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Tweak says, "You love me SOOOO much."

Peter Pettigrew (p__pettigrew) wrote in hogwarts_dawn,
@ 2021-04-12 10:15:00

Entry tags:

character: lily evans potter, character: peter pettigrew

RP: Peter/Lily
Who: Peter/Lily
When: after breakfast 12 April
Where: the Great Hall
What: they talk

Thank you for being willing to meet with me.

The words were stuck in his mind. Lily had said it as if Peter even had a choice. How could he refuse such a little thing? The fact that she thought he could spoke more about her goodness than any real choice on his part. On the other hand, he knew that anything he said would sound a million times worse, because she'd been almost an irrelevant afterthought. It had been all about Sirius and James. Still, he owed her an explanation.

He waited until after breakfast. James and the others would go to their 'jobs', but Peter didn't have one at the moment, and neither did Lily. He wasn't trying to hide from James, since he knew that she'd tell him and he deserved to know, but he wanted to have this one first discussion in private.

When they were almost alone, he approached. "Hey, Lily, how are you? Or do you want to walk?" It was still cold outside, but at least the sun was out and they could walk through the long hallways and let the sun shine through the large windows.

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lovingsacrifice
2021-04-13 04:21 pm UTC (link)

This was about us, the Marauders, four stupid boys who did stupid things...

That statement haunted her. Peter made it clear that Lily hadn't done anything. Meaning he hadn't even considered her when he chose to made a decision that would lead to her death. And put her son in mortal peril. She was trying not to dwell on that. She wanted to remain calm and give Peter a proper chance to explain himself to her.

She couldn't eat breakfast. Thankfully, she didn't have to make excuses to James or Sirius, which was good since Lily hated fibbing. Especially to James. She made her way towards where she was meeting Peter, ignoring the sick feeling in her throat.

Hearing someone getting closer, she offered Peter a slight smile. "Hi, Peter. I'm as good as one can be under the circumstances. And yes, I think we should walk." It would give her something else to focus on if she felt herself losing her grip on her temper.

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p__pettigrew
2021-04-13 04:56 pm UTC (link)

Peter started to walk going nowhere, but making sure that they didn't go toward the seventh floor and the Ministry's offices. They didn't need to do this with an audience.

"It gets better," Peter says. "Once it sinks in that you're alive, there's no war, no constant fear. It's still bad, but not as bad. I'm still working on believing that part, though. Remus is doing better, because he lived past the war." He wished that he could stop worrying about when the Death Eaters would arrive.

"I know you probably want answers, but I'm not even sure where to start. I can tell you the facts. I- Bella threatened me once she recognized Sirius at a battle. She wanted me to give him and the other members up, and said that I was the weak link. She was right. When I said no, she put my grandmother under the Imperius and made her walk in front of a bus. The bus stopped in time and she had minor scratches and a scare, but Bellatrix said that she'd kill my entire family. Except for my Mum, they are all Muggles. They had no idea what was happening and couldn't defend themselves. My cousins didn't even know about magic. I agreed to help Bellatrix. I never said much, but she seemed to know things and only wanted confirmation. I suspected that there might have been some other spy but I never knew for certain. She never asked about you and James. At least not yet."

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lovingsacrifice
2021-04-15 12:53 am UTC (link)

Lily walked beside him, letting him pick where they headed since she wasn't really paying attention to all that anyway. She was too focused on making sense of everything.

"No war is nice," Lily agreed. "It will probably take me a little while to get over the constant fear." With everything she learned about the past, Lily was hesitant to trust that she would ever truly feel safe anywhere. Even knowing James, Remus, and Sirius were here, and that Harry was doing relatively well, she was still being cautious.

"I'm sorry that your family was put through all that, and I can understand wanting to protect them. Did you tell anyone that Bellatrix had approached you, or that she threatened your family?" The question might have seemed a bit odd, but Lily was operating off the assumption that the Order could have helped Peter. Hearing the facts did little to set Lily at ease, but it did shed some light on what Peter had been going through and why he chose to do what he did. She didn't want to be angry with him, but she was still having a hard time allowing herself to feel sympathetic to his plight considering how it affected her family and those she loved.

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p__pettigrew
2021-04-15 01:53 am UTC (link)

"No, it's never nice," he agreed. "I'm not sure I feel safe either even if the fear isn't the same. People are still dying, people are still disappearing. Instead of the Death Eaters, it's the castle deciding what happens, but otherwise it feels much the same."

Peter sighed. "I thought about it. I really did, but who was I going to tell? What would have happened? I've played so many scenarios in my head. You had my mother, who was the easy one to deal with since she's a Muggleborn. My grandparents, my uncle and my aunt, who knew about magic, their spouses and children who didn't know. What would they do? Put them under Fidelius? Can't be done. Protect them 24/7? We didn't have the resources. Send them away? I mean even now that was brought up but if it was so simple, why didn't you and James leave? It was only the three of you instead of twelve people. I knew that there was nothing that could have been done and the fact that in the months here, no one could come up with one good alternative, pretty much tells me that I was right."

He rubbed his face. "James would have never left. No matter what I'd said, and when it started, I thought I could control the flow of information. She never asked anything she didn't know. She only wanted confirmation, so what was the harm in that, right? I don't know how it went from confirming information to betraying you. I didn't live though that."

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lovingsacrifice
2021-04-16 07:12 pm UTC (link)

"With everything you experienced," she began. "Feeling safe is as foreign a concept as there not being a war going on. It will take some getting used to, as will being pulled into the future at the whim of a mercurial castle."

Lily kept her expression carefully blank. "That still doesn't answer the question of why you didn't tell anyone that you were approached by Bellatrix. Not James, not Remus, not even anyone in the Order. You said before that this was about the Marauders, but to me it sounds more like it was about Bellatrix preying on your concerns about being inadequate in comparison to James and Sirius. I've heard nothing indicating that you were being watched, or that your communications were being monitored. As for why James and I didn't leave, for all you know, if we were aware of exactly how close the threat was getting, we would have. In denying us the knowledge that you had, you never gave us a chance to make that decision."

She was angry. Not in a white-hot undirected fury sort of way, but in a coldly rational sense. "You gambled with the belief that you could outsmart the Devil in the form of Bellatrix Lestrange, and lost. You bet the safety of my husband and child on your own hubris. Give me one reason why I shouldn't walk away right now and forget you exist?"

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p__pettigrew
2021-04-16 07:26 pm UTC (link)

"I don't know that we can get used to it while we are at the mercy of a mercurial castle. I could be sent back tomorrow. You could. Any one of us could disappear without warning." He had no illusion that this bright future would stay bright.

"Who exactly would I tell?" he asked, wondering who she thought should be told. "The Ministry? When half of them supported the Dark Lord? Or Dumbledore? Who only cared about James and Sirius? He didn't even protect the Longbottoms and they were as much in danger as you were. Instead they were turned into mindless beings from exposure to the Cruciatus. How come you were the only ones he protected? I'll tell you why because he only cared about James and you, the loving couple that kept people wanting to fight. He never cared about the rest of us. So who exactly would I have told? And if you cared, if James cared, he would have left when I told him. When I said over and over that I didn't want to be the Secret Keeper, but did he listen? No because it's all about what he wants and what he thinks his best and he didn't want to leave me and Sirius. You can put a lot of things on me, but the choice not to leave was yours and yours alone. You didn't even bloody leave your house to make it harder for them to find you. You could have easily disappeared in the Muggle world. You decided not to, and that's on you and not me."

He snorted. "No, you gambled with your safety that you could outsmart the Dark Lord when you decided that you'd just stay put in your house and wait it out, and you lost. I gambled that I could keep my family safe, and I did, even if at great personal cost." He knew she had the right to be angry, but he would not take the blame for their own choices. If they had just left, everyone would have been safer. "If you want to walk away, that's up to you, Lily. I'm pretty sure your husband doesn't want anything to do with me anyway, so in the end, it won't make much of a difference."

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lovingsacrifice
2021-04-16 08:27 pm UTC (link)

"Time is fleeting even when there aren't threats of war of being sent home looming over us. The only thing we can really do is make the most of it while we have the chance to." At least, that's what she planned on doing.

"You could have told me," she responded, frustration in her tone. "You keep talking about James, and how he never listened to you, and yet not once did you come to me with your concerns." She spoke softly, allowing him to hear how hurt she was. "I thought you were my friend, Peter, and that you would have considered coming to me, so that perhaps I could talk to James and remind him that there were certain decisions we should have been making together. We both know how stubborn James could be, and that he would never think of abandoning his friends to whatever fate the Dark Lord had in store for us all. I'm not trying to deny or downplay your decisions, as you said you did what you had to in order to keep your family safe. I just for the life of me can't understand why, after butting heads with James and Sirius for as long as you had, the idea of having a conversation with me never even entered your mind." She wasn't going to comment on the decisions Dumbledore made, because she had no way of knowing why he did what he did.

She smiled sadly. "You're not wrong, although you're leaving out the part where in saying 'you', you're implying that I was aware of every decision my husband made on my behalf. Yes, I took a chance in trusting that my clever husband and his equally clever friends were doing what they thought was for the best. I trusted you, I trusted Dumbledore, I trusted James, and I trusted Sirius. I've made a lot of mistakes in my life, and I know that, however I've never once felt regret over choosing to trust the people I believed were my friends." She wouldn't shy away from taking some of the responsibility, but it would never change the fact that proved himself untrustworthy. "I'll have to think about it, Peter. Like I said, I thought you were my friend, and even knowing your reasons for doing what you did, I need time to digest everything. Thank you, though, for explaining yourself as best you could."

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p__pettigrew
2021-04-16 08:50 pm UTC (link)

The discussion about the fleeting nature of life was forgotten as she kept speaking and her words stopped him short, literally and figuratively. He stood there, frowning. Why had he not talked to her? Merlin, that seemed like such an easy question. "I'm an idiot." The realization hit him like a ton of bricks. He should have talked to her because he knew that there was nothing more powerful than a mother's determination. His own mother had proved it, while raising a child as a single parent and with no support in the Muggle world.

"I-" He couldn't seem to make his feet or mouth move. He leaned against a wall, looking at her. "It never occurred to me and it should have been so obvious. Merlin, I'm- God, sorry doesn't seem appropriate here, but I am. The solution was obvious." He ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. His stomach was tied in a knut. Had it been so simple and he'd missed it because of the Marauders?

"In the past few months, I've realized just how much the Marauders held us back. I don't mean the friendship, but the title, the name. We held on tight to something that didn't exist anymore," he said, shaking his head. "We wanted to be the same. Sirius is basically having a breakdown because people grew up, none of us trusted Remus because he didn't share everything, I was the most obtuse of all, never considering that you could convince James. We kept thinking of us as the Marauders and James just happened to be married, and- I know it's not going to change the past, but I want to do better. For all of us, you included. The Marauders can't be who they were, four plus one. I'm sorry that's how we- I treated you."

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