Peter Pettigrew (wormtailings) wrote in triumphic, @ 2014-04-15 20:30:00 |
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Entry tags: | !backstory, !scene, lupin remus, pettigrew peter |
Who: Remus & Peter
When: October 31, last year
Where: Peter's house
What: Celebrating
Rating: Medium, drinking, swearing, etc.
Status: Complete
Usually, Remus does not have the funds nor the particular inclination to celebrate...well, much of anything, but every All Hallow’s Eve, he was sincerely dedicated to making an exception, even if it meant he’d be eating nothing but beans on toast for a week. Every year, some off-license in Britain would be down a middling bottle of Laphroaig, nearly half its contents consumed by the time he darkened Peter’s door. By this time, as per usual, all his thoughts were safely cocooned in a thick, bleary cushion of utterly fucking mullered, and he could focus his remaining faculties on bracing himself, right shoulder and temple, against the wooden doorframe and banging on Peter’s door with the bottom of his left fist. “Pete,” Remus said softly into the smooth, cool surface beneath him. “Peter. Are you home?” Surely. There had yet to be a year when Peter wasn’t. Of course Peter was home. Where else would he be on such a God-awful day like this one. Anyone who knew him, every job he ever had, knew that today was the worst day on earth and for that reason, Peter nearly all of it in a dark house, alone, quiet, until Moony showed up. Once Remus showed up, the two of them would consume copious amounts of alcohol and say very little. He opened the door and stepped aside to let Remus in. "Come in," he mumbled. "You're letting in the blasted sunlight." After an uncertain moment of precarious imbalance, Remus found his footing and held up the rest of the bottle. “Saved this for you,” he offered before swaying forward slightly, as if the weight of the half-empty bottle were enough to weigh him down. But in the manner of the truly inebriated, he used the momentum to stumble forward into Peter’s home, stopping only until he was in the middle of Peter’s living room -- small but clean, minimal scent of dust, trace of floral perfume (Mrs Pettigrew had visited recently, of course) -- then gazing about as if he did not know what to do next. Peter took the bottle, weighed it, frowned, and then pointed to the sofa. "Sit," he ordered, even if it didn't come out quite like a command and more like a question. Even if it had started to become easier for him to be truly confident, he still wasn't very keen on acting like it. "I'll get glasses." It was clear that Remus hadn't had much use for glasses thus far. It always seemed to happen thus. Remus would arrive, already quick drunk, and Peter would try and catch up until the two of them were useless fools sprawled out in the parlor, passed out. It was ritual, after all. And ritual was good and needed on anniversaries. Right. Given an immediate purpose, Remus settled onto one end of the sofa with exaggerated care before nearly melting into it, removing the noose of propriety like someone would a tie. The windows were tightly shuddered, and the darkness blurred all the sharp edges of the world like this. Things should start off civil though. “Your mum,” he began, “How’s she then?” Peter didn't think he really wanted to know how his mum was, but he answered anyway: "Just fine. Harping on me about settling down. Told her I don't care much what she thinks." He hadn't, not really, because he could never talk back to his mum, but it felt better to admit that he would have liked to say it. He brought them over two glasses, the same two glasses they used every year. He poured into one then the other. "Uh, well, to, er, James and Lily and Harry?" The last word squeaked out. Peter cleared his throat. The acrid scent of alcohol burned his nose more than anything, but Remus took a moment to inhale its promise anyway before sliding his gaze up at Peter’s face. “Cheers to them,” he said, heavy-handedly knocking his glass against Peter’s. “And to us. We few, we happy few.” Peter knocked his back against Remus then swallowed it all down in two quick gulps. The burning satisfied him, first in his throat then heating his stomach. He screwed his eyes shut for a moment and smacked his lips once. "Shite," he mumbled, only because it seemed like the thing to say. Remus drained his own glass with but a soft huff of agreement. The glass warmed in his hand as he cradled it against his chest, allowing its hard, blunt edges dig into his bones. From his lax, slouched position, he could just make out Peter’s soft profile. “Why haven’t you?” he asked with a note of genuine curiosity after the moments had stretched long and were threatening to become mournful. He blinked a few times to clear his mind and his head. It didn't work. "Why haven't I what exactly now?" Peter asked, pouring each of them another one. He didn't hold his liquor well at all. "Settled," Remus said. "Marriage. House teeming with little Peters running about." The image of it all forced him to bite down on his lip to keep a sloppy grin at bay. "Got the best shot at normalcy than any of us now." He couldn't help but snort. That was a laugh. As if any witches were interested in him. They never were. James, Sirius, sure. Now of course, not them precisely but that type. Witches went for that type, not Peter's type. "Yeah, right." Remus blinked long and slow, none-too-subtly able to study the play of emotions across his friend's face, then brought the second glass to his lips with only a deep furrow of his brow. "Yes, well. Wealth and charm apparently have their limits." Sipping drink be damned, his taste buds had long since been seared away by the day's earlier lack of restraint. "I have often wondered if, at this very moment, he does this too." "Everyone has limits," Peter said, even though he really didn't get what Remus was talking about all over again. He drank the rest of his glass quickly and poured himself more. He rubbed his forehead and squeezed the bridge of his nose. "And if he does," Remus went on, too engrossed now in the thought of Sirius Black wallowing, that bastard. "Half of me is thrilled to see him suffer for as long as he can. And the other half is bloody furious, because what right has he to feel that way?" "I don't give two … well, er, you know, about him anymore." Peter had to say it. He had to say it because Sirius was the one who was caught doing wrong. He was the reason James and Lily and the baby were dead. It wasn't Peter's fault, which is something he had to be thankful for every. single. day. "He can rot." "Part of me wishes you had never come to me that night, Pete. That I had never seen his face. I still can't stop thinking about all of it, even now. Ten years on." His hand met the side of his face, pressing into bone and skin. He'd used Unforgivables. He would have done more, had he the chance. Even now, he could almost taste the smell of Sirius's fear and pain. It ringed around the edges of the smoky whiskey and lingered acridly at the back of his throat. "Maybe we ought to move on. This, year after year. It can't be healthy, can it? James probably laughs at us now." "We have moved on," Peter clipped. "Except for tonight. Can't forget things on anniversaries." Can't forget things most of the time, but at least on important days it made sense to make a big deal out of them. Or at least acknowledge or commemorate them. Or something. Peter scowled. "Okay," Remus quietly conceded. "Okay." Maybe it was their burden to bear. Them, the survivors. With the familiar pain of ripping off the bandage that covered that particular unhealing wound, he delved into a catalog of his memories. They were stories he'd repeated exactly eight times before, though perhaps they changed a little in each telling: the bad erased just a little more, the good becoming heroic. His face softened, his hardened gaze grew fond. "Do you remember the first day at Hogwarts? I thought James was such an arrogant prat. That bloody snitch he liked to toss around." Peter's face screwed up like he was in pain. He coughed, the leftover liquor burning. He took another long, slow sip and swallowed it down. He didn't like thinking about those early years of Hogwarts, but he nodded. "So was Sirius. The two of them. Together." Wasn't that how it always was? That's how it started and that's how it bloody well ended. "Hmm, yes," Remus said. Like that, encased fully in memory and another long swallow of numbing alcohol, the name caused less pain. Sirius was not the man who betrayed them and sentenced his best friend to die. Sirius was just a boy, a stupidly fearless and obnoxious boy always at James's side who had a malicious streak but also generous one too, sometimes. One could not be seen long without the other. It was Peter and him that walked in their long shadows. "I imagine they took one look at me after I'd been sorted and wondered if the hat had made a mistake. To be truthful, I had thought that had to be the case. I thought I'd get Ravenclaw, surely. Before Hogwarts, I didn't have frie...well. I liked books. They were steady companions." "They don't hurt you, do they?" Peter mumbled. He didn't have very many friends either, before Hogwarts. He wasn't even sure he had real friends until after Hogwarts, and even then it wasn't the expected friends. It was Carrow, who was gone, a few others, now Remus for certain. Though he could count on Remus even back at Hogwarts. If it hadn't been for him, Peter probably wouldn't have been a Marauder. Fat lot of good it did him anyway. "How many mistakes d'you think the hat makes every year?" he wondered, riffing on Remus's musings. He certainly would never have thought he was a Gryffindor, at the time. Now, maybe. Ten years ago, a Slytherin. "Dumbledore said the Sorting Hat does not make mistakes," Remus intoned, brow arched, imperiousness dripping from every slightly slurred note. "And we all know we can place our utmost trust and loyalty in him." He grinned bitterly. “Well. It did a bang up job with Gryffindor that year, didn’t it?” It was hard to tell, Peter realized, whether or not Remus was using sarcasm. He pressed his lips into a narrow, tight line. "S'pose so," he ground out. When he reached again for the bottle, he knocked it over. "Sorry." There was something there Remus was supposed to object to...not...not suppose so, Peter...Dumbledore, that bloody bastard... but what little remained of the bottle now spilt across Peter's table and dripped onto the floor. And he couldn't help but laugh. "Ah gods. You best clean...that's still allowed, isn't it? You don't want your flat to smell like whiskey, lest anyone think you've succumbed to evils of drink. And then what would your mum say, Pete?" And the idea of Mrs Pettigrew's scandalised face -- her beloved boy, corrupted by the Devil's juice, and with a werewolf no less -- sent him into another fit of of amusement, bordering nigh on hysterical. After a moment of barely suppressed mirth: “She’s say that had you settled down by now, this never would have happened.” "She doesn't always know what she's talking about," Pete snapped back, face red both from the drink and the defense of his mother, bless her heart. He flicked his wand -- as a Ministry worker of course he was allowed something so mundane as cleaning a spilt drink. Maybe since Remus was a werewolf, he had tighter restrictions. It occurred to Peter that he ought to know that, and he probably did, but at the moment everything was fuzzy round the edges and difficult to make heads or tails of. Remus blinked, humour immediately vanished upon hearing the sharp note in Peter's voice, much as the mess was banished by his wand. "I'm sorry, Peter. It's not very funny. I know your mother loves you immensely, and I did not mean to make light of that." The perils of inebriation were vast and ever changeable. For him, who healed a bit faster than was usual, also metabolised much quicker as well. A headache was blossoming behind his eyes, pressing against his temples from within. What near-hyper input his senses received that had been momentarily staved off by the alcohol was renewing its assault: whiskey, perfume, canned air from the windows shuttered all day, the neighbours just outside debating whether to plant daisies or daffodils in their window garden, Peter, the tension he could barely stand. "I envy it. And I'm...bitter. And you must completely disregard the rantings and ravings of a bitter, old man." "Don't forget drunk," Peter added without thinking. That's what happened when Peter drank; he tended to say things that normally he would never say, things he'd hold back. He had held back most of his life, especially in the shadow of James and Sirius, and it was only in the last near-decade that he'd managed to be different. Or, maybe, more himself. He didn't even know any more. He pushed himself to his feet and took his glass into the kitchen, tumbling it into the sink and turning on the water to wet his face. He needed a moment. Hell, he always needed a moment, and he couldn't even explain why. "Not drunk enough," he muttered, watching Peter exit the room. No anniversary promised the same atmosphere, from revelry to morose, but this time was yet again altogether different. Remus waited until he could hear the tap switched off, gathered the will to heave himself up off to sofa and hovered in the entryway to kitchen. Peter, singular, shoulders stooped in the muscle memory of huddling in on himself, painted a familiar picture. "You can tell me anything, you know. I will listen. I will remain quiet," he said, gaze fallen to the discoloured linoleum floor. "If something's wrong. If you want." "Nothing's wrong," Peter returned. Nothing, at least, that he wanted to talk about. "Can't we just do as always and drink until we black out?" He went banging round the kitchen to find the firewhiskey he knew he had stashed there specifically for this damned anniversary. For a long moment, Remus was silent, watching Peter briskly open and close cupboards with the single-minded focus of someone who desperately wanted to avoid something. Remus was quite familiar with the tactic. "Alright. Yes. It's a good plan. I don't know what I was thinking." As if someone had flipped a switch, he straightened his shoulders, turned with near military precision back to his assigned seat. "Come along, Wormtail. You've got a lot of catching up to do then." Once he heard Remus turn and return to his seat, Peter relaxed. His forearm itched. A burning itch that he could do nothing about. It was imaginary. A ghost itch. His arm hadn't shown anything in ten years, and yet, every year, on this anniversary, he felt the burning summons of the Dark Lord. He never dared ask anyone else if they did too. What did it matter yes or no? He rubbed his arm, just once, then grabbed the firewhiskey and took a searing gulp straight from the bottle. He returned to Remus and held the bottle out to him. |