Chapter Text
When he wakes, the first thing he thinks is that he’s got no idea where he is. The room is homey enough—off-white walls hung with still life paintings whose subjects rustle with an unfelt breeze, yellow glow from the torches lighting up the room, checkered quilt on the soft full bed tucked all the way up to his chin—but he doesn’t think he’s in a bedroom, per se, let alone at home. For one thing, there are three beds in this room, though the other two remain empty; for another, there are wide windows that reveal a corridor bustling with people wearing lime green robes and frowns.
The second thing he thinks is that he can’t remember what “home” is supposed to look like.
Then the pain sets in.
He only has to lie there moaning for a couple of moments, really, before the door swings open to reveal an attractive man who, unlike everybody else out in the corridor, is wearing black robes instead of green. He’s got messy black hair and spectacles, and some color seeps into his caramel cheeks as he gasps, “Peter? Peter!”
“Why—?” He breaks off, coughing, and then tries again: “Why are you calling me Peter?”
The man goes pale again. “That’s your name. Don’t you—don’t you remember who you are?—how you got here?”
He thinks about this for a second. It’s hard, given that he feels like he’s been run over by a train—but then he realizes that, for all he knows, maybe he was run over by a train. The name “Peter” doesn’t ring any bells, but it could very well be his name: he can’t think what the alternative could be.
“No,” croaks he—croaks Peter. The other man’s face falls. “Who are you, anyway?”
The look that crosses the man’s face fills Peter with guilt. A second later, Peter feels annoyed with himself. It’s not like he can help that he can’t remember.
“It’s James,” the man with the glasses says. “It’s Prongs. I’m your best friend.”
“Prongs? That’s a weird—” Peter interrupts himself with another long moan.
“Shit. I’ll be right back, okay? I’m going to go get help.”
Peter doesn’t know much, but what he does know is that he doesn’t want James to go. What’s he going to say to make James stay, though? He says he’s Peter’s friend, which probably means he’s not a Healer and can’t do anything to make the pain stop. Then again, if James really is Peter’s best friend, then he might have some answers about who Peter is and what the hell landed him in this place (which he’s starting to realize must be a hospital)—but, by the time Peter thinks to ask him these things, James is already gone.
It’s not long, however, before he returns with a witch in green robes—that must be what Healers wear. “Mr. Pettigrew?” Peter is confused for a second before he realizes this must be his last name. “I’m Healer Ella Payne. You’re at St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. Drink this—” She holds out a glass full of potion and raises it to Peter’s lips. He swallows obediently. “Do you remember how you got here?”
“No,” says Peter. The pain, for the most part, melts away, leaving behind nothing but soreness. It’s not even a bad ache; it’s the kind that makes it feel good to stretch and feel his muscles working. “I don’t remember anything.”
“I think he really does mean he can’t remember,” intones James. “He didn’t recognize his name, for one thing.”
Payne sighs, her beady eyes narrowing. “If you don’t recall how you got here, Mr. Pettigrew, I’m afraid I can’t help fill in many of those blanks. Someone in a mask Side-Along-Apparated you into our lobby three days ago, but then Disapparated without answering any of our questions—just told us you belonged on the Spell Damage floor. Your friends have been checking in on you ever since we reached out to a Mr. Remus Lupin, who was your emergency contact on file.”
James suddenly frowns. “You did understand—you still remember magic, right?”
“Yeah, I do. Do you know where my wand is?”
James sighs in relief. “And the war?”
“What war?”
“Let’s just take a breath,” says Payne calmly. “We’ll know more when we run some tests.”
Payne’s tests, as it turns out, come in two parts. She asks him a series of questions, some of which Peter can answer but others of which he can’t: who the Minister of Magic is, his home address, his job. Then she asks him to perform a series of routine tasks: feeding himself porridge (it turns out something he does remember is how much he hates the stuff), tying a shoelace, levitating a feather.
His diagnosis—amnesia—is pretty obvious by the end of this, but, since Payne doesn’t know exactly what spells Peter was hit with, she can’t give him a straight answer about how long it will last or whether there’s any spell she can use to reverse it. He’s supposed to stay in the hospital under observation for the next few days while the Healers treat his pain and experiment with remedies for memory loss.
Throughout the whole ordeal, James remains at Peter’s bedside, tight-lipped and stressed in the face. Peter barely knows the bloke, but, as far as he can tell, he’s done pretty well for himself in picking a best mate. He keeps brushing Peter’s hair out of his eyes and telling him to be patient with himself. “You’ve got a whole slew of us who are going to help you through this,” he vows when Payne finally finishes. “Healer Payne, can you stay with him a little while longer, just in case? Lily’s right downstairs in the dining hall; she’ll want to come up for this.”
“Is Lily my girlfriend?” asks Peter, kind of hoping she’s not: he’s doing just fine with James as the closest person to him, thanks.
James laughs. “No, she’s not. Lily is my wife.”
Color floods Peter’s cheeks, but not from embarrassment at his mistake. She’s not with Peter—she’s with James. This, he thinks, is even worse.
Lily turns out to be a tall redhead with sparkling green eyes and a dusting of freckles on her cheeks. She’s holding James’s hand as he reenters the room, but when she sights Peter, she drops it so she can rush to his bedside and pull him into a careful hug. Her hair smells nice—like lemon and ginger—but it still feels awfully intrusive to be seized into the arms of a stranger.
Going by what James says, of course, Lily isn’t a stranger, not really: she’s Peter’s best friend’s wife. It’s just that he can’t remember the first thing about his relationship with her.
“We were so worried about you,” she says breathlessly as Payne nods to James and bows out of the room. “How are you feeling? Is it weird, not remembering anything?”
“I dunno,” says Peter, feeling rather taken aback. “It feels normal enough. It’s not like I remember what it feels like to—er—remember anything.”
“Of course you don’t,” she says, looking rapidly between his eyes. She’s still got her hands on his shoulders, like she’s sizing him up, and the whole effect is somewhat uncomfortable. “I’m so glad you’re awake, in any case. It was touch-and-go for a while there.”
“Right. So, uh—who’s Remus Lupin? Healer Payne said he’s my emergency contact.”
“Remus is another one of our best friends from Hogwarts,” says James.
“Hogwarts?”
James and Lily look at each other. “You should catch him up,” Lily tells James. “I’m going to go—I should track down Moony and Padfoot and tell them that he’s awake. They’ll want to come down tonight, I’m sure.”
“Who are—?”
James anticipates this question before Peter can even get it all the way out. As Lily is kissing him goodbye on the cheek, James says swiftly, “We all, uh—we have nicknames for each other. That’s where ‘Prongs’ comes from, too. Moony is Remus, and Padfoot is Sirius—that’s Sirius Black, our other best friend.”
“What’s your nickname, Lily?”
She blushes. “Oh, I don’t have one. It’s a thing you blokes did before I was friends with any of you. James, I’ll see you at home, okay? I want to give you and Wormy some time.”
“You call me Wormy?”
“It’s short for ‘Wormtail,’” says James. “Sounds good, Lily, thanks.”
When she pecks him on the lips, Peter forces himself to watch. He may as well accept reality—the sooner he does, the sooner he can get over this stupid notion that he ought to get to keep James all to himself.
And then, for the first time, he’s alone with James. At the same time, he’s both pleased and terrified by this. “So when you call yourself my best friend…”
James laughs at this. “I am one of them, I promise. You’re lucky enough to have four of us.”
“Lily, too?”
“Yeah, Lily, too. She just joined us late, after she and I started dating—we were almost eighteen when we did, but you, Remus, Sirius, and I had all been close since first year. Sorry—I mean first year at Hogwarts, which would have been when we were eleven. I keep forgetting how much you must not know.”
“It’s okay,” says Peter. “Weird question: can we conjure up a mirror or something? I want to know what I look like.”
When he finally does see his reflection, he doesn’t like it. He’s got fat cheeks, dark blonde hair that’s sticking out at odd angles, colorless eyes that are too small and too far apart, a pointy sort of nose, and something of a double chin. It’s a wonder that someone as good-looking as James would stoop to even speak to somebody who looks like Peter, let alone become one of his best mates.
“Not what you were expecting?” James asks.
“I can’t say I was expecting anything in particular,” says Peter. “More like not what I was hoping.”
And James’s veneer of casual confidence cracks—he looks for a moment like he’s trembling on the edge with no idea what to say. Then, finally: “Come on, Pete, it’s not like that. There’s nothing wrong with the way you look. Anyway, all I see when I look at you is my best mate in the entire world, and, to me, that makes you… er…”
James never says, but Peter will spend plenty of time imagining how that sentence would have ended if he had. Gorgeous. Perfect. Mine. For now, though, he just shoves the mirror aside and lies back against the pillows, spent.