Work Text:
It wasn’t easy to get Peter Pettigrew alone. He was always tagging along after James and Sirius, sitting with them at mealtimes and lingering near them on the school grounds. But that was why the Dark Lord wanted him so badly, after all.
In the fall of Regulus’s sixth year, Peter’s seventh, he found him alone beneath the shade of a tree by the lake. Regulus didn’t bother asking permission to seat himself on the grass beside Peter, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye and offering a smile when Peter met his gaze.
“How are you?”
Peter shrugged.
“Gotten tired of my brother, have you?” Regulus asked.
He shouldn’t say that. Shouldn’t call Sirius his brother, not when the burn mark on the tapestry insisted otherwise. But it slipped out anyway. It wasn’t so easy to change the way he thought of Sirius.
“No,” said Peter. “He’s in detention. So is James. And Remus is in the hospital wing, so…”
“Well, I guess you’ve got better luck than they do,” said Regulus. “Or maybe just more common sense.”
Peter flushed and looked away, but Regulus saw that he was hiding a smile, as though it embarrassed him to be told he was in any way better than his friends.
“Here,” said Regulus. “I’ve got a bag of Bertie Bott’s. Want to share it?”
Peter’s eyes went wide, like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“You. You want to share your sweets. With me?”
“Sure.” Regulus pulled open the drawstring top and held out the bag. “Unless you’re scared you’ll get a nasty flavor, I suppose. But then, you are a Gryffindor, aren’t you?”
Peter might not have accepted an offer, but he wouldn’t refuse a challenge. Not when his very belonging to something he clearly cared so much about was called into question. He reached into the bag and pulled out a single, bright green bean, looking at it for a moment before popping it into his mouth.
He made a face, and Regulus chuckled.
“What? What was it?”
“Something sour,” said Peter. “I’d say lemon, except it was green, so… lime, I think.”
Regulus smirked at him.
“Better luck next time.”
He reached into the bag himself and pulled out a bean, eyeing it cautiously, then, slowly, placing it on his tongue. It tasted vaguely sweet, like vanilla.
He probably ought to say something about the Dark Lord, but it didn’t feel like the time. He didn’t want to ruin the moment.
They met beneath the tree again a week later, both with stacks of textbooks and parchment. Regulus helped Peter with his D.A.D.A. homework, even though Peter was a year ahead of him and studying things he hadn't gotten to yet - not in the official curriculum, in any case.
“Inferi are not really alive, of course,” he explained. “The dead people’s souls have already passed on. They’re just bodies being used as puppets, to do the bidding of the Dark Wizard that creates them.”
“That’s horrible,” said Peter, shuddering.
“Gryffindors think all Dark Arts are horrible,” said Regulus with a shrug. “Although, I have to admit, I do find necromancy to be in poor taste.”
“What sort of Dark Arts do you like, then?” Peter asked.
“Curses. Blood runes. Combative magic. Sometimes, you’ve got to be willing to do what it takes to get what you want.”
Peter probably should have shied away from such an idea, but instead, he looked at Regulus with curiosity. And so the seed was planted.
They played gobstones. Peter somehow managed to win, leaving Regulus with foul black goo all over his shirt. He looked down at it in disgust.
“How are you so good at this game?”
Peter shrugged.
“Your brother’s better. Usually I’m the one covered in that stuff.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better,” Regulus grumbled.
There was another attack. Dozens of people dead. The Dark Mark in the sky up above.
Peter leaned back against the tree trunk and looked up at the lush canopy above, the morning's edition of The Daily Prophet still held loosely in one hand.
“It’s getting worse, isn’t it?”
Regulus frowned and said nothing. Peter turned to glance at him, a nervous, fearful look in his eyes.
“James and Sirius are talking about joining the Order of the Phoenix. Have you heard of…?”
Regulus nodded solemnly. “Is that what you want to do?”
“I’m not sure I’m brave enough for that,” Peter admitted quietly. “But they’re my friends, and… I don’t know.”
Regulus reached out to squeeze his hand, and the seed he had planted began to grow roots.
Peter helped Regulus with his Transfiguration homework. Regulus didn’t know where he had learned so much about the Animagus transformation, but he took careful notes as the other boy talked. Silver teaspoon, mandrake leaf - his hand ached, but it would be worth it for top marks on his essay.
Snow was falling now, coating the ground in a blanket of white. The branches above were bare and skeletal.
Regulus reached out for Peter’s hand, as he had done a dozen times before. Then, with a careful movement, he shifted his weight, angling his body toward Peter’s and reaching up with his other hand to caress his cheek.
“May I?” he asked, leaning in close.
Peter stared at him in confusion for a moment, then nodded.
Regulus kissed him.
Peter’s lips were soft and warm, and the lines between Death Eater mission and friendship-turned-romance blurred until the two became impossible to distinguish.
In early January, they met beneath a chandelier of icicles.
“They’re saying Mulciber’s a Death Eater for real now,” Peter whispered. “They’re saying he had his initiation at Christmas. Maybe some of the other Slytherins, too.”
Regulus nodded.
“Have you…?”
“I wouldn’t tell you if I had,” said Regulus, his forearm aching beneath his sleeve.
Peter’s arm remained around his shoulders, comforting and warm.
“You don’t have to, you know,” said Peter quietly. “You could run away like Sirius, if you wanted out. The Potters would take you in.”
“I wouldn’t have to run,” said Regulus. “I’m the only heir my family’s got left now. I could simply refuse on those grounds, no need to get disowned over it.”
He could. But he hadn’t.
“If I did… if the Dark Lord’s cause was something I believed in and wanted to fight for…”
Peter gave him a sad look, but he didn’t pull away.
“I suppose… I suppose that makes you brave, in a way. Braver than me.”
“Hmm?”
“The Order is losing. They’re going to get themselves killed. And I’m scared.”
“You don’t have to get yourself killed alongside them,” said Regulus softly. “I know they’re your friends, but you can still decide for yourself.”
And so the seed that was planted all those months ago began to push through the surface in frozen ground.
The ice melted, and their tree’s branches were covered once again by a lush canopy of green. Regulus held a grasshopper in the palm of his hand, pointed his wand, and whispered a single word.
“Imperio.”
Peter’s eyes widened as the insect hopped down from Regulus’s palm and across the grass, toward a pair of Gryffindors studying together, landing directly on Mary Macdonald’s hand. Her scream filled the air. Regulus smirked at Peter.
“It’s easy with insects. People are harder. But you’ve got to start somewhere.”
Summer came, and they kissed each other goodbye beneath that very same tree. They clung to one another, as if they knew, even then, that things would never be the same.
A year went by in a flurry of owl post and furtive meetings in Hogsmeade, stolen kisses and whispered secrets. The tree’s branches stood bare and covered in icicles again, then burst forth into life once more.
There was a potion and a locket, a profound betrayal and an overwhelming question:
Can I trust him?
The answer was no.
Perhaps, once Regulus had swallowed down the potion and taken the locket, there would be time to speak with Peter. If he made it out of the cave alive. Perhaps Peter could be made to see that the Dark Lord’s side wasn’t the right one after all, and they could make a plan together.
Or, more likely, even if Peter agreed that a Horcrux was going too far, he would choose his own survival over the chance to finally do the right thing. Gryffindor though he might be, he wasn’t a brave man. Regulus had always known that.
But perhaps…
Until it was done, Regulus didn’t dare even ask.
Peter visited the grave in secret. There was no body beneath the headstone, nothing left of the boy he had kissed beneath the tree by the lakeside.
They said he had been a traitor, and maybe that was true. If so, he was a more courageous one than Peter, giving up his own life rather than desperately trying to save himself. Peter sobbed, and he didn’t care that he had been betrayed, too. He just wished Regulus’s brand of treason had been a bit more selfish, a bit more like his own.