February 26 – Peter

What if…

"How's the studying coming?" asked Remus as he sat down next to me. I was in James' Room of Requirement – the one filled with flowers – because the number of uninhabited locations in the castle was ridiculously few and Sirius, the most distracting person of all, couldn't abide the scent in there.

"Alright, I guess. I still don't understand any of it. I'm going to fail all of my NEWTs. But with P's instead of T's," I sighed, banging my head on the Charms textbook open in my lap.

"You'll do fine," he assured me. "Stop worrying."

"I guess," I replied, still not really believing him.

"So how are you doing otherwise?" he asked, picking a flower and turning it over in his hands.

"About Dumbledore's thing, you mean?"

"Yeah."

"I don't know." None of us can say 'Order of the Phoenix' out loud. James comes close, occasionally, but then, he's the only one who can say Voldemort's name. We've also, I noticed, all taken to reading the Daily Prophet, both the morning and the evening editions.

"I get that."

"It kind of makes it feel real that we're finally leaving Hogwarts."

"Yeah. And it made me realize how little I was really paying attention to the outside world. I always knew it was going to suck, but I guess I just didn't want to think about it." I looked over at Remus while he spoke. I always forget that he's a werewolf – it just seems like such a separate part of him from my quiet, intelligent friend. The forgetting always made me worry that it was just another sign I wasn't meant to be a wizard – I didn't understand what werewolf really meant. James and Sirius understood, but they overlooked it because they were bigger than that; I was just too stupid to comprehend, never mind to see past it.

"He wouldn't have asked me if it weren't for you," I said. "You were the one who helped me figure out the Animagus thing. And I don't know if you'd all still be friends with me if I were too stupid to get that. And if you weren't friends with me then I'd never get to be in Dumbledore's thing."

Remus made an incredulous noise. "What a great debt to have. You get to fight now, to risk your life. And for what?"

I didn't know. "Things are going to be better," I replied, because that's just what I had always assumed.

"What if they're not?" he asked. "What if something happens? It's my fault. Like you said. I never should have let any of you become Anamagi."

"That's stupid," I replied. "Dumbledore would have asked the three of you anyway. And I'm just glad I get to be with you. I didn't mean it like that. Nothing's going to happen to us."

But Remus turned his head away and when I saw news of more killings at dinner in the Evening Prophet (how had I missed them before?) a voice in the back of my head wondered rhetorically who it would happen to, if something happened. I was the stupidest Marauder after all.

A/N: I'm back! I was doing a show, and therefore disappeared. However, I'm getting ready to go to college (!) so in light of that, updates will be slowing down to one a week. Also, I went back and edited most of the AU stuff in the previous chapters, because I felt really stupid and hated it. So yeah. Thanks for sticking with me, as always. Cheers! _alice