Fault

Author: Kali (thirty2flavors)

Rating: PG. Strong language here and there.

Summary: Four very different perspectives of a certain three day chain of event that shape the rest - or the end - of their lives.

Notes: I wrote this a while ago, revamped it in August of 2004. A lot of it is the same, but I tweaked some grammar, fixed some typos, and changed some wording. Reviews are very much appreciated. Repost, because fanfic was being weird.

Moony

Every one of the other three have fallen in one way or another.

James was first. The one with the most to live for was the very first to die. The one who had a family was the one who went down first. Ironic, isn't it? A week ago I would have told you that, of the four of us, he was the one I knew any of us would save first. James was the one that I figured, in a save-one-sacrifice-the-rest situation, would be saved. All three of the rest of us seemed to recognize that, because he had a wife and a son - a family, he would be the one we'd do the most to protect. The top of the priorities list.

On a similar note, I never would have expected that Sirius be the cause. That Sirius of all people, Sirius, be the one to cause it, is absurd. He was the one who dropped the stone in the water to watch it ripple. I never, for all the money in the world, would have thought him to be the sellout. If someone had suggested that Sirius Black would be the one to sell out the Potters - to sell out James - I would have laughed at them. Laughed.

And I never would have expected Peter to be the one to die with his back straight. I never could have anticipated that Peter Pettigrew would be the one to confront the traitorous, murderous ringleader. I wouldn't have expected Peter to go down fighting for his friend in a manner so truly honourable. It's almost ludicrous to think that Peter was the one who rose to meet the challenge and make Sirius face the music.

Perhaps that is why I dropped Divination in forth year.

I do not understand it. I don't understand how three days ago Sirius could have handed over his best friend - the person everyone was convinced he would have done anything for - and proceeded to murder another. The thought itself is sickening.

Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs.

Alone, murdered, traitorous and betrayed.

What a quartet we are now. It's a far cry from Purveyors of Aids to Magical Mischief-Maker isn't it? Age-old links that seemed invincible have completely crumpled, irreversibly damaged.

I know they thought it was me.

No one anticipated, of course, that Sirius would follow the path of everyone else in his family. It couldn't have been James. Never James. That was out of the question. And Peter...why, why would it be Peter? The proudest moment in his short life had to have been his death. Order of Merlin, First Class.

It was my job to be the rational one. To find loopholes like this. To notice when something is wrong, to notice a change in the pattern. It was my job to stop this kind of thing from happening to us.

Years before any of this James would say I was the bungee cord, the one that pulled them back up before we all got ourselves killed.

A bungee cord doesn't help when it's not connected to any of the jumpers.

Two dead, one as good as.

And the remnant.

It's my fault.