Running Close to the Ground

Part II: In the Time of My Confession

Chapter Four: Drifting Apart

The flowers of indulgence

And the weeds of yesteryear,

Like criminals, they have choked the breath

Of conscience and good cheer...

- Bob Dylan, "Every Grain of Sand"

As I lie in the shadows of the room above the Hanged Man, the past comes back to me. I am half-awake and half-asleep, half-dreaming and half-remembering, and the scenes do not follow one another in order but form curious patterns.

Ottery St. Catchpole, 1992

On hot summer nights, the younger children sometimes set up the tent in the back yard and spread out their sleeping bags there. They play games of Twenty Questions or Truth or Dare (Ginny always chooses Dare; she likes to keep a tight hold on her secrets), and they talk about anything and everything, and finally fall asleep well past midnight. In the stillness of the early morning hours I watch their sleeping faces, the long eyelashes falling over the freckled cheekbones.

They remind me so much of me and my friends before everything went wrong. Their games and their dreams and their faults are ours.

I creep from one sleeping bag to the next in the darkness, thinking of what I would say to them if I dared to speak, just once, with the voice of a man.

The twins are sprawled in front of the tent flap like watchdogs guarding their little brother and sister. Your pranks are fun, but never forget that it's easy to be cruel in little, careless ways. Before you do anything, think of how it would feel to be the one on the receiving end.

Ginny's long hair spills over her pillow, and she mutters something in her sleep. Speak of the things that are troubling you, little one. Don't keep your thoughts to yourself until it's too late.

Ron's mouth is open, and he is snoring softly. Dear boy, I have so much to say to you that I hardly know how to begin. You are the child I was before I went astray. Learn not to doubt yourself or let others underestimate you. Stand by your friends and your brothers. And beware of envy, the sin that first led brother to lift his hand against brother. Learn to recognize it when it comes to you wearing the mask of love.

"I had a weird dream last night," says Ron at breakfast. "I dreamed Scabbers could talk."

But nobody pays him much attention.

Hogwarts, 1972

James and Sirius race down the corridor in my direction. James is carrying a large book under his arm and they both have an air of barely repressed excitement, but this isn't unusual. They both spend hours doing unauthorized research in the library, mostly trying to figure out new ways to get around the school rules.

Sirius speaks first. "Peter, you've got to take a look at this -"

"We think we've just discovered something amazing -"

"It's about Remus. We think he's -"

"Well, you'll see." James draws me aside into one of the niches under the castle windows and lays the book out flat on the sill. I catch a glimpse of the title. The Compleat Book of Werewolves?

"Ever notice how his mother's always ill every month like clockwork?" asks Sirius triumphantly, before I have a chance to read more than a few lines.

"She has, um, female problems," I say. "He told me."

"Contagious female problems?" asks James scornfully. "Because he always comes back looking like he hasn't slept or eaten in days, and covered with scratches -"

"And honestly, I thought at first that his parents were - were like mine. But you've met them. They can't be."

"Be quiet and let me read, won't you?" I say. But the more I read, the more I feel like I've swallowed a lead weight. I thought he was my best friend, and he's been lying to me about something this big?

"All right," I tell them, looking up from the book at last, "maybe you're right, but I don't think you should tell him you've found out. If it's true, it's obviously something he wants to keep private, isn't it?"

But neither of them really listens, and next thing I know James has grabbed me by the arm and dragged me off to the dormitory to confront Remus.

As they begin to speak, he turns pale. His eyes flicker toward the door for a fleeting moment, as if he's thinking of escape, but then they meet mine. Behind them I see fear and pain and the shadow of a beast with matted fur and gleaming teeth, and I know beyond a doubt that the others are right.

I didn't mean for this to happen, I think, not looking away from him. I tried to tell them to let you keep your secrets, but they wouldn't listen...

His eyes widen in surprise, and in a flash I understand why. Whatever he was expecting me to think, he wasn't prepared for acceptance. It's all right. As long as you don't hate me.

No. Of course not.

We have communicated all this without speaking a word. It isn't until afterwards that I realize the others have been chattering away the whole time, and Professor McGonagall and the trick she showed us during our first Transfiguration class this term have come into it somehow, and Sirius has the look he always gets when he comes up with Big Plans.

We spend long hours in the library after that, all through the crisp, sunny autumn afternoons when everybody else is out in the courtyard or down by the lake shore, as James and Sirius leaf through bigger and bigger books and occasionally venture into the Restricted Section under the Invisibility Cloak.

At first Remus seems almost as skeptical about the project as I am, and we duck out of the library now and again and spend the afternoon at Hagrid's, but before long he develops an extracurricular interest of his own. James lets him borrow the Invisibility Cloak sometimes - a privilege he never granted to either of us during our first two years - and he, too, finds the Restricted Section irresistible.

"I found out something dead cool about the eye-talking thing we do sometimes," he says, looking up from a large black-bound volume. "Did you know it's an actual branch of magic? It's called Legilimency."

"Really?" I say absently, sitting in a window seat and watching a group of first-years jump into leaf piles.

"Mm-hm. It says here that you can block it, too - keep other people from accessing your thoughts and feelings. That's called Occlumency, and it's actually supposed to be easier. What you have to do is clear your mind, make it go completely blank. Or you can deceive people if you concentrate strictly on the facts, not emotions, and tell them things that are sort of true, but not really. It's much harder to get away with a complete lie." He shuts the book and curls up at the opposite end of the window seat. "Let's practice and see if we can do it."

I play along because I'm bored, but I don't see what's so cool about knowing it's a proper branch of magic. I liked it when it was our thing, something nobody else shared. And I don't get why Remus wants to practice blocking it, as if he didn't want to share everything with me any more.

But these friends of mine are all the same way, excited about new facts and new ideas. It's not that I don't care for books, myself, or that I'm stupid, although I get mixed up in class sometimes when the professors are strict. It's that I don't like the way this new knowledge is changing our lives and our friendships so quickly.

I pick up a book of adventure stories and return to the window seat, where I lose myself in tales of Egyptian curse-breakers and African nundu hunters, tales of the far away and long ago that change nothing.

Hogwarts, 1975

Remus throws himself on the bed and opens the Transfiguration textbook, pretending to study for our last O.W.L., but I'm not fooled.

"Sometimes I don't like Sirius very much," I confess after a moment, remembering the scene beside the lake. I'm tempted to add "or James," but that seems almost like heresy.

"I don't either." He doesn't look up from the book, and he doesn't say "sometimes."

"Why didn't you do something? You're a prefect."

"I never wanted to be a prefect! I hate being a prefect," he says, slamming the book shut and sounding so different from our cheerful Moony that I look up sharply. "You think I can do something about it? I'm just the sick kid they let tag along."

But he is wrong. He's got something about him that makes the others listen to him when they'd never listen to me. They let him sit there with his nose buried in a book and his face showing his disapproval, while I have to force a sickly smile and hope they won't turn on me next. Cheering them on is my job. Sometimes I have an uneasy feeling that it's the only reason they still let me hang around with them.

"That's not true," I tell him. "They respect you. They think you're cool." (I'm never going to be cool.)

"Sirius thinks running around with a werewolf is cool," he says bitterly. "Did you hear him today? 'I'm bored, wish it was full moon.'"

"Well, they let you alone, anyway. At least you don't have to pretend you're bloody enjoying what they do to Snivellus."

"You don't have to either."

"They're one step away from doing it to me. At least Sirius is. You heard him. 'Put that away, will you, before Wormtail wets himself.'"

"He didn't mean it," says Remus without conviction.

"Yes he did."

"Well, maybe he wouldn't if you didn't give him a reason to say it."

We glare at each other. Are we fighting? We never fight. Pads and Prongs have epic shouting matches every three weeks or so, and then they're best friends again in a matter of hours, as if nothing had happened. We haven't even raised our voices, and yet it feels like something between us has been broken, perhaps forever. Is friendship that fragile?

"Who are we angry at?" I ask him. "Them, or each other?"

He chews on his lower lip for a moment. "We're angry at ourselves, I think."

But it's not our fault, I think resentfully. They were the ones picking on him. Before I can decide whether to say anything or let it go, the others have come into the dormitory, flushed and laughing. "Did you see the look on his face?" Sirius is saying. "Too bad Rosier and Lestrange had to come along and spoil all the fun."

"Yeah. Fun," says Remus sarcastically.

"What's eating you?"

He paces to the far end of the room and stands there, his fists clenched in the pockets of his too-short robes, facing them, facing all of us. "Some Gryffindors you are. Is that what you call courage, two of you piling up on one, and your little cheering section urging you on?"

Does he mean me? Is that what he thinks of me?

"Look," says James. "The little pustule was asking for it, wasn't he? You heard what he said to Evans."

"Yeah, and I saw how impressed Evans was with your ringing defense of her. Way to get a girl's attention, Prongs, picking on people who are smaller and weaker than you. Would you be doing that to Peter and me if we weren't your friends?" He looks at me for the first time since he started to speak, but it's only the briefest of glances.

"No!" says James, much too quickly. Before that last question, he'd been reaching for his wand as if he had half a mind to hex Moony, but now he lets his hand drop to his side. His cheeks are burning.

"It's different with you guys," Sirius protests. "You're not filthy little gutter rats with no manners or breeding, in case you hadn't noticed. And you wash."

Remus pounces on this in a flash. "So this is about snobbery, is it?" He can't quite look Sirius in the eye because he's about six inches too short, but he stands in front of him, much too close for comfort, with his chin held high. "You keep saying you're different from your family, but I don't see it. At all."

He's crossed an invisible line this time, and we all know it. We don't talk about the Blacks.

Sirius usually does a pretty neat line in insults, and I expect him to rip Moony to shreds, but he just stands there with his eyes on the floor and the color rising in his face. His silence seems more ominous than anything he might have said. I reckon Remus sees it that way too, because he mumbles "Sorry," and backs away, and I think for a minute that everything's going to be all right.

"Peace, both of you," says James, holding up his hand. "It's been a long day. Let's get something to eat."

So we walk down to the Great Hall together - but no: not really together any more. Sirius slouches along a couple of steps behind the rest of us with a look of smoldering resentment on his face; I keep expecting him to hex Remus from behind, but he doesn't try anything. I almost wish he would. This isn't normal.

And Remus strides down the corridor with his eyes on the stained-glass windows high above our heads, as if he were a million miles away from the rest of us. It seems to me that my closest friend is wearing adulthood, suddenly, with the same easy grace with which he wears his secondhand robes, and that he has gone somewhere I can't follow him. Is it my fault I have lost him, or his own, or theirs?

I tell myself it's theirs.

Hogsmeade, 1994

"Where is he, Sirius?"

Azkaban's most notorious prisoner lifts his eyes and clears his face of expression, willing Remus to read his mind. Caught in a trap, I think. Bloody Legilimency.

"But then ... why hasn't he shown himself before now?" The light dawns as they continue to stare at one another. "Unless ... unless he was the one ... unless you switched - without telling me?"

Remus lowers his wand and steps forward. Thirteen - no, twenty - years of bitterness and suspicion melt away and their arms tighten around each other like a noose tightening around my neck.

I don't hear much of what passes between them after that. I'm too busy struggling, wriggling, trying to claw my way out of the boy's hands. And then later I'm trying to calculate the best way to persuade my former friends to let me out of this alive, and then after that I've forgotten all my calculations and I'm down on my knees begging my life from anyone who'll listen and knowing none of them will, because they are Gryffindors and they scorn men who grovel.

I look at Remus once. Behind his eyes a question stirs: Why? But does he really have to ask?

"Lily and James only made you Secret-Keeper because I suggested it." Sirius spits out the words. "I thought it was the perfect plan ... a bluff ... Voldemort would be sure to come after me, would never dream they'd use a weak, talentless thing like you ... It must have been the finest moment of your miserable life, telling Voldemort you could hand him the Potters."

So clever. So dismissive. So assured of his own righteousness. He should have been there in my place, half-fainting from terror and seeing their faces every time he closed his eyes. Believe me, I've known one or two finer moments.

"YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED! DIED RATHER THAN BETRAY YOUR FRIENDS, AS WE WOULD HAVE DONE FOR YOU!"

Would he? Since when do people die for weak, talentless things?

Remus' gaze meets mine once again, and I can read his feelings as clearly as my own, anger battling with sorrow and a grim determination rising to the surface at last.

This won't hurt a bit, Peter. I promise. Be brave for once in your life.

Fuck bravery! You're about to KILL ME and you're telling me to be brave? What kind of friend are you?

I am doing what I would have you do for me if I were in your place. What more can friendship ask?

But I'M NOT YOU! You never GOT that, did you? None of you ever bloody understood!

It's a gift, you fool! I am trying to give you honor. Decency. Humanity. Do you not understand that death is the one way out for you now? Better that than the dementors!

Hell of a strange gift. Happy deathday, old mate, I got you a nice little box of honor! Excuse me if I don't write you a thank-you note after I'm dead!

But he has broken eye contact with me. "You should have realized," he says in a voice as cold as steel, "if Voldemort didn't kill you, we would. Goodbye, Peter."

And then a miracle happens. James' boy runs forward, shielding me with his body. "You can't kill him. You can't." And, after a moment that seems like an age, the men agree.

I clasp the boy's knees in gratitude, but he shakes me off as if I were contaminated. "We'll hand him over to the dementors ... He can go to Azkaban ... but don't kill him."

Remus binds and gags me. Very well. We offered you mercy and you chose justice. Do you want to know what justice will look like for you? Stop trying to catch my eyes; look into Sirius Black's instead. And imagine something a thousand times worse...

I look into the charcoal-grey eyes of a man half mad and see the shadow of death behind them. Was it my hand that did this to him, or his own?

I tell myself this is justice. He deserved it for his arrogance and disrespect, and for what he did to us. I want to tell Remus, but he won't meet my eyes again. I'm talking to myself now, and the argument seems weak and feeble, even to me. Anyway, it doesn't matter any more what happened thirteen years ago or why. The only thing that matters is the knowledge I have taken away from this last look at my former friend: Azkaban is another kind of death. And I must and will escape it.

"One wrong move, Peter," says Remus between his teeth. But he can't have read my thoughts when he won't look me in the eye. Can he?

I turn back toward him, intending to meet his gaze and deceive him with the same trick he taught me years ago, but there's no need. As the moon breaks through the clouds, I see the beast rising up and overwhelming the man - and another miracle. A dropped wand.

I dive for the wand, transform, and take off running: running through tall grass, running for my life, running, running close to the ground.