Running Close to the Ground

Chapter Twelve: Aftermath

Seen a shooting star tonight

Slip away.

Tomorrow will be another day.

Guess it's too late to say the things to you

That you needed to hear me say.

Seen a shooting star tonight

Slip away.

- Bob Dylan, "Shooting Star"

I wake up in a place where everything is bright and safe and antiseptic. It takes me a moment to make sure this isn't the afterlife, just one of the private rooms at St. Mungo's.

I need a cigarette. I wonder if they'll let me have one before they push me through the veil.

I look around for guards, human or dementor, but the only person in sight is a bustling, businesslike mediwitch. She makes me swallow a goblet of something murky and bitter that puts me straight back to sleep.

Dreamless sleep. What an unimaginable luxury.

I wake, and sleep again, and wake much later. I open my eyes in time to see Remus limp into the room, looking battered, worn-out, and very much alive. "Hello, Peter."

He moves awkwardly, a crutch under one arm and a basket of fruit under the other. He sets the fruit down on the table at the foot of my bed, but doesn't sit down; he just stands there looking uncertain what to do, perhaps uncertain what to feel.

I get the feeling that this scene isn't supposed to happen at all. One or the other of us - and let's face it, it's probably me - is supposed to be dead. Death is artistic and redemptive and final; life is messy and resists proper endings. If I had been killed in some grand self-sacrificing way, Remus would probably do all the proper honors at my grave, but since I'm alive, he doesn't even know what to say to me.

"The Dark Lord ... dead?" I say at last.

"Yes. Snakebite." He shivers slightly. "He was lucky his heart stopped before the dementors got to him. All his creatures turned against him."

Including his pet rat. But neither of us says it.

"Did Avery make it through?" I ask, though I'm pretty sure I know what the answer will be.

"He was killed in the battle." After a moment, he asks, "Was he a friend of yours?" as if it's only just occurred to him that Death Eaters might have friends.

"Yes."

"I'm sorry. Was he ... was he playing the same sort of game you were?"

"Avery wasn't the betraying kind. He was trying to stay alive. That's all," I say wearily, looking into my old friend's face, the face of a man who has been through hell and still kept his pride and honor and dignity intact. There's another one who never crawled through a sewer. He will not understand if I tell him how things were with us. "Does he have to have been on your side to deserve to live?"

"No," he says quietly. "I suppose not. But the Ministry won't see it that way, and now that they've got the dementors back under control ... Honestly, Peter, with what they've been doing to the captured Death Eaters, he's better off dead."

I'm tempted to tell him Avery wouldn't have seen it that way, not in a million years, but perhaps I'm wrong about that. He gave Snivellus the gift of death, so maybe he believed there were worse fates. How well did any of us know the others, really?

I turn toward the wall and shut my eyes, thinking of Avery asking me which side I was on, and Travers running off to channel druids instead of disarming Hogwarts, and Nott refusing to hand his blood-traitor son over to the Dark Lord, and Rabastan falling at his brother's hand. How many of them were the betraying kind? What might we have done if we had acted together?

"You'll be pardoned if you testify against the others," Remus is saying. "I've already filed a statement testifying that I recognized the writing and the enchantments on the map you slipped us, and my ... my good friend is an Auror and can make the Ministry listen. Besides, they need somebody to identify the Death Eaters we haven't captured or killed. You might even get to keep that Order of Merlin if you play it right."

He can't quite keep a faint note of disgust out of his voice, and I can't blame him. Sell out a couple of your friends and you're a traitor; sell out a bunch more and you're a hero.

"The other thing we ask - my friend and I, I mean, this is a personal request - is that you help us clear Sirius Black's name. Is that a fair bargain?"

"More than fair. I would have done that anyway."

He looks at me as if he isn't sure whether I'm telling the truth. "Just out of curiosity, what made you decide to turn against Voldemort?" he asks.

I roll over and punch the pillow. "What do you want me to tell you? That I was being all heroic and noble, or that I'm a dirty little rat who bailed out of the losing side in time to save my own skin? Which would you rather believe?"

He flinches and looks away. "I don't know," he says at last.

"Funny, that's exactly what I was going to answer. I don't know either." I try to look back over the last few days and come up with an answer; but it's too hard to sift through all the causes and effects. Maybe years from now, I'll be able to sit down and think it through ...

That's when it hits me. I'm not going to die. And I don't know what the hell to do with myself now that I'm not fighting to stay alive. I've got a feeling that career counseling services for ex-Death Eaters are going to be a bit limited in this brave new world.

There is a moment of silence as I think about myself, and the others, and then I ask, "What became of Jephthah Nott?"

"Captured alive. Don't ask for clemency for him, though. He fought ruthlessly - killed two Order members and wounded three more."

"I know I can't ask for clemency. I was going to ask if he could see his son. If his son is alive, I mean."

"Theo is not only alive, he's one of our best men. We asked him if he wanted to see his father. He refused, and it isn't my place to force him."

"But you came to see me."

"I'm older than he is. Much older." He has been leaning heavily on his crutch; now, at last, he sits down on the chair next to the bed, as if the effort of standing were too much for him. "And I'm tired of hatred, Peter. It's been a dirty war. Father against son, brother against brother."

Something stirs in the back of my mind. "Rabastan Lestrange."

Remus shakes his head. "He's dead."

"I know. Will he have a decent burial?"

"Yes. That much we can give them all. Any reason why you asked about him, particularly?"

"I think you and I made it out alive because he believed in brotherhood. And he's dead because his brother didn't." I think of Rabastan's worn face, the nights of heavy drinking, the sudden fits of temper. "He might be another one who's better off dead. Azkaban gets its own in the end, you know. Most of them go mad slowly. I've watched it, and it isn't pretty."

"I know it isn't. I watched it too. Day and night for a year."

He gets to his feet and limps to the window, and I know then that he might have forgiven me for what I did to the Potters, but I will never be forgiven for Sirius.

"What happened to Ron?"

He turns back toward me and sits down again. He bows his head and says nothing for a moment, but I can tell from his face that he cared as much for the kid as I did. Maybe more. God knows I didn't actually do anything to protect Ron.

"He fought bravely. All the kids did. We lost very few of them."

But they lost the only one who mattered...

"There was a Muggle woman living in the village," I begin. The lines on his forehead deepen; I expect this means not many of the inhabitants of Little Hangleton survived. "Her name is Ruby Brown. She's about our age, with dark brown hair and eyes..." I struggle to come up with a purely physical description of Roo, one that does not include the low-pitched laugh and the hand reaching to light a cigarette for me and the light touch of her lips on my forehead. These things will not survive the Killing Curse. "And she might have had a pet rabbit with her, but it's probably dead."

But his face clears suddenly, and just for a moment he is the old familiar Moony with the quick smile. "She's upstairs. She's injured, but she'll be all right. And the rabbit's alive, believe it or not. A couple of Aurors found it hopping around in the ruins of the village, nonchalant as anything. Although there seems to be some spell damage to its ears."

"It's always had funny ears," I explain. "It used to be a hat."

He looks like he's going to ask me about this, but thinks better of it, as if he is anxious not to give the impression that he came for small talk. "She's been drifting in and out of consciousness, and we haven't been able to get her full story, but she keeps saying your name. The Healers were going to use Obliviate on her after she recovers, but they thought they'd better ask your permission first, in case she was - anything - to you."

"She's my fiancee," I say, trying to remember whether this will be sufficient to allow her to keep her memories. What's one more lie, after so many of them?

He looks skeptical, but decides to let it pass. "I see. Then she's cleared under the Statute of Secrecy, but you might want to consider allowing a trained person to Memory Charm her anyway. Remembering the battle might be rather painful for her."

"That's her choice to make." But I already know which way Roo will choose. She's the sort of person who loves life and I cannot imagine her giving up part of it, even a painful part, without a fight. "So tell me about this Auror friend of yours. Is she cute?"

He shakes his head. "I didn't come here as a friend, Peter."

He probably thinks he's being stern by not using my childhood nickname: but he doesn't know how hungry I have been for the sound of my proper name. I want it to go on and on. Peter. Peter. Peter.

"I'd better be going now," he says, shifting his weight slightly and placing one hand on the crutch. "I ... I suppose this is good-bye. For good. I don't think we have much else to say to each other."

"All right." Suddenly I feel wearier than I have ever felt. "I'm tired anyway. Going to sleep."

But he sits by the bed for quite a while after I shut my eyes, and when he finally decides I'm asleep and gets up to leave, he pauses in the doorway and whispers, "Thank you, Peter."

I open my eyes just for a moment before drifting off to sleep again. The last thing I see is the basket of plums and peaches in the pool of sunlight at the foot of the bed, glowing Gryffindor red and gold.

The End