The Tenth Part of a Gift

Chapter Two: The Man Who Betrayed

Hermione Granger stopped by after dinner with a basket of tropical fruit and an armful of other gifts for the family. The children seemed, perhaps, more polite than excited about the jumbo-sized boxes of Toothflossing Stringmints she gave them, but Remus was delighted with his new illustrated edition of African Magical Creatures: A Fantastic Bestiary.

She had a deep tan after six months of research in Equatorial Guinea, and she was wearing a thin gold chain around her neck. Harry looked at her and frowned slightly; Remus followed his gaze and noticed that the pendant was a ring with a small diamond: a reminder of her all-too-brief engagement to Ron Weasley, who had been killed in the final battle. For more than seven years she had worn that ring on her finger. But when he looked at her hands, he saw that they were tanned evenly with no telltale bands of white; she must have made the change some time ago.

Theo, who had not seen Hermione since they were at school together, seemed slightly abashed by her presence at first; but it soon appeared that she had read A History of the British Wizarding War and was keen to discuss it with the author. After that the conversation flowed freely, and when Theo, blushing a little, suggested that they go out for a walk, Hermione agreed eagerly.

Harry watched them from the window as they walked out into the gathering twilight, the frown lines on his forehead deepening.

“I could do with a walk myself after all that food,” said Remus, getting up and stretching himself. “Care to come along, Harry?”

“All right,” said Harry, acquiescently rather than enthusiastically.

Outside, stiff gusts of wind shook the trees and whirled the withered leaves in little eddies, almost drowning out the song of a distant band of carolers:

O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie / Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by...

They might, Remus thought, almost have been singing about Hogsmeade, two thousand years later. The little village was almost perfectly still; there were no street lights or traffic to disturb the peace, only candles in every window.

Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light...

They had turned on to the cobblestoned High Street, where the storefronts were decorated with boughs of holly and pine, before Remus spoke. “She can’t stay in mourning forever, you know. One doesn’t. Sooner or later you wake up and realize that you’re still alive, and you can’t throw your own life after the dead. It isn’t fair to them or to you.”

“I know,” said Harry quietly. But the plain truth was that he had stayed in mourning, and showed every sign of planning to stay that way forever, and Remus had never been sure how to help him.

The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight...

At the end of the war, all eyes had been on the boy hero of the wizarding world, but it was plain that Harry just wanted to hide. The Weasleys had offered him a home at the Burrow for as long as he liked, but he hadn’t been able to stay long; the place was too full of reminders of the son who had paid with his life for Harry’s friendship. He’d said he was doing all right, but Remus had taken one look at the dark-rimmed green eyes in his dead white face and whisked him away to Hogsmeade, where he had just bought a cottage with an advance on his first year’s salary. It was the first time Remus had ever had a place to call his own, and he had meant to fill it with secondhand books and lead a comfortable bachelorly existence with his old friend’s son for company. This life-plan had been scuttled when he rather unexpectedly acquired a girlfriend and discovered, not long afterward, that Irene was on the way. And so Harry had settled into his place as a trusted family friend, honorary uncle, and extra pair of hands...

He’d spent the first year or two after leaving school working at a series of temporary, dead-end jobs that entailed no risks and demanded no commitments. Tonks had finally cajoled him into applying for Auror training, urged him along through his frequent bouts of despair, and given him a swift kick in the pants when he had dropped out of the program for a while because of sheer apathy. He was on his second chance now, and the final round of qualifying examinations was coming up in a month’s time. Remus hadn’t dared to ask how he was doing. Even if you were the Boy Who Defeated the Dark Lord, you didn’t get third chances in Auror training.

They walked up the little hill toward the Shrieking Shack, which stood dark and silent with the windows boarded up. Remus took off one of his gloves and touched the rough wood; it was a comforting action somehow, as if it brought him into contact with the past.

“Harry, I need to ask you something,” he said. “I’ve got some things of Peter’s back at the house. Would you mind very much if I returned them to him?”

Lost property could, of course, be sent by owl; but they both knew that wasn’t what Remus was asking. Harry stopped short on the path.

“You don’t need my permission,” he said after a moment.

“I’m not asking for your permission. I am asking for your blessing.”

The sky had gone very dark. He couldn’t see Harry’s face at all, just the outline of features that were still boyish and hair mussed by the wind.

Slowly, Harry nodded.

“Thank you.”

They began to walk down the hill as the stars came out one by one and the carolers’ voices grew stronger. Beneath the heavenly strain have rolled two thousand years of wrong / And man, at war with man, hears not the tidings which they bring ...

“Merry Christmas,” said Remus softly.

 

                                                                        *          *          *

When he made the same request of Tonks, she looked at him in frank astonishment. “D’you mean to say you haven’t already been?”

“What do you mean, already been?”

“Well – you asked me where he lived three years ago, and I told you. And I reckoned there were only two reasons why you’d want to know, and I didn’t hear about any gory unsolved murders in the area, so it had to be the second one.”

It was his turn to stare at her. “Did you seriously believe I was plotting to commit a murder?”

“Of course not, you daft old thing. I wouldn’t have given you his address if I thought you were going to do anything of the sort. I don’t fancy being hauled up before the Wizengamot as an accessory before the fact, even for you.”

“But you thought I’d been visiting him – and I hadn’t told you – Do you really think I’m that secretive?”

She grinned. “You’re joking, right? Of course you are.”

He spent a moment trying to decide how he felt about this view of himself and how to respond, and finally settled for smiling back.

“I wouldn’t have minded if you had been, you know. It’s your business if you want to see him.” She turned over the bracelet he’d given her for Christmas and started fidgeting with the clasp. “If it had been one of my friends who betrayed us – say Charlie Weasley – I think I would have wanted to talk to him after a while. Find out why he did what he did, if nothing else. And that would be between me and Charlie, not you or anyone else.”

“Yes, but it’s a bit different with Peter, isn’t it? I mean, he condemned your cousin to twelve years of hell on earth.”

“You loved him too, didn’t you?”

“Well, yes – naturally I did, it was like losing a brother – but I think, in a way, what he did to you is worse. I mean, Peter cheated you out of ever getting to know Sirius properly. And that’s something he could never take from me. So I think you have every right to say no, if that’s how you feel.”

“It isn’t. Besides, if you’ve forgiven him – you can’t stop forgiving him just because somebody else doesn’t like it. It doesn’t work that way.”

“I haven’t forgiven him, exactly. I just want to – to give him his due.”

She nodded. “In my line of work,” she said slowly, “you think a lot about justice, and the more you think about it, you realize how hard it is for one human being to take the measure of another. Oh, if you talk to some of the old-timers, people like Scrimgeour and Moody, they’ll tell you Light is Light and Dark is Dark and the two never mix, but in my experience that all gets shot to hell when you’re dealing with people. You have to weigh one thing against another, and even then – I wouldn’t care to be the one to pass judgment, most of the time.” She looked up. “If what you care about is giving him his due, well – don’t forget to look around you.” She motioned toward the room in what was probably meant to be a dramatic gesture, although the effect was slightly compromised when the bracelet went flying into the corner. “This is what he gave me.”

He looked. The toy soldiers were scattered everywhere, Theo’s mock castle lay in ruins, and somebody appeared to have been crushing Toothflossing Stringmints into the carpet. And the coffee table was nearly buried, thanks to his own bad habit of leaving half-read books and stacks of student essays everywhere, not to mention unwashed teacups...

He raised one eyebrow as he fastened the bracelet back on her wrist. “Peter gave you a very untidy living room for Christmas?”

“He gave me a whole family of lovely untidy people. That counts for something, you know.”

 

                                                            *          *          *

He set out to visit Peter the following morning. After a moment’s consideration, he decided to fly rather than Apparate; it was clear weather, though cold, and he wanted time to collect his thoughts. He still wasn’t altogether certain what to say.

The Stratosphere Five was one of his most cherished possessions. It had been a Christmas present from his parents, many years ago, and it wasn’t until recently that he had been able to afford another broomstick. By then it had ceased to be an unfashionable older model and become a classic, worth who knew how much, since it was rare to find one so well cared-for and serviced. He had, however, no intention of selling it. The Strat felt like an old friend; it responded to his slightest touch.

The wind felt sharp and clean on his face as he left the Forbidden Forest behind him. He skimmed over crags as bare and inhospitable as the surface of the moon, apart from the odd tuft of yellowed grass in the hollows between the rocks. This was Dead Man’s Moor, a wind-swept stretch of wasteland inhabited mostly by sheep and, if you believed the legends, ghosts and Grims. Peter lived just outside a remote Muggle village on the other side. He wondered what had possessed the man to choose a place shunned by most of his own kind; but then, some part of him still thought of Peter as a sociable, talkative little boy, as if the thirty-five years separating him from that boy had never been. He forced himself to remember that they had.

He landed on the edge of the moor, away from curious eyes, and shrank the broomstick until it was pocket-sized. Consulting the map he had borrowed from the school library, he turned in the opposite direction from the village and began to walk up a narrow, unpaved lane.

A stone house came into view, although he couldn’t make out whether it was a Muggle or a wizarding household from this distance. A thin line of smoke rose from the chimney and there didn’t seem to be any cars about the place, but on the other hand the place was connected to electric and telephone lines. And then he saw something that startled him very much.

A small boy – perhaps Celia’s age – was playing at the edge of the lane, pretending to make a plastic action figure fight against a roughly carved wooden dragon. He had fair hair and a round face, with a sharp little nose.

Remus didn’t know what he had been expecting, but he hadn’t expected this.

Peter had claimed to be engaged the last time he saw him, more than seven years before, but it hadn’t occurred to Remus that he might have been telling the truth. Well, there was no accounting for some women’s tastes.

“Hello,” he said to Peter’s son. “Is your father home?”

The child studied him. “Are you a reporter?” he asked.

“No,” said Remus, bemused. “I’m a teacher.”

“Good, ‘cause my daddy won’t let reporters in the house,” explained the boy. “He says they’re a bunch of ... Well, I’m not supposed to say the word he used. There was this one lady, she had a crocodile bag and really big hands, and she kept coming around the pub where my mummy works and going through our rubbish bins, and then she started asking me questions about Daddy, and Mummy came outside and said if she didn’t leave us alone she was going to take her quill and stick it up her ... something else I’m not allowed to say. So we don’t like reporters very much.”

“I’m not one, I promise,” said Remus, hiding a smile. Mrs. Pettigrew, whoever she was, might have regrettable taste in men, but she certainly knew how to deal with Rita Skeeter.

The toy dragon flapped its wings and snorted out a puff of smoke.

“That happens sometimes. It’s because I’m going to be a wizard,” the boy explained matter-of-factly. “Just like my daddy. Sometimes our pet bunny turns into a hat, and he changes it back. Only he doesn’t really like being a wizard, and he didn’t want me to be one. The first time I made Puff do that, he got all sulky, but Mummy says it wasn’t my fault, he’s just had a rough life ...” The boy stopped short and put one finger in his mouth. “Oh yeah. I’m not supposed to talk about wizard things either.”

“It’s all right,” said Remus. “I already know about wizards. I am one.”

The child didn’t take his hand away from his face. He wrinkled his forehead. “You’re not angry at my daddy, are you? Because most wizards are angry at him. They yell at him when he goes out on the street sometimes, and once a whole bunch of them flew by on broomsticks and threw rocks in our window.”

“No. I suppose I’m not angry at your daddy.” Acting partly on instinct and partly from the memory of certain things Tonks had told him about her childhood, he dropped to one knee. “You know that isn’t your fault either.”

“Yeah. That’s what Daddy says. And Mummy says they’re savages and we shouldn’t pay them any mind.”

“Your mummy sounds like a smart lady.”

“She knows everything.”

“What’s your name?”

“Avery.”

A woman’s voice cut through the frosty air. “AVERY!!!”

The boy put his hand to his mouth again. “That’s my mummy. I’d better go.” He ran toward the doorway of the house, leaving the toy dragon and its prey behind.

The woman who stood there was about forty-five, brown-haired, and attractive in a plump, large-bosomed sort of way, although Remus would have had more appreciation for her looks if she hadn’t been pointing a wand straight at him.

“Don’t come one step closer and don’t you dare lay a hand on my son’s things,” she said through gritted teeth, “or I’ll curse you six ways to Sunday.”

Remus froze, but his hand found his wand under his robes. Very slowly and cautiously, he inched it out into the open.

The woman’s eyes were too sharp to miss the motion. “Put that down,” she ordered, “unless you want to die a very slow and painful death.”

But she had just marked herself as an amateur; Remus knew from years of dueling experience that time spent threatening your opponent was time wasted. Before she was halfway through the sentence, he shouted “Expelliarmus!”

And nothing happened. The wand didn’t fly out of her hand, she didn’t open fire, he certainly didn’t die a slow and painful death. They just stood there, wands aimed at each other in the same awkward standoff as before, while Avery clung to his mother’s skirts.

He had a moment of vertigo – this didn’t make sense – and then he remembered Avery saying I’m going to be a wizard just like my daddy, and something clicked in the back of his mind. No wonder the Disarming charm hadn’t worked. He was willing to bet gold that the wand, in this woman’s hands, was no weapon at all.

“You can stop threatening me, Mrs. Pettigrew,” he said. “I know you’re a Muggle.”

She lowered the wand but didn’t move from her place in front of the door. She looked like a mother lioness guarding the entrance to her den.

“I was at school with your husband and I wanted to return some things he left with me. That’s all.” He paused for a moment, unsure whether giving his name would do more harm than good, and decided to take the plunge. “My name is Remus Lupin. I don’t know whether Peter would have mentioned me, but we were friends once.”

Apparently he had, and in complimentary terms, because her whole stance softened instantly. “I’m Ruby Pettigrew. Please come inside.”

He blinked a little in the bright light of the front hall; it had been a long time since he had been in a building with electricity. A lop-eared bunny hopped up to him and began to nibble at the laces of his boots.

“Please, let me take your coat,” Peter’s wife was saying. “I’m sorry I was so rude to you. It’s just that we’ve had – well, a fair number of people coming around wanting to cause trouble...”

And then Remus heard a familiar voice from the back of the house. “If anyone tries to tell you being the man who betrayed the Dark Lord is going to do wonders for your social life, don’t bloody believe it.”

Mrs. Pettigrew led him into a very Muggle room, filled with all sorts of mysterious boxes. Remus knew a television when he saw one because his grandmother used to have one, but he wasn’t sure what the black box underneath it with all the buttons was; it also took him a minute or two to work out that another, similar object was a sort of modern-day gramophone, and that the small flat boxes scattered around it held a great deal of music by someone named Bob Dylan.

Peter was sitting in a rocking chair next to the window. The first thing Remus noticed was how much older and more tired the man looked than he remembered. He wondered if his own appearance struck his old friend the same way, and was vain enough to hope it didn’t.

Peter was wearing Muggle clothing, blue jeans and a flannel shirt, with the air of one who was used to dressing this way. The right sleeve of the shirt was cut off and stitched shut just below the elbow. Remus wondered why. Even the Muggles had prosthetic devices nowadays, and wizards had very good ones. Perhaps it was a sort of penance. Or perhaps he didn’t want any wizards he might encounter to be reminded of his last replacement arm.

Ruby offered him a cup of coffee, and Peter invited him to sit down and asked how he was doing; he heard himself make the appropriate replies, but his mind was far away. He supposed they were waiting for him to explain what he was doing in their house, and suddenly he hadn’t the faintest idea.

Peter’s hand shook as he stirred his coffee, and Ruby Pettigrew placed her hand under his good elbow. With a start, Remus recognized the way she touched him; it was an unobtrusive attempt to steady his arm, designed to spare a husband’s pride. He would have taken it for a simple gesture of affection if he hadn’t been on the receiving end of a very similar gesture so recently.

“I’m all right, Roo,” Peter muttered. “I reckon this is sort of between the two of us, if you know what I mean.”

The woman and child left the room. Left alone, Peter looked like a criminal facing a hanging judge, and Remus realized with a start that he couldn’t blame him. For all Peter knew, he might have tracked him down with the idea of executing vigilante justice, even after all these years.

“D’you mind if I smoke?” Peter asked abruptly. “Filthy habit, but it’s taken hold of me and I can’t seem to lose it.”

Remus shrugged. “Go ahead.”

Peter opened a packet of cigarettes with difficulty, placed one of them, between his lips and struggled to hold his wand to the tip with a hand that trembled violently. “Ignis,” he said around the cigarette. The wand fell to the floor just as a jet of flames shot from the end of it. “Damn.” He stared at the fallen piece of wood ruefully; luckily nothing had caught fire. “Bloody miracle I haven’t burned the house down before now. It would be safer to use one of those Muggle lighters, but I can’t hold my fingers steady enough.”

Remus winced and reached for his own wand. “Please let me do that for you, Peter.”

He lit the cigarette and covered the box he had brought with a corner of his robes, hoping Peter wouldn’t notice it. His errand seemed an absurd mockery; it was all too clear that his host’s remaining hand would never hold a pencil or a quill again.

And the evil wizard sought vengeance from beyond the grave, and he claimed the last poor remnant of the artist’s gift in the end...

“You still want to know why I did it, I suppose?” said Peter after a moment.

Remus didn’t, but he wasn’t doing very well at making conversation on his own. “All right. Tell me why.”

“Why did I betray the Order, or why did I turn against the – against him in the end? Oh hell, it doesn’t matter – there were a million reasons. Because I was afraid, and because I believed it was a losing fight, and because I thought I was playing both sides and realized too late that I couldn’t, and because I hoped I might be able to protect the people I cared about ... You know he killed Dorcas Meadowes because she wouldn’t turn spy, right? Next week it would have been you or Sirius.” He rubbed his eyes, as if fighting a profound weariness. “All right. And because I was sick and tired of other people expecting me to lay down my life for them, when they’d already had everything else handed to them on a silver plate. Condemn me for that, if you like. Go on. I suppose I deserve it.”

Remus shook his head in disbelief. “If that was what you wanted to get away from, you picked the wrong master.”

Peter laughed harshly. “Do I know it! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. You want to hear that I had some sort of epiphany before the final battle. I didn’t. When I betrayed him, it was for the same reasons why I went over to his side in the first place. Good and bad. The last thing I remember before I drew that map was watching Lucius Malfoy drinking Ogden’s single malt and thinking – I’m supposed to die so he can go on receiving distinguished pureblood guests at the manor? Not if I’ve got anything to say about it, Lucy old boy. And you know the rest of the story.”

Remus didn’t know what to say. He supposed he ought to be frustrated and disappointed by this mixed set of motives, and yet this was unquestionably the Peter he had loved once: the boy with an irreverent sense of humor and disarming honesty, born to a family as poor as his own but not schooled in the lessons of pride and dignity that the Lupins had instilled in their only child.

Peter’s eyes fell on his hands. “If you came to hear a story about redemption, try this on for size. You’re married, I see.”

“Yes.” It didn’t quite seem the appropriate time to explain whom he had married.

“Do you have children?”

“Yes. Three little girls.”

Peter nodded. “You’ll understand about this, then. Avery’s our only one. Muggles have a harder time with childbirth and all that, and Roo was forty when he was born. I don’t know what the hell they’re teaching their Healers – doctors – in those universities of theirs, but they thought they were going to lose her and the baby for a while ... That’s one of those things that hits you in the gut, the way nothing had ever hit me before. Makes you realize there are worse things than dying. You won’t believe it, I suppose, not after everything that’s happened, but at that moment I would have given my life for theirs. And I’ve never stopped feeling that way since then. If you’ve come here to judge me, I want you to know that, at least.”

But this is not the end of the story, for the artist still carried within him the embers of another gift, a power of which the evil wizard knew nothing; and, tended, they grew brighter and burst into flame like a phoenix on Burning Day ...

 

Remus shook his head. “I didn’t come to judge. I came because I had a student who reminded me a bit of you, and I was just thinking about the old days and I realized I still had these.” He uncovered the sketch pad and pencils; what the hell, he’d already said and done just about every tactless thing that came to mind. One more wouldn’t matter. “I thought you might like to have them.”

 

Peter leafed through the first few pages of the sketch pad with trembling fingers. He smiled reminiscently. “I was a bit good, wasn’t I? I’d almost forgotten. There’s that sketch I did of the mountains around the lake ... And there’s James and Lily. Well.” He shut the pad abruptly, his cheeks reddening. “Thank you.”

 

“I suppose you can’t – do much with them now.”

 

“No. But I’ll keep them for Avery. He likes to draw. That’s his attempt at a family portrait over there.” Peter motioned toward a large sheet of posterboard tacked to the kitchen wall.

 

Remus examined the child’s drawing. “He’s figured out that people have necks and shoulders,” he commented in some surprise, “and that the sky isn’t a thin blue stripe at the top of the page. My daughter Irene’s just turned six, and she hasn’t worked that out yet.”

 

“Yes. I had the feeling he might be ... rather talented for his age, but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t have anything to compare him to because we don’t really know any other children. Man Who Betrayed The Dark Lord Social Club effect, again.” Peter smiled wryly. “Better art than wizardry, if you ask me, but I’m afraid he’s been gifted with both. I was hoping he might be a Squib. It would make everything simpler.”

 

“It’s hard on a child to grow up that way.” Remus spoke from experience on this point. “You can have the kindest and most loving parents in the world, but you’re still starved for the company of other children.”

 

Peter looked sharply at him. “Are you saying we shouldn’t have brought him into the world?”

 

“No. Only that it’s funny how some things never change, generation after generation.” Half a dozen images and memories flashed through his mind. Himself as a child, playing behind his father’s backyard Potions lab with imaginary friends so vivid that they seemed always on the edge of becoming visible and tangible. Harry after the final battle, huddled in an armchair and lost in thoughts of the dead, looking so like James and so different. Little Edmund Daumier-Smith, sharpening his talents on mischief because nobody in the wizarding world could be bothered to take them seriously. Tonks bending over their half-blooded baby daughter who had inherited the fatal Black beauty. Irene and Celia trying to make sense of a story their father had told them for his own benefit.

 

“I suppose that’s why people keep having children,” said Peter, “even if the circumstances are all wrong. You keep hoping for second chances and all that. You think maybe we’ll get it right this time. Doesn’t work, of course.”

 

“Maybe it’s not too late to make it work,” said Remus. “How old is Avery?”

 

“Four and a half.”

 

“He’s about my daughter Celia’s age, then.” Remus hesitated a moment and then made the offer. “Would it be all right if I brought her over to play sometime?”

 

His host’s face lit up like a wreath of Christmas candles, and once again he could see the shadow of the boy he had known. “That would be wonderful. He needs someone his own age.”

 

So do we, if it comes to that, but we’ve got too much pride to say so, Remus thought, remembering the vague fear that had tugged at him ever since Caroline was born. He had never expressed it to anyone before; he was half afraid to do so, as if it might take on the force of a premonition if it were spoken aloud. “This is going to sound about five different shades of mad and morbid, but do you ever worry that you might not live to see him grow up?”

 

“Oh, hell, yes. I was afraid I wouldn’t live to see his first birthday, and every birthday after that I’ve worried that I wouldn’t make it to the next one. I think everybody who has children at our time of life is a little afraid. Well, not that we’re so old, but we’ve lived too much, if you know what I mean.”

 

Not a premonition, then, just ... normal. He felt a little silly for attaching so much importance to it, and tried not to let his relief show too much.

 

“I’ll be seeing you again, then. Merry Christmas ... Peter.” He hesitated a moment, on the point of using the old schoolboy nickname; but that time was past and gone.

 

“Merry Christmas.”

 

After a moment of awkward groping, his right hand found Peter’s left one, and he steadied the tremors with his grip. It was not the embrace they would have shared if things had gone very differently, but it was a beginning.

 

As he restored the broomstick to its usual size and kicked off, Peter and Avery watched from the doorway, the child’s face alight with wonder and the father’s resigned, as though struggling toward a difficult peace. Higher and higher he flew, across the open moorland and over the dark pine forest, until at last the little village in the shadow of the great castle came into view. Icicles glinted on the eaves of his own house, and he could see Harry and the girls romping about in the garden, making snow angels.

 

He was home.