Famous Last Words

He was always the one we had to protect. Always. When he couldn't quite manage a new spell, when his homework fell behind, when he wasn't able to master the Animagus transformation... we were always there to pick up the slack for him, because that was something that friends just did. We were the Marauders, invincible and indivisible.

So we thought then.

It's been sixteen years since Lily and James died. Sixteen years spent allowing my guilt to drip from my subconscious like pus. Sixteen years spent fantasizing about the day I would finally tear out that dirty traitor's throat and fling his all-too-appropriate phrase back to him.

Lily and James, Sirius! How could you?

Strange how the traitor's words wound up being the most eloquent expression of my guilt. Yes, my guilt, no matter what anyone says. I deserved every day of my time in Azkaban, because I failed them all. Lily and James, for turning over their safety to that... that... rat. Remus, for even suspecting that he would ever give Voldemort the time of day, much less turn traitor. And Harry... I failed Harry most of all. I still haven't forgotten my first view of the broom cupboard that had been his bedroom for ten years of his life. Or the thinly veiled fear and disgust on the Dursleys' faces whenever they looked at him. It's a minor miracle, and no thanks to me, that Harry turned out as well - no, as wonderful - as he did.

Lily and James, Sirius! How could you?

That was always the dementors' favorite memory to wave in front of my face. If anything good could be said for dementors, it was that they had a taste in emotions that was more refined than the most discriminating wine taster's palate could ever be. Not for them the crude mental groping of most wizards' mind-share spells. The dementors skimmed delicately across the psyches of their prisoners, selecting only the choicest memories to torment us with.

It made the Azkaban inmates die slower, you see. Nothing worse than a wasted meal.

Harry's often said, with an expression of concern on his face, that when I sink too much into morbid thoughts like these, my eyes are like the slammed door to a tomb, dead and unseeing. I've never gotten around to explaining to him, mostly because I don't know how, that being dead to everything besides the all-consuming belief in my innocence was the only thing that saved my sanity, but I think he understands on some level, and as he looks at me with that unsettling green-eyed gaze of his, I know that he believes that someday, somehow, I'll be healed.

I don't deserve him.

I sometimes wonder when, exactly, I ceased to think of Harry as "James' son" and substituted "my godson" in its place. Or when even that boundary blurred, and we tacitly but no less surely dropped the prefix in "godson" and "godfather" altogether. The adoption papers that Fudge signed reluctantly last week following my pardon were only a formality, really, because somewhere in between that first awkward exchange in the tunnel behind the Whomping Willow and the end of the Triwizard Tournament, the boundary line between father and godfather had become about as blurry as Harry's vision without his glasses.

I don't deserve that, either. Of course, none of us really deserved what we got. James and Lily didn't deserve to die. Remus didn't deserve to be shunned from wizarding society. Harry didn't deserve to go to the Dursleys'. And Peter didn't deserve to get off scot-free.

But then, he didn't, in the end. Oh, he might have avoided feeling my hands around his scrawny little throat, but the makeshift noose he hung himself with after my trial cut off his air just as well.

I used to think that there was no worse fate than death. Then I got sent to Azkaban, and I discovered that there were actually worse things. Still, I thought that twelve years of sitting in dark stone cell regurgitating my worst memories like mouthfuls of stale phlegm was about as bad as you can go. But that's not quite true. The worst that can happen is, after joining the Dark, betraying your best friends, spending twelve years as a rat, spending four more years being treated like dirt by the master you gave everything up for, and eventually suffering his defeat, you find out after a long, drawn-out, and (in my opinion) rather melodramatic trial that everything you did was for nothing and you hang yourself in a dark cell in a mess of blood and shit and sweat. Death might be the next great adventure like Dumbledore says, but there was nothing remotely adventurous or exciting about Peter's blackened face or broken neck.

Not a good death. Not good at all.

But at the same time I feel cheated. It's not so much that I would have relished the chance to kill him personally - I would - or that he died before getting the chance to enjoy the same experience that I did in Azkaban. He's dead, and I'm free, but his death seems oddly pointless now. He's dead, but all the things that I wanted to say to him are still very much alive and well.

No, that's not true. Not "all the things." Just one. One of them would have been enough.

When I was in Azkaban, when I was on the run, the only thing that kept me going was the one dream that I still had left. This is before I ever even imagined that I would ever be living with Harry, you understand. No, this dream was much more basic than that.

It was always the same. I would find Peter, hunt him down like the rat he was, and before I would tear out his throat I would say the one thing that I had been wanting to say to him ever since he cut off his finger and blew apart the street. More than even his death, I wanted the chance to be able to fling his words back into his face. Derivative words, perhaps, but always effective. I should know; I spent twelve years thinking about them.

Lily and James, Peter! How could you?