A Chance You Only Get Once

Chapter Fifteen
And Nothing Would Ever Be the Same

The teacup fell from his hands and shattered on the desk, its contents spilling across the parchment, its progress unchecked. The man who had dropped it was not clumsy or lazy for not cleaning it, he was stunned.

There was no reason for it. There was no sense in it. It could not be. There was no possibility of what his eyes were seeing being true. None. Whatsoever. There couldn't be. It meant... It meant... Remus wasn't even sure all that it meant, but it was enormously, monstrously important. It changed everything. Loyalties, history, friendships, priorities, all the assumptions that he had built his life on; thirteen years of them were changed in one moment, with one name.

Most of all it changed that he was alone. Peter Pettigrew. There it was, written as plain as day, in the special font and larger size that all of the Marauders' names appeared in on the Map. Peter. Alive all these years.

Peter alive all these years? Standing in Hagrid's hut as if it were the most normal thing in the world? As if he hadn't been dead for thirteen years? Forget how, why? Remus stared at the Map in bewilderment as the four dots labelled Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger and, unbelievably and undeniably, Petter Pettigrew started to make their way slowly back to the castle.

They didn't get far, however, before a fifth dot crossed their path. This one was also labelled larger than the rest. Sirius Black this time. Damn! He would get Harry, he would kill him, Remus had to get out there, alert Dumbledore, the Headmaster was in Hagrid's hut by this point. Remus grabbed his wand and made to rush out, but he glanced down at the Map before he left, and his heart froze once again.

Sirius's dot and two others were heading directly for the Whomping Willow. Peter Pettigrew and Ron Weasley. This actually hit Remus harder than seeing Peter on the Map again. Why not Harry? Bait? That wasn't Sirius's style, even if the Minister of Magic and Headmaster of Hogwarts were only a short distance away. Why not drag Harry off if he could drag one away? Why unless...

Why unless it wasn't Harry or Ron that he wanted after all.

Remus lept to his feet, forgetting that he hadn't taken his potion yet tonight, that he needed to wipe the Map or anyone could read it, forgetting that he should go for Dumbledore, forgetting everything but the desperate need to get to the Whomping Willow before he lost his friends who had been his whole life all over again. Whatever new chance this was, he wasn't going to lose it.

He wasn't going to lose Harry either, not to either of the men Remus had once counted as friends who might want to kill him. Both of the suspects were in the room. But what did this mean? Why would Sirius want to kill Peter? Surely, surely, the Dark Lord's second-in-command would care more for the boy that killed Voldemort than for the man who... The man who what? Could Peter be the ...

How was any of this possible?

Why would Harry, Ron and Hermione go with Peter to the castle?

That was when, as he practically leaped down a whole flight of stairs (werewolf on the full moon), he remembered the glimpse of Ron's rat that he had had on the Hogwarts Express at the beginning of the year. "Scabbers" had looked almost familiar. He had even thought that it looked like Peter, though scrawnier and older and much more careworn. But Peter wouldn't have unless ...

His thoughts wouldn't finish themselves. Another pushed its way in before he could complete it, and the conclusions were too horrifying. Sirius couldn't have spent thirteen years in Azkaban if... Peter couldn't have been sleeping for three years one bed away from Harry if he was...

Remus ran faster, not meeting anyone but hardly noticing. He burst out the doors and didn't stop sprinting to the Willow, diving down into the roots and falling down the passageway. He didn't stop running until he reached the trapdoor.

Could it have been Peter all these years and not Sirius? Not that Remus would have known, they didn't even tell him when they were doing it. He had returned from a three week mission to find that he didn't remember where Lily and James lived anymore. He had put it down at first to being unable to keep up with their weekly rotation, but before long he had gone to Dumbledore to report the bizarre event.

Dumbledore had looked at him sympathetically. He had reminded him that his absenses for the Order couldn't be explained and thus looked highly, well he never said suspicious, but then he didn't have to. Remus had known why he hadn't been told. Remus shook his head to dislodge that thought as he slid to a stop by the trapdoor.

He paused for the briefest of seconds, trying to take in the idea that two of his friends, both of whom he had thought he lost forever, were in the Shrieking Shack yet again. Then he threw it up and hoisted himself into the Shack. He heard voices coming from upstairs and the sounds of a scuffle. Remus's heart stopped dead for a moment. Harry.

Then the sounds quieted. Then a new voice, Hermione's shrill scream. Remus only heard two words, "SIRIUS BLACK!"

"Expelliarmus!" he shouted as he entered, Harry's wand leaping out of his hand as the small boy knelt over the wraith that Sirius had become. Remus didn't even notice that it was the first time in thirteen years that he had called him "Sirius" rather than "Black," even in his thoughts. Remus caught the three wands without a thought in his head. There was no room for them in his whirling mind.

He looked at Sirius, Hermione's cat on his chest, looking at him with haunted eyes that did not belong to the Sirius Black he chose to remember when he could bear to. He said the first words he had said to his friend in thirteen years, "Where is he, Sirius?"

Sirius, after a long moment, pointed at the bed. Remus looked at the frantic rat. Now that he knew, the resemblance was undeniable. Peter looked terrible, but there was no other rat that it could be scurrying about the bed with Ron Weasley trying to keep hold of him. Serve him right if it were true that...

Remus turned back to Sirius and stared at him long and hard, trying to see the truth in his eyes and pluck the thoughts out of his mind. "But then ... why hasn't he shown himself before now?" That was the proof that Remus's mind needed. He was desperate to believe Sirius was innocent after all. He would never realize how willing, in contrast, he was to believe that Peter was the one. But his mind had ever appealed to sense, and now he could give some sense to the desperate desire of his heart. "Unless, he was the one ... unless you switched - without telling me?"

Sirius locked eyes with him, offering no resistance to Remus's legilimency. Remus didn't need it. He could see it in his gaze without any help. He didn't need Sirius's nod either. He knew.

Remus Lupin walked over to the sunken, weak man and pulled him to his feet and did what he thought for thirteen years he would never do again, he embraced Sirius Black as his brother.

As Sirius returned the embrace, Remus was not immediately aware of Hermione's shriek of outrage or the picture that this would make the to three young wizards in the room. He didn't care. He had a piece of his old life back, the life before it was shattered. Would he have been able to save it, had he known then that it was as fragile as glass? Or would the forces of evil have torn it from his grasp all the same?

* * *

When Marissa arrived, straight from the hospital, people were everywhere trying vainly to pick up the shards of the Pettigrews' shattered life. She looked even more dazed than Peter to her friends who had already arrived. Lily had arrived first, out of breath from running the several blocks to his house following the owl that had given her the awful and largely fabricated news. Then the Potters had pulled up with James and Sirius who practically lept out of the car when it was still moving and sprinted up to Peter and Lily then stood around not sure what to do. Remus flooed when he realized that his parents were seriously refusing to take him.

Jerome Fletcher dropped Marissa at the curb. He had been soliticious at the hospital, but there was distance between them in the car. Marissa knew, deep down in the place that wasn't consumed with thousands of shifting, sliding, and crashing thoughts, that he was pulling away from what he thought he might lose. He wouldn't let himself lose someone he cared about again. Jerome Fletcher wouldn't refuse to consider losing her, he would stop caring about her. He would try. He might even be able to manage it.

Marissa only knew this at the level just above the one where she knew that she had to keep breathing to stay alive. Alive. That word had so many different feelings connected with it now. Marissa took in a long, slow breath and let it out even more slowly. She wasn't sure if she could do this. She just didn't know.

The only mind more chaotic than her own was Peter's. His mother was being carted off to the Ministry to await trial for the murder of his father. Dumbledore was here looking at him with all-knowing eyes that pierced right into his soul, or seemed to at least. He was inviting him to Hogwarts. He even asked the Potters to take him in with James and Sirius or even let them all come to Hogwarts for their own protection. But Peter was the most dangerous person to James and Sirius now. He shivered. What had he done?

Whatever it was, there was no going back.

"Hello Peter," Marissa said weakly when she reached them, a feeble smile twitching on her lips out of long habit then dying quickly. Dying. Marissa shook her head to dislodge the word from her jumbled thoughts. "I'm sorry."

No, I am. Peter could hardly stand to look at Marissa who was so sweet and caring and noble. He could barely stand to look at his proud and certain friends. He was sitting down in a chair, thankfully, or he couldn't have kept his legs under him. Marissa knelt down in front of him and caught his eyes with hers. Peter would think later that after enduring that gaze, so full of friendship and sympathy and sweetness and sorrow, he would never again feel the scourge of guilt so sharply. Never could his conscience scream so loudly again as it had then with the act so fresh in his mind and the face of this angel looking at him with such pure empathy and caring as if he were the innocent victim. No, he caused this.

"She didn't kill him," he found himself saying to her.

Marissa nodded solemnly. "She really loved him despite it all."

"They always loved each other. It was the reason they drove each other so nuts," Peter said, looking at her and wanting her to believe but not see. Was that even possible? Peter didn't care. He didn't care if this got him caught, he wanted Marissa to see.

Marissa smiled weakly at him, "There are many ways of loving."

They were all watching this exchange with awe. They had been trying to talk to Peter since arriving, but he had merely stared at his feet and said nothing. They had shielded him from the worst of the onslaughts by the Aurors, but only she had gotten him to look her in the eye. They knew then that Peter Pettigrew loved Marissa Fletcher. They also knew that she didn't love him back. They hadn't thought that the day could grow more bittersweet.

"I came home and found him dead," Peter said, looking at her even though it killed him.

She was looking back steadily, trying to be a rock in the storm rather than the millstone around his neck that was yanking him even deeper down into the depths. She didn't know that she was sinking him deeper in guilt and regret. "And then they came to take Mum away."

Marissa closed her eyes and bit her lip, taking a deep breath to steady herself. When she opened her eyes a moment later, they were swimming in tears. "Everything's gone, Riss, everything," he said, unable to look away from the grief in her eyes.

"Not everything," she said in a voice tight from choking back sobs. "He never takes everything at once, Peter."

"Who?" Peter cried in surprise. Did she know about Voldemort? Could she possibly know? Was even that not beyond the omniscient powers of Marissa Fletcher?

"God," she whispered.

Oh not that. Not Him too. "I don't believe in God," Peter said, looking down. It was defiant. Peter knew that he would pay too high a price for this in this life. He couldn't bear the thought of paying again in the next. There could be no God. Peter did not need another thing to fear. He did not need another consequence of today's choice to haunt him. Marissa had tried to help but in her sweetness and innocence and caring she was torturing him for his betrayal.

"Don't you believe that you'll see your father again?" Marissa asked him.

Peter didn't know. He hoped not. His father would never forgive him for his choice, for what he was putting his mother through, for lacking the courage to brave Azkaban. "When you're dead you're gone. Over. It's ended. There's nothing after death," he heard himself saying harshly, still staring at his feet.

So it was only the other Marauders and Lily that saw how Marissa cringed and shuddered at every word. Dead. Gone. Over. Ended. Nothing. The last word was the most frightening of all. She put her hand over her eyes and let out a few sobs, unable to keep them back any longer.

"I - I'm sorry, Peter," she cried, rising quickly and hurrying away to find a quieter corner of the house. The boys and Lily looked at each other for a moment indecisively. Then Remus nodded toward Peter and hurried after her. They could handle this closed, grim Peter. Remus would only add to his moodiness with anything that he could muster. He might as well try to calm Marissa down.

Ducking an owl that was heading for Dumbledore, Remus hurried after where he thought Marissa had gone. He found her in the back yard on the garden bench beside Mrs Pettigrew's beloved flowers. Remus wondered briefly if that was a Muggle thing, the flowers. Lily's mother and sister and Peter's...

It was probably wrong to be thinking so calmly about poor Mrs Pettigrew. Even if Peter wasn't right about her innocence, the Dementors were a horrible fate to wish on anyone.

Her garden was like an island safe from the raging storm all around them. Marissa was curled in on herself on the bench, sobbing uncontrollably. The peaceful setting didn't seem to be helping. Remus walked over and sat next to her on the bench. He reached tentatively out and touched her shoulder.

Marissa jumped and her limbs broke apart in shock as she turned to stare at him. Her eyes were red from crying and still leaking tears, and her sobs had only lessened rather than stopped entirely. Remus was startled by the intensity of her gaze. It was a naked gaze, nothing of the grief and pain she had been feeling veiled.

"Riss, are you -" he began awkwardly.

Marissa shook her head violent back and forth. "I'm a terrible person."

Remus was speechless for a minute. "What are you talking about?" he demanded, taking her by the shoulders and turning her to face him. Marissa was still shaking her head back and forth.

"I am terrible, Remus. This horrible thing just happened to Peter. He just lost his whole family in one swoop and I'm not crying for him," Marissa said, covering her face with her hands. Remus drew her closer with the hands still on her shoulders and pulled her into his arms. He tried not to think, at this very inappropriate moment, that it felt so good to have her there.

"You don't have to be selfless all the time, Riss," he whispered to her as he held the sobbing girl. It rather terrified him to have her crying like this. It was panicked and frightened. He had grudgingly grown used to the melancholy and wistful and even sorrowful Marissa, but this terror and sadness in her eyes scared him.

"But today - today of all days -" she had calmed enough to speak even if it was broken speech, but the panic was still in her voice.

"Is it your mother?" he asked her.

Marissa seemed to give a short laugh, you could almost see the wry smile briefly gracing her face. "I suppose that would make sense," she replied noncommitally.

She pulled away enough to look at him. They both stopped, freezing as if they had never quite seen each other before. Remus's head was full of nothing but this moment. He reached out and tenderly pushed a strand of hair out of her face. Marissa was gazing at him in a way that rather undid him.

Suddenly, Marissa's eyes widened, and she was staring at him with a different emotion on her face. The old fear was back, and the pain was stronger than before. She pushed away hurriedly. "I have to go," she said as she stood, shaking. "I can't do this. Not today. I have to get out of here."

"Riss!" he called after her, dazed. He stood to follow her, but she did not turn. She was hurrying away from him, looking straight ahead as if she couldn't bear to look back. Remus sank back down onto the bench, overwhelmed by all the emotions that a few short seconds had brought him.

* * *

Tears still blurring her eyes and emotions running even faster and more out of control than her thoughts, Marissa nearly careened right into Dumbledore as she headed for the way out. "Sorry, Headmaster," she mumbled, starting to move past him.

He caught her arm. Marissa had never seen him touch a student. It wasn't that there was anything improper about it, it just surprised her. "Miss Fletcher, I have just received your father's owl." Marissa froze. Dumbledore continued calmly, "Can you and your father meet me at Hogwarts on Monday at two o'clock for tea?" Marissa looked up at him in surprise, unable to keep the anguish off her face.

"Tea?" was all that she could muster in her surprise. Dumbledore's utter calm helped to steady her, but she was almost affronted by it. Her world had just come crashing down on her. He had no right to be so calm. Then Marissa noticed the grief in his eyes, the way they bore into hers. There was sadness. All the jolliness, the happiness, the almost giddiness was gone. She wondered if her eyes were just as devoid of these things that normally filled them.

"Yes, I find a good cup of tea helps to ease a difficult discusion," Dumbledore said in a tone very subdued for the cheerful headmaster of Hogwarts. "Though it is not so devoid of hope as you may think now, Marissa, it is very serious."

Marissa just stared up at him. "I feel as if all my hope was robbed from me," she whispered seriously.

"Nothing can take that away, Marissa," he told her simply. "But this is not the best place for you to be just now."

"I need to go home, Professor," Marissa said, registering with a start that he had called her by her first name. Professor Dumbledore never called students by their first names. "I'm going to try to catch my father - "

Dumbledore shook his head at her. "Your father has departed. I will provide you with a portkey home once the Aurors have all returned to the Ministry in a few moments. I will have your house's fireplace connected to the Floo Network before Monday."

"Thank you, Professor," Marissa said, taking a deep breath to collect herself. She wasn't sure if she had it in her to be calm now, however.

* * *

"She'll get off, Peter," Lily tried yet again to break the heavy, oppressive silence. She wondered briefly if this was selfish. Peter might want to just be left alone, but none of them could bear to leave him. "They won't convict her. They can't, because it's not true."

"Her fingerprints are on the knife," Peter said hollowly. "They'll have testimony from neighbors who will say how they fought. They won't believe any one else could have been in the house. It wasn't suicide. And she's a Muggle. She's doomed."

They were all silenced. Any encouraging words they had died on their lips. "Then what did happen?" Lily cried in frustration. "What could have happened here today?"

I know, Lily, Peter thought as he sunk deeper in his depression.

"We'll find out, Wormtail, I promise you that," James said determinedly. He looked gratefully at Lily for giving him that purpose.

"How?" Peter asked hollowly, hiding his panic successfully. "We don't have any clues."

"There's got to be some around here," Lily said, taking up the spirit of the idea.

"Like what? A burglar?" Peter asked. "A barrister would probably tell us to plead insanity. It's a pity the wizarding world doesn't usually buy that."

"But it can be true!" Lily flared up. Then she deflated again the next moment, setting aside her anger as she looked at Peter.

"Peter, your folks drove you crazy, but you can't give up what's left of your family without a fight," Sirius insisted, surprising them all slightly considering his current situation.

"There's nothing I can do now," Peter said, standing up and starting to walk away from his friends, unable to bear being in their righteous and untainted presence any longer.

"You can't just give up, Peter!" Sirius called determinedly after him. He followed him, his arms waving furiously as he argued. "Look, your parents were batty. They screamed and they fought and they damn near tore each other's throats out every day, but they loved each other and they loved you. You loved them separately. Well, your mother, just your mother, is at the Ministry about to be thrown to the Dementors. Will you do nothing?"

"Yes!" Peter screamed, whirling around to face him when he couldn't walk faster than he did. "Because there's nothing I can do."

He turned and hurried away, but Sirius still followed. "You can't throw off family this easily, Peter. You love her. You're condemning her to the Dementors if you do nothing. Do you want that on your conscience? Can you bear that, Peter?"

"Shut up, Sirius! Shut up!" Peter screamed, holding his hands over his ears. "For Merlin's sake shut up!"

Sirius stopped dead in surprise. For a moment, the thought struck him that it was a terrible day to expect Peter to act his best. However, this was the moment that the decision had to be made. He hurried to catch up, his longer stride allowing him to overtake Peter. "She needs you now, Peter. You're the only one who will believe her innocence. If nothing else, she needs you to be there believing in her, fighting for her. Don't cast her off!"

The sounds of the argument receded slowly as Sirius pursued Peter down the different corridors and passageways of the old house. James and Lily stood still, regarding each other. "I think all our friends have gone crazy now," James said uncertainly.

"It's a hard day for sanity," Lily replied. "James - " she began but cut herself off. Before she could say what she wanted to, Remus came back in the room. He looked dazed but calm. Lily stopped and felt both relief and a sickening feeling that a great chance for something had just been lost. She didn't know what it was, she didn't even know what she had been about to say, but she had missed it.

"What happened, Remus?" James asked, looking at his confused looking friend.

"Marissa ran off, I think she's gone home," he said. Both James and Lily started in surprise. "I think this hits too close to home for her." Even as he said it, however, Remus felt that it had to be more than her mother that was bothering Marissa for her to abandon her friend like this.

"Peter and Sirius ran off too, arguing heatedly about family obligations of all things," James said. "You never would have seen the sides they took coming either."

"It's a day for things you never saw coming," Lily murmured.

"Things can't go back to normal after this, can they?" James said, running a hand nervously through his hair. "Do you ever feel like we lost our childhood this summer?"

"I don't know if I ever had one," Remus said.

"We lost youth, innocence," Lily corrected, the fact that she was agreeing with James Potter ignored for the grave occassion. "All the evil of the world has touched us now, and nothing can ever be the same again, can it?"

"Voldemort's real now, not just a phantom," Remus said. "Ever since Lizzie. Now Death is haunting our steps again."

"Do you think that Marissa's all right?" Lily asked suddenly sounding very concerned rather than merely melancholy.

"I don't know, Lily," Remus said with a sigh.

* * *

Gideon Prewett arrived just as Marissa was about to take Dumbledore's Portkey home. He walked determined up to her. "Peter?" he said abruptly.

"In the house, arguing with Sirius about how to help his mother," Marissa replied immediately. "Is Mrs Pettigrew doing - "

"That is Auror business," Gideon all but snapped. Then he replied in crisp, military tones, "As I am not an Auror, however, I feel free to disclose to you that she is doing as well as someone on trial for a murder they did not in all likelihood commit can be."

Marissa nodded her appreciation. "You believe her then?"

"It's too obvious. It's a conspiracy if you ask me," Gideon said, actually looking Marissa in the eye briefly. It wasn't much, but she appreciated it considering what their last conversation had entailed.

His theory worried her, however. "Gideon...a conspiracy? Are you sure that you're not getting a little paranoid?" Marissa regretted it the moment that she said it.

"If neither Peter nor Mrs Pettigrew killed her husband and his father, what do you suggest happened?" Gideon asked her. "Or do you believe her less than you pretend?"

"I just meant...oh I don't know, Gideon. I'm worried about you. You can't go around seeing Death Eaters in every shadow," Marissa said. "Believe me, there are evils that have nothing to do with them."

"What do you know of evil in your life, Marissa Fletcher?"

Marissa felt the answer on her tongue, but it froze there. It suddenly felt as heavy as if it were made of lead and as difficult to control as if magnets were involved with the lead. "Could you be more specific as to Peter's whereabouts, it is a fairly large house," Gideon said clinically.

"Upstairs I think," Marissa whispered, blinking as if it would clear her head, frowning when it did not.

"Thank you," he moved past her. He turned right before he left the room, and said to her back, "I don't really hate you, Marissa."

"I knew that, Gideon," she replied simply. Then she picked up the small globe that Professor Dumbledore had given her telling her that it would also take her to Hogwarts on Monday if there was a hold-up with the Floo Network. She closed her eyes, and in a moment she felt her feet hit the ground and was thankfully home.

* * *

Peter saw Marissa leave and couldn't believe that she would go without even saying anything today of all days. As hard as it was to see her, even though it only drug him through more torture, he wanted her there. Peter wandered sometimes if he was glutton for punishment. Nothing had made him feel worse today than seeing his father dead and the knife in his mother's hands, but looking in her eyes knowing what he had done had come close.

Now if only Sirius would leave him alone. Sirius who was so brave and valiant and gave up so much for what was right. Sirius was what Peter could never be. Sirius could give up everything he had ever known for an uncertain future the outlook of which was decidedly bleak, but Peter couldn't do the same thing. He had faced the test and failed spectacularly.

He looked down the stairs at all of his friends, clustered together and preparing to go hunt him down. He envied them their pride and bravery, but most of all the fact that they had not yet been tested. Sirius and James had fought, but they had never been the targets of Death Eaters. They had never been their prey. Now Peter was their tool. Lily's biggest problem was convincing people that she wanted no part of James and the prejudice of the magical world in general. That was too general, however, to affect her too much. Remus, well Remus came close, but he had no choice. He had to bear it. He hadn't had to choose between two evils. He stared one in the face, but he hadn't had to live with the fact that he chose the greater of two evils because it was a little easier.

Who would have ever thought that he would think longingly of what would have happened if he had gone to Azkaban?

* * *

Remus, unlike the other boys, was not surprised by Marissa Fletcher's house. It was the first time that he saw it (she had picked him up for the Ball rather than the other way around), but he did not do a double-take or check to make sure that he had the address right.

Perhaps, it was because she shared more of her family troubles with him than she did the other boys. Perhaps it was that he was used to this sort of atmosphere. Perhaps it was merely that Remus had her welfare more on his mind than the size and decor of her house.

Just like the other Marauders, however, Remus used the heavy knocker rather than the doorbell. Not even James and his parents had managed to work out the pull-bell. It was not Marissa, looking amused and as if she had just stopped laughing, who opened the door for Remus. It was her father, looking pale and drawn and grave. It did not strike Remus as strange. He would have been startled only by the opposite look on Mr Fletcher's face.

"Is Marissa home, Mr Fletcher?" Remus said politely.

Jerome Fletcher looked as if he were pulling himself out of a heavy daze when the confusion finally lifted from his face, "Oh, you're that Remus boy who escorted her," he said simply. "Lupin?" he asked without appearing to be interested in the least. "Marissa's not seeing anyone today," he announced without waiting for confirmation.

He moved to close the door in the young wizard's face. "Please, sir," Remus said, stepping forward slightly to keep him from closing the door. "Is she all right?"

"Of course not," Mr Fletcher said harshly. "Why would she be?"

"I don't know, sir," Remus said, a cold feeling in his stomache. "When she left crying, I - we didn't know what to thing. None of us thought that she would leave Peter today."

"And just what is today?" he demanded.

"Peter's father died today, and they arrested his mother for his murder," Remus said. "She didn't do it," Remus added quickly.

Jerome Fletcher's face blanked for a moment, then sluggishly resumed animation. "Peter's father died today?" he asked hollowly.

"Yes, Mr Fletcher," Remus replied. "May I please just speak to her?"

"I'm sorry, Mr Lupin," Jerome Fletcher said, recovering his composure. "Not today. Not today."

"Please, just tell me how she is, what's wrong," Remus found himself almost pleading.

"Mr Lupin, our family has sustained something of a shock today as well. I think it would be best if you left now. I'm sure that Marissa will be in contact with you when she is ready," Marissa's father said as he firmly closed the door on Remus Lupin.

Remus stood in shock for a moment, his mind turning over and over this conversation for some shred of understanding to drop into place. None did. He slowly turned to leave.

Jerome Fletcher turned from the door he had used to shut out the world in this new form. Marissa was standing at the top of the stairs looking down at him steadily. Jerome Fletcher looked right back at her. Marissa broke the gaze first and looked down, her arms wrapped around herself and looking as if the slightest draft would knock her over if her determination to remain standing wavered even slightly.

"You were right to leave," Jerome said at long last. "Don't think on it or their reactions."

"Professor Dumbledore wants to meet with us on Monday," Marissa said. "He said he'd connect our home to the Floo Network."

"You will tell me later what that is?" Jerome said clinically. Marissa nodded. Neither said anything else. They merely stood there just like that, almost as still as statues for time without end. Father and daughter with nothing to say to each other, father and daughter with even more to stand between them than before, father and daughter unsure how to proceed.

It was not lost on them that this was the same room where Livy Fletcher had made the decision that drove this wedge between them to save another member of their family. Livy's death had been the death of her family. The corpse that remained had never been so apparent or gruesome as it was now. Father did not rush to comfort daughter, daughter did not appeal to father for comfort. They looked little like they were father and daughter now and more like strangers. They felt more like strangers than kin, this new shock making the gulf between them even wider. The feeble bridge that they had carefully crafted over it had caved in under the weight of this shock, and neither felt that they had the strength to rebuild.

* * *

Snape had come up with a new way to drive the thoughts of Marissa Fletcher out of his head. Everytime he starting thinking about what she had said or her words replayed themselves in his mind, he would break something. Something expensive. It didn't drive her out, but it fit his mood well. As a side benefit, this new mood in his son seemed to please Siward Snape for the first time in anyone's memory.

Ursula Snape certainly didn't mind the breaking; after all, house elves could fix that in the blink of an eye. What bothered her was what she knew it probably meant. It wasn't regret at his choice over the Easter Holidays. It was something in its way even more dangerous to Ursula Snape's plans for her son's future. It was a girl.

And he hated this girl too. That was clear from his anger with the world and himself. He didn't want to feel anything at all for her. He wanted to show contempt for her. He wanted to dismiss her. He would settle for loathing her, but he couldn't even do that.

Such a girl was dangerous. So Ursula Snape waited for him to tell her who it was. A Mudblood, that much she knew from his disgust with himself. A Gryffindor? Perhaps. Beautiful? Not quite. Strong-willed, certainly. Meddlesome? Yes, dangerously so.

Once there was enough for her name to be found out, Ursula Snape would deal with her. Her son did not have to worry, though of course he did anyway. He did not know his conniving mother. It would not take much, it never took much to convince Death Eaters to kill a Mudblood.

Even if his mother had suceeded that fateful summer, it would not have wiped Marissa Fletcher's painful words out of his mind. His head was ringing with them because they were true. His head was ringing with them because she had shown compassion without pity, offered a kind of friendship that was not charity but companionship. His head was ringing with them because he could not fathom that there existed such a person as she appeared to be. He was fascinated and hated himself for giving her a second thought, yet he could not drive her from his head.

She was too sweet to be sincere. She thought too much in black and white to be forgiving. She was too naive to be understanding. Surely these paradoxes could not be reversed by one little slip of a girl who was no more than the lesser counterpart of the Moroners?

Snape conjured a sledge hammer and smashed the Vanishing Cabinet to smithereens. It did not beat Marissa Fletcher or her words out of his head.

* * *

Marissa wanted to bash her own head in about that same time, incidentally. It appeared that "natural causes" would beat even Ursula Snape to the draw. Jerome Fletcher was not the caring man of her childhood or the aloof man of what had been left of it after her mother died or the solicitious man at the hospital. He was pulling away entirely.

The only words that she said to him from after Remus's visit until it was time to leave for Hogwarts were instructions about how to use the Floo Network. Even those were delivered in an unsure, clipped tone. Jerome Fletcher only nodded wordlessly in response to her words. With a heavy sigh, Marissa threw the powder onto the flames and stepped amongst them, "Hogwarts!" she shouted, her voice coming out angry despite herself.

Then the word was spinning and green flames and a whirlwind of fireplaces that was so confusing and overwhelming that it quieted for that brief trip the similiar whirlwind within her mind. She felt sick after a moment, but it was better than thinking about being sick.

All too soon, she was stepping out of the fireplace in Dumbledore's office and moving to the side to allow her father through a moment later. They stood before the Headmaster, both looked lost and infinitely sad. The twinkle in Dumbledore's eyes was barely there.

"Welcome back to Hogwarts, Mr Fletcher, Miss Fletcher," Dumbledore said with the unflappable calm he always radiated. Marissa latched onto his calm to quell the rising panic in her heart.

"Have the two of you spoken about what kind of treatment method you will be pursuing?" he asked in a sincere though detached sort of voice.

All three were struck by the reminder of the last time that the three of them had been together in this room. Marissa heard his words in her head, "There is someone here with whom you have not truly spoken in many years." And had she in the time that had elapsed? Really talked with him? Was it too late now with her father already so dramatically changed?

"The doctors are in agreement about their suggestions," Jerome Fletcher said at long length.

"The reason that I called you in today is that there is an option that your doctors would not have known of to consider," Dumbledore told them calmly. He saw hope light up Marissa's face again and doubt cloud her father's. Both were very dangerous in their fragile states after the repeated shocks of the last week.

"You mean, wizards have a way of - "

"Actually, no," Dumbledore told them calmly. "It's a Muggle treatment, but generally regarded as being ... well, the wizarding world can help with the side effects. That's what I wanted to discuss with the two of you.

"Would you please all take a seat?" Marissa and Jerome Fletcher exchanged looks briefly, wondering what this boded if the last invitation to sit had shattered their world. Did they dare even hope that this would help put it back together?

* * *

Two days until Dumbledore's deadline for deciding if they wanted to do the treatment and they hadn't even discussed it. Enough was enough, Marissa decided. She strode into the room where she knew her father would be. "I want to do the treatment," she said firmly, staring at the man who was pretending to read his paper.

"You want to get the hell away from this house," her father replied. "What else is new? You've been doing it ever since Mundungus was born."

"That's not fair," Marissa said, and you could hear the tears in her eyes and the anger in her heart in her voice. "You were the one who left. I don't want to stay here and in hospitals. I want to go home."

Jerome Fletcher's head snapped up. "What, you can say it but I can't?" she demanded in the same voice, thick with emotion but not loud or wailing. "This place hasn't been home since Mum died, a time I can barely remember. I want to go to Hogwarts. With this treatment I can. I can go to class, talk to my friends, study - "

"And there's a seventy percent chance that we lose you in less than a year? What good will your precious classes do you then?" he demanded. "How is Mundungus going to take this? This could very well be the last six months of your life and you won't spend it with him."

"Oh don't you dare drag him into this!" Marissa shouted at him. "Don't you dare when you've ignored him his whole life!"

"Well who's ignoring him now? Doesn't he have a right to be with his sister in what might be the last days of her life?" her father demanded. "He needs you."

"We've always needed you, since when does that stop anybody in this family?" Marissa replied.

"Fine, Marissa. You hate me. Fine," her father cried, rising out of his chair and staring down at her, looking her directly in the eye for the first time since they left the hospital. "But as much as you may want to you can't make this about me and what I did. This is about you. Are you going to choose your friends and your precious school over your brother? It doesn't matter that I'm a hypocrit for using this argument, that doesn't make it untrue."

Marissa was silent for a minute. "The only place I can get this treatment is Hogwarts and I have twice the chance of surviving this ordeal," Marissa said tightly. "Isn't it better that I'm always here for Gus than that I'm here just a few more years, most of which I'll be too weak to do much?"

"The odds are ridiculous, Marissa, why deprive us of so much time?"

"Less time, less time!" Marissa shouted back suddenly. "But more time that matters! More time when the world can be normal! When I can be happy and not have to live under constant pity and weakness! More time away from hospitals! More time away from other sick people! More time with the people who really care about me! More time with the people who don't need death to frighten them into wanting me around!"

Jerome Fletcher lept to his feet and began to pace in his anger. "You understand that this is just one shot, one chance, no turning back? If this doesn't work, nothing else will, do you understand that?" he demanded. "You'll go to school for what is most likely the last six months to a year of your life and your family loses this chance to be with you as much as possible."

Marissa shook her head at him. "What is there for me here?" she asked calmly and tiredly. "A brother who will be at Hogwarts in a year when I'm in hospitals up to my eyeballs and laying about in a bed with no strength to do anything else but just lie there. A father who can't look me in the face except when I'm defying him. What am I staying for? I'm giving up my best chance to live for a worse way to die."

They were both silent for a very long moment. "Mundungus - " her father was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone. He stopped and neither moved until Mavi entered the room. "It's for you, Miss Rissa," she said, casting glances back and forth between them curiously.

"I'll get the extension in here," Marissa said in a hollow voice. Mavi nodded and, after a moment of staring at them in confused silence, closed the door again. Marissa slowly moved toward the phone. With her hand on the mouthpeice she took a deep breath then picked it up. "Hello?" she said in the same hollow voice.

Jerome Fletcher watched her listen for a long moment, then heard her say, "I'll be right there." She slowly put the phone down. She closed her eyes as if steeling herself against a mental blow. After a moment she opened them again and started to walk out.

"Where are you going?" her father demanded.

"The hospital," she said, closing the door behind her.

Her father caught it and swung it open, following her. "The hospital? You can't cancel treatment without my consent. You're only sixteen for heaven's sake."

"Heaven?" Marissa asked, rounding on him. "Heaven is what's about to take my best friend's mother. She's been dying for a long time. They're saying that death is a blessing. They're saying that the family bore it so long it began to tear them apart inside. They're saying that they couldn't take much more. They're saying that they're almost glad that it's finally over."

"You can't do this today," Jerome Fletcher said, catching her arm.

"If you don't drive me I'll take the bus," Marissa snapped.

"That's not what I meant," he said, holding her still as she tried to walk away. "Didn't you learn from the Pettigrew death? You can't do this. Not now, not today. Not with your own fate still undecided."

Marissa pulled her arm out of his grasp, "I have to. I won't lose my friend." She turned to walk away. She turned back at the door, "I can't lose her. Not now, not today. So I'm going, and I've already decided my fate."

"Which is?"

"As much life as I can steal from the death that's creeping up on me," Marissa answered, "but real life, not life-support." She turned again.

She reached for the door when she heard her father say, "I'll take you. We can talk to Dr Gottfried while we're there. Do you think your Headmaster will be there to comfort her?"

"Thank you," Marissa said, looking him in the eye.

"I think it's a mistake, Marissa," he told her bluntly, "but it's your life and your mistake to make."

---

©KatyMulvaney12-29-2004
Posted:3/31/2005