The First Piece of Silver

The tiny bubbles in the glass of champagne did nothing to lift Peter's mood. All around him in The Three Broomsticks, everyone was laughing, dancing, joking. Toasting the happy couple. Well, bully for them.

Oh, he'd mouthed the proper words, shaken James's hand, kissed Lily on the cheek. The beginning of their lives together, long and happy lives as everybody wished them. But it was the final nail for him. The last term at Hogwarts had been a slow slide down a long slope, watching what was happening, powerless to stop it.

Madam Rosmerta had pushed all the tables to the edges, making a sort of dance floor in the middle. He watched as Sirius cut in, claimed Lily for a dance. James, laughing, pulled Remus up, and they clowned across the floor, pulling faces, cutting up until Lily reclaimed James and the others returned to Peter's table.

"You haven't yet danced with Lily," said Sirius.

Peter flushed. "I can't dance."

"Nether can Remus, but that didn't stop him."

Remus laughed and punched Sirius gently on the shoulder. "We all bow to your superior skills."

Peter drank more champagne and stared out at the improvised dance floor. They had inhabited a perfect space for four people. There was no room for five. It was no longer Moony and Wormtail and Padfoot and Prongs. It was James and Lily, full stop. Remus and Sirius. And Peter, poor Peter, out in the cold again.

Enough, he decided. It was time for something stronger than butterbeer and champagne, strong enough to chase away the images of James and Lily. Beautiful Lily. Why the hell did James have to go and fall in love?

Mumbling excuses, he stumbled to the dance floor for one last word with James and Lily -- the lovebirds didn't even have the decency to act upset that he was leaving early -- then headed over to the fireplace. A quick floo to the Leaky Cauldron, a quick exit out back, and soon he was picking his steps down Knockturn Alley, to a place Sirius had taken them all one deliciously debauched night. They'd all gotten pissed on firewhiskey, and then...Peter closed his mind deliberately. He was not going to think about it.

The Staff and Serpent was dark, and quiet, and blessedly free of happy couples. The barman was a squinty-eyed codger that reminded Peter a bit of Filch, the old school caretaker.

"Old Ogden's Finest, if you please."

"I'se not pleasing anybody," grumbled the old man, but he reached for a tumbler -- it was none too clean, Peter noted -- and splashed in a good measure.

Four glasses later, he lurched out to the toilet. It was even darker out back; when he'd finished and came back inside, he squinted against the dim light. "Well, I'll be damned," he muttered, looking at a table shoved up close to the wall, three men around it, facing out to the room, backs towards him. Two dark heads and one brown head. James and Sirius and Remus. Waiting for him.

"Finally came to your senses, did you?" He clapped James on the shoulder; the man turned his head, and Peter realized it wasn't James at all. He had the same dark hair, the same well-muscled body, but the face was completely unfamiliar. Quite a bit older, too, maybe close to thirty, with deep brown eyes and fine features.

"Pettigrew," came a familiar drawl from the other side of the table. Peter felt his heart plummet through the floor. That greasy git Snape. How could he possibly have mistaken him for Sirius?

"A friend of yours?" asked the man who wasn't James.

"Not precisely a friend." The distaste in Snape's voice left no doubt as to what, precisely, they were to each other.

"Look, awfully sorry to bother you. I thought you were James, but the drink has obviously gone to my head, as he's busy getting married," said Peter. "That is, he just got married, he's --"

The man who wasn't James shot a hand out, grabbing Peter by the wrist. "Sit down, Pettigrew. Have a drink with us. I'm Evan."

Peter looked confused. "Lily's brother?"

Snape snorted, and the other two grinned. "Evan Rosier. You know Severus, I take it, and the other fellow there is Ian Nott."

"Peter," he said, shaking the offered hands. There wasn't really much else he could do. And who was he to refuse a drink if this Evan chap was nice enough to offer one? So he slid into a chair as Rosier waved over the barman, who seemed to have figured out what was happening and brought his empty glass to the table. Rosier immediately poured a generous measure from the bottle sitting on the table. "To new friends."

Snape made a rather rude noise, and Rosier looked at him sharply. A glance that Peter couldn't decipher passed between them; after a short pause, Snape lifted his glass. Ian Nott smiled as he drank, echoed "New friends." Of course he looked nothing like Remus, Peter could see that now; even his hair was really quite a bit blonder than it had seemed, darkened by the gloom of the bar, and as Peter studied his face he suddenly recognized the other man. "You were a few years ahead of us, right? Slytherin." Ian nodded, and Peter sighed theatrically, putting his glass down on the table. "I must have gone mad. Drinking with a pack of Slytherins."

"And what brings you to this serpent's den?" asked Rosier smoothly.

"James. Married." He sighed again, took a warming swallow of the liquor. It no longer burned his throat, and his fingers were feeling a bit numb. Maybe if he drank enough his heart would go numb as well.

Snape leaned forward. "I would imagine you'd be dancing at the wedding. Your best friends. Such as they are."

"Were."

"What, a falling-out? And on their wedding day, too. How sad." Rosier didn't sound particularly sad.

"James and Lily." He waved his hands, making sloppy parentheses in the air. "Remus and Sirius. And me."

Rosier's eyes gleamed with a positively feral light. "Well, you've got us now." He plucked Peter's hand out of the air, held it to the table under his own. "You've got me."

"Isn't that sweet," purred Snape.

Evan Rosier narrowed his eyes, looked at Snape. "Severus. Shut. Up." That indefinable something passed between their eyes again, and Peter suddenly got the strange idea that Snape was jealous somehow of Evan's attentions to him. The idea of annoying Snape seemed rather appealing. It was something Sirius would do. So he smiled up at Evan, who actually did sort of look like James in the dim light, if Peter squinched his eyes and imagined eyeglasses on that face. Although James had never looked at him the way that Evan was looking at him.

"Rather rude of James, wasn't it. To go off with a woman."

"Oh, Lily's all right," said Peter, uncertainly. It wasn't like she wasn't nice to him.

"But women don't understand us men, really. They don't know what it's like, do they, Peter?" Evan's voice was low and soothing, and as he spoke he gently ran his finger over Peter's hand. Peter's hand, which unlike the rest of him was not numb but on fire, tingling with the other man's touch, as though all the nerves in his body ended in those few square centimeters of skin.

"Well," said Snape, standing abruptly. "Do let me know when you've tired of blonds." He looked over at Ian, who stood as well, and the two of them made their way out of the room.

Peter looked down. "Di'n't mean to chase your friends away."

"They're friends," Evan said carelessly. "They'll come back to me." He fixed those feral eyes on Peter again. "My friends always come back to me."

Peter drank the dregs from his glass. "James won't. Back to me. He's got Lily."

Evan slid his chair closer. Peter could feel the heat radiating from the other man, a warmth that entered his skin and seeped in to meet the warmth of the alcohol seeping out. Dark hair brushed his cheek, lips brushed his ear. "You've got me," came the whisper, soft and sensual, like petals falling on his earlobe, petals from a dark rose.

He closed his eyes, absorbing the sensation. Then he remembered that this was a *man* whose lips were running down the side of his neck, and he twisted away. "Don't -- you can't --"

"Shhh. Let's go outside." Evan maneuvered him out of his chair and toward the door. Peter was aware he was stumbling; he'd had far too much to drink, the room was spinning, and going out into the fresher air of the alley suddenly seemed a remarkably good idea.

The pressure of hands at his shoulder and waist guided him down a cobbled walkway between buildings, past couples in shadowy doorways.

"Are you feeling all right?"

"Better. Drank too much."

"Shhh, I know, Peter. I'll take care of you." He felt the hands turn him at an archway, wrap around his waist more tightly. A masculine body pressed against his. In the darkness, Evan's eyes looked blacker than the night sky. No stars, Peter thought wildly as he looked into their depths. No stars. And then the other man bent and kissed him full on the lips.

This had nothing in common with the kisses he'd shared with the few girls he'd ever dared to kiss. Those were dry lips nervously licked, soft giggles, a shy hand on bare skin under a blouse. This was fire. This was danger.

The mouth, Evan's mouth, moved from his lips to his chin to his neck and back again. Evan's tongue slid across his teeth, across the inner flesh of his lips, parting, pushing, exploring. Peter's mouth opened automatically, to the taste of firewhiskey and tobacco. He moaned and clung to the contours of the older man's body, guided by instinct alone; an instinct stronger than the alcohol, stronger than the faint echoes of "mustn't" and "can't" which rose from the back of his mind, only to break somewhere short of speech.

Something pushed against him, and he realized muzzily that it was the other man's erection, hard against his own body. He vaguely thought that something about it was supposed to be wrong, and if only the world would stop spinning, he thought, he might be able to sort things out. Then a distinctly unpleasant feeling welled up inside him, and he pushed Evan away abruptly and vomited on the ground.

"Easy, Peter. Easy."

Peter looked up into brown eyes which held a trace of amused sympathy. "Drank too much."

"I can see that," said Evan, taking his arm again.

With his stomach empty, Peter felt his head clear just a fraction. Enough. "You were kissing me," he said, uncertainly.

"I was kissing you," agreed Evan. "Let's get you some water, and then I'll kiss you some more."

He shook free of Evan's touch. "You're sick," he hissed. "Leave me alone."

"You don't really want to be alone, do you, Peter? You're my friend."

"Leave me alone!" And he was running, running across the cobblestones, back to the light and the bustle of Diagon Alley. Running as fast as he could. But not so fast that he didn't hear Evan Rosier call out to him:

"And my friends always come back to me."