Chapter Eighteen

July 24th, 1981

James spent the night in a fitful sleep; if it could even be called sleep. When he wasn't worrying about Lily and Harry, he was worried about his friends. Remus looked exhausted, as though a rising full moon was fast approaching, and Sirius had that nervous look in his eyes. The same he got back at Hogwarts when his mischief was leading more toward mayhem than a casual prank. It was Peter, however, that James was most concerned about.

He knew something had been wrong. Not before Harry, Hermione, and Draco's arrival, but the moment they told them about Peter's betrayal in their timeline, James couldn't bring himself to believe it. No matter how many fights they got in throughout the years they had been friends, these men were his brothers. Something had to have happened to Peter. Which was why James cursed himself over and over for not noticing sooner that something had happened, had been happening, to his friend.

Logically, he knew that his focus needed to be on keeping Lily and Harry safe, but he had always prided himself on being a caretaker for his friends. Despite it not being his idea, he had been the one to push Sirius and Peter both during their Animagi training, when the former would rush in too quickly and get himself hurt, and the latter would get frustrated with feeling as though he were falling behind. It was James who always came first to Sirius's aid whenever something had gone wrong back at Grimmauld Place. And while they had all gathered around Peter to help him through his grief after the death of his father back in second year, it was James who kept to his side, trying to get him to open up about his feelings instead of burying them the same way that Remus and Sirius both excelled at.

James hated himself for not realising that Peter had been hurt.

He hated himself even more for not realising that Peter could hurt others.

Sirius woke him up, nudging him in the shoulder. James opened his eyes to see a weary Hermione slip in the room and crawl, exhausted, into the bed where Remus was snoring. He felt a bit of relief there, knowing that at least one of his friends was well looked after.

Taking Sirius's hand and using it to pull himself to his feet, James whispered, "Everything all right?"

Sirius shook his head. "I don't know, Prongs. Peter's awake, though. I gave Hermione a Dreamless Sleep to give him, but he refused."

"What did he say?" James asked, feeling a cold bit of dread slip around his stomach.

"I haven't . . . I didn't go in the room. Not yet."

Sighing with relief, James put a hand on Sirius's shoulder, glad that his best friend hadn't done anything reckless. "Will you check on Lily and Harry?"

"Which one?" Sirius asked, his smirk looking tired and forced.

"Fuck off," James said with a half-hearted smile of his own, pressing his forehead to Sirius's briefly before squeezing his shoulder and leaving the room.

"Prongs?"

Turning back, James met Sirius's stare. "Yeah?"

Sirius paused, looking down. "She said the Veritaserum worked. Draco broke whatever those fucks did to him. But just . . . don't trust him. Not yet. Please."

Nodding, James continued his way back toward the bedroom, nudging the door open only to see Peter on the bed, curled up with his back facing the door. Despite the fact that he had eventually caught up with the rest of them during their growth spurts in school, Peter had never reminded James more of the little boy he'd met at Hogwarts.

Clicking the door shut behind him, James watched as Peter's body froze completely still.

"It's me, Wormy."

Peter's shoulders began to shake a little once more, and James could barely make out a whispered, "I didn't mean to."

He tried to remember Sirius's words of caution, but he couldn't help but step closer to the bed. Taking the chair left by the bedside, James sat down and slowly reached a hand out, cringing when Peter winced as he put his palm on the man's shoulder. "You didn't know."

"Should've."

"Well, we should've been paying more attention. Sirius was just so badly hurt that . . . Fuck, that's not a good excuse. We should have checked you over too, Peter. I'm sorry we didn't."

He could hear Peter let out a shaky breath. "Prongs, please don't . . . Please don't apologise to me. Not after what I . . . Fuck, I don't even know what I might've done. I don't remember. I don't. Fuck them. Goddamned Death Eater pieces of shit! And now I'm one of them." When James said nothing, Peter whispered, "I know you saw it. You all saw it on my arm. Didn't you?"

He had seen it. And it made him sick to think about. But . . . he trusted his son. His son who was presently somewhere in his home right now, likely snuggled up with a man who had the same tattoo as Peter. "Remember when we were little, and Remus came back from summer after third year. He had that really bad scar on his back that he kept trying to hide?"

Peter shook his head. "This isn't the same thing."

"It's similar," James said, trying to keep his own breath steady. "Remus was attacked, infected with something awful that makes him want to do bad things sometimes. And because of something that someone else did to him, he has scars."

Peter finally rolled over, meeting James's eyes.

He looked sick, pale, sweaty, and wrecked. He looked worse than James had ever seen him, even after his dad had died. His eyes were red and puffy, his cheeks stained with dried tear tracks. There were small red spots on his face, and James realised that his friend had probably thrown up. He remembered when Lily was pregnant with Harry, she was so sick those first few months that she'd actually broken a few blood vessels in her face from the strain of throwing up so violently.

"This isn't the same thing as Remus, James," Peter said. "It's not the same. It's not the—"

Standing, James reached forward, grabbing Peter's face. "Shut up! Just shut the fuck up, Wormtail!"

Tears forming again, Peter clenched his eyes shut.

"You tried to protect our children, Pete," James said. "Someone, the person who broke you free of whatever Voldemort did . . . he saw your memories. He told us what was in there. He said you were trying to protect Harry and Luna. You're not Dumbledore. None of us can keep them out of our heads forever if they put us through what . . . Fuck, Pete. You tried to save our kids."

Slowly, Peter opened his eyes. "And how long do you think I would be able to?"

James thought of what he'd learnt about Peter through Harry, Hermione, and Draco. Of the man, the monster, the murderer that his friend had become. Shaking his head, he held Peter in place, pressing their foreheads together the same way he had with Sirius not minutes earlier. "What could have happened doesn't matter now. Because we fixed this."

The door behind them opened up, and James let go of Peter to turn around and catch sight of Harry peeking in the door. "Hey."

Harry turned his gaze from James to Peter, eyes looking hesitant. "Everything all right in here?"

Looking back to Peter, James caught his friend staring at Harry with a confused expression.

"We're fi—" James began to say, but Peter cut him off with, "Harry?"

Harry's eyes widened, and James sat up straight. "What?"

"What?" Harry replied, looking just as perplexed.

"What did you call him?" James asked.

Peter looked back and forth between Harry and James and eventually said, "What did you do, Prongs? Was it a . . . curse or a potion mishap or . . .?"

"What are you talking about?" James slowly asked. "You think that's—?" He gestured vaguely to the doorway.

"I may be coming out of something," Peter said. "And I'm obviously not uncle of the goddamned year, all things considered, but I know your bloody kid, Prongs. As you liked to point out, I spent all my efforts trying to keep my memories of him secure. I'd know Harry Potter and Luna Lovegood on sight no matter what. And that," he said, pointing at Harry, "is your son."

"Well, I didn't accidentally have a potions mishap with my baby," James said, feeling slightly offended. He wasn't that bad at brewing.

"Time-Turner," Harry eventually said, stepping fully into the room, his eyes stuck on Peter. "Pettigrew. Nice to umm . . . finally meet you. This you, at least."

Taking in a slow breath, Peter looked over Harry carefully, every so often letting his gaze drift to James with a similar expression as his Animagus form did when searching for danger. James didn't blame him. As much as he knew the situation they were in wasn't Peter's fault, seeing the man look at his grown son, knowing who he was, had James on high alert, just in case.

"You knew me then? I mean . . . Time-Turner and all?"

Harry swallowed, taking another slow step forward. "I knew you, Wormtail."

"H-How . . . how bad was it? Did I . . .?"

"You're the turning point," Harry said, looking more a soldier than James had seen thus far. "Because of what you did . . ." He stopped, looked down, and sighed. "Because of what Voldemort did to you, everything goes south. Mum and Dad are murdered, Sirius ends up imprisoned in Azkaban, Voldemort is resurrected, and . . . and yes, it all comes down to you."

Several minutes of pure silence hovered in the room. James didn't dare to speak. He didn't know what to say. As much as he was Harry's father, there was no denying that his son was in charge of this moment. He was the fighter in this. He had seen war, truer and bloodier than even James had witnessed.

Eventually, Peter choked out, "Did I kill them?"

"Through your betrayals, yes," Harry admitted. "And you murdered one of my friends. Right in front of me. For no reason other than Voldemort told you to, and because he was there. He was only seventeen years old."

Peter looked down, shame filling his entire expression. James watched as his eyes lingered on his left arm, the tattoo hidden beneath his sleeve.

Harry cleared his throat, shoving his hands into his pockets. "But that won't happen now. None of it will. Because you're not a Death Eater, are you?"

His eyes still focused on his left arm, Peter's breathing was slow and shaky. Eventually, he looked up, making eye contact with James first and then Harry. "No. I'm not."

Peter rested for the morning whilst everyone else had a quiet breakfast together.

Despite the lack of sleep they had, Harry, Hermione, and Draco all looked remarkably better than anyone else. Lily slept uncomfortably in her bed. Little Harry had been sleeping in his crib on his own for quite some time, but she felt she needed to have him right up against her through the night in order to feel safe and in some semblance of control, what with everything that was happening regarding Peter just down the hall. She'd taken one look at herself in the mirror that morning and grimaced, flipping off her reflection when the enchanted mirror made a comment about how she ought to put a little rouge on her cheeks if she wanted to keep her husband happy.

Still, even though she'd seen what she looked like, the way James, Sirius, and Remus drifted into the kitchen reminded her of how they all used to look back at Hogwarts after a night under the full moon. Funny, how she always assumed they'd been out drinking with Hufflepuffs or sneaking into Hogsmeade and having dalliances at the Three Broomsticks. It had taken her far longer than she was proud to admit to find out they were up all night trying to help Remus.

Reminded of how he used to look after the full moon when they were younger, Lily glanced at Hermione, secretly hoping the girl would survive her first transformation with as little pain as possible. Draco had been a great help for that. He and Lily had sat down to try and deconstruct what he knew of the future potion called Wolfsbane. They were still far behind where she had hoped to be, and Peter's arrival had only delayed things further; especially since none of them could leave the cottage to fetch fresh ingredients without arousing suspicion or getting killed.

She made breakfast, little Harry perched on her hip and sucking on a biscuit that was turning to mush in his mouth and his hands. Normally, she would have set him down and washed him clean, but this morning, she didn't even bother stopping when he took a fistful of her hair in one of his dirty little hands. Scrambled eggs and toast was all she could rally herself to make, knowing that she'd likely burn any meat from distraction were she to attempt it.

Silence filled the room, only ever interrupted by the sound of scraping forks on plates and cups being set back down on the table.

She couldn't bring herself to eat.

James and Sirius poked at their plates, taking the occasional bite. Remus and Hermione, thankfully, were eating more than anyone else, but mostly at one another's quiet urging. Lily watched in quiet contemplation as Draco dutifully buttered a piece of toast for Harry, taking a bite before passing it over and earning an affectionate eye roll in the process. They looked so young and innocently in love in those moments. It felt like there was an ease of domesticity to them. But then her gaze would linger on their scars.

Harry had many more than Draco, but there was a cut above the blond's eye, bisecting right through the brow. He didn't bother with long sleeves since they all knew about his Dark Mark, and Lily could easily see the wound from the centaur's arrow was healed over nicely, but hex and curse marks left behind lingered on his skin as well. Nothing, thankfully, as horrendous as the one that Hermione had on her arm and just below her throat. Draco scratched at his collar bone, and Lily could see white scars peeking out from beneath the collar of his shirt, stretching down beneath the fabric. From what she could see, it looked like someone had taken a sharp knife to him over and over again.

Still, Harry looked worse than them all.

Lily tried not to seem obvious as her gaze raked over her son's body. The mark on his forehead was most prominent, though he'd yet to say much on what had happened other than it had to do with Voldemort. There was an ugly, deep scar on the inside of his forearm, burn marks along his arms and legs that matched ones Hermione had. She'd seen it only once the first night he had been there when she went to fetch him some clean clothes out of James's wardrobe, but Harry had a twisted scar in the centre of his chest in the shape of an oval.

As he brought his glass of pumpkin juice to his lips, Lily caught sight of a scar on the back of his hand. It looked like words. Squinting, she made them out just as light from the nearby window briefly flashed over him: I must not tell lies.

"We need to know everything," she blurted out, trying to temper her growing rage. "Everything about where you come from and what happens in this war. You've given little details here and there, names of Death Eaters, and generally what happens to us . . . though without details."

Harry flinched and looked down at his plate.

"We need to know everything. Every single moment."

"I don't know if that will help," Hermione whispered, casting a short glance at Remus. "We should try to keep in good spirits."

Annoyed, Lily turned her attention on Draco, figuring he would be the easiest to get the truth out of. When he made eye contact with her, she let the corner of her mouth turn up a little in quiet victory.

"What do you want to know?"

James set his glass down hard on the table. "If we're going to do this, then we're all going to hear it."

Making eye contact with her husband, she already knew what he meant.

"James," Sirius began, looking frustrated, "we don't know if we can trust—"

"He's not leaving the cottage," James cut in. "But Peter needs to know as well. He needs to be reminded of what we're fighting for and what we all stand to lose in this."

Not knowing how she felt about the Peter situation, Lily stood up, tugging her baby against her side with one arm and picking up her plate with her free hand. "I'll go put him down. Everyone meet upstairs."

"Spare no details," Lily said, making eye contact with Draco, even as Harry gave her a pleading look. "Harry, I'm sorry. I don't want you to relive any of it in your memories, but better that we know so we can do what's possible to prevent it."

They'd gathered in the room with Peter, who was still confined to the bed, though now permitted to sit up. James sat on one side of him with the other men in the opposite corner of the room, leaning against one another. Lily perched on the arm of a nearby chair, whilst Harry, Hermione, and Draco stood at the foot of the bed, looking haunted.

"Dumbledore will approach you," Harry said, looking at Lily and then James. "He'll offer to put a Fidelius Charm on the house."

"You said that wouldn't work, though," Remus replied questioningly.

Harry nodded. "It didn't. Dumbledore cast the spell with Sirius as the Secret Keeper, but . . . and I can only speculate because I never really heard much about exactly how it happened, Sirius was being targeted. Everyone would know that you would choose him to keep you safe," he said, looking at James. "And so you changed the Secret Keeper without telling anyone. Dumbledore never knew until it was too late."

"Neither did you," Hermione whispered, looking at Remus. "From what we know, you stayed with the werewolf packs until Dumbledore called you back. Until it was too late. We've already disrupted the timeline because of that fact alone. You shouldn't have come home when you did."

Lily looked over James's shoulder and made eye contact with Peter for the first time. He glanced down, his expression filled with guilt and sorrow. "So Peter then," she said, coming to the obvious conclusion. "And because Voldemort's curse on him had taken root by then, he betrayed us. How did it happen? How did we die?"

Harry cringed. "Mum—"

"How?"

She watched carefully as he reached up, rubbing at the scar on his forehead. "Halloween. This year. He came in through the front door. You knew ahead of time, but not by more than a few seconds." His attention turned to James. "You told Mum to take me and run. She took me up the stairs to my, er, Harry's room. You said that you would hold Voldemort off in order for us to get away."

"Sounds like something you'd do," Sirius muttered, casting an angry look at James. "Did he at least get in a good curse or two?"

Harry sighed heavily, sticking his hands in his pockets. "He didn't have his wand."

"What?" James asked, looking up with wide eyes. "I didn't even—? I mean . . ." He trailed off, his breaths rapidly increasing as he stood from the bed to run his hands through his hair.

"Harry?" Lily whispered, waiting for her son to take his eyes off of James and return his attention to her. "Who else was here?"

"No one," Harry said, shaking his head. "The two of you, me, and Voldemort." When she looked at Peter, Harry added, "He wasn't here."

Trying to add it all up in her head, she finally asked, "Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware of how smart you are. But you're only, I mean you were just a baby. How do you remember this? If no one else was here to tell you what happened . . . And you weren't downstairs. So how do you know that James didn't have his wand? Did someone find the bodies and—"

"Stop," Sirius pleaded. "Can you not talk like . . .? Don't say that."

Draco and Hermione both looked at Harry with tense expressions.

Harry rubbed at his forehead. "You all know about Voldemort's Horcruxes."

Peter gasped as he looked up, eyes wide. Clearly, no one had gotten around to telling him.

"What I haven't told you," Harry continued, "is that until I was seventeen, I was one of them."

Having not sat back down since his panicky outburst, James rushed to Harry, gripping him by the shoulders and examining his forehead. Lily, too, stood and made her way quickly across the room to her son.

"I'm fine now," Harry said, looking flustered and embarrassed at being fawned over. "It's gone now. But, for a time, I shared a connection with him. I could feel what he felt, see what he saw, and . . . I could see his memories. They were inside my head. I remember everything," he said gravely. "I remember the sounds coming from downstairs, and I remember what you looked like, Mum, when . . ."

She pulled him into her embrace, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. "Keep going."

"He gave you a choice. He would have spared you if you let me die."

She pulled back, looking into Harry's eyes. "I never would—"

"And you didn't," he said softly, sadly, looking grief-stricken still, even though she stood right in front of him, alive and—mostly—well. "You screamed, begged for my life, and then he murdered you. And then you were gone." Harry's voice cracked on that, and Lily cupped his face in her hands.

"I'm here," she said quietly.

"Whatever you did," Hermione said, "it put some sort of magic on Harry. Sacrificial magic. Because you gave your life for his, when Voldemort tried to kill him, the spell backfired. He died instead. But," she said, letting out a heavy sigh, "since he'd made Horcruxes, he wasn't really dead."

"And whatever happened when the Killing Curse struck back at him," Draco chimed in, "made a piece of him go inside Harry. Which really explains why he was such an intolerable twat for so many years."

"Jesus Christ," Harry muttered, letting out an exasperated laugh as he pressed his forehead against Lily's shoulder.

"But the Horcrux is gone now?" Remus asked, stepping forward. He shared a brief look with Peter and then very hesitantly approached the bed, taking up the seat that James had left empty.

Harry nodded. "It was destroyed a few years back during a battle."

Letting out a heavy sigh, James sat down at the end of the bed. Peter tugged his knees up to his chest, allowing James more room to collapse a bit. "So we can't use a Fidelius. And we have to destroy Horcruxes. And we can't trust Dumbledore."

"We can't?" Peter asked, looking confused. "I mean, I thought that you all—"

"Things've changed, Wormtail," Sirius muttered, briefly making eye contact with Peter. "If not Dumbledore, then who can we trust? Who's actually on our side that will help keep James, Lily, and Harry safe?"

"I don't need you to—" James began, but Sirius glared at him. "Fine. Whatever. Keep us all safe, but it doesn't end with us, Pads. And we can't stay in this goddamned cottage forever. From what we know, this war can potentially go on for years, and I'm not raising my son locked up here like . . ."

Lily put a hand on Harry's shoulder. "Not again," she said, agreeing with James. "We need out. All of us."

Hermione paced around the room, letting out an occasional huff under her breath, though it never appeared to be connected with anything anyone else was saying or doing. She actually looked a bit lost in her own mind for a while. "Horcruxes can be tracked down. The last time, Voldemort didn't have any idea that we'd been destroying them, not until we'd made several mistakes." She looked up at Draco. "Can you get the diary out of Malfoy Manor without letting your parents catch on?"

Peter's mouth fell open. "Bloody hell," he whispered. "I thought he looked a lot like—"

"Keep up, Pete," Remus muttered, looking frustrated from lack of sleep. "But try to do so quietly."

"I can get it," Draco confirmed.

"Not alone," Harry said.

"Fuck off."

"I'm not goddamned joking, Draco! We won't split up again."

Lily watched her son turn on his boyfriend with a look of rage in his green eyes that felt more than looked familiar to her. She knew those eyes. She'd seen them just this morning looked right back at her from behind her mirror. Since he'd come to them, Harry had felt like her son. He looked like a man who'd been through war, but she still saw him in the sweet little face of her baby just in the other room. But she was finally able to see the parts that made him who he was. He had her temper and James's self-sacrificing nature. He had a reckless bit of him that was too much Sirius, and there was even some of Remus there, hidden in the shadows beneath his eyes, looking as though the weight of the world rested on his shoulders and he just didn't feel that he measured up to expectations.

"We're all in this," Lily said. "We'll figure out the Horcruxes. But right now, we need to know who our allies are. Dumbledore cannot be trusted, which means many people in the Order can't either. What about outside? Anyone at the Ministry or in Hogwarts?"

"McGonagall," Harry said immediately. "As for the Ministry, I wouldn't have a clue where to begin."

Lily looked up, catching Sirius's gaze. "What do you think?"

He sighed, raking a hand through his hair. "Pandora might have some ideas about how to keep everyone safe. At the very least, I'll bet she can come up with a way to integrate these three into our timeline without everyone wondering who the hell they are."

"It would help to have someone on the inside," Harry said quietly. "In the previous timeline, we had an ally inside the Death Eaters."

"No," Hermione and Draco said at the same time.

Throwing his hands up, Harry walked to the other side of the room, sitting down in the chair that Lily had abandoned. "We've changed too much already. And with—" He casually gestured to Peter on the bed "—We have no idea when Voldemort will strike now. As much as I wanted to prevent Halloween from happening this year, it was at least a timeline we could follow. But there's no way that we can send Pettigrew back to Voldemort."

At the mere suggestion, Peter looked like he was ready to be sick again. "I don't expect you to trust me—"

"It's not about trust," Harry replied.

"It's quite a lot about that," Sirius countered. When James looked at him with narrowed eyes, Sirius lifted his hands in supplication. "I know it was a curse and there was nothing to be done about that. But there's no way of telling if anything's changed. Not yet. Pete, you're one of my best friends, but we have children to think of right now."

Peter nodded solemnly. "No, it's fine. I understand. I don't want anyone hurt or killed because of me. I'm a . . . I'm a liability. No, James, it's true," he said when James spun around to argue. "You're too good-hearted to see it. But Sirius is right. I can't be trusted. I don't even know what all I've done since this happened to me."

"Maybe," Hermione began, biting her lower lip. "I'm not saying it's the best idea, but maybe we should keep him . . . locked up, for the time being."

"I agree," Peter said.

"No," James refused.

"Then an Unbreakable Vow."

"Peter! That type of magic is . . ." James stood, gesturing with his hands wildly as he spoke. "We have no idea what it could do to you."

Sitting up straight, Peter moved his legs over the side of the bed, nudging Remus to stand. "It doesn't matter. You need to know that I can't betray you. You can't worry about destroying Death Eaters and V-Voldemort while also wondering what I might do. Besides, an Unbreakable Vow can't be broken by other means. So they can't use Legilimency on me. And the Imperius Curse wouldn't work either, right?"

Lily opened her mouth to reply but then noticed that Peter was looking at Hermione.

"He's right," Hermione said.

Standing up, Peter awkwardly rubbed at his arms as though he were cold. He let out a soft, uncomfortable laugh. "Besides, even if I wasn't scared of breaking the Vow and dying, I've been pretty much assured that it's in my best interest to be good." He kept his gaze on Hermione, even as her eyes briefly narrowed. "Don't want to end up on fire, fed to centaurs, or stuck in a jar."

"What?" Remus asked, confused.

"You told him about Rita Skeeter?" Harry asked Hermione.

Lily blinked. "The Daily Prophet reporter?"

"Hermione put her in a jar once," Draco casually mentioned. "It was hardly the worst thing she's ever done. Did you tell him about the witch whose face you permanently cursed with boils?"

Folding her arms and looking slightly attacked, Hermione exhaled sharply. "I hardly think any of that matters now. Anyone I may have cursed or hexed in my past is clearly perfectly healthy in this timeline, you realise."

"Who did you feed to centaurs?" Sirius asked with a grin. "And aren't centaurs vegetarians?"

"They didn't eat her," Hermione said defensively. "They just . . . dragged her off into the forest is all. It was nothing."

Harry let out an amused snort. "Nothing."

"We're getting off topic!' Hermione snapped loudly, a threatening growl in the back of her throat. Remus was immediately at her side, settling a hand on her shoulder. She took in a deep breath and slowly let it out. "But that does remind me that some people do need to be handled before they're given the ability to cause harm to others."

"I'm on board if we're taking Umbridge down," Harry said. "But I agree; it's off topic. She can wait."

Peter stuck his hand out. "Let's get on with it."

Everyone stared at the Dark Mark on his skin.

James, Remus, and Sirius all hesitated to step forward.

Sighing impatiently, Lily moved in front of him, grabbing his left hand with her own. "I'll do it. Who can cast the spell?"

Most eyes turned toward Hermione, but it was Draco who approached, holding his hand out to Harry, who placed the Elder Wand in the centre of his palm.

The moment that the wand touched their joined hands, Lily spoke. "Will you, Peter Pettigrew keep all the secrets of everyone in this room and those who are our allies for the benefit of their safety and the ultimate destruction of Voldemort and his Death Eaters?"

"I will," Peter said.

A thin rope of magical fire emerged from the wand, wrapping tightly around their hands.

"Will you, to the best of your ability, protect our children?"

"I will."

Lily took a breath. "And will you swear on your life through this Vow which will strike you dead should you break it, that you will never, in word or deed, betray anyone in this room in a way that could cause serious harm or otherwise benefit Voldemort and his supporters in any way?"

He did not look hesitant, even though he did pause before answering. Peter's eyes stared down at the flames of magic wrapped around their hands, one edge of the magic curling against the bottom of his Dark Mark. He brought his attention up, looking at Lily and then to his friends, one by one.

Sirius looked resolved with the situation, even as Remus shifted on his feet a little, nervously chewing on his thumbnail. When Peter glanced at James, he sighed, shaking his head.

"Don't wait for my permission," James said softly. "You're your own man, Pete."

"I will," Peter said.

The magic burned and glowed blindingly bright before eventually vanishing.

Lily withdrew her hand and sat back down on the arm of the chair that Harry now occupied.

"Now what?" James asked.

Harry leant forward, putting his elbows on his knees, looking contemplative. "Now we find people we can trust. Build up our own . . ."

"Order?" Sirius cheekily suggested.

"Army," Hermione said with a little grin in Harry's direction.

Chuckling under his breath, Harry nodded. "Think we might need a different name for it this time around."