Chapter Text
On the night the love of his life dies, James Potter argues with her until they both go to bed angry.
She doesn’t trust Peter.
She has been getting nervous. Going paranoid on him, just like Sirius. James is starting to think he is the only one with a head on his shoulders at all.
Remus had a falling out with Sirius weeks ago about the incident in fifth year where Sirius tried to get Snivellus killed, or mauled just a little. Probably just wanted to scare him. Wanted a laugh. Wanted to shut that smarmy git up.
It hadn’t been the most considerate thing to do to Remus, of course, weaponizing his lycanthropy and all. But it had all turned out alright, hadn’t it? James had saved the nosy bastard. James had made it okay.
But now, six whole years later Remus decides to kick up a fuss about it, get in a row with Sirius. As it stands, they are both convinced of each other’s untrustworthiness–Remus because of the incident in fifth year, Sirius because Remus finally spoke up about it.
Peter is the only one who seems to not be losing his mind.
And Sirius is right, no one would suspect they’d choose Peter over Sirius for their Secret-Keeper.
It was just good sense.
So why can't Lily see it?
“I just think–I keep looking at Harry’s face, his sweet, perfect face, James,” Lily implores, desperate for an understanding James can’t possibly give her, not when her premise is so flawed. “I keep thinking–does Peter love him enough to stare down Voldemort’s wand, to trade his own life for Harry’s? Does he love me enough to do that? I just don’t–”
“Yes!” James exclaims. “Bloody hell, yes, Lily. Of course he does. He loves me like a brother. Has since first year. He’d do anything–”
“When he was here, on Harry’s birthday, when he held him, there was just, I dunno James, just something–”
“Something ?” James reiterates rhetorically, running an exasperated hand through his mess of dark hair. “I should doubt one of my best mates who has never failed to keep my secrets, Remus’ secret, because of… something?”
Lily’s mouth clamps shut. She sits heavily on their marriage bed. Outside, a thunderstorm pounds against the windows. In the next room, Harry is asleep in his crib.
“I just…” Lily starts again, fear contorting her face. She’s been like this since Harry was born. Always worrying herself sick. Thinking too much. James doesn’t blame her, not exactly, he can’t bear the thought of something happening to her, to Harry… but they’re safe here. They have to be. “I… I think we could have chosen better. For our Secret-Keeper. For our boy. I think–”
“You think what exactly?”
She scrubs her hands down her face. “I think he was very nervous, at Harry’s party.”
“Oh, come off it, he’s always been that way,” James groans, exasperation and frustration hitting him like open air after missing a swing on a quaffle. “Peter’s harmless. He’s literally let me hold his entire life in my hands, scurried into my palms as a fragile, plump little rat to get kissed on his fuzzy rat head.”
Wormtail is the most innocent of the lot of them.
The most pure.
He rivals Moony for sweetness, too.
“James, please. I’m saying I’m scared.”
James clenches his jaw, on the verge of fed up. He doesn’t know what he can say that he hasn’t already said. “What are you saying? That you don’t trust Peter?
Lily stares at him for a long moment. She takes a deep breath. Says, “I don’t. Not at all.”
The words are like a petrificus totalus to the gut.
James has had enough.
Enough slander of someone who has been a constant source of support at his side for the last decade.
Someone who has done nothing to earn Lily’s doubt.
Someone James loves like a brother he never had.
“And who in your life would you deem loyal enough to be our Secret-Keeper?” James snaps, sounding, feeling too much like himself at fifteen, pig-headedly trying to taunt Lily Evans into dating him. “Your best mate Mary Macdonald who didn’t attend our wedding out of fear for the target joining the Order put on our backs? Your sister Petunia?”
Lily looks momentarily as if James has just struck her across the face. Tears slip down her freckled cheeks. Then her nose wrinkles and she stands abruptly, glaring at him with those wet, stunning eyes. He’s always loved them, her eyes, even when she’s angry like this. He can’t help it.
James knows what he said was cruel. But…
He may not have earned the fortune his parents left for him, but the one thing he has built for himself is an empire of loyal friends.
It hurts that she thinks so lowly of them. And her glare now, it feels just like it had in school, when she looked down her nose at him like he was beneath her.
He was. He knows he was. Is.
But his friends weren’t. Aren't.
They were just doing what James wanted. Just having the laugh James needed to soothe that ache inside him when he saw his future, his wife–he always knew she’d be his wife–walking down the halls with that Cokeworth trash.
Lily was so much better than that. Better than that slimy git that always only ever brought her down.
“Who?” James challenges, brows raised behind his glasses. “Who would you have trusted more than my friend?”
Lily sucks in a breath. Clenches her jaw. There’s fury and grief written on her face.
“Lils, what in Merlin’s name is this really about?”
Lily’s defiant gaze fills with tears and James knows before she says it.
Not this again.
“I just think I could have trusted him for this. Severus.”
James groans.
He wishes she would get over her broken friendship. Wishes she would forget that slimy git. Wishes she would stop picking that scab like she enjoys to bleed.
“He would have done anything, anything for me. It should have been him. He should be here and it should have been him.”
James’ pulse shoots skyward. He can’t believe what he’s hearing.
It can't be him because it's already done. The Fidelius Charm performed. They chose Peter. It’s done with.
He almost raises his voice, but instead hisses his next words to keep them from waking Harry through the wall. “You’re mad. You’re actually mad if you reckon that Death Eater , blood purist, creep is more trustworthy than Peter, my mate who has not once showed a dust-mote of disloyalty.”
“He wouldn’t have betrayed me. I know he wouldn’t have,” Lily caries on, as if she hadn’t heard a word James just said.
“Wouldn’t have betrayed you?” James scoffs. “He did that, Lils. He did. Fifth year. He called you a mudblood.”
“I know. I know that and I told you, over the years, I don’t understand it, but the older I get, I think… I think I should have…” she pauses, takes a long breath to hold back her tears about something she should have stopped crying over a long time ago. Snape isn’t worth her sympathy. She’s always wasted too much of it on him. “He never wanted me dead.”
“He joined an organization that wants you dead! Eradicated! Exterminated! ”
“I know! Don’t you think I know?! Don’t you think it hurts? I know you think he was a creep but he never hurt me. Never made me uncomfortable except with all that Dark Magic stuff. And his father was a muggle who–”
“Oh, bollocks. That’s a rubbish excuse and you know it.”
“James, please!” Lily shouts, loud and shrill and full of fear and desperation. “Please just listen! I’m so scared. I’m so scared and when I think of the person I trust most with my life I think of…” her voice wavers, catches in her throat. Quietly, just above a whisper, she finishes, “I think of him, James. I think of Severus. After all these years.”
Somehow, it’s not a surprise.
Not when Lily’s been so privately torn up over the loss of her friendship with Severus Snape for all the years James has gotten close to her.
It’s a point of contention in their relationship. How many times can he reassure her that she did the right thing by removing that scum from her life?
James doesn’t understand how Lily can claim her friendship with Severus Snape had ever been as deep or worthwhile or rewarding as what he had with Padfoot and Wormtail and Moony.
It doesn’t make any sense.
Through the wall, Harry has woken to the sound of Lily’s raised voice and begins to wail.
Lily meets James’ eyes accusingly. He doesn’t know what she’s glaring at him for, he wasn’t the one who yelled.
Lily goes quiet, steely resolve coming over her, and like so many nights before this one, James knows the conversation is over.
She doesn’t break her glare as she trudges past James out of their bedroom door without a word. Off to collect Harry.
James sighs, runs a hand up his face, jostling his glasses, and slinks downstairs to sleep on the sofa.
He listens with indignation still pounding through his veins as Lily sings Harry back to sleep.
The house grows quiet.
Eventually, long after he hears Lily retreat back into their bedroom upstairs, James falls asleep.
He wakes some time later to the front door opening.
The figure that ducks through the doorway is too tall to be Peter. It’s not Sirius or Remus or Albus Dumbledore.
James’ blood runs cold.
The monster who calls himself Voldemort.
Through the front door.
Then–
Peter has betrayed them.
It couldn't be–
Peter. Small, squeaky little Peter.
The most innocent of the lot of them.
The most pure of heart.
Or so James had thought.
Suddenly, James thinks that he hasn’t really paid much attention to who Peter is at all.
Lily pays attention.
Lily’s intuition had been right.
It always is.
It always is.
It always is and James is such a bloody fool.
He thinks of Lily’s tears earlier. Her desperation. Her fear.
He thinks of his wand, upstairs in his bedroom under his pillow, where he had placed it before their argument. Where he always places it before bed. Where he would be sleeping if he had just listened to Lily for once.
All he had to do was listen to her.
And she had been trying to tell him for so long. About Snape. About James’ friends, the cracks forming between them like chasms.
James shouts a warning, Lily’s name, as loud as he can and then throws himself between the monster and the staircase.
The pale wizard smiles, toothy and serpentine and satisfied.
Lily was right.
He should have listened to her.
She’s always right. Always.
He never listened to her. Not about things he thought he knew better about. Not his friends. Certainly not Severus Snape.
Perhaps it was meant to happen this way.
He will be the first to meet Voldemort’s wand.
He wouldn’t have it any other way.
James is as defenseless as a muggle without his wand. Voldemort easily lifts him into the air with a wordless flick of his wand and throws him with excruciating force into the wall, hard enough to bash it in.
James scrambles through disorienting burst of pain to stand. He can hear Lily’s footsteps crashing through the hallway above him, into Harry’s room.
Harry is screaming, woken by chaos a second time tonight.
Voldemort hits him with another spell, something that opens gashes over his skin, tears through his clothes. Blood is pouring into his eyes.
“Not yet,” Voldemort says softly, gently. “Stay here bleeding and listen to the sound your squealing spawn makes as it dies.”
James sees red, has never felt so much rage in his entire life. He kicks the monster’s legs with a force only something desperate and feral and close to death can muster.
Voldemort seems to barely feel it. He flicks his wand carelessly and James can feel his shin bones snap like wands. He’s slammed into the wall again, pain bursting at the back of his skull. Blood is gushing from him in more than one place. He’s lightheaded. Sick and trembling.
Still, he tries to stand.
Lily.
Harry.
They need him.
They can’t–
Voldemort steps over his broken body, gliding up the stairs with a triumphant determination on his inhuman face.
Lily was right.
Lily was right and James has killed her with his arrogance.
The last thing James hears before he blacks out is Lily pleading, voice high with terror, and Harry’s screams quieting, as if he, even small and fragile and innocent as he is, knows something is very, very wrong.