Peter was born into a family of soft smiles and softer demeanor, into a house and a farm cradled in the golden light of the Cheshire countryside. They were happy, there, a man and the love of his life, and a baby born from wedlock, but they were happy there. It was quiet, the lambs louder than any of their neighbours, but they were happy there, and maybe Peter would trip over the feet of others in the schoolyard, and something wasn’t quite right with his parents, with the secret conversations and the constant phone calls and slowly it was he that would haul the hay and he that would shear the sheep in spring and his schoolwork was often cast aside in favour of sowing or lambing season, but they were happy there.
Right?
And then suddenly it was all plucked from them, though perhaps not as suddenly as it had seemed to Peter, perhaps it had been coming for a long time, but one day his mother was making jam and feeding chickens, and the next he was in a suit that didn’t quite fit and a starched collar that jutted into his chin, and it was just him and his father, stranded in a house that felt too big and a farm that didn’t seem worth the hassle, anymore. But his dad was a man’s man, a farmer with broad shoulders and a broader pride, and if they didn’t talk of the work to be done they didn’t talk at all. It was by himself that Peter would learn to evade certain children in the yard, by himself that he worked his way into a group of friends, by himself that he began to hoard pocket money for cigarettes and by himself that he learned that staying out ‘till the wee hours of the morning was far, far less crushing than a dad that would hardly nod at him on the best of days, and a family that he hardly knew, because she should have never ran off with that boy, and it’s his fault, you know, that she was stranded out there. So he buried himself in work at home and the antics of these friends - who had not so long ago felt like the enemy - who, eventually, he grew to belong with, as that streak of bitterness grew a little stronger, the product of being resented by grandparents he would never meet, and a family of barely-one. He grew to belong, and the hours spent crowded around in a haze of smoke and alcohol and preteen angst and they all took themselves a little too seriously, but it was friendship of sorts, and it was his.
And so when Peter hit eleven and his letter arrived, it felt not like a little piece was being torn from him, but like he was the little piece being torn from something larger, a gap that would no-doubt be smoothed over by some other scuffed-up country kid that felt like they couldn’t care less, but with Hogwarts came the Marauders, and with the Marauders came what Peter had craved for what felt like an eternity. A family.
And while he loved his dad, loved him more than he could - or wanted to try - put into words, and the sheer idea of losing him was unthinkable, it had been a while since he’d felt loved back. And the Marauders embodied friendship, real friendship, not the situational shit his friends from home, where they had all needed something a little better, a little more real, but nobody wanted to admit it or dared to hope for something more intimate than sharing a cig and a bottle of Bacardi Breezer, and Merlin, Peter was more grateful for them than he was comfortable with voicing.
And through the years, if Peter began to acquire a plant here, and there, and suddenly everywhere, it wasn’t his fault, right? Because with every sprout he willed to grow, every seed he sowed with gentle hands, he could remember the farm that he returned to each summer and each winter, his return a bittersweet experience. With that came the memory of a tinkly laugh and rolled-up sleeves, and any connection, big or small, was one he was happy to cling to. Any connection to the happy family, as distant and hazy as they might seem, was one he wrapped himself up in, bathing in the warm glow of childhood. He loved the science of it, but also the labour of love so deeply associated with it, the process of watching something he created coming to life. He loved being good at something, for once in his life, loved the gleam of pride his dad would look at him with when he carted in a new harvest of carrots, of tomatoes, of peas- and that pride was so fucking short in stock and so fucking high in demand that any sense of that meant tenfold to him than it really should have.
So he grew what he could fit into pots through the year, and carted himself and his plants off home every summer, to turn hay and feed chickens alongside the farm workers his dad had once hired to replace him, a little bit jealous that he was that easy to replace. And the man himself would smile at his son and they would talk cattle feed and tasks and weather conditions, and pretend that that was all there ever was to talk about, day in and day out. He would meet back up with the friends - his allies, his peers - that he had spent countless hours drinking and smoking and talking shit with, once, and they would try to do the same and every year it would feel a little bit less genuine and a lot more sour.
And if, when he greeted his friends - his friends, his brothers - the following year, his shoulders a little tighter than before and his eyes a little wearier, it was for no reason in particular, I swear James, and he would pack away the tiredness under a layer of nonchalance and ease and reach for a smoke.
