"Yeah," Ron muttered, the memory of the event looked like it left a cold feeling in
his gut. "He was bloody terrified."
Changed you how? Ron had asked her.
Mia listened to the answer to her question, and she closed her eyes, taking another
slow, deep breath. When she exhaled, it felt like relief, peace, and contentment. She
remembered seeing Mary's bloodied body after her death, and the confrontation she'd had
with Peter prior to her burial. He had been terrified then too.
When Mia opened her eyes, Ron was looking at her with a horrified stare. She
realised then that she was smiling.
"He murdered my friend," she told him. "Betrayed my brother and sister-in-law.
And he took a blade to Harry's arm. Sirius went to Azkaban because of Peter Pettigrew.
I'm fairly positive I had a large hand in pushing him toward the road he chose, but I went
to school with a lot of people whom I wasn't very pleasant to." She thought of Snape,
Regulus, and even Draco. "People who had so much less than Peter. Fewer friends, more
pressure, larger threats. I saw the beginning." She could still see that first meeting with
Peter and every moment since then that turned him into the eventual Death Eater she
knew him to be. "I wanted to know the end."
"We tried to save him," Ron told her. "When it happened. Harry and I... We tried
to stop it from happening."
"Neither of you are the killing type. You're both Gryffindors," she said with a tender
smile.
"Aren't you?"
Mia thought about it for a moment and then shrugged her shoulders. "I'll tell you if
I ever get a chance to ask the Sorting Hat again."
An hour or so later, the two older couples sat on the long sofa, curled together.
Remus at the end with Tonks lying back against his chest, and Mia leaning her shoulder
against Tonks while Sirius rested his head in her lap. Harry sat in the large armchair, looking
at old photos that Sirius and Mia had gone through to filter out some of the more risqué
pictures—of which Sirius had a shocking amount.