#also like from one rambler to another: ur totally fine. long posts are the best.

[padfootastic]

no i totally get what u mean! although i have to preface this with: i’m a terrible, terrible person to have a discussion with since i can’t distinguish between canon/fanon/hcs and when i don’t like something, i often just hand-wave it into something i do. i tend to operate by ~vibes more often than not lol

that’s such an interesting point about jily & what they represent tbh. i feel like the marauders just have so much tragedy in their arcs beyond the in-plot reasoning for it. i mean, i usually just think about sirius but him running away from the blacks/trying to distance himself from them and yet never being able to, for example? or, how peter ended up being the most accomplished of them all (no matter how pathetically he lived & died). sort of like—none of the marauders ever grew up from what we knew them as? i don’t exactly mean that in a developmental/physical/maturity sense but james literally never grew up; peter literally spent years as a rat + never grew a spine + despite his actions, never had any dignity (in life or death); remus never came out of his ‘woe is me, i’m a troubled werewolf’ attitude (right up until dh, he uses that as a cop out to abandon his family); and sirius lived & died a perceived black. there was never an arc, never a resolution. does that make sense? but yeah. metaphorical tragedy.

i’m also just…thinking out loud here but what you mention about harry finding out about peter’s betrayal -> james finding out. it feels like something that carries more depth than one’d think, especially keeping all the james-harry parallels in mind. remus saying that ‘james would also consider it the height of dishonour to mistrust his friends’ (even if he was trying to shade harry lol) and how that arguably brought about his demise, in a way. idk. just the whole thing kind of ties into harry’s constant search for meaning + connection to his family? like he’s always happy to be compared to his dad, he’s protective of them even w/o knowing anything about them, the most significant hit to his view of them comes from watching james act like (in his mind) dudley and the implication of that. so peter’s actions aren’t just bad because, ykno, they’re bad but they undermine family & friendship (two things harry desperately craves) in a way that fully enrages him.

snape goes from evil to evil to evil to complicated to what the fuck.

side note but honestly what an a+ line lol.

i agree with you that your readings of peter’s actions would be coming from a ‘there was no them in the first place’ (something i’m…interested in whenever u post that 👀) which is the exact opposite of my ‘tight knit marauders’ ideas lol so there would be some things that we might fundamentally disagree over just because of that. although i do think the text would more heavily favor ur interpretation, i’ll freely admit i don’t have anything backing my opinion except for ~vibes.

1. it’s interesting u bring that up because i think i remember reading something about james, specifically, believing in the idyllic marauders. like he will look at things through a rose tinted lens while at the same time being the glue that keeps them together, all these little mismatched, jagged pieces. also now that i’m thinking about it, it’s also a bit of a vengeful satisfaction moment for peter. they made him secret keeper because no one would suspect him, and that led to their downfall. if by that point, peter was fully disillusioned, then it would be a nice little ‘ha!’ moment for him.

2. that’s such a good point! the symbolic implications of peter being a weak, little, rat that needs protection from the larger predators—relegated to the little tasks but also juxtaposed with him being a survivor, cunning, bending things to his advantage. he can scurry wherever needed, out of others’ sight, and do what needs to be done. his contributions are necessary but undervalued (u need the passage to be opened; it’s necessary but not flashy).

3. hm. see, this one i’m a bit leery on because where/how could that really be proved anyway? what could sirius (or anyone else) have done to show that he’d have died for peter (and is it necessary enough for the plot that it would’ve been shown?) (can’t we simply extrapolate it based off what we know about his loyalty?) it can, however, be tied into ur point about perceived closeness, imo. sirius believed he’d die for peter (and it’s easy to persist in that belief because, presumably, he’s never been placed in a situation where that has been disputed) because he was in the category of ‘his people’ (whether that be possessive or affectionate or practical).

i think, ultimately, what i’m interested in is what made peter turn. the minutiae of it. sirius says it was him running off the most powerful player on the block, and that’s certainly plausible enough. but what caused the cracks? who was the go between? who recruited him? did peter always consider himself to be an outsider or was it something that happened towards the later years that finally pushed him over the edge? it’s a bunch of hypotheticals that depend on headcanons filling in the gap lol. and people like me, who’ll always have a rose-lens reading of the marauders, will fill it in differently, i’d say.

haha no need for an apology. it’s always interesting to see differing peter opinions (esp since i’m not attached to him so discourse can actually be fun) so in that vein, i hope it’s okay i pitch in?

ur definitely right that his betrayal still means something for all those reasons—the potters dying, harry becoming an orphan, sirius going to azkaban—but i’d argue that it became as personal as it did because he was a friend. after all, it was war time, people they knew were dying left, right, centre. violence was everywhere. they knew it could come for them anytime. that it came from one of their own, it had to have hit deeper no?

i guess the reason i feel like peter was One Of Them (beyond personal hcs) is 1. the potters trusting him with their safety in the middle of a war 2. peter being an animagus, knowing & protecting remus’ secret 3. the ‘died for us, as we would have done for you’ line from sirius.

i know there’s parts there that indicate exactly the opposite, the potshots sirius takes at peter’s intelligence + skill + general disposition in the shack but i’d always seen it as more hurting him where it hurts (with the benefit of hindsight) rather than always believing it. the way you’re aware of your friends’ faults but you don’t bring it up unless you wanna hurt them, if that makes sense? (i guess also the ambiguity around peter’s actions make this whole thing more tricky—why did he turn? when did he turn? what was the pipeline like?)

all of that being said, i definitely do agree with you that in that moment it was about james & lily & harry for sirius. when i said ‘the betrayal meant something’ i was talking more of in a larger sense of peter’s actions, not specifically sirius’ pov. some random guy betraying the potters is yeah, fine, whatever, wartime. but their own friend stabbing them in the back is what makes it a true tragedy (kind of like how sirius’ perceived betrayal hit harry particularly hard after the three broomsticks scene because he was his dad’s best friend & best man) but that’s just my opinion!! i’d love to hear ur thoughts :”)

first thank you so much for being ok with my post and second thank you so so much for answering! i love having conversations about this stuff more than anything and it's so rare for the conversation to be two people disagreeing but being considerate since usually this type of stuff ends up for me either just an argument or very one-sided so this is really fresh!

i love love love your last paragraph and i think that's what resonates with me best and kind of makes me see this in a different way. i always viewed the "the betrayal matters since peter was their friend" comment as a very in-plotline/character thing and didn't stop to consider it in the more metaphorical sense, which is always an important interpretation too.

and i'm not saying that to vaguely agree--i love talking about the marauders/their storyline in a metaphorical way. like i may have said before how i see james and lily as the golden age in a metaphorical sense--married, had a kid, the epitome of happiness, head boy and head girl and head of the world; but then they die and whoops there's a war and hey their parents were dead and their son is an orphan. they represent what never was; what harry longed to have but couldn't have (partly why the epilogue is so important). they're the idyllic until they aren't, and their story is riddled with flaws and holes since most importantly it fell apart.

that was off topic but your words got me thinking about the betrayal in the metaphorical/big picture sense rather than the "what were the exact feelings of the remaining marauders" sense and also like...of harry, too. firstly i very much agree--the idea of the tragedy, the betrayal as a whole of the friend who then wasn't. imo it's still about how he wasn't their friend in the first place--on the large interps, poa is when the books start to deviate from black and white and begin the theme of what-you-think-isn't-always-what-it-is (bad wording but you get the idea!) which is huge with the marauders (bully james, werewolf remus, not-murderer sirius, death eater peter) since the first impression ends up being the wrong one but they all stay consistently complex. (james goes from 100% good to bully to complicated but good. remus goes from perfect professor to werewolf to an occasional asshole that's a bit edgy--aka complicated but good. sirius goes from murderer to godfather to responsible to irresponsible to elf hater to dead...definitely complicated but good. peter goes from good and dead to alive and pathetic to evil to pathetic to evil to complicated but dead and bad. snape goes from evil to evil to evil to complicated to what the fuck.) and i believe the peter plotline follows that things-aren't-what-they-seem theme through that his goodness wasn't actually good and that his friendship wasn't actually friendship. big-picture wise.

but--in terms of harry. definitely definitely definitely. actually in terms of all of this -- the wording of "some random guy betraying the potters is yeah, fine, whatever, wartime" is what i'm thinking of right now--how the word friend is important in all of this; no matter what, it's extremely important that peter had a connection with james and with harry, and that it was his friend is definitely what hit hard. especially since sirius and remus and peter all use their connection/friendship with james to get at harry, so that they're important is important. but imo there's the parallel between harry believing peter was his dad's friend -> harry learning peter betrayed his dad (aka was definitely not a very good friend at the very least 💀) to james believing peter was his friend --> james learning peter wasn't his friend...well, not that he learned peter wasn't his friend, but that he died, sadly.

and to clarify, i 100% agree with the sentiment of peter shouldn't be "left out of the marauders" in fics (well you can do that if you want, no need to follow canon, just that it isn't canon) and that they 1) all believed he was a part of the marauders and their friend (including peter, up until the whole joining-the-death-eaters thing) and 2) included him as much as remus was included. and 10000% agree that peter being left out would make the betrayal hurt less--fully agree that a lot of it was about their closeness; i simply believe it to be a perceived closeness.

the way you’re aware of your friends’ faults but you don’t bring it up unless you wanna hurt them, if that makes sense?

irrelevant but slay lily 😍

i guess the reason i feel like peter was One Of Them (beyond personal hcs) is 1. the potters trusting him with their safety in the middle of a war 2. peter being an animagus, knowing & protecting remus’ secret 3. the ‘died for us, as we would have done for you’ line from sirius.

ok i'm gonna be a bit annoying (as if this isn't already help) and just kinda...answer those points? but first i want to clarify i'm part of the marauders-weren't-real squad (i really need to make that post don't i) so that probably results in a large disjunction here since my stance of peter not being "one of them" includes that there is no "them" in the first place but that's a somewhat separate thing

i think that's a super important point of the sort of trust given since trust is a major thing here. again with the parallels (whoops) james trusted peter just as harry trusted peter (ish) and remus (the more prominent poa parallel) and didn't trust sirius. same with harry trusting dumbledore until he didn't, and not trusting snape until he did, and the list goes on and on. and i don't want to invalidate anything and 100% agree the potters trusted peter and that's super important! but imo that shows the "fake" side rather than the truth ig? like the other potter-parallels in poa are of james and lily not trusting dumbledore (and then dying) and sirius not trusting sirius (and then them dying) and there's a lot of. Here's One Side. hahahaha that's wrong you're dead. so i do very much believe the potters believed in that sort of idyllic marauder concept, including with peter as a friend, just that it was wrong and peter was already disillusioned by then.

the animagus stuff is interesting because even then peter is portrayed as behind sirius and james, not on their level, needing help, etc. he's still separated even then, and regulated to level of opening-the-tree-trunk compared to the actual task of holding remus back. and looking at it symbolically, him being a rat even as a 15 yr old is consistent with his portrayal in swm--that he always kinda sucked (not in the terrorism way in the gross-teenager way), and always wasn't a real one of the gang in a sense. but also, yes, there is a definite bond between them and there was a secret kept between the four so you're entirely right there!

this is way too long so i won't go off here but imo all the marauders are very often hypocritical (a parallel to the things-aren't-as-they-seem theme!) and sirius is no exception and well...this line has nothing really to back it on sirius's end given he and none of the rest of them show any willingness of the sort at any time period so imo the sort of symbolism of that line is more 1) the contrast between the other marauders and peter and 2) the fumbling of what's right and what's wrong

i am so so sorry for this long af post but genuinely thank you!!