Harry Potter Unfinished Business

**A/N: Okay, fair warning, this is a bit different from my normal stuff. But I've read a few fics with this general idea (though none with this plot) and I wanted to give it a try. Not sure how it turned out. It's a bit ambiguous at first, but... well, you'll see. **

**Thanks for giving it a shot. And of course, I own nothing here. **

It was a strange place. Not nearly as golden or as fiery as he had always imagined. In fact, it was far too real. He felt, sometimes, that he had been gypped out of the promise of nothingness. Here there was no sanctuary of black emptiness, devoid of thought or memory. Actually, there was little else for him now _but_ thought and memory. His own punishment, he knew.

He sat high atop a cliff, surrounded by cold, spiky rock. There was no shelter when the storms came or when the sun beat relentlessly down on him; not even the sparsest shadow of green to relieve the landscape. He burned with hunger, but there was no food, and only when it stormed was there water. But usually it was neutral, not hot or cold or parched or stormy. Just a cliff and himself, and nothing more.

But he could see, and he could hear far more. His cliff was part of something like a dividing wall. On one side there was a valley, lush and green and full of life, on the other a barren, dark, stony landscape filled with the shrieks and howls of those who were trapped there.

He usually sat facing the valley, but he could not escape the sound of the tortured souls behind him, no matter how hard he pressed his hands over his ears or how loudly he sang to drown them out. Not even in his fitful sleep when they mingled with his dreams and turned them invariably to nightmares.

But the valley at least formed a peaceful picture, most of the time. He could see clear across it from his perch to the mountains on the other side and the dim green that suggested another valley beyond that. A stream gushed out of the mountains and sped downwards, curving and zigzagging at impossible angles across the valley floor, a sparkling ribbon of water. Thick forest and orchards covered the far side, but in the gently rolling hills of the valley were nestled homes.

It looked like the strangest village ever built. The houses were placed erratically, with no attempt at pattern and no roads to connect them. Some were in groups, others stood alone. And the buildings themselves were the wildest assortment ever gathered together. They ranged from little bungalows to big brick apartment buildings to small castles and every other kind of house or combination of houses imaginable. But somehow they all seemed to fit together in that valley.

There was one house in particular that he watched for. It was right beside a hair-pin bend in the river about halfway across the valley, the one with a big beach tree beside it. On a clear day, he could make out the people moving about outside and passed the time trying to identify them. He fancied he could tell most of the time who was who, though at this distance they might be complete strangers and he would never know. But most of the time, heavy fog obscured all but the smudged outlines of the valley floor.

Sometimes, when he grew restless, he would turn to look at the turbulent, dark, endless fields of rock where came the screaming. He could see the people there little better than in the valley, but was sure, for some reason, who he was hearing. And he wondered sometimes (though not very often) why he had not been condemned like so many of his fellows. But his cliff-top prison was seemed little better most of the time.

Time was a strange thing here, too. There was regular night and day, for no other reason than because most people liked the normal, familiar balance of light and dark, stars and sun. But it did not seem to pass the same for him up here, all alone. He had no idea how long he had sat in his solitude before it happened. It might have been years or only weeks, he had no idea.

But one day, the endlessly unchanging pattern he had fallen into was jarred by a figure steadily climbing up towards his cliff. He had absentmindedly watched the black spot move through the foothills, assuming it was coming to visit one of the hermits that made their homes on the edges of the valley, having earned a place there, but not a place to fit in. But the figure did not stop at any of the cottages, and soon it was hiking up the steep incline and then hauling itself up the steep, rocky slope that led to his cliff.

He knew who it was even before the details of the person came into focus. Somehow, he had always known it was coming. He watched steadily as the young man nimbly negotiated the sharp rock face, far more gracefully than he himself ever would have been able to, especially now. The newcomer's dark hair stuck up in all directions, and his glasses flashed in the bright sunlight. Slight and agile, James Potter climbed up onto the shelf-like cliff and stood staring down at the man who would occupy it for all of eternity.

He was achingly familiar, down to the lopsidedness of his glasses, yet at the same time he was completely different. There was no spark of mischief in his hazel eyes, no sly grin across his face, no light of laughter about him. But there was also no fury raging in him, snarling shouts or flying fists or any of the things the other had expected. He just stood, looking steadily down at the man before him.

It was the calmness that made him cower, the lack of reaction or emotion that had him sniveling and shaking. For a long time James just stared down at him. And then he said, in just as even a voice, "Hello, Peter."

Peter Pettigrew gaped, lips trembling. He had nothing to say to that, no defense. He was at the mercy of James Potter. It had finally caught up to him and all he could think was how furious he was that no one had told him death didn't mean the end.

"You can stop quaking like a jelly mold," James said with a hint of irritation as he folded himself to the stone across from Peter. "There's nothing I can do to you now, you know."

Actually there was, and both of them knew it. Peter did not understand it, but when hail rained down on top of him, he could feel every stone that struck him like a punch, when lightning struck, he could feel the electricity course through his body with almost unendurable pain. Thirst scorched his throat, hunger clawed his stomach every day, but here he still was, sitting on his cliff. If James wanted to beat him senseless, he could. And there would be no easy escape. James could spend eternity beating him senseless for what he had done.

But he did not. He did not even raise his wand. He sat across from Peter and scrutinized him, and that was all.

At last Peter lowered his defending arms and managed to croak squeakily, "S-so w-why are you here?"

"You sold us out, Peter," James said simply, almost sadly.

"I didn't mean to!" Peter bawled, throwing himself down at James's feet like the pathetic little rodent he had always been.

James only watched him. "Yes you did, Peter. You meant every word you passed to Voldemort. For an entire year. You knew you were sentencing us all to death, and you did it anyway."

Peter slowly sat up again, watching James as he had when they were in school, looking for cues on how to act.

"But it isn't so bad here," Peter said at last, almost pleadingly. "Not for you. Death wasn't the most terrible thing after all."

"We were going to have a big family," James said, almost distantly. "When the war was over, we were going to have a bunch of little kids running around. I always wanted kids around. It was lonely being the only one. And Lily missed her sister. For the life of me, I can't understand why. But she never wanted Harry to be alone like that…"

He trailed off for a moment. Peter's heart was thudding far faster than it should have been with James siting so calmly in front of him.

"I was going to be an Auror when the Order didn't need me full time. Pick up where my dad left off, finish his battle. I'd have been good, too. And Lily… she wanted to work in the potions laboratory in St. Mungos. She wanted to help save people, heal people. And she would have been good, too.

"We had dreams, Peter. Not just about proving ourselves to the world, or having a big family. We wanted to send our son off to Hogwarts, be there when he got married, hold our grandchildren. Hell, I'd have spent eternity over there in that rock field over there just to have tucked him into bed one more night. Do you know what it's like to watch your child grow up without you? To watch him be hurt and scared and alone and not be able to do anything about it?"

Heat had finally crept into James's voice, pain and fury leaching into every word with such intensity that Peter felt it like a sting.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" he wailed, throwing up his hands again.

But James didn't strike. In fact, he seemed to lose his furor, and when he spoke again, the words were heavy and tired. "No, Peter. You aren't sorry. If you were sorry, if you could ever have been sorry, you wouldn't have thrown away your second chance. My son showed you mercy after everything you did, and you used that chance to try to kill him, to start up war again because you were too terrified to face up. The only thing you're sorry about is that you're stuck here on this cliff."

They sat in silence for a long while. Peter found he could not look James in the eye. But for all the guilt and fear his presence brought, he did not want James to go. He did not want to be alone again. And so he broke the silence.

"How did you even know I was up here?" he asked, more to hear a voice besides his own or the screams from behind him than because he cared very much about the answer.

James shrugged. "Dumbledore still knows everything, even in the afterlife. I had to stop Sirius from trying to chuck you into the rock fields when we heard you landed here instead. He'd still love to throttle you."

Peter winced at the last comment, but curiosity goaded him into asking, "And why don't you? I got you killed. Why don't you want to throttle me, too?"

James laughed. "Oh, believe me, Peter. There were times I wanted to with every fiber of my body."

Peter flinched as every word brought fire leaping to James's eyes again.

" Like when I was listening to my baby screaming because he was starving and not a damn person in that house even twitched. Or when I was watching Sirius slowly go mad inside Azkaban or Remus rip himself up every full moon, all alone for twelve years. I would have gladly choked the life out of you when you were cutting my son open to bring back the effing Dark Lord.

"There were plenty of times I wanted to watch you burn, Peter. And now here you are. You'll sit here on this cliff for the rest of time, all alone with no relief or comfort, listening to the screams of your fellows and watching us be at peace without you, knowing what devastation you brought."

James stood and walked to the edge of the cliff, looking out across the valley, fearless as ever, so close to such a steep drop.

"You can see the bonfire from here, all the people who come to it. Those are the ones who died because of the war you started again. Those are the souls you destroyed, Peter, the lives you ripped apart. And attached to every one of that mass of people are parents who have lost their child, children who will grow up not knowing their parents, brothers and sisters and friends with gaping holes torn into their lives…"

James's voice seemed to rise and fall with the power of a storm. He turned to look at Peter gain and delivered his last words with a quiet that seemed to resonate all the more.

"That's all on you, Peter. And there's just enough humanity lurking in you somewhere for that fact to torment you up here, otherwise you would have been cast into those fields with the rest. Was it worth it, Peter? Was it worth all those terrible things just to keep yourself alive a little bit longer?"

Peter was unable to answer one way or another. He gapped pathetically up at James, defeated.

"So why did you come?" he asked James finally. "If you're so satisfied with my sentence, why did you come up here at all?"

"To mourn," James answered. "You murdered the boy that was my friend in far more permanent and devastating way than you had me murdered. I came here to mourn you."

And then he turned and was gone down the mountainside. And Peter was alone once more, as he would stay forever.

**A/N: So I'm going to tentatively ask what you thought. To be honest, I debated if I should even post this, but in the end I figureed I needed some feedback. So please tell me how you think it turned out. Was it worth reading? =/**


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