Abstract
Precup recently proved that intersections with Schubert cells pave regular nilpotent Hessenberg varieties. We use this paving to prove that the homology of the Peterson variety injects into the homology of the full flag variety. The proof uses intersection theory and expands the class of the Peterson variety in the homology of the flag variety in terms of the basis of Schubert classes. We explicitly identify some of the coefficients of Schubert classes in this expansion, answering a problem of independent interest in Schubert calculus. We also identify some singular points in a certain family of Schubert varieties in general Lie type.