Chapter 128 — The Rat in the Photograph

I reached Snape before Black did. The professor had one hand on the floor and was trying to stand, his face pale with anger. Lupin caught his arm and helped him onto the bed’s edge while I moved out of the way, keeping clear of the broken glass.

Hermione stared at Harry. ‘I gave you that to help Ron,’ she said. He looked down at her wand as though it had become unfamiliar in his hand.

‘He was going to take Sirius to Fudge.’ Harry glanced towards Snape, who had stopped attempting to stand for the moment.

‘With the rat,’ I said. ‘He’d just said that.’ I picked up Snape’s wand and offered it to him. He took it without looking away from Harry, while Harry returned Hermione’s with an apology.

‘Your explanation will wait,’ Snape said, ‘until Weasley is being treated and we are clear of this room.’ Black began speaking, but I turned towards him before he could make the attack sound useful. I told him it hadn’t been for his benefit, and he closed his mouth.

Lupin asked about Snape’s shoulder and examined it briefly. He could move the arm, though he remained seated while the dizziness passed, his wand ready in the other hand. I looked at the darkening boards around the bottle and asked whether any of the potion could be saved.

‘No,’ Snape said. ‘Mending the glass won’t bring it out of that floor.’ Lupin glanced towards the window again and said we had to return before he changed. Harry stared at the spreading stain, then looked up at Lupin.

I moved the chair back against the wall. I had left it in Snape’s way after breaking off the rung for Ron’s splint; Harry had provided the force, but the obstacle had been mine. When I turned back, Harry asked what I intended to do now.

‘Make sure we’re ready when the rat comes out. Then get Ron back.’ I took out two pulse strips, one the piece I had put away beneath the Willow, and showed them to Hermione. ‘The relay we practised. I want one beside the hinge, aimed at the bottom of the door.’

Harry followed the line with his eyes. I explained that if Scabbers ran for the stairs, I could try to push the door shut. The first spell still had to travel from my hand to the waiting piece, with room for the throw and the spoken incantation.

‘It might miss,’ Ron said from the floor. I agreed and asked everyone to keep watching rather than relying on it. Snape gave a short nod towards the doorway, telling me to place it and then stay clear of his wand.

I set the second piece against a crack in the floorboard and checked its direction. The first remained in my hand. Black watched me return, his gaze moving between the paper and my face.

‘Ken used to make people watch the wrong hand,’ he said. Hearing my father’s name gave me a small, unexpected ache.

‘These are the people I need watching the right one.’ I picked up Harry’s own wand from the floor and offered it handle first. ‘Help us keep Ron safe. No more deciding for everyone with a spell.’

Harry looked at the scrape on my palm before taking it. ‘You did that to me,’ he said. I waited until he looked up.

‘I did. You were pointing yours at a man’s face. I should have told you sooner that I wasn’t letting either of you kill the other.’

His mouth tightened. ‘Tell me before it gets that far next time.’ I said I would if I could, and he went back beside Ron with his wand lit. I couldn’t tell whether he had forgiven me, but we both knew what he was asking.

Black’s attention returned to the movement beneath Ron’s robe. I asked how he had recognised Peter before the map was involved, and he answered that he had seen him. The words brought back Ron spreading a photograph across our breakfast table, pointing out his family among unfamiliar buildings.

‘In the newspaper?’ I asked. Black went still, and I continued. ‘The Weasleys in Egypt, with Scabbers. Is that what made you come here?’

‘How did you work that out?’ For the first time since we entered, he stayed focused on me. I told him Ron had shown us the picture, and Black nodded slowly.

‘I was given a newspaper. There he was, with a boy who would bring him back to Hogwarts at the end of the summer.’ He looked towards Ron, whose free hand tightened on the cloth beside his leg.

‘You knew where I went to school,’ Ron said. Black took a moment to answer, then admitted he had. The photograph had meant a holiday to Ron, with stories he wanted to tell us; somebody in another place had studied it for a very different reason.

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Harry lowered his wand a little. ‘You got out as a dog,’ he said. When Black answered that he had, eventually, Harry asked why the Dementors hadn’t noticed.

‘They knew I was still there. They weren’t watching a man’s face through the bars.’ Black rubbed his fingers together against his knee. ‘I’d been weak for a long time. When I changed, what they found in the cell was different enough that they left me alone more often.’

I remembered my thoughts inside the lion’s body. The weight and senses changed, but I still knew who I was. When I asked how becoming a dog helped if he could remember everything, Black looked towards the boards over the window.

‘The remembering was different. I spent longer in that shape, sleeping when I could, following sounds, waiting for food. Some days it was easier to keep hold of one thing at a time.’ His fingers curled against his knee. ‘They thought I was losing whatever was left. I let them.’

I had wanted a clear answer about what changing shape could protect me from. He had given me part of twelve years in a cell. Snape shifted on the bed before I could ask anything else and told Lupin the escape details could wait; we needed to examine the animal.

Lupin knelt beside Ron and asked him to loosen the fold enough for us to see Scabbers. Ron looked at me first. I had expected that look since Hagrid’s kitchen, and I wished I could offer him something better than the need to find out.

‘We’re here,’ I said. He lowered his arm a little, allowing the rat’s head to emerge. Its whiskers moved, then it tried to withdraw at the sight of Lupin’s hand.

‘Look at his front foot,’ Black said. Harry brought the light closer while Ron held the fold open. A small paw spread against the dark lining, and I saw the missing toe.

Black made a low sound in his throat. ‘He cut off his finger in the street,’ he said. ‘Before the explosion. I saw him do it.’

I looked from the paw to his face and asked what else he had seen. Black described Peter shouting that he had betrayed James and Lily, making certain other people could hear, then striking the street behind his back. He stopped halfway through the next sentence, breathing unevenly.

‘When the smoke cleared, he was gone. A rat could get out through places I couldn’t even see.’ Lupin asked whether that was his account of what he witnessed, and Black said yes. Snape’s wand stayed steady, though his expression had changed.

Ron swallowed. ‘I knew about his foot,’ he said. ‘I thought something happened before Percy got him.’

‘It doesn’t prove everything by itself,’ I told him. ‘Let Lupin finish.’ Ron pointed out that I kept saying that, and I could only answer that it was still true. Scabbers trembled inside the fold while Ron looked down at him again.

I remembered him looking just as small in my hands when I had decided he would be useful for an experiment. The memory stayed with me, but I left Ron room to reach his own decision. He gave a reluctant nod at last, and Lupin spread a loose cloth from the damaged bed in the clear space before him.

‘If this is an Animagus, he’ll need room to resume his human shape,’ Lupin said. He showed Ron where to set the rat and asked him to keep his hands clear afterwards. Hermione helped him lean forward without shifting his supported leg.

‘Don’t let him come back near me,’ Ron whispered. Lupin met his eyes and said he would do his best to keep him safe. Ron tightened the fold around Scabbers, then lowered it towards the cloth.

I checked the strip beside the hinge. It hadn’t moved. The first piece rested between the fingers of my left hand, away from the scrape on my right, and I reminded the others to leave the route clear.

Harry and Hermione moved closer to Ron. Snape stood carefully, using the bedpost until he was certain of his footing. Black bent forward as Scabbers emerged, bringing his shadow across the cloth despite Lupin’s instruction to stay back.

The rat ran beneath Lupin’s hand and changed direction before the wand could follow. A flash struck the floor beside the cloth. Scabbers vanished under the bed, then came out close enough to Black’s foot that Lupin checked his next movement.

I could see the route he had chosen. The open door lay behind me, with a gap beside its edge that led straight to the stairs. I threw the first strip towards the prepared piece at the hinge and spoke ‘Impello’ before the rat reached it.

The first pulse struck the waiting marks. The second drove into the lower part of the door, swinging it across the opening while Black stepped back at the sound. Snape held his spell as I moved through his view, and the door struck its frame.

Scabbers swerved along the skirting board. I put my boot in his way, felt him strike the leather and watched him roll sideways. He scrabbled to turn before I could bring my other foot around, but I kept him inside the corner with the edge of my shoe, blocking his route towards the bed.

‘Now!’ I shouted. Lupin’s spell caught him, and the shape beside my boot began changing. I stepped back as it rose from the floor, lengthening where it should have stayed small.

Limbs unfolded beneath the grey shape. A hand struck the boards, then another, spread wide beside it. Where the rat had been, a man knelt with his head lowered, breathing hard enough to fill the quiet room.

His face was older and more strained than the newspaper photograph, but I recognised the thinning hair and the round cheeks. Peter Pettigrew looked from one of us to the next. One finger was missing from the hand nearest my boot.

Ron recoiled against Hermione, who caught him before his leg twisted. Harry stared at the man on the floor. Black took a step forward, shaking, and Snape raised his wand between them with an order to stay where he was.

Lupin hadn’t lowered his own wand. He looked as though someone had struck him, and for a moment nobody spoke. Then Pettigrew turned towards me and bared his teeth before trying to hide the expression.

He recognised me. Whatever he had made of us while living in Ron’s pocket, he remembered the boy standing beside the door. I remembered the classroom and returning him with a lie ready for Ron; seeing the man inside the rat hadn’t made either memory disappear.

‘You knew us,’ I said. Pettigrew’s eyes moved to the handle, and I stepped sideways to remain between him and the way out. ‘You’re going to answer us as yourself.’