Bella and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Chapter Forty Nine

WARNING: LONG CHAPTER AHEAD!

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"Come off it," he said weakly. "Are you trying to say you broke out of Azkaban just to get your hands on Scabbers? I mean..." he looked up at me, Harry, and Hermione for support. "OK, say Pettigrew could turn into a rat - there are millions of rats - how's he supposed to know which one he's after if he was locked up in Azkaban?"

"You know, Sirius, that's a fair question," Lupin said, turning to Black and frowning slightly. "How did you find out where he was?"

Black put one of his claw-like hands inside his robes and took out a crumpled piece of paper, which he smoothed flat, and held it out to show us. It was the photograph of Ron and his family that had appeared in the Daily Prophet the previous summer, and there, on Ron's shoulder, was Scabbers. 

"How did you get this?" Lupin asked Black, thunderstruck.

"Fudge," Black answered. "When he came to inspect Azkaban last year, he gave me this paper. And there was Peter, on the front page...on this boy's shoulder...I knew him at once...how many times had I seen him transform? And the caption said the boy would be going back to Hogwarts...to where Bella and Harry was..."

"My God," Lupin said softly, staring from Scabbers to the paper and back again. "His front paw..."

"What about it?" Ron asked defiantly.

"He's got a toe missing," Black told us.

"Of course," Lupin breathed, "so simple...so brilliant...He cut it off himself?"

"Just before he transformed," Black said. "When I cornered him, he yelled for the whole street to hear that I'd betrayed Lily and James. Then, before I could curse him, he blew apart the street with the wand behind his back, killed everyone within twenty feet of himself - and sped down into the sewer with the other rats..."

"Didn't you ever hear, Ron?" Lupin asked. "The biggest bit of Peter they found was his finger"

"Look, Scabbers probably had a fight with another rat or something! He's been in my family for ages, right -"

"Twelve years, in fact," Lupin said. "Didn't you ever wonder why he was living for so long?"

"We - we've been taking good care of him!" Ron exclaimed.

"Not looking too good at the moment, though, is he?" Lupin said softly. "I'd guess he's been losing weight ever since he heard Sirius was on the loose again..."

"He's been scared of that mad cat!" Ron said, nodding towards Crookshanks, who was still purring on the bed. 

But that wasn't right, I thought suddenly...Scabbers had been looking ill before he met Crookshanks...ever since Ron's return from Egypt...since the time when Black had escaped...

"This cat isn't mad," Black said hoarsely. He reached out a bony hand and stroked Crookshanks's fluffy head. "He's the most intelligent of his kind I've ever met. He recognised Peter for what he was straight away. And when he met me, he knew I was no dog. It was a while before he trusted me. Finally, I managed to communicate to him what I was after, and he's been helping me..."

"What do you mean?" Hermione breathed. 

"He tried to bring Peter to me, but couldn't...so he stole the passwords into Gryffindor Tower for me...As I understand it, he took them from a boy's bedside table..."

My brain seemed to be sagging under the weight of what I was hearing. It was absurd...and yet...

"But Peter got wind of what was going on and ran for it...this cat - Crookshanks, did you call him? - told me Peter had left blood on the sheets...I suppose he bit himself...well, faking his own death had worked once..."

These words jolted me to my senses. Harry too.

"And why did he fake his death?" Harry asked furiously. "Because he knew you were about to kill him like you killed Bella's mother and my parents!"

"No," Lupin said. "Harry -"

"And now you've come to finish him off!"

"Yes, I have," Black said, with an evil look at Scabbers.

"Harry," Lupin said hurriedly, "don't you see? All this time we've thought Sirius betrayed your parents and Bella's mother, and Peter tracked him down - but it was the other way around, don't you see? Peter  betrayed them - Sirius tracked Peter  down- "

"THAT'S NOT TRUE!" I yelled. "HE WAS THEIR SECRET-KEEPER! HE SAID SO BEFORE YOU TURNED UP, HE SAID HE KILLED THEM!"

I was pointing at Black, who shook his head slowly; the sunked eyes were suddenly over-bright. 

"Bella...I as good as killed them," he croaked. "I persuaded Lily, James and your mother to change to Peter at the last moment, persuaded them to use him as a Secret-Keeper instead of me...I am to blame, I know it...the night they died, I'd arranged to check on Peter, make sure he was still safe, but when I arrived at his hiding place, he'd gone. Yet there was no sign of a struggle. It didn't feel right. I was scared. I set out for the houses straight away. And when I saw them, destroyed, and their bodies - I realised what Peter must have done. What I'd done"

His voice broke. He turned away. Could this be true? Could this mad man be telling the truth? So my dad isn't a killer? I'm confused...

"Enough of this," Lupin said, and there was a steely note in his voice I had never heard before. "There's one certain way to prove what really happened. Ron, give me that rat"

"What are you going to do to him if I give him to you?" Ron asked Lupin tensely.

"Force him to show himself," Lupin said. "If he really is a rat, it won't hurt him"

"And if he's not then all this has been a waste of time," I sighed. 

Ron hesitated, then at long last held out Scabbers and Lupin took him. Scabbers began to squeak without stopping, twisting and turning, his tiny black eyes bulging out of his head. 

"Ready, Sirius?" Lupin asked. 

Black had already retrieved Snape's wand from the bed. He approached Lupin and the struggling rat, and his wet eyes suddenly seemed to be burning in his face.

"Together?" he asked quietly.

"I think so," Lupin answered, holding Scabbers tightly in one hand and his wand in the other. "On the count of three. One - two - THREE!"

A flash of blue-white light erupted from both wands; for a moment, Scabbers was frozen in mid-air, his small black form twisting madly - Ron yelled - the rat fell and hit the floor. There was another blidning flash of light and then -

It was like watching a speeded-up film of a growing tree. A head was shooting upwards from the ground; limbs were sprouting; next moment, a man was standing where Scabbers had been, cringing and wringing his hands. Crookshanks was spitting and snarling on the bed, the hair on his back standing up. 

"Oh...my...God..."I breathed, in both horror and shock. 

He was a very short man, hardly taller than Harry and Hermione. His thin, colourless hair was unkempt and there was a large bald patch on top. He had the shrunken appearance of a plump man who had lost a lot of weight in a short time. His skin looked grubby, almost like Scabbers's fur, and something of the rat lingered around his pointed nose, his very, small, watery eyes. He looked around at us all, his breathing fast and shallow. I saw his eyes dart to the door and back again.

"Well, hello, Peter," Lupin said pleasantly, as though rats frequently erupted into old schoolfriends around him. "Long time, no see"