Running

Chapter 18

The first-year boys' dorm was now completely blocked off. Most of the first-year boys had spent the past 24 hours sharing with the second years. Now, in their dorm, the Minister of Magic, four Aurors, Professor Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall and Professor Snape, alongside Harry, Ronald, Molly and Arthur Weasley were now standing around the younger Weasley's bed. Laying there was one petrified Peter Pettigrew.

"I'm sorry, Professor, but you are going to have to explain to me exactly how you made this discovery," Minister Fudge sighed as he turned to face McGonagall. The Aurors around him had their wands pointed at the paralysed man, curled up in the fetal position, overall looking rather pathetic.

"Like I said minister, I barely played a part in this. It was Mr Potter who made the discovery. I was simply performing a bag check."

"Right, yes, well," the minister tripped over his words for a moment before collecting himself. "And why was a bag checking taking place? Has one of the students stolen something?"

"No, no, nothing like that Cornelius," Dumbledore jumped in suddenly, "it was simply a spot check, keep the students on their toes, I'm sure you understand." Ron seemed ready to correct the headmaster when his mother held him back. Why Dumbledore was lying was very much unapparent to the boy.

"Right, well," Fudge now turned his attention to Harry, "How did you make this discovery then, boy?"

"Well, I know who Peter Pettigrew was- is, sir," Harry began. If he and Hermione had learnt anything, it was that people swallowed up the 'tragic hero, longing for a connection to his dead parents' character that Rita Skeeter had eventually created; now Harry was ready to use that to his advantage. "You see when I found out that my parents were magical, I started looking into what happened a bit more. I learnt everything I could about them, and that included how they... died," Harry paused for a moment, "My muggle family don't approve of the magical world, I had no idea about any of this so I did as much research as I could when I found out." Another pause. Harry found himself slightly enjoying the dramatics, "So I knew about Pettigrew and Black and the fight that broke out, but something didn't really make sense to me."

"And what was that?" Fudge asked, an eyebrow raised. Initially, he'd have thought the boy to be an arrogant celebrity - a child believing he knew better than investigators who'd had more experience in the field than this boy had years alive. But he couldn't think like that when the evidence of those investigators' failure lay on the ground in front of them.

"How a whole finger that was clearly cut, came out of an explosion that obliterated 12 people without a trace. But I suppose I just ignored it. At least the criminal had been locked away, I thought. Anyways, when Professor McGonagall was checking my bag, I went over to my friend's bed, that's Ron," he pointed to the redhead who clearly had no idea what was going on, "I remembered him saying that Scabbers was really old, that the Weasleys had found Scabbers 11 years ago." Ron couldn't really remember saying any of this to Harry, but the fact that Harry had outright called Ron his friend was his main focus, even Mrs Weasley had to hide the smile that was threatening to beam. "He'd also shown me that Scabbers had a toe that was missing, exactly where Pettigrew had lost his finger. It was a bit of a jump, and I didn't even know whether or not he could have been an animagus but I told Professor McGonagall."

"I did at first tell him that he was being ridiculous," McGonagall jumped in now. Despite what her calm demeanour would suggest, she had absolutely no idea what was going on, "I told him there was no way that this rat could possibly be Peter Pettigrew. I'm not even sure when the boy had the chance to learn about something as advanced as animagi. But the more he insisted the more agitated the rat became, like he was trying to escape. It was an odd coincidence but really, I only attempted to turn him back to prove a point. I didn't even open the cage." The broken bits of metal and a small pile of dried grass around Pettigrew's body attested to this.