Willow (HP Fanfic)

Chapter 9: Confessions

Willow's POV:

I sat in the Shrieking Shack for what seemed like hours, but was only probably minutes. Though I had no way of knowing either. My father sat across from me on a raggedy old bed. I tried to wrap my brain around what he was telling me but for some reason it was to much.

"So you are telling me that you were wrongly accused?" I questioned.

"Yes, when I heard that someone sold out Lily and James Potter, I was furious and I know who done it. So I went to confront him and he was the one who killed all those muggles and he cut off his own finger." my father explained.

"But who would do such a thing?" I asked "Who hates you, and Harry's parents so much that they would want to send you to Azkaban and get them killed?"

"One name, Peter Pettigrew. He is Ron Weasley's rat." my father admitted.

"A rat?" I almost laughed at the irony of it.

"He, like myself and James, is Animagus" my father explained.

"Basically what muggles call Shape-Shifters." I stated, remembering what I read in Hogwarts A History. "I just don't understand why this Peter Pettigrew character would want to work with someone so evil."

"At the time Voldemort promised a better future, he could offer protection. If you want to know exactly why someone would join him ask Snape. He was one of them, I am not a hundred percent that he still is but it is likely." my father stated, and I felt my stomach drop at the thought.

"He was a Death-Eater?" I whispered, mostly to myself closing my eyes and taking a deep breath.

"From what I remember from what Lily told me it was after he called her a Mudblood when James, Remus, and myself where picking on him." Sirius explained, almost sounding as he defended Severus even though it is clear he dis-test him.

Third Person POV:

Harry didn't have a very clear idea of how he had managed to get back into the Honeydukes cellar, through the tunnel, and into the castle once more. All he knew was that the return trip seemed to take no time at all, and that he hardly noticed what he was doing, because his head was still pounding with the conversation he had just heard.

Why had nobody ever told him? Dumbledore, Hagrid, Mr. Weasley, Cornelius Fudge... why hadn't anyone ever mentioned the fact that Harry's parents had died because their best friend had betrayed them?

Ron and Hermione watched Harry nervously all through dinner, not daring to talk about what they'd overheard, because Percy was sitting close by them. When they went upstairs to the crowded common room, it was to find Fred and George had set off half a dozen Dungbombs in a fit of end-of-term high spirits. Harry, who didn't want Fred and George asking him whether he'd reached Hogsmeade or not, sneaked quietly up to the empty dormitory and headed straight for his bedside cabinet. He pushed his books aside and quickly found what he was looking for — the leather-bound photo album Hagrid had given him two years ago, which was full of wizard pictures of his mother and father. He sat down on his bed, drew the hangings around him, and started turning the pages, searching, until...

He stopped on a picture of his parents' wedding day. There was his father waving up at him, beaming, the untidy black hair Harry had inherited standing up in all directions. There was his mother, alight with happiness, arm in arm with his dad. And there... that must be him. Their best man... Harry had never given him a thought before.

If he hadn't known it was the same person, he would never have guessed it was Black in this old photograph. His face wasn't sunken and waxy, but handsome, full of laughter. Had he already been working for Voldemort when this picture had been taken? Was he already planning the deaths of the two people next to him? Did he realize he was facing twelve years in Azkaban, twelve years that would make him unrecognizable?