Disclaimer: Still don't own Harry Potter.

And here it is! The answers to all [well most of] my plot holes! Aren't you excited? What happened between Harry and Ron? How did Luna meet Neville? What is with Scabbers...and did he hurt anyone while in Gryffindor tower?

Well, read on! ~Kit.


Lesson 9 ~ Telling of Tales

Hermione sat in front of the fireplace, reminiscing. Everything that had happened during the first few months of Hogwarts had passed by so quickly that her head was swimming. Meditation with Professor McGonagall had stopped completely and their sessions had trickled down to smaller jinxes. In all honesty, she was stunned when the professor suggested returning to the basics, but the shortened sessions had given the time-traveler more time to do her work.

She sighed, if her mind kept wandering, she'd never get her thoughts in order.

A flash of yellow in the fire warmed Hermione's thoughts. Her new little sister Luna was the biggest surprise of all. They had gotten so close in so little time; it was simply astounding how a simple mention of her birthday from Neville and an insult from Ron could bring the two girls together.

'Wait a minute, how'd Neville know Luna anyway?' Hermione asked herself. Laughing, she put the thought from her mind and smiled. Luna had done so much for her. Most of Gryffindor had yet to notice, but thanks to the bombardment of strange from Luna and the trying effort to keeping an open mind about house-elf adoption, Hermione had lightened up considerably. She spent less time in her books and more time having fun.

Gaining Luna as a friend, a sister, was most definitely worth losing Ron's friendship entirely. 'I mean, we never even got along. The only thing we've ever agreed on was Harry.'

She frowned, what was with those silly depressing thoughts invading her reminiscence? Well, all things considered, Hermione truly hoped that Harry patched things up with Ron, even if the red head would probably never speak to her again.

Harry on the other hand had no such reservations. He had stomached just about enough drama and hot headedness that seemed to burst form Ronald Weasley. At first, everything had fallen out as normal Hermione-Ron behavior, but now? This? It was crazy.

And Ron? Ron wanted him to choose. "It's me or her, mate," he stated plainly one night.

When Harry told his friend he shouldn't have to pick just one, Ron spat at him, "I don't even know why you still even want hang out with her. All she does is nag!" He had spoken so viciously that Harry winced.

Well, if Ron wanted him to choose, he'd get his wish. Hermione was not only a more stable friend, but a helpful one that he almost always turned to. A life without Hermione, it was unthinkable. Only, he just couldn't seem to tell that to Ron...

And what was with him anyway? One day he was the picture of a perfect friend, he was even praising Hermione on their first day! Then, for some little rat he barely even noticed was still missing, Ron threw it all away.

He plopped himself down beside Hermione and gave her a smile. "Can I borrow your Runes text?" he asked sweetly.

"Third time this week, Harry. Are you finally conceding defeat?" she teased him half-heartedly.

"No," he winked. "I just wanted to see what this one array would do if I activated it."

Hermione glared at him, "If you're going to practice working with arrays and sequences, you should let me teach you the basics! You can't just go off of nothing."

"Okay," Harry shrugged, and sat down. "Teach me, oh smart one."

As she laughed and tossed a pillow at him, the portrait swung open. Instantly their laughing ceased; Ron had walked in steaming. He sent a glare their way, but said nothing as he made his way up the boys' staircase.

Hermione raised her brow. "What was that about?"

Sighing, Harry began describing the last conversation Harry and Ron had.

[Flashback, Three days prior]

It was the evening before the great prank, and Harry sat across from Ron, who was giving a spectacular beating to Harry's chess pieces.

"What's wrong this time?" he asked Ron for the third time that week.

"Nothing's wrong," Ron grunted in return. He moved another piece, smashing up Harry's Queen. "Checkmate."

Harry sighed and set up the board again, forgetting that he could have easily ordered the pieces back to their place. "Are you going to apologize to Hermione anytime soon?" he had wanted to ask. Of course, he knew that line of questioning would get him nowhere. Instead, he settled on, something simpler. "Ron, why are you being so stubborn?" he prodded.

"I'm not, she is. If she had any decency she'd apologize for almost killing Scabbers!"

Harry almost sneered. "It wasn't her fault, Crookshanks is a cat!"

"So?" Ron spat. "There are always cats in the tower, and I'm sure there are many other rats. Why does her cat want to eat mine? Obviously she told that monster to kill Scabbers."

Harry groaned; it was true. Crookshanks was a bit vindictive, but that was hardly Hermione's fault. "Hermione would never do that. She knows that you can't..." he stopped himself from mentioning the Weasley's lack of finances, but Ron had understood the message.

"You see! Hermione is such a menace!" Ron screamed at him. "I know she's doing this on purpose, and you should know that too, but like I said before, it's her or me mate."

"I shouldn't have to pick between my two best friends just because you think Hermione is out to get you."

Ron frowned at him, but kept whatever insult or argument he wanted to shout at Harry to himself. Instead, Ron returned to viciously smashing up Harry's chess pieces until he defeated Harry thrice more. Ron skipped his usual good night, but told Harry quite plainly, "I don't even know why you still even want hang out with her. All she does is nag!"

From then on, Harry couldn't find it in himself to tell Ron how he really felt or even that in his mind there wasn't even a decision that needed to be made. The next day, it was clear that Ron would not speak to him, and Harry knew that he had lost the first friend he had ever made over some stupid little rat.

[Flashback end]

"Harry," Hermione said sullenly, "maybe you should just go and talk to him. I'm not—"

"No," Harry told her stubbornly. "It's not because I'm stubborn, and it's not because I want to copy your homework! Hermione, you're my friend. You are loyal and smart like nobody's business. You would never make me choose between friends, but there was never any choice! Yes, it sucks that Ron might not ever speak to either one of us again, but you are worth it."

She smiled, blinking away a few tears that threatened to fall. She gave him a ferocious hug and a small kiss on the cheek. "Thank you, Harry," she mumbled as she held him.

"You know Hermione," a dazed voice called from behind them, "Harry does need to breathe every once and in a while."

She let him go immediately and turned towards their two newest study members. "H-hello Luna, Neville."

Harry simply waved, desperately wishing for Hermione's warmth. 'She's just a friend, a sister...right?' he asked himself. He allowed himself to look at Hermione, really look at her.

The first thing he noticed was her smile. When Hermione smiled, his world seemed to right itself. Light simply danced across her face, but most of it wound up in her stunning chocolate eyes, eyes that, as usual, turned to him with worry. "Harry, are you okay?" she asked him softly.

"Ye-yeah," he returned breathlessly. "What were we doing again?"

Hermione rolled her eyes, "Neville and Luna were going to tell us how they met!" And there it was again, that smile. Harry blinked hard, and returned his attention to Luna, who was currently speaking.

"So since my classmates made it so difficult for me to work, Professor Sprout assigned me a tutor. Neville, as it turns out, is quite the budding Herbologist."

Neville blushed at the praise. "Yeah, so I was assigned to help Luna out, and during our first meeting Luna gave me the shock of a life time. I, of course, was expecting a little second year who was a bit clumsy, as that was how Professor Sprout described her, instead I see Luna, who by her own rights is very good with plants."

"Then he walks up to me and asks, 'Do you know where I can find a Luna Lovegood?'" she said with a laugh. "At first I hadn't the heart to tell him, but he managed to weasel it out of me."

"We weren't friends right away, though," Neville said a bit sorrowfully. "I hate to say it, but I was a bit rude. I yelled at her, saying 'If you're so good, you shouldn't be messing around in class,' or something like that."

Luna nodded, "Then I told him a little bit about my roommates, not as much as I told you, Hermione, but–"

"But it was enough," Neville said decisively. "After that, we talked for a while and your birthday came up."

"He told me how you planned it all, Harry. I thought it was very sweet of the Blibbering Humdingers to help you work it out," Luna interjected. "Then, one of my thoughts decided to give Hermione some inspiration – an iris."

"And we know the rest," Hermione smiled.

They then began to study, only if you were any other Gryffindor, you wouldn't quite believe that. In-between the bouts of laughter and giggles were a few moments of seriousness, but no one truly believed the new quartet could really learn anything in such an environment. If only they knew that the excitement was from Hermione teaching the others proper Wizarding history.

The Weasley twins, however, were not fooled by the laughter and cheer. They appeared at the quartet's table and instantly began 'lecturing' them. "My, my dear brother, what have we here?"

"I do believe there are four Gryffindors doing work on a Sunday...wait. Four? Where's Ron?"

Harry sighed and told the twins about Ron's mishap with Scabbers. "When do you plan on giving him back to Ron anyway? I mean, he hasn't really noticed, but still."

A dark look passed between the Weasleys. "Scabbers is not a rat," George spoke up gravely.

"What do you mean? How could Scabbers not be— no. It can't – he can't," Hermione's face turned ashen.

Fred nodded, "Scabbers is an Animagus. His name is Peter Pettigrew, and from our research we deduced some bad things."

Harry felt as if he had eaten one of Dudley's gym socks. He had been living with some wizard pretending to be a rat for two years? Neville and Hermione had similar looks of discomfort. Well, actually, Hermione looked a bit more angry than he felt.

"That's...I," she was at a loss for words.

Ignoring her indignant stuttering, George continued, "We figured it out a little while after you gave him to us, Harry. After he had calmed down a little, we set him in our dorm mate's owl cage and began to plan our great prank."

"The we noticed that for a rat, Scabbers was awfully quiet. He was in an owl's cage. Why wasn't he scared for his life?"

George stopped his twin. 'We should tell them,' he communicated mutely.

'But that's our secret,' Fred glared.

'We were going to give it to Harry anyway,' George reminded his twin. No one had really noticed their silent conversation, because quite honestly they weren't really paying attention. Although they heard each word spoken by the two pranksters, only Luna seemed attentive.

"Fine," Fred said suddenly. "There's a second reason."

"We have this map."

"The Marauder's Map," Fred supplied.

"It, well, let me show you." George pulled out an old piece of parchment and flattened it out. "I solemnly swear I am up to no good." This piece of magic pushed all thoughts of the rat out of their minds.

And at once, thin ink lines began to spread like a spider's web from the point that George's wand had touched. They joined each other, they crisscrossed, they fanned into every corner of the parchment; then words began to blossom across the top, great, curly green words, that proclaimed:

Messrs. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs

Purveyors of Aids to Magical Mischief-Makers

are proud to present

THE MARAUDER'S MAP

"It's Hogwarts!" Hermione exclaimed excitedly.

The twins looked poignantly at Hermione. "And you'd better not tell a soul we have it, or we won't be handing this to Harry like we thought we would," George decided finitely.

She blushed, and responded in a similar tone, "Of course I won't tell. But I'm taking back my debt to you for insinuating so."

Fred huffed a bit, but moved them along. "As you can see, this map shows the people currently in Hogwarts. It shows just about everyone, but animals don't appear, so we found it odd that there were three dots in our dorm rather than two."

"Right after, we took down the name, but debated for weeks about what to tell Dumbledore."

"Then we did a Hermione and headed off to the library." Fred was then hit by one of the harder pillows.

"And we found," George tried to say between his small fits of laughter, "that the person, Peter Pettigrew, who was hiding as a rat..."

"Was actually friends with James Potter..."

"More commonly known as Harry's father."

Luna then decided to speak, "What was he doing as a rat then? He should have been playing Uncle for Harry."

Fred nodded, "Very true, but so should Professor Lupin. Which reminds me, if you haven't already, you should get in contact with him soon."

"Oh, yes. Professor Lupin, Peter Pettigrew and Sirius Black were all friends with your father."

"Where did you find this out," Hermione demanded eagerly. "I've looked everywhere for references to Harry's parents, but how'd you get this information?"

Fred and George looked at her in shock. Neville, however, prodded their consciousnesses back to life. "Are you going to answer her or just stare?"

"Right," George said with a satisfied smirk. "Anyway, before the war with you-know-who got bad, Hogwarts used to make yearbooks. We threatened Madam Pince with a little...um..."

"It doesn't matter," Fred said suddenly. "We got all the yearbooks from up to thirty-six years ago, but only kept the six that had Harry and Neville's parents in them. There wasn't one for seventh year..."

"We don't know why, really, as there were two more after that..."

"Can we get back to what happened with Scab—I mean Pettigrew?" Harry asked hastily.

"Oh, well, after our prank, we went up to Dumbledore and presented him one rat with rather vague descriptions of un-rat-like behavior," Fred said simply.

"Course, he made us stay for a bit as he hmmed and hummed over the pest."

"And it was no surprise that he sent us to get Snape."

"But after that, we know nothing, as McGonagall kicked us out so we could 'go to the party.'"

"'There's a party in Gryffindor waiting for you,'" George mimicked. "'Be sure it shuts down by ten.'"

"Anyway, we'll leave this with you, Harry."

"Use it to avoid some trouble."

"And to find others."

"Good bye, younger years!" they chorused, sweeping away in a rather grand motion.

[Meanwhile, in a heavily warded section of the dungeons...]

Amelia Bones was a rather stern woman, she prided herself on being professional and fair, not unlike Professor McGonagall. She was also the first person the Headmaster would turn to when he had a problem that needed to be handled discretely, and the case of Peter Pettigrew was no acceptation.

However, when Amelia received a floo call from Dumbledore suggesting they had a criminal in custody, she was rightly shocked to find it to be someone who was thought to have died many years ago.

"What is this Albus? I thought you said you had a criminal in custody. In fact, I was quite sure that criminal was to be Sirius Black, not Peter Pettigrew."

"Ah, Amelia. How else was I to drag you away from your office?" Dumbledore asked. "In any case, he is a criminal, Peter Pettigrew."

"Oh? And how is that Albus?" she asked curtly.

"He has been hiding as an Animagus in the form of a lazy pet rat," he spoke tiredly. "Living with the Weasleys, more specifically Ronald Weasley, Harry Potter's best friend."

"Has he...?"

"We were waiting for you to find out."

A knock on the door alerted them to Professors Snape and McGonagall's entry.

"Ah, and here comes our Potions Master and second Witness."

"I have brought the Veritaserum," Snape spoke tersely. "It has been properly brewed and tested."

"Thank you, Severus. Please hand it to Madam Bones and let us begin."

Amelia took the bottle shakily. She both wanted to know if he harmed anyone during his twelve years as a rat, and didn't. What if he had only lived as his animagus in fear of Sirius Black? But then, he should have surfaced once they had captured him. What if he didn't know? How could he not, living with a full wizard family?

There were too many discrepancies, Amelia decided as she placed the potion to the criminal's lips, administering the proper dose. They had to know.

"Ennervate," Dumbledore cast as she stepped away.

The Director nodded her thanks and told the scribe quill, "Start recording." Turning to the suspect, she began the interrogation. "State your full name and any other names you possess."

"P-pet-ter P-pet-tigrew," rasped the suspect's squeaky voice. "Als-so known as Wormtail and Scabbers."

Snape hissed angrily, recognizing the name, but held his tongue as Madam Bones asked her next question.

"Why have you been hiding as a rat for twelve years?"

Peter's eyes widened for a second, but the affects of the potion were still very potent. "I was hiding from Sirius Black."

Amelia rolled her eyes, "Why?"

"He wants to kill me."

Sometimes Amelia hated Veritaserum. "What is the reason that Sirius Black wants to kill you?"

"Because I killed Lily and James Potter."

Shock was evident on the faces surrounding her, apparently they really had followed protocol and waited for her. Of course the next question was, "How?"

"I was their secret keeper. I gave their location to the Dark Lord."

Amelia frowned, "Wasn't the secret keeper Sirius Black?"

"No."

She shook her head at him, 'The question was rhetorical!' she screamed mentally. "Do you know why Sirius Black escaped Azkaban?"

"Sirius Black wants to kill me."

Realizing she would get nowhere with this line of questioning, she changed directives. "What have you been doing for the last twelve years?"

His eyes drooped, indicating happier memories, "I lived with the Weasleys."

"Did you hurt anyone while in the care of the Weasleys?"

"Once, I bit this eleven-year-old who was trying to steal my food."

A loud sigh of relief could be heard from McGonagall, but Snape and Dumbledore seemed very impassive.

The session continued for over three hours, leaving the adults feeling a mix of relief, disgust, and anger. They had found out that Pettigrew had faked his death and killed the Muggles, framing Sirius for all of it. They learned Pettigrew had plans to kidnap the youngest Weasley once the Hogwarts session had ended, once again blaming Sirius Black. Most importantly, they learned that Wormtail was more than just a sniveling worm; he was a true fanatical Death Eater.

Once they had finished, Amelia turned to the Hogwarts staff. "We can't keep this quiet. This transcript could prove Sirius Black's innocence."

"I would prefer not to tarnish the reputation of Hogwarts, Amelia. Perhaps once we apprehend Sirius–"

"Dumbledore! You'd let him rot?" Amelia scolded angrily. "I won't stand for injustice. But, you do have a point. The public would not put much faith in Hogwarts if this was found out. I'll give you until the end of the year to find Black. And Albus, please for the sake of Hogwarts modify the wards."

McGonagall sighed, "It will have to be an alert system, my students study the transformation in their seventh year, some even attempt it under my supervision."

"I shall take it into consideration," Dumbledore said kindly. "However, it is quite late, and it might be best if we retired."


My, my, things are going a bit too slowly. Oh well, plans are for those who don't know that life's too random to have them right? The point is I'm having fun and I hope you are too. If you want to see something specific, you have to review. I'll consider it kindly and if I like the thought, I'll work with it. Please no asking for bashings, I'm working on keeping the characters close to my own vision of how they should be. Other than that, suggest away.

To alix33: Thank you so much for spotting those mistakes. I really enjoy your reviews; they make me feel so much better about my writing.

To Anime Princess: I would never do that to my characters I just thought it would be what the Professors would think automatically in that sort of situation. I mean, sure it's the Wizarding world, but even they must have suspicions of rapists and such, especially after the first war. Plus, it got that rat doused with Veritaserum.

To Howlermonkey77: They met in chapter 7 in a very random and Luna-ish way. I hope this chapter expanded on that enough for you, thanks for pointing it out that it wasn't quite clear.

Anyways, thanks for reading, and if you reviewed, you have my love.

Until next time,

~Kit.

*Bold text is from page 192 of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.