AUTHOR'S NOTE: Sirius, Secrets, Scabbers and Snakes! Several S-s in this Story! As you can see we're gently headed towards the end of Second Year, and towards the 50k mark. Which is honestly sort of amazing to me. I never foresaw that story being this big! While I'm on the topic, many thanks to all who Favourited, Reviewed and/or Followed this story! This means the world to me!
Chapter XIII: The Story of Scabbers
And Ron explained. It had taken Sirius agreeing to surrender his wand to get the Weasley talking, but Hermione did it, and so he explained.
No, Ron didn't know Scabbers was a criminal. But he had known, for a while, that Scabbers was a human — or at least that he could be a human sometimes, when he wanted to.
Soon after Ron had come to Hogwarts and the 'prank war' had begun, he'd found himself alone in his room with Scabbers, working on a half-baked attempt to prank the Twins. The old rat had grown more and more restless before suddenly turning into a strange, pudgy, still very ratty wizard in a dirty, ragged suit.
"Just let me handle that, Ron!" he had said.
Ron had understandably been rather terrified. Wand pointed at the man, the red-head had threatened to call for a Professor right there and then if the rat didn't give a very good explanation of who he was and what he'd done with the real Scabbers.
"But I am Scabbers!…" the wizard had then explained with a bit of a forced smile. "Why, surely you didn't imagine a rat found at the Burrow could be anything but a magical rat?… Now look, look, Ron, I may look like a man now, but I'm still the same old Scabbers — here, I…, I can tell you exactly what we had for breakfast on the day we left for Hogwarts — bacon, eggs, and you would have had some sausage, only — only you noticed me and you gave your share to your poor old rat…! Thank you for that, by the way. You're… you're the best master a rat could ask for. And your mother's cooking is wonderful."
Ron, while impressed, had still complained that a rat turning into a man at random was still pretty weird and kinda creepy.
"Well, your Transfiguration Professor, bless her old heart," Scabbers had continued, "she can turn into a cat, can't she? Why couldn't a rat, a magical one, I mean, do the same, except… in reverse? And besides, I just want to be your friend, really I do, Ron. It gets so lonely, being an old rat, never talking to anyone… but my powers must remain a secret, you see…"
"Why?"
"I'm special, Ron," Scabbers had pleaded, "I'm unique, can't you see? If wizards, grown-up wizards, knew about me, they'd put me in a cage in the Department of Mysteries and study me all day long to learn how I work — and-and that's if they don't just cut me open from the get-go!… I can't allow it, I can't what would you do in my place?… Ron, I'm sorry, but either you'll let me be your friend, or… or I'll have to Memory-Charm you. Make you forget you ever saw my human form."
Faced with that choice, Ron had agreed to keep the rat's secret. Week after week, the Amazing Magical Rat had helped him plot and execute his slapstick revenge schemes against the Twins, revealing magical prowess that put some actual wizards to shame and teaching Ron a few tricks along the way. He and Ron had grown close — Scabbers, more than a bet, was now something like another big brother, a brother who was perhaps weirder and dirtier than the other five combined, but also one who'd stick out for Ron… for a change. And as Ron, thanks to Harry and Hermione, had met a Basilisk and later learned of an evil turban, a rat who could turn into a wizard had become less and less of an oddity in his mind. He'd debated letting Harry and Hermione in on the secret, but Scabbers was violently against it himself, and when Ron's two Hogwarts friends revealed they'd been keeping their Parseltongue a secret fro him, he decided turnabout was fair play and put all worries to rest.
Then the Riddle Meetings had started. Scabbers refused to talk about it, for all that Ron tried to persuade him. The rat looked more and more worried the more time Ron spent worrying about the way to rid Hogwarts of Tom Riddle. One evening Scabbers had seemed just on the brink of offering his help to the trio — but then he recoiled back, every feature of his body the very image of fear. Ron didn't blame him, really — you couldn't expect too much bravery out of a rat, even an Amazing Magical one.
Only, the next day, Scabbers had disappeared, leaving a note on a scrap of parchment in that strange, scratchy handwriting Ron knew very well by then.
I'm sorry. Good bye.
There was a long, long moment of heavy silence once Ron was done with his story.
"What am I going to do?!…" Sirius then wailed.
"Well, what did you intend to do?" asked Hermione, gathering her wits.
"I…" hesitated Sirius. "I'm not entirely sure… but the plan, first and foremost, was to catch Wormtail… and then,… kill him, maybe?… Or bring the traitor to Dumbledore, get a pardon for myself… I don't even remember!…"
"But…" started Ron. "No matter what he did before… the Scabbers I knew was a good bloke. He just… he doesn't deserve to be… to be…"
"Well I see that now!" snapped Sirius, suddenly shouting. "I should have known… he was still my friend, before — he made mistakes, terrible mistakes, but he's still the same man underneath, the same man I could have called brother twenty years ago… he wasn't some sort of deranged spy, just a poor sod… I shouldn't have fixated on — only, I couldn't think of all that in Azkaban, I couldn't think of forgiveness…"
"Why not?" asked Hermione innocently.
"Because of the Dementors!…" replied Sirius. "They take the joy and the good right out of you — the longer you're around them, the more like them you become — twisted, petty, cruel, cold. I stayed sane because I had things neither happy nor vil to cling to — thirst for revenge, and regret, and worry for you, Harry — but as you can see, it looks like it didn't keep me as well as I thought. Even that… even that, they took the meaning out of it, and I didn't even notice!"
"Sorry," interrupted Hermione, "but what's a Dementor?"
"Poor innocent girl!" said the wizard. "Dementors… they're the most rotten people in this world — Hell, I'd say they're the most rotten things. You know Goblins, right?"
"Yes, yes I do!" answered Hermione, but Sirius continued before she could launch into a detailed summary of all the books she'd read about Goblins.
"Well," he said, "imagine Goblins who live on an island of stormy, foggy doom. Goblins whom no wizards know how to kill and the best Aurors can barely subdue. And imagine that these super-goblins hoard not gold and jewels… but bits of human souls."
Ron, Hermione and Harry gulped loudly. Maximilian just seemed interested.
"Yes, quite." agreed Sirius. "Oh, and they look like floating corpses dressed up as You-Know-Who, to boot."
"Oh, I'm, I'm sorry for you, Mr Black!…" said Harry with emotion.
"Sirius, please, Harry, just Sirius…" said Sirius quietly, letting the one he'd almost forgotten was his godson hug him tightly.
The five people then wracked their brains for quite a while, trying to figure out what to do with Sirius Black, now that they all agreed sending Peter Pettigrew to Azkaban would be both extremely unethical and extremely impractical. In the end, Maximilian and Harry agreed that they should get Professor Dumbledore to help sort things out. Hermione, Ron and Sirius would rather have resolve this between the five of them, but eventually let the Boggart run along to fetch the Headmaster.
"My, my," the Grand Sorcerer was muttering when he walked by, "I do hope this is truly important, I was teaching Alchemy to Seventh-Years, and I am not sure they can handle my enchanted stove all on their own…"
Dumbledore was at first only mildly surprised to find a secret room he didn't know. But then his eyes met Sirius's.
"Hi, Professor," said the fugitive. "I'm innocent."
"Well then, Sirius, I believe I may have an employ for you, my boy," said Dumbledore contentedly. "One such that no pesky Ministry people would dare, or even think, to have a look there. You see, ever since the Acromantula ate the pixies and turned traitor, I've been missing a guardian or two in the Third Floor Corridor…"
"…I'm sorry?" asked Sirius in confusion.
"I will be blunt, Sirius. Would you like to be Hogwarts's new Voldemort-keeper?"
"…what?!"
"If any student asks, of course, you'll just be a magical replica of Sirius Black whom I created to scare people away… Such a thing as a magical duplicate wouldn't be unheard of around here."
Dumbledore stared pointedly at Maximilian when saying that, for reasons Sirius didn't understand (not that there were many things Sirius Black understood about Dumbledore's last few sentences).
"What… who…"
"Miss Granger," said Dumbledore with a smile, "I see Sirius is just bursting with questions, and I know you want nothing more than to answer them all in excruciating detail. Thus, well, would you do so on my behalf? I really would like to go back to the Alchemy laboratory before my eager apprentices blow up the North Tower with saltpeter."
"A Basilisk?!"
"You-Know-Who did WHAT?!"
"Did… Did you just say a horde of Acromantulas and a dragon-rider attacked Hogwarts?"
"No, I said a horde of Acromantulas with a dragon-rider attacked Hogwarts. The rider was an Acromantula too, you see?"
"Boggart can do that?!"
"Oh, that's BRILLIANT! If only I could have seen old Snivellus's face!"
"Wait… Junior Marauders?"
"Why yes. You're talking to Lady Macbrains, Knight of the Order of the Junior Marauders."
"You don't understand — I'm a Marauder! A… Senior Marauder, I guess, under those Weasleys' system. We… me, Harry's father, Remus and… the rat… we were the original four Marauders! Makers of the Marauder's Map!"
"Oh! That's interesting." Then Hermione had had a breakthrough. "Of course! They're the ones who've got the Map! That's why you couldn't find it!"
"The Map, m'lady?" said Grandmaster Fred. "We found it in our first year in Filch's office — but it disappeared last year."
"We suspected Sir Ronniekins," continued Grandmaster George, "but he swore on his honor as a Knight that he didn't have it either…"
"We're rather curious, in fact," said Fred again, "about precisely how you found out about the Map's existence."
"Mr Padfoot told me," answered Lady Macbrains. "Oh, and by the way, I think Mr Wormtail's the one who took the Map."
Lady Macbrains then bowed in goodbye to the aghast Grandmasters and headed towards the Third Floor Corridor, in the final chambers of which Sirius Black was beginning to set up a cozy little apartment for himself.
"Sooo," Hermione asked as Sirius finished sweeping the last few cobwebs into a corner, "…how did you find a wand?"
"Wand?" Sirius repeated absent-mindedly, staring at the wand he was holding. "Oh! Yes! Yes, when we were at school, we Marauders managed to get some spare wands which we hid in the Secret Classroom… just in case. That certainly came in handy. But…"
"Let me guess, the wand that would have been Pettigrew's was missing?"
"You said it." Sirius sighed. "Well, no use thinking about him now. Either he'll come back on his own, or we've really seen the last of him… I'm certainly not going to look for him. So! How do you like what I've done with this place?"
Hermione looked around and saw that the room that she had last seen coated in Kerbog the Acromantula's webs was now furnished like a comfortable muggle interior, complete with armchairs and what she assumed was Sirius's idea of a TV set, but really looked more like a clockwork fishbowl.
"Well, it's nice as far as interiors go, yes," she said slowly, "but how are you going to handle things if students challenging the Corridor actually come by? Trespassers! Come sit by the fire! Have a cuppa!"
"Heheh!" Sirius snickered. "No, no, Macbrains. Watch."
Sirius waved his wand twice and the furniture suddenly came to life, growling and snarling. The ottoman scuttled towards her and opened a gigantic, toothy maw.
"Ah. I see." said Hermione.
The armchair was getting closer and closer.
"Uhm. I'm convinced, Sirius, you can call them off now… Sirius?"
A few more instants of angry furniture growling and Sirius called snapped his fingers, returning the room to normal in a howl of barking laughter.
"Come now, Hermione, can't a Marauder take a joke from another? Heheheh!"
"Oh, fine." granted Hermione. "What's in the next room, by the way? The one that used to contain a flock of pixies"
"I wouldn't try it," Sirius said slowly. "I enlisted Marauder Grandmasters Fred and George Weasley to prepare the traps in that one."
"Oh." Hermione said simply.
Weeks drifted by. After an Autumn and Winter rich in revelations, twists and turns, and perils, Hermione's life (and Hogwarts in general) had returned to its odd idea of normalcy — that was to say, the sort of normalcy that included saying hello to a giant goggle-wearing Basilisk at breakfast, dodging the pranks of a poltergeist and the unpleasantness of a bloody ghost, having tea with a half-giant every Saturday, teaching a shapeshifting being of concentrated fear how to be a human preteen, and visiting an escaped mass-murderer and professional Dark-Lord-keeper inside a veritable Corridor of Terrors he called home.
For the Easter Holidays, Hermione felt she owed it to her parents to spend the week at home. She bid farewell to her miscellaneous Hogwarts friends (an increasingly large category that, as of late, seemed to also include the Portrait version of McGonagall) and hopped onto the Hogwarts Express. When she got back home, her parents immediately drove her home, where she was finally able to join the young grass-snake mother who answered to the nickname of 'Nettle', the one who had made her nest in the compost heap of Mr and Mrs Dyson, the Grangers' neighbours.
{Nettle! I'm Hermione Granger! I'm back!} she called after climbing over the hedge between the Grangers' garden and the Dysons'.
The Dysons never minded — they were an elderly couple who only rarely tended to their garden these days, and as from a very young age Hermione had sneaked off onto their property, they had eventually settled on an agreement with the Grangers that their feisty little girl could do so whenever she wanted as long as Mr Granger mowed the lawn for them.
{Hermione Granger!} hissed Nettle in response, emerging from the Dysons' pond. {It has been so, so long!}
{Are you well and well-fed?} asked Hermione conversationally after crouching near the edge of the pond.
{Yes, Hermione Granger,} answered Nettle, {your parents have been good to me while you were away. They brought me many legs of frogs. The winter was warm enough, especially here.}
{Your children have hatched, I suppose?} she asked, still remembering with fondness the twelve white eggs she had seen nearly a year ago.
{Sweet scales!} said Nettle with amusement, {Yes, they have, so long ago, so long ago… Why must you always go so long? I will show them to you.}
Nettle slid back into the water, the whole length of her barred body sinking under the murky surface, and she reemerged followed by twelve snakes half as long as she was, who were twitching with excitement at meeting the human girl they'd been told about by their mother so often in their first months of life.
{You are Hermione Granger?} asked the first one curiously — her voice was still what would have been described as stuttering in a human, hesitant, unsure, shy. She was young still, and not used to speaking much.
{Yes, little Nettle!} cooed Hermione. {And do you have a name of your own too?}
{I do!} the little snake replied enthusiastically.
{We all do!} chorused her siblings, and they all stated their names at the same time, an unintelligible cacophony of short twitchy hisses.
{One at a time, children, one at a time,} Nettle told them gently.
By Hermione's reckoning, around a year old was equivalent to five in human terms, although the snakelets were much more independent than any five-year-old human could be. Either way, she found them quite adorable. People less familiar with serpents, of course, might have thought rather differently.
One by one, the children gave their names —they were neither human-style 'special' names, nor a word-based nickname like Nettle's, but instead short, meaningless Parseltongue syllables that each snakelet had found to his or her liking. Tsh! Sth! S-s! Ths! Ts! and so on. Hermione committed each to memory, although at such short notice even she would have been hard pressed to tell all twelve kids apart.
The thing about snakes, really, was that they knew very little. Knowledge of basic language was about all that parents usually passed on to their children, and Hermione suspected magic might have something to do with even that much. For magic really was the only explanation Hermione had for the strange and wonderful thing that was snakes' sapience. She trusted muggle science enough to know their mere brains, unlike a human's, couldn't possibly be enough for complex thought to develop; a snake's mind was a function of their magic, of their soul, there was no other way. A snake was born as stupid as the next animal, but if it was placed in mentally stimulating circumstances — such as a mother who was herself educated — then, why then its mind would grow and blossom into something like a human's.
Thus, snake intelligence being in essence a happy accident, snakes didn't have a society like humans or goblins or even gargoyles. They had little culture at all, and frighteningly few concepts of education.
Hermione, being Hermione, could never let such a thing slide. To snakes everywhere, she had always been an educator as much as a friend — and they were always eager to learn, at least once they'd gotten a taste of it (the wilder ones she always had to befriend through offers of food before anything else). She always cherished the look in snakes' eyes when they learned such simple things as what the Sun and stars really were, how the Earth was really a big ball of stone, or why exactly water went all hard and rocky in the winter sometimes.
And thus teach she did to Tsh and her eleven siblings, and also to Nettle, who could never learn enough even if she'd grown unusually educated over her short six years of life thanks to Hermione's companionship. The one thing she (nor the Basilisk, nor Kaiser, nor any other snake) never got a hang of was English. Snakes couldn't possibly pronounce it to any meaningful degree, and Hermione supposed that the sounds of it were therefore just too alien for their young minds to ever fully accept as words. If only she could learn techniques to teach people who were born mute how to understand spoken language… oh, but even that wasn't a right analogy, because mute humans didn't have a wholly different sort of language to occupy the part of their brain devoted to communication…
Oh well. Now she was telling the eager youths about rainbows. Their hisses of admiration were music to the girl's ears.