Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Chapter 34 – Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs
The following day both Harry and Ginny were quite subdued, much to Ron and Hermione's understanding once Harry told them what had happened with the boggart. Snape, during their training session that afternoon, also looked on Harry with understanding, and when asked confessed that he'd overheard Lupin telling McGonagall and Dumbledore that Harry had actually killed a boggart. Snape's understanding came from a continued sense that he was slowly piecing together why this slip of a boy constantly outwitted one of the darkest and most powerful wizards of all time. Snape had no doubt that Harry's survival as a baby hadn't been because he was some powerful warlock, but agreed with Dumbledore that it was because of Lily's sacrifice for her son. His continued defeat of the Dark Lord, though, could not be just because of his mother, and with each trial Harry faced, Snape saw more and more of the wizard who might one day be that same dark lord's downfall. Of course, he would never say any of this to Harry, but it renewed the potion master's determination to train Harry and give him his best shot, for he himself might very well be the wizarding world's best shot of being rid of Voldemort.
-H/G-
That evening a tired foursome returned to the common room and began on their homework. They hadn't been working for long, however, when an unusually serious Fred and George approached them.
"What's got your wands in a knot?" Ginny asked. The twins didn't answer but instead looked around and motioned for them to follow. If it was anyone else they would have been told to sod off. Snape's training tonight hadn't been easy and the amount of homework they had meant that it would still be some hours before they got to bed. But this was the twins, and their behaviour was starting to scare the quartet. Fred and George led them out of the common room and to the nearest unused alcove where they quickly cast a couple of notice-me-not charms. Fred then pulled out a mangy old bit of parchment and unfolded it while George tapped it with his wand.
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good." Ginny was about to make a quip about how that must be their motto, but she was stopped as words began to appear on the parchment.
" 'Messers Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs are proud to present…the Marauder's Map.' " Ron read in confusion. Harry, however, had reached out and taken the map from Fred almost reverently the moment those names were read, much to the twins' own confusion.
"Prongs was his dad." Hermione explained quietly, and in a rare moment of understanding the two gave Harry a minute before getting down to the reason they'd brought them here.
"This is a map of Hogwarts and shows everyone in the castle." Fred explained, opening the map to show their location, each of them seeing their names intermingled, hovering next to six sets of footprints.
"It shows their exact location." George added.
"Where everyone is."
"Every minute."
"Of every day."
"Brilliant." Muttered Harry.
"We owe them so much." Fred agreed. "But that's not why we brought you here."
"You see, the map has never been wrong before."
"Not once since we were innocent little first years who just happened to find the map in Filch's desk has it ever been wrong." Ron and Ginny knew firsthand that Fred and George had never been innocent, but let that remark pass for now.
"And now it is?" Ginny asked.
"Now it's showing something that's quite impossible." George unfurled a small square that revealed the inside of the Gryffindor common room. There were dozens of footprints there with names overlapping to the point that you could barely make one out, but that didn't deter George. Using his wand he tapped the map again and the area of the common room expanded, and they could now clearly see Percy, his footprints moving back and forth as if pacing in front of the fire. George didn't stop there though and used his wand to move the map around until the dormitories, specifically the third-year boys' dormitory, was visible. There was one name in the dormitory, and the four could see immediately why the map must be wrong, for there, clear as day, was the name Peter Pettigrew.
"No…he's dead!" Harry gasped.
"Exactly." Said Fred. "But the map has never lied before, so we don't really know what to make of it."
"And given who we know was supposed to have killed him, we thought Harry should know." They all turned to look at the boy in question who hadn't taken his eyes off Pettigrew's name.
"There's one person we can ask." He said finally, taking off down the corridor. The five of them followed Harry down to the third floor and into the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. Harry didn't even bother to knock on the office door but led them inside and straight to another doorway, though this one he did knock on.
"Harry?" Lupin looked confused as he answered the door. He was wearing his dressing gown as he stood in what could only be the entrance to his personal quarters. "What are you – all of you – doing out so late, it's almost curfew."
"Can the map be wrong?" Harry held up the parchment and Lupin's eyes widened.
"The Marauder's Map!" He exclaimed, taking it from Harry and looking on it fondly. "I haven't seen this since Filch confiscated it not a week before the end of our seventh year." His eyes widened even further. "How did you get this? No, I don't care." He pressed on when Harry opened his mouth to reply, looking quite severe. "But I am astounded that you didn't hand it in. Did it never occur to you that this, in the hands of Sirius Black, is a map? I know your father never set much store in the rules-"
"Uncle Moony!" Harry interrupted. He had taken, on occasion, to addressing Lupin the same way he had before his parents' deaths, though without the abbreviated impediment of a baby. "Can the map be wrong?" Lupin looked to him and saw the serious expression on his face, one that was mirrored on the other five faces of his students.
"No." He replied finally. Harry's heart raced, though with what emotion he wasn't sure. Reaching over and unfolded the map to reveal the boys' dormitory in Gryffindor tower, and pointed to the one name that most certainly should not be there. The blood drained from Lupin's face. "That's impossible."
"Then the map must be lying." Ron ventured.
"The map never lies." Lupin said it with such conviction that none doubted him.
"But then that means Peter Pettigrew is alive." Said Hermione. The ramifications of that statement were put on hold as everyone's attention was drawn to a name that moving towards the dormitory. Dean Thomas moved out from the throng in the common room and they all watched as he entered his dorm, his name right on top of Pettigrew's. They watched as his footprints moving around for a minute, before leaving and heading back to the common room at a normal pace.
"How did he miss a grown dead man sitting in his dorm room?" Fred asked. None of the other jumble of names in the common room moved towards the dormitory, nor did they leave the tower, so clearly Dean hadn't sounded the alarm.
"There isn't exactly room to hide in a Hogwarts' dorm room." George agreed. "He seems to be on your bed, Ron."
"Scabbers!" Ron gasped. "He might hurt Scabbers!"
"Scabbers?" Lupin asked.
"Ron's rat." Ginny replied and any colour that was left in Lupin's face vanished. He turned on Ron and desperately looked him in the eyes.
"Is he missing a toe?"
"What are you-"
"Is he?!" Ron nodded.
"He was like that when we got him, come to think of it." George spoke up.
"Yeah, Charlie said he must have lost it in a fight with another rat or something." Added Fred.
"How long has Scabbers been in your family?"
"I dunno…years."
"Twelve years?" Ron shrugged and looked to his older brothers who, out of everyone present, might remember best when Scabbers came into the family.
"It was before our time, mate." Fred shook his head. "I don't remember a time when we didn't have Scabbers."
"Yeah, he was Charlie's first, then Percy's and now Ron's."
"An unusually long life for a common garden rat." A shadow passed over Lupin's face and he gained a ferocious look, his eyes darkening to a deep amber. It took a moment but he seemed to calm himself, his eyes returning to normal, before he faced Harry again. "Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs are names your father, Peter and I, along with our fourth friend, gave each other in our fifth year. That friend was Sirius Black." Harry had already worked that out for himself after hearing how close Sirius Black had been to his father. It explained also why Lupin had never mentioned the fourth friend by name before.
"Bloody hell!" Fred and George couldn't help but gasp. The others had known, of course, Harry not having hidden his suspicions from them, but the twins weren't privy to those conversations.
"I tried so hard to hide my condition from them, terrified that they would abandon me if they knew. For the first time in my life I had friends and I couldn't bear to lose them. I should have known better." Lupin smiled slightly at the memory. "By our second year they had worked it out and all three were determined that I wouldn't spend the full moon alone."
"Wh-" Again Fred and George were shocked, but Ginny shushed them
"They knew that they couldn't be around me at the full moon while human, so they decided to make themselves not human. It took three years for them to become animagi and it was their forms, and my wolf form, that gave us our names. Sirius was Padfoot and could transform into a rather large black dog. Your father, as you know, was Prongs and could turn into a stag, while Peter…his tail while in his rat form did indeed resemble a worm." It took a moment for the implications to sink in.
"You think Scabbers is Pettigrew?" Harry and Ron said as one, both in disbelief though for vastly different reasons.
"No way!" Ron continued. "I'd know if my pet was a wizard in disguise. Anyways, they'd have seen him on the map!" He pointed to Fred and George. "They wouldn't see a dead man on my bed and not mention it for three years!"
"Sorry to burst your bubble, Ronnikins, but you're not so interesting that we've been following you around on the map this whole time." Said George.
"There's much more interesting things to do then watch your kid brother." Fred agreed. "Besides, see how jumbled all those names in the common room are?"
"Can't say we've ever tried to get a closer look at your whereabouts, or your bedroom."
"So even if our eyes passed over you on the map, Pettigrew's name would be mixed in with everyone else's."
"Then how did you notice it tonight?" Ginny asked. The twins grew serious again.
"Both times that Black broke in,"
"Or tried to break in,"
"To the tower were on Friday nights."
"Maybe it was a coincidence that both attempts were on the same day of the week, but we've been searching the map every Friday since."
"And tonight we saw something out of the ordinary." The others nodded
"So what do we do now?" Hermione asked.
"We go to Dumbledore." Said Harry. "And I'll call Cornelius. If Pettigrew's still alive then the night my parents died things didn't happen as we were told, and I for one want the truth."
A/N - Well I got absolutely no writing done this weekend...I had been so hopeful I would. Either way, we're coming to an end of Prisoner of Azkaban!
Review please!
