A/N: I have modified the last chapter, so you should probably go back and read the end if you haven't already.


When Fred and George came tearing into the library five minutes later, with Fred shouting that he had won, Madam Pince glared at them as though she wanted to bar them from even entering her sacred domain.

"Sorry," George said in a sort of fake whisper that was intended to seem quiet while carrying all the way over to Madam Pince's desk. "We'll be quiet." George turned to Fred and said in an actual whisper, "I think the old Daily Prophets are in the reference section."

"You owe me a sickle," Fred said.

"I don't carry them around the castle," George said. Unlike Fred, who was probably going to lose all of his before he found anything to spend them on. "I'll give it to you when we get back to our room. Now hurry up, we've only got half an hour."

Fred shrugged and muttered, "Like we're going to find anything in that time," but he tore off to the old Prophets fast enough that Madam Pince clicked her tongue in disapproval.

George's optimism plummeted when he saw the stacks of newspapers and realized how many years worth of papers they were going to have to sort through in order to find Pettigrew's death. Assuming, of course, that Pettigrew's death had really made the papers.

Fred elbowed his twin in the ribs. "Chin up, even if he died of 'natural causes' it would be worth mentioning in the obituaries, wouldn't it? We'll just have to be thorough."

"Right," George said. He supposed he should be cheered up by that, but the idea of thoroughly reading every article in decades-old Daily Prophets was a bit daunting. Why don't you start with December of 1981, just in case Pettigrew was killed after You-Know-Who's defeat and I'll start in..."

"1975," Fred suggested. "Bill told me that once that when he was really little Mum would take him down to a muggle playground near where they lived, but that they stopped a little before he turned four."

The logic of that seemed fishy to George, partly because he had no memory of Bill telling him such a thing, but he went over to the shelf marked 1975 and started looking through the newspapers one at a time.

"Well, what do you know, he did die after the war," Fred announced before George had even made it through a week's worth of papers. "Says here that he died trying to apprehend Sirius Black, when Black tried to do a runner after You-Know-Who's defeat. Give me a minute to find the original article, this is just a list of Order of Merlin recipients."

George put his year's worth of newspapers away and went over to his brother in time for Fred to give a shout of accomplishment and begin to read, "Fugitive Auror Black Apprehended After Killing Thirteen! Sirius Black, former Auror, now known to have passed information to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, was apprehended yesterday at a scene that turned even the staunchest stomachs. 'I'll never forget it,' said Cornelius Fudge, Junior Minister in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, 'The entire street was gone, nothing left of it but a smoking crater. Bodies, everywhere. And Black's sitting in the middle of it, laughing like a maniac.'"

"He's not laughing in the picture they've got of him," George said. Indeed the expression Black's face very closely resembled Percy's shortly after one of the fourth years practicing banishing charms had accidentally sent their textbook flying into his stomach.

"Maybe he was putting up such a fuss that they had to stun him in order to take the mug shot," Fred suggested. "Continuing on... 'Muggle eyewitnesses report that Black was cornered by a man matching the desription of Peter Pettigrew who shouted, "Lily and James, Sirius, how could you?"' before Black drew his wand and cast the curse that destroyed the street. Pettigrew, longtime friend of that late Lily and James Potter, was disintegrated by Black's curse and had to be identified by his finger the largest portion of him the DMAC was able to find. Errgh, why do they need to tell us that? It's disgusting."

George snorted. "Gross things sell, I suppose. I'm surprised they didn't mention how Pettigrew's remains were splattered all over the sidewalk. They should have been, if it was some kind of overpowered blasting curse Black hit him with."

Fred shivered. "Maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was some kind of other curse that vaporizes people and... Scabbers is missing a toe, isn't he? On his right front paw."

"Yeah," George said, "but there's no way he's this Peter Pettigrew. If Black had cut off his finger and turned him into a rat before blowing up the street the muggles would have mentioned some kind of physical fight."

"Maybe," Fred said. "We've only got what the Prophet said the muggles said and they certainly didn't question the muggles themselves-"

"-so we've got a thirdhand account at best and it's quite possible that something got lost along the way." George looked down at the photograph of Sirius Black in the newspaper. "Why didn't Black apparate out? There had to have been at least five minutes between the explosion and arrival of the DMAC, Black could have been long gone by the time they showed up."

"Could Pettigrew have turned himself into a rat?" Fred asked.

"Probably," George said. "I can't see why he'd bother to learn- rats can get into all kinds of spaces. It'd be really useful for pranking-"

"-or spying-"

"-or hiding-"

"-or escaping crime scenes-"

"-but then why didn't he turn himself back once Black had been arrested and go home?" asked George. "Plus he'd have to have cut off his own finger and-"

"-if he blew up the street," Fred said, "if he killed all those muggles and made it look like Black had done it. Of course Black stuck around, he probably thought the Aurors were there to arrest Pettigrew after he mixed up a curse and blew the street up-"

"-and he let himself be taken into custody because he thought that the Ministry would sort it out, but they didn't, so he's been stuck in Azkaban unable to do anything about it ever since," George paused realizing what he had said. "We've got to tell somebody about this."

"That our brother's rat is secretly a mass murderer who framed someone else for his crimes and is living as a rat to avoid capture? McGonagall-"

"Not McGonagall," George said. "We'll tell Bill. We can make him promise not to confiscate the Map."

"And if he doesn't?"

"Some innocent bloke's locked up in Azkaban, Fred. I'll tell him anyway."