I feel so guilty for the long wait, you get another chapter! Huzzah!
Dobby's Polka-Dotted Sock
Chapter Thirteen:
Cornered Animal
Harry examined every corner of his dorm room on the map. "I don't get it," he said finally. "How come Pettigrew just up and vanished?"
"How should I know?" Leila shot back, "I was just looking around, and then it hit me that he was gone!"
"But nothing different has happened recently, nothing at all. Unless the ghost left when Black almost attacked Ron," they looked at each other and shook their heads. Even though they had been decided on the ghost story for awhile, both knew it was a silly idea. Nearly Headless Nick didn't show up on the map, so why would Peter Pettigrew? No one had ever seen his ghost anyway.
"Well, if he really is haunting the place, he can't have gone far," Leila said finally and Harry nodded. They bent over the map, eyes slowly passing over every inch of the paper. After a bit she gave a groan and said, "This is going to take forever! Hogwarts is huge!"
"Yeah," Harry sighed wearily, "I wish there was some kind of way to pinpoint a person's location on this thing if you needed to find them."
"What's this?"
"Not satisfied with our Christmas gift?" The red-haired twins were leaning in the doorframe of the third-year boy's dorm.
"Pettigrew's gone," Harry said simply, and the older boys looked much more interested, coming to see for themselves.
"So he is," said George, holding the map up to the light.
"Good of him to do so. He was hanging around our little brother's bed."
"And that's hardly acceptable behavior."
"But what does it mean?" Leila asked.
"Hell if we know. We nicked the thing, we didn't make it."
"Well who did?" Harry asked. "If we knew who it was, maybe we could ask them what it means. We could send a letter with Hedwig or something."
"That might take weeks of study in the library though," George reminded them. "And we might not even be able to figure it out."
"Well, how about asking one of the teachers if they know these nicknames?" Leila tried. "McGonagall might remember, or maybe Flitwick—"
"And give away that we have this?" Fred asked. "Fat chance."
"Dumbledore might not get suspicious," Harry said, "And he's probably our best bet. He's been here forever!"
"If you want to try, be my—"
"Or, we could interview Hagrid's new dinner guest," George said, pointing to not one, but two dots on the map inside Hagrid's Hut. One of which was labeled Peter Pettigrew.
"Good eye, Forge!" Fred cheered, and made for the door. "What are we waiting for?"
"Um, it's past curfew," Harry pointed out. That had never stopped them before, but Leila knew Harry was wary of letting the Weasley Twins know they owned an Invisibility Cloak.
"What kind of adventurer are you, Harry? The conclusion of this mystery awaits!"
With that proclamation the identical twins lead their fraternal counterparts down the stairs. Not many were in the common room, but Hermione was among them. She looked up and said with some suspicion, "Where are you four going?"
"Erm—" Leila was shoved forward by the other three to answer her female friend. "Harry, er, forgot something, and the twins are helping us sneak out to find it. We'll be back in a little bit, I swear, Hermione, but Harry needs it to finish that potions essay." She knew it was a weak lie, but Hermione only looked away and said,
"Al-alright. I won't tell on you or anything." Was Hermione's voice wavering? The girl wasn't that much a stickler for rules!
"Thanks, Hermione," she said with a grateful smile and moved to rejoin the group. But Hermione caught her arm and faced her, and Leila could see honest-to-Merlin tears welling up in the other's eyes.
"Just—be careful. And-and remember what McGonagall was teaching us today about human-to-animal transifiguration."
"Er…alright, Hermione," Leila agreed to appease her, even though she had no idea what Hermione was talking about. And why was she so upset?
As she rather awkwardly got up and returned to the boys, Harry muttered, "How come I have to be the idiot who forgot his potions notes?"
"Hey, you can make up the lie next time if you aren't satisfied," Leila defended, and they slipped out of the portrait hole.
They were on the third floor when it happened. "Lupin!" Fred hissed in shock, "How'd he get behind us so fast?"
"No way out?" George asked and sounded worried.
"Afraid not, we'll have to hope he goes easy on us. Mischief Managed!"
"Who's there?" The professor's familiar voice sounded from down the corridor. "Show yourself."
Leila had never felt so guilty in her life when, as she and the other three turned to face him, Lupin's face first went slack with relief, and then livid.
"What are you all doing out here? There's a murderer on the loose!"
"Sorry sir," said Fred, bowing his head a little. "Harry here forgot something in the Potions Classroom, so we figured we'd help him find it so Snape wouldn't give him a zero on his homework. It was wrong of us."
"Yeah, we'll go back to the common room, now."
"Yes, you will, but first; what is that behind your back, Mr. Weasley?"
Fred had not had time to fully hide the map, and so, though it looked almost physically painful, he pulled out the now-blank parchment.
"Just some parchment, sir," George answered this time.
"Uh-huh, well, I'll take it if you don't mind." Reluctantly, the twins handed it over, and Leila hoped they could just head back now, but Lupin continued. "I'm very disappointed in all four of you. Sneaking around the castle at night is very dangerous, especially now. I do not want to catch you at it again, understand?"
"Yes sir," Harry managed, while Leila wasn't sure whether to trust her voice, and so settled with a nod.
They made their way out of Lupin's sight, and the Potter twins headed for the stairs when they were pulled by the Weasley twins down a tunnel.
"Where are we going?" Leila hissed.
"Professor Lupin said to go back to the common room!" Harry added.
"Yeah, well, what he doesn't know won't hurt him," said Fred, and that wicked smirk was back in place.
"Besides," George reasoned, "he doesn't know how to work the map anyway, so who's the wiser? And you do want to know why Pettigrew's dot has moved, don't you?" The dark-haired siblings turned to each other, equally torn, before Leila sighed in defeat.
"Lead on."
Fred and George grinned.
OoO
The door had been flung open almost the instant after they knocked, and instead of being angry, Hagrid gathered Harry and Leila into a crushing, tearful hug.
"Ye came!" He sobbed, huge tears rolling down his face, and Fred and George awkwardly slipped in, closing Hagrid's front door. "I was going ter write a letter ter yeh, but here yeh are!" Eventually, he let them down and Fang started his regimen of jumping and licking. Leila glanced up to see Fred at the stove boiling water while George searched for teabags and couldn't help but smile. It seemed Molly Weasley's advice on calming people down had been passed down to all of her sons.
"Hagrid, what's the matter?" Harry asked, attempting to console their large friend. Still crying, Hagrid showed them a letter; the date of Buckbeak's appeal.
"You lost the hearing?" Leila asked, feeling a little guilty that they had nearly forgotten about Hagrid's troubles with his Hippogriff.
"What do we do? There's no one in here but Hagrid and Fang, and we don't have the map," Leila whispered to Fred, but he put a finger to his lips.
"Cheer up, Hagrid, I'm sure things will turn out fine," George said as he placed a cup of tea in front of the large man. "Besides, I'm sure Fang doesn't like to see you so sad, or any other creatures, be them man, beast, or specter, that hang about here."
Hagrid took a large gulp of the tea, blew his nose on his handkerchief, and said, "Well, thank yeh Fred. Er—well, whichever you are. Molly an' Arthur oughtta be proud ter have raised all of yeh. Good kids. Charlie always talked real nice about yeh when he was here. Loved the animals, he did." Hagrid blinked and his beady eyes seemed to light up in recognition. "Hang on, speaking of animals, and yer brothers—" He stood, went over to a cabinet, and pulled out a little container, from which he produced—
"Scabbers!" All four exclaimed. The rat looked frightened for it's life, and had lost even more fur.
"Hagrid, where did you find him?" Harry asked, incredulous, while Fred and George over Scabbers 'giving Ron the slip'.
"He was in the grass an' I happened upon 'im," the Care of Magical Creatures professor replied. "Be careful with him now, he looks in pretty bad shape."
"Yeah, he's been like this all year," Harry told him as the rat was gingerly handed to Leila.
"How do you reckon he lost that toe, eh? Do yeh know?"
"He's always been like that," George informed them.
"So we didn't find our ghost, but we found Scabbers. Well, at least Ron will be happy," Fred commented.
"Ghost? What ghost?" Hagrid asked.
"Well, this may seem silly Hagrid, but we found this map, see, and it showed all these people in Hogwarts," Leila felt safe to tell Hagrid, it was obvious the man had been at the bottle some before they arrived. "And there was this one dot that said 'Peter Pettigrew' hanging around Harry's dorm—ow! Scabbers, stop scratching!" The rat was in full blown panic for some unknown reason, but she wasn't about to let Ron's pet disappear again.
"Pettigrew! Well, there's not a body left o'him ter make a dot with on a map, it'd just be his finger!" Harry grimaced at Hagrid's inadvertent reminder of his parent's friend's murder, but George paused for a moment.
"A finger, huh?"
"And when Scabbers disappears, Pettigrew's dot moves right to where we find him again…" the red-haired boys were looking at each other oddly, as if trying to work out a particularly difficult puzzle. But that was when Scabbers sunk his teeth into her finger.
"Argh!" She couldn't help dropping him in reaction to the pain, but she quickly moved to intercept his dart towards the door. "Scabbers, honestly you're the biggest menace of an animal since Aunt Marge's bulldog Ripper!"
Animal….what had Hermione said? Human-to-animal transfiguration? But what did that have to do with any of this, all McGonagall had talked about today was some complex rules and theories on becoming—"
"Animagi!" She breathed, but then someone pounded on the door behind her and Fang shrunk back with a growl.
"Hagrid, open the door!" And everyone, humans and animals, tensed.
"Professor Lupin? What's he doing out here?" Hagrid questioned them, but then the door was opened—the Weasley's had forgotten to lock it.
In the doorway stood Professor Lupin, brandishing his lit wand over the activated Marauder's Map. And Leila saw her name in front of his, and in front of her—
Four exclamations of shock were heard, and she whirled around in time to see a filthy, balding man who had not been there before snatch a knife from Hagrid's counter and press it to her throat. Leila's arms were captured and she was roughly shoved in front of Peter Pettigrew so that she acted as a human shield from four wands and an umbrella.
"I don't want to—to kill anybody," Pettigrew wheezed, and his breath was hot on her neck and coming in panicked gasps. "Just—just let me out of here. Let me leave, and she doesn't get hurt."
"Peter—" Lupin started and Leila could see the anger, fear, and hurt all displayed on his face.
"You too, Remus! Let me through, or I'll-I'll do it!"
Professor Lupin seemed to struggle with what to do and Leila stared at his with wide, terrified eyes. His shoulders slumped in defeat, and he stepped aside.
Pettigrew had to nudge her once or twice to get her moving, she was so frozen out of fear. Consciously aware of how close the blade was to her skin, the two began to edge out the door, always with her facing the others to ensure no one tried attacking the man.
Hagrid's jaw was dropped in complete shock and horror, the twins were trembling—with what she wasn't sure—but Harry. Harry's knuckles were white on his wand handle and his teeth were clenched in frustration and rage.
"I—I'm just taking her to the edge of the forest," the rat-turned-man said. "Then I'll let her go." She refused to even swallow, though her mouth was very dry, as the hand that held the knife was trembling. It was clear that the man was terrified and inexperienced, but no one pointed it out. He still had the knife. "Not a word, Remus. Not a warning to anyone in the castle.
They were at least twenty feet away from the hut before Lupin said anything at all. And he didn't break his promise; he did not warn anyone in the castle.
"Sirius! Sirius, we need you!"
Was really not planning for another cliff-hanger, but this was getting on five pages. Figured that was plenty long. So, please please let me know what you think of the chapter! Thanks so much for reading, we're almost at the end of the third year! Review please!