[author's note] normally I'd post this on the weekend, but I will be out of town this weekend, so Thursday will have to do. We're getting close to the end. No one is more relieved than me. [/author's note]
Chapter 29 - A Rat in the House
Harry immediately leaned forward, peering at the map. Walken and McGonagall were in the hallway outside the room, and Harry could imagine Wormtail watching them from the shadows as a rat; his beady eyes gleaming. Harry scrambled to his feet, dropping the Chansonarc and bottle of blue flames. Neville was sitting on the corner of his bed, talking to Connor, who hadn't vanished from the map in the last two days. They both looked up as he shot from his bed, fumbling with things on his bureau.
"Harry?" Neville was watching him curiously.
"Pettigrew. He's here."
"Who?"
"Wormtail. Death Eater. Brought Voldemort back. Killed my father." He hesitated for a moment, then stuck his mother's wand in his watch band. Both Connor and Neville rose as one.
"Was he in the DOM?" Neville asked.
Harry nodded as he tapped the corner of the mirror and muttered. Then he looked up.
"Fat bloke. Blond hair. Silver hand."
At that Neville grabbed his wand. "We're with you, Harry," he said, pulling on his shoes. Connor nodded. Harry's mind was moving a mile a minute. He wanted to capture Wormtail as much as anything. He wanted to interrogate him. He wanted to find some things out. He glanced at the map. Ron and Hermione were still in a Prefect's meeting near the Ravenclaw tower. A plan was beginning to form in his head.
"Alright. Come with me then. Connor..." Harry paused. He was going to tell Connor to stay here, but really, most of the misgivings he'd actually had about the American had been quite adequately explained by Dumbledore. It seemed he really was made to be sneaky, and he probably couldn't help it. That might come in handy tonight, since Conner couldn't fit under the invisibility cloak. "Do you think you can get to the temporalism room without anyone seeing you?"
"Temporalism?"
"Where some of your apparation lessons are." Conner nodded and started to go. Harry stopped him. "Look, don't go in. Stay outside the classroom and keep an eye out for anything." He paused. "Can you catch a rat?"
Connor often smirked, but he seldom actually smiled like he was now. "D'you think so?" Harry nodded.
Neville pulled on a bandolier of potions very much like Connor's. "Don't worry Harry, well get him."
He looked at the mirror in his hands. Where was Lupin? Where was Dumbledore? Connor had already fled, and Harry could no longer see him on the map. He and Neville flew down the stairs and through the common room. A few students tried to talk to them but they brushed them off.
Harry could see the map in the intermittent light of the hallway...there was no one near him. He still flipped the invisibility cloak over Neville. Walken and McGonagall had moved to her classroom, but Wormtail was still in the Temporalism office. He was moving along the back, like he was pacing. A moment later, Connor briefly reappeared in the room across from Walken's classroom, and then disappeared again. In his mind, Harry saw Connor the catamount considering how to deal with the doorknob, and then transfigure briefly to open the door with far more suitable human hands, step into the darkness, and return to life as something rather more suited to rodent-hunting.
Behind him, he could occasionally hear Neville scraping the floor. The time where more than one person could hide under the cloak comfortably was long gone. He'd be willing to give it a go with a pretty girl, but that was a different situation entirely.
On the map, PETTER PETTIGREW was still pacing in Walken's office. Harry was beginning to wonder exactly what was going on. He briefly scanned the map; there was no-one between him and the Temporalism classroom. Harry and Neville ran through the hallways until Harry stopped so short that Neville ran into him from behind.
"What is it, Harry?" Neville whispered from behind the cloak.
Harry pointed down the last hallway they had to traverse before they could confront and capture Wormtail. Neville pulled the cloak over his head with a thoughtful "Oh."
"Yeah," Harry said.
In front of them, Peeves was sitting upside-down on the ceiling in the middle of the hallway. He was holding a stout candle in one hand and writing profane words with candle wax with the other. He was muttering nonsense to himself.
"Isn't there a u in that?" Neville mused.
"Never mind that," Harry said. "How do we get him out of there? There isn't another way to the classroom. It's right around the corner."
"We can wait," Neville said hopefully. "I'm sure he'll go away."
"We can't wait," Harry insisted. "Wormtail's looking for something. When he finds it, he'll vanish. He's done it before."
"What if I go back down the hall and create a diversion? I reckon he'd come to see what happened."
Harry had considered that, but he knew from experience what would happen if he tried that.
"We can't do that, either. If Wormtail hears anything we'll never catch him."
Neville thought about this a moment. There was a shuffling as he reached under the cloak and fished something out. It was a bottle from his bandolier of potions. Harry took it and examined it in the dim light. The light from Peeves' candle didn't reach even half way to them. He still knew what this particular bottle held.
"How will this help with Peeves? Will it make me invisible to him?" He liked how the potion swirled in the bottle; as if it was vaguely shiny smoke.
"It's got the repellent mixed in; we've used that before, remember? The party? Snape made me put it in the ghost potion. He'll just...go away."
"Are you sure? It'll make me a ghost, wont it?"
"Yeah," Neville admitted. "You'll let me know what it's like?"
"You haven't tried it?"
Neville shook his head. Harry stared at the bottle again. He didn't fancy being a guinea pig, but he really had to catch Wormtail. He pulled the stopper from the bottle and drained it before he could reconsider. The world brightened...all the blacks turned to white and the whites turned to black. The ball of light that surrounded Peeves was black, and the formerly dim hallway was dazzling. Harry looked down at his hands. All the creases in his hands were white, and the skin was a deep blue. He looked back to Peeves, who had ceased writing and was now glancing around. After a moment, he drifted, first towards Harry, and then he suddenly stopped and sunk slowly through the floor. Harry walked slowly forward. He paused before he turned the corner where Connor and Wormtail were waiting. He had a very strange idea forming in his mind.
"How much time do I have?" Harry turned to where he thought Neville was.
"I don't know. Ten minutes?"
"The mirror I gave you to carry...someone may show up on it. If they do, tell them Pettigrew is in the Temporalism classroom." Neville nodded. Harry looked at the corner. "Can you stand here in case Wormtail makes it past Connor?" Neville nodded again. "Okay...hit me."
"With my fist?"
Harry leveled his wand and used the same marking spell they used to practice in DA. He produced several ghostly bolts of light that all seemed to pass harmlessly through Neville and, with a tiny spreading splotch, the wall behind him as well. After a moment of gawking, Neville fired a few balls of paint at him as well, which passed through him harmlessly and struck the wall behind him.
"Right," Harry said. "No spells going out, no spells coming in." He took one step and looked back. "I'm going to vanish, but it's okay. It's something I learned in this class," Harry nodded at his friend. He looked at him more carefully. When had Neville gotten so tall? Harry was beginning to feel he really needed to pay better attention to the obvious things. He walked around the corner and paused again.
The step was one spell in Temporalism that most of the students could handle. Professor Walken had an explanation for that which was mostly unsatisfying, as well as boring and unintelligible (at least to Harry), but the point was most of them could do it. Harry had never seen a ghost simply vanish before...all the Hogwarts ghosts glided -sometimes very quickly- but in stories he had heard, ghosts appeared and disappeared all the time. Besides, everyone knew apparating didn't work in the castle, and that included Wormtail.
When performing the Spatium Tornare-the step-one got the sensation that their legs were impossibly long; that they were traveling further with one step than could be reasonably believed, because of course, they were. So it was that Harry found himself a ghost, stepping through the door of a classroom, about to confront the man who had helped kill his parents.
Perhaps Wormtail saw movement from the corner of his eyes. Perhaps he just possessed very good instincts, honed by years of being prey. Either way he tucked what he was holding in his inside pocket and pulled a wand, firing curses the moment it was clear of his robe. Harry could have blocked them easily, but he rather preferred the effect of letting them pass through him. He heard things breaking behind him but he didn't want to look away.
Wormtail's mouth worked but it was a while before anything came out.
"J-James?"
"I'm very disappointed in you, Wormtail," Harry replied. His voice sounded funny, even to him.
"James..."
"James what? James I didn't mean to get you and Lilly killed? James I'm sorry Harry's an orphan now?"
Wormtail was shaking his head. "I never meant for any of that to happen!"
Harry tilted his head. "What did you expect? You sold us out to Voldemort. Did you expect the dark lord to pop by for tea and cakes?"
"What do you want?" Wormtail moaned.
"Who says I want anything?" Harry paused as Wormtail stared at him. "Lilly asked me to show you this." He pulled her wand from his sleeve. Harry had noticed that many wizards and witches, Ron for example, had the nearly uncanny ability to recognize a wand on sight. From the way Wormtail reacted, he recognized the wand.
"Is Lilly coming?"
"She doesn't want to see you, Wormtail. I have to admit that honestly, you did fool me, for a long time. Very impressive. Lilly; however..." Harry shrugged. "Well, she knew you were rotten all along, and she believed you. You made her feel responsible for our deaths, Wormtail. Bravo. Really." Wormtail cringed. "You won't like being dead, Wormtail. You know what they say? Well it's true. Dead men tell no lies. So when I see you again, and I will, I'll finally get the truth."
"So...so that means you can't lie?" Wormtail showed a flash of courage then. "Then why were you so mean to me?"
Harry was stunned. He forgot to answer as James and said the first thing that came to his mind. "Did you ever say anything about it?"
"Well, no," Wormtail admitted. "You had to know! If you'd have been kinder, Prongs...just a little kinder...I don't know if that would have changed anything, but..." He shook his head sadly.
Harry did not like this new revelation at all. He stared at the floor. He now had an answer. "Sometimes, we don't know people as well as we should, Wormtail." Then he looked up. "Were you bad from the beginning, then? From that time in the tower?"
"How do you know..."
"Come on, Wormtail," said Harry, in an exasperated voice. "I'm dead. You learn all sorts of things, after you're dead."
For a long time, Peter didn't answer. Then he slowly shook his head. "I never meant to betray you. It was...just a moment, that's all it was. And after that I knew there was no going back, not ever. And with all of you gone, it's like...I'm dead already." He shook his head again. "I'm just waiting for my body to catch up."
"So you meant what you said to my-" Harry stopped himself in time. "My Lilly."
"Every word, Prongs. Is Padfoot there? Is Lilly?"
"They're all here, Wormtail."
"Tell them..." Wormtail stopped. "There's nothing you can tell them, is there?" Harry shook his head. "Tell them I'll see them soon, then, and when I can only tell the truth, maybe you'll all believe me. That I'm sorry."
Harry felt miserable. He wanted to hate Wormtail. He wanted to believe that he was a sniveling rat who had betrayed his parents and helped Voldemort willingly, because it was somehow easier. He wanted to believe that everyone who had told him that his father could be wearisome was wrong, that James and Sirius were kind, noble people. He wanted an easy explanation to what he had seen...all the memories that had made it to him.
What it seemed is that James Potter may have been a good man who did bad things, just like everyone else. Harry didn't know exactly what he felt about Wormtail now, but he knew that it involved pity, and he knew that if he was able to hate Pettigrew completely, pity wouldn't factor into it. He wasn't sure what to say next. Wormtail was staring at the ground.
"There is no going back, Wormtail; but someday the chance will come, and you'll know why you were sorted into Gryffindor, with me and Sirus and Lilly; your real friends."
Pettigrew was watching him with a look that might even have been hope. Harry was faced with a new problem. He had never arranged ahead of time how to signal Neville and Connor, and his spells would pass harmlessly through Wormtail, so there was no way to capture him. Wormtail glanced up just as the door behind Harry burst open and a streak of brown shot through the room.
Wormtail transfigured without hesitation. He wheeled and dashed; it was surprisingly swift. Connor overshot him, though he did manage to reach down and slap at Wormtail. If he was a smaller cat, Harry thought Connor might have actually caught Wormtail. His paws were so big he actually scooped up the rat and tossed him through the air like a golf ball from a shovel. Harry watched Wormtail spin and flop down on top of a cabinet in the back if the room. Connor landed and skidded until he slammed into the back wall, where his feet scrambled on the stone floor. He finally got re-oriented and leapt to the top of the shelf.
Perhaps some cats were graceful. Perhaps they could dance over the shelves without knocking anything to the ground or even moving anything out of place. Connor was no such cat. In fact, he knocked everything in his path to the ground. Sheets of paper fluttered lazily through the air, and important looking things crunched, crashed, and clanged. Behind him, the shelves and cabinet tops were clear, holding only scattered litter. Connor growled, only it wasn't like any growl Harry had ever heard; it was a shriek, almost a scream. The blood in Harry's veins stopped, and he even saw Wormtail freeze momentarily. Connor was still fumbling along the cabinets in the back. Wormtail vanished from sight, and Harry saw another flash, this one white and grey and gold. It was Minerva McGonagall, and she had lept up to the other side of the cabinetry. Wormtail now had cats in both directions. He still wasn't done yet, though. He could thread through the menagerie on the shelving with relative ease.
"What in the name-" Harry turned to see Walken, wand in hand, watching the pandemonium. Neville was behind him. He was still holding the mirror, and he had his wand held uncertainly in one hand.
"Dumbledore showed up in your mirror. He's on his way." Harry glided behind his friend. In front of them, Connor and McGonagall were still upon the furniture in the back of the room. McGonagall was delicately shifting things to the side, while Conner was kneeling; waiting, Harry assumed, to catch a glimpse of rodent. Walken was pleading with them not to break anything more, while Neville remained back, wand half-raised, waiting for a clear shot on Wormtail.
"The map," Harry whispered.
Neville glanced at him, then pulled the Map out from under the invisibility cloak. Wormtail was gone, now a floor below them. Harry and Neville glanced at each other. "Professor...he's gone!" When no one reacted, Neville shouted again. McGonagall and Connor were still on the cabinetry in the back, Walken was still shouting, and from out of nowhere, Dumbledore was standing at Harry's side. Neville dropped his hand, letting the cloak fall over the map. The headmaster didn't seem interested in it anyway.
"Mister Longbottom." He nodded at Neville, ignoring the fact that Neville was wrapped in Harry's invisibility cloak. After a brief glance in the room, he turned to Harry. After looking him up and down, he poked at him experimentally with one long finger, which passed lazily through and touched Neville's invisible shoulder. He grinned with amusement. "How fascinating!" He again nodded. "Harry." He examined the improbable scene in the room, then cleared his throat, which was impressively loud but nonetheless worthless. After another moment of waiting for the cacophony to stop, Dumbledore raised his arms. "Enough!"
His voice boomed, echoing off, or perhaps emanating from the walls, ceiling, and floor. Everything in the room acted as a sounding board, even the things which could not or should not make any noise, whatsoever. All motion in the room stopped. Walken stopped in mid-sentence, his black wand hanging forgotten at his side. Connor looked up slowly, while McGonagall leapt lightly to the ground with a sour look on her face. Almost immediately upon landing, she returned to her normal form.
Dumbledore closed his eyes, took several deep breaths, and extended splayed fingers, as if smelling the air. He wandered through the room, moving haphazardly around tables and chairs. Harry had the sensation that he might be feeling for something in the air. His wand was very steady. After some tense moments during which no one spoke, Dumbledore finally stopped in the middle of the room. "If Mister Pettigrew was here, he is here no longer."
Professor McGonagall ran her fingers through her hair. She looked old, Harry thought, but not 'normal' old. Perhaps Walken's last time reversal spell hadn't worn totally off, yet. Connor leapt to the floor as well, after sniffing disgustedly at the last place Wormtail had been. He paced the room a few times in his loping stride, then shifted in mid stride. His unfashionable, oversized robes billowed around him.
"We almost had that..." McGonagall trailed off.
"Who?" Walken was watching them all, while waving his wand gently. A number of things that had been knocked to the floor gradually righted themselves, restacked themselves, and repaired themselves. Harry had slowly backed to the door.
He leaned back towards Neville. "The map," he whispered.
Neville shrugged off the cloak. He stood in between Harry and the temporalism room, and unfolded the map. PETER PETTIGREW was in a familiar hallway.
"I know where he's going," Harry announced. Conversation, which had started again in earnest, ceased as all eyes in the room turned to him. The world flashed in an enthralling show of light as the potion finally wore off. Harry didn't realize he was levitating until he fell to the ground. He still landed on his feet, but it was ugly. Harry ran down the hall, and the others followed.
He took the steps two at a time, paying special attention to the trick ones. He could hear the others running behind him. Connor was on one side and Neville the other. They twisted and turned, and wound their way through the halls of Hogwarts, until at long last, they were at the stairs to the same tower where Wormtail sold out his father. Connor shifted without stopping and darted up the stairs. Harry tried to follow on his heals but the big cat was far too quick to stay close. By the time he got into the room at the top, Wormtail was just squeezing through the trapdoor at the top of the levitated rope. Connor leapt, which took him at least half-way to the ceiling. He shifted at the top of his leap and grabbed the knotted line, the muscles in his forearms rippling. He jerked on the rope savagely, and grabbed Wormtail's ankle. Pettigrew shrieked; Harry could hear it even though almost all of Wormtail's body was on the roof. He transfigured into a rat again and dangled from the rectangular opening, where he was silhouetted in the silvery moonlight for a brief moment. Connor nearly fell off the rope...he dangled by one arm, the veins in his arm standing out proudly. Wormtail scrambled through the trap door and out of sight, and Connor managed to get his other hand on the rope and pull himself over the top with brute strength. Wormtail was out of sight, but Harry knew what he did next when the rope dropped to the ground. Harry had time to think that there was no way on Earth that he was falling again. He had time to notice Connor's feet slide through the trapdoor at the top and wonder if hitting the ground would hurt when he suddenly began to float upward to the hole in the roof. When he could reach it, he grabbed the frame and struggled through. Connor was at the edge of the tower, looking out over the edge. He had his wand out and was firing curses into the night. They didn't look exactly right. He spoke to Harry without looking.
"He hopped a ride. Some kind of invisible bird. I can hardly see him."
Harry could see him, in fact; a small splotch in the starlight, bobbing through the air. Harry took careful aim and fired off three curses in rapid succession. Wormtail glowed softly and went limp, but still faded away as the unseen bird rapidly faded out of sight. Harry cursed.
"You hit him!" Connor said.
"I wasn't aiming for him. I was trying to hit the bloody bird. What good did stunning him do?"
"That's what you did? I'd have just blasted him."
Harry glared. "That's because you're a bloody Yankee cowboy." Harry was actually glad Connor hadn't gotten a hold of Wormtail if he was just going to kill him. Still..."Hey, Yank," he said, as Connor turned back to the trap door. Connor looked back. "Thanks."
Connor's lips actually twitched. "May as well put my super powers to good use. You know, occasionally."
They looked through the hole in the roof as one. Connor simply leapt through. He passed the top as a human. He hit the ground as a cat. Harry thought about taking a cue from Connor and flying down as a bird, but he wasn't sure how long he could stay a bird, or even if he could become one. He was spared the decision when Walken simply waved a hand for him to jump.
"Come on, Potter." Harry hesitated. "I've got you. Leave the rope, Longbottom." Neville looked up from where he had been toying with the rope. Harry never actually jumped. He was simply levitated over the opening and drifted slowly down to the ground. "I got you going up, Potter; I can get you coming down." So it was Walken who had saved him from a nasty fall. Walken set him gently down. "Who was that...rodent...and what was he doing in my room? Why were we chasing him?"
Thumping on the stairs announced the arrival of Dumbledore and McGonagall. Harry wandered over to where the stag had been burned into the wall by Wormtail the night he had met with the future Death Eaters. He stroked it gently. "He was my parents' friend, until he made a bad decision."
"Must have been some decision," Walken mused.
"Did he get away again?" McGonagall puffed. "Merlin's beard, that man is slippery!"
"Am I to understand that was Peter Pettigrew?" Dumbledore asked.
"Yes," Harry, Neville, and McGonagall said at once.
Walken shrugged. "I assume so."
Dumbledore looked around the tower. "It's been a while since I was up here. I believe this tower was intended to be used for hitching one's dragon. As you can see; the tethering of dragons is not in particularly high demand, in this day and age."
"Peter Pettigrew found it useful enough," Professor McGonagall remarked.
"Indeed," Dumbledore mused. "How did he..."
"A bird," Harry said. "Like the one I hit."
"It was waiting on the roof," Connor added. "He hit the roof, ratted up, and hitched a ride."
Dumbledore nodded. "Clever." He stroked his beard. "There are not many ways in or out of this castle. That's...a resourceful way around the limitations."
"I hit him with a stunning curse," Harry said. "I was aiming for the bird."
"We know he was here," Dumbledore said. "Ambrose, do you have anything that would be of interest to Voldemort?"
Professor Walken was looking out the window. He glanced back at Dumbledore and screwed up his face. "I don't reckon what it could be, Albus. I haven't even been in the country for years."
"Perhaps you should examine your room. I don't think Mister Pettigrew was re-visiting for the old memories." He turned to Harry. "Perhaps the students among us should make their way...unobtrusively back. If they think they can. Provided their head of house is willing to accept that, of course. Far be it for me to...assume her authority."
As one, Harry, Connor, and Neville turned to Professor McGonagall. It was obvious that she was suffering from some internal conflict.
"Get back to your common room. Tell no-one, of this. Since I know you'll tell Weasley and Granger anyway, tell them that it is absolutely imperative to keep this silent. And if you get caught making your way back to your common room, well gentlemen, for your sake I hope you are capable of remaining unobtrusive for a few more minutes."
Harry nodded. Neville pulled the invisibility cloak over his shoulders and Dumbledore muttered something. A cold feeling spread through Harry, radiating from between his shoulders and spreading throughout his body. He looked at his hands, which even to him were amazingly dim. He glanced at Dumbledore, who was holding his wand lightly and smiling a crooked smile. Connor walked on ahead of them, and Harry knew that the moment he was out of site, in his place would be a catamount,
un-trackable by wards or special maps, and nearly invisible. Neville pulled the cloak over his head and started down the stairs. He turned back to Harry and paused.
"You coming, Harry?"
"In a second. I have to talk to the headmaster. I'll only be a moment."
Neville nodded, and started down the stairs. McGonagall and Walken were standing with their heads together near the window. The starlight made her grey hair seem white and her black hair blacker.
He turned to Dumbledore. "I talked to Pettigrew." Dumbledore nodded and waited for him to continue. The urge to say something was maddening; he really had to perfect that trick. "I had taken the potion...the one that made me a ghost."
"Ahh...that was a marvelous potion indeed. I've ever seen anything quite like it, and I've seen a good many potions. Tell me, wouldn't it have been easier to capture him and then ask questions?"
"That was my plan," Harry admitted. "But...I had to use the potion. Anyway...he sort of thinks he talked to James Potter's ghost."
"Ah." Dumbledore nodded. After a while he nodded. "It is a rule as old as adversity itself. Make the best of a bad situation. Still, there are worse ideas than to remind him of his ties to you."
Harry turned to go, then looked back. Something had occurred to him. "Sir...when you first saw me, had the potion started to wear off?"
"I don't believe so, Mister Potter."
"Did I look like my father?"
"The very image. Even more so, without Lilly's eyes to give you away."
"Then...how did you know? I mean...you knew me right away."
"Ah!" Dumbledore clapped a hand on his shoulder. "Well, James was many things. Talented, handsome, competent...overall an estimable human being...but never once did he bear such stylish footwear."