Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

Chapter 35 – Cat, Rat and Wolf

Harry led the way to Dumbledore's office and to say that the Headmaster was surprised to see them was an understatement. They showed him the map and Remus explained how his three friends had become animagi for him while still at school, and about Peter's form. Dumbledore grew quite serious and summoned both McGonagall and Snape, who he told an abridged version of the tale to. McGonagall was shocked, but Snape looked thunderous, though Harry didn't know why. He went off to retrieve some Veritaserum when asked by Dumbledore, who then told McGonagall to quietly clear out Gryffindor Tower.

"Best you go with her." He told the twins, handing them back the map. "You can keep an eye on him, and let Professor McGonagall know if he tries to leave the boy's dormitory." They nodded and followed their Head of House out of the office. "I think it time we summon Cornelius and the aurors." Harry nodded and was the one to make the call through Dumbledore's floo. He had been avoiding his guardian since the day he'd overheard the conversation in the Three Broomsticks, so to hear from him now meant that Cornelius would come through quickly. Not five minutes later he was proven right, the Minister even having brought the aurors Harry had requested, though he'd not told him why.

"Harry…" Cornelius looked quite hesitant, but there was hope in his eyes and Harry was reminded that for all that he used Harry for his fame, Cornelius did care for him in his own way. Harry gave a hesitant smile back and they recounted the tale again, though unlike before they didn't have the map as proof, Dumbledore having sent it off with the twins, and when it got to the point of explaining how they knew all this, it became clear that Dumbledore had planned it that way.

"I was alerted when an animagus, that was not Professor McGonagall, entered Gryffindor Tower." He said. "You know, of course, of the extra measures we have taken to ensure the students' safety after the last break in. One of those measures is a nifty little charm I invented that is a variation of the Homenum Revelio and Appare Vestigium charms. As you know, the original charms can detect a human presence, and reveal recent magical activity, but I both altered and combined the two so that it can detect magical forms of concealment and will track the person for a few hours. You know it is quite the story how I came up with the idea. I would be happy to go over the mechanics of-"

"Yes, yes, Dumbledore, I'm sure it's a very interesting story, but perhaps we could move on?" Harry watched as Dumbledore smiled, a twinkle in his eye, and knew that he was watching a master manipulator at work. From anyone else Dumbledore's tale would be ludicrous, even if Harry didn't know that he was lying through his teeth. But given the Headmaster's eccentricity and powerful magical ability it was plausible enough that Dumbledore had created such a spell, and offering to go over the mechanics of it turned Cornelius off that line of questioning and had him pushing to move on.

"Yes, well I was alerted when an animagus entered the tower and the tracking part of the spell led me to see him enter the third-year boys' dormitory, where he stayed. Before I could evacuate the tower to investigate Mr. Thomas went to retrieve something from his dorm and returned as if nothing was amiss, which meant that the animal was small enough not to be seen, or that it was meant to be there."

"That's when the Headmaster came to us, to ask after any pets we might have." Harry jumped in, motioning to him and Ron, in who's dorm this was taking place. "Hedwig, of course, is in the owlery, Neville has a toad, but he doesn't let Trevor out of his sight or he'll lose him, so that left Ron's rat."

"Scabbers." Ron too jumped in, his earlier shock having simmered enough that could follow along with one of Harry's plans. Or Dumbledore's as the case may be. "I told the Headmaster that he'd been in our family for years, and was actually kind of pathetic, was missing a toe and everything."

"Which is where I come in, Minister." Lupin stepped forward. "I knew Peter to be an animagus, a rat animagus to be exact. He and the others-"

"Kept it a secret, due to the war." Dumbledore cut in. "For all that he was not the brightest pupil, some wizards are simply born with the powers of an animagus. I cannot say why neither he nor his family ever registered him as a child, but it proved quite useful in the war effort, for very few knew of his ability. You know how things were then, Cornelius." The Minister merely nodded though Harry shot the Headmaster a look. Not only had he now lied about how Pettigrew was discovered, but he'd omitted that Harry's dad, and more importantly, Sirius Black, were both animagi as well. Harry was sure that Dumbledore had his reasons, and he was determined to find out what they were, though now was certainly not the time.

"Yes." Lupin agreed with an uncomfortable cough, though he too had caught on. "Well, I knew of his form and given how long of a life this rat has had and the fact that he's missing a toe…" He trailed off and Cornelius muttered.

"All we found of Pettigrew was a finger."

"But you're not certain it's him?" Kingsley, the Head Auror, was the one to ask.

"No. But shall we go discover the truth?" Dumbledore led them up to Gryffindor Tower. The students were gone, sent down to the Great Hall with the Head Boy and prefects as chaperones. McGonagall, Snape and the twins were the only ones left in the tower and the latter two stepped back and quietly put the map away at a look from their sister. When the portrait hole closed McGonagall cast a spell that enveloped the whole tower, lest Pettigrew try to escape; a rat being able to find many holes to hide in. Dumbledore led the way up the stairs to the third-year boys' dormitory and stopped short at the sight outside the door.

"Crookshanks!" Hermione hissed, feeling embarrassed that her cat was still chasing Scabbers, even though they knew he likely wasn't a rat a all.

"You have a very smart familiar there, Miss Granger." Said McGonagall, a tone of pride in her voice. "When we began evacuating the tower he raced up here and hasn't left that spot, though we tried a few times to remove him."

"More than once the rat could be seen trying to get out from under the door, but the beast wouldn't let him." Snape, who hadn't been down in the common room when they'd arrived, but had been standing off to the side of the door to the third-year dorm, corroborated.

"Have you been standing guard?" Hermione cooed as she went to pick Crookshanks up, the half-kneazle now not fighting being removed from the doorway. "Did you know Scabbers wasn't a real rat? Is that why you went after him so much? You tried so hard to tell us something was wrong, oh clever Crookshanks!" Harry and Ron shared a look. Though they had to admit now that maybe Crookshanks had sensed, or more likely smelled, that something was off with Scabbers, they wouldn't go so far as to assume the orange menace knew it was a wizard in disguise and had been trying to send a message to them this whole time. They didn't get to think on it any further though for no sooner had Crookshanks been removed then a little snout began peeking out from under the door. Dumbledore was ready though and threw the door open with a bang, his wand pointed at a squealing rat that was hovering in midair. The other adults had their wands out as well, and Cornelius was even standing protectively in front of Harry.

"If he is an animagus, this won't take a moment." Kingsley stepped forward, casting a spell with a blue light. The rat squealed again but then it began growing. Its tail vanished, its limbs lengthened while its head rounded out. When all was said and done a short, stubby, snivelling man, who actually resembled the rat he had just been, kneeled before them. For a moment no one said anything and it took that time for the man to stop sniffing around on all fours and gain his bearings.

"Remus?" He said, sounding surprised. "My old friend!" He made if to hug Lupin but instead made a mad dash for the door. Lupin was quicker though and with an inhuman growl he grabbed Pettigrew, throwing him up against the wall.

"What did you do?" It was clear that the wolf within was in charge, his voice having taken on a guttural tone, his eyes a bright amber once again. The aurors raised their wands and moved to stand in front of the children. Even in their human forms werewolves were physically quite strong and somewhat resistant to magic. McGonagall and Snape even held their wands at the ready, Dumbledore being the only one who didn't seem worried.

"I don't know what you mean!" The denial sounded more like a whine than an actual defense.

"I thought you, one of my best friends, dead! Yet here you are alive and well…and living as a rat. If you hadn't have done something you have would have come forward once Sirius was in Azkaban instead of spending twelve years as a rat."

"I didn't do anything!"

"Don't lie to me!" He roared. "Have you forgotten my abilities? Moony's abilities? I can sense your deceit, hear your heart racing, and smell your fear. You cannot lie to me!"

"Uncle Moony." Harry stepped forwards, not caring that Cornelius and the aurors tried to stop him. While he respected that even in human form werewolves could still be dangerous, he wasn't afraid. "He's not going anywhere. We'll get the truth from him, but please let him go." It took a moment, but eventually the wolf receded, and Lupin released his hold on Pettigrew.

"Harry, look at you." Pettigrew turned his sights on Harry. "You look so much like your father, like James, we were the best of friends he and I!" Harry looked into the face of one of his father's best friends, his unease since seeing Pettigrew's name on the map growing into a truly bad feeling, and didn't have to think about his answer.

"Somehow I doubt that." Kingsley stepped forward then and took control of the situation as Head Auror, the wand of his companion, Dawlish, trained on Pettigrew.

"How did you survive that day?" The deep baritone voice wasn't completely unkind, after all up until this moment the man had been a hero, having earned an Order of Merlin – First Class, for his actions the morning after the Potters' deaths. Yet it brooked no argument and Pettigrew coward. "Tell us what happened, everything that happened, from the moment you knew He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was defeated to how you ended up spending twelve years as a rat." There were more whimpers, but no actual answer was given. He seemed genuinely scared, and that made it all the more pathetic. "If you will not speak of your own accord then we will discover the truth under Veritaserum." Fear turned to panic and Pettigrew ran behind one of the beds. With each moment that he tried to avoid giving them answers, Harry's bad feeling grew and he began to suspect that this ran much deeper than any of them thought.

"It's illegal! You can't just use Veritaseum on a person, it's illegal!" While true that the use of Veritaserum was strictly regulated by the Ministry, its use by the aurors was allowed in exceptional circumstances, which this certainly was, and with the express permission of the Minister, which Fudge quickly gave. It took Kingsley and Dawlish but a moment to conjure a chair and restrain Pettigrew to it, and not a moment more for Snape to force three drops of the world's most powerful truth serum down his throat.

"What is your name?" Kingsley started, needing to determine if the potion was working.

"Peter Pettigrew."

"When were your born?"

"April 28, 1960."

"When did you attend Hogwarts?"

"1971-1978." The first answers were given quite happily. The effects of Veritaserum had the drinker wanting to be truthful and feeling quite euphoric when they were. It was one of the reasons it was considered so powerful; if people wanted to tell the truth they were likely to do just that. Of course, nothing is infallible. Those with a strong mind, with strong occlumency shields, could circumvent the effects, and those wanting to play at telling the truth could fake the euphoria and give quite a performance. That was one of the main reasons Veritaserum wasn't relied on, or even used, in criminal trials, but only to aid in an investigation, or occasionally in civil suits of little importance. Those that were on trial for criminal offenses, that were facing Azkaban, were more often than not powerful enough to get around the truth serum enough that their testimony under it could not be fully trusted. The other main reason it wasn't used being that the truth the potion revealed was subjective and based on what the drinker believed to be true, whether or not it actually was. Now, though, it seemed to be fully working, and not one person in the room questioned its effectiveness; McGonagall's words from the Three Broomsticks that Pettigrew had no real magical talent apparently being known to all.

"What happened the night of October 31, 1981?"

"I sent my master to the house in Godric's Hollow, the one James, Lily and baby Harry were staying in." Harry's ears were ringing, though the room had gone deathly silent, those standing around had wide eyes, and hands covering mouths in shock.

"You sent Voldemort after my parents?" Harry breathed through gritted teeth. Ginny reached down and squeezed his hand so tight he wouldn't be surprised if a couple fingers were broken, but Harry didn't care and squeezed back just as tightly.

"Not after them." It was said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "After you. The Dark Lord wanted you dead, James and Lily needn't have died, had they just handed you over."

"As if that would happen." Remus growled.

"What then?" Kingsley asked.

"When the Dark Lord disappeared I knew I had to hide, but Sirius caught up with me the next morning." His joy at telling the truth had gone down, he was fighting the potion, but still he didn't hesitate. "I knew I didn't stand a chance against him, so I screamed at him that he had betrayed Lily and James and blew a hole into the street. I cut off my finger so everyone would think I was dead and transformed into my rat form. I lived on the street and in the sewers for over a year and eventually decided enough time had passed to venture back into the wizarding world. I knew I would need to keep an eye on things and wait for a sign of my lord's return, so I set myself up as a pet in a wizarding family." There were no doubt more details to his story, but there was only one that Harry cared about.

"You betrayed my parents. You're the reason they're dead!" Ginny wasn't sure if he was going to cry or begin cursing Pettigrew, but Harry wasn't finished. "Wait…that means that you were their Secret Keeper. Not Sirius Black." Remus made a strangled noise and his eyes shot to Pettigrew.

"Of course." He was once again sounding happy. Apparently after having admitted his betrayal of the Potters, he no longer cared about admitting to another one. "It was Sirius' idea actually. He was the obvious choice, no one would believe that they'd choose me, with my lack of skill,over him. I could not believe my luck. My master had tasked me with finding a way to get to the Potters and here I was being handed the key to serve them to him on a silver platter." Harry didn't seem to care about those details, didn't care how happy the betrayer was at being able to serve Voldemort. Instead he was still focused on the fact that Sirius Black was not the Potters' Secret Keeper.

"You knew." He turned to Dumbledore. "You knew that Black wasn't the Secret Keeper."

"Harry-"

"You were the one to cast the Fidelius charm, that's what you said that day at the Three Broomsticks." He looked to McGonagall. "So when Voldemort killed them, you knew it was Pettigrew and not Sirius Black who was at fault, and you said nothing?!"

"By the time I had a chance to, Pettigrew was already dead…or so we thought." Said Dumbledore, who at least had the decency to look remorseful. "While I knew the one to betray Lily and James was not Sirius Black I thought the one responsible was dead. It was too late to save your parents, Harry, and since the perpetrator was dead, what good would it do to speak up then?"

"It wasn't too late for Sirius! For my godfather!" Harry was upset, and with good reason, but it was not for the reason everyone thought. He was not just angry at Pettigrew, or Dumbledore, or the entire situation, he was concerned for someone else, and angry because someone else had been wronged. Even at a time like this he was thinking of others. This was just one of the reasons that people gravitated towards him, that had his friends closing rank around him to offer support and back him up. "If you had said something he wouldn't have been in Azkaban all these years! He could have raised me as my parents wanted, I wouldn't have spent six years in hell at the Dursleys!"

"Harry," Cornelius too wanted to offer support to his charge, but he knew Harry wasn't thinking clearly. "Yes, it was wrong for Professor Dumbledore to have not said anything, but it wouldn't have changed anything. Regardless of who actually betrayed your parents, Black still killed Pettigrew and those twelve muggles."

"Pettigrew is right there, and we just heard him say that he killed those people and faked his own death!"

"Perhaps, but we didn't know that at the time. All the evidence suggested that Sirius Black had murdered those people, so he would still have gone to Azkaban, even if Professor Dumbledore had spoken up." Harry had to admit that Cornelius had a point, but he had one too.

"But now we do know differently. Sirius Black wasn't a Death Eater, he didn't betray my parents, didn't kill anyone, he's innocent. We have to clear his name!"

"Now, Harry, let's be reasonable." Cornelius back peddled. "Sirius Black is an escaped convict, and he has already broken into Hogwarts twice to try and kill you! Does that sound like an innocent man to you? Besides, the entire wizarding world is living in fear, the Ministry must be seen to catch the criminal and protect the people."

"Perhaps he's not completely innocent. But he is innocent of the crimes he was convicted of, and I know, Cornelius, that you would never let anyone suffer Azkaban, or worse the Dementor's Kiss, if they weren't guilty. We've uncovered this grave mistake – made, I might add, by the previous Minister and not yourself – and I know that you will do everything in your power set things right. The public will be heartened to know that they have a Minister who will see that the mistakes of his predecessors are set right, and justice is truly served." Normally Harry's manipulations of his guardian were much more subtle, but Harry didn't care right now and so simply handed Cornelius what he needed to save face and keep up his public image, knowing that Cornelius would do exactly what he wanted him to, what with the Boy-Who-Lived backing him up. All Harry wanted right now though was the truth, all of it, which meant clearing Sirius' name. At least enough to get him to come out of hiding so Harry could talk to him. "I'm sure you'll want to get right on that, Cornelius, so perhaps Head Auror Shacklebolt could place Pettigrew under arrest, and you could return to the Ministry to overturn Sirius Black's conviction?"

"What?" The Minister looked a bit startled and Harry knew that he'd been weighing the pros and cons of declaring Black innocent, and trying to think if there was a way that this could make him look bad.

"Arrest Pettigrew and overturn Black's conviction?" Harry prompted.

"Oh…oh yes. Shacklebolt, place Peter Pettigrew under arrest for the murder of twelve muggles, and the orchestration of the murder of James and Lily Potter. And attempted murder of Harry Potter." Harry hadn't expected that charge, but Cornelius' hand on his shoulder reminded him, not for the first time tonight, that his guardian did care for him, so he shouldn't be too surprised that he'd been thinking that Pettigrew's actions had almost meant Harry's death.

"Right away, Minister." Kingsley stepped forward and shot Harry an amused look as he passed him; his manipulation of Cornelius really hadn't been subtle at all.

"Dawlish, summon the dementors, tell them we have a new prisoner for them."

"No!" Pettigrew's whining panic returned. "Harry, no, James wouldn't have wanted me killed! Your dad would spare me, he would have shown me mercy!"

"How dare you speak to Harry!" The growl was inhuman and Remus, who had stood back allowing Harry to take charge, now came forward. "How dare you speak of James in front of him! After what you've done!" It may have been Harry's parents who had been killed, but Pettigrew hadn't just betrayed the Potters that night, he'd betrayed Remus as well, and the werewolf was having just as hard a time of this as Harry was.

"Ron! Ron, haven't I been a good friend, a good pet? You won't let them turn me into the dementors?"

"I let you sleep in my bed!" Ron looked disgusted.

"Kind boy…kind master…" Pettigrew crawled toward Ron, managing to doge both Remus and Kingsley. "You won't let them do it…I was your rat… I was a good pet."

"That you made a better rat than a human is not much to boast about, Peter." Remus growled. Peter whimpered and turned to Hermione, grabbing the hem of her robes.

"Sweet girl, clever girl-"

"Get away from her!" Ron said, shoving Pettigrew away even as Crookshanks, still held in Hermione's arms, hissed and swatted at him, his claws extended; for once Ron agreed with the cat. Remus and Kingsley came forward and grabbed Pettigrew, magically binding him, Remus casting a spell to ensure he couldn't transform to escape, before hauling him off.

"Maybe I should come to the Ministry with you, Cornelius." Harry suggested, putting Pettigrew out of his mind for now. "The Wizengamot will want first-hand testimony before overturning the conviction and you can't give it as you're a member. I, on the other hand, have no reason to love Black and every reason to hate him, so why would I lie about something like this?"

"Yes, perhaps-"

"That won't be necessary, Cornelius." Dumbledore spoke up. Harry looked to the Headmaster for the first time since yelling at him for not coming forward about who the Potters' Secret Keeper really was, and saw that he looked more guilty and before.

"And why won't that be necessary, Headmaster?" Harry's eyes narrowed dangerously. Dumbledore was already not his favourite person at the moment.

"Because there is no conviction to overturn."

"What?" Now Harry was just confused, and even Cornelius had his brows furrowed.

"Sirius Black was never officially convicted of any crime. He never even stood trial." For the first time Dumbledore would not meet Harry's eyes, in fact he was looking down, and looked every one of his years.

"You mean to say that a man was sent to Azkaban for twelve years without ever having been convicted?" Harry said after a moment. "Without even having stood trial?"

"Yes." Harry wasn't sure if there was ever a time that he'd felt so incredulous. He looked to his friends, completely unsure what to say, though Ron just about summed it up.

"Bloody hell!"

A/N - Review please!