Disclaimer: The opinions of the characters are not necessarily those of the author—or of JK Rowling.

A/N: This chapter was a very difficult balance to get just right, as you may be able to tell from the length alone. And do note that I have been reading your comments and taking them into consideration. In fact, I recalibrated some of the reactions in this chapter in light of them. I have no illusions that I'll satisfy everyone, or even that my opinion will be the near median of commenters here, but don't let it be said that I'm letting Snape off the hook here.

Chapter 19: Flitwick

The Servant of Lord Voldemort

The students gasped dramatically at Snape's reveal, although there wasn't a shocking revelation of information that needed discussing this time. However, Harry was even more certain now that Snape had been listening for most of the last chapter and had deliberately chosen the most dramatic moment to reveal himself, though he wasn't sure what to do about that.

Meanwhile, Professor Flitwick quickly took the book and continued the reading: "Chapter Nineteen: The Servant of Lord Voldemort." There were nervous whispers around the Great Hall as people remembered Trelawney's prophecy from yesterday. That was also interesting timing. At this point, it was pretty clear that it meant Wormtail, but to place it immediately after Snape appearing was very suggestive.

"'I found this at the base of the Whomping Willow,' said Snape, throwing the cloak aside."

Suddenly, Ginny whacked Harry in the back of the head.

"Ow! What was that for?"

"You threw your dad's invisibility cloak away again, Harry?" she scolded.

"Hey, I was worried about saving Ron!" he protested. "And I thought Sirius was just a dog, I didn't thinks we'd need it."

"Harry, that is not something to leave just lying around. You need to be more careful with it."

"Well, I got it back, anyway."

"'I've just been to your office, Lupin. You forgot to take your potion tonight, so I took a gobletful along. And very lucky I did…lucky for me.'"

"Didn't care enough to bring it with him, did he," Harry growled.

"I don't know," Hermione said. But then her eyes went wide. "Merlin's pants! We never actually checked!"

Harry's eyebrows rose as well. "I never thought of that."

"And we knocked him out before he finished talking. And I was the only one who was paying attention to the Moon cycle," Hermione said. "I should have known. But I was so distraught over Buckbeak and then Wormtail…"

But Harry rallied, then: "Still, shouldn't he have given it to him right away?"

"Well, yes, I suppose so."

In the story, Remus tried to talk Snape down. He…still wasn't doing the best job of it, Harry thought, but also, Snape wasn't in a mood to listen to anyone, regardless. He tied up Remus; he was even more ready to kill Sirius than Harry was, and Hermione suggesting they should hear them out was met with even more venom.

"'But if — if there was a mistake — '"

"'KEEP QUIET, YOU STUPID GIRL!' Snape shouted, looking suddenly quite deranged. 'DON'T TALK ABOUT WHAT YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND!'" The effect was…strange. Professor Flitwick didn't put as much drama into the words as he had before, but it was enough. Some people were indignant on Hermione's behalf, but others laughed—not at Hermione, but at Flitwick's reading. Flitwick tried to imitate Snape, but with his higher and squeakier voice, it came across sounding comical.

Then Flitwick coughed a couple times. "Pardon me, Severus, I don't think I can do your voice quite right," he said, to more laughter. Snape was glaring at him. "A few sparks shot out of the end of his wand, which was still pointed at Black's face. Hermione fell silent. Now, that is a sure sign that you need to stop for a minute and calm down, Severus. Losing control of your magic even with a wand is a fast way to get dangerous disruptions in your casting."

Sirius tried to turn the tables by offering to come quietly with the evidence he needed, but Snape said he wasn't interested in having Sirius's case heard.

"'Up to the castle?' said Snape silkily. 'I don't think we need to go that far. All I have to do is call the dementors once we get out of the Willow. They'll be very pleased to see you, Black…pleased enough to give you a little kiss, I daresay…'"

"Okay, that's going overboard, Snape," Tonks cut in suddenly. "If you actually want to see the Dementor's Kiss, you need your head examined."

"Auror Tonks," Madam Bones warned, "let's keep it civil. Although she has a point, Professor Snape. If you had ever seen the Dementor's Kiss before, I highly doubt you would ever want to see it again, even in that situation."

Snape glowered, but he also kept it civil. "You might find yourself surprised, Madam Bones," he said.

In the book, Snape was ready to escort them back up to the grounds. "'I'll drag the werewolf. Perhaps the dementors will have a kiss for him too—'"

"WHOA!" Tonks blurted, again without thinking, nearly rising from her seat. "Where did that come from."

Snape glowered even harder at her. "If you'll recall, Professor Tonks," he said slowly, as if he were explaining potions to a particularly thick student, "I was under the impression that Lupin was aiding and abetting a mass murderer. It was an entirely reasonable course of action."

"I…" she started, but she faltered and sank back into her chair. "Okay, yeah, I can see that from what you knew." A little more softly, she added, "Sounded a lot more personal to me, but I can see it. But why didn't you give him his potion then?"

"What?"

"The Wolfsbane Potion? You said you took it up to his office. That night was the full moon, wasn't it? Didn't the werewolf attack we heard about in the DMLE happen right after that? Shouldn't you have bottled it and taken it to him?"

"I…" Snape sputtered. Now, Madam Bones was staring at him.

"Bloody hell, he didn't bring it with him," Harry whispered, to Hermione's shock.

But he rallied: "He was bound hand and foot and muzzled! He wouldn't have been a threat if Potter hadn't freed him."

"For good reason!" Tonks protested.

"There was no reason to think that!"

"Enough!" Madam Bones cut them off again. "We all want to finish this reading today, so let's try to keep it moving rather than fighting. Professor Snape, I will want to talk to you afterwards about that incident, given the number of other safety incidents at Hogwarts that year. Auror Tonks, while your insight is appreciated, I do still have the authority to remove you from the Great Hall if it comes to it."

Tonks sat still and stared. She gaped at being spoken to like an errant child like that, but soon, she resignedly sat back in her chair.

In the story, Harry tried to stop Snape. "'Professor Lupin could have killed me about a hundred times this year,' Harry said. 'I've been alone with him loads of times, having defense lessons against the dementors. If he was helping Black, why didn't he just finish me off then?'

"'Don't ask me to fathom the way a werewolf's mind works,' hissed Snape. 'Get out of the way, Potter.' Well, that was uncalled for," Flitwick said. "A werewolf is just as capable of logic as the rest of us. I would say it was a valid question." Then he hesitated, reading down the rest of the page. Harry hadn't cut any of this part out, but it was plain to see it could cause trouble.

"Excuse me, Severus, but I think this will prove relevant to the plot," he said. "Ahem—'YOU'RE PATHETIC!' Harry yelled. 'JUST BECAUSE THEY MADE FOOL OF YOU AT SCHOOL YOU WON'T EVEN LISTEN—'" Flitwick did not act this line out in dramatic form, but he did still speak loudly enough to hear the capital letters, and that was enough for Snape to interrupt him.

"That is uncalled for, Filius!" he snapped.

"I'm hardly praising the boy for that insult, Severus, but I think it's important to understand the full conversation in this instance: 'SILENCE! I WILL NOT BE SPOKEN TO LIKE THAT!' Snape shrieked, looking madder than ever. 'Like father, like son, Potter! I have just saved your neck; you should be thanking me on bended knee! You would have been well served if he'd killed you! You'd have died like your father, too arrogant to believe you might be mistaken in Black — now get out of the way, or I will make you. GET OUT OF THE WAY, POTTER!"

Harry saw a vein pulsing in Snape's forehead, and he was sure the man was about to snap and set spells flying like he did yesterday, but he didn't. In the story, however, Harry didn't get out of the way, and not just him, but Ron and Hermione, too. All three of them cast Expelliarmus at Snape at the same time, throwing him into the wall and knocking him out cold.

The school gasped again. They weren't laughing this time, even though most of them would have loved to see that, but many students were looking back and forth between Snape and the Gryffindor trio, wondering just how much trouble they would be in. For most of Hogwarts, just insulting Snape to his face felt like a task for someone with a death wish, but attacking him? There would be stories told in future years about how Harry Potter was the only student ever to attack Severus Snape and live to tell of it (no matter how inaccurate it was).

And then Sirius stuck his foot in his mouth again by saying they should have left Snape to him.

"Harry avoided Black's eyes. He wasn't sure, even now, that he'd done the right thing."

"'We attacked a teacher…We attacked a teacher…' Hermione whimpered…"

"And it was awesome!" said Fred and George together, which didn't help the real Hermione's attitude.

Snape finally found his voice again, and it held that low, dangerous tone that the students knew spelt doom for anyone who dared even think of crossing him. "Are you," he said, "going to do something about that, Madam Bones?"

Bones, with a scowl on her face at the whole situation, huffed loudly. "I will need to hear the rest of the story, Professor Snape," she said. "And I find it rather telling that all three of them independently reached the same conclusion at the same time. The way things are going, there may be a case for defence of an innocent there—if not Black, then certainly Lupin."

"What—?! I—Madam Bones, I cannot countenance the idea that Potter is a reliable narrator."

"Are you claiming that Black is guilty, then?" she asked.

"I…" Snape opened his mouth to respond, but he stopped after receiving a stern look from Dumbledore. He couldn't very well say that. "That's beside the point! Black tried to kill me when I was still in school! And Lupin—"

Suddenly, Tonks spoke up again: "Now, wait just one minute! It sounds to me like you already suspected Remus was a werewolf. Someone as smart as you should have been able to figure it out."

"Tonks," Madam Bones warned.

"Hold on, ma'am, this is important," she said, speaking sharply, but still controlled. "Snape, you saw Madam Pomfrey escorting Remus across the grounds; not his friends, not even one of the teachers, but the Mediwitch. That's obviously a medical issue, so we've already got invasion of privacy there. And she escorted him to the Whomping Willow, not, you know, the hospital. That's not exactly normal medical procedure, is it? If you cared enough to look, you could've worked out it was always at the full moon. Yeah, maybe Sirius was dumb for telling you to go down there, but you must have known there was at least a chance you would wind up confronting a transformed werewolf that night."

Suddenly Snape shot to his feet, screaming, "BE QUIET! DON'T TALK ABOUT WHAT YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, YOU STUPID GIRL!"

Tonks mirrored him, standing up herself and her hair flashing bright red: "I UNDERSTAND ENOUGH! WHAT DID YOU DO THAT NIGHT IN THE BOOK? YOU DID THE SAME DAMN THING!"

Madam Bones shot up out of her seat before Snape could retort. "AUROR TONKS!" she barked.

"YOU DON'T KNOW—!" Snape yelled

BANG!

A blast the echoed like a cannon in the Great Hall issued from Dumbledore's wand, louder than yesterday. Some of the students screamed at the sound, but quickly fell silent. Dumbledore was standing as well, wand out, looking angrier than Harry would have ever expected him to look at a fellow teacher. McGonagall had risen too, though Dumbledore was faster. From where he was sitting, he couldn't tell if Dumbledore was staring at Snape, Tonks, or both of them, but perhaps tellingly, he didn't speak to them directly, but instead nodded to Madam Bones for her to continue. Tonks's hair shifted from red to a paler pink that was almost white.

Bones nodded in return. "Thank you, Dumbledore," she said. "Auror Tonks, this is a serious matter and will be investigated, but the time to deal with this is later, after the reading is over."

Tonks took a deep breath, as if considering, but she stood her ground. "With all due respect, ma'am, I don't think it is," she said. "Snape called out Harry last week for his screw-up, and yeah, a bit of that was on me, but at least that was an honest mistake. And he was twelve." Tonks looked back at Snape. "You were, what, sixteen? It was at least fifth year." She turned back to Bones. "But that's not even the worst of it. I'm talking about what he clearly did wrong that night in the book, and I think it's only fair that we get it out there."

Bones continued giving Tonks a stern look, but before she could respond, Kingsley stepped in. "I would be very interested to hear what Tonks has to say as well, Madam Bones," he said. He turned to Tonks and added, "Calmly."

At that, Bones relaxed fractionally and said "Very well," with a resigned look on her face. Snape, meanwhile, was turning redder than ever, and it seemed to be only the continued stares of the other teachers keeping him from speaking out. "What do you need to say, Auror?" Bones said.

Tonks looked back at Snape and spoke: "I'm saying, Professor Snape, that night in the book, you knew Remus was in the Shrieking Shack. You knew he was a werewolf; you knew it was the full moon, and you knew he hadn't taken his potion because you had it with you, but you apparently left it in the castle. In fact you kind of did what Harry did in the last book and abandoned a good plan that you already had by leaving behind the Wolfsbane potion that you had already brought with you to his office. Except you have a lot less excuse!" Tonks was breathing heavily, her voice sounding more and more agitated, her hair shifting back to red again. "You knew that giving Remus his potion would have been the safest thing to do whether you thought he was a criminal or not! Unless you were trying to make thing worse for him—"

"Tonks—" Madam Bones warned before she could finish her accusation.

But at that, Snape finally cracked and responded, not shouting this time, but with the same breathless tone of seething anger that Tonks had, as if he might slip again at any moment. "You have no right to speak for them to me," he growled. "You don't know what they did, for years, and I nearly got killed, and they got off scot-free!"

Suddenly, Dumbledore spoke up for the first time. "Severus, I believe we have had this conversation before as well," he said sternly.

Snape froze and slowly turned around to face Dumbledore. "Yes, of course, sir. Several times, sir. But that doesn't make it right, sir," he snapped in return, sounding unsettlingly like a petulant schoolboy. It was a bit disturbing, Harry thought.

"I am not saying it was right, Severus, but neither are your accusations," Dumbledore countered. "Since you insist on airing this publicly, that prank was perpetrated by Sirius Black, alone—as everyone involved told you at the time, including myself. James Potter did not know of it. If you cannot see that because of your prejudice, that is your own problem. Remus Lupin certainly did not know of it. As reckless as he was to roam Hogsmeade while transformed, he would never position himself to attack a chosen target, as Fenrir Greyback does."

"Greyback?" Harry whispered in confusion, but no one in his immediate vicinity knew the name any more than he did.

"And as for Sirius," Dumbledore continued. "He baited you into entering what you suspected to be a dangerous situation, and you chose to take that bait. In spite of that, I personally punished Sirius as harshly as I dared for other infractions for the remainder of that year. But I could not punish him for baiting you, for that would have exposed Remus's condition, and he would have faced expulsion at the very least. For a prank in which, again, he had no witting part."

Snape wasn't deterred. "So you thought he was more valuable than I was, then?" he said.

Dumbledore's face grew hard again. "Yes, Severus, I thought that the lifelong reputation and education of a boy who was as much a victim as yourself was more important than the—I admit, very real, but one-time emotional trauma of another. As I have told you before."

Far from being assuaged, Snape looked downright murderous. But he couldn't very well challenge Dumbledore, and looking around, he could see Bones, McGonagall, and various other teachers staring at him with expressions ranging from questioning to hostile. He was also getting some looks from the students.

Though he clearly wanted to dispute it further, Snape could read the writing on the wall. He drew himself up and ground out, "I have had enough of this farce, Headmistress, Madam Bones. It should have been ended long ago." And he stalked down the from the High Table toward the exit.

"Professor Snape!" Madam Bones called out.

Snape stopped cold and turned around with an expression that suggested he was considering either ignoring her or hexing her.

"I can't speak to what happened when you were a student," Bones said, "but what I'm seeing in this book is troubling. While it was not illegal under the current law given the low availability of Wolfsbane Potion, you were being reckless with your own life and the lives of others by not taking Lupin's potion to him. And that is just one of many security failures I've heard about from that school year. We will still be talking about this after the reading," she said in a tone that brooked no argument.

Snape stared at her for a long moment, then said, "Of course, Madam Bones," before continuing out of the Great Hall.

"Well," Bones huffed, sitting down. "That was very irregular, but we do still need to finish this."

"I don't like it, ma'am," Tonks said as she sat down, too. "With the way he was acting toward Remus—I mean, yeah, he thought he was helping a criminal, but that stunt with the potion was suspicious."

"Agreed, Auror Tonks, but again, that is a matter for later. For now, we need to finish this damn reading so we can be done with it."

It wasn't until after the reading was over that someone pointed out that Snape had used exactly the same insult on Tonks that he had used on Hermione just a few pages earlier in the book. When Harry heard about it, he decided that Snape probably hadn't even noticed.

At the moment, however, Harry had a different thought on his mind. "D'you think Snape did that on purpose?" he whispered to Ron and Hermione. "Not bringing Remus's potion? He sure sounded like he wanted to get Remus, too."

Hermione bit her lip. "I don't know," she said. "It is odd that he didn't. Maybe he just ran out there without thinking like Remus did, but…I don't know what we do if it was on purpose."

"Tell Madam Bones?" Ron suggested obviously.

"We don't have any proof," Hermione countered. "Besides, it's like she said; it wasn't technically illegal."

But in the book, Flitwick was finally able to get back to the reading—which quickly went off the rails again when Sirius explained that he noticed Scabbers in the news article of the Weasleys' trip to Egypt.

SMACK!

Madam Bones slapped her hand down on the table. "Are you telling me, Professor Flitwick," she demanded, "that Cornelius Fudge caused a breakout from Azkaban by handing a prisoner a newspaper?"

Flitwick shrugged: "I supposed so, though it was by a very improbable chain of coincidences. Surely, there are prisoners who are just as motivated to escape as Black was, who don't have the means of being an Animagus."

Bones sighed: "Right of course…This is going to be a mess, isn't it?"

Flitwick, for his part, shrugged again and went back to reading. "'He's got a toe missing,' said Black.

"'Of course,' Lupin breathed. 'So simple ... so brilliant ... he cut it off himself?'"

"He cut off his own finger? Ew!" said Natalie.

Harry shook his head: "He cut off his entire hand when he brought Voldemort back."

Most of his friends who didn't know stared at him aghast.

"What the hell?" said Dean.

"Er…you probably don't wanna know."

In the book, they were still trying to convince Ron that Scabbers was Pettigrew. Looking back, Harry couldn't believe Ron had managed to hold onto him that long either. Maybe Wormtail wasn't that good at being a rat. Then Sirius and Remus pointed out how long the rat had lived.

"'Twelve years, in fact,' said Lupin. 'Didn't you ever wonder why he was living so long?'"

"Yeah, that's actually a good question," Tonks cut in. "At least some of the teachers had to notice. He was yours before, wasn't he Percy?"

"Don't remind me," Percy groaned.

"No, really. Headmistress, did anyone notice 'Scabbers' living at least six or seven years here? Pets have to be recorded somewhere, right? Didn't you think that was odd?"

McGonagall sighed: "To be honest, Professor Tonks, I though that it was not the same rat. Parents are sometimes known to replace their children's small pets when they die, with their children none the wiser. Or perhaps Mr Weasley got a new rat himself and gave it the same name." She turned to Percy, who gave her a surprised and slightly disturbed look back. "Both would have been odd at your age, Mr Weasley, but it seemed obvious to me at the time. And even if it hadn't, I would have thought 'magical rat' far more likely than 'unregistered Animagus.'"

It also turned out Neville had not been so careless as to leave a list of passwords lying around in public. Crookshanks had stolen them from inside the dorm after the cat had befriended Padfoot and—somehow—understood that he wanted him to fetch Scabbers.

"Part Kneazle, huh?" Dean asked.

"Crookshanks is very intelligent," Hermione said.

But that revelation caused another stir.

"Yes!" Neville spoke up, loud enough to draw the attention of the Hall. "I knew I didn't leave the passwords lying around. I never took them out of my bag except to get in the dorm."

McGonagall sighed. "Indeed. I owe you another apology, Longbottom. I still believe speaking to the prefects or to me would have been preferable to writing down the passwords, but in this case, I can place the blame more securely on Sir Cadogan."

"Thanks, Professor," Neville said cheerfully. "I'm just glad to've figured out what happened."

Harry winced. "Sorry, Nev. We probably should've told you."

But it was only then in the story that they came to the real truth—or more likely, that Harry made his feelings known again—loudly—and Sirius and Remus remembered that they hadn't actually got around to telling Harry the truth: that Sirius had convinced James and Lily to switch Secret Keepers from him to Peter as an extra level of misdirection—and that because of Peter's betrayal, Sirius blamed himself for their deaths—which honestly was the source of a lot of his problems.

"He couldn't just spit it out, could he?" Dean asked.

"No. That night was rough," Harry agreed.

"They switched Secret Keepers," Madam Bones said thoughtfully. "So that's what they were talking about before. That would fill in a lot of the holes—from the time of the incident and the ones revealed in the book."

"Indeed," agreed Dumbledore. "I am afraid they kept their secret a little too well. Even I did not know they had switched, and by the time the dust had settled, there was no one left who was willing and able to tell it."

"And I suppose with the emergency powers Barty Crouch had at the end of the war, they took his raving to be a confession and didn't question it further."

Then, Percy spoke up: "I think part of that was on Fudge, Director. He was the first one who said Black confessed, and if he'd investigated the scene more, he might have seen it was suspicious."

Bones sighed: "I think we're going to have quite a few files to review after today."

But in the book, Remus finally convinced Ron to give up Scabbers, and at last, the rat was revealed, once and for all, to be Peter Pettigrew.

"Finally," Harry grumbled. "That really did take a long time."

What followed was an almost painful interrogation—painful in just how weaselly Pettigrew was. He was doing an admirable job pretending that Black's story was completely mad and trying to talk his way out, saying he'd been hiding from Black and fearing his eventual escape, improbable as that was. But Black wasn't deterred. In fact, he'd heard from the other prisoners that they thought Peter was a traitor to Voldemort. They knew that Voldemort had gone to the Potters' on his information and was defeated there, and Death Eaters who had avoided Azkaban would know that, too.

"Huh," said Harry. "I never really thought about that. The Death Eaters I saw in the graveyard didn't say anything. Voldemort already had Wormtail and vouched for him when he came back." His friends all looked uneasy at him mentioning it so casually.

"Lupin was right," said Professor Sprout. "There was no good reason for an innocent man to spend twelve years as a rat."

"A pet rat! In a cage!" Tonks exclaimed.

"And he'd have been welcomed as a hero if he showed himself," Kingsley agreed. "For all he didn't deserve it."

Regardless, Sirius's story seemed to hang together much better than Pettigrew's, especially seeing as he thought Remus had been the spy and so hadn't confided in him. But even so, the children weren't fully convinced, as Hermione pointed out.

"'Well—Scabbers—I mean, this—this man—he's been sleeping in Harry's dormitory for three years—'"

Flitwick's next statement was interrupted as Neville, Dean, and Seamus, who hadn't quite made the connection, reacted loudly.

"Ew! Gross!" Seamus yelled.

"That's just wrong!" said Dean.

Neville was trembling, but not with fear as he might have at the time. "That bastard," he growled. "If I ever get my hands on him…"

"Yeah, well, now you know how I feel," grumbled Ron.

But that wasn't her only question, either.

"'If you don't mind me asking, how—how did you get out of Azkaban, if you didn't use Dark Magic?'"

"Yes, I'd very much like to know that, too," said Madam Bones.

The answer of course was Animagus, but Madam Bones nodded along in an exasperated way when she heard the exact details. Meanwhile, Pettigrew was still trying every last line he could think of to get himself out of trouble, including some truly boneheaded ones.

"'Ron…haven't I been a good friend…a good pet?'"

Ron bent down and stared resolutely at the table so he wouldn't have to face the stares of everyone watching him right now.

"Wow. Of all the words that shouldn't go together…" said Natalie.

"But Ron was staring at Pettigrew with the utmost revulsion.

"'I let you sleep in my bed!' he said."

The horrified uproar was deafening. Harry could just barely hear it when Ron's head thudded against the table, and he groaned, "Just kill me now."

The noise was just dying down when Natalie added in a flawless deadpan, "No, I was wrong. That was worse." Enough people heard it that a wave of nervous laughter mingled with gasps circled the Hall. Ron tried to glare at her, but he was still too mortified to pull it off.

Up at the High Table, Percy was if anything taking it even worse. He sputtered incoherently: "I—but he—can't believe—I thought—"

"Let me guess; you did too?" Tonks asked.

Percy gagged loudly. "I think I'm gonna be sick," he said, and he jumped up and bolted from the Great Hall, already looking green around the gills.

"Okay…that was even more dramatic than I expected," Tonks muttered.

McGonagall stared uneasily, considering how to address this problem. That sort of invasion was a nightmare for a school—the kind that cast a shadow on the entire institution, and Madam Bones was already here. Publicly (more publicly, anyway) was unthinkable. But she shot Madam Pomfrey a meaningful look, and she nodded. Knowing her, the Matron would check over all of the boys in Weasley's dorm, just in case, even though Minerva privately doubted there was any such issue. Pettigrew was a coward and a traitor, but he didn't have the feel of an abuser.

Bones shook her head and rubbed her temples. "Just…just keep going," she said.

Pettigrew did keep going in the next story, next appealing to Hermione and then to Harry himself.

"'Harry ... Harry ... you look just like your father ... just like him. ...'"

"'HOW DARE YOU SPEAK TO HARRY?' roared Black." The students jumped at Flitwick shouted the words. "'HOW DARE YOU FACE HIM? HOW DARE YOU TALK ABOUT JAMES IN FRONT OF HIM?'" People flinched at the anger in his voice. This was different from when he tried to imitate Snape. His voice still didn't sound much like Sirius's, but the tone was spot on. Harry could hear the genuine anger this time.

Pettigrew still tried everything he could think of, the coward, but he finally admitted to his deeds with the last excuse he could muster.

"'You don't understand!' Pettigrew whined. 'He would have killed me, Sirius!'"

"'THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED!' roared Black. 'DIED RATHER THAN BETRAY YOUR FRIENDS, AS WE WOULD HAVE DONE FOR YOU!'"

Flitwick was so into it by now that some of the students shouted and cheered in agreement—as did Tonks. In the story, Sirius and Remus were predictably unmoved. But just as they were prepared to kill the rat, Harry completely flipped his earlier thoughts of murder and jumped in front of him.

"'You can't kill him,' he said. "You can't."

"WHAT?!" roared many of the listeners.

"Harry, why would you do that?" Neville said, looking indignant this time.

But the book explained it soon enough: "'I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing it because—I don't reckon my dad would've wanted them to become killers—just for you.'"

"You didn't want to kill him yourself?" Neville repeated. "After you wanted to kill Black before?"

"But I didn't want that either," Harry said. "Not really. That's why I didn't do it." He saw Neville's darkened expression and guessed what he was thinking. "Look, Voldemort—even the Lestranges, they're different. They've always had it in for us. You have to kill them before they kill you. But Pettigrew…it's like I said. He wasn't worth it. He was just too pathetic…And maybe it was a mistake," he admitted. "I thought it was a mistake afterwards, but that's what I thought."

Neville was still frowning, but he relaxed fractionally and nodded in acknowledgement. In the story, with Pettigrew's fate decided, they tied him up, bound Ron's broken leg, and levitated Snape in front of them, still unconscious. And to make sure he didn't get away, they bound Ron and Remus to Pettigrew with conjured chains and headed back up to the castle.

Hermione sighed and smacked her forehead. "The chains didn't stop Pettigrew from transforming," she said. "We should have thought of that. He probably could've run for it any time once you were out of the tunnel."

"Sirius and Remus threatened him not to, though," Harry pointed out.

"We were going to send him to Azkaban. At some point, even he might have decided to take his chances."

"Maybe," he admitted. "I'm don't know how you contain an Animagus, though." He smirked at Hermione. "Besides catching them in animal form and putting them in a jam jar."

"Harry!" Hermione hissed, turning red.

"Well, that is the end of the chapter," Professor Flitwick said. "Unfortunately, from my recollection of that night, I'm afraid it isn't going to get any better. Pomona, you should be next."