"DON'T LIE!" Black roared. "You'd been passing him information for a year before Lily and James died! You were his spy!"
"He was taking power everywhere!" Pettigrew panted. "What was the point of standing up to him?"
"What was the point of standing up to the most evil wizard in history?" Black snarled. "Only saving innocent lives, Peter!"
"You don't understand!" whimpered Pettigrew. "He would have killed me, Sirius."
"THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED!" Black bellowed. "Better to die than betray your friends! Any of us would have chosen death rather than betray you!"
Black and Lupin stood side by side, wands raised.
"You should have realised," Lupin said quietly, "that if Voldemort didn't kill you, we would. Goodbye, Peter."
Hermione covered her face with her hands and turned to the wall.
"No," Harry said softly. "You can't kill him."
The three adults turned to look at him, one of them with hopeful eyes.
"Harry, I don't think you understand the pain this… this rat has caused Sirius and me," Lupin said, stepping closer. "I hope you never go through anything like it, but… imagine that instead of James and Lily it was Hermione and Ron…"
"I don't need you to explain anything; I understand perfectly," Harry cut in. "I'm not saying he should live. I'm only sayingyoucan't be the ones to kill him. If anyone has suffered most because of him, it's me," he added grimly.
Behind him, Hermione let out a choking sound.
"Harry, you can't be serious… We have to hand him over to the Ministry—they'll deal with him! Or to Professor Dumbledore—"
"For what? So a Dementor can kiss him? Hermione, for someone who doesn't want him killed, what you're proposing is even darker," Harry replied curtly. "No, it's not enough. What he did is unforgivable. He deserves no compassion. And it wasn't cowardice—cowards take the easy way out. He acted fully aware of what he was doing."
Sirius began to laugh, a laugh teetering on the edge of madness. "If I didn't know you were James and Lily's son, I'd take you for a pure-blood, Harry. My mother would be proud to hear you."
"Sirius, please… Don't encourage him, he's thirteen; he doesn't mean it," Lupin interjected.
"Are you sure? For my godfathers, you don't seem to know me that well. Or have you forgotten that last year I had to face a basilisk alone? Or that in first year I faced not only a troll but Voldemort himself possessing a teacher?" Harry cut in sarcastically. "Let's see how serious I am…"
Pointing his wand at the cringing, sobbing traitor who had betrayed his parents, he murmured the Levitation Charm; Pettigrew began to rise slowly from the floor.
"You don't have to prove anything, Harry. I don't doubt your abilities; I'm only trying to protect you," Lupin said, slipping into the tone of a professor addressing an eager student. "There's no spell taught at Hogwarts that can be used forthat, by the way."
The look Harry gave him—brief, but chilling—made Lupin shudder. It wasn't the look of a pre-teen trying to show off, nor a simple glare of anger. It was hatred savoured, a concentratednow we'll see.
"In first year, Ron used this same spell on the troll's club to levitate it and drop it on its head," Harry said calmly. "If a first-year, after a few months of lessons, could lift that weight, what happens with an angry third-year?"
With a sharp flick of his wrist, Pettigrew was hurled violently against one of the wooden columns supporting the Shrieking Shack. His head struck first, taking the full impact; a crack sounded before he collapsed onto the dusty floor of the abandoned room.
Silence thundered in the aftermath, broken only by Sirius's manic laughter and Hermione's cry, "Harry! What have you done?"
"Justice," he whispered.
