Venus

22- Peter Pettigrew

Snape pointed his wand directly at Lupin.

"I found this at the base of the Whomping Willow," Snape threw the invisibility cloak at Harry, "very useful Potter. Thank you."

"You're wondering prehaps how I knew you were here," Snape said to Lupin, bit moving his wand.

"We weren't really," Venus informed him, "I was wondering when you were going to leave."

Snape let out a hollow laugh, "just as arrogant as your father." He turned back to Lupin, ignoring Black, who was shaking with rage, "I was at your office Lupin, you forgot to take your potion, so I bought you a goblet full and I saw the map on your desk. Once glance at it told me exactly where you were." Snape smirked, "I told the headmaster that you were helping your old pal Black, and here's the proof! Two more for Azkaban tonight!"

"Is a school boy grudge worth sending an innocent man back to Azkaban!" Lupin asked.

BANG! a thin chord spilled from Snape's wand and wrapped around Lupin. Paralyzing him.

Black let out a roar of rage and started forwards.

"Give me a reason!" Snape pointed his wand at Blacks face, "give me a reason and I swear I will! Now let's get outside and I'll call the dementors, they'll be pleased to see you, maybe enough to give you a little kiss."

Black's face drained of colour, "you have to hear me out!" He croaked, "the rat, look at the rat!"

"C'mon all of you!" Snape clicked his fingers and the ropes that bound Lupin flew into his hands, "I'll drag the Werewolf, prehaps the dementors will have a kiss for him too."

"Professor Lupin could've killed me about a hundred times this year!" Harry protested, "if he was helping Back, why didn't he just finish me off then?"

"Don't ask me to fathom the way a Werewolf's mind works," Snape said, "now get out of the way!"

"You're pathetic!" Venus interjected, "just because you didn't like them at school, you won't even listen!"

"Silence girl!" Snape snapped, "I WILL NOT BE SPOKEN TO LIKE THIS! If he had killed you, Potter, you would have died like your father, too arrogant to believe that you might be mistaken in trusting Black, and Weasley your mother trusted him irrationally too, and look where that got then both! Dead."

"You shouldn't have said that," Venus raised her wand. "STUPIFY!

"EXPELLIARMUS!" Harry yelled at the same time. Hermione and Ron had also shouted spells.

Snape flew backwards, he hit the wall with a crunch and a trickle of blood made it's way down his face. He had been knocked out.

"You should have left him to me!" Black said in a growl.

Hermione was murmuring about how they'd attacked a teacher.

Black bent down quickly and untied Lupin, who straightened up and thanked them.

"I'm still not saying I believe you!" Harry said.

"Then it's time we offered you some proof," Black turned to Ron, "give Peter here now."

"You're having a laugh," Ron clutched the rat, "you're saying that you broke out of Azkaban just to get your hands on Scabbers!" Ron looked to the others for support, "okay, say Pettigrew could turn into a rat, there are millions of rats, how are you supposed to know which one is Pettigrew if you were locked up in Azkaban?"

"That's a fair question," Lupin turned to Black, "how did you know where he was?"

Black pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his robes and held out to show the others.

It was the photograph of the Weasleys that had been in the Daily Prophet in the summer and on Ron's shoulder was Scabbers.

"How did you get this?" Lupin asked.

"Fudge," said Black, "when he came to inspect Azkaban last summer, he gave me his paper and there on the front page was Pettigrew, just inches away from my daughter. I knew him at once, how many times had I seen him transform? And the caption said that Venus and Ron would be going back to Hogwarts, to where Harry was."

"My God!" Lupin stared at Scabbers. "His front paw!"

"What about it?" Ron demanded.

"He's missing a toe!" Venus spotted.

"Of course!" Lupin smacked himself, "he cut it off."

"Just before he transformed." Black confirmed, "he yelled for the whole street to hear that I'd betrayed Lily and James, then he blew apart the street behind him and sped down into the sewer."

"The biggest part of Peter they ever found was his finger," Lupin murmered.

"Look, he's been in my family for agers!" Ron defended.

"Twelve years infact!" Lupin agreed, "didn't it seem strange that a common rat was living so long?"

"We've been taking good care of him!" Ron hugged the rat close.

"Not looking too good at the moment though is he?" Lupin added, "I bet he's been losing weight ever since he heard that Sirius was out."

"He's been scared of that mad cat!"

"Ron he wasn't well before that though," Venus recalled, he started getting I'll just before we left Egypt."

"This cat isn't mad," Sirius insisted, "he recognized Peter for what he was, and he knew I was no dog! It was a while before he trusted me, but when he did he was able to help me, he tried to bring Peter to me, then he stole the passwords into Gryffindor common room. But Peter got wind of what was happening and faked his own death again."

"And why did he fake his own death?" Harry demanded. "Because he knew you were about to kill him, like you killed my parents, and now you're here to finish him off!"

"Yes I am," Black growled.

"Then I should've let Snape take you." Harry growled back.

"Harry!" Lupin said, "all this time we thought Sirius betrayed your parents, but it was Peter!"

"That's not true!" Harry yelled, "he was their secret keeper!"

"Harry I as good as killed them," Black croaked, his words were filled with remorse, "I persuaded Lily and James to switch to Peter at the last minute, to use him as secret keeper instead of me, I'm to blame. The night they died I was going to check on Peter. I thought that I'd only be minuets, I left Venus, but when I got there he was gone, it didn't feel right, I was scared so I headed to your house straight away, and when I saw your house I knew what had happened. I realised what Peter had done. What I had done."

"Enough of this." Lupin turned to Ron, "there's one sure way to find out what really happened, Ron give us that rat. We're going to force him to show himself, if he really is a rat it won't hurt him."

At long last Ron held out Scabbers.

Lupin took him. The rat attempted to escape.

Sirius had retrieved Snape's wand from the bed.

"Together," Black said.

Lupin nodded, on the count of three. 1, 2, 3-" there was a flash of blue light, Scabbers fell to the floor, twisting. There was another flash and the rat transformed into a man.

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~Em zz