Aunt Rose

55.

"The Map was lying then!" Harry was as stubborn as his father. He couldn't fathom what the adults were trying to tell him.

"The Map never lies! It was made by your Aunt, Harry. Pettigrew's alive! And he's right there!" Sirius defended the reliability of the Map before he turned to point at Ron, at the rat in Ron's arms.

"Me?! He's mental!" Ron was terrified and he was confused.

Sirius sighed dramatically. "Not you. Your rat!"

Ron furrowed his brows as the rat began to squirm, he couldn't believe the accusation.

"Scabbers has been in my family for..."

"Twelve years?! That's a curiously long life for a common garden rat." Sirius was revealing the evidence, piece by piece. "He's missing a toe, isn't he?"

"So what?" Ron replied, staring up at the murderer who was getting closer to him.

"All they could find of Pettigrew was his fi..."

"Finger!" Sirius cut Harry off so he could explain what truly happened. "The dirty coward cut it off so everyone would think he was dead! And then he transformed into a rat."

Sirius was glaring down at the squealing rat in Ron's arms. He knew Pettigrew could hear everything.

Harry looked back at his Aunt. He needed to see her agree, to see her confirm what Sirius was saying.

And she did. Rose looked at her nephew and nodded. It was true; Peter was an animagus.

"Show me."

That's all Sirius needed to hear. He reached forward and fought with Ron for a moment, trying to pull the rat away by its scruff.

"Give it took him, Ron," Harry ordered.

Rose couldn't comfort Ron about his rat then. No, she needed to make sure Pettigrew was truly revealed. She needed to see his cowardly face.

So when Sirius had hold of it, both she and Remus got their wands ready.

With a silent countdown, Sirius tossed the rat onto the piano.

Immediately it started to run. And since it was so small, hitting it with the spell was a difficult task. They missed a few and hit the piano. For a moment, when the rat got to the ground and ran for a hole in the wall, Rose thought he would get away.

She wouldn't let that happen.

As soon as the rat tried to leap through the hole, Rose closed one eye, raised her wand, and cast the spell.

And like that, there he was.

Suddenly the rat wasn't a small creature anymore. Instead, everyone was staring at the behind of a human man. It was him.

Rose stood back with her wand raised while Remus and Sirius moved to pull Pettigrew from the wall. She was covering the door.

The boys pulled their old friend out of the wall and tossed him back into the middle of the room. He looked awful.

Peter was balding on the top of his head and his teeth had grown to resemble a rat's. His nails were unsanitary and long, and his nose was scrunched up like he was sniffing something.