All three teenagers started shouting at once, Katherine however remained quiet. It didn't make sense, but nothing about this situation made sense. If it really was Peter Pettigrew, then why has he been living as Scabbers for 12 years.
"Peter Pettigrew's dead, you killed him twelve years ago!" Harry yelled. Katherine placed the heel of her hands against her eyes. This was all quickly becoming too much.
"I meant to, but little Peter got the better of me not this time though" Sirius snarled, he lunged for Scabbers, and in the process Ron, so Katherine lunged at him and sent them both tumbling to the floor. Lupin picked him up and dragged him backward a little to create some distance in between him and the teenagers. Lupin knew Katherine's temper was wearing thin by the way her purple eyes seemed to shine brighter.
"Sirius no, they have a right to know everything" Lupin was trying to restrain Black to stop him lunging at the rat again. "Ron's kept him as a pet, there are parts that even I don't understand! And Harry, you owe Harry the truth Sirius" Katherine had enough, her fuse had blown.
"ENOUGH" everyone went silent, even the rat stopped squeaking. "If you have something to explain I suggest you get on with it before I bang your bloody heads together" Both men looked at her, Sirius's mouth was opening and closing, and Lupin looked stunned before he seemed to collect himself and begin speaking.
"Katherines right, your going to hear me out Ron, just keep a tight hold of peter."
"He's not Peter, he's Scabbers!" Ron cried, Katherine just sent him a look and he instantly shut up.
"There were witness who saw him kill Pettigrew, a whole street of them" Harry pointed out.
"They didn't see what they thought they saw" Sirius's eyes had never left the rat in Ron's hand.
"Everyone though Sirius killed peter, I thought so too, until I saw the map tonight, and the map never lies...Peter's alive and Ron's holding him" the younger teenagers looked like they didn't believe a word coming out of Lupins mouth, however to Katherine it made perfect sense, him and Sirius, and probably Harry's father were unregistered Animagi.
"He's an unregistered Animagus isn't he?" Lupin looked at Katherine, then at Sirius and nodded, "So is Sirius, and since I know for a fact, there was four marauders one was probably Harry's father as well" both of the men nodded again.
"Your right Katherine, the ministry never knew there were three unregistered Animagi running around Hogwarts".
"If you going to tell them the story, get a move on Remus" Sirius snapped, he still hadn't taken his eyes off the rat.
"All right but you need to help me, I only know how it began" Just then Katherines hearing picked up footsteps and then a loud creak had sounded from the door behind them all, Katherine pulled in her wings, she didn't need anyone else knowing about them, her eyes however stayed purple. She stepped towards the door and looked onto the landing. "No one's there..." Lupins voice sounded from behind he, but she knew there was, she could hear their breathing, the cloak might have made it undetectable to the human ear, but she wasn't fully human.
"This place is Haunted" Muttered Ron.
"It's not" He glanced back at the door which Katherine had now moved from to take her place back in front of the teenagers. "The shrieking Shack has never been haunted, the screams and howls were made by me". Taking a breath Katherine saw a flicker of a common emotion in his eyes. He hated the way he was it softened her heart just a little as it was something she could relate to, "That's where all this starts, with my becoming a werewolf. None of this could have happened if I hadn't been bitten, and if I hadn't been so foolhardy" Ron started to interrupt but was silenced immediately by Katherine and Hermione. "I was a small boy when I received the bite. My parents tied everything, but in those days, there was no cure" Katherine noticed how tired he looked, "The Potion that Professor Snape has been making for me is a very recent discovery. It makes me safe; you see. As long as I take it in the week preceding the full moon, I keep my mind when I transform ... I am able to curl up in my office, a harmless wolf, and wait for the moon to wane again".
"'Before the Wolfsbane Potion was discovered, however, I became a fully-fledged monster once a month. It seemed impossible that I would be able to come to Hogwarts. Other parents weren't likely to want their children exposed to me. 'But then Dumbledore became Headmaster, and he was sympathetic. He said that, as long as we took certain precautions, there was no reason I shouldn't come to school ..." Lupin sighed. "I told you, months ago, that the Whomping Willow was planted the year I came to Hogwarts. The truth is that it was planted because I had come to Hogwarts. This house the tunnel that leads to it – they were built for my use. Once a month, I was smuggled out of the castle, into this place, to transform. The tree was placed at the tunnel mouth to stop anyone coming across me while I was dangerous".
The room descended into a brief moment of silence and Katherine could feel her anger fading, replaced by a heart clenching sadness for the fact the Lupin had been experiencing this since he was a child. "My transformations in those days were – were terrible. It is very painful to turn into a werewolf. I was separated from humans to bite, so I bit and scratched myself instead. The villagers heard the noise and the screaming and thought they were hearing particularly violent spirits. Dumbledore encouraged the rumour ... even now, when the house has been silent for years, the villagers don't dare approach it ... But apart from my transformations, I was happier than I had ever been in my life. For the first time ever, I had friends, three great friends. Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew, and, of course, your father, Harry – James Potter. Now, my three friends could hardly fail to notice that I disappeared once a month. I made up all sorts of stories. I told them my mother was ill, and that I had to go home to see her ... I was terrified they would desert me the moment they found out what I was. But of course, they, like you, Katherine, worked out the truth. And they didn't desert me at all. Instead, they did something for me that would make my transformations not only bearable, but the best times of my life. They became Animagi."
"I told you" Katherine mumbled, but no one was paying attention to her.
"My dad too?" Harry sounded surprised, I mean Katherine isn't surprised, Harry has never had the chance to know his parents.
"Yes indeed. It took them the best part of three years to work out how to do it. Your father and Sirius here were the cleverest students in the school, and lucky they were, because the Animagus transformation can go horribly wrong. One reason the Ministry keeps a close watch on those attempting to do it. Peter needed all the help he could get from James and Sirius. Finally, in our fifth year, they managed it. They could each turn into a different animal at will."
"But how did that help you?" Katherine looked over at Hermione who had asked Lupin the question.
"Because as animals werewolf Lupin was no danger to them 'Mione" Katherine responded before anyone else could. She remembers all of this because of her parent's experiments.
"That's right Katherine" Katherine gave Lupin a faint smile.
"Hurry up Remus" Black sounded more desperate than ever.
"Alright I'm getting there Sirius, well, highly exciting possibilities were open to us now, we could all transform. Soon we were leaving the Shrieking Shack and roaming the school grounds and the village by night. Sirius and James transformed into such large animals; they were able to keep a werewolf in check. I doubt whether any Hogwarts students ever found out more about the Hogwarts grounds and Hogsmeade than we did ... And that's how we came to write the Marauder's Map and sign it with our nicknames. Sirius is Padfoot. Peter is Wormtail. James was Prongs."
"That was still dangerous, running around in the dark with a werewolf, what if you'd given the others the slip and bitten someone!" Hermione cried, Katherine snorted.
"Unlikely 'Mione, I'm more dangerous than he is, and yet the twins tried to come into the forest to see me shift" Hermione looked down, but deep-down Katherine knew she was right.
"A thought that still haunts me, and there were near misses, many of them. We laughed about them afterwards. We were young, thoughtless – carried away with our own cleverness. I sometimes felt guilty about betraying Dumbledore's trust, of course, he had admitted me to Hogwarts when no other headmaster would have done so, and he had no idea I was breaking the rules he had set down for my own and others' safety. He never knew I had led three fellow students into be-coming Animagi illegally. But I always managed to forget my guilty feelings every time we sat down to plan our next month's adventure. And I haven't changed ..." He looked away in disgust at himself, "All this year, I have been battling with myself, wondering whether I should tell Dumbledore that Sirius was an Animagus. But I didn't do it. Why? Because I was too cowardly. It would have meant admitting that I'd betrayed his trust while I was at school, admitting that I'd led others along with me, and Dumbledore's trust has meant everything to me. He let me into Hogwarts as a boy, and he gave me a job, when I have been shunned all my adult life, unable to find paid work because of what I am. And so, I convinced myself that Sirius was getting into the school using dark arts he learned from Voldemort, that being an Animagus had nothing to do with it ... so, in a way, Snape's been right about me all along" Sirius looked at Remus.
"Snape? What's Snape got to do with it?" He had finally taken his eyes off the Rat to address his friend.
"He teachers here Sirius" He looked at the teenagers, "Professor Snape was at school with us. He fought very hard against my appointment to the Defence Against the Dark Arts job. He has been telling Dumbledore all year that I am not to be trusted. He has his reasons, you see, Sirius here played a trick on him which nearly killed him, a trick which involved me – "Sirius made a sound which sounded like a snort.
"It severed him right, sneaking around trying to find out what we were up to, hoping he could get us expelled" It was Katherines turn to snort, seems like snape hadn't changed much.
"Severus was very interested in where I went every month," Lupin told the teenagers. "We were in the same year, you know, and we, er, didn't like each other very much. He especially disliked James. Jealous, I think, of James's talent on the Quidditch pitch, anyway, Snape had seen me crossing the grounds with Madam Pomfrey one evening as she led me towards the Whomping Willow to transform. Sirius thought it would be, er, amusing, to tell Snape all he had to do was prod the knot on the tree-trunk with a long stick, and he'd be able to get in after me. Well, of course, Snape tried it, if he'd got as far as this house, he'd have met a fully grown werewolf, but your father, who'd heard what Sirius had done, went after Snape and pulled him back, at great risk to his life, Snape glimpsed me, though, at the end of the tunnel. He was forbidden to tell anybody by Dumbledore, but from that time on he knew what I was" Lupin looked at the faces of the shocked teenagers.
"So that's why snape doesn't like you, because the thought you were in on the joke?" Katherine whipped round as she heard the door creak again.
"That's right" Snaped pulled off the invisibility cloak that Harry must have left near the whomping willow, with his wand pointing at the two men....