Book of Memories

Chapter 13: PETTIGREW'S PLEA

Sunday morning, Harry entered the Great Hall amongst lots of fellow Gryffindors wanting to ask him questions.

"Where'd you go?"

"What'd you do?"

"How come you got to stay out so late and didn't get punished? No fair!"

"How come you both came back sopping wet, huh, Harry?"

"Potter's got a girlfriend!"

As much as his instinct wanted him to deny this last sneer, the reality was, it was true. Still grinning like he was last night, Harry sat down between Ron and Hermione.

"You're awfully happy this morning," said Hermione with an air of superiority. "So was it a good idea after all?"

"It was a great idea," said Harry cheerfully as he snatched a bagel, cut it in half and buttered it.

"So?" asked Ron. "What's she like?"

"Until you tell me anything about Fleur I'm not telling you anything about Cho," said Harry sharply.

Ron frowned. It didn't look like he was going to spill anything on Fleur.

Harry found some peace and quiet during his classes that morning. It wasn't until Hermione got a little bit edgy with her frequent I-told-you-so's did Harry start to get a little upset.

Ron kept telling Harry that she'll stop eventually but Hermione did it all through Defense Against the Dark Arts while they were reading more of Harry Potter: Lucky or Legendary. She continued to say it all through Paladism where Dumbledore showed everyone how to mend cuts with potions they had made previously in class. Hermione's "I told you so" speech pinnacled during lunch that afternoon.

"I told you so," said Hermione for the thousandth time.

"I'm starting to get sick of hearing that," said a now-annoyed Harry.

"Well if you had such a good time with her -- I mean, you were nervous at first, right?"

"You might say that."

"But look at you now! Happy as could be. Should've gone sooner, that's all."

"Yes and I'm quite sick of hearing it, Hermione," said Harry sharply.

"Fine," Hermione snapped. "You obviously don't appreciate my efforts." And she started towards the Great Hall. Harry tutted loudly.

"Hermione -" Ron called after her, but -

"Leave her alone," said Harry. "She's been so annoying all morning. She needs to know how it feels."

"I don't get it, why'd she get so upset?"

Harry shrugged. Hermione exited the Great Hall as Ron looked uncertainly after her.

Ron and Harry were going to return to eating normally but just moments after she was out of sight, she returned, panting. Every head turned as Hermione came storming back in, stopping midway between the entrance and the staff table, screaming at the top of her lungs.

"PETER PETTIGREW!" she thundered.

The room went deadly quiet and Professor Dumbledore abruptly stopped his conversation with Professor McGonagall to stand up and look at her.

"JUST RAN INTO HIM!"

Before anyone else had a chance to say or do anything, the dormant hatred Harry had for Pettigrew, otherwise known as Wormtail to his friends at Hogwarts and among those friends, Harry's dad, was wakened. Fireworks were going off in the pit of Harry's stomach. How dearly would he like to have Wormtail quivering at his feet, his wand pointed at Wormtail's balding head...

Ron didn't have time to stop him. Harry leapt out of his seat, grabbed Hermione's arm and dashed out of the Great Hall. If Wormtail had the guts to slip out from underneath Harry's fingers and yet more guts to turn up at Hogwarts, then he wouldn't mind seeing Harry face to face when Harry only had one thing on his mind: to kill.

"What do you plan on doing?" Hermione asked him anxiously as Harry lead her through the entrance hall, looking every which way.

"What the hell do you think I'm going to do when I get my hands on him?" Harry said hotly. "Where'd you see him?"

"Heading upstairs. Harry, what are you -"

She didn't get to finish. Harry let go of her arm and hurried up the marble staircase towards the next floor.

Very quickly, Harry realized this was next to useless. Hogwarts was huge and Wormtail could be anywhere. Harry searched the second floor as fast as he could and hurried up towards the next floor... It took several minutes to search the entire floor, trying to remember all the passages and trying not to forget whether he'd been down that path or not. He ran towards the stairs towards then the next floor... then the next...

As he rounded the stairs to the sixth floor he saw a rat bounding down the corridor.

"WORMTAIL!" he roared and dashed as fast as he could, which, and he didn't take notice to, had him across a very long corridor in a very short amount of time.

Harry seized the tail of the rat, assured it was the one he wanted because it had a silver paw on the same side that it used to have a toe missing. It was a magical hand Voldemort had given Wormtail for having to cut off his own two years ago. Wormtail dangled in front of Harry, swinging back and forth madly, practically all of it's fur missing.

And now, Harry wanted the rat to turn into a man. Sirius and Lupin knew a way to force Wormtail to transform but they didn't hadn't made an incantation and Harry had only seen a flash of blue-white light with Wormtail hanging in midair. None of that was any help.

He pulled his wand out from his robes and stupidly pointed it at the rat dangling in his other hand. All he wanted was to turn the rat into a man and he had absolutely no idea how. Maybe if he really, really wanted it to happen?

"C'mon," he muttered, "do something!"

He waved his wand, feeling very stupid and glad Hermione couldn't see him. Nothing happened but Harry continued jiggling it. At one point, he grunted.

And then it happened.

Inexplicably, miraculously, unbelievably a burst of blue-white light shot out of his wand at the rat. Heart thumping, Harry let go, Wormtail hanging in midair, and watched the slow motion transformation of Wormtail from a rat to a full grown -- or at least full grown for his size -- man.

"You!" Harry breathed.

The short, bald and pathetic figure of Wormtail quivered on the spot, crumpled up on the floor.

"No!" he cried, trying to shout but it came out as a mere whisper. "P-please! D-don't hurt m-me!" His eyes didn't meet Harry's and, in fact, he didn't look Harry in the face.

But, don't hurt him? Is he crazy?

"WHAT?" Harry roared, gaping open-mouth with a look of shock on his face that was beyond disbelief. It was painful to hear Wormtail ask not to be hurt. "DON'T HURT YOU?"

"Y-you -- h-hear me out!" cried Wormtail.

Harry dropped his wand as well as his disbelief (exchanging it for wanting Wormtail dead again) and said, more like a statement then a question, "Why."

"Because -"

"Harry!" shrieked a voice from behind him.

Harry wheeled around to see Professors Dumbledore, Snape and McGonagall charging down the corridor. Harry's frame covered Wormtail, but when they caught sight of him, Professor McGonagall shrieked, clasping a hand to her heart; Snape abruptly stopped moving and Dumbledore slowed to a stop.

"Pettigrew!" McGonagall shrieked again. "What - what is he doing here?"

"I'd like to know that myself," said Harry hotly, rounding on Wormtail again, who continued to avoid looking at Harry like he was some sort of wizard far more fearsome than Voldemort... or was it because he was hiding something and he thought Harry might figure it out? He had figured things out before...

Snape looked far too angry for words, an attitude that, for once, mirrored Harry's (and about the same person, too). Dumbledore had his ears tuned to Wormtail.

"I ran," Wormtail said through heavy breath, looking at Dumbledore, still whimpering, still crumpled up on the floor and still looking pathetic, "escaped... from the Dark Lord. P-planning t-to come back!"

"HE'S LYING!" Harry roared, the look that was beyond disbelief now back on his face. "WHY WOULD HE RUN?"

"You have to believe me!" cried Wormtail who now rounded on Professor McGonagall.

Harry pointed his wand at Wormtail threateningly and simply said, "Why'd you run from Voldemort -- what, still shiver at his name?"

Harry bent down and whispered the name in Wormtail's ear, to which Wormtail then covered his head with his stubby arms. Harry grinned and stood straight again. Normally, Harry was not mean but there was no helping himself with Wormtail in his presence, a person that had willingly changed his life for the worse.

Wormtail sniffed. "My Lord is planning to steal something!"

"What?" Harry began coldly. "What does he want? No," he then said, stopping Wormtail from changing the subject. "Nevermind. You ran for it when Lupin turned into a werewolf! I'm gonna do what I didn't get to do last time!"

"Harry, calm yourself," said Dumbledore as he put a hand on Harry's shoulder. Harry shrugged him off.

"This piece of vermin is the reason I have no parents! I gave Sirius and Lupin permission to kill him if he ran and HE DID!" Harry's wand hand was trembling.

"And killing him will do nothing if he's not lying -"

"BUT - HE - IS!"

Gone from Harry's mind was the night with Cho and all he wanted was revenge -- sweet, delicious revenge.

"You will go back to your dormitory," Dumbledore said sharply. There was no point in arguing.

"Fine," said Harry, not taking his eyes off Wormtail and stuffing his wand back in his pocket. "But he's still lying"

Harry made an about face and walked away, fists clenched and denied, from the scene, taking many backward glances at Wormtail who still refused to look Harry in the face. He was hiding something. Why wouldn't he be able to look Harry in the face? Harry knew. Wormtail's guilt would show.

When Harry arrived at the Fat Lady's portrait, she asked him why he was running so fast. Harry told her he saw a stray rat that needed to be killed. When she admitted him into the common room, the questions flying at him were totally indistinguishable. The first question that he caught in it's entirety was -

"What's he doing at Hogwarts?" Hermione shuffled over.

"I don't know," Harry began, "He's an Animagus, you know. Tried to hide by turning into a rat. Dumbledore wouldn't let me kill him... shame," he added without any pity. Harry noticed his wand hand was still shaking and grabbed it with the other hand to curb the shakiness. "Voldemort" -- to which everyone that could hear him flinched -- "wants something. Wormtail says he ran. I don't believe him and I don't want to talk about it," he said flatly.

There was no taking Harry's mind off the simple but important fact that he was an inch away from killing Wormtail, either by magic or by elbow grease, for the rest of the day. The next day at breakfast, Professor Dumbledore called Harry aside as he tried to leave the Great Hall for his first class: Potions.

"I ask that you stay out of trouble this year, that you leave your Invisibility Cloak at the bottom of your trunk and that you not wander the school after hours, among others things, or I am afraid I will have to" -- and he hesitated for a tense moment before continuing -- "insist on greater punishments than detention."

Harry had the sick feeling that this meant getting expelled. He had the same sick feeling that he was going to be expelled twice before and once it had actually come true last year. Never, ever did he want that again.

Harry had become more than frightened, more than sickened and more than beaten up with the gross reality that he would have to live as a Muggle, forever banished from the wizarding world. Fortunately, it was due to his own safety and the expulsion was only temporary. He more than gratefully accepted the fact that Dumbledore was acting out of Harry's best interest during the month absence from Hogwarts.

Okay, Harry thought, possibly he could manage it -- or rather, he better. But again, time and time again, had his honest to goodness willingness to stay out of trouble been put to a test and thoroughly shattered by unforgiving circumstances. Harry grudgingly accepted the fact, however much he reminded Dumbledore that he thought Wormtail a liar, that Dumbledore had full trust. For once in his life did Harry think Dumbledore wrong and it came as no surprise to him that Ron and Hermione agreed.

"Out of his mind. What is he thinking?"

"He's just trusting him with nothing to go on?"

It just seemed a bit odd that, in all his efforts to stymie Voldemort, all his precautions and all the protections, that Dumbledore trusted Wormtail. Dumbledore himself had been hoodwinked two years ago. The Triwizard Cup had been a Portkey and it had transported Harry and Cedric right into Voldemort's hands and Voldemort had risen to power again. Needless to say, Harry thought Dumbledore mad to trust Wormtail and rightly so after one particular incident that very same day. Unfortunately, his word to Dumbledore was also tested that very same day.

Harry had seen Wormtail several times that morning before breakfast which was strange in itself as he only had two classes. Wormtail seemed to trod up and down the corridors and reappear at the very next one Harry was to go down to. At the fifth time before heading off to Divination, he had to ask something.

"You're not following me, are you?" he asked casually. Wormtail turned to look at who spoke to him but quickly turned his head away at the sight of Harry.

"No, w-why would you think that?" he squeaked.

Harry shot the back of Wormtail's head a nasty looked and climbed the ladder into Professor Trelawney's hot and musty classroom. He made a mental note to express his great anger at Dumbledore for trusting Wormtail in the slightest while listening to a boring speech on how to interpret dreams to which he paid no attention -- his were always cut and dry.

"Dumbledore's off his rocker," said Ron later that night in the Gryffindor commons.

They all nodded in agreement, along with the rest of the Gryffindors, as they all felt exactly the same on the subject. There wasn't much to be said. It only took a few days' time for the entire school to be untrustworthy of Wormtail.

In other matters, the Gryffindor team's first Quidditch practice of the season was especially excellent due to Harry's determination in continually using Mr. Weasley's advice of simply putting it out of his mind -- Harry caught the Golden Snitch every other minute. None to his own surprise, for that matter, as he had finally learned to control the immense speed of his faithful Dragonback. Flying at speeds close to three hundred miles per hour when he wanted to was no longer a terrorizing experience.

Just as he once saw Viktor Krum flying through the air on his own Firebolt as if it was a natural extension of his body, so did Harry feel like the Dragonback was a part of him. His hands controlled his direction and leaning was his speed control -- and it all came as easy as moving his head, moving it away from the direction of the Potions master if need be...

Professor Snape had kept his low tone with Harry ever since Harry had made it sound like he was going to break every bone in Snape's body. Just as Snape had once said he would do, he sure did teach them how to bottle fame, brew glory and stopper death. Harry bottled Snape's fame and brewed his own glory but Hermione stoppered him from killing Snape.

During the next several weeks of October, Snape had taken to simply bullying Neville and leaving Harry, Ron and Hermione alone. One quick glance from Harry to Snape put a stopper on Snape's bullying of Neville, too.

"Oh, thank you!" Neville cried after class to Harry in the corridor.

"Yeah, don't mention it," said Harry dully.

On the same token, Harry's former rival, Draco Malfoy, had kept his mouth shut in Harry's presence. It's not every day you get spared of the pain and agony of having a sword cut through your chest by someone you really don't like. Of course, Harry, in reflection, wished some amount of real pain onto Malfoy.

Harry himself had had all the bones in one arm removed and painfully regrown in one night, A few months later, he found a one foot long venomous fang stuck in the same arm, fell fifty feet from an airborn broomstick and had a deep gash in his arm coupled with a broken leg and intense pain in the ominous lightning shaped scar on his forehead. That is, of course, not mentioning the time he had been cut in both ankles, both wrists and the neck, to withdraw blood from; been impaled and had a leg bitten off by an extremely large snake. Indeed, Harry knew what pain felt like but there was the time Harry thrust a needle through Malfoy's arm causing him to pass out... that was fun...

October would have finished without incident if it wasn't for a flare-up in Defense Against the Dark Arts. Professor Delacour had been reading a passage from her book, Harry Potter: Lucky or Legendary, that Harry didn't particularly feel like hearing. He was far more red in the face than he had been in recent classes. This current section of the book, she reminded the class, was a study of Harry's traits and continually labeled him under the "Legendary" category.

"'So how then does one endure such hardships year after year, month after month? Some have argued that Mr. Potter, while enduring great lows, also cheers through great highs and this is a driving force. But while many think along these lines, perhaps one should take a Time Turner to his early childhood.'"

Harry found himself taking deep, steady breaths and repeated slowly to himself "It's just a class, they're trying to figure out what your scar is," while gripping the Order of Merlin plaque tightly. Professor Delacour continued unabated.

"'Mr. Potter, having not had much acceptance from his aunt and uncle, was conditioned through childhood to take hardships, endure them and come out with something positive. Some say this is an impossible line of thought, that a child, any child, would end up being sent to a Psychologist.'"

"'While the mindset one must take on to endure such a thing for ten years can be argued to be the result of conditioning, some rebel Psychologists ensure that having never known a caring family, one -'"

"Do you have any idea how embarrassing this is?" Harry blurted out, eyes closed, not caring that he was staring up at the ceiling, one hand on the plaque, one hand situating his hair so that his scar was easily viewable.

Ron and Hermione sympathized but Professor Delacour offered no pity -- she took five points from Gryffindor for talking while she was speaking. She proceeded to take another five points when Harry called her something nasty. He suspected he might have gotten detention but she knew better -- Harry made sure that she could see the look on his face.

Hermione assured him that they would end up getting fifty or more points by the year's end for something they do. He threw a flurry of explicatives at her but she wasn't mad. She felt she deserved it in the end.

The first Quidditch game of the season came, the first Quidditch game of the season went. Gryffindor crushed Slytherin, naturally, and Harry saw fit to make it a point to celebrate with Cho on their next Hogsmeade visit. Harry began to wish Cho would come eat at the Gryffindor table -- as they had been spending lots of time talking in the corridors -- but Hermione reminded him that "she has friends, too." Harry gave her a look of deepest loathing and bit off the end of his sausage. He didn't admit it, but if someone paid any attention, they would notice that he and Cho were becoming quite close.

Of course, Harry wasn't untroubled. There was still the matter of James Griffith and James Potter and Harry seeing the latter when hearing the first name of the former. For several nights, though thankfully uncommon, did Harry find himself battling to get the image of his dad out of his head before falling asleep.

Wormtail became an annoying dust ball in the back of Harry's head while Cho and him went on their hand in hand walk to the Great Hall after every torturous Defense Against the Dark Arts class. Quickly, Cho's hand became a substitute for the Order of Merlin plaque when she was around.

Cho continued to pour a satisfying feeling into Harry's heart and a contentedness in his stomach that, no matter how brightly he smiled or how much spring there was in his step, it was insatiable. It was a feeling that he wished he could have experienced long ago but like he annoyingly kept reminding himself, his parents probably would have provided that. He wallowed in it, taking in every moment and felt slightly dejected each time Cho hugged him good bye and went towards the Ravenclaw table. She was no longer just more than a friend -- she was a release of pent up emotions.

But she wasn't a thing to make Harry feel better, she was a person he could talk to like he could talk to... Sirius. Sirius -- that was another painful thought that continued to stab at the back of his head night after night. Something, anything had to take his mind off the wretched feeling that Wormtail was going to do something bad if he couldn't, at least, stop thinking about Sirius. One senseless visit reminded Harry that Sirius was still white-faced, still looking dead.

Hermione quickly took notice of another problem, but small, that Harry would soon have on his hands. She merely mentioned it ("Harry, you ought to watch Ginny when she's around and you're with Cho"). It didn't come of any significance until Harry invited Cho to watch one of their Quidditch practices. Harry bit his lip. Ron thought it hilarious. Hermione wasn't taking sides.