166 Arth’s part

"..."

"... how the hell do you know this Arth?" Ron said with a confused look. "Were you helping Sirius Black?"

Arth rolled his eyes.

"Please, if I was helping Sirius Black, your rat would be dead by now."

"What!"

"It's just a joke Ron, calm down."

"Do you think I can be calm when we are in the same room as a convicted murderer?"

"You see Ron," said Arth with a smile, "I understand that staying in the same area as a murderer is quiet... unnerving."

"Of course!"

"However, what if the convicted murderer was actually falsely accused?"

Harry narrowed his eyes.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, let's start from the beginning shall we? Last year, when I went to Azkaban, although I did not necessarily become best buddies with Mr. Sirius Black over here, I did spend a minuscule amount of time talking with him."

"What does that have anything to do with this?"

"Well you see Harry, we all both overheard the world minister of magic speak of Sirius Black having some... sleep talk about a certain someone who was at Hogwarts right?"

"Yes, I remember."

"Well, funnily enough, it seems that Sirius Black only started to mutter these phrases after a certain period. This summer as a matter of fact."

"So?"

"Isn't it a bit weird that Sirius Black would only start to desire to kill you this year? This summer? If Sirius Black really wanted to kill you, then he should've had said these phrases ever since he was put in Azkaban."

Harry frowned.

"You do have a point."

"So this was the main reason why I believed that Sirius Black wasn't after Harry Potter but something else. But the question was what?"

Arth grabbed his briefcase and opened it.

"Well, in order to solve that, I first had to ask myself, why did Sirius Black start to mutter these weird phrases and when? So I connected the time period where Sirius Black started to mutter to what had happened during that time and realized-"

Arth took out a newspaper out of the briefcase and proudly presented it.

"-that the cause was this!"

Ron stared at Arth with a suspicious look.

"How did you even get this?"

"I have ties in the prison, but that is not the point. The point is that this newspaper is the only thing that could've sparked a difference in Sirius Black."

Harry frowned.

"How do you even know that this is the paper that Sirius Black read?"

Arth gave a smirk.

"Do you remember what the minister of Magic said? He said that he gave Sirius Black a newspaper because he asked for it."

Harry, Ron, And Hermione all had enlightened looks on their faces.

"So this is the newspaper that Fudge gave to Sirius?"

"Yep, I even confirmed it with the minister himself. This is one hundred percent the newspaper that was given to Sirius Black. But then I had to figure out what part of the newspaper had changed Sirius's behavior. So I proceeded to filter out everything Hogwarts related in newspaper."

Arth let out a weary sigh.

"Trust me, it took me a long time to figure it out. You see, the only thing that remotely had anything to do with Hogwarts was this."

Arth flipped his newspaper until a picture of a big family appeared looking as though they were in Egypt.

"It was you Ron."

"Me?"

"Yes, you were the only thing in the paper that had any relation to Hogwarts. But obviously Sirius Black would have no desire for revenge against you so it had to be something in the picture. And then it hit me. Scabbers. I realized how odd scabbers was. Ron said that his rat was in his family for twelve years. The rat shower no sign of magical powers yet it could live for so long. And then, Scabbers was missing a toe. Remember what Fudge said about Peter Pettigrew? They only found a finger. How odd isn't it?"

Arth pulled out a picture of Petter Pettigrew's funeral and the one finger placed in a casket.

"So from there, I determined that Peter Pettigrew has faked his death and that Sirius was wrongly framed. Of course, I had some help from the Ravenclaws but I honestly thought that Crookshanks had killed Scabbers and decided to ignore my theory as I had no way to prove it. Until now."

Arthur sent a glance at Professor Lupin and Sirius Black.

"Am I right?"

Lupin nodded.

"You are right. Everyone thought Sirius killed Peter," said Lupin, nodding. "I believed it myself — until I saw the map tonight. Because the Ma- rauder's map never lies... Peter's alive. Ron's holding him, which confirms both of our theories."

Then Hermione spoke, in a trembling, would be calm sort of voice.

"But... Scabbers can't be Pettigrew... it just can't be true, you know it can't..."

"Why can't it be true?" Lupin said calmly, as though they were in class, and Hermione had simply spotted a problem in an experiment with grindylows.

"Because... because people would know if Peter Pettigrew had been an Animagus. We did Animagi in class with Professor McGonagall. And I looked them up when I did my homework — the Ministry of Magic keeps tabs on witches and wizards who can become animals; there's a register showing what animal they become, and their markings and things... and I went and looked Professor McGonagall up on the register, and there have been only seven Animagi this century, and Pettigrew's name wasn't on the list —"

"Right again, Hermione!" he said. "But the Ministry never knew that there used to be three unregistered Animagi running around Hogwarts."