What If Crookshanks KILLED Wormtail

Discord:   / discord   Voice Acting & Narration: Steven Waters ⁨@bobablackfly602⁩ Writing: Myself, @khuz377 , @viktoriafilbert What if Crookshanks killed Wormtail? Let's explore the depths of it in the video. Ron has fallen asleep over his Charms essay. The fire is low, most of the tower is at dinner, and the common room holds a stillness that settles over Hogwarts. Hermione is reading in the armchair by the window. Harry is cleaning his Firebolt on the rug. Scabbers is curled on the arm of the sofa beside Ron, twitching in his sleep. Crookshanks has been watching the rat from across the room for ten minutes. Completely still. His amber eyes fixed with the a patient, unblinking focus of a creature that has never once been wrong about what it sees. Half-Kneazle blood runs through him, and Kneazles do not guess. They do not suspect. They simply know who is trustworthy and who is not, with a certainty that has nothing to do with evidence and everything to do with what a creature actually is. Hermione notices. She rises from her chair. She’s too slow. Crookshanks crosses the room in three strides and strikes. One clean bite to the back of the neck, and Scabbers makes a sound that is almost human. Then goes still. And then the body begins to change. The fur recedes. The limbs stretch and thicken. The ribcage expands outward in a way that makes the sofa creak, and Ron jolts awake with a shout. By the time Harry reaches his feet, what is lying across Ron Weasley's lap is a man. Small, pale, grey-haired, dressed in the shredded remnants of robes that spent twelve years compressed into the shape of a fist. He is missing a finger on his right hand. Ron scrambles backwards off the sofa so fast he hits the floor. Hermione screams. Harry(stunned): "That was Scabbers." Ron(shaking, on the floor): "What is that. What is that?" Hermione(barely breathing): "That, is a man. And always was apparently." Hermione runs. She sprints through the portrait hole and down two flights of stairs before she finds Professor McGonagall outside the Transfiguration classroom. Whatever she says, she says it fast enough that McGonagall follows her at a pace that the third-years have never seen from the Deputy Headmistress. McGonagall stands in the doorway of the common room and looks at the body for a long time. Her face is very still. When she speaks, her voice carries the kind of control that only comes from decades of suppressing shock in front of students. McGonagall(quiet, precise): "That’s… that’s Peter Pettigrew." Dumbledore arrives within the hour. Two Aurors come with him, their faces grim. Madam Pomfrey follows to examine the body. Professor Flitwick stands in the doorway with an expression of genuine, wordless shock. Dumbledore examines the corpse with care. He confirms the missing finger, the residual Animagus markers in the tissue, the trace signature of a wizard who was supposed to have died twelve years ago on a street in London, leaving behind nothing but a finger and a crater. He says almost nothing for several minutes. Then he straightens and looks at Harry. Dumbledore(measured): "Peter Pettigrew. An Unregistered Animagus. I had suspicions, Harry. But suspicions are a long way from proof, and proof is what we have now." Harry: "Sirius Black. He was never after me. He was after Scabbers. Because he knew Pettigrew was alive. Because Pettigrew was the traitor." Dumbledore(a beat of silence, then): "I believe you are correct." The Aurors secure the body. The Ministry is informed by encrypted Floo. And in the caves above Hogsmeade, a gaunt black dog lifts its head at the sound of an owl that carries a note in Dumbledore's handwriting. Sirius Black reads it. He sits on the cold stone for a long while. Then he stands, and he walks toward the castle. The exoneration takes two hours. Minister Cornelius Fudge is already in Dumbledore's office when Sirius arrives, red-faced and perspiring, clutching his lime-green bowler hat in both hands as though it might escape. Fudge(blustering): "Dumbledore, you are asking me to overturn twelve years of Ministry records on the basis of a dead rat." Dumbledore(calm): "I am asking you to examine the evidence, Cornelius. Peter Pettigrew was alive until this afternoon, hiding as an unregistered Animagus in the Weasley family home. He was the Potters' Secret-Keeper. He betrayed them to Voldemort. He murdered those twelve Muggles and framed Sirius Black. The body is downstairs. The Aurors have confirmed the identification."