Chapter 141: Crookshanks and the New Password

Ivan, Harry and Hermione exited the Great Hall. Actually, there were no crazed axe murderers in the hallway.

Professor Trelawney and Ron disappeared around the corner. She went in the direction of the basement, while he followed the stairs back to Gryffindor Tower.

"We'd better hurry!" Ivan said hurriedly, he noticed that the stairs leading to the second floor were moving.

The three of them were a step late. By the time they arrived, the stairs had already moved and they had to turn around. That slowed them down and put them five minutes behind Ron.

Just as they entered the Gryffindor tower, Ivan noticed a ginger-colored figure emerge from the shadow.

It was Crookshanks, who had a piece of white paper in his mouth.

When he saw the three of them, he approached, purring and meowing oddly.

Hermione picked up the paper, looked at it curiously and said, "Crookshanks, where did you get this piece of paper? what's written on it?"

Ivan and Harry were curious, they looked together and discovered that a few letters on the paper were twisted to form together - "Scurvy Cur"!

"I don't understand, what does that mean?" said Harry quizzically.

"That's really rude! Maybe it's a prank played by a student!" Hermione said with a frown. "Crookshanks; didn't I tell you not to pick up random things?"

Crookshanks meowed and purred lazily in Hermione's arms.

Ivan didn't speak. Staring at the dirty piece of paper, he had a funny feeling. Knowing Crookshanks, that clever pet was no ordinary cat. He shouldn't be collecting useless notes for no reason.

Scurvy Cur, is this just a joke?

Still, someone had deliberately written this note to Crookshanks, hoping he would deliver it to him.

On their way, they discussed the subject of the piece of paper for a while. When they reached the entrance to the common room, at the portrait they found Sir Cadogan enjoying a Christmas party with a couple of monks, several previous Hogwarts headmasters, and his fat pony. He raised his visor and took a large mug of mead, "Merry - hic - Christmas! Password?"

"Oddsbodkins!" Harry said to Sir Cadogan.

"Wrong password, isn't it!", Sir Cadogan immediately rushed up to him, drawing his great and outrageous sword from its scabbard and shouting violently, "Are you willing to come in? to this room behind me? I won't let you in, get up and fight, you mangy dog!"

"Shut up!" said Harry, perplexed. "How can the password be wrong? It was just this morning."

Sir Cadogan said, "I just changed it and notified him of the new password!"

Harry said, "But we don't know! Let us through, we're in a hurry."

"No! I won't let you in, not without the correct password." Sir Cadogan shouted, "Draw your sword, you filthy scoundrel! Face the wrath of Sir Cadogan, I will defeat you, otherwise I will die valiantly in combat!"

Harry looked helplessly at Sir Cadogan. In the face of such a mad man, he was completely helpless.

"Maybe he told Professor McGonagall the new password, we should go back..." said Hermione with some hesitation.

"Wait a second, the words on that paper!" Ivan suddenly remembered.

"What?!" Harry turned and looked at him strangely.

"The words on the paper might be the new password." Ivan said to Sir Cadogan, "Scurvy Cur."

"And the same to you, sir!" roared Sir Cadogan, as the cadre swung forward to let them in..

There was no one in the deserted common room.

"This is stupid; this guy keeps changing those ridiculous passwords all the time!" Harry was the first to enter the room and said angrily, "This time he's giving the cat the new password, if we hadn't met Crookshanks, we would have...."

"That piece of paper can't have been written by Sir Cadogan!" Hermione said. "It's a portrait, how can he write?!"

"Who else could it be?" asked Harry.

"It must be Ron!" Ivan narrowed his eyes and analyzed, "Sir Cadogan just said so; he said he had notified us of the password. There are only four Gryffindor students in the castle, and the three of us didn't know it. So yes, it can only be Ron."

"But why would Ron write the password on a note? isn't that too weird?!" Hermione looked worried. She looked around and whispered, "Ivan, what's that guy going to do?"

"I don't know!" Ivan shook his head. He felt it was really strange, and he couldn't understand why Pettigrew would do such a thing.

Why would he write down the new password and give it to Crookshanks?

No matter how he looked at it, it didn't make sense, it was too silly, and even too dangerous for Peter Pettigrew to do such a thing.

He knew very well that Black was looking for him at Hogwarts. He even broke into the castle and tried to enter the common room on Halloween. He couldn't do it then because he didn't have a password. Now, it's one of two possibilities: either Pettigrew had Ron write the note and then it was found by Crookshanks; or, he deliberately gave it to the cat himself.

It was just too strange. Pettigrew should be well aware of the relationship between Crookshanks and Sirius Black.

The cat had been chasing him his Animagus form for the past 6 months!

But now he gives him the password, which means he was giving it to Sirius Black.

In other words, Peter wants Black to get into the castle.

Ivan had a bad feeling about this whole thing, what does Peter want to do? Last night, Ron accused Professor Lupin of attacking him, and since that moment, everything has been too different from the original story and has progressed in a really unpredictable way. All these changes were out of Ivan's control.

Ivan tried to think of the whole thing from Peter's perspective: first he controlled Ron and framed Professor Lupin, and with that, he managed to get Professor Dumbledore away from the castle. Now, he's taking that opportunity to bring Black in!

This was all obviously too abnormal. After all, Pettigrew had been hiding from Black all this time, why bring him into the castle now?

Ivan suddenly remembered that Peter couldn't have known about his plot with Black, and he must not have known that Black was coming to the castle tonight. Meaning he wanted Black to come into the castle in the Gryffindor common room.

He's not crazy, he has a new plan