Chapter - 37 : Matters Part - 5

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Harry slipped back into Hogwarts through the statue, the charms reversed so that all of his fading ink marks were visible. When he crawled through the portrait hole into the common room Ron, Hermione, and Neville were studying at a table near the stairway to the boys' dormitory. Ron leapt to his feet. Neville and Hermione looked up.

"Where've you been mate?"

"Hi Harry!"

"You're late!" Hermione hissed.

Harry grinned. When he was close enough he sat down and whispered.

"I've been to see my solicitor."

"Harry!" Hermione yelped. "You snuck off of school grounds! You could get expelled!"

"You snuck off of school grounds?" Ron demanded in scandalized tones. "And you didn't take us with you?"

"It wasn't for fun! I needed to see my solicitor!"

"A-About what?" Neville asked then flushed. "If you can tell us that is."

Harry flicked his wand so that the quartet was surrounded by a privacy charm. Then he whispered to them about the change in his parents' Secret Keeper and Sirius' imprisonment without a trial and what he had spent the day doing. They made all the appropriate noises in all of the right places – Hermione in particular was outraged that the entire Wizarding World could deliberately skip straight to sentencing – until Harry revealed Scabbers to be Peter Pettigrew.

Neville looked vaguely ill and Hermione looked thoughtful but Ron was quite obviously livid.

"Not Scabbers!" Ron said, his mouth twisting with mulish denial. "He's just a rat!"

"Ron, he's been with your family for ten years. Not even magical rats live more than four or five years. Regular rats like Scabbers should only live about two years at the most. Scabbers wasn't normal in any sense of the word."

"Don't you think my parents would have noticed if anything were off about Scabbers?"

Actually, that was something Harry had wondered about a lot in the original timeline, especially during that summer after third year. The magical world was dangerous so why would two pureblooded magical people like Mr. and Mrs. Weasley fail to keep an eye on their danger-prone brood?

"I don't think your parents had time" Harry said carefully. "Bill and Charlie must've been a handful, especially since Charlie seems to share Hagrid definition of 'cute.' The twins would've been little monsters. And you keep saying nasty things about Ginny's Bat Bogie Hex. I just don't think your parents had the time to really think about exactly how long Scabbers had been with your family."

Ron glared. "I let that rat sleep in my bed! There's no way I would've let some full grown wizard chew on my sheets!"

And with that Ron slammed his chair back and stormed off to the dormitory.

"Honestly!" Hermione huffed. "It's logical when you have all of the facts!"

"Don't worry about Ron" Neville said comfortingly. "He's just shocked. And probably feeling a bit sick." Neville shivered. "I'd feel sick too if I'd kept a murderer as a pet!"

Harry nodded and tried to look cheered up. Mostly he felt ill. They had only just started to be friends – there had been no troll or dragon or Philosopher's Stone or Chamber of Secrets or flying car to cement their friendship yet. What if Ron never forgave Harry?

Sunday morning Ron was glaring at Hermione's copy of the Daily Prophet when Harry made his way into the Great Hall for breakfast. It was much noisier than usual. On the front page of the Daily Prophet was a picture of a middle-aged, crying Peter Pettigrew next to a picture of a young, madly laughing Sirius Black.

"Harry!" Hermione shouted as soon as her eyes landed on Harry. She was practically vibrating with excitement – even her hair seemed frizzier than usual. "Sirius Black escaped Azkaban!"

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