Unite
I'm bored out of my mind tonight, so we'll make it a two-fer. Make up for me ditching these things for two weeks, right? Nah.
Right, I've heard about this before. This is the chapter where Snape "rescues" the kids from Sirius Black, frequently cited as an example of Snape's sincere good-guy status, since he had no other obvious motive for going to these lengths for Harry Potter. On the other hand, the reason "rescues" is in quotation marks is because Black isn't even the villain here, so the nWo isn't actually in any real danger, and Snape would later claim that he only did all this to maintain his cover as a double-agent for Voldemort. But we'll see for ourselves, I guess.
Chapter 19: The Servant of Lord Voldemort
(Original Japanese Title: "Pathos of Pettigrew! Super Harry Spares His Life ! !")
To set this up, after luring the nWo to an abandoned shack, Sirius Black has informed them that he's innocent of killing thirteen people, in part because one of his supposed victims is actually Ron's pet rat, Scabbers. Remus Lupin followed them to the shack, and after a brief hesitation realized that Sirius is telling the truth. Together they attempt to explain to the children that Peter Pettigrew was once their friend, who learned how to turn himself into a rat, and now it's very important that they kill his furry little ass right the hell now. Before they can really get into why, though, Snape shows up to confront them both.
As for how Snape found them, he pretty much did it the same way Lupin did. Since he's been making these special potions for Lupin all year, he swung by Lupin's office to give him his latest dose, only to find Lupin gone, but the Marauder's Map still activated on his desk. A brief examination revealed them to be in the Shack, and so he followed along, being one of the few people still alive who knew of the secret passage to the Shack. The key difference here is that while Lupin noticed that Peter Pettigrew is somehow still alive, thus putting Black's murder conviction in doubt, Snape doesn't seem to know or care about any of that. As far as he's concerned, he's here to capture escaped convict Sirius Black, and his buddy Lupin, whom he's suspected of aiding him all year long. Refusing to hear out the other two men, Snape fires off some spell that ties of Lupin in silly string, and then holds Black at bay with his wand, threatening to kill him at the slightest provocation. Hermione meekly pleads for Snape to hear them out, but he ain't having none of that.
"KEEP QUIET, YOU STUPID GIRL! DON'T TALK ABOUT WHAT YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND!" Yeah, the whole chapter's gonna play out like this, so you know. SNAPE: THE HERO WHO YELLS INSULTS AT THE PEOPLE HE SAVES!
Black agrees to go quietly, so long as they bring the rat along with them, since it'll prove his innocence, but Snape figures he'll just call the dementors once they're out of the tunnel, and they'll eat Black's soul and that'll be that. Hey, maybe they'll eat Lupin's soul too while they're at it. SNAPE: THE HERO WHO'S MOSTLY IN IT FOR REVENGE!
At this point, now that literally all the other characters have no cards left to play, Harry finally steps up. Not entirely sure of his own actions (big shock), Harry feels his Super Dumbass power surging forth again, and he stands in the doorway to stop Snape from leaving with his prisoners. He points out that it doesn't make sense that Lupin would have been helping Black when he simply could have killed Harry at any time throughout the school year. That almost flies, except my understanding is that lots of Harry's enemies seem to pass up opportunities to kill him. Didn't Voldemort pose as a teacher for a whole year? Draco was a Death Eater in Book 6, and he beat the crap out of Harry, but left him alive anyway. This makes me consider that the villains in these books are the crappiest bad guys ever. Anyway, Snape won't listen to Harry, so they start speaking in their common tongue, which is all caps.
"YOU'RE PATHETIC! JUST BECAUSE THEY MADE A FOOL OF YOU AT SCHOOL YOU WON'T EVEN LISTEN --"
"SILENCE! I WILL NOT BE SPOKEN TO LIKE THAT! GET OUT OF THE WAY, POTTER!"
Man, I feel bad for whoever lives next door to this dump. SNAPE: THE HERO WHO DOESN'T KNOW THE MEANING OF THE WORD 'DECAF'!
So Harry decides his only choice is to throw down with Snape with his wand. Yeah, because that works SO well, from what I've seen. Of course, this time it ends up doing the trick, because in the moment Harry makes his move, Ron and Hermione do as well, and their combined attack slams Snape into a wall, leaving a smear of blood as he sinks down to the ground. The book says he's knocked out, but damn. SNAPE: THE HERO WHO FAILS REALLY EASILY!
And with Snape out of commission, the five of them resume their Q&A session from the previous chapter, as though he'd never even shown up. (snicker) What? This is his big hero moment? He just barges into the room, shouts at people and gets his skull cracked open by a bunch of thirteen-year-olds? This is bad comedy. It's like Snape already knew how this book turns out, so he figured he'd just run into the scene and do his Harry Potter impression for us. "YOU WON'T GET AWAY WITH IT I'M GOING TO KILL YOU OOPS I FALL DOWN GO BOOM GINNY GO OUT WITH ME!"
No, I'm sorry, is this a joke? I had been telling people that I really am kind of looking forward to Book 7, because that'll finally settle Snape's loyalties, which in turn would force him to explain his ambiguous actions to Harry in a satisfactory manner. And I had been banking on him turning out to be a relucatant hero of sorts, since it would be a better reveal than to just confirm the obvious and have him be a villain. But if this is all I can expect from Snape the Hero then I guess I'm boned either way, aren't I?
But let's move on, because that's what everyone else is doing, apparently. Ron's still reluctant to accept that Scabbers has been Pettigrew in disguise. Even granting that Pettigrew could turn into a rat, it doesn't make sense that Black could know which rat is the one he's after. That does seem rather unlikely, until Black produces an old newspaper that featured an article on the Weasley's family vacation to Egypt last summer. As was established earlier in the book, Black once asked Cornelius Fudge for a copy of the newspaper a while back, and it just so happened that the one edition he read just happened to feature an article with a picture of Scabbers in it. Recognizing the rat as Pettigrew right away, Black learned from the article that the boy holding him was Ron, and that he'd be goin back to Hogwarts in the fall. And, as Lupin notices, the picture shows that Scabbers is clearly missing a toe on his front paw. Wait, back up. I know this is a magic newspaper, but I doubt they did any close-up shots of Scabbers for this article. He's looking at a shot of the entire family, which is like 85 people, I think, and Lupin can tell how many toes are on the tiny white thing on one of the smaller people in the image?
Anyway, this seems to weigh in favor of Scabbers being Pettigrew, since if Peter were still alive, he'd be missing one of his thumbs, which was all that was found on the day of the massacre. Black himself guesses that he cut it off before it happened, then with his wand behind his back, he blew up the street behind him, and fled into the sewer in rat form. Further, he's been living with Ron's family since about twelve years ago, right around the time Peter supposedly was killed. And really, why would a rat live so long anyway? And as for his recent stress-related illness, that started right around the time the news broke of Black's escape. This is what I like about this revalation, because I had NO idea, and yet all the clues were laid out for me. I had a feeling Peter Pettigrew was still alive, and I suspected that Black was somehow posing as or in league with Scabbers and/or Crookshanks, but I never put it all together. Unlike the Half-Blood Prince non-mystery, the final piece of the puzzle wasn't so obvious: Peter lost a THUMB, but Scabbers is missing a TOE. Of course they're the same thing with different terminology, but it's those semantics that save Rowling's plot twist. If Peter had lost a toe that day, then it might have hit me that he had the same injury as Scabbers, and that might have led me to realizing they were the same being. But since he lost a thumb instead, I never noticed the connection. Besides which, it never occured to me that Peter was the real murderer, so I didn't consider that Peter might disguise himself, because I thought he hadn't done anything wrong. It's a masterful ploy, all around. Notice that Harry Potter played no part in figuring this out.
This all leads to Crookshanks role in this story. You'd think Crookshanks would turn out to be some other middle-aged wizard with a flair for turning into stuff, but apparently he's just a regular cat, but one savvy enough to have recognized Peter and Sirius for Animagi. Eventually, Black managed to win the cat's trust, then they teamed up to get Pettigrew. First Crookshanks tried to catch Peter, then he stole Neville's list of passwords so Black could get in and do the job himself, and finally Pettigrew faked his own death, staining Ron's bed with his own blood to make it look as though Crookshanks had eaten him. You know, cast in this light, all those animal hijinks moments throughout this book would almost be justified, but I still say they were a waste of time, since they could have just as easily been covered in a few sentences in each chapter. "Crookshanks was still trying to eat Scabbers," for example. And like I've been saying all along, Black's was the story that was actually worth telling, and the whole time he was involved in this secret hunt for a treacherous murderer, a housecat for his only ally, and the whole thing was buried under all the dumb stuff Harry was doing all year.
Speaking of Harry, he's starting to understand that Scabbers really is Pettigrew, except he still doesn't see how that makes Black any less guilty. Cripes, Potter, at least TRY to keep up. Lupin tries to connect the dots for him, explaining that it was Peter who betrayed Harry's parents, and Sirius who tried to avenge them by confronting Peter, but Harry stil doesn't follow. "THAT'S NOT TRUE! HE WAS THEIR SECRET-KEEPER! HE SAID SO BEFORE YOU TURNED UP. HE SAID HE KILLED THEM!"
But as Black explains, what he meant was that he may as well have killed them, because when the Potters went into hiding, they had planned to use Black as their Secret-Keeper, but at the last minute he convinced them to go with Peter instead. In theory this would have been an extra layer of security, since Voldemort would be searching for Black to find the Potters, when in fact only Peter could divulge their location. But as it turned out, Peter went straight to Voldemort with what he knew, and Sirius would arrive at their home just in time to find them dead. Between that, and the confrontation with Peter, Sirius looked like a perfect suspect for the crime.
In light of all this, Ron finally agrees to let Lupin have the rat so they can prove their claim. Using some sort of magic whositz, Lupin and Black force Scabbers to revert to human form, and since they all three recognize each other, I think it's safe to say that it's really Peter Pettigrew.
A sniveling shell of a man, Peter immediately tries to spin things to his favor, insisting that Black really was the killer and that he miraculously escaped the massacre and went into hiding for fear he'd return. Asked why he'd fear Black's vengeance when he was locked up in an inescapable prison, Peter suggests that Black's affiliation with Voldemort gives him all sorts of dark powers that could have allowed him to escape.
But Black's actually been to the prison with all of Voldemort's real cronies, and the way he's heard it, they're all pissed at Pettigrew for screwing over Voldemort. After all, Voldemort was geivously weakened when he killed the Potters, and that never would have happened if Pettigrew hadn't told him where they were. So the way Black figures it, Pettigrew was more or less hiding from everyone, since the bad guys blame him for their problems, and the good guys would eventually figure out he was the culprit if he turned up alive.
Hermione, however, raises the question of why Pettigrew hasn't killed Harry Potter already, since he's been sleeping in Harry's dorm room for three years. But Black figures that Peter wouldn't do anything so risky until he was sure which side would win out. Killing Harry would make him a big shot with Voldemort's team, but what good would that do if Voldemort ended up losing? So he's been biding his time, hiding from his enemies, and waiting to back the winning side. Plausible enough.
Hermione follows up by asking how Black managed to escape if he didn't use Dark Magic, as Pettigrew suggests. In fact, not even Black himself is entirely sure how he pulled it off. He speculates that his innocence kept him sane, since it wasn't a happy thought, and the dementors couldn't affect it. Keeping his sanity, in turn, allowed him to use his powers, including his ability to turn into a dog. This happens to exploit the dementors' greatest flaws as guardsmen. First, they're completely blind, relying on their empathic abilities to sense the presence of humans. Second, their powers don't work on animals, at least not to the same extent as they affect humans. In dog form, the dementors could still sense Black's mind, but it would have been simpler and less human, but this they would have attributed to the effects of their own powers. Finally, the dementors don't actually care about their role as jailers to begin with, so the fact that Black was a dog half the time, or the fact that he was reading newspapers about his enemies living with his godsons, or the fact that he was suddenly motivated to escape and protect Harry, all meant nothing to them. Even if they had known what was going through Black's mind, they wouldn't have known what to do about it. And so, knowing Peter would kill Harry at the slightest hint that Voldemort was back on the mend, Black became obsessed with saving him. That obsession allowed him the presence of mind to slip out of his cell in dog form one night when he was being fed, and this confused the dementors enough for him to get to the shore of the island.
From there, Black says he swam back to the mainland as a dog, then made his way northward to Hogwarts, where he'd been living in the forest ever since, waiting for his chance to strike at Pettigrew. I'm a little disappointed by the tale of Black's escape. I was expecting something ingenious, and it turns out he mostly got along on pure instinct. Also, since I'd already known Black was innocent and had the power to turn into a dog, I'm not too surprised to see that those elements factored into his escape. I had hoped for some third element that he hadn't revealed up to now. Of course, I have a hard time believing he swam all the way back to England as a dog, especially one as weary and half-starved as he describes. I'm not saying he couldn't do it, but that'd be a third of a novel in itself, and I'd take that over seven chapters of this any day.
Seeing how moved Harry is by Sirius' story, Peter drops to his knees, begging Sirius to spare him. When he refuses, Peter turns to Remus suggesting that he couldn't have been the Secret-Keeper, since no one bothered to tell Lupin about it. But Lupin reasons this was because Sirius had suspected him at some point, so it adds up in his mind. They agree to kill him together, and Peter turns to Ron, recalling his long years as his faithful pet rat. OK, now this is getting really pathetic. Ron, of course, is disgusted, so he turns to Hermione for help. Dude, you don't even KNOW her. She's naturally horrified, so he finally turns to Harry, perhaps hoping that some nostalgic words about his father might sway him the same way it has for Black.
This pisses Black off. "HOW DARE YOU SPEAK TO HARRY? HOW DARE YOU FACE HIM? HOW DARE YOU TALK ABOUT JAMES IN FRONT OF HIM?" Dude, he's right there, you don't need to shout. At last, Peter admits his crime, and tries to claim he was coerced--
"DON'T LIE! YOU'D BEEN PASSING INFORMATION TO HIM FOR A YEAR BEFORE LILY AND JAMES DIED! YOU WERE HIS SPY!" Wait, how does Black know that? Anyway, Pettigrew can't deny it, so he offers his own cowardice as his only defense. To have opposed Voldemort, Peter reasons, would have only gotten himself killed.
"THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED! DIED RATHER THAN BETRAY YOUR FRIENDS, AS WE WOULD HAVE DONE FOR YOU!" Do you ever get the feeling that if there were a third case for the alphabet, one with even larger letters than uppercase, that Rowling would overuse that, too? Anyway, just before Lupin and Sirius can kill Peter like the scum he is, Harry stands in their way, shouting "NO!" The way he sees it, it's more than Peter deserves, but he thinks his dad wouldn't want Remus and Black to become murders on account of Peter's worthless ass. Let Azkaban have him, he decides. And since Remus and Sirius respect his opinion on the matter, they agree. You know, this could have been tied into the Aunt Marge Incident, with Harry having the sudden realization that Black and Lupin were about to act on the same rage that he had acted on before, and maybe he'd decide he didn't like the way it looked from the outside. But as I've said all along, Harry never actually learns anything, so that's not gonna happen. Honestly, I half-wonder if Rowling only spared Peter here just because she'd need him later for the ending.
And so, they make preparations to return to Hogwarts. Lupin binds up Peter the same way Snape had done to him earlier, then he generates a makeshift splint for until they can get Ron to the hospital, and then he levitates Snape's unconscious body so they can move him back to the castle without his resistance. Finally, Black generates heavy manacles to chain Pettigrew to Lupin and Ron. They all head for the tunnel, with Crookshanks taking up the rear.
Again, the Peter/Scabbers reveal goes a long way for this book. And I like how efficiently Rowling characterized the guy. A lot of writers make the mistake of telling you what the character's personality is, when in truth it needs to be demonstrated in their actions. By the time he's exposed, Peter's character is already established as being a weasely opportunist who'll trade loyalty and dignity for his own safety. All she had to do from there was make him beg for his life like a worm. Almost makes up for the dullness of most of the other chapters. Almost.
The only problem is that in doing all this, the book is devoid of any strong villain. Black had the charisma, if only by his reputation, but ultimately he's not even a bad guy. Peter's the one doing all the killing, but he's a total coward who buckles in two seconds. You don't really vanquish a guy like him so much as you find him and step on him. And that leaves the dementors, who really have all the power and the menace, except they have no personality or motivation whatsoever. I'd hesitate to even call them characters, let alone villains. Of course, as Snape's demonstrated, this book never had any strong heroes either, so this shouldn't shock me much. Why bother being anything but lukewarm, when you get down to it?
So we'll let this one pass, since this seems to be the climax of the book here, and I'll assume Snape's antics here were intentional parody rather than sincere incompetence. Man...
RATING: GOOD
NEXT: They whiz it ten seconds after the get out of the tunnel.
Right, I've heard about this before. This is the chapter where Snape "rescues" the kids from Sirius Black, frequently cited as an example of Snape's sincere good-guy status, since he had no other obvious motive for going to these lengths for Harry Potter. On the other hand, the reason "rescues" is in quotation marks is because Black isn't even the villain here, so the nWo isn't actually in any real danger, and Snape would later claim that he only did all this to maintain his cover as a double-agent for Voldemort. But we'll see for ourselves, I guess.
Chapter 19: The Servant of Lord Voldemort
(Original Japanese Title: "Pathos of Pettigrew! Super Harry Spares His Life ! !")
To set this up, after luring the nWo to an abandoned shack, Sirius Black has informed them that he's innocent of killing thirteen people, in part because one of his supposed victims is actually Ron's pet rat, Scabbers. Remus Lupin followed them to the shack, and after a brief hesitation realized that Sirius is telling the truth. Together they attempt to explain to the children that Peter Pettigrew was once their friend, who learned how to turn himself into a rat, and now it's very important that they kill his furry little ass right the hell now. Before they can really get into why, though, Snape shows up to confront them both.
As for how Snape found them, he pretty much did it the same way Lupin did. Since he's been making these special potions for Lupin all year, he swung by Lupin's office to give him his latest dose, only to find Lupin gone, but the Marauder's Map still activated on his desk. A brief examination revealed them to be in the Shack, and so he followed along, being one of the few people still alive who knew of the secret passage to the Shack. The key difference here is that while Lupin noticed that Peter Pettigrew is somehow still alive, thus putting Black's murder conviction in doubt, Snape doesn't seem to know or care about any of that. As far as he's concerned, he's here to capture escaped convict Sirius Black, and his buddy Lupin, whom he's suspected of aiding him all year long. Refusing to hear out the other two men, Snape fires off some spell that ties of Lupin in silly string, and then holds Black at bay with his wand, threatening to kill him at the slightest provocation. Hermione meekly pleads for Snape to hear them out, but he ain't having none of that.
"KEEP QUIET, YOU STUPID GIRL! DON'T TALK ABOUT WHAT YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND!" Yeah, the whole chapter's gonna play out like this, so you know. SNAPE: THE HERO WHO YELLS INSULTS AT THE PEOPLE HE SAVES!
Black agrees to go quietly, so long as they bring the rat along with them, since it'll prove his innocence, but Snape figures he'll just call the dementors once they're out of the tunnel, and they'll eat Black's soul and that'll be that. Hey, maybe they'll eat Lupin's soul too while they're at it. SNAPE: THE HERO WHO'S MOSTLY IN IT FOR REVENGE!
At this point, now that literally all the other characters have no cards left to play, Harry finally steps up. Not entirely sure of his own actions (big shock), Harry feels his Super Dumbass power surging forth again, and he stands in the doorway to stop Snape from leaving with his prisoners. He points out that it doesn't make sense that Lupin would have been helping Black when he simply could have killed Harry at any time throughout the school year. That almost flies, except my understanding is that lots of Harry's enemies seem to pass up opportunities to kill him. Didn't Voldemort pose as a teacher for a whole year? Draco was a Death Eater in Book 6, and he beat the crap out of Harry, but left him alive anyway. This makes me consider that the villains in these books are the crappiest bad guys ever. Anyway, Snape won't listen to Harry, so they start speaking in their common tongue, which is all caps.
"YOU'RE PATHETIC! JUST BECAUSE THEY MADE A FOOL OF YOU AT SCHOOL YOU WON'T EVEN LISTEN --"
"SILENCE! I WILL NOT BE SPOKEN TO LIKE THAT! GET OUT OF THE WAY, POTTER!"
Man, I feel bad for whoever lives next door to this dump. SNAPE: THE HERO WHO DOESN'T KNOW THE MEANING OF THE WORD 'DECAF'!
So Harry decides his only choice is to throw down with Snape with his wand. Yeah, because that works SO well, from what I've seen. Of course, this time it ends up doing the trick, because in the moment Harry makes his move, Ron and Hermione do as well, and their combined attack slams Snape into a wall, leaving a smear of blood as he sinks down to the ground. The book says he's knocked out, but damn. SNAPE: THE HERO WHO FAILS REALLY EASILY!
And with Snape out of commission, the five of them resume their Q&A session from the previous chapter, as though he'd never even shown up. (snicker) What? This is his big hero moment? He just barges into the room, shouts at people and gets his skull cracked open by a bunch of thirteen-year-olds? This is bad comedy. It's like Snape already knew how this book turns out, so he figured he'd just run into the scene and do his Harry Potter impression for us. "YOU WON'T GET AWAY WITH IT I'M GOING TO KILL YOU OOPS I FALL DOWN GO BOOM GINNY GO OUT WITH ME!"
No, I'm sorry, is this a joke? I had been telling people that I really am kind of looking forward to Book 7, because that'll finally settle Snape's loyalties, which in turn would force him to explain his ambiguous actions to Harry in a satisfactory manner. And I had been banking on him turning out to be a relucatant hero of sorts, since it would be a better reveal than to just confirm the obvious and have him be a villain. But if this is all I can expect from Snape the Hero then I guess I'm boned either way, aren't I?
But let's move on, because that's what everyone else is doing, apparently. Ron's still reluctant to accept that Scabbers has been Pettigrew in disguise. Even granting that Pettigrew could turn into a rat, it doesn't make sense that Black could know which rat is the one he's after. That does seem rather unlikely, until Black produces an old newspaper that featured an article on the Weasley's family vacation to Egypt last summer. As was established earlier in the book, Black once asked Cornelius Fudge for a copy of the newspaper a while back, and it just so happened that the one edition he read just happened to feature an article with a picture of Scabbers in it. Recognizing the rat as Pettigrew right away, Black learned from the article that the boy holding him was Ron, and that he'd be goin back to Hogwarts in the fall. And, as Lupin notices, the picture shows that Scabbers is clearly missing a toe on his front paw. Wait, back up. I know this is a magic newspaper, but I doubt they did any close-up shots of Scabbers for this article. He's looking at a shot of the entire family, which is like 85 people, I think, and Lupin can tell how many toes are on the tiny white thing on one of the smaller people in the image?
Anyway, this seems to weigh in favor of Scabbers being Pettigrew, since if Peter were still alive, he'd be missing one of his thumbs, which was all that was found on the day of the massacre. Black himself guesses that he cut it off before it happened, then with his wand behind his back, he blew up the street behind him, and fled into the sewer in rat form. Further, he's been living with Ron's family since about twelve years ago, right around the time Peter supposedly was killed. And really, why would a rat live so long anyway? And as for his recent stress-related illness, that started right around the time the news broke of Black's escape. This is what I like about this revalation, because I had NO idea, and yet all the clues were laid out for me. I had a feeling Peter Pettigrew was still alive, and I suspected that Black was somehow posing as or in league with Scabbers and/or Crookshanks, but I never put it all together. Unlike the Half-Blood Prince non-mystery, the final piece of the puzzle wasn't so obvious: Peter lost a THUMB, but Scabbers is missing a TOE. Of course they're the same thing with different terminology, but it's those semantics that save Rowling's plot twist. If Peter had lost a toe that day, then it might have hit me that he had the same injury as Scabbers, and that might have led me to realizing they were the same being. But since he lost a thumb instead, I never noticed the connection. Besides which, it never occured to me that Peter was the real murderer, so I didn't consider that Peter might disguise himself, because I thought he hadn't done anything wrong. It's a masterful ploy, all around. Notice that Harry Potter played no part in figuring this out.
This all leads to Crookshanks role in this story. You'd think Crookshanks would turn out to be some other middle-aged wizard with a flair for turning into stuff, but apparently he's just a regular cat, but one savvy enough to have recognized Peter and Sirius for Animagi. Eventually, Black managed to win the cat's trust, then they teamed up to get Pettigrew. First Crookshanks tried to catch Peter, then he stole Neville's list of passwords so Black could get in and do the job himself, and finally Pettigrew faked his own death, staining Ron's bed with his own blood to make it look as though Crookshanks had eaten him. You know, cast in this light, all those animal hijinks moments throughout this book would almost be justified, but I still say they were a waste of time, since they could have just as easily been covered in a few sentences in each chapter. "Crookshanks was still trying to eat Scabbers," for example. And like I've been saying all along, Black's was the story that was actually worth telling, and the whole time he was involved in this secret hunt for a treacherous murderer, a housecat for his only ally, and the whole thing was buried under all the dumb stuff Harry was doing all year.
Speaking of Harry, he's starting to understand that Scabbers really is Pettigrew, except he still doesn't see how that makes Black any less guilty. Cripes, Potter, at least TRY to keep up. Lupin tries to connect the dots for him, explaining that it was Peter who betrayed Harry's parents, and Sirius who tried to avenge them by confronting Peter, but Harry stil doesn't follow. "THAT'S NOT TRUE! HE WAS THEIR SECRET-KEEPER! HE SAID SO BEFORE YOU TURNED UP. HE SAID HE KILLED THEM!"
But as Black explains, what he meant was that he may as well have killed them, because when the Potters went into hiding, they had planned to use Black as their Secret-Keeper, but at the last minute he convinced them to go with Peter instead. In theory this would have been an extra layer of security, since Voldemort would be searching for Black to find the Potters, when in fact only Peter could divulge their location. But as it turned out, Peter went straight to Voldemort with what he knew, and Sirius would arrive at their home just in time to find them dead. Between that, and the confrontation with Peter, Sirius looked like a perfect suspect for the crime.
In light of all this, Ron finally agrees to let Lupin have the rat so they can prove their claim. Using some sort of magic whositz, Lupin and Black force Scabbers to revert to human form, and since they all three recognize each other, I think it's safe to say that it's really Peter Pettigrew.
A sniveling shell of a man, Peter immediately tries to spin things to his favor, insisting that Black really was the killer and that he miraculously escaped the massacre and went into hiding for fear he'd return. Asked why he'd fear Black's vengeance when he was locked up in an inescapable prison, Peter suggests that Black's affiliation with Voldemort gives him all sorts of dark powers that could have allowed him to escape.
But Black's actually been to the prison with all of Voldemort's real cronies, and the way he's heard it, they're all pissed at Pettigrew for screwing over Voldemort. After all, Voldemort was geivously weakened when he killed the Potters, and that never would have happened if Pettigrew hadn't told him where they were. So the way Black figures it, Pettigrew was more or less hiding from everyone, since the bad guys blame him for their problems, and the good guys would eventually figure out he was the culprit if he turned up alive.
Hermione, however, raises the question of why Pettigrew hasn't killed Harry Potter already, since he's been sleeping in Harry's dorm room for three years. But Black figures that Peter wouldn't do anything so risky until he was sure which side would win out. Killing Harry would make him a big shot with Voldemort's team, but what good would that do if Voldemort ended up losing? So he's been biding his time, hiding from his enemies, and waiting to back the winning side. Plausible enough.
Hermione follows up by asking how Black managed to escape if he didn't use Dark Magic, as Pettigrew suggests. In fact, not even Black himself is entirely sure how he pulled it off. He speculates that his innocence kept him sane, since it wasn't a happy thought, and the dementors couldn't affect it. Keeping his sanity, in turn, allowed him to use his powers, including his ability to turn into a dog. This happens to exploit the dementors' greatest flaws as guardsmen. First, they're completely blind, relying on their empathic abilities to sense the presence of humans. Second, their powers don't work on animals, at least not to the same extent as they affect humans. In dog form, the dementors could still sense Black's mind, but it would have been simpler and less human, but this they would have attributed to the effects of their own powers. Finally, the dementors don't actually care about their role as jailers to begin with, so the fact that Black was a dog half the time, or the fact that he was reading newspapers about his enemies living with his godsons, or the fact that he was suddenly motivated to escape and protect Harry, all meant nothing to them. Even if they had known what was going through Black's mind, they wouldn't have known what to do about it. And so, knowing Peter would kill Harry at the slightest hint that Voldemort was back on the mend, Black became obsessed with saving him. That obsession allowed him the presence of mind to slip out of his cell in dog form one night when he was being fed, and this confused the dementors enough for him to get to the shore of the island.
From there, Black says he swam back to the mainland as a dog, then made his way northward to Hogwarts, where he'd been living in the forest ever since, waiting for his chance to strike at Pettigrew. I'm a little disappointed by the tale of Black's escape. I was expecting something ingenious, and it turns out he mostly got along on pure instinct. Also, since I'd already known Black was innocent and had the power to turn into a dog, I'm not too surprised to see that those elements factored into his escape. I had hoped for some third element that he hadn't revealed up to now. Of course, I have a hard time believing he swam all the way back to England as a dog, especially one as weary and half-starved as he describes. I'm not saying he couldn't do it, but that'd be a third of a novel in itself, and I'd take that over seven chapters of this any day.
Seeing how moved Harry is by Sirius' story, Peter drops to his knees, begging Sirius to spare him. When he refuses, Peter turns to Remus suggesting that he couldn't have been the Secret-Keeper, since no one bothered to tell Lupin about it. But Lupin reasons this was because Sirius had suspected him at some point, so it adds up in his mind. They agree to kill him together, and Peter turns to Ron, recalling his long years as his faithful pet rat. OK, now this is getting really pathetic. Ron, of course, is disgusted, so he turns to Hermione for help. Dude, you don't even KNOW her. She's naturally horrified, so he finally turns to Harry, perhaps hoping that some nostalgic words about his father might sway him the same way it has for Black.
This pisses Black off. "HOW DARE YOU SPEAK TO HARRY? HOW DARE YOU FACE HIM? HOW DARE YOU TALK ABOUT JAMES IN FRONT OF HIM?" Dude, he's right there, you don't need to shout. At last, Peter admits his crime, and tries to claim he was coerced--
"DON'T LIE! YOU'D BEEN PASSING INFORMATION TO HIM FOR A YEAR BEFORE LILY AND JAMES DIED! YOU WERE HIS SPY!" Wait, how does Black know that? Anyway, Pettigrew can't deny it, so he offers his own cowardice as his only defense. To have opposed Voldemort, Peter reasons, would have only gotten himself killed.
"THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED! DIED RATHER THAN BETRAY YOUR FRIENDS, AS WE WOULD HAVE DONE FOR YOU!" Do you ever get the feeling that if there were a third case for the alphabet, one with even larger letters than uppercase, that Rowling would overuse that, too? Anyway, just before Lupin and Sirius can kill Peter like the scum he is, Harry stands in their way, shouting "NO!" The way he sees it, it's more than Peter deserves, but he thinks his dad wouldn't want Remus and Black to become murders on account of Peter's worthless ass. Let Azkaban have him, he decides. And since Remus and Sirius respect his opinion on the matter, they agree. You know, this could have been tied into the Aunt Marge Incident, with Harry having the sudden realization that Black and Lupin were about to act on the same rage that he had acted on before, and maybe he'd decide he didn't like the way it looked from the outside. But as I've said all along, Harry never actually learns anything, so that's not gonna happen. Honestly, I half-wonder if Rowling only spared Peter here just because she'd need him later for the ending.
And so, they make preparations to return to Hogwarts. Lupin binds up Peter the same way Snape had done to him earlier, then he generates a makeshift splint for until they can get Ron to the hospital, and then he levitates Snape's unconscious body so they can move him back to the castle without his resistance. Finally, Black generates heavy manacles to chain Pettigrew to Lupin and Ron. They all head for the tunnel, with Crookshanks taking up the rear.
Again, the Peter/Scabbers reveal goes a long way for this book. And I like how efficiently Rowling characterized the guy. A lot of writers make the mistake of telling you what the character's personality is, when in truth it needs to be demonstrated in their actions. By the time he's exposed, Peter's character is already established as being a weasely opportunist who'll trade loyalty and dignity for his own safety. All she had to do from there was make him beg for his life like a worm. Almost makes up for the dullness of most of the other chapters. Almost.
The only problem is that in doing all this, the book is devoid of any strong villain. Black had the charisma, if only by his reputation, but ultimately he's not even a bad guy. Peter's the one doing all the killing, but he's a total coward who buckles in two seconds. You don't really vanquish a guy like him so much as you find him and step on him. And that leaves the dementors, who really have all the power and the menace, except they have no personality or motivation whatsoever. I'd hesitate to even call them characters, let alone villains. Of course, as Snape's demonstrated, this book never had any strong heroes either, so this shouldn't shock me much. Why bother being anything but lukewarm, when you get down to it?
So we'll let this one pass, since this seems to be the climax of the book here, and I'll assume Snape's antics here were intentional parody rather than sincere incompetence. Man...
RATING: GOOD
NEXT: They whiz it ten seconds after the get out of the tunnel.