Chapter 389: Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs (Edited)

"This story is a bit long..."

The kitten pricked up his ears at hearing Lupin say that.

The atmosphere had been depressing since Harry and Snape had shown up, and Fish didn't like it, but he didn't know what to do about it, even if he felt tempted to run away.

Now that he had finally heard something that interested him, the cat perked up at once.

"Good storytelling! Fish loves stories."

(??ω??)

Lupin: "..."

The mood that had been brewing for a long time had been ruined by Fish, but there was nothing anyone could do about Fish except Professor McGonagall, so Lupin had to reluctantly gather his emotions and start over.

"It all started here, with me turning into a werewolf..."

In a quiet, tired voice, Lupin told Harry and Fish how the school had started, and how the passage to the Boxing Willow and the Shrieking Shack had come about."

"... I had friends for the first time, three very good friends. Sirius Black... Peter Pettigrew... and of course, Harry, your father, James Potter."

At the mention of his three friends, Black and Snape let out a growl in turn.

"They found out he was a werewolf just like you and Ron..."

"Er... actually Hermione found out."

Harry interrupted in embarrassment, he remembered Hermione's disbelieving eyes back then, and felt that compared to his father, he was really way behind.

"I suppose so," Lupin smiled softly and continued, "But instead of abandoning me, they managed to make my transformation period not only better, but the best of my life, they learned the Animagus Charm."

Hearing this, Fish, who had found the story a bit boring, froze for a moment and, with a serious expression, regained his composure and listened attentively to Lupin's account.

I don't know if he knew it's a common problem for storytellers to maintain suspense, but Lupin wouldn't say what the Animagus forms of the three men were.... Of course, Fish already knew that Black was a big black dog.

If he had been listening to Professor McGonagall's story, this kind of suspense would have been interesting and would have kept Fish's anticipation alive, but now Fish just wanted to know if his guess was correct, so he was anxious at Lupin's half-covered way of telling the story.

Just when Fish couldn't resist asking a direct question, Lupin suddenly mentioned the feud between them and Snape.

"And then, Severus noticed that I was disappearing for a few days every month, and we.... well... we didn't get along very well, and he hated James in particular, and James didn't like him.... anyway, Snape saw me walking around the grounds one night with Madam Pomfrey, and she sent me to the Boxing Willow to be transformed."

"Hum hum..."

As Lupin spoke, Snape let out a series of scoffs under his breath before turning his attention back to Sirius Black, who was hanging from the tree.

And Sirius turned his head away disdainfully, as if he didn't want to meet Snape as well, but in Harry and Fish's eyes, no matter how he looked at his actions, there was a sense of guilt.

"Sirius told Snape, for his amusement, that he could follow me around pulling the knot out of the tree trunk with a long stick." Lupin continued, "Of course, Snape tried just that... your father heard what Sirius had done, and risked his life to catch up with Snape and drag him back..."

"Heh!" Snape scoffed again, then clapped his hands together and sneered, "What a wonderful speech, and he and Potter were easily praised."

He couldn't believe that the others didn't know, and the fact that James Potter had risked his life to save his own was even more ridiculous.... Lupin himself had just said that werewolves would have no desire to attack the Animagus.

Plainly speaking, James Potter saved his life because he was worried that he would be expelled from school if anything happened to him, and there was no danger.

Snape hadn't appreciated it from the beginning, and now that he knew James was an Animagus, he was unlikely to thank him.

Beside him, Fish's eyes widened and he shouted at Sirius, "You really are a bad man, aren't you?"

?(?ΦДΦ?)?

Sirius opened his mouth to retort, but finally sighed in frustration and agreed to Fish's accusation.

Had it been Snape, his nemesis, he would have argued his case, but in front of the others, Sirius could not in good conscience deny the mistakes of his youth.

"True, I don't know about that, but we did a lot of things to Severus back then, and of course, he did a lot of things to us, but you know... there's more of us, and we're well liked in Gryffindor, and Severus is a half-blood Slytherin, and.... well... he didn't have much help at school at the time anyway."

Lupin shrugged, giving a relatively fair account of the situation back then.

"Fish said a long time ago, Severus, you shouldn't be so pessimistic, you should make more friends nya."

(??ˇ?ˇ??)

The kitten turned his head to the side and said to Snape with a serious countenance.

Snape twisted the corner of his mouth and, as usual, ignored him.

And Harry looked at Snape with a complicated expression. Now he understood why Snape hated him so much. To be honest, he even felt that Snape would still protect him. Now that he thought about it, Harry wasn't sure about protecting Malfoy's children.

As for Dumbledore's claim that Snape would protect him because his father had saved him, how could Harry believe that now?

Lupin then went on to tell the story of his school days and soon mentioned their respective nicknames; Cornamenta, Padfoot, Wormtail and his own nickname, Moony.

"Nya?!"

∑(?ΦДΦ?)

Fish pulled the Marauder's Map out of his pocket and pointed at Lupin.

"So you guys made this thing nya?"

Seeing the map in the cat's hand, Lupin froze slightly, then shook his head and laughed bitterly, "It's actually in your hands, so that's how Sirius and I got exposed?"

Sirius, who had known that the Marauder's Map was in Fish's hands, also smiled bitterly.

"Serves you right."

Snape gloated, glancing nonchalantly at the supposed Marauder's Map without giving it a thought.

Just as Harry had been unwilling to use the 2001 Nimbus, and Malfoy had been dismayed that the two of them had the same boggart, Snape didn't give a damn what Lupin's gang had come up with.

After a bit of wailing, a cajoling Lupin finally got to what Fish was most concerned about: the Animagus form of the three of them, mainly Pettigrew Peter's Animagus form.

"I'm a werewolf, hence the name Moony, and your father's Animagus is a stag, so we call him Prongs, and Sirius turns into a big black dog, which is naturally Padfoot..."

"What?!"

Harry couldn't help but exclaim upon hearing that Black's Animagus form was a big black dog, and he turned his gaze back to Fish.

"That's right, it's Cold!"

(〃｀3′〃)

The kitten pouted and said, "I can't believe he fooled Fish with all those treats, Fish will have to hit him a few more times!".

However, what Fish said made Harry believe a little that Lupin and the others had been wronged, and the reason was, naturally, the same as before.

"So, Black should have had plenty of chances to kill me?"

Harry asked, unable to contain his doubts.

"Probably because Fluffy and Buckbeak were there?"

Fish offered an explanation before Snape could say anything.

The cat was undecided at the moment, though he had begun to suspect that Peter Pettigrew was probably Scabbers, but if Black really wasn't the killer, then his reward might disappear....

So he wants to know the truth, but he also hopes that Lupin is lying, or that Peter Pettigrew's Animagus form isn't a rat.

However, things failed....

"Wormtail's Animagus form is a rat, he was the one who betrayed your parents, he's been hiding at the Weasley's since he faked his death, Sirius saw a picture of the Weasleys together in the Daily Prophet, that's how he knew Wormtail wasn't dead..."

There was a slight change in Lupin's gentle tone, and Harry could feel the pent-up anger in his words.

"Remember when I asked Ron about his pet? I was making sure Sirius wasn't lying, and I only found out everything from him today."

Harry corroborated what Lupin had said with what he had found out, and was beginning to believe that he and Black were innocent.

Fish, on the other hand, didn't care about that, because....

The reward of the gold galleons had disappeared nya!

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