It took a few seconds for my statement to sink in. Then Ron voiced his feelings.

"The three of you are mental."

"Ridiculous!" says Hermione faintly.

"Peter Pettigrew's dead!" says Harry. "He killed him twelve years ago!" He points at Dad, whose face twitches convulsively.

"I meant to," he growls, his yellow teeth bared, "but little Peter got the better of me...not this time, though!"

Dad lunged at Scabbers; Ron yells with pain as Dad's weight fell on his broken leg.

"Sirius, NO!" Uncle Remus yells, launching himself forwards and dragging Dad away from Ron again. Maybe Dad really lost it in Azkaban. "WAIT! You can't do it just like that-they need to understand-we've got to explain-"

"We can explain afterwords!" Dad snarls, trying to throw Uncle Remus off. One hand was still clawing the air as it tried to reach Scabbers, who was squealing like a pig, scratching Ron's face and neck as he tries to escape.

"They've-got-a-right-to-know-everything!" Uncle Remus pants, still trying to restrain Dad. "Ron's kept him as a pet! There are parts of it even I don't understand! And Harry and Clara-you owe them the truth, Sirius!"

Dad stops struggling, though his hallowed eyes off the rat. "Tell them whatever you like. But make t quick, Remus. I want to commit the murder I was imprisoned for...."

"You're nutters, you three," said Ron shakily, looking round at Harry and Hermione for support. "I've had enough of this. I'm off."

He tried to heave himself up on his good leg, but Uncle Remus raised his wand again, pointing it at Scabbers.

"You're going to hear me out, Ron," he said quietly. "Just keep a tight hold on Peter while you listen."

"HE'S NOT PETER, HE'S SCABBERS!" Ron yells, trying to force Peter back into his front pocket, but Peter was fighting him; Ron swayed and overbalanced, and Harry caught him and pushed him back down to the bed. Ignoring Dad, Harry looks to Uncle Remus.

"There were witnesses who saw Pettigrew die," he said. "A whole street full of them..."

"They didn't see what they thought they saw!" Argues Dad savagely, still staring at the rat with a watchful eye.

"Everyone thought Sirius killed Peter," says Uncle Remus, nodding. "I believed it myself-until I saw the Map tonight. Because the Marauder's Map never lies...Peter's alive. Ron's holding him, Harry."

I definitely believe it.

Harry and Ron share a look. Judging by their expression, they still think Uncle Remus, Dad, and I are insane.

Then Hermione speaks, in a trembling, would-be calm sort of voice, as though trying to will Uncle Remus to talk sensibly.

"But Professor Lupin...Scabbers can't be Pettigrew...it just can't be true, you know it can't..."

"Why can't it be true?" Uncle Remus asks, sounding like we're in class and Hermione notices some incorrect fact in our notes.

"Because...because people would know if Peter Pettigrew had been an Animagus. We did Animagi in class with Professoe McGonagall. And I looked them up when I did my homework-the Ministry of Magic keeps tabs on witches and wizards who can become animals; there's a register showing what animal they become, and their markings and things...and I went and looked Professor McGonagall up on the register, and there have been only seven Animagi this century, and Pettigrew's name wasn't on the list-"

I had to laugh at that. Everybody turned to look at me so I said, "Hermione, you're so naive! How can you have been friends with me for so long, and not realize that people break rules all the time? There used to be four unregistered Animagi running around Hogwarts once a month years ago."

"How do you-?"

"-know that? I know because I know the four unregistered Animagi: Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew, James Potter, and my mother. I don't believe stuff without proof, Hermione."

"Aunt Jamie and Dad are Animagi?" Harry asks. "Why?"

"You can tell that one," I tell Uncle Remus and Dad.

"If you're going to tell then the story, get a move on, Remus," Dad snarls, who was still watching Scabber's every move. "I've waited twelve years, in not going to wait much longer."

"All right...but you'll need to help me, Sirius," says Uncle Remus, "I only know how it began...."

Uncle Remus brakes off. There had been a loud creak behind him. The bedroom door had opened of its own accord. Uncle Remus strode toward it and looked out into the landing.

"That's not normal. Doors can't open on their own." I say. I know enough horror movie cliches to know this is how people die. Not paying attention!

"No one there..." Uncle Remus tells the remaining six of us.

"This place is haunted!" Ron insists.

"It's not," says Uncle Remus, still looking puzzled by the door. "The Shrieking Shack was never haunted....The screams and howls the villagers used to hear were made by me."

He pushed his fraying hair out of his eyes, thought for a moment, then said, "That's where all of this starts-with my becoming a werewolf. None of this could have happened if I haven't been bitten...and if I hadn't been so foolhardy...."

He looked sober and tired. His little opening to the story got me interested. Ron started to interrupt, but Hermione said, "Shh!" She was watching Uncle Remus very intently.

"I was a very small boy when I received the bite. My parents tried everything, but in these days there was no cure. The potion that Professor Snape has been making me is a very recent discovery. It makes me safe, you see. As long as I take it within the week preceding the full moon, I keep my mind when I transform....I am able to curl up in my office, a harmless wild, and wait for the moon to wane again.

"Perhaps Professor Snape knew about this werewolf and made some for him as well. He certainly did take some." Uncle Remus comments.

"I made it for him. I found the recipe in a book. I wanted to help." I admit. "I'm just glad it worked." Adam nudges me with his nose and I pet behind his ears. He lies down.

Uncle Remus continues on with his story, "Before the Wolfsbane Potion was discovered, however, I became a fully fledged monster once a month. It seemed impossible that I would be able to come to Hogwarts. Other parents weren't likely to want their children exposed to me.

"But then Dumbledore becomes headmaster, and he was sympathetic. He said that as long as we took certain precautions there was no reason I shouldn't come to school...."

Uncle Remus sighed, and looks directly at Harry. "I told you, months ago, that the Whomping Willow was planted the year I came to Hogwarts. The truth is that it was planted because I came to Hogwarts. This house" -he looks miserably around the room- "the tunnel that leads to it-they were built for my use. Once a month, I was smuggled out of the castle, into this place, to transform. The tree was placed at the tunnel mouth to stop anyone coming across me while I was dangerous."

Even though I pretty much already heard this story, I sat in silence to listen. The only sound apart from Uncle Remus's voice was Peter's frightened squeaking. I hope Ron drops him so I can step on him.

"My transformations in those days were-were terrible. It is very painful to turn into a werewolf. I was separated from humans to bite, so I scratched myself instead. The villagers heard the noise and the screaming and thought they were hearing particularly violent spirits. Dumbledore encouraged the rumor....Even now, when the house has been silent for years, the villagers don't dare approach it....

"But apart from my transformations, I was happier than I had ever been in my life. For the first time ever, I had friends, four great friends, Sirius Black...Peter Pettigrew...of course, your aunt and father, Harry-James Potter and Jamie Potter.

"Now my four friends could hardly fail to notice that I disappeared once a month. I made up all sorts of stories. I told them my mother was ill, and that I had to go home to see her....I was terrified they would desert me the moment they found out what I was. But of course, they, like you, Hermione, worked out the truth....

"And they didn't desert me at all. Instead, they did something for me that would make my transformation not only bearable, but the best times of my life. They became Animagi."

"My dad too?" Harry asks. I roll my eyes and look to Adam. If wolves can roll their eyes, Adam did. He seemed to be telling me, "And this is the Boy Who Lived? Who beat a dark sorcerer as a baby?"

"Yes, indeed," said Uncle Remus. "It took them the best part of three years to work out how to do it. Your father, Clara's mother, and Sirius here were the cleverest students in the school, and luckily they were, because the Animagus transformation can go horribly wrong-one reason the Ministry keeps a close watch on those attempting to do it. Peter needed all the help he could get from James, Jamie, and Sirius. Finally, in our fifth year, they managed it. They could each turn into a different animal at will."

"But how did that help you?" says Hermione, sounding puzzled.

"They couldn't keep me company as humans, so they kept me company as animals," says Uncle Remus. "A werewolf is only a danger to people. They sneaked out of the castle every month under James's Invisibility Cloak. They transformed...Peter, as the smallest, could slip beneath the Willow's attacking branches and touch the knot that freezes it. They would then slip down the tunnel and join me. Under their influence, I became less dangerous. My body was still wolfish, but my mind seemed to become less so while I was with them."

"Hurry up, Remus," snarls Dad, who was still watching Peter with a horrible sort of hunger in his face.

"I'm getting there, Sirius, I'm getting there...well, highly exciting possibilities were open to us now that we could all transform. Soon we were leaving the Shrieking Shack and roaming the school grounds and village by night. Sirius and James transformed into such large animals, they were able to keep a werewolf in check. Jamie too, but to a lesser extent. I doubt whether any Hogwarts students ever found out more about the Hogwarts grounds and Hogsmede than we did....And that's how we came to write the Marauder's Map, and sign it with our nicknames. Sirius is Padfoot. Jamie is Paws. Peter is Wormtail. James was Prongs.

"What sort of animal-?" Harry began, but Hermione cut him off.

"That was still really dangerous! Running around in the dark with a werewolf! What if you'd given the others the slip, and bitten somebody?"

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" I asked Adam. He gives me a wolf version of a grin.

"You're mad," Hermione tells me.

Grinning, I say, "As a hatter!"

"The thought still haunts me, Hermione," Uncle Remus says, hastily in response to her question. He doesn't comment on anything I've said. Perhaps he's had too much experience with Dad. "And there were near misses, many of them. We laughed about them afterwords. We were young, thoughtless-carried away with our own cleverness.

"I sometimes feel guilty about betraying Dumbledore's trust, of course...he had admitted me to Hogwarts when no other headmaster would have done so, and he had no idea I was breaking the rules he had set down for my own and others' safety. He never knew I had led three fellow students into becoming Animagi illegally. But I always managed to forget my guilty feelings every time we sat down to plan our next adventure. And I haven't changed...."

Uncle Remus's face had hardened, and there was self-hatred lacing his tone. "All this year, I have been battling with myself, wondering whether I should tell Dumbledore that Sirius was an Animagus. But I didn't do it. Why? Because I was too cowardly. It would have meant admitting that I betrayed his trust while I was at school, admitting that I lead others along with me...and Dumbledore's trust has meant everything to me. He let me into Hogwarts as a boy, and he gave me a job when I have been shunned all my adult life, unable to find paid work because of what I am. By the way, your mother sent me a howler, Clara."

I shrug. "You needed to hear whatever it is she said."

"Anyway, I convinced myself that Sirius was getting into the school using Dark Arts he learned from Voldemort, that being an Animagus had nothing to do with it...so, in a way, Snape's been right about me all along."

"Snape?" says Dad harshly, finally turning away from Scabbers and looking over at Uncle Remus. "What's Snape got to do with it?"

"He's here, Sirius," Uncle Remus tells him heavily. "He's teaching here as well." He looks at us kids.

"Professor Snape was at school with us. He fought very hard against my appointment to the Defense Against the Dark Arts job. He has been telling Dumbledore all year that I am not to be trusted. He has his reason...you see, Sirius here played a trick on him which nearly killed him, a trick which involved me-"

It's one thing to be jealous of a coworker's position and to be a dreadful, bullying teacher to your students, but to actively try and get a man fired because of a prank gone extremely wrong that happened years ago? That's just petty. I hope Dumbledore fires him.

Wait! Did Uncle Remus say nearly killed?

Dad makes a derisive noise.

"It served him right," he sneered. "Sneaking around, trying to figure out what we were up to...hoping he could get us expelled...."

"Severus was very interested in where I went every month," Uncle Remus explaining to Ron, Hermione, Harry, Adam, and I. "We were in the same year, you know, and we-er-didn't like each other very much. He especially disliked James. Jealous, I think, of James's talent on the Quidditch field...anyway, Snape had seen me crossing the grounds with Madam Pomfrey one evening as she led me toward the Whomping Willow to transform. Sirius thought it would be-er-amusing, to tell Snape all he had to do was prod the knot in the tree trunk with a long stick, and he'd be able to get in after me. Well, of course, Snape tried it-if he'd got as far as this house, he'd have met a fully grown werewolf-but James, who'd heard what Sirius had done, went after Snape and pulled him back, at great risk to his life...Snape glimpsed me, though, at the end of the tunnel. He was forbidden by Dumbledore to tell anybody, but from that time on he knew what I was...."

"So that's why Snape doesn't like you," said Harry slowly, "because he thought you were in on the joke?"

"A joke I fail to see," I whisper.

"That's right," sneers a cold voice from the wall behind Uncle Remus.

Severus Snape was pulling off the Invisibility Cloak, his wand pointing directly at my Uncle Remus.