The Traitor Dies as a Rat

"Harry, when did you get up here?"

On the way back to the compartment, Ron was astonished.

Neville wasn't tall, but he was broad, and with him added in, plus the heads occasionally poking out from compartments on either side of the corridor, it was practically a blockade of the entire passageway.

"Took the stairs," Harry said.

"That's Apparition—it can easily cause splinching as a side effect," Hermione immediately chimed in. "You can only pay to learn that magic when you're seventeen and of age, and you have to get a license from the Ministry's Floo Network Authority under the guidance of a Ministry-appointed professor before you can use it legally!"

"Harry's no ordinary person," Draco said contemptuously.

Ron stopped, as if he'd uncovered some earth-shattering secret. "Why are you still following behind us!"

"Harry didn't say anything," Draco raised an eyebrow. "We Malfoys always stand behind the victor."

"So you sided with You-Know-Who." Ron shot Draco a disgusted look and pushed open the compartment door.

"Merlin's beard!" x2

"What's wrong with Scabbers? / Trevor's gone!"

Ron and Neville's exclamations instantly quelled the smoke of battle that was about to ignite.

On top of the silver-white notebook, the gray rat Scabbers had turned a mottled gray and white, ancient and decrepit, on the verge of drawing its last breath.

[Quest [The Betrayer Dies by the Rat's Hand] [The Captured Boy Riddle] [The Vindicated Dog Godfather] completed. 130 XP, Silver Magic Knowledge 2, Gold Talent 1]

—The last two quests were completed too? Already fated?

Harry was astonished.

"No!" Ron, who had been about to lunge forward and turn to berate Draco as the rat's murderer, stopped in his tracks.

Scabbers had vanished without a trace, replaced by a pudgy old man with a missing index finger, his chest no longer rising and falling.

"An Animagus! That's Peter Pettigrew! He was supposed to be dead... when he tried to stop Sirius Black... the biggest remnant was just a finger!" Draco's mouth rattled off like a machine gun.

Sirius was his mother's cousin—a Death Eater his father didn't even know about, but their family had mentioned many times. Peter was dragged into it too, so even though Peter had completely changed, he still recognized him at a glance.

"That notebook is moving!" Neville exclaimed.

Beneath the silver-threaded fabric cover of the notebook, something like a heart was pulsing steadily, emitting a moon-white glow.

"A dark magic artifact!" Ron collapsed to the floor.

In that moment, countless cursed books his father had told him about flashed through his mind: The Wizard's Sonnet, which forced anyone who read it to speak only in limericks for the rest of their life; The Book of Shadows, which made people lose their shadow and unable to face the sun; Daydreams, which left readers only able to sleep during the day...

Hermione had already run over, leading Percy.

"A corpse or something—it must be Fred and George's prank—"

Percy, who walked with a breeze and always puffed out the side of his chest bearing the prefect badge, instantly lost all color.

"Go get Headmaster Dumbledore!"

—Go get the Tathagata Buddha from the Western Paradise.

For a moment, only Harry kept his usual calm expression beside the compartment.

Three minutes later, there was one more person like that.

The man wore half-moon spectacles, his nose bridge looked like it had been broken at least twice, and his hair and beard were silver-white. He was Albus Dumbledore.

But...

The two people behind him made everyone want to keep their distance.

One had greasy hair and a sallow complexion, radiating a "keep away" aura.

The other wore a turban, reeked of garlic, and immediately wobbled unsteadily at the sight of the corpse, even worse than Neville or Ron.

Only Harry knew that this turban-wearing man, Quirrell, was reacting to seeing the diary. Quirrell himself didn't know why, but Voldemort on the back of his head was surely furious, cursing Lucius Malfoy nonstop for causing him to lose a precious Horcrux.

A Horcrux was the very root of Voldemort's immortality.

As long as even one existed in this world, Voldemort could never be truly killed.

And now, one of them had fallen into Dumbledore's hands.

And another...

The former Horcrux, Harry, stroked the metal wand pulsing against his chest.

Though the soul was of the same origin, it was no longer Voldemort's Horcrux—it belonged to Harry now, leaving only hostility toward its original master deep within the soul, a fierce predatory instinct.

[[Voldemort's Vigilance] (100 XP, Silver Talent Word 1). The loss of one Horcrux has put Voldemort on guard. Find the Ravenclaw's Diadem within three school years.]

—Voldemort moved the diadem?

—No longer in the Room of Requirement?

—An inevitable fate? What if I stop it?

Harry was stunned.

On the other side, Dumbledore had finally stopped his movements.

The silvery, mist-like substance no longer precipitated from the area of Peter Pettigrew's brain. Dumbledore lightly flicked his sleeve, and a triangular crystal vial materialized in midair, absorbing that strange substance.

"A piece of good news." Dumbledore picked up the notebook, which had fallen silent since he approached, and looked at Harry. "You will have a godfather."

Under Snape's shocked gaze, he nodded and continued: "Sirius Black is innocent. The true traitor is Peter Pettigrew. After Voldemort (the surrounding students collectively gasped) died, he hid from the Death Eaters and our pursuit once the truth came to light by staying in the form of a rat with the Weasley family for nearly ten years."

Percy made a sound like he was about to vomit. Before Ron, Scabbers had been his pet, sleeping on his pillow, sometimes even...

Ron also wore a look of disgust. He wasn't much better off. His brother's affection had turned into a curse that haunted his midnight dreams.

"I think... I should head to the Ministry of Magic as soon as possible. Severus, take Quirinus back."

As soon as Dumbledore finished speaking, he vanished into thin air along with Peter Pettigrew's corpse.

After Snape and Quirrell left.

"I knew Sirius Black wasn't a Death Eater. My mother and father never believed it." Draco, son of a double-agent Death Eater, issued his endorsement. "Haha, Weasley, you slept with an old man for ten years."

"Shut up! Percy slept with him even longer! You... you evil Malfoy," Ron fumed. "I bet that notebook was your father's doing. Your family has always been against ours!"

"For you to lose a precious magical artifact? The cover was woven from Unicorn Tail Hair, and it came with plenty of powerful spells attached. Do you think my father is insane?"

"What if it was for Harry? He's definitely going to be a Gryffindor. Every single one of us Weasleys is a Gryffindor."

"Quiet. You're disturbing my reading!"

Hermione slammed the thick Hogwarts: A History shut.

They were now in Hermione's compartment.

The original compartment had a dead body in it. No one wanted to stay there except Harry.

At the mention of reading, everyone in the compartment secretly glanced at Harry.

Ten minutes ago, after Harry said "Pull Noodles," space had stretched, and the ceiling had risen.

Then Harry started reading.

It was as if his feet had magnetism. He hung upside down from the ceiling, and the floating book turned its own pages.

No, to be precise, he was standing on it. His hair, clothes, and pants all obeyed gravity as if he were standing on the ground.

This wasn't a system task. It was for skill proficiency.

He had completely become the shape of that dogskin book!

Tragic!