It was Scabbers!
Yet Scabbers looked utterly strange. He seemed to be bound by an invisible force, squeaking and writhing as though he had gone mad.
"Scabbers—" Ron sounded anxious. He was his pet, after all. But a moment later, Ron froze.
Something horrifying happened: Scabbers's body began to undergo a terrible, violent transformation!
His body swelled like an inflating balloon and stretched out. His gray fur rapidly receded, exposing pale, trembling human skin beneath.
His squeaks became human howls of pain and terror. His limbs twisted and changed shape, his claws retracting into filthy fingers and toes. His rat's head swelled too, his pointed snout shrinking back to reveal a man's thin, sharp face, creased with terror.
Within seconds—nauseating seconds that Ron would never forget for the rest of his life—Scabbers, his old, sickly pet rat who had been with the Weasley family for over a decade, vanished.
In his place was a short man crouching on the ground, trembling all over.
His sparse, pale hair was a tangled mess, with a large bald patch on top. His skin was filthy and so pale that he hardly looked alive. He wore ragged, obviously ill-fitting clothes that looked almost like Scabbers's fur, and his pointed nose and tiny, beady eyes still retained something of a rat's features.
His small, watery eyes were now filled with utter terror, darting frantically over every face surrounding him.
"Peter. Ah." Dumbledore's voice was frighteningly calm, yet it struck like a thunderclap in Harry's and Ron's ears beneath the Invisibility Cloak.
Under the Invisibility Cloak, Harry and Ron stared with wide eyes, cold all over, as though even their blood had frozen.
Ron clapped a hand over his mouth just in time to stop himself from screaming. His eyes bulged, his face was white as