Sirius shrugged his shoulders. "Dumbledore wanted Harry. Wanted to take him somewhere safe I suppose. Dumbledore didn't know about the change in secret keeper you see, I suppose he wanted to get Harry away from me in case I was a Death Eater. I didn't want to hand Harry over, but Hagrid had his orders. Our arguing got a bit heated and in the end… I don't know, I guess I just handed him over. I told Hagrid to take my bike and told him to make sure Harry was safe. Then I went after Pettigrew."
"I tracked him down him down to London later the next day. The stupid idiot had rushed to Diagon Alley for some supplies and I spotted him coming out of Gringotts. He never got the hang of apparition so when he saw me he ran for it. Lots of people were out in the Alley that day, knowing that Voldemort had been defeated, and I had to push my way through a large crowd of people in order to try to get to him. He managed to stay ahead of me and got to the Leaky Cauldron well before I did. By the time I got there he was just disappearing through the front door into the Muggle world. I had to chase him down several muggle streets before he finally took a wrong turn and I cornered him.
"He started shouting that I had betrayed James and Lily. I shouted back that is was him and threatened to kill him for his betrayal. That's when he blew up the street, killing twelve muggle bystanders in the process."
"And what happened to Pettigrew?" asked Amelia.
"He cut of a finger in order to trick people into thinking that that was all that was left of him and then he transformed and disappeared into the sewers, leaving me standing there, borderline hysterical. Moments later the Aurors showed up and arrested me."
"You say he transformed…" began Scrimgeour.
"He was an animagus," replied Sirius. "A rat. I'm one too, a dog. James was a stag. We learned at Hogwarts so that we could safely keep Remus company while he was transformed during the full moon."
"I assume that this animagus form has something to do with how you escaped from Azkaban undetected?" asked Amelia.
"Yes. For some reason the Dementors could not sense me when I was in dog form. One day they let open the cell door and I was able to slip right by them unnoticed."
"Why wait twelve years to try?"
"I didn't want to risk it. I knew that if I was caught trying to escape I would be sentenced to the kiss. So I stayed in my cell hoping that someone would come through and realise that I had never been given a trial. Then one day Fudge turned up for a look around and left a copy of The Daily Prophet behind. Right there on the front cover was Pettigrew in rat form."
"How did you know it was him?" asked Scrimgeour.
"To be honest I was never completely sure," said Sirius. "Pettigrew's animagus form didn't have too much about it that made it significantly distinct from any other rat, but when I saw that there was a toe missing on its front paw… In the photograph he was being held by a young boy with red hair and the article said that the five youngest children of the family were all at Hogwarts. That rat being at Hogwarts while Harry was there was too much of a coincidence for my liking. I had to do something."
Silence filled the room for a few moments, broken only by the sound of a blue dictation quill as it furiously scribbled out a transcript of the questioning.
Finally Amelia asked "What can you tell us about the night you were captured at Hogwarts?"
"Getting to Hogwarts was relatively easy. I remained in my animagus form for most of the way and made it there by early October. Getting inside the castle and getting my hands on that rat was a completely different matter. Then, one day, I happened to find Harry and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger out on the grounds of the school. Ron had the rat in his hands. Pettigrew realised I was nearby and ran so I went for him. Ron tried to stop me so I grabbed him and Pettigrew and dragged them both into a secret passageway beneath the Whomping Willow. I knew that if Harry was anything like his father he would follow us and I wanted to talk to him away from prying eyes.
"The passageway leads to the Shrieking Shack. Once there I only had to wait for about a minute for Harry to turn up with Hermione in tow. Luckily for me, no matter how much he might have wanted to kill me on some level, Harry doesn't have the killer's instinct. I thought that he might give me a painful hexing though, before Remus turned up."
"He saw you going after them?" suggested Scrimgeour.
"Yes, though not in person. When we at school, James, Remus, Peter and I developed a map of the school and grounds which could show where people were at any given time. We were pranksters and developing that map helped us to evade capture. During the time that Remus had been teaching at Hogwarts the map had found its way into Harry's hands. Remus confiscated it out of fear that I would somehow get my hands on it. He was looking at it on the evening in question. He saw me on the map clear and anything. Then he spotted Harry, Ron, Hermione and a fourth name. The moment he saw Pettigrew's name he pieced everything together and came running just as I was dragging Ron and the rat into the passageway.
"Together Remus and I convinced tried to convince Harry of the truth, but then Snape turned up. He had gone to Remus' office moments after he left it and saw the map. He completely missed Pettigrew's name and locked onto mine. He was so overjoyed at the prospect of being the one to capture me and at having what he saw as being proof that Remus was helping me. Add in the added bonus of having caught Harry out of bounds and he was in no mood to listen to anyone. Harry wasn't particularly in the mood to put up with Snape's behaviour and hit him with a disarming hex at the exact same time as Ron and Hermione did. He spent the rest of the encounter out cold.
"In the end we had to forcefully reverse Pettigrew's transformation, but it worked. Pettigrew was exposed and, most importantly, Harry believed me."
"I was rather determined to commit one of the crimes that I had been imprisoned for and by this time Remus shared that same sentiment but Harry wouldn't let us kill him. He said that Pettigrew had to be taken by the Ministry and questioned so that I could be free properly.
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