From Hogwarts to Strixhaven.

Chapter 198 Who is a Good Friend

"Think about it, Harry." Ron carefully avoided Hermione's ear and whispered to Harry, "If you hadn't saved Snape, or if you had cast the spell a little slower... Hogwarts would have been spared two troubles! Everyone would be grateful to us!"

Harry shook his head and carefully avoided a senior student who was holding a huge pile of books: "I just... I just felt that I should do that..."

"It's all that Squib Filch's fault for forbidding students to perform magic in the corridor..." Ron muttered as he watched the student with the books bump into the door frame. "Well, Harry, there's nothing wrong with what you did. Even the meanest person can't find fault with it. But Snape... he didn't even say thank you! There must be something wrong with this guy..."

"I don't understand either," said Harry.

I don't understand why he saved me.

This was what Harry didn't say.

But Ron couldn't hear his inner thoughts, so he could only misunderstand: "Well, what's the big deal? I don't believe anyone can understand Snape!"

Harry shook his head and said nothing.

Hermione, who was walking in front of them, pushed open a classroom door, stuck her head in and looked inside. She said, "Not here either."

"We've already looked in the library, the clock tower, and the empty classrooms. Where else does Ivy often go?" Ron glanced at the snow outside the window. The cold wind was blowing. "He can't be sitting in the snow in this weather, right?"

On the first day of the new semester, the second-year wizards did not have many classes because the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor encountered an unexpected incident.

Although this matter was discovered at the dinner the day before, it was not until today that everyone generally knew that Professor Lockhart of Defense Against the Dark Arts had encountered an accident again.

The instigator had no time to pay attention to all this commotion because he was busy finding Ivy and helping Ron's pet mouse Scabbers to free it from the cage.

"Harry!"

Just as Harry and his two friends were racking their brains over where to look for Ivy, Colin Creevey, a first-year Gryffindor student, found them.

"No. Colin, now is not the time for pictures," Harry responded reflexively.

"I'm not here to take your picture, Harry." Colin did not have the Muggle camera hanging around his neck.

Harry breathed a sigh of relief and asked, "What is it?"

"Professor Dumbledore asked me to pass you a message. He wants you to go to the headmaster's office to find him." Colin took out a piece of paper from his bag and handed it to Harry. "This is the password."

"Oh, thank you." Harry didn't expect to meet Dumbledore so soon, and suddenly felt a little timid.

"If you really want to thank me, let me take a picture of you!" It turned out that Colin's Muggle camera was put into his schoolbag.

The only thing that made Harry happy was that Lockhart was no longer likely to suddenly jump out from a corner and strongly demand to join in.

"How about being with your friends?" Colin made an unreasonable request.

"Why not?" Ron agreed enthusiastically. It was the first time he was pointed a Muggle camera at someone.

So for the first time, embarrassed Harry, excited Ron, and absent-minded Hermione appeared in the same photo.

They were leaning against each other's shoulders, but neither of them, except Ron, was looking much at the camera.

"Do you need my help to make the picture move?" Colin asked Harry as he swung the picture to speed it up.

"No thanks."

"Well, have a nice day!" Colin handed the photo to Harry and trotted away.

Harry laughed when he saw himself in the photo. Ron leaned on his shoulder to watch it with him. He shouted, "It really doesn't move! How interesting!"

"Here you go." Harry handed the photo to Ron and opened the note from Dumbledore. It read: Coconut Ice Cream.

"I know where to find Ivy!" Harry said suddenly, "He must be in the headmaster's office too!"

So Harry asked Ron for the spotted hamster wheel, twirled his legs, and ran away like the wind.

“Coconut sorbet!”

The gargoyles heard the correct command and nimbly jumped to the side, making way for a spiral staircase that slowly moved upwards.

Harry had been here quite often and was already very familiar with the furnishings in the principal's office.

This beautiful and spacious room was no different from the last time Harry came. If anything, Professor Snape, who had been lying on the table last time, was now sitting on a chair, while Ivy, who had been sitting on a chair last time, was standing in front of the phoenix Fawkes's perch, teasing the little bird, which had not even grown all its feathers yet.

"Welcome, Harry." The old headmaster sitting behind the desk cast a kind look at Harry and reached out to get him a chair. "Sit down. What's in your hand?"

"Thank you, Professor Dumbledore." Harry thanked him and held up Scabbers' hamster wheel. He said, "This is Scabbers, Ron's pet. Ivy gave him a hamster wheel before, but it won't open now. We're going to ask Ivy to help take a look."

"Give it to me." Ivy stretched out her hand and took the small silver cage from Harry.

Banban looked listless and sickly.

Ivy poked it with her wand and asked, "How are you, Scabbers?"

Banban tilted his head and cried out weakly, then lay down and didn't move.

"We shouldn't waste our time on a rat," said Snape, without looking at Harry.

"I'm afraid we'll have to waste our time on this rat." Ivy smiled at him.

"Remember what I said?" Ivy asked herself, "I can talk to all the animals."

"And this mouse," Ivy tapped the buckle of the hamster wheel with her wand, and the cage opened, and Scabbers floated out. The feeling of losing gravity was quite bad, and Scabbers waved his limbs wildly in the air, "but it can only make meaningless sounds." "...What do you mean?" Harry asked blankly.

Dumbledore narrowed his eyes as well.

"This means it's not a rat." Ivy used her wand to control Scabbers. Its screams made Harry look unbearable. "Even now, its howls don't convey any clear message."

"I feel like it's scared to death by you..." Harry said uneasily.

Dumbledore waved his hand to stop Harry from saying the next word, stared at Ivy and asked: "I think you already have the answer, right, Ivy?"

Ivy curled his lips and said with a smile: "Please allow me to perform a magic trick - to transform a living person!"

The silver lime tree wand emitted a blue-white light, and Banban began to spin rapidly in the air.

With a flash of light, a head appeared, followed by limbs, and finally a fat body.

A short, fat man with a pointed nose, small, watery eyes, and shaggy, light-colored hair that was bald in places appeared upside down in the air.

"Peter Pettigrew!" Snape said through gritted teeth. He recognized the man at a glance.

"It seems that our Potions professor has some grudge against him." Ivy teased.

Snape glared at him and asked in the most terrifying tone Harry had ever heard: "Why would our Merlin First Class Medal winner appear in Hogwarts? I'm curious how you came back to life? Or how did you escape Black's pursuit?"

Pettigrew, who was hung upside down in the air by Ivy's magic, shrank, revealing two large yellow front teeth, and said with a fake smile: "Severus... I just hid... used magic... you know..."

"Don't yell so intimately!" Snape roared, then he calmed down and said to Dumbledore, "I suggest using truth serum. Prepare it now and it will be ready in a moment."

"I can explain!" Peter Pettigrew screamed, like a fat rat caught in a mousetrap. "Sirius... Black is chasing me! I don't want to die! That's why I'm hiding!"

"I'm afraid that doesn't make sense," Dumbledore said slowly, his eyes gleaming with cold anger. "Black is in Azkaban now, and Voldemort is a ghost now. So what are you hiding from, Peter?"

"He killed everyone on the street!" Peter Pettigrew was still screaming. Perhaps because he was facing away from Dumbledore, he seemed full of energy. So Ivy turned him over, and his voice immediately became timid. "Those people... were covered in blood... There were broken limbs everywhere... Even me, even I lost a finger!"

Dumbledore's gaze was like a sword piercing deep into Peter Pettigrew's heart, and the latter struggled to move his limbs to get free.

"Harry!" Peter Pettigrew suddenly shouted, "I'm your parents' friend! Best friend! Help me! Help me!"

"Professor Dumbledore..." Harry said hesitantly. He didn't know whether he should believe what the man in front of him said.

"Your Occlumency is not very good, Peter." Dumbledore took off his glasses and wiped them with a cloth on the desk.

"Can you please tell him to shut up, Ivy?" Dumbledore put on his glasses again, his face as cold as iron.

"Glad to help." Ivy snapped his fingers, and Peter Pettigrew suddenly became silent and turned into a fat rat that could only flutter in the air.

The air in the principal's office was as quiet as death. Even the principals who always snored opened their eyes quietly, eager to know what would happen next.

"Excellent Transfiguration," Dumbledore exclaimed.

Then he sighed again and said to Harry, "We were going to talk about something else today, but now we have to make way for Peter."

Harry still looked confused. He still didn't understand the situation, just like the last time he came here.

"Peter Pettigrew, the mouse, was indeed a good friend of your parents, but he was also a traitor," Dumbledore explained. "He betrayed your parents, leading to Voldemort finding them eleven years ago."

"Ah..." Harry made a little sound from his throat, not being able to immediately understand what Dumbledore said.

But he heard Snape's teeth clattering: "Let me kill him. Now! Immediately!"

"I'm afraid not, Severus." Dumbledore soothed, "We need Peter as a witness to correct the past mistakes and clear Sirius, who was wrongfully imprisoned."

"That's what he deserves!" Snape's anger was not so easy to calm down, not to mention that he already had a grudge against the four robbers.

"If I'm not mistaken, it must be that stupid Black who was smart enough to change the Secret-Keeper at the last minute! He deserves to rot in prison!"

"It was not Sirius who betrayed James and Lily, you must understand that." Dumbledore insisted, "If you think Sirius must pay the price for their deaths, eleven years in prison would have been enough, but you..."

"Hmph!" Snape snorted and turned his head away, suddenly meeting Harry's confused green eyes.

"Professor Snape..." Harry asked blankly, "You are also a good friend of my parents, right?"

"How dare you..." Snape hadn't finished his denial when he realized that if he denied the question, he would also be denying Lily's identity as her friend. So he stopped awkwardly and turned his head to the other side.

Dumbledore smiled and continued to say to Harry: "Let me explain things to you clearly. Back then, Voldemort wanted to find your parents and kill them. We got the news in advance and decided to use a magic called the Fidelius Charm to protect them. This spell requires a secret keeper. It can hide a secret in a person's soul. As long as the secret keeper does not reveal it personally, no one can make the secret public."

"Your parents have three good friends. One is the mouse in front of you, and the other is Sirius who is imprisoned in Azkaban."

"At first, your parents planned to let Sirius be the secret keeper. But later, as Professor Snape said, they changed the secret keeper on a whim. Then Peter, the traitor who had been hiding among us for a long time, betrayed your parents' location to Voldemort..."

"Everything happened so suddenly. Your parents died, Voldemort fell, Peter fled madly under the pursuit of Sirius Black, and finally turned into a mouse and hid in the Weasley family until he was found by Ivy."

Harry stared at the fat rat in front of him. He suddenly understood Snape's hatred. He said slowly, "Another friend of my parents, not Professor Snape?"

"No, it's not." Dumbledore smiled, "Or rather, not entirely. Severus is not a mutual friend of your parents."

Snape still tilted his head, as if he had taken a sudden interest in the Pensieve standing against the wall.

"But you reminded me, Harry." Dumbledore said cheerfully, "Perhaps I can find a third friend of your parents and let him be the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts."

(End of this chapter)