My Hogwarts has a serious problem.

Chapter 400. The Truth

Harry did not stop Black from defending himself.

Just like Lynn said, at this point, it's no big deal to listen to him say a few words, since they can't escape anyway.

"When it came to choosing the secret agent, I advised Jaime not to choose me, because everyone knows how close we are, like brothers, and the Death Eaters would surely guess that too."

So I recommended Peter to James, making him their confidant, while I myself acted as bait, luring the Death Eaters to target me. James agreed, and he did just that.

Blake's face turned utterly filled with hatred at that moment.

"But none of us expected that Peter had already defected to Voldemort a year ago, joining their ranks and hiding among us as an undercover agent."

The night James died, I caught Peter and cornered him. He yelled so loudly that the whole street could hear him, saying that I had betrayed James and Lily.

Then, before I could curse him, he blew up the entire street with the wand he'd hidden on his back, killing everyone within twenty feet of him, and finally escaped into the gutter with the other rats!

"With the other rats!" Harry suddenly shuddered, as he keenly caught the words Black had just uttered.

"That's right, besides Lupin, the three of us—your father, Peter, and I—have all learned Animagus. Peter's Animagus form is a mouse!"

When Black said those words, Harry and Ron exchanged a glance.

Ron's face turned deathly pale, and he kept muttering to himself.

"Impossible, this is impossible."

"Nothing's impossible!" Blake yelled through gritted teeth at Ron. "Your pet is Peter! He ran away from me and hid in your house for over a decade!"

He certainly didn't hate Ron, but he couldn't help clenching his teeth whenever Peter's name was mentioned.

Hermione then raised a question at that opportune moment.

"But you've been in Azkaban the whole time, how did you recognize Ron's pet as Peter?"

To answer this question, Black made a request to Harry.

"Release me. I need to show you the evidence. Don't worry, I can't hurt you without the wand."

Harry didn't say anything, but turned to look at Lynn.

Lynn winked at him, then beckoned to the black rope binding Blake. The black rope, like a snake, loosened from Blake's body and transformed into a black metal rod that flew into Lynn's hand.

"An extremely sophisticated transformation technique."

After being released, Blake did not do anything drastic. He absentmindedly praised the gesture, then reached his claw-like hand into his robe and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper.

He smoothed out the paper and showed it to everyone.

That's a photo of Ron's family with Harry, published in the Daily Prophet this summer. Ron has Scabbers on his shoulder.

"How did you get your hands on this newspaper?" Lupin asked Black, quite surprised.

“Fudge,” Black said, “He gave me this newspaper when he visited Azkaban last year.”

That was Peter, on the front page of the newspaper, on the shoulder of the boy next to Harry. I recognized him immediately. I don't know how many times I've seen him transform. I remember exactly what the mouse he turned into looked like.

The caption accompanying the photo says, "Harry Potter is having a wonderful time with his new host family!"

Lupin also noticed a distinctive feature on the mouse in the photograph.

Look at its front paws!

"So what?" Ron said, not caring at all.

He simply refused to believe it. Although Banban had gone missing, he still had a deep affection for his pet.

"It's missing a toe," Blake said.

“Of course,” Lupin whispered. “At the scene of your arrest, they only found one finger left by Peter.”

"Well, that spotted thing might have fought with other mice or something else! It's been in our house for years," Ron argued.

"Twelve years, right?" Lupin said. "Didn't you ever wonder how it could live that long?"

"We...we've been taking good care of it!" Ron said.

"But it doesn't look too good right now, does it?" Lupin said. "I guess it's been losing weight ever since it heard Blake escaped."

"That's because she was scared by Hermione's cat!"

Ron's explanations became increasingly weak and unconvincing; at this point, almost anyone could see that something was wrong.

Blake continued.

"I've been waiting for an opportunity, a chance to capture Peter without alerting any of you, but before I could make my move, I discovered that Peter had vanished from the boy's side!"

A look of surprise appeared on Lupin's wolf-like face.

"Peter ran away?"

"Yes, he escaped. I was tricked into coming here tonight by these children using a mouse disguised as Peter."

Lupin glanced at Lynn meaningfully. Black, having spent so long in prison, would naturally not know what kind of person had emerged at Hogwarts, but Lupin knew everything.

"You didn't lose out, or rather, it wasn't an accident."

Lynn ignored Lupin's probing gaze, because at this point it was up to Harry to believe Black's words.

Harry didn't know what expression to make. He looked at Ron, then at Lynn, exchanged a glance with Hermione, then looked past Black's bruised and swollen face, and finally looked at Lupin.

"What's Peter's code name? You're called Moonface, so what about him?"

Lupin didn't know why Harry was asking this, but he calmly replied, "Wormtail. His Animagus is a rat, so he gave himself the codename Wormtail."

Harry truly wavered at that moment.

Because the prophecy Lynn had told him earlier perfectly matched the facts that Blake and Lupin had stated.

But Harry couldn't be sure if Black and Lupin were conspiring to deceive him, and even Ron couldn't accept such a thing.

"Anyway, Banban is already lost! No matter what you say about him, he can't defend himself! You can blame everything on that mouse that we don't even know if it was actually a human!"

Ron didn't want to stay there any longer. He stood up and was about to leave the cellar in frustration when Lynn stopped him.

"Actually, it's very simple to test whether Blake is telling the truth."

He took a vial of medicine from the pocket of his robe.

"I remember you said at the beginning that Mr. Blake didn't mind using truth serum to test whether he was telling the truth?"

(End of this chapter)