Just like in the original works and the films, the man before her was short and slight, with thin, lusterless hair sticking up in a tangle and a large bald patch on top.
His pointed nose and watery, beady eyes gave him a distinctly rat-like look. He was the very picture of someone shifty and sneaky.
"Hello, Peter," Lupin said, the first to speak. "It's been a long time."
"S-Sirius... R-Remus..." Peter Pettigrew's voice was thin and squeaky. His eyes darted in every direction, hunting for some gap to bolt through in this walled-in space.
Kate reminded him at just the right moment. "I wouldn't recommend running. Nowhere out there is safe right now except here."
Everyone instinctively looked up, and only then noticed that the one remaining passage out had been ringed by seven or eight Dementors.
Lupin frowned and was about to raise his wand to drive them off, but Kate stopped him.
"Professor, they won't act on their own." She snapped her fingers easily, and the Dementors above drifted back.
The look Sirius gave her had shifted from strangeness to alarm. "You can actually control Dementors?"
"I don't think that's the point of today." Kate took a few deliberate steps back. "The point is, have you decided what to do with him?"
"Kill him, of course!" Sirius whipped his head around and glared viciously at Peter, looking as though he'd gladly tear the man apart with his teeth.
Lupin looked at him again. "What exactly happened back then? Sirius, you've never told me all of it."
"Put simply, to escape the mysterious person's pursuit, Harry's parents used the Fidelius Charm."
Seeing Sirius's emotions turning unstable again, visibly this time, Kate had no choice but to play the narrator.
The Fidelius Charm uses magic to hide someone's secret forever inside a living soul.
The secret lives inside the Secret-Keeper, and unless that person willingly gives it away, the charm holds forever.
"At first the couple chose Sirius as their Secret-Keeper, but he later persuaded them to switch to Peter.
In the end, Peter leaked the secret. The mysterious person found the couple and killed them, leaving only Harry..."
"No! That's not true!" Peter shrieked. "Remus, you can't really believe what some child says! She's in league with him, they want to kill me—"
His voice cut off abruptly, because Kate, thoroughly out of patience, had cast a Silencing Charm on him.
"I hate being interrupted," she said with distaste, and kicked him in the head for good measure.
If Sirius had been in a stable state of mind, he would surely have griped that she had too many rules and was a pain. But right now he just stood there, his whole body trembling.
Even twelve years later, this was the great regret and sorrow of his life.
"Afterward, Peter was hunted down by Sirius, so he blew up more than a dozen people in the street, and just before the explosion he pinned the whole blame on Sirius.
Then he used the blast to cut off his own tail and save himself. He severed only a little finger, turned into a rat, and slipped into the sewer with the other rats."
"It was me... I'm the one who got them killed," Sirius rasped. "It was me who talked Lily and James into using Peter at the last moment! It's as good as if I killed them myself!"
He choked on his anguish, turned his face away, and shook without stopping.
At the time he'd thought it a good plan. He'd been sure Voldemort would come after him, and never imagined that Peter would betray them of his own accord and hand his best friend's life to Voldemort.
Kate had plenty to say about that, but she thought it over and kept it to herself.
It was a tragedy of human nature.
The loyal assume others are as loyal as they are, while the base climb upward on other people's trust and lives.
True, making the timid, self-doubting Peter shoulder the burden of Secret-Keeper, and exposing him to all the risks that came with it, had been poorly judged.
But in fact, a full year before the Potters met their end, Peter had already been secretly passing information to Voldemort.
He was a fence-sitter, someone who raced toward whichever side the wind blew, then offered up his friends' bones as stepping stones.
If it weren't for the magic of Lily's love, which brought Voldemort down at Harry's hands, Peter would now be the greatest hero among the Death Eaters, climbing to the top over his friends' corpses.
As an outsider to the affair, she could view the tragedy objectively. But since everyone involved except the dead was right here, there was no need for her to show off her insight.
She kicked Peter again where he lay playing dead. "Hey, aren't you going to say something?"
Peter cringed and sat up, working his mouth hard, but not a sound came out.
Oh. She'd forgotten to take his voice off.
The instant she lifted the spell, Peter opened his mouth to resume his wailing and begging. But he'd barely produced a syllable before Kate kicked him flat again.
With a Strength of 66, even without using her full force, it was enough to send him rolling around on the ground for a while.
"On second thought, never mind, there's no need to talk." She turned to Lupin and Sirius. "What do you plan to do with him?"
"Remus!" Pettigrew whimpered, turning toward Lupin and writhing pitifully at his feet. "You can't believe all this... If they'd changed the plan, wouldn't Sirius have told you?"
"No. If he thought I was the spy, he wouldn't have told me, Peter," Lupin said calmly.
"I suppose that's why you didn't tell me, Sirius?" he added casually, over the top of Pettigrew's head.
"Forgive me, Remus." Sirius got to his feet, apologetic.
"Not at all, Padfoot, old friend," Lupin said, rolling up his sleeves. "Will you forgive me for believing you were the spy?"
"Of course." A flicker of a smile crossed Black's haggard face, and he rolled up his own sleeves. "Shall we kill him together?"
"I think so," Lupin said grimly.
The two stepped forward as one, seized him, and threw him to the ground.
Kate watched Pettigrew twitch on the floor in terror. She thought for a moment, then said, "Maybe we should still..."
"Shafiq!" Sirius looked up, his bloodshot eyes fixed on her. "I'm grateful you caught him. Leave the rest to us. You don't need to get mixed up in this!"
He turned back to Peter. "You should have known this day would come, back when you started feeding information to Voldemort a year early!"
Sirius gripped his throat, and Lupin raised his wand.
"You should have known," Lupin said softly, "that if Voldemort didn't kill you, we would. Farewell, Peter."
His wand glinted, and it was just about to sweep down when something forced it to halt in midair.
Lupin looked up in disbelief and found that the armored warrior had appeared behind him at some point and caught his hand.
"Killing him is easy, but Harry doesn't know the truth yet. Neither does the Ministry of Magic, or the magical world at large. So... you'll have to wait a moment."
Held in the armored warrior's grip, both middle-aged men were pinned in place. All they could do was watch Kate walk over and forcibly draw several silver threads from Peter's temple.
"Those are his memories..." Lupin said, brow knitted as he watched her work. "She means to preserve evidence?"
Though judging by how much she was pulling out, she must have started from the days when he still wet the bed.
Kate couldn't have cared less. Even if Peter ended up a drooling idiot, it was none of her business.
As for whether the Ministry of Magic would suspect the memories had been forged, that would depend on Dumbledore's skill.
At last she filled a jar to the brim with memories, sealed it tightly and put it away, then kicked Peter again, his eyes already rolled back in his head.
With that many memories forcibly drawn out, even if Peter didn't die, his mind would be damaged afterward. At the very least, the Dark Lord could forget about ever hearing his faithful servant string together a whole sentence in this lifetime.
"Now Harry will get his explanation, and Dumbledore will have evidence to submit to the Ministry of Magic. You don't want Sirius spending his whole life hiding under a murderer's name, do you?"
Smiling, she had the armored warrior set the two of them down and held up two fingers. "Now you have two choices. One: kill Peter right now, and I'll pretend I saw nothing and won't interfere."
Sirius ground his teeth. Interrupted again and again, he'd been in a foul mood all along, and he snarled at once, "I choose that one!"
With that he lunged straight at Peter and clamped down on his throat. "Remus, come help! Remus!"
He roared wildly, his grip tightening until Peter was nearly choking.
But Lupin did not step forward.
"Remus, don't you want to kill him?!" Sirius bellowed until his voice cracked.
"Of course I do," Lupin said, his expression heavy as he patted Sirius's shoulder. "But I think it would be better to hear Kate's second option before we choose."
The corners of Kate's mouth curved slightly. "The second option: just let me use him for an experiment."
She snapped her fingers again, and the Dementors that had backed off gathered once more in the sky, watching them like silent specters.
Sirius flinched, and a terrible, unthinkable idea flashed through his mind. "You're going to use Dementors to kill someone?"
"More or less." Kate stroked her chin thoughtfully. "I just want to see whether a flock of Dementors feeding on the same person's soul can kill him."
She had run every other experiment: controlling Dementors, detonating them, driving them off. What she couldn't find was a living person to help her test the most crucial step.
Which sane person would volunteer to let a Dementor feed on them?
But Peter was different. He deserved to die in the first place, and even if Sirius killed him, presenting enough evidence of Peter's crimes afterward would clear Sirius.
In that case, why not make use of the scraps and let him help with her experiment?
"You spent twelve years in Azkaban. You must have been fed on by Dementors quite a lot?"
Her eyes curved, her smile innocent, but her words made their hair stand on end. "So would you like to let the man you hate most feel a little of what you've gone through all these years?"
A tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye.
It was the most primitive form of revenge, and also the one that promised the most satisfying release.
Though it was broad daylight, Sirius shivered for no reason, and the hand that had been clamped around Pettigrew's neck loosened quietly.
Lupin helped him to his feet, and he looked at her, wary and uncertain. "You're not using these Dementors just to get revenge on Peter, are you?"
"That's none of your concern," Kate said, hands clasped behind her back. "You only need to make your choice."
If Harry had been here, she probably couldn't have offered such a choice.
But everyone present was an adult, with none of the naivete of youth left.
Mercy toward an enemy is cruelty toward yourself.
Sirius was silent for a long time. Then he closed his eyes and turned away.
His choice was plain without a word.
The wall that had stood before them gradually crumbled and fell. Lupin supported him, Crookshanks trailing behind, and together they retreated a few steps.
When they looked back, seven or eight Dementors were drifting down at Kate's command like phantoms out of a nightmare, circling Peter and feeding on his soul without restraint.
He had seen scenes like this countless times in Azkaban. Sirius backed away, his face slick with cold sweat, and swallowed hard.
He turned his head and saw Kate standing at ease in front of the armored warrior, calmly watching Peter's soul being devoured, without the slightest ripple of emotion.
What kind of Wizard could look on such cruelty with such composure?
The despair of his Azkaban days was still vivid in his mind. Sirius took a step forward, his pale lips trembling. "Enough... enough!"
He'd assumed Kate would turn around and mock him as if nothing were wrong. But the instant his shout rang out, the girl who'd shown no emotion at all frowned, staggered back two steps, and bumped into the armored warrior.
"Kate!"
"Stay back!"
Lupin had moved to help her, but was stopped by a sharp command.
Kate's small face had gone pale without her noticing. She tugged uncomfortably at her collar, raised a hand, and snapped her fingers.
In an instant, all the Dementors that had been clinging to Peter and feeding scattered in every direction, as if they were terrified of her.
Sirius looked over, still shaken. Peter, who had already slipped into unconsciousness, was now deathly white. His face was hideously contorted, his bloodshot eyes bulged, and his body twitched and jerked every so often.
"He's still alive." Lupin stepped up to examine him, his tone deeply conflicted.
"But living like that is worse than being dead." Sirius squeezed his eyes shut and let out a long breath.
Kate, her face pale, leaned against the armored warrior and murmured to herself, "So even this much can't kill him. Is it better to cripple someone first and then use the Dementors..."
She hadn't finished before Sirius seized her by the collar and hauled her up. "You bastard, do you know what you're saying?!"
As she watched a fist the size of a stew pot about to come crashing down, Kate's expression eased, and she slowly closed her eyes.
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