One by one, Remus located each professor, the wandering prefects in the halls,
Hagrid down in his hut with Professor Dumbledore, a retreating Cornelius Fudge and
Walden Macnair.
Out of habit, he searched for the dot labelled Sirius Black, finding it almost
immediately near the Whomping Willow.
He frowned at the sight. Sirius had not come so close to the castle since Remus
obtained the map. But it was not the dot labelled Sirius Black that caused the blood to drain
from Remus's already ashen face.
Huddled close together, but moving swiftly across the map he could easily
locate Harry Potter, Ronald Weasley, Hermione Granger, and a fourth name among them: Peter
Pettigrew.
But Peter was dead.
"Ron was trying to do magic to show off," Mia had told him once. "Said this worthless spell
over his pet r-r-r... Scab-b-b—Fuck!"
Remus gasped as a cold chill ran up his spine.
"I'm surprised you and Mia didn't get along better, Minerva. She had a similar distaste for
rodents."
His whole body stiffened in a mixture of guilt and rage, and he turned back to the
Marauder's Map where he watched the dots labelled, Sirius Black, Ronald Weasley, and Peter
Pettigrew vanish beneath the Whomping Willow.
He was here somewhere. Sirius knew it. When his kneazle friend had informed him
that the rat bit itself and bled all over the Weasley boy's bed to fake his own death—again—
Sirius waited patiently, relying on the large feline for as much help as possible in tracking
down Wormtail. The orange beast assured him that the rat was nowhere inside the castle,
and Sirius trusted the kneazle to track Wormtail's scent, knowing that the cat had been in
contact with him more recently.
On the other side of Hagrid's hut: that's where the kneazle insisted Wormtail was.
Unfortunately, even from where Padfoot was crouched in the shadows of the
setting sun, he could sense that Harry was nearby even if he could not see him—Probably