"Thud."
Before Hermione could figure out what was happening, another strange sound of something hitting the ground came from beside her. Hermione looked toward the sound in confusion...
Then immediately regretted her curiosity.
It was an arm—violently torn and ripped off at the shoulder. The hand still gripped a wand, and the torn base exposed jagged bone fragments, crimson blood flowing steadily from the wound.
"Ugh!"
Hermione's face went pale as she dry-heaved. Though she'd seen plenty of blood and wounds before, this sudden severed limb was clearly too shocking for her.
This was Peter Pettigrew's right arm that had been holding his wand, which Glenn had shot off in passing when he broke through the window.
Peter Pettigrew, now missing an arm, hadn't made a sound of pain. Glenn had him pinned underfoot—apparently when Glenn landed, he'd kicked him down so that he hit his head and lost consciousness, falling into unconsciousness.
The dark red Obscurus around Glenn was beginning to gradually dissipate and withdraw into his body, but the somewhat exaggeratedly large silver-white pistol in his hand—though whether it could still be called a pistol was debatable—remained pointed at Peter Pettigrew's head on the ground.
If Dumbledore hadn't intervened in time, Glenn's second bullet would have shattered Peter Pettigrew's skull.
Wait.
"Glenn aside, Professor Dumbledore, when did you arrive?"
Hermione had just recovered from her nausea and asked her question in confusion.
After Glenn learned she'd encountered this Animagus, though his speed in reaching her side was somewhat fast, it was still within her expectations. But Dumbledore's sudden appearance completely exceeded her expectations.
"From the beginning."
Dumbledore replied to Hermione's question in a calm tone, his left hand still resting on Glenn's gun.
Though he was regretting it a bit now—this large-caliber pistol had just been fired and was rather hot to the touch.
Dumbledore silently moved his hand to a different position, gently pressing down on Glenn's raised right hand.
"I came when you caught up with Crookshanks, but I kept my presence hidden and didn't appear before you. After all, protecting students is something a headmaster should do."
Hearing Dumbledore's pointed reply, Glenn glanced at him, then lowered the pistol he'd been pointing at Peter Pettigrew's head, though he didn't return it to his black ring.
Hermione looked at Dumbledore, then at Glenn's actions. On one hand, she felt helpless about Glenn's excessive killing intent; on the other, she felt the warmth of being protected. She secretly smiled to herself and didn't plan to expose Dumbledore's little scheme, so the girl chose to change the subject. Looking at both of them, she continued gathering information about the situation she couldn't understand.
"So, can you two tell me now what exactly happened and who this person really is?"
Dumbledore didn't speak, looking toward Glenn. The latter nodded and began revealing everything about how he and Snape had encountered Sirius Black in the Shrieking Shack and learned from him a certain truth that had been hidden for twelve years.
Though he omitted some unnecessary parts, like how exactly they'd extracted the information from Sirius Black.
Because this way was faster. The two suspects in this case dating back twelve years had been brought to justice—he could leave the mess for Dumbledore to handle.
Well... though what Snape had instructed him to do probably couldn't be accomplished now. The plan to hide things from Dumbledore was obviously doomed to fail the moment Dumbledore witnessed Peter Pettigrew still being alive. If Sirius Black's memory hadn't been modified, then Dumbledore would inevitably be able to deduce the truth from twelve years ago based on this completed information.
After all, from Dumbledore's attitude toward Sirius Black from the beginning, it was clear he'd actually held reservations about that year's verdict.
"...Let me sort this out. So the person who betrayed Harry's parents back then wasn't Sirius Black, but this Peter Pettigrew in front of us. He created that explosion and left behind one of his fingers to fake his own death, then escaped by transforming into a rat through Animagus magic and hid in the Weasley family home until now."
"Sirius Black's recent prison break was because he saw Peter Pettigrew transformed into a rat in the newspaper. He came to Hogwarts for revenge..."
Hermione cupped her chin, reorganizing the information she'd just learned from Glenn, sorting out the cause and effect, then looked up angrily.
"So the wrongly accused Sirius spent twelve years in prison for nothing, while the supposedly dead Peter Pettigrew was posthumously awarded a First Class Order of Merlin he never should have received?!"
"What were the people at the Ministry of Magic doing?"
Hermione was beginning to feel sorry for Sirius. Just thinking about an innocent person's twelve years of Azkaban prison life was despairing, but at this moment the girl felt more anger toward the Ministry's incompetence.
"Even I, a child, know that in an explosion, if you only find one charred finger but can't find any other body parts belonging to that finger's owner, declaring that person dead is too hasty. The Ministry personnel responsible for the search..."
Hermione's words stopped there. From her face, flushed red with excitement, and her lips that kept changing shape without producing any words, she was probably considering what words to use to describe the people responsible for the search back then, though she kept rejecting words that were too crude.
"Because at that time, in everyone's understanding, Sirius was the only one who 'could' betray James and Lily—he was the Secret-Keeper for the Fidelius Charm protecting the Potters."
"When Ministry members found Sirius, he was standing silently in front of that bombed street. When arrested, he remained silent. Everyone believed he was the traitor, and the Ministry sent him to Azkaban without even a trial... Though I didn't believe it in my heart back then, under the judgment of results deduced from the information I knew, I also accepted this conclusion."
"I bear responsibility too. Regardless of what the real situation was, this was my dereliction of duty."
In the darkness, Dumbledore's expression was difficult to discern.
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