Headscratchers / Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban The Marauders

Lupin - richest poor guy ever?

• In the first scene with Lupin, we see his battered briefcase which says 'Professor R. J. Lupin' in peeling letters. If he's never been a professor before, the letters of 'Professor' shouldn't be peeling, even if the case and the original name were worn out. How did no one notice that?
  • Maybe it was a gift from James and Lily. "Here, mate, you're exceptionally clever, you should go profess things." Or perhaps he was a professor at Muggle schools — the prejudice against werewolves in Wizarding culture presumably wouldn't extend to Muggle culture. Or maybe his father was a professor and had the same initials.
  • I'm pretty sure Lupin says in a later book that he's been tutoring Muggle students, perhaps that was still the case.
  • Maybe it was an old briefcase and just the letters were new, but they were the cheap stick-on kind so they were already peeling off.
  • Or maybe it just was a new but poor-quality briefcase?
  • Or a poor-quality, secondhand magic briefcase, which changes its lettering to match its owner's name.
  • This is my theory. He could have had it for a while, too, and the "Professor" part only appeared now he's a professor, but came in peeling because that's how the magical briefcase thing works.
  • Maybe he possesses a Murphyonic field that eventually causes a state of tidy shabbiness in all the objects around him.
  • Or maybe he stole it from some other Professor R. J. Lupin.
  • Maybe he knows enough transfiguration to change the lettering on an old briefcase.
  • More seriously though, he might have been named after a relative, or simply shared the same initials. Maybe the case belonged to a relative.

Walking Stick

• In the scene where Harry and Lupin are walking in the woods, Lupin suddenly has a walking stick. So is it like a hiking-in-the-woods walking stick, or a lycanthropy-induced-leg-pain walking stick? He might have been limping a bit, but I can't remember. And it seems fairly consistent with the fact his face was all scratched up for about half the movie and then got a bit better: he keeps getting himself injured quite badly and it just goes away without much comment... yeah, I just want to know so I can be sure of how much of a woobie to consider him.
  • In the book, Lupin says that when he became a werewolf without other humans around to attack, he was forced to scratch and bite himself, and he couldn't afford the Wolfsbane potion before Snape started making it for him. Once he has access to the potion as a professor, he has some time for his scratches and other injuries to heal, his injured leg possibly being one of them.

Shapeshifting vs. laws of physics... FIGHT!

• Just one question about the shapeshifting: where does all the extra flesh go? Law of conservation of mass, after all.
  • You're expecting magic to conform to the laws of physics?
  • Looking for logic in a man transforming into a rat, or any element in a fantasy novel for that matter, is kind of a moot point. Hell, in this universe the common thirteen year-old can turn teacups into turtles, i.e. give life to inanimate objects.
  • Yeah, In a World… of flying broomsticks, teleporting people, and all that, a person shrinking down to a rat didn't fuss me that much. The only thing that bothered me was that in the movie, Peter Pettigrew came back in clothing, and when he turned back into a rat, the clothes didn't go with him. If they're gonna do something like that, they can at least be consistent about it.
  • No, I'm fairly sure he had clothes in the book.^note It is a children's book, and you don't generally offer kiddies the mental image of a middle-aged man running around nude.
  • A theory in book 2 or 3 of the Star Trek: Millennium posits that shape-shifter shifts the extra mass into another dimension via using it to create four dimensional shapes.
  • If it's any use, in the Animorphs books, when the kids shapeshift, their extra mass goes into something called "Z-Space" IIRC, and this becomes a minor plot point in one of the books.
  • Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality dealt with this before. ** Easy one. A Wizard Did It (literally)!
  • The mass goes where Vanished objects go; into Nothingness, which is to say, everything.
  • And the one who deciphered that riddle is the Transfiguration professor. Brilliant.
• A better question is how Peter Pettigrew was fully clothed (in the movie) when Sirius and Lupin changed him back into a human in the Shrieking Shack. Later when he escapes, he transfigures right out of his clothes and into a rat. So....where did his clothes come from? We don't see Sirius transfigure so we don't know what happens to his clothes, but he, too, is fully clothed when he changes back into a human. It is especially frustrating with Peter Pettigrew, because his clothes are clearly shown to not be attached to him anymore in any way shape or form, but he will presumably have them again when he returns to human form.
  • "We don't see Sirius transfigure": this has been bothering me for years. Why?
  • Seeing how Prof. McGonagall also transformed together with her clothes, it appears that Pettigrews turning into a rat and leaving clothes behind was just a movie blunder.
  • I'd rather think that when a wizard animagi transform into an animal, the clothes they're wearing transform along with the rest of his/her body.
  • Especially since both McGonagall's and Rita Skeeter's animal forms directly incorporate the look of their eyeglasses into their facial markings.
  • Possibly the Animagus effect gives you the option to bring clothes along into your animal form, but Pettigrew opted not to do so in that instance because his wrists were chained to two other characters. Leaving the clothes behind him meant he also left the shackles behind.

That Maddening Marauder's Map

• If Hogwarts has 1000+ people in it, how is the Marauders' Map even readable, with all those names floating around on it at once?
  • Harry does mention being unable to spot a name once or twice (Draco's in HBP). Besides, the castle is big and Harry usually uses the map to look for teachers at places he's not supposed to be and all that, so it's plausible.
  • Harry only doesn't see Draco's name because Draco is in the Room of Requirement, which has magically concealed him.
  • Yeah, that's true, but he makes mention of it being hard to be sure because he can't make his name out from the crowds near the Entrance Hall, etc.
  • The map works like maps in most computer games. You can zoom in and out and move it around to focus on the part you need to focus on.
  • That can't be, because if it could do that, then Harry would have had no doubt at all when he couldn't find Malfoy on the map. Also, bear in mind that when Harry's using the map to get around and avoid people, it's mostly at night, or other times when the corridors are mostly deserted.
  • The way I read it was that at first Harry wasn't sure if he was just missing Malfoy on the map because Hogwarts has so many students. And the map is magic. It's never said how big it is when it's unfolded. The film does show there being several levels to represent the different floors of Hogwarts.

Operating the Map

• How did Fred and George know how to operate the Marauders Map? If you need the specific phrase "I solemnly swear I am up to no good" to turn it on and "Mischief Managed" to switch it off, how did they find out what the phrases were? The only theories I can come up with are 1) They tried as many different passwords as possible until they got the right ones, or 2) The map realised that the twins were mischief makers on par with its creators, and that they were deserving of knowing the passwords.
  • In fact, those are both Word of God (more or less), from this interview. So there you go!
  • Basically, they spent a long period of time trying different phrases at random, and the closer they got to being correct, the more the map would reveal itself.
  • It could also be that "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good" isn't the exact phrase needed, but it's close enough to use the map. It's unrelated, but it reminds me of DuckTales (1987), when the Gizmoduck suit was activated by shouting "Blathering Blatherskite!" The actual password was just the second word, but the guy who wore the suit didn't know that.
  • Also, Snape was able to make the map appear by simply saying "Reveal your secrets," so it may respond to several different phrases.
    • No, Snape said "Professor Severus Snape commands you to reveal your secrets" and it proceeded to insult him, not show the map. Knowing the Marauders, they probably put a charm on there to insult Snape if he ever got ahold of it.
  • Once the twins started playing with it, trying to figure out what it did and how it worked, the spirits of the Marauders probably realized that they were worthy wielders of the map and helped them along. Then once they were in, the Marauders could share their tips, like "Mischief managed!"
  • Even if you accept that the Map saw kindred spirits in the persons of Fred and George and revealed itself to them, that does not explain why Filch was holding on to a blank piece of parchment for who knows how many years (17 years or so since the Marauders graduated, but maybe the Map passed through other hands) or why Fred and George stole a blank piece of parchment in the first place.
    • Filch confiscated the map from the Marauders in their final year, and neither of them were able to steal it back because Filch was, at the time, well-prepared and extremely suspiscious. Over time, Filch just left the map where it was, and most likely forgot about it. Since Hogwarts Mystery states that, at some point by 1988, the map had been stolen, but was later returned either in the 1988-1989 or 1989-1990 school year, it is possible the map had, prior to Fred and George, been repeatedly stolen from and later reconfiscated by Filch. Then, during Fred and George's first year, they were dragged into Filch's office, saw the drawer where the map was kept, and stole it for what is, evidently, the final time.
    • None of this explains why Filch confiscated a blank piece of parchment, or why he had it sitting on his desk for years.

The Worst Protection Plan Ever?

• Let's recap the Marauders' plan for Potters' protection, shall we? They announce that Sirius is going to be the Keeper, but then secretly swap him for Pettigrew with the reasoning that the cowardly Wormtail is the last person the Death Eaters would suspect of being the Keeper. Thus V's conjectural spy in their midst will be misinformed, the DE'll waste time chasing the wrong guy, and if they get him, they can't make him break the Charm. A sound plan, isn't it? No, it's downright stupid, because SIRIUS STILL KNOWS WHO THE REAL KEEPER IS. Their master plan's only gain was that instead of two stages: "capture Sirius - kill Potters", V'd have to complete three: "capture Sirius - capture Pettigrew - kill Potters". The plan would make sense if, for example, somebody erased knowledge of Pete's involvement from Sirius' mind, Code Geass-style, or if Sirius scrammed to Australia.
  • Maybe he WAS planning to scram abroad, but the Potters were killed too soon after the event. Also, Sirius has said he would rather die than betray his friends; presumably, even if tortured, or threatened with death, he would not have given up the location of Pettigrew, or the fact that he was the real Secret Keeper. So it was supposed to be at least as safe as the original plan - they still had to find and break Sirius, but then they had to do the same with Wormtail.
  • As they say: "The only safe way to preserve the secret - is not to know it." Information extraction techniques are not limited to torture and death threats - there are also Veretaserum, Legilimency (which V is VERY potent in), and the Imperius Curse, and even though they can be resisted in theory, you can't guarantee that you'll manage to. And let's not forget about the "nauseatingly endless possibilities" of torture by proxy. My point is that there was a gaping flaw in the plan which could be easily avoided if they'd just erased the information from Sirius's mind.
  • According to this, those methods wouldn't work: "Additionally, it appears as if the disclosure must be voluntary (as evidenced by the fact that no dark wizard is ever seen attempting to coerce the disclosure by means of Veritaserum, Legilimency or the Imperius Curse)."
  • Going with the whole Secret Keeper train of thought. It says in the book that at one point, Dumbledore offered to be the Potters' Secret Keeper. Why in the world did they not take him up on it?!?!?! Dumbledore is one of the most powerful wizards in the world, and it was well-known that Voldemort wouldn't dare to cross him. Sounds like an ideal Secret Keeper to me.
  • Evil Dumbledore...?
  • Somewhere at that point, Sirius had a major break out with his mother and was disowned. Perhaps James wanted to cheer him up by showing such deep trust.
  • They may have thought that Sirius and Wormtail, being unknown Animagi, would be easier to hide in plain sight.
  • Also, Dumbledore was probably second only to Harry on Voldemort's "People To Kill" list. He may have feared him, but that doesn't mean that he wasn't trying to get rid of him. While Dumbledore's plan ultimately won out in the end, Voldemort did legitimately Out Gambit him a few times over the course of the series and they seemed to be pretty evenly matched during their duel in Order of the Phoenix. It wouldn't be unreasonable for the Potters to think Dumbledore could be captured or killed and that they would be safer going with someone (they thought) Voldemort wasn't likely to know about or suspect like Pettigrew.
  • It was mentioned in the Three Broomsticks that Sirius planned to go into hiding himself. Maybe he was going to do whatever it was he was planning to do on November 1, figuring that Voldemort wouldn't have caught up with him yet. Didn't he imply that Peter ran straight to Voldemort, meaning that the charm hadn't been in place for long?
  • Hiding from somebody who can irreversibly curse a frigging school position, expose and strip of wards anyone who mentions his name, and track his quarry across several countries, seems a rather shaky idea to me. Unless it is possible to provide the same level of security as the Fidelius Charm does, but without third person involvement (otherwise it's just Turtles All the Way Down). But in that case, they should've just used that method for the Potters themselves.
  • He only gained the power to remove protections any time his name was spoken after he took over the Ministry in DH.
  • He only used that power afterwards. It doesn't mean he didn't have it, maybe he just didn't see the point of using it - he already knew where Harry was, but the wards in his home and in Hogwarts could've been impervious to the spell.
  • They wouldn't exactly be planning on having either of their friends get caught. But even so, it still adds protection in the form of time if nothing else, as well as giving them more warning. If Sirius was the SK, and was in hiding, they might not know he'd been captured till Voldy came knocking. This way, if they suspect something may have happened to Sirius, they can double down the protection on Peter, and if he vanishes too, they know to get the hell out of Dodge ASAP.
  • It seems that a lot of the topics on this page come from people expecting others to think and behave rationally in dire situations. "James, Lily, guess what? The most dangerous, evil, murderous wizard in the world has just decided that your infant son has to die. Alright, now, if you'll just stop screaming and crying for a couple seconds, we can come up with a plan to make sure your baby boy isn't horribly murdered among your own fresh corpses."
  • Yeah, something like that. That is if you firmly insist that two brilliant wizards and relatively battle-hardened veterans, who'd already escaped death by V's hands thrice, would pee their pants at the news that he might, *gasp*, try it for the fourth time.
  • Voldemort wasn't out to kill them a fourth time, he was aiming for their baby. That'll panic quite a few parents, I'd guess.
  • If dropped upon them unexpectedly, yes. But they knew Voldemort would be coming, they just didn't know when. This is a situation in which experienced fighters would come up with something called a 'contingency plan' and rehearse it. "OK, if Voldemort somehow breaks the Fidelius and boots the front door, I'll chokepoint here while you grab Harry and the escape portkey there, and..."
  • Dumbledore is Headmaster of Hogwarts. Meaning that Voldemort automatically knows where he always is - except during the summer holidays. Sirius and Peter - both unregistered Animagi at that - could be anywhere and can go into hiding much easier.

Surprises at the Shrieking Shack

• Apologies if this has already been discussed, but towards the end of the third book, Sirius, Lupin, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Pettigrew, and (unconscious) Snape leave the Shrieking Shack. It is well past nightfall — we see this both when they leave and later, when Harry and Hermione revisit the scene. Moonrise has come and the night is upon them. And yet Lupin has not transformed! He only does so when the moon comes out from behind a cloud. We've seen on other occasions that he transforms during the full moon regardless of whether or not he is directly in the moonlight — otherwise, how would he transform in the Shack when he was a kid? Being a werewolf wouldn't even matter if he could just stick it out indoors. So... why does the position of a few clouds suddenly matter? (Other than the obvious answer.)
  • Perhaps he would've transformed anyway later, and the direct moonlight only accelerated the process.
  • I've always said that if I ever get bitten by a werewolf, then I'm going to invest in a wide-brimmed hat and wear it every night. This book is by no means the first (or last) time that looking at the full moon as it passed from behind a cloud is when the transformation hits. I'm starting to think that's the real trigger, and the only thing that causes werewolves to transform is a lack of proper planning and foresight.
  • Did J.K.R. ever say "naked"?
  • Uhm, hello? He transformed inside the Shack.
  • He'd have transformed that night, no matter where he was. The moon peeking out from the clouds was just a visual aid for the audience, to remind everyone of his lycanthropy and give the fans an Oh, Crap! moment, just before the fangs and fur start sprouting ... that, and a Shout-Out to classic horror movies that used the same gimmick.
  • Unless I'm mistaken, these events happen in June. At some parts of Britain and Ireland, it can still be light close to eleven o'clock in the evening during the summer. So the moon could only just have properly risen. And they go down to visit Hagrid at around seven, and wake up in the Hospital Wing close to ten (three turns sends Hermione and Harry back to seven). So plausibly the moon could only be just rising.
  • The moon rises and sets at the same times, regardless of whether it's still light out or not. Don't tell me you've never seen the moon in the sky during the day? It seems to require both a full moon and nighttime in order for most werewolves to transform. So what are the definitions of "full moon" and "night"? There is some exact moment when the moon is the most full, and then there's time on either side when it's practically full. Is it "full" when it's 99% illuminated? 99.9%? 98%? Or is the transformation triggered at the moment of brightest illumination, and then it lasts until sunrise? At what point is it "night" enough for transformation? At what point is it "morning" enough for the transformation to end? Astronomical twilight? Nautical twilight? Civil twilight? There are enough fudge factors and potential wrinkles for the author or director to put the transformation at whatever moment suits the story best. As long as she sticks to the same rules from then on, or at least doesn't directly contradict precedent, she's good. The clouds were just a coincidence.
    • Just to point out, it's not possible for a full moon to happen at any time except after nightfall. If the sun and Moon are in the sky at the same time, that means some of the sunlight being reflected off the moon won't be visible from Earth, since the two bodies are adjacent to each other when compared to the sun in this instance.

Stunning Lupin

• Couldn't they just, you know, stun or petrify Lupin? I don't recall anybody saying werewolves were invincible to magic. Grayback was hexed quite a lot in the later books. Didn't it occur to somebody to petrify Lupin every time he was about to transform?
  • I would assume they were resistant to most spells when transformed, if not completely immune. They probably wouldn't be considered so dangerous otherwise.
  • Who said they were considered especially dangerous, other than the viral part? They were shunned by the society, sure, but then the magical society consists mostly of clueless and/or racist assholes, so it's not surprising. Also, there are indirect spells, like the ones that conjure ropes or manacles, like the one they'd used a few seconds ago on Pettegrew.
  • That'd be rather painful, wouldn't it, being Stunned/petrified again and again?
  • First, "again and again" was just once a month; second, where did it say that either of those was painful at all; third, being locked in a room in wolf morph was already extremely painful; finally, we're talking juvenile security here. And anyway, my prime question is, why didn't the Trio and/or Sirius stun him after they left the Shack.
  • The trio didn't learn to stun until the next book; it's my belief that JKR didn't even invent Stupefy until the next book. As for Sirius, he and the other Marauders never stunned Remus before, they always transformed to keep him company. That was the point of them becoming Animagi in the first place. And when describing his past, Remus says that when they had adventures exploring Hogsmeade during the full moon, "there were near misses, many of them." This implies that Padfoot and Prongs had to hold Moony back from attacking people before. Sirius probably figured that doing what he had always done would still work. The only problem was that he hadn't had a decent meal in twelve years and James wasn't around to help him out this time.
  • The kids did learn Petrificus Totalus in their first year.
  • Casting Petrificus Totalus on a stubborn 11-year-old is a different story from casting it on a slavering werewolf who's gunning for you.
  • Let's see: you point the wand at it, you say the words, it's petrified. Frankly, I don't see the difference. Especially if you do it while it's busy transforming.
  • He means that the kids might have gotten flustered in the face of transforming werewolf and thus not been able to concentrate on casting effectively. While this is true, it overlooks that Sirius is also there, and he is a combat-experienced certified badass who spent years mixing it up with Death Eaters back at the height of the first war against Voldemort and also has spent years and years of time helping Remus with his transformations and so shouldn't be remotely panicking at 'werewolf!' at all, because he's used to this. Which means he's clutching an Idiot Ball in trying to wrestle Remus in wolf form (when the werewolf is larger and stronger than his grim form) instead of just taking that wand and going 'stupefy stupefy stupefy incarcerous ok let's run before he gets back up'.
  • Are you sure that making someone unable to move while their body is deforming and growing in size is a good idea? I always assumed that Petrificus Totalus worked by paralyzing the target's muscles, and if those muscles are trying to deform into an entirely different creature... it just sounds liable to cause serious injury. I don't think that Sirius or the Trio would be willing to risk it. The point for stunning him AFTER the transformation still stands, though.
  • Conjure shackles, like the ones Lupin put on Pettigrew earlier, or a sturdy net, just to keep Remus from lunging at them immediately after morphing. When he's done, petrify him. And before somebody starts crying "hindsight" or "you-want-the-characters-to-be-perfect-fallacy", please consider, that this is by no means the first time they encounter such situation, and what I suggest is NOT rocket science, but something that took me five minutes to come up with. They had years to think of the solution.
  • Maybe at first they forgot he hadn't taken the potion. He still transforms but he's harmless. So when he starts they assume there's nothing to worry about, then they go Oh, Crap!.
  • Snape had told them about the potion just a few minutes prior.

Knowing the traitor

• When Sirius confronts Lupin, Wormtail, and the Trio at the Shrieking Shack at the end, he says that the other Death Eaters at Azkaban knew that Wormtail was the traitor. While they obviously wouldn't tell the good guys that, why wouldn't Snape know? And if Snape knew, the rest of the Order would presumably know too.
  • In the next book, Karkaroff says that "we never knew the names of every one of our fellows", so apparently not all the Death Eaters knew that Wormtail was the spy. It seems Voldemort didn't trust Snape and apparently Lucius Malfoy (since Draco also thought Sirius was the spy) enough during the first war to let them in on it. I'd imagine that the Death Eaters in Azkaban who knew it was Wormtail were the Lestranges. The fact that Sirius knew the Death Eaters hated Wormtail implies that the prisoners can communicate with each other, so maybe the Lestranges spread the word of Wormtail's betrayal around until all the Death Eaters in Azkaban knew it.
  • Is it said how late Wormtail's betrayal was? How long had he been passing information? If he betrayed them right before the night he went after Harry, there might not have been time for anyone else to know about it. The shoot out between Sirius and Wormtail happened not long after that.
  • Remus and Sirius state that Peter had been passing information on to You-Know-Who for a year before the Potters' deaths.

Is the Sorting Hat going senile?

• Wormtail is a coward, no doubt about it. He hides behind powerful people, only is with someone when he thinks it's going to be a benefit for him... all of that would automatically makes him a Slytherin. So then, why on earth did he wind up in Gryffindor, according to Word of God?
• He may have already lacked bravery at 11, but plenty of wimpy kids grow up to be brave and strong. Perhaps Wormtail wanted to become brave and heroic, and the Hat complied, hoping the positive influence of other Gryffindors would better him. Besides, he may lack the bravery, but he may have displayed other Gryffindor traits at the time to make up for it: we know he had the pranking-spirit, and he may well have wanted to improve the world and fight back evil even if he lacked the actual courage when put down on the spot.
  • 1) Peter couldn't be put in Slytherin, possibly because he doesn't have enough ambition, and there's no one for him to hide behind if everyone's looking out for themselves.
  • 2) He wasn't suited for Hufflepuff because he wasn't too loyal, as it turns out.
  • 3) He was not smart nor talented enough for Ravenclaw.
  • By default, he was put in Gryffindor, which also provided him a houseful of brave people for him to hide behind and mooch off of. Plus, it's possible he asked the Sorting Hat to be put in Gryffindor, as Harry did.
  • It's also possible the Hat gave him the benefit of the doubt, like he did with Neville.
  • Just because he possesses certain qualities doesn't mean he'll embrace them or won't ever change. Peter probably fancied himself brave and noble as an 11 year old but when theory was put into practice he found himself unable to sacrifice himself and sold out his friends instead. After that it was either be crushed by guilt or adopt a philosophy of doing whatever he needed to.
  • Pettigrew wasn't completely devoid of courage. Infiltrating the household of someone who works for the Ministry must have required a certain amount of daring, and a complete coward would never have been able to go through with cutting off his own hand. Rather, he has nerve, but he never directs that nerve to anyone else's benefit.
  • Alternately, he was probably courageous and good-hearted, but began turning bad over time. That or he was tortured.
  • The Sorting Hat takes student's choices into account. Perhaps like Harry, Pettigrew may had been meant for Slytherin but was placed into Gryffindor because he asked.

Just leave him, he'll be fine

• The scene with Lupin's transformation in the movie. Snape suddenly emerges from the Shack and...wait, does this mean those assholes just left him there, unconscious and probably injured? Why?
  • Probably happened something like this:
    Hermione: Hey, shouldn't we get Snape?
    Sirius: Nah, he likes lying around in the dark. He'll feel right at home here.
    Lupin: And it's Professor Snape, Miss Granger.
  • They didn't leave Snape behind. He was unconscious, and Lupin had levitated him to hover along at the back of the group. Presumably, in the process of getting Ron out of the tunnel with his broken leg, they left him inside out of the way. Once he woke up, he emerged ala Bat Out Of Hell.
• In the original script, it is shown that Hermione put him under a sleepwalking spell, which he comes out of in time to try to protect the trio.

Wormtail - The TRUE Dark Lord!

• How did a nincompoop like Pettigrew manage such a powerful spell, and, more importantly, why don't we ever see this "magic hand grenade" used later, except maybe for the time Fred got killed in DH? You'd think that in a massive battle, it would be even more effective than Avada Kedavra.
  • I always figured that Pettigrew was rather more talented than he let on (after all, he did manage the animagus transformation, which is supposed to be insanely advanced magic and can't have been easy even with help from James and Sirius); being the quintessential Dirty Coward, though, he'd want to make himself look as harmless as possible unless backed into a corner. As for why nobody else used it, I'd imagine something like that would be a bit hard to aim and could just as easily take out your allies as your enemies.
  • Well, Pettigrew managed to aim it precisely enough to make it look like he was blasted, yet not actually harm himself.
  • If it was exploding outwards from behind him (how I always imagined the scene, what with the "wand behind his back" reference), there's no reason it would hit him, and it would also make it look like Sirius just indiscriminately blasted everything in front of him.
  • Or perhaps he has strong reflexes and was relying on turning into a rat just before the blast, so the blast would hit where his head would have been if it weren't all of a sudden much smaller and lower to the ground. He was, after all, in a desperate situation — if he didn't get away, it was virtually certain that either Sirius would kill him or he'd be taken to Azkaban for the rest of his life — so it's conceivable that he'd be willing to take the risk.
  • I just figured that he legitimately hit a gas main with his spell, causing it to explode. It would be ironic, at least — that the fake story fed to the muggle press was the version of events closest to the truth.
  • My impression was if Pettigrew could pull off a spell like that but be considered "talentless" by Black, that Pettigrew could commit manslaughter of that magnitude but opted to run from Black and spend nine years in hiding, then Black and everyone else he's hiding from must be hardcore (a little disappointing only a few Death Eaters lived up to the hype).

Has Scabbers outsmarted the Map?

• How come Fred and George didn't notice Peter Pettigrew being on the map? Since they'd been there longer, you would think that they would know more names of people in the school than Harry would, so they might know quicker that it wasn't anyone who attended, right?
  • It's not like being at Hogwarts a particularly long time makes you familiar with every single student. At the start of his fifth year, Harry had never met Luna Lovegood, even though she had been attending since his second year. If you saw a perfectly ordinary name on the Marauder's Map, would you assume it was a student you hadn't met or an Animagus Death Eater in hiding?
  • Also, the map is big. Unless Peter happened to be in the corridors they intended to snoop through, they might not have seen him.
  • Word of God has answered this on her official website; it can be found in the FAQ.
  • "It would not have mattered if they had. Unless somebody was very familiar with the story of Sirius Black (and after all, Sirius was not Mr. and Mrs. Weasley's best friend — indeed, they never knew him until after he escaped from Azkaban), Fred and George would be unlikely to know or remember that Peter Pettigrew was the person Sirius had (supposedly) murdered. Even if Fred and George HAD heard the story at some point, why would they assume that the 'Peter Pettigrew' they occasionally saw moving around the map was, in fact, the man murdered years before? Fred and George used the map for their own mischief-making, so they concentrated, naturally enough, on those portions of the map where they were planning their next misdeeds. And finally, you must not forget that hundreds of little dots are moving around this map at any given time; Fred and George did not know everyone in school by name, so a single unfamiliar name was unlikely to stand out."
  • I hate to challenge the FAQ, but her version of events seems incomplete. Peter Pettigrew was given an Order of Merlin for 'bravely defying Sirius Black to the end', so the events are public record. And given that 'Sirius Black escapes from Azkaban!' has been the headline news event all summer, the name "Peter Pettigrew" should be in common wizarding knowledge all of fourth year unless we assume that despite running 'Sirius Black: Threat Or Menace?' articles for months on end, the Daily Prophet has never once mentioned what crimes Sirius Black was put in prison for in the first place. Even for the Daily Prophet's famously low standards of journalism, that would still seem to be a bit too low to be believed.
  • They did know who Peter Pettigrew was. When Harry finds out that Sirius supposedly betrayed his parents Ron tries to calm him with saying, "Do you know what Pettigrew's mother got when Black was done with the guy? A single finger and the order of Merlin, because that was the biggest part of Pettigrew they could find.", adding that he knows this from his father who worked at the Ministry already then and he told them after much prodding probably after Sirius escaped and the kids bombarded him with questions for juicy details.
  • Except that the map would show "Peter Pettigrew" and "Ronald Weasley" right on top of each other, nearly 24/7. Even if Fred and George weren't looking for the secret passageways, they must at some point have needed to find out where Ron or the Trio were, and they would see Pettigrew with them. It doesn't make any sense that Fred and George wouldn't put 2 and 2 together and realize that Scabbers was Pettigrew.
  • This image suggests the brothers are just◊ open minded.
  • They're looking at a map, not security cameras. Assuming the twins ever bothered to spy on their brother, it would almost always show several people practically on top of him. There's only so much room on a two dimensional representation of a three-dimensional object full of thousands of ever-moving trackable people. The only time it would ever be obvious would be if he was right in front of them with Scabbers in his pocket (pets don't go everywhere with their masters). Hell, even if they did notice Peter was with him so much when they couldn't see him, they might have just assumed he had a secret boyfriend he was trying to hide. Percy had spent a year trying to hide the fact that he had a girlfriend, after all.
  • This may work to explain how Peter Pettigrew was never discovered in waking hours, but what about at night when everyone is in their room? I may not have been to a boarding school, but I'm quite certain that you do not normally need to share a room with, say, hundreds of students. And by the way the books describe it, it seems there are only a handful of students that share a room, and along with Ron and Harry, only Neville, Dean, and Seamus appear to be sharing the same room, and George and Fred do know all of these boys (if not personally, in name's and appearance's sake).
  • At some point, you would think that the twins would be sneaking out at night (and am I not going to accept the possibility that they wouldn't sneak out... after breaking practically every rule in the book, how could they have not snuck out after hours?!) and when they consult the map they wouldn't have seen the name "Peter Pettigrew" in the same room as their brother. Hell, let's go one step further and point out that the nights Peter as Scabbers was sleeping in that room at night instead of scurrying about the castle, that he was even sleeping in the same bed as Ron (much to the disgust of the poor boy when he realized his pet rat was a balding man). How could the two mischief makers Fred and George not only have not noticed that Ron's and this "Peter's" name is suspiciously way too close together, but to have resisted the urge to tease their brother about this? Please explain how they would not notice an additional name in one fairly decent sized room that should only have at most FIVE boys occupying it. Even on a small two dimensional magical map, this feat should not be too hard to accomplish, unlike trying to find one name among thousands of moving names in a narrow corridor.
  • Also, why didn't they notice that Scabbers' name never appeared on the Map? Mrs. Norris's name does, so we know that named pets aren't exempt.
  • "...they concentrated, naturally enough, on those portions of the map where they were planning their next misdeeds." In the two and some years Ron goes to school and F&G have the map, we never hear any hint of them pranking the room. The only time they even go into the room is to wake the boys up on Christmas Day, an event which doesn't require looking at the map.
  • This HP Lexicon essay offers a possibility - the map focuses itself on the areas most likely to be relevant to the user, in this case Harry or F/G: their immediate vicinity, teachers' offices and quarters, etc. If it showed the common rooms at all, it might only focus on people of particular interest to mischief-makers, perhaps going a la Facebook and saying "Percy Weasley, (prefects' names), and 117 others are in here."
  • Yep. Indeed, the twins themselves said they didn't use the map much anymore, else they wouldn't have given it away in the first place. From their comments, it sounds like they used it to find secret passages, not spy on people.
  • Ron didn't have Scabbers with him all the time, he was probably in the Common Room or the dormitory most of the time during classes. And though Scabbers did sleep in Ron's bed, it's doubtful Fred and George would ever think to check that room while they were about their mischief. Even on the off chance that Ron happened to catch them sneaking out, they would have just told him to go away. They'd be more likely to see what Percy was doing, so they could avoid him.
  • Does it say that Scabbers/Pettigrew necessarily was sleeping in Ron's bed every night? Potter only notices him on the map himself because he was out prowling and saw Pettigrew's name wandering the corridor.
  • Did Harry notice Peter's name in the book? I think it was just in the film.
  • No-Prize Explanation: The name on the map used to be Scabbers. It was only that year when the name started showing Peter Pettigrew again, because Peter's identity returned as his fear of Sirius and Crookshanks overwhelmed the mellow pet personality he'd assumed for himself over the years. In short, he had been Becoming the Mask as Scabbers, and come Sirius's escape, the mask came off.
  • For all the twins knew, Sean or Dean could've had a pet named "Peter Pettigrew". We don't know whether either one of them had a pet at all.
  • We know that Arthur Weasley told Ron about Peter Pettigrew's finger, since it was Ron who told Harry about it. And Arthur had equally good reason to tell the rest of his family, including Fred and George. Now, whether Fred and George saw fit to listen to him is another story.
  • Don't forget - Gryffindors sleep in a tower, with rooms stacked by years following a stairwell. Maybe names are always on top of each other if (logically) the beds are in the same spot on every floor.
  • All the explanations above have the same flaw - they adhere to the following sequence: *Twins don't have the Map* - ??? - *Twins use the Map exclusively for pranking and focusing only on secret passages and such*. But let's return to Step 2, namely what happened immediately after they found the Map and figured out how to make it work (note, it doesn't have a manual on it). What would they do? Test it! Examine it thoroughly! And where would they start? Naturally, with the parts of the castle they already know well and can verify, i.e. their Common room! And what would they see? Exactly, an extra person, whom they at best never heard about, and at worst know as the gallant hero and martyr of the First War, Peter Pettegrew.
  • Fred and George had two years at Hogwarts before Ron and Scabbers came. They probably had finished experimenting with the map before Peter was on school grounds.
  • "Never heard about" shouldn't raise too many alarms, because even within the houses not everyone knows everyone. For example, Harry didn't meet Romilda Vane until his sixth year, and they're both Gryffindors.
  • She's a girl and Harry's a Socially Awkward Hero. Twins hardly had that problem. If anybody ever knew everybody in their House (if not in the whole school), it would be them. Not that it matters, the simple fact of there being more people on the Map than there were in the room should've raised their interest.
  • Um have to point out that Scabberd wasn't even NEW to the family when Ron got him, Scabbers was Percy's pet rat BEFORE he became prefect so that means from Nov.2? Nov 3? 1987(maybe 1981-since for all we know it could have been Bill's pet before Percy's)-1990 Percy had it the twins start going to school in 2 years in fall 1989. The twins get the map in 1989..? and Percy has the rat for at least one more year between 1989 and 1991.
  • Fridge Brilliance: Every time we see Harry notice someone's name on the Map, they're always moving around. Possibly the Map doesn't routinely apply names to dots that aren't moving, as stationary occupants of the castle aren't as relevant to its function - showing a clear path to wherever there's mischief to be carried out - than those who are roaming about and might cross the Map-user's path. And how did Scabbers spend 99% of his time at Hogwarts? Sleeping in Ron's dorm.
    • So if Filch is standing somewhere keeping watch rather than roaming around, you run smack-dab into him-?
• Peter, Sirius, and Remus are all only seen on Marauder's Map when Remus opens it and leaves it open on his desk for Snape to find, even though they've been wandering around the castle all year. The Marauders enchanted the Map so that only they could see each other on it as a safety measure.
• I seem to recall Word of God having said something similar to: to see a person in their Animagus form on the map, you must have knowledge of that person's Animagus form. Probably an extra trick added by the Marauders themselves because of their own illicit Animagus-ing. So Fred and George wouldn't have seen "Peter Pettigrew" on the map because they didn't know about his Animagus rat form. The movie complicates this significantly, because in the film Harry is the one to spot Peter on the map for the first time—recall that Scabbers had gone missing before Harry was given the map, so he wouldn't have seen him earlier and wondered why the map said there was an extra person in their dorm room that clearly wasn't there. But in the book, Lupin is the one to find him, after he's confiscated the map from Harry. Thus, Fred and George would never have been able to see Peter on the map and never had occasion to wonder who this strange person in their brother's dorm was, even if they had cared to look. Lupin found Peter because he already had knowledge of his Animagus form, and no one else found him before that point because they didn't.
  • Let's face it, the Map is probably the greatest security device that Hogwarts has but doesn't know it has. Also, the Peter situation does make sense. It seems like the kids are only looking for things on the Map that are immediately beneficial to their current situation. Harry hones in on Draco and Ginny only when he particularly wants to know where they are and what they're doing. He hones in on Snape and Filch when he is planning to break school rules and wants to check where they are so they don't catch him. The Weasley twins probably wouldn't need to look for Ron so they wouldn't see who is with him. Unless they looked in this book, I'm not sure the name would mean much. Sirius and suspected Death Eaters had been out of the news for some time and they were young when Peter's faked death occurred. Had they searched for Quirrell at any point in the first book, they would have found him with "Tom Riddle". "Bartemius Crouch" came up on the Map constantly in Goblet of Fire, with Crouch Jr. only avoiding being discovered because he could circumnavigate the Map's one weakness of not be able to tell apart two people with the same name. Sirius would have appeared on the map and where he was in Prisoner of Azkaban. Four severe infiltrations in four years (three of the four are suspected to be dead at that point by the vast majority) of the allegedly the most secure building in Magical Britain would have been spotted immediately if an adult of responsibility in Hogwarts had thought to do what four teenagers did. The Map is so powerful that it even circumvents the Unplottable nature of Hogwarts as Harry uses it when he is not at the school. It's a brilliant piece of security.

• Remember, the Map also shows the names of ghosts as they move around the castle. Even if Fred and George were aware of Peter Pettigrew and had seen his name on the map, would it really be that strange for a dead, heroic former Griffindor to spend its time haunting the tower?

The Strange Case(s) of Peter Pettigrew

• It is established that the reason Sirius knows where to find Wormtail is that he recognized him from the newspaper photo. Now, I can buy that Sirius would be able to tell the difference between his friend's animagus form and any other rat, but the picture wasn't of Scabbers, was it? It was of the entire Weasley family, and Scabbers was sitting on Ron's shoulders. And they have a big family. You may have been able to identify Scabbers as a rat, but he'd have been tiny. There's no way the differences between RATS are going to be visible at that size. I seriously doubt they'd have noticed the missing toe, either.
  • A couple of points here: Some rats are bigger than people think. In the movies, Scabbers is shown to be about the size of a 3-month-old kitten. Secondly, wizarding photographs move about, and interact with the wizard holding the photograph (as seen in OotP with Moody telling people in the old Order photograph 'Move along, one side' and the like to show off all of the old Order). It's possible that he saw the rat that was familiar, asked Ron to step forward with the rat in the picture, and got a clear view that way. It's not just the missing toe that gave Peter away; in their school days, they used to run around at least once a month with each other for the better part of at least 2 years. It's like recognizing a human friend in a photograph from a distance. You get the idea you might be wrong, and you need a closer look, but you get that pang of recognition.
  • Indeed, male domestic rats can weigh upward of half a kilogram. I should know, I've held one that was - he's so big, he has to be held in two hands.
  • Also keep in mind that the Dementors have been "eating" his happy memories and forcing him to dwell on Peter's betrayal. It's not just a hazy memory of what his buddy looked like as a rat, it's all he's been able to think about for 12 years.
  • If that's not good enough, consider that maybe it being Pettigrew was a stroke of dumb luck. I doubt being around mind-raping demons is good for your mental health. Maybe with Sirius being unable to think of anything but Pettigrew's betrayal, saw a rat, fixated on the possibility of it being the traitor and boom. The missing toe on Scabbers would have only fueled that obsession (would he have seen the rat in enough detail in photo to see the missing toe?). The fact that this rat would be at Hogwarts with Harry only made things worse.
  • Also, remember just how much time Sirius spent with Peter. To an outsider, two grayish/brownish rats would probably look the same, just like two roughly same-sized black cats would. Yet I can usually tell the difference between my black cat and some random other black cat even from a considerable distance, because I saw that kitten grow up. Same thing here, Sirius is so used to how Rat!Peter looks, he can easily distinguish him from some normal rat, even from a distance/small picture.
  • Moreover, the newspaper picture is an animated one. Even if Scabbers looks like just any other rat, his mannerisms may have been familiar to Sirius. He had weeks to watch the little rodent fidgeting about on Ron's shoulder.
  • And aren't Animagi established to have markings that resemble their human form? Both McGonagall and Rita Skeeter have markings that resemble their glasses, and Pettigrew has his missing toe. Harry and co might not have picked up that 'Scabbers' has different features because...well...they're hardly going to have lots of rats to compare him to. So Sirius could recognize these markings. And as another troper mentioned, maybe it was just a hunch that he was lucky enough to be right on. It would explain why he kept a distance and took months to finally confirm it was Peter (he could have been using Crookshanks to work out if there's something off about the rat).

Traitor

• Neither the Potters, nor Lupin, nor Sirius ever figured out that Peter had turned over to Voldemort's side. True, they probably didn't pay much attention to him, but surely someone would have recognized that something was wrong? In Lily's letter to Sirius that Harry finds in DH, she mentions that Peter was acting odd last time he visited, and it makes sense that she wouldn't know why given that they didn't spend much time together. But James and Peter spent nearly their entire Hogwarts careers together — don't you think he would have been able to see that Peter was seriously off the mark? Or is Peter just that good of an actor?
  • People lie successfully all the time. That one's not even something we see take place in the continuity of the series, we just find out about it about after the fact, so I don't know how you can find it badly done/hard to believe. You might as well say the books are at fault for not explaining exactly how Aunt Petunia met and married Uncle Vernon.
  • Also, if Lily didn't know Peter all that well, it's entirely possible for her to describe "acting odd" when, to James, he was acting the same as he always was for the past 7+ years. Peter is clearly a frightened person. While it doesn't excuse the betrayal of his only real friends or the glee he obviously took from the bullying of Severus Snape, he probably hid behind James a lot and James would've been used to seeing a jumpy Peter. Peter being more jumpy than usual during a time of war wouldn't have surprised James. Lily would've only have gotten to know Peter well for at least three years, more depending on the exact age difference between Harry and his parents. (I'm under the assumption James and Lily were 20-21 when Harry was born, but that's due to something I read long ago. I've recently read they were 25-26, but I'm not sure which is correct.)
  • Besides, Lily is the type who sees the best in people. Look how long it took her to ditch Snape. Even seeing that Peter was acting strange, she probably wouldn't jump to the conclusion that he's a Death Eater.
  • I can't remember what was said from the films, but in the book, Lily doesn't say he was acting oddly at all. He said that he 'seemed down', but rationalizes it as probably being due the news about the MacKinnons, something she cried all night when she heard about, according to the letter. Harry, who unlike Lily knows that Peter was a cowardly douche, assumes otherwise.
  • Also everyone knew Pettigrew (McGonagall, the Marauders) described him as stupid and cowardly, which are poor traits for a spy and would get them caught quickly. Its possible that nobody suspected Pettigrew due to incompetence rather than lack of loyalty
  • At any rate, who says that Lily doesn't know Peter? Sure, she may not have been close with him when we see them in school in HBP, but they've had years to become friends. And it's worth noting that Peter was one of James's best friends, just like Lupin and Sirius, and she became good friends with them. There's no reason to believe that she was any less of a friend of his as James or Sirius was at this point. Maybe the fact that she realized something was off but didn't put 2 and 2 together is exactly why James or Sirius or Lupin didn't figure it out.
  • And they're in the middle of a war where friends are dying everywhere. It makes sense that he'd be acting a little down.

Lupin discovering the traitor

• Until Lupin saw Peter Pettigrew on the Marauders' Map, he, like the rest of the wizarding world, had believed that Sirius Black betrayed Harry's parents to Voldemort. Lupin seems oddly calm about having his entire world-view shifted in just an hour or so - even though he's considered the Only Sane Man to a bunch of (mostly) useless adults, that seems to stretch Angst? What Angst? to its limits.
  • It's possible that Lupin always suspected that something was off. Keep in mind, he knew something that no one else did: Sirius's and James's loyalty was such that they would risk a highly dangerous act of magic in his service. Peter was along for the ride, for the most part. So he can't rectify the image of Sirius that he's always had with the image of Sirius turning to Voldemort. Which would make him feel guilty, especially since he probably wouldn't be able to imagine Peter as the courageous hero he made himself out to be in his last moments. Then he sees Peter's name, and he sees that Peter didn't die. And the already shaky image he has of Peter as a hero falls apart. I imagine him being more relieved than angsty: he didn't underestimate Peter, he hadn't gotten himself killed for James and Lily; what else could he have been wrong about?
  • Besides, take note that Sirius didn't act as a bloodthirsty murderer either. He didn't kill anybody when he had a chance in the boys' dorm. Lupin was already confused and unsure in anything by the moment of Reveal. Finally, even seeing Peter's name on the Map didn't immediately transcribe into "Pete's a traitor" for him. Only when learning about Peter's time as Ron's rat, did he understand everything. So in fact the "shift of world-view" was rather gradual.
  • Lupin has spent most of his life waking up naked and bloodied in the woods every month, wondering what happened last night and if he just killed someone. If anyone's going to be able to adjust to disorienting circumstances quickly, it's Lupin.
  • If you read the books, you would know that Lupin didn't "spent most of his (Hogwarts) life waking up in the woods. He woke up in the Shrieking Shack.
  • Six or seven years is not "most of his life", and the Shrieking Shack wasn't available to him once he left school.
  • No but is hinted in the books that after school he still took precautions when transformed, like lock himself probably somewhere else, it’s very unlikely that he just let himself wander around when transformed, besides it’s also mentioned that the Ministry keep track of werewolves to make sure they won’t harm people. Fenrir Grayback was considered a rogue werewolf because he didn’t comply to the Ministry’s security measures.
  • Again, something that we have to realize is that we see almost everything from Harry's POV. Who's to say that Lupin took it in stride? When Harry first tells him about Pettigrew, it's as Harry is leaving Lupin's company and Lupin's only reaction is denial. It's possible that he spends the next few hours combing the map hoping both to find Peter's name and hoping not to at the same time. Then when he finds it, he goes into a Heroic BSoD, all of which would have taken place away from Harry's POV.

Pettigrew and Crookshanks

• If Crookshanks was such a threat to him in his rat form, either physically or because the cat's actions might eventually cast suspicion upon him, why didn't Pettigrew ever do something to stop Hermione's pet from pursuing him? There must have been times when both Scabbers and Crookshanks were left behind in the dormitory while all the students were in class. So why couldn't Peter have returned to his human form and snuck into Hermione's room long enough to stun or kill Crookshanks? That would protect his life and his secret, while denying Sirius the help he needed to get past the Whomping Willow. He could even set things up for Sirius to take the blame for Crookshanks's death, if he left the doors to the Gryffindor dormitory and Hermione's room open a bit, so it looked like Sirius broke in again, and found the cat wandering loose in the common room.
  • Boys cannot enter the girls' dorms. Maybe the staff is exempt, but Pettigrew wouldn't be.
  • So use his rat-form to lure the cat into the common room when nobody's around, then revert to human when it tries to pounce and kill it. Even if he's a coward, we're talking about a full-grown man letting himself be terrorized by a cat, for pity's sake!
  • Yeah, except Crookshanks is half-kneazle, is intelligent, so much so that he was able to partially communicate with Sirius and help him out, and he knows something is fishy about the rat, if not that it IS an Animagus. Crookshanks is not going to be stupid enough to let Pettigrew get the jump on him.
  • Also, dead cat in the common room? Or inexplicably vanished cat? Could potentially lead to unfortunate questions and perhaps a risk, be it ever so slight, of discovery. Pettigrew has played it safe and stayed in rat form for more than a decade; he's not the type to do anything that might even look like it could potentially lead to him being exposed. Much safer then to fake his own death; everyone knows cats eat rats so this would come with its own handy explanation.
  • For what it's worth, Crookshanks only usually attacks whenever he's with Hermione. So Peter can't do anything then. Crookshanks doesn't ever seem to go after him when he's not with Hermione. And clearly Peter thought faking his death was more convenient than killing the cat. For one, he doesn't have a wand, so he can't transfigure the cat into something else like a bug to be squashed. If he wanted to get rid of Crookshanks, he'd have to kill it the old fashioned way - which is anything but fool-proof since he needs to get the cat alone and to a place where he can kill it without any of the children noticing. Sure if he wanted to use magic he could steal a wand, but then again that leaves a lot more chance for things to go wrong. So faking his death is much simpler.
  • And here's food for thought - maybe since he's been a rat for so long he's forgotten how to turn back into a human. He only turns back because Sirius and Remus cast a spell that forces him to.

Containing werewolves: you're doing it wrong!

• What was Dumbledore thinking when he devised the procedure to deal with Lupin's condition? An allegedly haunted house on the outskirts of a town, with a secret passage leading to it, with an open entrance on the school grounds protected by a homicidal tree? The hell? Even Voldemort would scratch his head at the contrivedness of this solution. It is blatantly unsecure, it's conspicuous, it adds another giant Schmuck Bait to the place that already feels no shortage of them and most importantly, what's the point? Why not just a padded, soundproof room somewhere in the dungeons? Why not the Room of Requirement? Even if it has to be a separate building (which does makes sense, I guess), why not just cast the Disillusionment Charm on Remus and whoever escorts him there? And why not simply immobilize him after he transforms, so that he couldn't hurt himself?
  • All I can say about the Room of Requirement suggestion is that it wouldn't work because Dumbledore didn't know it existed. The rest, however, I have no answer for.
  • How was it "blatantly unsecure"? No one was ever able to get into the Shrieking Shack without being told about the Whomping Willow's secret by someone who knew. As for being conspicuous, sure, the Whomping Willow and Shrieking Shack would stand out, but who would assume that there's a secret passage under the Willow that leads to the Shack? That, and when the locals interpreted the noises Lupin made as the sounds of violent spirits, Dumbledore further encouraged the rumors to keep people from getting too suspicious. I feel that the dungeon idea could work just as well, but also feel that it wouldn't stop James, Sirius and Peter from getting past it. I do agree though that it would have made sense not to let people see Lupin being taken to the Shack. Finally, as for why they didn't immobilize Lupin during his transformations, they might just have been unwilling to chain him up like an animal.
  • Why. Why go to all the troubles and create such an elaborate scheme that was threatening to come apart at seams once somebody starts snooping around? DD was lucky it were the Marauders and not some Slytherin, whose parents would've killed for such an opportunity to undermine his authority. Why NOT a dungeon cell? No, the Marauders would've never got there because, a) had it been done correctly, they would've never learned about it and b), that's the reason for the "keep guard while he's transformed" part. As for immobilizing Lupin, excuse me, but Remus was an animal during those times. And having a rabid, viral monster near a castle full of children is the absolutely worst time to be fastidious.
  • I always figured that the Marauders found out that Lupin was a werewolf before finding out what was protecting the students from him (considering that Hermione could, I don't find this hard to believe) and that he told them how to get past the Willow afterwards. All they had to do then was learn how to become Animagi. Considering that's a hard piece of magic to learn, and they managed it, if Lupin got put in a dungeon cell, I can imagine the Marauders learning how to break Lupin out of whatever's imprisoning him there and modify the guards' memories so they're none the wiser, if he told them what to do. As for whether to keep Lupin immobilized or not, while it would have been wise to do so with the cell scenario, in the Shrieking Shack it seems he's too far away from humans to want to go after them, so it's not too necessary.
  • "Imprisoning him there" should've been a locked door and DD standing in front of it. Personally. That was his school, and his bright idea to bring a monster into it. Would you feel safe if you knew that the only thing that is potentially keeping your child from a gruesome death is that the monster is "too far away from humans to want (not actually be able to - he is and nothing stops him, but want) to go after them"? Who can say, how far is far enough for that? And then this point became moot anyway, when the Maraduers started bringing him close enough to people (please don't tell me they were keeping him in check, and thus it was Ok, just don't). And then Sirius sent Severus to the Shack to be ripped apart and do you still have doubts about the "unsecure" part? Again, DD was lucky that nobody with a malicious intent (of which there is about a quarter of the school) took interest in Lupin's ailment and decided to investigate. You said it yourself - figuring Lupin out wasn't that difficult, if you wanted to.
  • I don't consider it anymore unsecure than the O.P's idea. Why? Because Snape got past it by being told how. That would work for either Rowling's plan, yours, or the O.P's (I don't know if the two of you are separate people or not). In fact, this is probably why Lupin's kept in a separate building when a werewolf: if someone does get in there, the casualties are limited to that person alone. Which is more dangerous; a werewolf running amock in a shack, or one running amock in a castle filled with children?
  • 1) Remind me again, what exactly stopped the former from turning into the latter? No, "it just didn't happen, so that" is not an argument. BTW, if you read the OP carefully, you'll see that I admit the merit of using a separate building as an extra precaution. That doesn't negate my other points.
  • 2) Yes, Sev was told. Not by some insider, mind you, but by a dumb teenager. Which is exactly the problem. "If Lupin told them what to do" is not a given - that he was able to is the sign of how weak the whole system was, despite being riduculously contrived (a hallmark of Dumbledore's designs, if you think of it). Revealing the "secret" wasn't even required, and becoming the animagi had nothing to do with it either. If Sev oversaw Remus being taken to the Willow, what would've stopped him (or any other snooper) from witnessing the complicated and arcane ritual of pushing a twig, which can be done with a first-year spell? I'm not even sure how couldn't he see it and why did he need Sirius to tell him (other then to set up a conflict between them, of course).
  • If Lupin tries to go through the tunnel, he's got to get past the Willow (which starts moving again shortly after being frozen, according to p. 295 of the book) again, which would probably batter him to a pulp, if not kill him. If he did get past it in one piece, they could probably have locked and strengthened all the doors to the castle beforehand, so that he'd be unable to break in. And how do we know that they didn't do the same thing in the shack itself? Though I admit that this is just speculation. I do agree though that Dumbledore should have taken some steps to prevent Lupin from telling anyone else (and if he did, bigger ones), and that not doing so greatly weakened the whole protection system. I'm guessing he trusted Lupin not to tell anyone. As for the last point, yes I agree that taking Lupin to the shack unconcealed was a mistake, but as for Snape seeing them go through the Willow, how do we know that whoever was escorting Lupin didn't use Homenum Revilio to check for snoopers before stopping the tree? Again, this is just speculation.
  • "...which would probably batter him to a pulp, if not kill him." - so either way DD would've got himself a corpse or a mangled victim, and I'd LOVE to hear him explaining to the authorities just how the hell did that happened. "they could probably have locked and strengthened all the doors..." - so, another layer of headache, even more threat of exposure, and even that guarantees nothing, judging by the number of secret entrances, and besides, what about Hogsmeed? "...didn't use Homenum Revilio to check for snoopers..." - would it reveal a distant person using a looking glass? Now, I hope, you see, what I meant by "blatantly unsecure". Not impossible - they'd used it, and it even "worked", because Rowling willed it, but it's akin to crossing a shasm via a flimsy suspened bridge, when you've got a perfectly good stone one just to your left.
  • "I'd LOVE to hear him explaining to the authorities just how the hell did that happened." Easy. All he'd have to say is "some kid was an idiot and tried to approach the Whomping Willow at night" or "some werewolf was an idiot and tried to attack the tree at night".
  • Fortifying all the doors would only require putting an unbreakable charm on them, and if Goblet of Fire's to be believed, there's no way of seeing if one's there short of trying to break the charmed object. As for the secret passages, I always figured that werewolves lose their minds when they transform, seeing that Lupin says that Wolfsbane potion allows him to keep his mind when he transforms. So even if he found out about a passage while human, he might not remember it while he's a werewolf.
    I do agree though that the Whomping Willow could have been replaced with something less conspicuous, like a large rock. And if you had to say a password to get through it, it would solve the problem with the spyglass. As for why DD didn't do that, I'm guessing he only concerned himself with keeping Lupin from harming anyone, and wasn't too worried about what would happen to his reputation if the secret got out. He's never been afraid of that.
  • "Fortifying all the doors..." That leaves out Hogsmeade. But hey, I guess you cannot make it entirely airtight, oh wait, yes you can, put him in a dungeon cell, lock the door and stand guard, and you don't have to worry about the passages, or charms, or interlopers, or anything, and I still see no reason not to do it - only how DD's insane plan kinda sorta could be made work. Yes, I agree that it could. It doesn't make it less needlessly contrived.
    "he only concerned himself with keeping Lupin from harming anyone..." Well, he failed at that as well, didn't he? Snape nearly got killed, Khorne knows how many people were put in danger during Marauders' little night trips, and if the secret got out, Lupin himself would've got the boot, and that is if he didn't actually hurt anyone. And all that for no reason.
  • I thought I had already explained why DD had chosen not to keep Lupin in the castle: if he breaks out, he'll be a lot closer to students than he would be if he came out from under the willow. As for Hogsmeade, I don't know a great deal about how well JK's werewolves can detect humans, but at the end of PoA, Dumbledore seemed content to let Lupin run around the Forbidden Forest when he did get out, which he probably wouldn't have done if Lupin was going to threaten any wizards. As for it failing, yeah it did, because of Lupin telling his friends how to get past it. DD never addressed that because he never found out about it until over a decade after they all graduated. And while I acknowledge that your werewolf containment plan would have worked, it could have failed the exact same way (Lupin telling people how to crack it).
  • 1) How was Lupin going to break out of a cell that had no doors, only several feet of solid enchanted stone around it, and DD guarding it? Remus had no magical powers in his lupine form - he was just a big rabid animal (and AGAIN, I do not argue against using a separate building - I argue against every other part of the plan, which were so asinine they ended negating the good part). 2) What could Lupin possibly tell the Marauders that would help them bust him out, if he didn't know the password to the cell (because it would be wordless), and if DD was personally guarding it? That's what bothers me - the problem was so trivial that the simplest solution would not have failed (or at least not nearly as easily), because there was virtually no room for failure until they went out of their way to create some.
  • A couple misc parts. 1) "DD seemed content to let Lupin run around the Forbidden Forest...which he probably wouldn't have done if Lupin was going to threaten any wizards." I'd like to point out that the rationality of DD's decisions is the object of scrutiny here, so the argument "DD did it, which means it was a sane thing to do" is invalid by default. But I guess it is alright, the wizards would be wishfully safe, and the centaurs and unicorns... meh, you're right, buck them.
  • 2) "DD never addressed that because he never found out about it until over a decade after they all graduated". Yeeeeeeeeah, this part. He knew. He couldn't possibly not know, and I don't even have to go WM Ging. Even if we assume that DD would've left his secret werewolf without a watch, there's this little slip in "OotP": "I watched from afar as you struggled to repel Dementors, as you found Sirius, learned what he was and rescued him." There's no way around it. DD had surveillance in the Shack, he knew what was going on both in time of Lupin's youth and in the finale of PoA, and he allowed both to transpire.
  • 1) I never imagined that Lupin breaking out WAS likely to happen. That's why I said your plan would work just as well. Guess someone at Hogwarts must have figured that you can't be too careful. 2) If DD was guarding it, and there were no doors, all the Marauders would have to do is: have James sneak up close to DD while under the invisibility cloak, use a spell to make him fall asleep for the rest of the night (even he can't perfectly defend against a surprise attack), hide him somewhere Lupin won't be likely to go, open the room the same way that whoever put Lupin in there did, then have all the Marauders transform into their animal forms and take Lupin out. Once they're done for the night, they can shut Lupin back in, then put DD back where he was, and he'll wake up none the wiser.
  • Misc points: 1) "the rationality of DD's decisions is the object of scrutiny here". Sorry, forgot about that. I entered this thread to find out why people thought DD's plan sucked, and you've certainly given me some reasons: namely why did they need a violent willow tree that you can find out how to get past with a spyglass?
    2) All that quote proves is that DD knew what was going on at the shack in Harry's third year. There's nothing that proves anything about Lupin's time, and from what I remember at the end of the third book, DD tells Harry that Sirius had told him all about them being animagi, and that he considered it "An extraordinary achievement - not least, keeping it quiet from me." So right now I'm not buying that claim that he knew what was going on.
  • Something tells me that if letting Lupin out demanded regularly assaulting their Headmaster rather than pushing a twig, it would've discouraged the Marauders at least a bit. If DD could possibly be sneaked up to and put to sleep by a teenager, then the war with Voldemort would've ended in five minutes with the victory of the later. And how the hell were they supposed to replicate a wordless spell? And AGAIN, inventing some (rather outlandish, if you ask me) way for the proposed solution to fail does not negate the point that it was still much simplier and more reasonable than the one they ended up using. 2)If DD knew what happened in the Shack in Harry's time, it means he did have some kind of surveliance there, and why would he have it except for keeping an eye on Lupin back in his time? If he didn't keep an eye on a freaking werewolf on his turf, then he's an idiot. Also, YOUR quote could be interpreted in the meaning that they managed to become the animagi wihout his privity - it doesn't say anything about their night escapades. And "keeping" doesn't mean indefinitely.
  • More simply perhaps spells were cast on the shack to prevent people from going inside it from Hogsmeade - but they're not active anymore because Remus isn't using it.
  • To answer the original question, Dumbeldore's set up acomplishes three things: 1)it keeps werewolf Lupin contained 2) it keeps the students from running into werewolf Lupin by accident as it takes deliberate effort to get into the shack and 3) it hides the fact that Lupin is a werewolf. That last one is one of the main reasons they couldn't just lock him up in the school. As soon as the student body learned his secret the parents would have forced him out of the school.
  • Thing that bothers me is that the Wolfsbane Potion was available at the time, it was expensive and complex, but, he was, you know, at Hogwarts, why dumbledore never made some for him during his sutdent days is a mystery, especially when you consider that during Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery, which is considered canon, Lupin wasn't the only werewolf in Hogwarts at the time, Chiara Lobosca was getting Wolfsbane Potion, said potion, during his time as a teacher allowed him to sleep while transformed in his office, rather than setting him up in an abandoned house with full function.
  • The Wolfsbane Potion wasn't avaliable to Lupin during his student years. It was a recent discovery after he left Hogwarts.
  • One question would be when Dumbledore discovered (or created?) the chamber they used in Harry's first year to hide the philospher's stone. It was a large distance under the school and they could simply fly Lupin in there once a month. He would be all alone while a werewolf, unable to get to anyone and everyone else unable to get to him.

"There's not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn't in Slytherin."

• In the first book, Hagrid claims there's "not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn't in Slytherin." But in this book, we find out that as far as he knew at the time, there was an exception to the rule: Sirius, who was in Gryffindor, and who Hagrid along with everyone else believed was very, very bad indeed. So why does he say that? And also note that Hagrid mentions Sirius loaned him the motorbike in the first chapter of the first book, so Rowling actually had some idea of Sirius being a character. Did she just forget later on while writing the first book, or was Sirius initially not going to be in Gryffindor or considered a murderer?
  • It was a figure of speech on Hagrid's part (and Ron's in the first movie). Not all dark witches and wizards were Slytherins, but seemingly most of them were.
  • Maybe Hagrid didn't entirely believe that Sirius was guilty, considering that they already knew each other.
  • Alternatively, Hagrid didn't know that Sirius was actually a Gryffindor, and he just assumed he was a Slytherin because the Blacks had such a reputation for being a pro-Slytherin household.

Lupin on the train

• Why is Lupin riding the train into Hogwarts? I know you can't Apparate into the castle, but why not Apparate into Hogsmeade, have a firewhiskey, and then walk or thestral-coach up and save yourself the inconvenience of a long train ride?
  • Dumbledore asked him to, because he knew Dementors would want to search the train, and also to familiarize him with the Trio.
  • Maybe he was dead tired and Apparating while sleep-deprived is a good way to get splinched. And maybe he didn't just get a good night's sleep ahead of time like a sensible person because of werewolf problems. Although I agree being there to keep an eye on the Dementor situation works better (since he also brought all that chocolate, presumably not to stuff his face with).
  • Having just read this book, I recall coming across a statement that Lupin was poor and not well-off, as he wasn't able to find employment due to being a werewolf. Chances are, unlike the other teachers, he didn't have a means of travelling to the school anytime before the start of term, and his only choice (the only choice he could afford) was to take the Hogwarts Express with the students.
  • Hmm for all we know, other new teachers sometimes take the Hogwarts Express. We don't know if Lockhart did, since Harry and Ron weren't on there. Moody didn't because he arrived late after being attacked and replaced by Barty Crouch Jr held him up. Umbridge seems as though she would have arrived in advance to get her office ready (hers is particularly done up). But the next year Slughorn chooses to go on the train. I mean there might be at least one teacher on board in charge since there's seven years worth of students on there. It seems unlikely that all of them would be left completely unsupervised in case of an emergency.
  • There is one scary thought about that train ride is that the full moon happened between Aug 31 and Sep 2 of that year. It was at 99% on Aug 31, 100% on Sept 1, and 99% on Sept 2. That could easily explain why he was so tired, but not why he would dare to take the Hogwarts Express so close to the time he changed into a werewolf.
    • The full moon only rises just around sunset, which is also near the time that the train arrives at Hogwarts. Since even the Wolfesbane potion doesn’t stop the transformation itself, I think we have to assume that only a completely perfect, 100% full moon is enough to bring on the transformation, not the 99% illumination phase it was in the day of the train ride. Otherwise, Lupin would’ve been cutting it way too close.

Sirius and Wormtail

• 1.) So, after everyone thought that he'd blown up Pettigrew along with a street full of Muggles, Sirius was sent to Azkaban without a trial. But the book mentions there were witnesses Indeed, there would have had to have been witnesses for anyone beyond the scope of the event to have known what had happened. So does that mean that every person that saw the crime vouched that Sirius blew up the street, even though Pettigrew was the one who did it?

2.) Trial or no, why would the Ministry of Magic rely on what was presumably a bunch of magic-illiterate Muggles as their only witnesses to a crime committed entirely through the use of magic?

3.) The book also mentions that Sirius was found going mad with laughter at the scene of the explosion. Was this meant to be taken as true? If so, why would Sirius be laughing at what amounted to his friend trying to frame him?

4.) Pettigrew used his wand to blow up the street behind his back, then transformed into a rat and escaped down into the sewer that had been exposed. Where in all of this did the whole "cutting-off-his-own-finger" bit come into play? After he got down into the sewer?

• Pettigrew also yelled to everyone in the street that Sirius had betrayed Lily and James. Presumably when Sirius advanced on him or reacted to that, then he blew up the street. He gets a couple of seconds where the blast confuses everyone, cuts off his finger with magic and then transforms. Sirius laughing isn't as crazy as you'd think. Laughing Mad is a common reaction to immense stress or trauma. He clearly knew Pettigrew had transformed and cut off his finger, so the laughing was probably from the realization that he'd been planning to frame Sirius all along.
• As to why they convicted Sirius, everyone else knew Sirius had been the Secret-Keeper. Only James, Lily, Sirius, and Pettigrew knew that it had been changed. So as far as the Aurors were concerned, Sirius was the only one who could have betrayed them. This includes Dumbledore himself. It's also revealed in Goblet of Fire that Barty Crouch Sr. was cracking down on Death Eaters to the point of giving Aurors free reign to kill if they wanted. Sirius was one of many who was either sent to Azkaban without a trial, or if they did get a trial, it was a biased Kangaroo Court (like Crouch Jr.). If he'd had a trial, the truth would have easily come out, especially with Remus to provide testimony. But Crouch was so dead set on jailing as many of Voldemort's associates as they could, he didn't care about sorting the innocent from the guilty.
  • The thing that bothers me most about the entire scenario is not necessarily that Sirius never got a trial, but that no one is ever particularly concerned that he never got a trial. Rowling does this a lot in the books. She gives lip service to ideas like equality and justice, but we never see it in application. Like, sure, not all Slytherins are bad, but we aren't shown an effective example. And while the Ministry of Magic is awful, we never see any attempts to reform the government, only seeing less-jerky Minister getting elected. To modern day British and American readers, Sirius' lack of a trial would be a huge deal, yet this is never resolved, or ever addressed. Here's how J.K. seems to have dealt with it:

Reader: Well, how come they didn't just ask Sirius what happened? He'd have told them!

J.K.: Oh, well... He was put in Azkaban without a trial, so he never got the chance.

Reader: Oh, okay, that makes sense.

Troper: Actually, that's a serious breach of an individual's legal rights, and sounds like a huge problem!

Sirius: Oh, I'm not complaining. I got out, didn't I?

• And don't forget that little bombshell about their only prison being staffed by demons that drive people insane, which is casually dropped and then never explored in any way other than the unpleasant experience the named characters have with them or their unreliability as guards. What's that, a grossest violation of prisoners' rights in history, which god knows how many people could've been sumbitted to for little to no reason, like Hagrid? Buck that, we have a Quiddich tournament coming!

• The magic of the Fidelius Charm does kind of make it only Sirius who could have betrayed them. His story about Peter Pettigrew being the one who betrayed them sounds pretty fantastic. And remember the context; Voldemort had just been defeated and the Ministry were rounding up all the remaining Death Eaters. Sirius was just one of many captured at the same time. And if you think about it, Peter had become something of a martyr for the Wizarding World - due to his apparently tragic death. It's not unreasonable to think that the authorities may have not wanted to believe that a symbol of hope was none of that in such dark and horrible times.

Moving in with Sirius

• Say Pettigrew hadn't escaped at the climax. How would Harry have been able to move in with Sirius, anyway? He was sent to live with the Dursleys because Petunia is his mother's sister, and thus, his relation to her helps to keep him safe from Voldemort and ambitious Death Eaters - Sirius being proven innocent wouldn't have changed the fact that he still needed protection. And it also couldn't have been because "Sirius was a skilled-enough wizard to keep Harry safe on his own," because there were already a ton of qualified witches and wizards Harry could've been sent to live with, in that case. I know this isn't too big an issue, because it never came to fruition anyway - I'm just wondering how it would've worked if it had.
  • It wouldn't have worked. Harry would still have to stay with the Dursleys for reasons known only to Dumbledore then. Whether or not Sirius and Harry would get him to say why a few years early is anyone's guess.
  • "Harry, I am homeless. Can I live with you?"
  • Sirius as the last male Black had Grimmauld Place all to himself. Yes he hates it enough to spend a whole year in a cave rather than there but for the sake of taking Harry in he surely would have swallowed his misgivings and pride.
    • Well as an aside, he may have gone to Grimmauld Place first after he escaped. He only hides out in Hogsmeade to be closer to Harry in the event of danger. Grimmauld Place is in London, while Hogwarts is in north Scotland.

Swimming

• After escaping from Azkaban, Sirius swam all the way across the ocean to get back to the mainland? Isn't the prison located on an island in the middle of some northern European sea? Wouldn't the water have been freezing? How could Sirius have survived that trip?
  • He did the doggie paddle ... I'll leave. In all fairness, the guy spent years managing to keep his sanity amidst soul-sucking guards, so he's got a fairly powerful set of willpower. Plus, he could transform into a shaggy dog. Maybe the dog's fur kept him warm.
  • Dogs can resist lower temperatures than humans as they have an extra fat layer, and also swimming in open air, even freezing water, was probably paradise compare to be in cell for so many years.
  • According to the wiki, Azkaban is in the North Sea. So it's not that far from the mainland. People have swum the English Channel all the way to Calais, so it's doable. And aren't wizards implied to be just that bit stronger than normal humans?
  • Stronger, no. Tougher, more resistant to blunt force trauma, crushing and burning, yes. If anyone has any idea how that works feel free to elaborate, but if a wizard takes heat better than muggles, chances are they can take the cold too. Dementors lower the temperature around them. Prolonged dementor activity actually condenses water vapor, creating a depression causing fog from a muggle's perspective, and numerous wizards forced into close quarters with dementors are not suffering from the effects of long term exposure to cold, despite being too depressed for regular meals or exercise. On top of that, taking a dog form. Some breeds of dogs, such as labs and Newfoundlands, do remarkable well in water humans consider cold, and a grim, being a magical canine associated with death, would likely do even better. Low temperature and death are closely related in these books. For instance, contact with ghosts is compared to a cold shower.
  • For what it's worth, Sirius escapes in the summer.
• Makes one wonder why nobody else had ever escaped Azkaban.
  • Said prisoner would have to also be an Animagus who was also innocent of whatever crime they'd been thrown in for. Sirius says that he wasn't completely broken down by the dementors because he was able to keep his mind somewhat as a dog. Sirius's motivation for escaping was also the realization that the friend who'd framed him was both still at large and could potentially hurt his godson. So he was able to resist the Dementors because he had a unique ability and kept his mind long enough to ask for a newspaper and get his Papa Wolf instincts flared.

Secret-keeping woes

• So Lily and James decide to put their lives, their son's life, and the peaceable future of the world in the hands...of Peter Pettigrew. They decide to switch it from the hands of someone more capable, and without telling anyone, and for what? Why, because Pettigrew's such a spineless coward that a judgmental, mind-reading chessmaster like Voldemort wouldn't possibly suspect him! Now, not only did the members of the Order already know at this point that there was a spy amidst them, but the whole point of the Secret Keeper is that they keep the secret, so whether Voldemort knew who it was wouldn't have mattered if he couldn't get the secret out of them. And I honestly think that even Mundungus Fletcher himself would've been more tight-lipped than Peter-spineless-backstabber-coward-Pettigrew.
  • In all honesty, that's hindsight speaking. Pettegrew wasn't a spineless backstabber coward back then. Remember, he was always a member of their inner circle, he went along with their dangerous animorph shenanigans and never ratted them out. Besides, Sirius was a reckless idiot, which in this situation is a far bigger liability than cowardice. His idea of keeping the secret was: "Hey, let that stupid Voldemort go after me, I will never tell him anything!" instead of "I will run to the end of the world and crawl into the deepest hole I can find so that he doesn't catch me and torture the secret out of me."
  • He was the outermost member of their inner circle, and I know that it's mentioned somewhere that he only got in because Lupin brought him to Sirius and James and vouched for him - Lupin calls himself out on this later. And you can't say he wasn't even the slightest bit spineless or a coward, since the reason Sirius switches the role over to him was because he was the spineless outermost member that Voldemort would never have expected the Potters to entrust their lives to.
  • Except that it was Sirius talking. Makes me wonder if this attitude (which he hardly kept a secret) influenced Peter's decision in any way. Also I don't recall Lupin mention bringing Peter in and vouching for him.
  • Also, how is "Let Voldemort hunt me down and torture me - I'll never give him the secret, anyway!" worse than "I'll run and hide from Voldemort because I'm scared of him finding and torturing me!"?
  • It's worse because it's stupid and empty bravado - V would've got everything he knew out of him, there's absolutely no argument here. And because Sirius was too stupid to Obliviate himself, that would've included Peter's name, thus voiding the entire charade. I wonder if that also influenced Pete's decision. He's a goner either way, and these people are clearly idiots, so they won't last either - might as well save everyone the troubles.
  • According to Pottermore, the Secret can't be tortured out of the Keeper. It has to be given willingly.
  • Awesome. In that case changing the Secret Keeper makes no sense at all. If Sirius kept the role and was willing to die in it, the Potters would've been safe, but all that switching to Peter did was bring him under the strike, since, I presume, V could've still tortured Peter's name out of Sirius. Also, as usual, Rowling sets the rules without giving a bit of thought over how easily they can be bypassed. "Ok, Black, I will not torture you. Instead we'll see how many of these precious Muggle children right here will it take for me to turn inside out before you WILLINGLY tell me all I want to know."
    • [spoiler]As demonstrated by Dumbledore’s death and the Fidelius on Grimmauld Place[/spoiler], if Sirius had died defending the Secret everyone whom he’d previously told would automatically become a Secret Keeper, which presumably included more than one person since the Potters kept on having social relations with a few people. So him dying wouldn’t have helped much. From this POV, entrusting a coward with the Secret, rather than a reckless person, may look as a safer option, counting on the coward’s higher sense of self-preservation.
  • Also, what's implied anyway is that Peter didn't need any coaxing for him to give the Potters' location over to Voldemort - he was already acting as a spy, and while his primary motives for doing so may have been due to fear, it likely wasn't fear of an immediate threat, since Sirius mentions going to check up on Peter, not finding him where he was supposed to be, assuming the worst, and going right away to check on Godric's Hollow before resorting to hunting him down. If he thought Peter had been kidnapped by Voldemort, I would hope he would've gone and tried to save him at once before going to check on the Potters. (Especially if what above is true and Peter would've had to have given the secret over willingly.)
  • "Go and save him" where? If Peter's been kidnapped by Voldemort, then too bad, but there's hardly anything to be done for him. No, for once, Sirius' actions make sence. Since V isn't even supposed to know that Peter is the Secret Keeper, because only Sirius could've told him that and he obviously hasn't, then Peter's absense means that he either relocated to another hideout or betrayed them. After checking on the Potters, Sirius realises that it's the latter.

Secret Keeper woes 2

I always thought that the saddest part of the whole Secret Keeper debacle was that Remus Lupin was not considered as an option. He’s far less a liability than Sirius (in that he wouldn’t chafe at remaining in hiding nor take reckless risks with his life and Secret just for kicks) and much more reliable than Peter, even without 20/20 hindsight on the latter. Not only that, but they didn’t even tell him about the switch. This always makes me exponentially more sad when thinking about how poor Lupin must have felt that November, when in a matter of two-three days his three best friends (possibly his only friends) were all either dead or irrevocably incarcerated and responsible for the death of the other two.Was it ever addressed why he was kept out of that particular loop?

• A few things are implied about this time period: First, that the Order of the Phoenix suspected that there was a mole (hence why they weren't incredibly surprised when Sirius Black was "revealed" to be a traitor.) Second, that Remus was working undercover, infiltrating Fenrir Greyback's pack. Third, that James and Sirius actually suspected Lupin of being the mole- or at least getting in too deep. Even disregarding all this, they may just simply have considered it wiser to have a Secret Keeper who wasn't involuntarily transformed into a bloodthirsty wolf 7 nights out of the month.
  • Sirius was chosen because he was James's closest friend, and thus the least likely to betray them. But they then switched to Peter, because he was the one they'd least suspect. Sirius was the Red Herring, and Lupin would be more likely to be chosen than Peter. James trusted all his friends, so he had no idea that Peter would betray him like that.

Why didn't Remus Lupin just move between time zones?

• In his backstory he went to the Shrieking Shack on full moon nights and gave it its name. But if he only turns into a wolf at night, why not just stay away from it during full moons? Wizards seem to have multiple methods of instant transportation. Is it so hard to transport a long distance that the shrieking shack is a better option?
  • Lupin didn't want his condition to interfere too much with his life at school - being evacuated to the Shrieking Shack with the coming of each full moon seemed to serve him well enough, he couldn't Apparate both until he came of age and learned how to, and Portkeys are monitored by the Ministry. All in all, being taken into a safehouse that was on school grounds was just the safest, most hassle-free option.
  • Was he keeping it a secret that he was a werewolf or something? I'd expect staying out of the night would be standard. The Ministry monitoring the portkeys just means that they'll know something is up if a known werewolf isn't using one. I don't see how spending the "night" in another country is less safe or more of a hassle than sneaking into a safehouse, turning into a monster, and then spending the night frantically biting yourself and howling.
  • "Was he keeping it a secret" Yes, he was, that was the whole point of the charade. They were afraid that should it come out, other parents would demand to give him the boot. Your suggestion implies that the nightfall is the trigger for transformation, rather than the phase of the moon itself, which will be the same wherever he moves and whatever time of the day it is. Although the idea of teleporting a rabid monster away from a castle full of children and into some wilderness is solid, but solid ideas are not encouraged in Hogwarts. Apparently they're too boring.
  • Lupin's situation seemed to be pretty well handled. It worked, didn't it? Seven years at Hogwarts and no one got hurt or bitten. Keeping him in a safe house is more convenient than apparating him through several different time zones to avoid the full moon.
  • Why not teleport him into the wilderness? Let’s see, confine him in the Shrieking Shack where he'll be confined, but tear the place/himself up, or send him into the wilderness where there's no guarantee that there are no hikers, rangers, or people of any sort living/staying nearby for him to kill and eat?
  • Teleporting Lupin away, between time zones, into the wilderness, etc., would not work for several reasons. First: You cannot apparate in or out of Hogwarts. This one should be pretty obvious. Second: If you wanted to escort Lupin to Hogsmeade, off of the Hogwarts grounds in order to apparate, fine. But it's a lot of work. However, apparition cannot be easily performed by most adult wizards, and side-along apparition is considered one of the most dangerous forms of transportation. Lupin would not be able to apparate himself, and I seriously doubt that there are any staff willing to spend every night babysitting a werewolf. Third: Portkeys are monitored by the Ministry of Magic; you have to get permission to create one. Now, I can buy that Dumbledore would make an illegal portkey for Order of the Phoenix activities, because, you know, Voldemort's kind of a big deal. But creating an illegal portkey to help a werewolf student would cause a lot more problems than it solved. Supposing they were caught, the Ministry would discover that Dumbledore had allowed a werewolf admission to Hogwarts, there'd be outrage, Dumbledore may lose his job, the Ministry would extend its tentacles into the management of the school and the kids' education, etc. Seems to me that that's one particular battle Dumbledore would be less than eager to fight- a battle that would only benefit one student.
  • Additionally, it was stated in Deathly Hallows that there's a hard maximum range for teleportation, and from what little information we have (Voldemort, after leaving Grindelwald's prison, needs at least a few minutes of flight before he's close enough to apparate at Malfoy's Manor), it's great - but still not big enough to cross the ocean. Traveling around the globe through teleportation wouldn't be feasible.

Lupin and the Marauders' transformations

• The book reveals that the Marauders became Animagi in order to be able to safely accompany Remus during his transformations and keep him under control. This raises some of questions:
  • Why were they needed to keep him under control? Why didn't Hogwarts put staff in charge of it?
  • Why did Wormtail pick a rat form? That should have made him weaker than his human form. Unless he choose it because it would make it easier for him to get away when Lupin transforms, in which case you would wonder why he became an Animagi at all, since he could simply choose not to join Remus, James and Sirius when the first transforms. Even James and Sirius' forms (a stag and a dog) don't sound that efficient at fighting werewolves, though I guess we can give them a free pass since they got the job done.
    • 1.) The original plan to accommodate Lupin at Hogwarts was for him to stay inside the Shrieking Shack during each full moon, where there was no one at risk of being attacked, and no need for the staff to control him any further since he wasn't ever supposed to leave. The other Marauders turning into animals was initially a way for them to keep him company - keeping him under control only became a necessity when they started going out on adventures at night. 2.) It's implied that you can't choose what sort of animal you turn into - Peter is a sneaking dirty coward, hence, he turned into a rat; Sirius is extremely loyal to his friends, so he turned into a dog, etc, etc. 3.) Pettigrew's rat form was also used to tap the pacifying root of the Whomping Willow, letting him and the others get in to see Lupin when he was inside the shack.
    • For 1: In that case, what was the point of keeping him company? It's clear that Lupin is out of his mind when he's in werewolf form, so it's not like Werewolf Lupin would appreciate the company. Seems like all it would accomplish is having to fight him needlessly.
    • There wasn't any real need for them to - they just wanted to do it because they were his friends. They probably figured that going out on adventures together during every full moon would at least be more fun than leaving Remus to be locked inside some ramshackle house biting and clawing at himself all night. Even as a mindless werewolf, he knew enough to not recognize the other animals as threats, meaning it carried at least some semblance of their true friendship, and the fights between them didn't come into play unless Remus happened to try anything too risky or dangerous, like (presumably) going after or trying to attack someone.
    • Yes, I get that, it just sounds rather farfetched. Were James, Sirius and Peter so obsessed with Remus that they couldn't stand not being with him 100% of the time? I don't see the gain in keeping him company when he's not even himself, especially when it involves going through all that trouble. And the fact that they became Animagi just so that they could become strong enough to survive being with him shows that Remus did attack them when he became a werewolf, otherwise there wouldn't have been any point in transforming.
    • Apparently their presence in animal form had a soothing influence on Remus, so he could keep himself in check. Don't ask me how it's fundamentally different from human presence, or why DD didn't think to bury him in kittens or invite some registered animagi to keep him company for the night, if that helps - making sense or having the characters who are not Hermione do the reasonable thing is not this series' forte. But if we take for granted that it works, then it makes sense for the Marauders to do it, because Remus' "normal" transformations were maddening and painful, so they wanted to help him go through them.
    • Simply put, there doesn't need to be a practical reason for everything. James and Sirius were both descended from pure-blooded wizarding families - they probably both knew about the prejudices suffered by werewolves in their world, even if Peter might not have. So, as a testament to their friendship with Remus, they desired to spend time with him and show that they didn't care about his condition, that they didn't intend to abandon him because of it. And the only way to do that was by becoming Animagi. Why? Apparently, it's just how werewolves work. Being able to sneak out and go on adventures at night was just a bonus to them. It's a heartwarming sign of their friendship, not something that needs to be prodded and picked apart.
  • As usual, there's a rift between "that's how it works" and "that's what the characters choose to do with it". Werewolves do not attack animals and regain their sanity in presence of transformed animagi? Fine, that's how it works here. You might have also noticed that I don't have a problem with Marauders' decision per se (until they began to take Lupin out on walks). But, the Marauders spent years mastering the transformation art. They had to be pretty darn sure that it would work. Meaning, it was common, or at least available, knowledge. So, again, why hadn't this trait been used? What was stopping DD from inviting some registered animagi to keep Lupin from mutilating himself all those years? Don't tell me it was the secrecy, because that's not an excuse even if it wasn't Dumbledore we're talking about.
  • The books imply that very few people are actually registered as Animaguses, and the ones who are probably have better things to do with their time than act as nightly company for a single lycanthropic student every full moon. Plus, it has everything to do with secrecy - they probably couldn't (or didn't want to) risk revealing Remus's condition to someone for fear that they might expose it.
  • Better then helping a child stop mutilating themselves? If you say so. But even then there was still Professor McGonagall. A registered animagus, who was in DD's employment and most certainly in on the whole charade and therefore was exempt from any security concerns. A perfect candidate to both keep an eye on Lupin (her own student, mind you) and provide the required soothing influence. Also, if Lupin's friends were so eager to help him they were prepared to master such an advanced art, why not involve them, help them learn it faster and let them come visit Remus under her supervision? Also, why would it have to be "a single lycanthropic student"? Wizards have no problem with transportation or accommodation. There's no reason why the "animagi therapy" for werewolves wasn't a widespread and established practice.
  • They might just not see Lupin as their problem to have to deal with - staying up all night just to provide company to some kid doesn't seem like something that would appeal to most normal people, especially if that kid had a condition that is widely frowned upon and shunned by the general public. McGonagall is another story - I don't think that a tiny house cat would have the same effect on a werewolf that a larger animal like a deer or dog would. For all we know, Moony could end up seeing her as food. (You could say the same about Wormtail, but he would seem fast enough to elude Moony if he had to, and Padfoot and Prongs were always there to make sure he was kept in check.) All in all, I'd say that this headscratcher can't be answered completely and absolutely until/unless we learn more about the exact effects animagi have on werewolves.
  • Some insight from Real Life. At the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park, they have a demonstration of a cheetah running at top speed. Cheetahs, being wild animals, are skittish around people, especially crowds. One way they've found to help reduce stress in the cheetahs is to raise each one with a companion, usually a laid-back, good-natured dog like a Golden Retriever. They bring them out together, and when the cheetah starts to get spooked by the crowd, she can look over at her buddy and see that her friend doesn't seem to be worried. That calm friend helps her calm down and not be so stressed about things either. I suspect Sirius and James had a similar calming effect on Remus.
  • And let's be honest - James and Sirius especially were incredibly cocky. Maybe it was half about keeping Remus company and half about bragging rights that they became Animagi at 15. They seem to have seen it as a challenge, and a chance to cause mischief (they did write the Marauders Map after all).
  • This was a loyal clique of friends. James, Sirius, and Peter discovered that one of their best friends was going to a torturous transformation once per month and is left alone where all he can do is to scratch and hurt himself until it's over. They then decided to become animagi in order to be with their best friend during those times.

The Marauders' Map

• Was it ever explained how Filch came into possession of the map? And if we're to believe that he confiscated it from the Marauders themselves, why wouldn't they just steal it back? If Fred and George had done it, I'll bet the four of them could have, too.
  • They may have just stopped using it as they matured in later years. Filch finds it one day, sees that it reacts when you try to ask it anything and keeps it in his office.

Sirius killing Peter

• Why does no one bring up the logical reason for bringing Peter up to the castle, instead of letting Sirius and Remus kill him on the spot...? Reason being, so that he could be presented as living proof of Sirius's innocence? I understand it's a heated moment, and that Sirius has been severely unhinged by his time in Azkaban, but if he killed Pettigrew before showing him alive to the authorities, what would his plan have been afterward? No one would have any reason to trust him if all they had to go on was the dead body of someone Sirius had already been convicted of killing.
  • You just answered your own question: Sirius wasn't exactly in his "right mind" at the time. Note that he could have escaped Azkaban at any time in his Animagus form, but only did so when he had built up enough psychotic rage (and gathered the necessary information) to go after Peter. His goals here don't seem to have much to do with clearing his name; he wants (A.) to kill Peter, and (B.) to see Harry again. Granted, Remus should have been the level-headed one in this case, but it's not too much of a stretch to say that he was pretty pissed at Peter, too.
  • Yeah, I was referring more to Remus and Harry, the former of whom I could accept as being royally angry and upset, but the latter only objects to the killing not because bringing him in alive would help clear Sirius's name, but rather just because he doesn't want to see his father's two closest friends stoop to the level of killers. (Not to mention Hermione, typically the smartest and most level-headed member of a group - I know she wasn't involved in what was happening, but she could've at least brought it up.)
  • In that case, let's go with: it was spur-of-the-moment, Harry's not the best at thinking ahead, and at any rate, "not stooping to the level of his killers" is not a bad reason.
  • Well you also need to remember that Peter was thought dead thirteen years ago - and blown to smithereens at that. If he gets killed by Sirius and they produce a body that looks like it's only been freshly killed, it still proves that what they thought happened is murky.

Peter escaping

• Had Sirius known all along that Peter was still alive somewhere? Or did he think that he'd killed himself by blowing up the street, until the picture of Scabbers in the newspaper told him otherwise? The fact that he knew about Scabbers's missing toe hints toward the former, since cutting off his finger was part of Peter's death-faking, but then why wouldn't Sirius have tried to escape from Azkaban sooner so he could hunt him down and take revenge?
  • He definitely knew Peter was alive. He tells Harry that he believes the fact that he was innocent was one of the things that kept him from losing his mind to the Dementors when he arrived. However, seeing the picture does seem to be what gave him the strength to escape. Realizing that Peter was at Hogwarts, perfectly positioned to strike at Harry the moment it suited him to do so, made him angry/desperate enough to attempt it whereas before he'd been too weak.
  • Also simply knowing where he is at all. Before that he hadn't had a slightest clue on where to even look for him, for he could've been anywhere in the world.
  • Sirius did not try to escape sooner because he was crippled by a depression that was being constantly forced upon him. When suffering under this particular form of failure induced depression, a person can usually distract themselves with an enjoyable brainstorming related to salvaging their mess or engaging in some activity that lets them think they can do something right. It usually doesn't make them feel any better for any amount of time longer than the duration, but it's a good a first step as any. Sirius didn't have these options, as the dementors would force out any feelings not related to misery. With no mitigation whatsoever, failure induced depression can easily lead to suicidal thoughts. Escape, why bother? Peter's won, there's nothing left for me to do. His only out was focusing on something he wanted to do that brought him no joy.Sirius actually had some mitigation in the form of the reprieve he could get in his grim form, but obviously not enough account for the external force actively forcing the depression on him. The thought of finding and killing Peter probably brought him some level of satisfaction, so that wouldn't work. That Peter, a murderer, is hiding out among several children, one of whom is Black's godson, and no one else knows he needs to be stopped before it's too late, is that. Happiness and pleasure take a backseat to the simple desire to act. His life has a purpose now that no amount of guilt, misery or self loathing will slow the pursuit of, so long as he doesn't fail again.

"A heap of bloodstained robes"

• When Fudge is telling the official story of Sirius Black's capture, he says that along with the finger they found after Wormtail cut it off to fake his death, there was "a heap of bloodstained robes". How exactly did he manage that? Your clothes transform with you when you transform into your animagus animal form. There's never been any talk about people being able to control what they take with them into their human form as it's "tucked away" wherever it goes when they transform. And even assuming he did do that and for whatever reason wound up shifting back naked later and getting dressed to explain why he wasn't naked when Sirius and Lupin forced him back to human form, I thought his plot to frame Sirius had been panicked and spontaneous. How and why did he get blood on the robes beforehand if this wasn't planned?
  • We don't know quite how the scene was staged, but couldn't the blood be from the Muggles he blew up alla round him? He also did cut off his finger, that might have been enough. We only have Fudge's word for "bloodstained", after all; it wouldn't be out of character for the wimpiest Minister of them all to have been dipply traumatized by what amounted to a few drops.
  • Apparently it was planned. He had to expect Sirius to come after him after all.
  • There's no reason to assume Peter spent the entire period between his faked death and his adoption by the Weasleys in rat-form. He would've needed to get to the Burrow somehow, and rats aren't built for long-distance travel; presumably he slipped out of the sewers, stole some clothes, and traversed the intervening distance in human form, possibly in disguise.
  • Fudge could just be embellishing the story. Little details can get changed or exaggerated in the re-telling. Maybe his clothes did transform with him but someone is just incorrectly remembering bloodstained robes.
  • Or more simply, Peter cut off parts of his robes to add to the image.
    • This is most likely. After all, if Pettigrew was blown so thin that the only part you can find of him is a finger, the probably didn't leave behind much of his robes. Probably just a small sliver cut off (that may be part of the cuff of the arm he cut the finger off from).

Taking the potion

• I can understand Remus being so taken aback by Peter's reemergence that he forgot to drink the Wolfsbane potion the night it happened...However, he says that he has an entire week before the full moon comes during which he can take the potion and be fine. He obviously didn't have knowledge of Peter for a week and just kept quiet about it, so there shouldn't have been anything to take his mind off taking the potion on time. There are ways to track the phases of the moon well in advance. Does he normally wait until the last minute before taking the potion, and this was one time where it backfired on him?
  • My theory is that Snape, being Snape, usually gave him the potion on the last day, or the day prior — thus having a bit of sadistic fun at Lupin's expense as Lupin grew more and more worried about whether he'd get the Potion in time each month.
  • He needs to drink the potion every night of the week leading up to the full moon.[1]
  • I can't find an official source that lines up with that. In the book, he says he needs to take it in the week leading up to the full moon, but not how many times.
  • We know he at least takes regular doses. In chapter 8 when Snape came in to deliver a goblet of it, he mentions if Lupin needs anymore, he brewed a cauldronful of it and Lupin says he reckons that he'll need some more tomorrow. Most other information came from Pottermore articles: that there are other symptoms werewolves display before their transformation, and missing even one dose renders it ineffective, thus why the potion must be taken a week in advance I suppose-not enough in their system. That would explain why Snape brought the potion to Remus in person even though he hated him.
  • Maybe Lupin is still working on trial and error, as the Wolfsbane potion is said to be a relatively recent invention. Maybe one dose the night of the moon might be enough, but he takes extra just to be safe - since now he's in an environment with hundreds of children to think of.
  • Fridge Brilliance - Voldemort's curse on the DADA job. The curse made Lupin forget to take his potion so he would transform in the grounds and resign.

The truth about Scabbers

• Did the other Weasleys ever find out that Scabbers was Peter Pettigrew? Did they genuinely think Scabbers was eaten by Crookshanks, or did they learn the truth when they realized Sirius was innocent? When Ron becomes a prefect, Molly suggests that he buy a new rat, because "(he) always liked Scabbers", with a tone of voice that could imply that she did not know the truth, yet this is when the Order's been reconstituted, and they're using Grimmauld Place.
  • Before the fifth book we can assume no. As Scabbers is thought dead and doesn't turn up alive until the night he's revealed as Peter Pettigrew, Ron would probably keep that quiet and pretend Scabbers just died. Possibly yes they were told between books four and five (certainly Sirius and/or Lupin would've brought it up at some point over that summer), and maybe Molly was just in an excited mood at the news (she even says "I'm all of a dither") that she said Scabbers by mistake. And if it isn't too long since she was told, it might have been out of habit since the rat was a family pet for years.

What if Crookshanks succeeded?

• It’s heavily implied in later books that all Animagi return to their true form upon death… so what would’ve become of poor Crookshanks had he eaten Scabbers? (Or even Sirius for that matter since he’s been living off of rats).
  • If Crookshanks is as preturnaturally intelligent as he's said to be, then he genuinely can detect Animagi. He's probably seen Sirius transform around him in private, so he knows what Scabbers could turn into. It's not a big logical leap from there that he'd avoid eating a rat which could blow up into a large man upon death; he'd be perfectly content to just maul him to death. As for Sirius, clearly he was able to subsist off of rats either in human form, dog or both, and his diet improved as of the return of Voldemort.

Sirius self-fulfilling the rumour

• Maybe I'm coming more from the movie source than the book, feel free to oppose me if it's different in the book, it's been a time since I read it. "OK, I am Sirius Black, a prisoner of Azkaban. I know I'm innocent and break free. What do I do now? Oh, I know, I will try to find the real culprit while behaving like a maniac they describe me." In the movie, we have a scene where Sirius first meets Harry when the latter makes an exit from the Dursleys. Sirius is hiding in a bush in his Animagi form (a dog). And he growls and barks menacingly at Harry. The next scene, where they meet I think is at the Shrieking Shack. And Sirius is standing menacingly in the corner of the house after he dragged Ron into a tunnel in his Animagi form. And then he continues to be enigmatic when issuing death threats to somebody. Then Harry tackles him and Sirius is just giggling like The Joker and asking "Hahaha, are you going to kill me, Harry?". Then all of a sudden after everything is explained to everyone, Sirius behaves like a normal, civilised, friendly and modest person who wouldn't hurt a fly. Excuse me... what? Why did he have to act like a rampaging lunatic as they had described him? Even the newspaper photo shows him as a raging animal... But as soon as it is confirmed by the story that he's a good guy, he behaves like an angel. I have the same problem with Marley from Home Alone, feel free to see my headscratcher there. A character behaves like a villain because other characters and the audience are informed he's a villain. But once the character proves he's not a villain, he then acts like a normal person. We may ascribe the manic behaviour to the Azkaban imprisonment, but we can't ignore that after everything he doesn't show any sign of psychopathy whatsoever.
  
  He didn't do anything to contact Harry and explain himself. When he encountered him as a dog, from Harry's POV, the best he could come up with was a rabid dog biting him. The worst? A magical rabid dog biting him. Couldn't he leave a note for Harry somewhere, saying "Harry, it is your godfather Sirius Black writing. I didn't betray your parents, Peter Pettigrew did". Granted, Harry might not believe it entirely, but it's a start and he would be honest. He could have said the same words in the Shrieking Shack. "Harry, calm down, I don't wanna hurt you, I'm after Ron's rat! I'll explain when I get the rat". Hell, couldn't he contact DD himself trying to plead with the proof of a rat? I don't think DD would be the one to deny Sirius a fair trial/explanation, even if he encountered him himself.
  • ....Uhhh...you already gave the basic answer, Azkaban had driven him to madness and left him with nothing but a desire for vengeance, due to the Dementors forcing him to relive every horrible memory, including his being framed for betraying James and Lily Potter, and he also is established to be very impulsive and short-sighted, even after this whole incident is somewhat resolved after Prisoner of Azkaban. It sounds more like you just don't like the idea of someone acting on impulse, when that just is something people do sometimes. People go about things the wrong way, and Sirius actually has a good reason/interconnected reasons. This is like taking issue with Viktor Krum diving into the lake because it should be too cold for him, even though he comes from a much colder region so he's perfectly fine. Sirius' own nature, and his situation, made him act irrationally, and being chased by more dementors couldn't have made him very open to surrendering even if he did consider it. Also, someone acting violent or erratic or "crazy" doesn't automatically make them a villain or a psychopath (a psychopath is someone without empathy or care for others, not just someone who's "crazy" or anything. Sirius caring about anything shows he isn't that, such as Crookshanks). The narrative shows someone to be a villain by leaving out things, not changing the character. In the book at least, Harry and Ron speculate, and are confused by, Sirius' lack of murdering people when he breaks into the castle twice (though he does attack the Fat Lady, she isn't harmed, just terrified), despite his portrayal as a violent madman, and also Hagrid mentions Sirius genuinely seemed upset about James and Lily before we even meet the man (he assumes he was upset about Voldemort's death, but in light of the truth...). Also, the movie cuts out Sirius trying to say to Harry "you'll regret it if you don't listen..." before Lupin arrives, so he does try to reason with them, though very poorly. As for the scene with Sirius as a dog, Sirius doesn't growl or even make a sound, he just scares Harry because Harry is alone in the dark and is not sure what to do after running away (he actually apologises for that at the end, funny enough). Your confusion is based on an incorrect perspective on tropes regarding a secretly innocent character, and also the movie cutting out moments that question Sirius' behaviour, and also exaggerating Sirius' fear factor.

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