alt_seamus | Private message to Jason Montague

Thanks for getting me into the Auror training. I like keeping busy.

I was thinking today, though. About Boot's message -- about the useful bits, I mean, not just him trying to twist the knife. He more or less told me he was an animagus, but he also told me Neville Longbottom died in the same rite as Harry Marvolo did. The Phoenix must have had someone else there, who got away and told them what happened, right? And it HAD to have been an animagus, because even if someone somehow got in under a disillusionment spell, Bellatrix would have known they were there.

And it couldn't have been Boot -- whatever he turns into, it's big enough to rip out a man's throat. Dog, I imagine, or wolf -- big cats, bears, they don't have to go for the throat, but in any case surely THAT would have been noticed.

Back last winter, Ron Weasley brought Sally-Anne Perks' rat back to our dorm room. Or at least, he said it was her rat. It didn't act especially rat-like. So now I'm wondering -- maybe it wasn't actually Perks' rat, but one of their lot had worked out how to do the transformation, but not how to get back? I've heard that's one of the dangers of trying to learn, that you can get stuck as an animal if you do it wrong. Anyway, it's possible a rat could have gone along and spied. And got away, after. I don't know who it was, though. No one was missed, though I don't know how much that matters, they might have had someone use polyjuice and pass themselves off as Weasley or Perks or whichever traitor was stuck being a rat that day.