[HPforGrownups] Re: What HP Character Scares You Most?

[Margaret Dean]

No: HPFGUIDX 23699

belinda at sawyertech.com wrote:

> I find the Pettigrew character something of an anomaly. How is it he
> had the smarts to figure out how to frame Sirius and the intent to do
> it in such a huge and destructive way, but then couldn't do any
> better than to live as a rat for 12 years and return as a snivelling
> git? Maybe the details of the frame-up had already been worked out
> with Lord V before he went to the Potters'? Or maybe panic made him
> bold for a brief moment, since Sirius would have ripped him apart.
> I've just never been able to marry the mind that cleverly left the
> severed digit amid all the muggle bodies and the fellow on the floor
> of the shrieking shack grovelling to Ron, "I was a good rat."

Perhaps being a rat for twelve years does something to the
brain.  As far as we've seen, most Animagi don't spend huge
chunks of time in their animal form -- the other exception being
Sirius in Azkaban, where the alternative would have been worse. 
And even he changed back to human form sometimes (presumably
whenever someone other than the Dementors came into the prison
and might see him).

Maybe a human intelligence can only be squeezed down into a rat's
brain for so long before it starts to . . . leak out.


--Margaret Dean
  <margdean at erols.com>