[HPforGrownups] Re: Scabbers looking to get near Harry

[heidi tandy]

No: HPFGUIDX 46566

Regina wrote: 
> 
> > --- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Regina" <rmm7e at y...> wrote:
> > When Scabbers was revealed I had a hard
>  > time believing it. Sure, the Weasleys were a good wizarding 
> family, 
>  > and having Arthur at the MoM was particularly helpful to Peter, 
> but 
>  > what are the odds that Ron would become best friends with Harry? 
>  > *That* was just unbelievably lucky.

And Diane suggested:

> It is always possible that Pettigrew ended up with the Weasleys by 
> sheer chance or selected them, as they are a good Wizarding family. 
> It is also possible that there is method in his madness. He could 
> have specifically chosen them in order to monitor Ron or another 
> member of the family because they had or were suspected to have some 
> kind of skill or might fulfil a role that has not yet been revealed. 
> Ron's actual friendship with Harry would seem to be a bonus though. 


Well, it's also entirely possible that he chose the family because they
had a son the same age as Harry Potter who would (unless he was a squib)
be in Harry's class at Hogwarts, thereby giving him eventual access to
Harry, while allowing him to remain in the wizarding world.

It's also possible that he selected the family for those reasons, and
then spent time, over the years, training Ron to be evil AND a friend to
Harry. 

Oh, stop laughing. There's canon support for this.

In PoA, Sirius' voice is described as sounding unused - as if it was
roughened from long periods of not speaking.

Peter, on the other hand, doesn't sound that way at all. His voice is
squeaky, but otherwise not far from normal - it certainly isn't
farfetched to think that he's been transforming back into a wizard at
various times - perhaps at the Burrow, perhaps even at Hogwarts, and
either talking to Ron as he sleeps (in a hypnotic suggestion sort of
way), or even face to face (although that would require believing that
Ron was pretending when he was horified in the Shack). 

And he could've told him all sorts of things, about the wonder of
Voldemort and how good things would be for Ron if he helped the Death
Eaters when the time was right, etc. Ron complains much more about
poverty and having so much that's rubbish in Book 4, after Wormtail no
longer has the access to influence him.

And that's also when he first fights with Harry. Before that, to a
certain extent, he's really tried to keep Harry isolated, from the
minute they met on the train. *HE* sought Harry out. He even spent time
in that first train ride disparaging other people - both Draco and
Hermione, and to a lesser extent, Neville, are discouraged by Ron
(directly and indirectly) from spending time talking to Harry. 

And he was sorted after Harry, so he had the opportunity to beg the hat
to put him in the same house. 

This is a world of magic, a world where conscious memories are not
always what they seem. And it's entirely possible that Pettigrew took
advantage of the opportunities he had for access to Ron to mold him into
someone who was, to some extent, under his (Pettigrew's) control. 

Other than Ron's revulsion in the Shrieking Shack scene, there's nothing
in canon which makes the above scenario utterly impossible - and a
series of hypnotic suggestions aren't even inconsistent with the Shack
scene. 

We take Sirius' and Remus' word for it that Pettigrew wouldn't do
anything to hurt Harry if he didn't know for sure that he'd be supported
by the bully in his corner. But that doesn't mean that he wouldn't do a
little seeding of the ground himself. 


Heidi, promoting "Ron Is Evil" since 1999