Animagus Forms, and The People Who Have Them
March 8, 2020—Shortly after we posted Episode 16, I reached a startling realization and texted Victoria: “Is it weird that we had an entire discussion about Pettigrew and Ron without once mentioning that Pettigrew spent several years as Ron’s pet?”
She, of course, pointed out that their actual relationship to one another wasn’t the point of the discussion, and she was right. But since it seemed like such an obvious point of intersection between the two, and we didn’t even mention it in the episode, I thought I’d address it here.
Peter Pettigrew is an unregistered Animagus, one who literally uses his powers for evil. His cowardly actions (see below) highlight the possible abuses of an Animagus form and the Ministry’s horrifically ineffective attempts to regulate them. In fact, of the five Animagi in the Harry Potter series, only one is registered, and most if not all of them use their forms for nefarious purposes.
So what do we know about these specialized witches and wizards?
Becoming one is a tricky, complex, and cumbersome process.
The process of becoming an Animagus involves holding a leaf inside one’s mouth for a month, a potion with very difficult-to-procure ingredients and finicky storage requirements, daily incantations and spellwork, and a lightning storm. If any step in the process is handled incorrectly, the whole endeavor has to be restarted.
If everything goes right, the process culminates in fiery pain, the reveal of the animal form, and the first transformation, during which the animal mind can take over if the wizard or witch panics. Given the difficulty and danger associated with becoming an Animagus, is it any wonder that few witches and wizards bother? Especially when one considers that the usefulness of the ability is highly dependent on the animal one assumes, which isn’t revealed until the very end.
Once you become one, it’s required by law that you register.
This seems to be more of a guideline than an actual rule (shout-out to any Pirates fans). As of 1994, only seven people have registered as Animagi in Great Britain in the 20th century. Since we know of at least four who become Animagi without registering between 1975 and 1994, we can assume that there are more unregistered than registered Animagi in general. This makes sense given that (a) the law seems impossible to enforce as long as the perpetrator practices some caution and (b) the most obvious uses for an animal form are not the sorts of activities one would want to broadcast to the Ministry.
It’s interesting to note that even the feared Bellatrix Lestrange kills a fox that crosses her path on the off chance it could be an Animagus. Apparently, even the bad guys assume that those fighting for the forces of good have illegal Animagi among their ranks.
It’s an easy ability to misuse.
Minerva McGonagall
Minerva McGonagall seems to have become an Animagi just for the accomplishment of it and for the educational edification of her students. The only time we see her employ her cat for practical purposes is when she hangs around a Muggle neighborhood unobtrusively all day at the beginning of Sorcerer’s Stone. Her use of this opportunity to spy on the people around her is not a particularly horrifying act, but it’s not a particularly virtuous one, either.
James Potter
James Potter’s form, a stag, can hardly be very useful for its stealth, ability to blend in, or size. Therefore, we don’t see him using it for much except to “safely” keep Remus company during his full moon transformations outside the confines of the Shrieking Shack. While his heart might have been in the right place here, his reasoning and his execution were deeply flawed.
Sirius Black
Sirius uses his form in school in the same way that James does, but given that a dog’s presence can go unnoticed pretty much anywhere, his form is much more useful. As a dog, he’s able to escape Azkaban and live on the run from the Ministry. While the escape could be considered justified given that he’s innocent of the crimes he’s been imprisoned for, his antics while on the run and in pursuit of Pettigrew aren’t as easily dismissed. Spying on Harry on Privet Drive could be either sweet or shady depending on how you tilt your head, but it’s hard to look at his terrorizing Hogwarts for several months, culminating in assaulting and kidnapping Ron, as merely misguided.
“Sirius has not acted like an innocent man. The attack on the Fat Lady — entering Gryffindor Tower with a knife…” -Albus Dumbledore
Peter Pettigrew
Here’s where things take a really dark turn. In order to escape justice after selling out the Potters and murdering 13 people, Peter Pettigrew changes semi-permanently into his alternative form as a rat and manages to ingratiate himself with a Wizarding family as its pet.
(How exactly he makes himself cute and winsome while disguised as vermin is unclear, but the Weasleys do take him in—possibly due to the cheapness of adopting a random animal from the garden rather than the desirability of the animal himself. I like to think that he tried and failed with other Wizarding families first, simply because it amuses me to imagine a rat-shaped Pettigrew scurrying away from angry witches and wizards, dodging spells and broom handles as he flees their homes. Maybe he was even sporting healing injuries when the Weasleys found him, thus the name Scabbers. But I digress.)
Of course, the fact that Pettigrew then spends almost 13 years living with young boys, even sleeping in their beds, is an uncomfortable fact that the books don’t bother addressing. I’m not going to belabor the point, either, but I don’t want to ignore it either. It’s creepy; it’s disturbing; it’s wildly inappropriate. But, from everything we know, it’s also ultimately innocuous. There’s no indication that Ron or Percy or any of their roommates were ever harmed, no hint that Pettigrew even assumed his human form in all that time. No hindsight “Aha!” moment (common at the end of the Harry Potter books) pointing in that direction.
After the whistle is blown on his identity, Pettigrew goes to Albania and communicates with the rats there to find Voldemort. From there, he brings the Dark Lord back to England, builds him a temporary body, assists him in kidnapping Harry, and then returns him to full power.
Rita Skeeter
While Rita Skeeter’s use of her form is not as sinister, it is unquestionably unethical. She uses it to spy on others, not just for her own information as McGonagall and Sirius do, but specifically to distribute others’ secrets widely through the press.
Of course, I feel that she deserves an award of some sort for the most on-point use of an Animagus form. I imagine she was positively gleeful to discover that her form was something as tiny and easily overlooked as a beetle, and she certainly takes full advantage of the opportunities that it presents to her.