Ickle Ronniekins" pet, Scabbers the rat, turned out to be an illegal Animagus, just like Sirius, and Harry Potter's late father. That gave me another goal in my studies, namely, to master Animagism just in case. It looks terribly useful, and one never knows when being able to fox a Dementor, or get out of Azkaban, might be a life-saver. And I mean "life-saver" quite literally. This was yet another case of the clues being right under everybody's nose but nobody bothering to put them together. Rats normally live a few years at most, but this one had been around for much longer than that.