10 Harry Potter Plot Twists You Never Saw Coming
4. Ron's Rat Is A Middle-Aged Man With Poor Hygiene
Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow, turn this stupid, fat rat yellow!
Scabbers, Ron Weasley's trusty rat companion, features in the first three films in the Potter franchise as little more than moving scenery, only latterly fuelling a conflict between Ron and Hermione (the former thinking the latter's ginger, squash-faced cat Crookshanks has eaten the rat) that drives the plot of Prisoner of Azkaban through to completion.
Harry himself first spies Peter Pettigrew (Timothy Spall) - the man who, until the film's conclusion, is assumed dead and innocent - on the magical Marauders Map, apparently flying by him silently and invisibly like a ghost.
While this is the first clue that all in not as it seems, few saw the real twist coming: Scabbers, an Animagus, is Pettigrew. He has been hiding in rat form for over a decade since Sirius Black attempted to kill him as vengeance for his betrayal of the Potter family.
As many have pointed out, though, one must wonder what Fred and George Weasley (original owners of the Marauders Map) thought of their brother sleeping with a 40-year-old dead man every night. Each to their own, eh?