Though Harry Potter is predominantly marketed as a children’s book it isn’t all whimsical magic and mischievous adventures –there is a dark side to the books. Voldemort may be the greatest evil known to the wizarding world, but he isn’t the only character that has done harm. There are plenty of other dark witches and wizards, but one that surprisingly seems to have done a huge amount of damage is not one that immediately comes to mind: Peter Pettigrew aka Wormtail.
Pettigrew not only betrayed his friends to Voldemort, leading directly to the death of James and Lily Potter but when confronted by Sirius Black and backed into a corner, the cowardly villain had to create a large-scale distraction in order to escape, one that killed 12 muggles at once. It is written in the books that Wormtail screamed for all to hear that it was Sirius who betrayed the Potters before taking out his wand behind his back and blowing up a section of the street with a powerful curse, strong enough that the resulting crater left the sewer pipes showing.
This massacre went down as one of the worst in recent wizarding history, one which the wizarding authorities blamed Sirius for along with the betrayal of the Potters, landing him in Azkaban for 12 years where he suffered under the torment of the Dementors. How someone could do that to the friends that supported them all through their school life is one moral question, another is how did Pettigrew, a wizard of seemingly no great talent, pull off a spell that caused so much devastation?
Reddit is determined to find the answer.
Many took a guess at spells that we have already heard of in the books, though abra kaboom is a new one…
On a more serious note, this user thought it may be one of the flame-based or reduction-based spells.
After seeing Umbridge blow a hole in a brick wall using this spell, many think Bombarda Maxima is highly likely based on the crater left in the street.
If he hit a gas line then the curse would have resulted in a much larger explosion.
Some people reminded us that we shouldn’t limit ourselves to the spells we know from the books alone, there are plenty more out there that Wormtail could have utilized.
Some wonder how a wizard lacking any great overall skill managed such a feat, though you don’t have to be overly smart to create havoc as this user points out.
While some argue that though he may have been cowardly, that may not equate to being untalented.
Pettigrew is a complicated character in the book, one we despise for his cowardice and betrayal but whose demise comes at his hesitation to kill Harry. Harry pitied his father’s old friend and saw how he had been afraid for most of his life. Pettigrew’s fear however resulted in the deaths of 13 others, including Cedric Diggory, and eventually, his cowardice led to his own demise.
