Mugglenet.com's Harry Potter Should Have Died - Emerson Spartz [49]
When Harry inherits Kreacher along with Sirius’s house and becomes his new master, he tries to treat Kreacher with more understanding. Sirius never thought about asking Kreacher questions, but in DH, Harry orders the elf to talk, and learns that he actually helped Regulus Black steal a Horcrux from Voldemort. Who would expect a story like that from Kreacher? And the reason the old elf is always so upset over the death of Mrs. Black is that he feels guilty over the loss of her son, whose corpse Kreacher had to leave behind in the Inferi Cave. So Kreacher has been suffering over that for years and Sirius never understood. If only Sirius hadn’t been so wrapped up in his own problems, he might have talked to Kreacher and found out the truth. Instead, Sirius seals his own fate by underestimating a house-elf’s free will and cunning, plus believing that mistreatment of house-elves doesn’t have consequences.
Voldemort makes the same mistake. He leaves Kreacher to die in the Horcrux cave, never realizing that house-elves have powers that wizards don’t have. Unlike a human wizard who would have been trapped, Kreacher is able to Disapparate out of there and survive. Good thing, too, because without Kreacher, Harry couldn’t have gotten the Horcrux locket back from Mundungus Fletcher so it could be destroyed in DH.
Kreacher is much more complex than he seems. It turns out he was never as feeble and incompetent as Sirius thought, and he was also not as mean and horrible as Harry (and many readers) believed. Regulus is the only one who really cares about him, and Kreacher loves him in return. Yes, he could love, and he also grows as a character. In the end, he accepts Harry as his new master—learning to respect a half-blood. And then he leads the house-elves into the fight during the Battle of Hogwarts in DH. So Kreacher actually redeems himself by the end of the series, and who would have thought that could happen? Never underestimate a house-elf.
Peter Pettigrew
Even more than Kreacher, Peter Pettigrew is the outwardly pathetic character who is overlooked and underestimated. From the time Peter is just a boy, people have low expectations of him. Professor McGonagall says in PoA that she felt sorry for him, and his best friends felt they had to help him all the time because he wasn’t as talented, as Sirius Black says in the Shrieking Shack. But Peter was never really that much of a loser. After all, just like the other Marauders, he learns to become an Animagus, able to transform himself into an animal, which is advanced and quasi-legal magic. And even though his animal form—a rat—is smaller than that of James or Sirius, Peter isn’t afraid to run around with a werewolf, either. So he’s just as tough as James and Sirius, but they dismiss him as if they are superior, and underestimate his abilities, which is a big mistake.
After they leave school, the Potters and Sirius take Peter’s loyalty for granted, but by then Peter is obviously looking out for himself. As Sirius explains in the Shrieking Shack in PoA, Peter unexpectedly gets a chance to betray the Potters and serve Lord Voldemort when he becomes the trusted Secret-Keeper of Godric’s Hollow. So, the Potters are killed by Voldemort, then Sirius goes after Peter for revenge, which should be easy, right? After all, Peter is just little Wormtail and Sirius is the stronger wizard, full of righteous anger. But Sirius totally underestimates