Rats

Rats are medium-sized, long-tailed rodents, sometimes kept as pets, but often regarded as vermin or pests.

Scabbers

Peter Pettigrew lived as a rat for twelve years, as a pet of the Weasley family known as Scabbers – initially belonging to Percy Weasley and later to his youngest brother Ron (PS6, PA4).

As a rat, Scabbers once bit Goyle’s finger on the Hogwarts Express. Ron had also tried to turn Scabbers yellow with a made-up spell that his brothers gave him (PS6).

His Marauders nickname at Hogwarts school was “Wormtail“, as his animagus form is a rat (PA10).

Once he is unmasked by Sirius Black, Pettigrew returns to the service of Lord Voldemort (PA20, PA21), and is only referred to as Wormtail from then onwards (HBP2, GF32, DH1, DH23).

Other appearances

Norbert the Norwegian Ridgeback ate dead rats by the crate-load when he was a growing dragon kept in Hagrid’s hut (PS14).

For sale in the Magical Menagerie on Diagon Alley was a cage full of black rats which were busy jumping rope with their tails; the saleswitch implied that they would live longer than a common rat’s three-year lifespan (PA4).

During detention in Professor Snape’s dungeon, Harry and Ron spend two hours pickling rats brains (GF19).

When Sirius Black was hiding in a cave near Hogsmeade during the Triwizard Tournament, he stayed mostly in his animagus form (a dog) and was living off rats (GF27).

While living in hiding in Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, Sirius appears to have kept Buckbeak mainly on a diet of dead rats (OP6).

In Harry’s OWLs he was supposed to turn a rat orange but mixed up the incantations and caused it to swell to the size of a badger instead (OP31).

Several different rat parts are used as potion ingredients, including rat tails and rat spleens.