"Can we go to the pet shop first?"
Ron spoke up while holding Scabbers by the tail and sizing him up.
"Scabbers has been listless lately; I want to go to the pet shop to buy him some medicine or something."
"Sure, the pet shop is right over there." Harry agreed without hesitation, pointing toward a location ahead.
Lynn and Hermione also expressed that they had no problem with it, following the two toward the pet shop.
While walking, Lynn's gaze instinctively fell upon Scabbers. The grey rat now looked "soul-shaken," letting Ron carry him without the slightest reaction.
Blinking mechanically, Lynn began to analyze potential rat-related illnesses for Scabbers in her mind.
She filtered through them one by one, but none of them fit.
It was possible that because Scabbers was a pet of the Wizarding World, his illnesses differed from the Muggle World rats she was familiar with.
Lynn summarized the most likely explanation in her brain.
Entering the pet shop behind Harry and Ron with Hermione, Lynn felt a flash of ginger-orange pass by in front of her.
This was immediately followed by a cry of pain from Ron, "Ow!"
He was seen clutching his head; Scabbers had already fallen to the ground and was fleeing frantically, chased by a large ginger cat.
"Merlin's beard... is that a little tiger?"
Ron rubbed his scalp, stepped forward to drive the big cat away, and picked Scabbers up again.
The shop assistant also hurried over, apologizing repeatedly to Ron, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Crookshanks is a bit too naughty."
"It's fine." Ron pursed his lips, rubbed his forehead a few more times, and handed the rat Scabbers to the assistant.
"I'd like to trouble you to take a look at him. He's been listless lately; is there any medicine he can take?"
The assistant locked Crookshanks back up, took Scabbers, and began to examine him carefully.
Standing to the side, Lynn listened to the conversation between the assistant and Ron, but her eyes were on Hermione.
She saw Hermione looking at Crookshanks in the cage, her eyes filled with a certain eagerness.
Hermione wanted this cat.
Combined with Hermione's expression, Lynn easily analyzed and reached this conclusion.
Shifting her gaze back to the assistant, Lynn prepared to follow the voice from the depths of her mind and buy this cat to give to Hermione.
But before that, she first heard the conversation between the assistant and Ron.
Ron stated that Scabbers had lived for at least a dozen years and was previously his brother Percy's pet.
The assistant was extremely surprised by this, saying he might just be too old, and suggested Ron could switch to one of the black rats in their shop.
Ron waved his hand in refusal, so the assistant recommended he buy a bottle of Rat Tonic for pets.
Lynn watched Scabbers being put back into Ron's pocket, her brain quickly mobilizing relevant information.
The lifespan of a rat is generally two to three years; the longest-living rat known lived for nine years and one hundred and eight days.
Scabbers had lived much longer than that, which seriously violated biological definitions.
Furthermore, based on the economic situation of Ron and the Weasley family, and analyzed from the fact that he needed Harry to lead the way to find the pet shop when buying medicine just now...
Scabbers should not have consumed items like Potions that could affect the body before this.
Therefore, regarding Scabbers' obviously abnormal long lifespan, there were only two possibilities.
Lynn quickly summarized two conclusions: first, as she had thought before coming to the pet shop, because Scabbers was a pet of the Wizarding World, he was inherently different from Muggle World rats—different illness states, different manifestations, and different lifespans.
However, this possibility could be easily ruled out by the assistant's reaction, because as a professional, he had also been surprised by Scabbers' long lifespan just now.
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