"I suppose I believed it because I couldn't have even helped prevent it--there were fears I was or would turn traitor because of how Voldemort was recruiting werewolves. I'd been shunted off to the north country to be out of the way."
He buried his face in his hands for a long moment. "You escaped in the summer of '93," he said softly. "You'd figured out Peter was still alive." Remus raised his head.
"He'd been spending the last several years living as the Weasley children's hand-me-down pet rat. Which is disturbing on several levels but also sort of hilarious. I figured it out, too, much later, after I took our old map off Harry and his friend Ron. Apparently the Weasley twins had had the thing for a few years and somehow never noticed that a 'Peter Pettigrew' was constantly around their brother."