Padfoot's Puppies

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03: Up a Dark Alley

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As the puppies padded their way down the alley, some of them were starting to have misgivings. Luna and Moony were starting to whine and shiver as the darkness of the alleyway that connects Wisteria Walk with Magnolia Crescent seemed to be pressing down on them like a Dementor feeding on the last desperate dregs of happiness from their Azkaban victims. Intermingled with the darkness was an overwhelming sadness. The sadness was overwhelming because it felt as though it had been damned up for so long and now it would be frustrated no longer. What was more, the puppies' lives hadn't been long enough for them to have any experience of true sadness. And this sadness, in particular, was far too overwhelming for such inexperienced little puppies...

Now Tonksy was joining Luna and Moony in whining and shivering. "Do we have to hide down here?" She whimpered quietly and shivered even further as if some Dementor was suckling at her.

It was getting to Midnight, too, but he was far too much a hunter at heart. He raised his nose and melted into a fighting stance, his hunter's instincts ready to pounce at whatever threat awaited them in the darkness.

Padfoot II had still been pressing ahead but he was now, too, was starting to feel as though the darkness was something alive, waiting to suckle him.

Luna, Moony and Tonksy were feeling it the most keenly of all. They had collapsed into shivering heaps. The others crowded around them anxiously, fervently licking at them to get up. Padfoot II looked around, and for the first time in his life he was absolutely terrified. This alley wasn't so beckoning after all.

And then, his ears pricked up as he heard something in the distance. His hackles prickled and he started growling as he sensed something was coming. From the blur of the distance, he could see something. It seemed to be shining with a drab, pearly grey glow. It was very indistinct, as if too afraid to show itself more clearly...

"Who's there?" Padfoot II barked into the distance. He crouched even lower towards the ground, to protect his siblings. Prongsy, Midnight and Syria growled and hackled right beside him. Nobody was getting past their siblings. The darkness seemed to be pressing on them even more, and the grey light seemed still and hesitant to show itself...

Nobody can say how long this standoff lasted but it seemed to be an eternity before the grey light finally seemed to heave a sigh and agree to show itself as a pearly white shadow...

As it grew closer towards the growling, shivering pups, it had finally manifested itself as a pearly white ghost. It was a man clad in Azkaban uniform; the striped grey underclothes topped with a grey robe. Had the puppies known anything about Azkaban they might have found it strange that the man's uniform was not filthy and ragged like most Azkaban prisoners - although it was drenched with what could only be blood. They might have also found it strange that the man was still rosy and hale instead of broken down and emaciated - although his face and skull were hideously battered and broken. Blood had poured profusely down to sodden his clothes. The man's eyes did not have the dead, haunted look of Azkaban, but they were alive with desperation, sadness and above all, the fire of outrage that only grave injustice can provide.

"Hello puppies. Please don't be frightened," the man's voice did not have the croakiness of disuse that marked a long-term Azkaban prisoner. However it was filled with the relief of finally giving vent to long-standing sadness, frustration and anger. There was also a note of fearfulness as well - as if the ghost was looking over his shoulder too. Then a frantic tone broke into his voice. "Please! Please, puppies! Don't be frightened! I need to talk to you! I need your help!"

Perhaps it was the look of desperate sincerity in the man's eyes that seemed to soothe the puppies slightly. Midnight and Syria were still growling, but. Prongsy and Padfoot II lowered their hackles somewhat. The quivering puppies looked up at the man curiously, though their eyes still bulged with bewildered terror.

The man now fell silent, his eyes desperately pleading with theirs, waiting for their response.

It was Tonksy who made the move. Breaking through the ranks of the growling and shivering puppies, she tiptoed up to the man to sniff him. It was there that she found out that you can't sniff ghosts, and she was abruptly brought up short with puzzled astonishment. She yelped as the ghost's cold aura caught her nose, and tumbled back into a clumsy Tonksy heap. The puppies drew back, and in an awful moment of alarm it looked like they might run away. But then Tonksy inched forward again and the man stretched out a ghostly hand towards her. Tonksy gave an abrupt shiver as the man's coldness bit her once more. But this time she sensed that there was warmth in his heart and responded with a commiserating tail wag.

The ice had been broken. The other puppies were still trembling, but they quietly rose and surrounded the man. They, too, were in for an abrupt surprise when their tongues burned with cold as they tried to lick the man. The man wept ghostly tears and collapsed in a ghostly heap to embrace them in a great ghostly hug.

"Oh thank you, oh thank you," he mumbled over and over.

No-one can say how long it was before the stricken ghost could muster enough composure to speak once more. The puppies all clustered around him in eager, sympathetic silence as he finally had the chance to unburden the tale that, like their own father's had been silenced for over twelve years by the "justice" of one Bartemius Crouch. The puppies were still too ignorant of the ways of the wizard world and its history to fully understand what the man was trying to say. However, they could follow enough to understand that here was another poor soul who, like themselves, had fallen foul of the nasty Ministry...

Twelve years ago John Earnest had been wheeling and drinking happily along this way to celebrate the downfall of You-Know-Who. John had been coming this way because he was such good friends with Arabella Figg. However he had been in his tipsy state a little TOO long, and the effects were really starting to make themselves known by now. Instead of ending up at Arabella Figg's he had taken a wrong turn and ended up in this alley instead, and crashed in a most embarrassing heap into some rubbish bins. It was while he was still lying there, still clawing his way through his wobbly haze, that he had heard voices somewhere down this alley:

"You! You're supposed to be dead! Blown up in that street! So how come you're here, then? I think the Ministry will be wanting a word with you!" It was an Auror, thrusting his wand very pointedly at a small, plump, seedy little man who resembled, John thought vaguely through the blur of his wobbliness - a rat. The man was green and ghastly pale - not just because he was caught in a trap like the rat he was, but because his right hand was swathed in bloody bandages that looked like they had been crudely torn from his robes.

The little rat-man suddenly lurched forward as if to be violently sick. The Auror, perhaps mindful of the man's bleeding hand, allowed him the leeway to retch.

The Auror's moment of consideration cost him his life. The rat man had only lurched forward to draw his wand. Having taken the Auror off-guard, he mouthed the dreaded words of the Killing Curse as he shot a burst of green light at the Auror. The Auror instantly crumpled, the life abruptly cut from his body. But the little rat-man didn't wait to hang around. He seemed to shrink and then disappear...

John Earnest, still lying in his wobbly state among the rubbish bins, suddenly found himself swooped upon by the Ministry authorities. Never mind that he was obviously too wobbly to keep himself steady, much less wield a Killing Curse. The manacles were clamped on him and he was bundled away away.

Bartemius Crouch had been extremely hasty in rounding up any remaining Deatheaters after the fall of You-Know-Who. So hasty in fact, that no detainee was spared even the chance to speak, much less be given the chance for their defence at a trial - if indeed, there was a trial at all. Barely an hour before, Bartemius had frowned upon one Sirius Black as he uttered the blood-curdling order for Sirius Black to serve the remainder of his life in Azkaban. Black hadn't even been granted as much as a mock trial like the one that Bartemius was to mete out to his own son in due course. Now John Earnest stood up in shackles before the same Bartemius Crouch. Perhaps it was a mercy that John was still feeling the effects of his drunken wobbliness, which was somewhat cushioning against what was happening to him. But by now he had sobered slightly to feel the same bone-chilling sentence that Bartemius had intoned to Sirius Black, for John Earnest to serve the remainder of his life in Azkaban "for the murder of Auror Brian Goodhew."

No amount of drunkenness could cushion John Earnest for the indescribable pitch that was now cutting through his soul as he was dragged down the black, clammy steps of Azkaban. His mind was being cast into a cold, plunging darkness that left him drowning in the worst dregs of his mind...the ghastly bloody hand...the rat man smiling as he shot the green blast that had sucked the life from the Auror...Bartemius Crouch scowling over him as though he was some filthy slug...no, worse, much worse than a slug...and now the horror of the most secure, and frightful section of Azkaban that now loomed before his goggling eyes.

John Earnest was thrust into the foul darkness of a gaping cell door and left sprawling in the muck of the dank floor. As the door clanged shut behind him, it sent the worst dregs of his mind churning into a ghastly maelstrom of black, indescribable terror. A ghastly sucking closed in behind him like a cluster of vampires pouncing on a bleeding victim. As they sucked...and sucked...they thrust John Earnest deeper and deeper into the coldness of a ferocious Tsunami of Terror...John Earnest was flung into a ghastly panic and despair that no words could describe...

The only way to express it was through the pounding, screaming and splattering of blood, bone and flesh as John Earnest smashed his head over and over...until there was little recognisable left of his head but a mass of blood and pulp, a broken body and a lurid pool of blood intermingling with the filth that already encrusted the floor.

John Earnest had only been in the cell for twelve minutes.

The guards who had locked him in thirteen minutes before now looked most annoyed, and cheated, that they had to take him out again so soon.

Little did they know that they were not quite rid of John Earnest.

As John Earnest's soul rose from his broken body, he was still in the throes of the indescribable terror that had driven him to such a violent deed of desperation. The terror was now intermingling with faint stabs of joy now that he could escape from this dreadful pit and flee towards the Light...

But then something stopped him and kept him hovering above his cell as if unsure as to what to do. It was the image of that rat man who had seemed so broken and bleeding as well - yet had still managed to cut that Auror's life short...and then the image of Bartemius' face as he had sentenced poor John Earnest to life in Azkaban without even a chance to speak. Why shouldn't the images hold him back? After all, only moments before, John Earnest had been forced to regurgitate them over and over as he had been driven to smash his head out against the walls of Azkaban. Even now, as his soul hovered above his smashed body, the memories were still eddying in horror.

But at long last, something that had been struggling to cut through the drunkenness, the maelstrom of terror, the churning horrors of John's memories, now at last poked its head into view. It was the rage of injustice. The injustice of being thrown into prison with not the slightest quarter given for his defence...the injustice of that wretched rat-man still out there, waiting to kill some other unwary soul...the injustice that the Auror was going unavenged...the image of the rat-man's hateful, blanched, pain-stricken face burned gloatingly like the Dark Mark billowing ghoulishly over some poor victim's home...

The man looked back one last time at his ghastly dungeon, his poor body, and the Azkaban guards who now crowded around muttering furious exasperation...then he looked toward the light that seemed to beckon from the tiny barred grille in the wall of his cell. It was not the Light that was beckoning him now, but the rays of fading sunlight that filtered and twinkled through the grim bars...and this was the light he now followed.

The twinkling sunlight had faded altogether by the time John Earnest arrived back at the alleyway. His pearly white form now illuminated starkly with the darkness of the alley that was all the more explicit after what had taken place mere hours before. The rubbish bins were still fallen where he had scattered them in his drunken wobbliness. Ghost though he was now, it made him sick to look at those scattered rubbish bins, remember when he lay there before...

And here he would remain, for there was no other place. Given a choice, he would be pursuing the rat man, but he had no idea who that man was or where he was headed. And he dared not risk any other wizard or witch knowing. Ghost though he was, he was still an Azkaban prisoner. If the Ministry found out, they would most likely drag him back and keep him bound to that pit by spells and enchantments. He could only hope that the rat man might return to this very spot...after all, it was so close to where the Boy Who Lived was to grow up. That man was clearly a Deatheater and every single jack of them would be after the boy. And maybe, while he was here, he could do his bit for the Boy Who Lived as well. Act as a lookout, just as Arabella Figg was doing...

John Earnest gave his most rueful sigh yet as he thought of that afternoon he should have spent with Arabella Figg...if only he hadn't drunk a little too much...

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Now all the puppies were howling most sympathetically around John Earnest as he reached the end of his tale. John had languished here ever since, acting only as lookout and catching the briefest glimpses of Dumbledore's lookouts and their assortment of pets, and only very rarely, the Boy Who Lived himself. As for the rat man, he had never returned to this spot, and he had never seen or heard any clue as to who or where he might be...until -

Until he heard that Sirius Black had actually managed to escape from that fearsome hell's pit when nobody was supposed to - and without being put in a body bag, either. John Earnest had been listening to the stories buzzing and flying from Muggle radios, distant Muggle TV sets, passers-by, Muggles on their phones, dialling that "hot line" number (whatever that was) that had been set up for Sirius Black. John Earnest had also seen the photographs of the haggard, shrunken face surrounded by filthy matted hair from the Muggle newspapers that had been dumped in the alley; and the whispers from Dumbledore's lookouts that they were fearful of what Black might do now that he was on the loose...

He had barely heard who Sirius Black was before he himself had gone to Azkaban and he vaguely knew that the man was second to You-Know-Who himself. He had been aghast at the thought of You-Know-Who's right hand man on the loose, though he couldn't help but be tickled pink at the thought that Black had managed to escape from that foul hell on earth...

But then John started hearing the wild rumours from Dumbledore's lookouts, that Black might kill the Boy Who Lived, that he might blow up Privet Drive, Hogwarts or some other place as he had blown up that Muggle street all those years ago...

Blown up a street?

From the blur of his now-distant drunkenness John Earnest had registered that the Auror had said that the rat man was supposed to have been blown up in a street. Could it be the same street Black was supposed to have blown up? If so, then that could mean only one thing...that Sirius Black had gone down for something the rat man did - just as John himself had. Just like himself, Black was an innocent man, outrageously condemned by the justice of Bartemius Crouch.

That rat man, John was now certain, was that same Peter Pettigrew who got an Order of Merlin for getting blown up in a street. It was that Peter Pettigrew who was the right-hand man of You-Know-Who. And that Peter Pettigrew was still out there somewhere, free to strike again because nobody knew he was out there.

John Earnest knew he had to do something. And here at last, after twelve long years, there was something he could do.

It was here that John Earnest pressed himself even closer to the puppies and said the most joyous thing that set their excited tails wagging like over-wound pendulums. He had seen a dog in this very alley quite recently. Back then, John had kept his distance, though he could sense the dog was magical. He regretted it now, because now he realised that the dog could only have been their father.

"Oh yes! Your father was right here," John beamed, and a heartfelt smile creased across his face for the very first time in probably about twelve years. He had gazed long and thoughtful across every puppy's face, and could see a mark of that dog in each and every one of them. That dog could only have been their father. It was waiting right here, watching the Boy Who Lived. It only caught the barest glimpse of him and the dog itself had only been here for the fleetest of seconds - but it had been here all right.

John now drifted back towards the mouth of the alley, beckoning the puppies to follow. They followed behind most impatiently, yapping in the greatest excitement they had felt in ages. As they reached the entrance to the alley, John raised his ghostly finger in the direction that the dog had gone. He then looked back down at the puppies and said:

"You must go to Hogwarts." John simply couldn't think of any other place. After all, that was where the Boy-Who-Lived was right now. That was where the place where everyone believed Sirius Black was headed - and maybe that was where the rat man was, too.

John pointed up, and the puppies gazed upwards at the North Star. "Follow that star. Go north until you come to Hogwarts. Follow the star. Go north until you reach Hogwarts! You got that? Go to Hogwarts! Hogwarts!"

The puppies leapt up towards John Earnest, anxious to lick him with boundless joy, excitement and gratitude. Unfortunately they forgot that ghosts couldn't be licked or touched. They kept falling through and hitting the pavement, but that couldn't dampen their spirits. They just leapt straight back up to lick him again and again. John appreciated it all the same, and wept ghostly tears of joy at receiving such appreciation in such a long, long time...before the time had to come for the puppies to wrench themselves away and begin their journey north until they reached this "Hogwarts". They had no idea what "Hogwarts" was, but it must be good place for them if their father was going there.

John stared after them long after the pitter-patter of their anxious paws had faded and the night had swallowed them whole. John then drifted back into his alley, but it was not to haunt the alley where he had languished for so long. But he would languish there no longer. John Earnest now perused his alley with the flint of resolute determination on his face and the gleam of anticipating revenge in his ethereal eyes.