All Debts Must be Paid

Chapter Eight: Sirius

Sirius had been waiting for nearly an hour, he estimated, and had concluded it was unlikely that the trolley would be coming down the stairs when he heard the bang as a dumb waiter materialised in an alcove opposite where he was lying. Immediately he withdrew back into the shadows.

A small shape pulled a large trolley out of the dumb waiter. Sirius followed immediately behind the trolley as the house elf pulled it towards the locked doors. Now, thought Sirius, it all depended if the house elf could get in by itself or if it needed the guards to come and let it in.

The house elf placed its hand on the door and muttered something under its breath. The door silently swung open. Sirius had to suppress a triumphant bark. Then it was a case of following close behind the trolley as the elf manoeuvred it through the doorway.

The dimly lit corridor on the other side of the doors looked just the same as the one upstairs. The underlying smell of fear was stronger though, making him feel intensely uncomfortable, and giving him a constant struggle to force down his memories, but they kept replaying like a badly recorded Muggle video. Once they'd got him down here, they'd dragged him into a large room where they'd taken it in turns to systematically beat him unconscious; over and over again. After that, there was a long blank in his memory and the only thing he remembered with any kind of clarity until Azkaban, he didn't know how many months later, was Barty Crouch breaking his wand in front of his face. He forced down the growl that was rising in his throat, struggling to stay in the present.

The corridor split and the house elf pulled the trolley down to the right and into a side room. A chorus of voices greeting the food told him that was where the guards hung out. He didn't follow; instead, he explored the main corridor until he found what he was looking for. A door marked, gents. He pushed the door open with his nose and went inside.

The toilets were empty. There was a large, old-fashioned urinal along one wall, a single cubicle and a couple of wash hand basins. Sirius transformed back and went and sat in the cubicle, settling back against the wall well out of sight, to wait for one of the guards to come to the toilet.

Just as he was beginning to wonder if these men ever needed to go, the door swung open and somebody came in. Sirius was on his feet before the man had finished coming through the door and had quietly pulled the cubicle door to.

The guard was whistling tunelessly as he walked up to the urinal. Sirius walked up behind him as the man proceeded to take a leak. He seemed to sense there was someone else in the room and turned his head, eyes widening in recognition.

Sirius gave a grim smile. "I see you've recognised who I am," he said to the now trembling guard. The man gulped.

He flicked a glance down and made a face, remarking, "Bit of a mess you've made of your boots there." The guard didn't seem bothered somehow. He leaned forwards, and grabbed the man by the throat, with one hand and deftly pulling his wand out of his pocket with the other, saying in the same off hand voice, "You are going to tell me where you are holding Remus Lupin."

"I, I can't do that," the guard stuttered.

"Oh, and why is that?" Sirius released his throat and pointed the wand at the man.

The man stared at the wand, clearly thinking he was about to be put under the Cruciatus Curse. He managed to gulp, "We're not holding him."

Sirius frowned. "Surely you can do better than that?"

"It's the truth!" the guard said quickly. "We were told he would be coming and to make sure we were prepared for a werewolf, but the boss said they'd decided to let him go. He's not here, you've got to believe me!"

Oh fuck, Sirius thought. This sounded horribly true. They'd never make up a story like this on the off chance that somebody might come and break one of the prisoners out, and the guard didn't look as if he had the brains to make it up on the spot. "When did they release him?"

"I don't know!" The guard had picked up on Sirius' consternation and was beginning to regain his confidence. "You don't think they tell us things like that do you?"

Sirius stared at the man for a moment then shook his head. "No I don't suppose I do." Just as the guard was realising that this meant he was now surplus to requirements with all the implications that meant, Sirius added, "Stupefy!"

As the man collapsed, Sirius caught his body and pulled him over to the cubicle, setting him down on the floor beside the toilet pan. Just in case the curse wore off, he conjured magical ropes and tied the man up.

It was amazing the difference having a wand made, although this one felt strange. He didn't feel nearly so vulnerable for one thing. He tried a few spells with it, to see how well they worked - it would be just his luck if one failed at a crucial moment because the wand wasn't quite right. He muttered a reveal charm, and looked around. A vague red glow showed up in one corner. Oh, hell's teeth. There was a magic alarm, and he'd triggered it.

For precious seconds he thought about what to do. It all depended where the monitor was. If it was in the security office, he was screwed. He listened for a moment, heart hammering in his chest. There was no sound outside from the corridor. Unless the guards had cast silencing charms on themselves then, the monitor wasn't down here. That gave him a little time. Quickly he pulled open the door and ran down the corridor towards the exit.

At the doors out of the cellblock, Sirius blasted the wards apart. It didn't matter how many alarms he set off; they would be coming anyway.

He rushed up the stairs, taking them two at a time, listening for sounds of pursuit. Suddenly he heard shouts coming from two flights up. He glanced upwards. Here they came.

Feet clattered down the stairs above him. He reached the ground floor just in time, as the feet reached the floor above him.

"Hey!" a voice shouted behind him, as he pushed open the swing door onto the ground floor corridor.

Without thinking about it, he cast a shield charm behind him, but it felt strange and he wasn't sure how well it had worked. As he had half turned to cast the charm he caught a glimpse of three men, pounding down the stairs after him, enraged expressions on their faces. At the same moment one of the men yelled, "Stupefy!"

Despite the shield, he ducked. It was just as well he had done as the curse shattered his shield and went over his head. Once through the door, he ran along the corridor, back towards the kitchen area. He fired a couple of hexes behind him as he did so, and gave a gasp of pain, stumbling so that he nearly fell. One of the hexes had misfired and sent a searing burn up his wand arm. He heard a cry of triumph behind him and managed to regain his balance, then he simply concentrated on running. He was nearly there. A surprised looking house elf was just coming out of the kitchen as he rounded the corner. It stared at him as he ran past towards the back entrance.

"Stop him!" one of the pursuers shouted.

The house elf goggled in astonishment, but didn't move.

Sirius snatched a glance behind him and saw the three wizards raising their wands. Wincing at the pain holding the wand gave him, he yelled the first Curse that came into his head, "Conjuncitivitis!" This time, to his relief, the wand didn't backfire and he grinned as one of the guards swore, hearing the sound as the man stumbled and fell over.

The entrance was only metres away now. The doors hadn't seemed locked earlier, but they must surely be warded. Although he didn't trust the wand now, he had to try and force the wards apart, as he didn't know which of the dozens of warding charms had been used. So, clutching it with both hands now, he muttered, "Dispersus!" To his surprise, it had the desired effect without backfiring again.

As the door opened, he almost fell down the steps into the cool darkness of the cobbled yard. He was nearly done, but he hadn't got away yet.

The alley stretched empty in both directions showing hundreds of metres of emptiness. He'd never make it to the main road before the pursuers caught him. Sirius glanced around. There was a skip on one side of the alley, twenty metres or so past the yard. It was overflowing with black bin bags, some spilling rubbish onto the ground. Quickly he transformed into Padfoot and proceeded to root around in the bin bags.

As the footsteps of the remaining two pursuers ran out into the alley, Padfoot heard an exclamation of disgust. "Where the fuck did he go?"

The footsteps walked towards the skip and a voice muttered, "Lumos!" lighting up the alley. Padfoot started growling as the man approached. He watched as the wizard's eyes slid over him without interest, looking for something else. The wizard held his wand up high illuminating more of the alley and looked, but there was clearly no one there.

"Nox!" The wizard extinguished the light and walked back towards his companion. "Nothing but a stray dog," he told him.

"Must have Apparated or had a portkey. We're beyond the perimeter now so he'd be able to," the other voice replied.

The footsteps started to recede as the men walked back into the cobbled yard, but Padfoot heard the first voice remark, "Better go and see what the bastard did to McNicol and tell Davis and that other guy, wossname, Jacks. They're not going to be happy." He sounded almost cheerful at this prospect.

Jacks. Now that was a name that reverberated in Sirius' memory.

The dog carried on rooting until Sirius was quite sure they had gone. Then he limped along the alley to the main road, thinking about what he was going to do. He needed to hole up somewhere until the inevitable hue and cry had died down and he needed to do something about his front leg. He could hardly bear to put his weight on it, but it was too dark to look at it properly. Remus was never going to let him forget this.

He remembered seeing a park earlier, on his way to the Ministry. That would do meantime. Slowly he limped his way in its general direction, keeping as far out of sight from possible watchers as he could. Eventually, as the sky was starting to lighten, Sirius found it. His nose told him it wasn't quite deserted, there were furtive sleepers huddled under blankets out of sight from police and less friendly disturbances. However, he found a sheltered spot for himself behind overgrown shrubs where he would have a wall at his back. It was hardly salubrious. He transformed back and sat down leaning against the wall. Gingerly he pulled back the sleeve of his jumper, wincing as he did so, and catching a whiff of singed wool that did not bode well for the state of his arm. Even in the dim, dawn light, he could see that it was a mess. A patch of skin the length of his forearm was seared and blistered. It hurt like hell. He sighed. There wasn't a lot he could do about it at the moment, but it looked to be the sort of wound that might get infected, so he would have to deal with it somehow.

Thoughtfully he pulled out the guard's wand and looked at it. Not that he was stupid enough to try a healing spell with it. But all the same, the wand was an asset, and one that he could use. He glanced up at the lightening sky, but not at this time of the morning.

He put the wand away and leaned back, closing his eyes. He wanted to think about what the hell that bastard Jacks might have to do with this whole business. It surely wasn't coincidence, but then if he had instigated this, why now, after all this time? He racked his brain for answers but could come up with nothing. He was just dozing off when something occurred to him and his eyes flew open.

Bloody hell, they'd be after Remus as well now.