A Promise Worth Keeping

Chapter 6

Sirius had decided he did not like sheep. They were silly creatures and made very poor travelling companions. The longer he sat at the back of the lorry the more frantic he became, but at least they were going south.

Longtown turned out to be a large livestock market near Carlisle. Fortunately it was still dark when they got there, and Sirius was able to briefly transform and slip out of the lorry before he was noticed. Back as Padfoot, he slunk underneath the next lorry to think about what to do. Carlisle might be in England, but it was at the other end of the country from Surrey. He thought he would start with the Dursleys, as he might be lucky and pick up a trail there. All the while as he tried to think calmly, an inner voice screamed at him, get moving! He didn't know how long ago Harry had been kidnapped, he didn't know what they might be doing to him; he didn't know if the boy was still alive or not. He might be too late. Sirius whimpered, giving up the struggle to think calmly, awful images flooding his mind.

After a while the dreadful sense of urgency faded and he realised he had been physically shaking. He took a series of deep breaths and began to feel calmer. As he did so he looked about him at all the other lorries unloading their livestock. It struck him that some of them might be from the south, and he could get another lift that way.

The night dragged on and there was less activity, except for the constant baaing of the numerous sheep. Stupid creatures! He emerged from under the lorry and started to look for one that came from a place name in the south that he recognised. Finally he found one emblazoned with the legend, J R Hines and Co Ltd, Chichester. That would do. And he scrambled into it.

It was impossible to sleep; he was too keyed up, desperate to get moving, afraid of being caught if he was seen. Every so often he was overcome by more fits of dreadful anxiety and shaking that seemed to get worse as time went on. However, eventually, sometime the next morning, the lorry was loaded up with sheep, and he staggered to his feet, growling at them to keep away from him.

As the lorry lurched its way out of the market and onto the main road, a shaft of sunlight shone through the battens in its side, casting fleeting shadows over the backs of the sheep and sending dust and straw motes whirling into the air. Sirius looked out through the narrow gap and saw a landscape that to other eyes might have been uninteresting and dull but to him was new and different, even if its scents were largely overwhelmed by sheep. He spent most of the journey standing there, drinking in the sights of the land and the roads, from the flat countryside round Carlisle through the Lake District and on south, past towns and through cities. As they went, the roads grew busier, the built up areas more frequent.

Through the day they went, and were still going as dusk began to fall. And then they ground to a halt. The driver had miss-timed his journey perhaps; they had hit the rush hour. As they crawled along though, Sirius thought that perhaps it might not be so bad after all. They had only stopped once and that had been miles to the north. He wasn't sure if the lorry would stop again and he didn't want to go all the way to Chichester. Now though, they were going slowly enough for him to climb out and jump down. If anybody saw him, they were hardly going to stop and get out of their cars.

The lorry slowly crawled past several junctions on the motorway. Sirius recognised the names on the signs and knew they must be getting near. Then at last he saw a sign for Guildford. He thought that was about ten or fifteen miles from Little Whinging. He hoped he could remember how to get there.

He needn't have worried; the memory of an unpleasant encounter with Lily's sister and her husband had stayed with him along with that of an angry walk to some shops on the main road. He was sure he would recognise that stretch of road again.

Just as he had thought, it was easy to scramble out of the lorry and the driver didn't even notice. The embankment was planted with thin, scrubby trees, now leafless, and he stumbled through them. He had intended to transform back into Padfoot as soon as he was out of sight of the road, but dizziness overwhelmed him and he sank to his knees. As spots danced before his eyes, he tried to get up again, but his legs wouldn't work, so he stayed where he was for a few moments until the dizziness cleared. Feeling slightly better, he staggered to his feet and took on the familiar canine shape. Four legs definitely felt more stable.

There was a barbed wired fence at the bottom of the embankment, and he carefully manoeuvred his way through it, then trotted across the field beyond. He thought he was going in roughly the right direction but, when he eventually came to a road and a signpost, it wasn't to anywhere he knew.

The dizziness came back, and he stumbled, four legs not helping to keep him on his feet. What was wrong with him, he wondered anxiously. Once it had passed, he climbed to his feet again and carried on. Then as he came into a village that was mostly executive bungalows, a smell hit him that had the drool running out of his mouth and onto the ground. He turned and headed towards it without any conscious thought. The village may not have had any real shops left, but it had a Chinese restaurant.

Sirius realised then that it must be at least twenty-four hours since he had eaten anything. He had been so focussed on getting to Privet Drive that he had ignored the physical discomfort hunger had wreaked on him. Surely the restaurant would have rubbish bins round the back that he could raid?

He was right; it did. Even in his human form he realised he was so hungry he would probably not have baulked at the scraps, left-overs and rotting remains that filled the bins. He did retain enough control not to eat until he threw up, but not enough to be silent at what he was about.

"Oy!" yelled an outraged voice. "Get out of here!" The figure, silhouetted in the kitchen doorway raised an arm, but Sirius stood his ground.

"Bloody hell, mate," said another voice, "that's the third time this week!"

"Go on! Piss off!" said the first man and this time he threw something at Sirius. He didn't wait, but skittered out of the yard as fast as he could.

He left the village and followed the road in what he still felt was vaguely the right direction. But soon he had to admit he was lost. He still didn't recognise anywhere and the Muggle road numbers meant nothing to him. Stopping beside another sign he wondered if it would be better to carry on in the dark or wait until day. His body made the decision for him; he was nearly asleep on his feet. Leaving the roadside, he holed up in some waste ground at the back of some industrial units and slept.

Despite his exhaustion his sleep was uneasy and haunted by hooded shapes chasing him down dark corridors. He woke with a start to hear voices nearby. They were talking about a delivery or something, but he wasn't interested enough to listen. Then however, something made him prick up his ears and listen more carefully. The voices belonged to two men standing beside a van; a nondescript commercial vehicle save for the inscription on the side, G W Jones Ltd, Blackheath Industrial Estate, Greater Whinging.

"Look," one of the men was saying, "I can't get back here before lunchtime because I've got pick ups at -" and he listed five places, the first of which Sirius had seen a sign to, "before I drop them off at Blackheath. Once I do that, I'll come back. You're just unlucky you're first on the list because you're furthest away."

Sirius sent up a silent prayer of thanks to any god who happened to be listening. He just hoped his memory was up to remembering the five places.

Once on the edge of Greater Whinging he recognised landmarks, and knew it wasn't far to Little Whinging. He speeded up, desperately hoping there was enough left of the Dursleys' house to give him some clue as to what might have happened to Harry.

So when he finally rounded the corner into Privet Drive, he stopped dead in shock. The house was still there. Why hadn't they destroyed it? Then, of course, he realised that the Death Eaters wouldn't have wasted time doing that. They couldn't be as powerful now as they had been ten years ago.

There was a car parked in the driveway of number four. Had it been left, or had they left one of the Dursleys alive? Now that he was finally there, Sirius felt nervous and he wasn't entirely sure how to proceed. While he sat there dithering, the front door opened and Petunia Dursley came out. At least he assumed it was Petunia Dursley. She hadn't worn particularly well. But then, he didn't suppose he had done so himself. Her blonde hair was faded, and the pinched expression he remembered her assume now seemed to be etched on her features. She turned and put her arm out to help someone out of the house. It was Dursley. He didn't look well.

"Come on Vernon, do please make an effort. We're going to be late for the hospital," she said waspishly.

Dursley muttered something Sirius couldn't hear from his vantage point. He watched them get into their car; Petunia carefully making sure Vernon had his seat belt fastened, before she drove off.

Sirius thought there had to be a clue of some sort inside the house. The problem was getting inside. He trotted across the road and round to the back. The garden wasn't overlooked, so he transformed and tried the back door. It was locked, of course and the Dursleys weren't the sort of people to leave a key under the mat. He stared at the door in thought for a moment, then turned and looked around for something sharp. The grass was carefully manicured, but the Dursleys were clearly not gardeners as the soil of the single flowerbed was thin and stony. He picked up a large stone, feeling the weight of it in his hand and grinned.

It wasn't as easy as he had thought it would be, he couldn't believe how hard it was to break the lock, but he got there eventually and pushed the door open, stopping dead on the threshold. The house reeked of fear and misery. Even as a human he could smell it. He transformed to better sense where it was coming from, and was nearly overwhelmed, but stayed in the dog's shape to gather as much information as possible.

He sniffed the air. The smell wasn't the sharply focussed smell of a single event, but was all-pervasive. Sirius stepped into the hall. An idea began to take hold of his mind that he pushed away at first, then growled as the evidence of his nose became indisputable. It belonged to a boy, even overlain by Muggle chemicals masquerading as floral scents, he could tell that.

Sirius transformed into himself and prowled around the living room. There was nothing to indicate if anything had happened in the house, and he stood looking round the room in puzzlement. Then he swung round, staring through the open doorway into the hall at a small cupboard door under the stairs. He marched forwards and yanked it open, nearly pulling it off its hinges.

As he stared inside the small space in disbelief, a blast of rage surged through him. This was how these Muggle scum had taken care of Lily and James's son! He wasn't terribly sure what he did next, or how long it took, but when he regained a measure of control, the living room and the hall were wrecked. He sank down onto the small bed inside the cupboard, surrounded by the smell of the boy who had slept there, and he broke down completely. This was his fault. If he had done what he had promised, Harry wouldn't have had to spend his life with these wretched excuses for people.

A car pulled up in the driveway outside and first one, then a second door opened and closed as two people got out. Sirius raised his head and sat up. So. A reckoning.

"…better sit down, Vernon. I'll put the kettle on," Petunia was saying as she opened the front door. Then she saw the mess the house was in and she shrieked, "Oh my God, Vernon! We've been burgled!"

"Don't be ridiculous, Petunia," came Dursley's voice as he clumped into the hall. "Bloody hell!"

Struggling to control the rage that threatened to overwhelm him again, Sirius emerged from the cupboard. He had to grip the doorframe to stop himself punching the man as he growled at Vernon, "Where's Harry?"

Petunia gave a gasp, but he ignored her, staring instead at Vernon's fleshy face. The other man, glared at him before saying in a disgusted tone, "If there was any justice in the world he'd be where all of you freaks should be, under lock and key."

Under lock and key? Sirius felt a bubble of hysterical laughter well up inside him and fought it down, snarling again, "Where's Harry?"

Vernon backed away, and stopped when he backed into the wall. "I don't know," he said defiantly, his eyes widening in fear.

"What do you mean, you don't know?" demanded Sirius striding up to him. Petunia put a hand on his arm to stop him, but he flung her off. He dimly heard the little shriek she gave as she overbalanced and fell over.

"You keep your filthy hands off my wife!" bellowed Vernon, anger beginning to overcome his fear.

Sirius blinked. What? He glanced round and saw Petunia picking herself up. He shook his head in confusion, then focussed back on Vernon. He grabbed the miserable excuse of a Muggle by the collar of his shirt and demanded, "What happened to Harry?"

"Oh for God's sake, tell him, Vernon! Then he'll go away!"

"He was taken into care for being violent and dangerous after he attacked me," Vernon spluttered.

"When did this happen? Where did they take him?" Sirius' eyes narrowed. "What did you do to him?"

"It was at Halloween. The little monster went completely berserk and was taken to a secure centre for disturbed children. It can't have been that secure, the little bastard ran away two weeks ago."

"Where is this place?" Sirius' voice was harsh and grating even to his own ears.

Vernon told him, then said, "There's no point in going there if you're looking for the boy. Like I said, he's not there, and nobody seems to know anything about what happened to him."

Sirius let go of Vernon's collar. He had the information he needed, and didn't trust himself not to kill the man if he stayed any longer. Turning, he started to walk towards the kitchen when the stupid Muggle had to yell out, "That's it, is it? You wreck our house, assault my wife and then just leave?" A vein was throbbing in his temple.

Instantly Sirius had him by the throat again. "Be very glad I'm in a hurry to find my godson," he hissed at Vernon, whose eyes were now bulging out of their sockets. He gave an exclamation of disgust and flung the man from him. Walking away he wiped his hands on his tattered robes, as if to clean them.

Out in the garden, he took a deep breath, trying to clear the smell of the place from his mind. Then, stepping out of sight of the windows he transformed and skittered away down the road, his claws clicking on the hard tarmac.

When he thought about it, he realised that the Aurors who had interrogated him in Azkaban had never said where Harry had been kidnapped from. He had simply assumed it had been from Privet Drive. A secure centre, though. That sounded ominous.

The building he arrived at some time later did not by any means look a pleasant place to be in. Sirius sat under a tree on the edge of the car park and looked at it. It didn't seem to have bars and there was no sense of Dementors, but it reeked of despair just as much as Azkaban did.

He decided to see if he could pick up any signs from the perimeter, then think about getting inside. He didn't think that was going to be easy. Round the side, the grim concrete blocks of the building gave way to a football pitch, surrounded by a high, wire fence. As he approached, he saw a group of five boys supervised by an adult, kicking a ball around in a desultory fashion. Sirius paused and watched them for a while, then carried on with his patrol of the perimeter.

He was imitating a dog looking for rabbit trails, nosing backwards and forwards, testing for scents of he didn't know quite what. All of a sudden he picked up something familiar. It was very faint, almost an echo really, the smell of magic. He stopped and looked around. There was nothing to indicate what had happened here, but there had been something… He closed his eyes and sniffed the ground again. Trying to see if there was anything in the signature that could tell him what kind of spell had been cast.

Suddenly his eyes flew open. This wasn't the blast of the Unforgivable Curse that he had feared. This was a hugely powerful, unfocussed surge of magic. The sort of thing a child might produce under the pressure of extreme stress. The stress of being kidnapped, he wondered. There was no other clue; any scent of people was long gone, and the ground not muddy enough to retain tracks for any length of time. He sighed, and was about to carry on round the fence, when he stopped, cursing himself for a fool. The signature was outside the fence, which meant that whatever had left it was outside. Suppose…He looked round at the trees and trotted over to them, eyes on the ground all the time. He began a systematic sweep through the trees, working parallel to the fence, becoming more despondent as time went on and he found nothing. Then finally, he found it, a small footprint. It was on a patch of mud beside a puddle and didn't look recent as far as he could tell, and it was heading away from the fence.

Sirius sat on his haunches and looked at it. Then transforming into himself, he shook his head, pushing his matted hair out of his eyes. It didn't prove anything. There was nothing to say it belonged to Harry and he had no way of knowing how old it was.

Slowly pulling himself to his feet, he looked around at the trees in despair. The frantic desperation of the last few days was receding, leaving him feeling hollow and empty. According to Vernon it had been over two weeks since Harry had disappeared. What had he expected, a sign saying 'this way to Harry'?

All the same though, there was nothing to indicate Death Eaters had been involved. Could it be that the boy had simply escaped? But, Sirius realised, that didn't get him any further forwards. He started walking in the general direction the footprint had been headed, keeping an eye to the ground in case he spotted anything, but with no real hope that he would. He knew he was no tracker.

It wasn't long before he came to the edge of the woodland and fields stretched out before him. The light was beginning to fail, and he knew he would have to find somewhere to hole up for the night. He transformed back into Padfoot, and trotted along a fence wondering briefly, as his stomach gave a gurgle, if he would pass another Chinese restaurant.

He stopped dead, thrusting the hunger away. What was it the man had said? "Bloody hell, mate that's the third time this week." Something else had been raiding their bins. Standing for a moment he tried to imagine what it must be like to be ten and locked up in a place like that building, then to somehow get away. What would he do, where would he go? He'd stay away from people, he thought. And he'd turn scavenger, once he got hungry enough. Bit like himself really.

Feeling more hopeful, Sirius followed the fence down towards a road. It was the same road he had come along earlier, and hoping his memory was up to it, began to retrace his steps. As he went, he thought about his options. He could go back to the restaurant, or he could try and find somewhere else Harry might try and raid, see if he could pick up a scent trail. If he had been in his human form, he would have grinned.

As he retraced the route he had taken, he paused at every snack bar, food store and restaurant he came to, trying to pick up that elusive scent, and so focussed on his task that he never even stopped to snatch any scraps for himself. But there was nothing. He began to wonder if he was deluding himself, that Harry might not be the only person or creature raiding bins in the area. Then crossing a park he caught the faintest whiff of something familiar. However although it was old and soon disappeared, it gave Sirius new hope. He was on the right track!

He circled round the park, trying to pick up the trail again, hoping to see if he could get some sense of the direction the boy had been going in. Ah. There it was again. Briefly he wondered if he should wait until daylight in the hope of picking up visual clues as well, but he decided no, it might rain, washing away the remaining traces of the scent trail, and the boy would be twelve hours further away. Instead, he let his canine instincts come to the fore, suppressing his human self, focussing on finding the trail again. And slowly, very slowly, as he cast around for the scent, he began to pick up traces of it.

The trail led away from the park, past some houses and along a road. It left the road at a stile, but petered out half way across a field. For once the sky was clear, and the waxing moon shone down, its light fighting the orangey glow from the streetlights of nearby towns and villages. Briefly, he wondered where Remus was, what he was doing, before returning to the task at hand. He ignored the human urge to guess where the trail might be headed; instead he continued to cast around for the elusive scent until he found a trace again. Then he found another, much stronger trace, coming from a different direction but, like the faint trail he had been following, headed towards a gate in the hedge at the edge of the field. This stronger trail was much more recent, hours old, if that. Sirius stopped suddenly. What was he going to do when he found Harry? He had been so focussed on the finding itself, he hadn't thought about what to do after. Now he realised he could hardly trot up to Harry and transform. If the boy hadn't been told about magic - which given the Dursleys' reaction today was more than likely - then doing that was hardly going to get the boy's confidence. Sirius didn't think trotting up to Harry and not transforming was much of an option either, not if he wanted to talk to the boy. Which left only one option, approaching Harry as himself. Well he'd worry about that when he found his godson. Standing up, he shook himself and followed the new trail to the gate, jumping over it when he got there.

The lane was dark and overgrown; tufts of grass grew in the centre of it, through the tarmac indicating there wasn't much traffic. About a hundred yards ahead on the right the dark shape of a building loomed, surrounded by trees; a barn perhaps or a cottage. As he approached, he saw a battered 'for sale' sign rammed into the earth beside a padlocked gate. This looked promising. Sirius jumped over the gate into the overgrown garden, taking care to be as quiet as possible. He sniffed around, there was no doubting it, Harry's scent was all over the place, so much so that it was hard to distinguish the various tracks, overlain as they were. He didn't think his godson was here at the moment, but he wasn't sure. He became aware of a tight, fluttery feeling in his stomach and realised he was nervous. What in Merlin's name was he going to say?

He transformed into himself and tried the door. It was locked. He walked round the house, looking for any other way in that a ten year old might use. All the windows were shut, and the back door seemed locked as well. He peered through the filthy glass of the kitchen window, trying to see in, but it was too dark. He decided to wait outside, then if Harry were inside he would see him in the morning and if he wasn't then he'd see him when he came back. So he huddled down into the doorway at the front and waited.

He must have fallen asleep, as he was woken some time later by the sound of someone climbing over the gate. His eyes flicked open and he saw a small figure coming towards the house, light reflecting off glasses as it crossed a patch of moonlight. As the boy came nearer, Sirius could see him more clearly. His stomach gave a lurch. God, he was like James.

Harry stopped dead. Had he seen him, Sirius wondered. "Harry?" he said, his voice hoarse with emotion, and slowly stood up.

An expression of sheer terror crossed the boy's face and he started to back away.

Oh no. "Harry, it's all right," Sirius said desperately, shaking off a momentary dizziness and moving towards where the boy stood frozen.

Harry stumbled backwards. "No, please don't take me back, I didn't do it, go away! Please!" and then as Sirius kept moving towards him, "NO!"

Then everything went black.