Nox Redux

Chapter 4

When Finn woke the next morning, much earlier than usual, he realised his Gran was still sitting beside the other bed, where she had been when he finally got to sleep.

He leaned out, looking down at the man below. "How is he?" he asked.

Finn's Gran looked up at him. "He got worse for a while but he's been the same for a few hours now. I've managed to get some food into him. That should help, but like I said I need you to go into town."

Finn groaned. "Gimme a chance to get up first, Gran."

"Well hurry up and get dressed. I don't have all day."

Once dressed, he poured himself a mug of tea, refilled hers, and sat down at the table. His gran sat down opposite him and took a sip of her tea. She had been working at a list of some sort. Now she handed it to him saying, "I don't know if you'll be able to find the shop, but I'd rather not leave our friend here unless I have to."

"It can't be that difficult to find, Gran" Finn protested. "I'm not a complete moron when it comes to finding my way about. And it's hardly a big city."

"I wasn't suggesting you were, son. It just might be a bit hard to find, that's all." Her blue eyes gleamed with amusement. "Now, I think it's in the lane that runs from the market through to where the train station used to be."

"You think! Can't you remember?" Finn was derisive.

"Put it down to my aged brain cells. Assuming you do find it, just give the person the list and get as much of what's on it as you can." She gave him a tattered twenty-pound note. "If there's any trouble about taking this, just tell them it was all right last time."

"Oh, okay. What's it called," he said looking down at the list, "Manningtree and Peabody's? Not exactly Superdrug then, is it?"

"Go on, get out of here!" His Gran prodded his arm, and he laughed and stood up.

His bike was hanging on a cradle on the rear of the bus. He got it down easily enough and cycled up the muddy track to the lane at the top. Once there he would have pretended he was in the lead in the Tour de France, but the tarmac was greasy from the recent rain, so he really had to pay attention. Also, competitors in the Tour de France didn't risk cycling round a corner into a tractor as nearly happened at one point. After that, he was even more careful.

Eventually the high banks and overgrown hedges gave way to small houses built close to the road and he passed a sign saying 'Amblesbury welcomes careful drivers'. The narrow street eventually widened out into a market square. But it was empty and clearly not market day. Like any small town in the back end of nowhere, there was hardly anyone about. Finn chained his bike to the railing round the war memorial at one end of the square, and set about finding the shop.

Twenty minutes later, he was getting frustrated. None of the lanes that ran off the square seemed to go to anywhere that might have remotely been a train station - even in prehistoric times when places like this had trains. Finally, he did what he should have done at the start and went into a newsagent and asked if there had ever been a train station in the town.

The old man behind the counter laughed. "Train station? In my day it was just the station. But it must be nigh on fifty years since it closed. You know, I remember when…"

Inwardly Finn groaned, but he tried to keep an interested expression on his face as the old man rambled on.

"So where was it then?" he asked when the fountain of reminiscences seemed to be drying up.

"Didn't I say? Up Cowper's Lane, of course."

Finn managed to extract directions from the old man, and crossed the square. Sure enough, just where the old man had told him, right in one corner was a narrow lane, more a passage than a lane. Even so, he was sure he should have noticed it before. It was like one of those trick paintings that can look like two different pictures, he thought. If you see the first it's really hard to see the second unless you know it's there. He peered into the gloom.

It was actually, when he thought about it, a bit spooky, what with the half-timbered houses meeting at the top and cutting out all the light. And it wasn't completely straight either, as he couldn't see the other end.

There was a small shop on the left hand side as he walked into the alley, but it wasn't the one he was looking for, and it appeared to be shut. He looked at his watch. It wasn't that early. The alley didn't seem to be a very good retail environment, as the next shop he passed was boarded up. In between, were doorways and dusty windows with yellowed net curtains. There was an air of dilapidation about the whole place that was vaguely unpleasant. Then he walked out into a small court, dimly lit by a patch of grey sky three stories above. The alley continued on the other side but he saw that he had found what he had been looking for. The shop took up one complete side of the court - which wasn't saying much. It looked like something out of Dickens - it didn't even have a proper plate glass window, but a bow front of small, bottle glass panes. He walked up to the door and pushed it open.

---

Remus was just tidying up his breakfast things when he heard Snape's impatient knock. He was relieved that the other man hadn't asked him to lift the anti-apparation wards from the house so he could apparate directly inside. Having him in the house was uncomfortable enough without him just appearing. He went and answered the door.

"Aren't you ready yet?" Snape demanded, walking into the kitchen.

"Not quite." Remus had to struggle to keep his temper. "But I won't be a minute."

Snape wandered over to the kitchen table where Remus had some more books piled up including Hearnshaw's Magical Gazetteer and the Muggle road atlas. Scattered pieces of parchment showed where he had been making notes.

"Not given up on this nonsense I see," Snape commented, in derision.

"No, I haven't and it's not nonsense."

Snape's voice was cold. "Perhaps you would care to enlighten me then," he said.

Remus sighed. "Consider this. Sirius was on the hippogriff. To our knowledge he doesn't have a wand so can't have been using any form of magical navigation. How else do you think he was going to get here if not by following the roads?"

The other man thought about this for a moment. "What's the point in doing that if you don't know which roads are which?" he said eventually.

Remus opened the atlas and turned it towards Snape pointing to a spot near one edge of the page. "Sirius went to Arabella last. She lives here." He indicated the edge of the opposite page saying, "And this is the direction I live in." Then he pointed at the long curving line of the M4 that ran almost due west from London. Snape's expression told him he had scored a hit. "You could be on to something I suppose," he conceded grudgingly. "However it's a very long stretch of road. Are you proposing that we walk up it until we find him?"

"Of course not. We use this." Remus picked up a small, green crystal on a silver chain.

Snape rolled his eyes. "Divination!" he exclaimed. "One of the most unreliable forms of magic there is."

"Under normal circumstances I would agree with you, Severus." Remus responded in an even voice, trying not to let his irritation show. "However this is a medieval form of the locator charm which was considered quite effective." He couldn't stop himself adding, "After all I've had plenty of time to research it."

Snape sneered. "I'm sure if Dumbledore had had any success with a locator charm he would have mentioned it."

Remus ignored him, and picked up his wand. He held the crystal a centimetre or so above the London end of the motorway and with his other hand waved his wand, muttering, "Quaero Sirio!"

Nothing happened and Snape looked contemptuous. Remus moved to a point about half way along the line of the road and cast the charm again. This time instead of hanging motionless, the pendulum moved slightly.

"That's just the movement of your hand," Snape declared.

Again, Remus moved the crystal further down the road and waited. "Are you happy it's not moving?" he asked. Snape shrugged. Taking this for an affirmative, Remus cast the charm again. It was a slow, tedious process, but eventually he had homed in on an area where the movement of the pendulum was strongest. He looked at the place name on the map. "In or around the town of Amblesbury," he said to Snape, "which just happens to be near a very interesting convergence of ley lines."

Snape was clearly unimpressed.

Remus sighed, "Well all right, it doesn't give us 'x marks the spot' but it does give us a starting point, and it tells us that he is still in that area."

"You're sure it's not just showing the point at which he was killed or captured?"

Remus shook his head. "Oh no, this is where he is now."

"Well it shouldn't be too difficult to find him then, should it?"

---

Inside, the shop was gloomy and smelled of herbs, pot pourri and something indefinably spicy. Down one side, there was a long polished wood counter, and behind it, from floor to ceiling there were shelves packed with jars full of exotic substances and stranger objects. Each jar was labelled in a scratchy copperplate hand that was hard to read. It reminded Finn of a Victorian apothecary's shop he had been to years ago on some school trip.

Someone coughed politely and a voice asked, "Can I help, sir?"

Finn jumped, then spotted an elderly man leaning against the counter at the far end of the shop. He had a beard Gandalf would have been proud of, and twinkling brown eyes. Finn walked over to him. "Er, yeah, I think so," he said.

"Just finished at Hogwarts are we, sir?" the old man asked.

"Er, Hogwarts?"

This was not the answer the old man had been expecting and he leaned forwards looking closely at Finn. "How did you get in here?" he demanded in a much less friendly tone.

Finn ignored the urge to reply, 'Through the door,' and instead said, "My Gran told me where to come."

"Did she. What do you want?" there was no mistaking the unfriendly tone now.

Pulling out his Gran's shopping list, Finn passed it over saying, "I've to get as much on this list as you've got."

The old man quickly scanned the list, flicking a glance up at Finn every few seconds. "I don't have the fine veined vervain, but ordinary vervain's fine so long as you're not making a rejuvenating potion." He looked up. "You're not are you?"

Finn hoped he didn't look totally gormless. "Um, she didn't say."

The old man rolled his eyes. Then he bustled about unscrewing jars and weighing out quantities, making up paper packets, some large, some small. Finally he wrapped them up in a large brown paper parcel and tied it with string. "That will be three galleons and five sickles," he told Finn once he had finished scratching his sale in a ledger with a real honest to goodness quill.

"Come again?"

"Oh for goodness sake!" snapped the old man. "How much money have you got?"

Finn held out the twenty-pound note his Gran had given him. "She said this would be OK. She said it was OK last time."

The shopkeeper distastefully took the note between a finger and thumb and said, "It's most inconvenient." Finn waited for him to hand it back, but instead he said, "Well, what are you waiting for? Take your parcel and go, boy."

Finn picked up the parcel from the counter and hurriedly left the shop, saying over his shoulder as he walked through the door, "Have a nice day too." He ran across the court to get as far away from the shop as possible before he was consumed by a fit of the giggles, hoping the old man wouldn't hear him.

Suddenly, behind him he heard two odd popping sounds, a bit like a champagne cork only louder, and he turned round to see what it was. Two men were standing by the shop window, and he could have sworn blind that they hadn't been there when he ran out of the shop. He jumped in surprise. While one of them looked relatively normal and perfectly non-descript, the other looked as if he was off to audition for a part in a vampire movie or perhaps he maybe just worked as an undertaker - the sort who could permanently smell his customers and made sure you knew about it. He ignored Finn and marched into the shop. The other man smiled slightly and nodded, following the undertaker. Finn fled.

---

Inside the shop, Snape and Remus could clearly see that old Manningtree was not in a good mood, muttering something about Muggles. He glared at them as they came through the door. "You're not Muggles are you?"

Snape took offence. "Of course not, why would we be?"

"Was that Muggle boy we saw outside in here?" Remus asked in surprise.

"Yes, and he insisted in paying with Muggle money," Manningtree complained. "What am I supposed to do with Muggle money?"

"What did he buy?" Snape asked in some astonishment.

"See for yourself." Manningtree pushed over the list Finn had left on the counter.

Snape looked at it. "Someone is making healing potions," he announced. "I wonder why."

"Perhaps we should ask him," suggested Remus.

"Well if you insist on indulging your idle curiosity I can't stop you."

Remus' lips twitched as he left the shop, leaving Snape saying to Manningtree, "I require a selection of medicinal herbs…"

Unfortunately the market square was empty, with no sign of the direction the boy had gone off in. Remus swore mildly. It was unusual, and as Snape had so rightly pointed out, there was no such thing as co-incidence in anything to do with Voldemort.

After five minutes or so, Snape joined him. "I don't think we'll get any help from that direction - he wasn't in the least willing to talk about unusual happenings in the neighbourhood and I've had to buy a vast quantity of poor quality ingredients that I have no need of at an extortionate price," was his acidic comment.

"It was worth a try," responded Remus. He pointed across the square. "The newsagent might be a better bet though."

The old man in the newsagent's was garrulous in the extreme, but nothing particularly unusual seemed to have happened in the neighbourhood for years. Remus then managed to steer the conversation around to lost animals, mentioning that he had lost a black dog.

"A black dog you say? Now who was going on about a black dog?"

Snape flicked a glance at Remus who shrugged slightly.

"Oh I know, couple of farmers from over Hexley way. They said something about seeing a stray dog. It had been worrying their stock or something."

"Oh that couldn't possibly have been our dog," Snape assured him dryly.

Remus sighed. "Do you know who these men were or where we could find them?"

"Don't know them to speak to, right enough. But if you try Nether Hexley farm, or ask at the garage off the Roman road just outside Hexley village. It's about six or seven miles that way." He pointed over his shoulder.

---

He slowly became aware of the sound of rain pattering above him and the whistle of a kettle coming to the boil, homely but somehow unfamiliar sounds. A chink of crockery told him someone was making a pot of tea and a cheerful bubbling noise coupled with the spicy smell of garam masala said that person was also cooking curry. This didn't seem to fit with where he'd been. But then he realised he didn't know where that was. He opened his eyes.

He was lying on a bunk in what looked like some sort of caravan. A small woman, her waist length grey hair, secured in pigtails was standing in the galley kitchen pouring tea into a mug from a bright green china teapot. He didn't have a clue who she was.

She turned round; saw he was awake, and smiled, blue eyes crinkling. "Feeling better?"

He'd been ill? "I suppose so," he croaked, suddenly surprised at how hoarse his voice was.

"If you sit up, you can drink your tea," the woman told him.

He pulled himself into a sitting position, wincing at a twinge in his shoulder and saw there was a large bandage wrapped round it. "What happened?" he demanded.

"Well, I thought you could tell me that!" replied the woman, her eyebrows flying up. She handed him her tea mug saying, "Careful it's hot." She poured herself another from the pot and sat down on the seat opposite his bunk.

"I'm Rose, by the way, and you're Sirius Black?" It was a question.

It sounded right somehow. "You know me?"

She chuckled. "You seem to be famous. My grandson found something about you on his computer thingy."

He hazarded a guess, "But not famous in a good way?"

She shook her head. "You can't remember?"

"I, no," he stammered to a stop, horrified at the black fog in his head.

Rose pursed her lips. "Could be a temporary side effect of the healing potion I gave you, or a simple reaction to events your mind can't handle any more."

"Healing potion?"

"Yes. When my grandson found you, you had a bullet in your shoulder. Wasn't doing you much good." She reached into her jeans pocket and pulled something out which she held out to him. "Here, a souvenir for you."

Sirius took the bullet and looked at it blankly for a moment. Suddenly he remembered pain slamming into his shoulder with such force it had knocked him over, and above everything the smell of blood. He struggled for more, but the images danced out of reach. He handed the bullet back, saying, "I don't really think I want to keep it."

Rose shrugged and put it back in her pocket. "You seemed quite anxious to find someone," she prompted, taking a sip of her tea.

As she said this a terrible sense of foreboding filled his mind. He shivered. "I don't remember," he said shortly.

Rose shrugged, accepting this even if she plainly didn't believe him. "I'll get your clothes."

Later, once he was up, wearing his frayed jeans and t-shirt, which appeared to have been washed, he realised he wasn't in a caravan at all, but a very old single decker bus. Peering through the windows he could see it was parked in a clearing beside a large stream. He sat at the table watching Rose potter around getting the dinner together and idly picked up an old book lying on it. The leather of its cover was so worn it was almost impossible to make out the title, so he opened it to the title page and read in a curly font, Magical Draughts and Potions and underneath, the author's name, Arsenius Jigger. Seeing the book brought a flash of memory, sitting in a classroom trying to stay awake as an elderly teacher droned on about the best way to chop leeches. He flicked through the pages, but soon put it down.

He looked up to see Rose staring at him, an odd expression in her eyes. "You know the book?"

Sirius shrugged. "Used it at school." he looked at the book again and commented, "Although this is such an old edition, it might be worth something. Where did you get it?"

"In a second hand book shop somewhere, a long time ago."

Just then, someone pushed the door of the bus open and clambered up the steps, saying, "Gran, is dinner nearly ready? I'm famished!" A gangly boy in his mid teens appeared.

Rose looked at him, "And you're telling me you didn't stock up on hamburgers when you went into town this morning?"

Before he could reply to this, the boy noticed Sirius sitting at the table and his jaw dropped. "Bloody hell, mate! You were half dead this morning!"

Sirius grinned at the boy's amazement, as Rose exclaimed, "Don't be rude, boy!" She turned to Sirius, "This as you probably have gathered is my grandson, Finn."

"Uh, hi," he said to the boy, "I hear I have you to thank for saving my life."

Finn looked excruciatingly embarrassed as any teenager would. He mumbled something that might have been, "No problem." But it was hard to tell.

Rose's curry was very good. Even if it hadn't been, Sirius would have cleared his plate three times over. He was that hungry.

Even the boy, Finn seemed to think it was good. Then, wiping up the last of his rice with a chapatti he asked, "So, when are we going to find Moony?"

A dam broke in Sirius' mind.

TBC...