Stag Night

Stag Night

~ XI ~

Dogfight

“The spell on the tiger’s pretty elementary,” James pointed to the stone beast with his wand as if he were lecturing a class, “and not all that different from the one on the gargoyle outside Dumbledore’s office.”

“Well, we got it to sing Christmas carols one year,” Peter said brightly.

“But we never did figure out how to get past it into Dumbledore’s office,” retorted Sirius.  He walked around the tiger, staring at the stone plinth upon which the enormous paws rested.  “Hmmm.  There could be a door underneath, I suppose.  Maybe there’s a password, except then, what’s the key for? And it’s no bloody good asking you,” Sirius gave Peter an offhanded shove, “because you didn’t think to ask your idiot of a brother, not that he’s smart enough to remember the odd password here and there.”

“The fountain’s more interesting,” said James and all three turned toward the round pool of dark water, just a meter in diameter, with the fountain bubbling quietly in the center and occasionally playing little tunes when the water splashed onto unseen chimes.

“At least it has a lot more spells on it. That’s promising,” concluded Sirius.  “I wonder if the water’s real.  Go on, Peter, stick your hand in and tell us.”

“Um, okay,” stammered Peter.  He was always the one who got “volunteered” for this sort of thing.  It wasn’t really fair.  Except that tonight he wanted to stop all the squabbling in the hopes that a calmer environment would make it easier to chat with James or Sirius about the wedding.  So, he bit back his irritation and leaned over the surface of the water. 

“No reflection,” James murmured.

“It just means he’s a vampire,” said Sirius shortly. “Get on with it,”

Peter’s fingertips vanished utterly when he slid them into the blackness.  Limitless blackness.  It was numbingly cold and decidedly unwet. Ceaseless night. The more he pushed, the harder it became.  Things moving unseen in the dark, closer, closer. And the ice turned to fire. Hidden eyes, gaping jaws.  The pain was real.  He had to get out, had to--

Sirius grabbed Peter’s trembling shoulders and yanked him back from the pool.  Peter was sweating heavily as he gripped his trembling wrist with the other hand.

“Wh-whatever that is, it isn’t water,” Peter gulped, while trying not to hyperventilate.

“A hex? Let’s see that hand, Peter.” James waved a wand over Peter’s useless hand.  “Doesn’t look like Dark magic.  You’d almost think there was a Transfiguration spell here, but it’s not quite right.  Sirius?”

Before Sirius could answer, Remus said quietly, “The Transfiguration spell looks odd because it’s a three-way… at least.  Evidently the whatever-it-is has been transfigured and can take on more than one form. And then there’s another spell overlaid on top of that, the one that got Peter.”

“Oh, it’s alive,” said Sirius sarcastically.  “I thought you’d bloody turned to stone.  You might give us a hand here.”

“I didn’t think you needed any help from me.”  Remus shrugged. 

Sirius glared at him.  He didn’t understand Remus sometimes.  It hadn’t been like that before, when they were all at school.  Sure, they’d have fights, especially the poundings that James gave him (or he gave James), but those were easy to resolve and over things that he understood.  Should they explore the Forbidden Forest or the caves on the mountain past Hogsmeade?  Should they plant dungbombs outside the Slytherin common room before or after dinner?

Easy questions--and Sirius had understood where his friends stood on the answers.

Since they’d left school, James and Peter were much the same as before; jobs and life outside Hogwarts castle hadn’t changed them much.  But Remus was another matter.  He got harder to fathom with his long absences and his reluctance to tell Sirius where he had been and whom he had seen.  Remus’s life was no bed of roses, Sirius knew that, but most of the wizarding world wasn’t in such great shape either because of the killings and the disappearances.  Remus would never show it, though, not old Mr. Cool himself.  On this holiday of his, for example, Sirius was certain that something had happened.

“And why are you so sure there’s no Dark Magic?” Sirius growled in response.  “For all we know, we could have stumbled into the wrong entrance to Tigerseye, the one that turns clueless blokes like us into turnips.”

“Oh, I forgot.  You’re an expert on Dark Magic, almost an Auror, right? Or maybe it just runs in the family.” Remus gave a dry cough, which almost sounded like a laugh, and carefully put his wand back into his jacket.

Sirius fumed.  Remus knew better than to remind him about the Blacks.  Of course, Sirius wanted to be an Auror. Remus just had to bring that up, too, couldn’t give it a rest, even tonight.  He got angry all over again every time he thought about the letter, the letter that he’d twice torn up and twice magically mended.  He kept it stuffed inside a book on Disfiguring Charms at his flat, but he didn’t need to see it to remember the words.

Dear Mr Black:

We regret to inform you that your application for the position of Auror, received in this office on 17 May 1978, will not be considered at this time.  If we have need of someone with your talents and background in the future, we shall not hesitate to contact you.  The Department of Magical Law Enforcement commends you on your public-spirited enthusiasm and support for the Ministry’s efforts to maintain law and order in our community.

Most sincerely yours,
Bartemius Crouch, Sr.
Head of Department, Magical Law Enforcement

The letter, the fucking idiotic letter from that fucking idiotic head of department, told him nothing.  According to discreet inquiries that James had made at the Ministry, Sirius was thought to be a security risk and too “precipitous”.  Sirius almost took off James’s head when he heard this.  The Ministry had heard about the incident with Snape and the Whomping Willow, of course, and there was the matter of the Death Eater with whom Sirius had had a brief and nearly fatal affair.  Perhaps he should have suspected from the outset that someone who looked that good in black leather had to be a Death Eater.  Anyone could make that sort of mistake. 

A word from Alastor Moody might open doors at the Ministry, though.  The old Auror seemed to think that Sirius was all right, after their first meeting, at least.  Not that working closely with Moody was any picnic, but they had come to an understanding of sorts, especially after the adventure of the paperwork.  Who’d have thought that paperwork could be so perilous? 

Midnight: a time when all decent folk were in bed.

If decent folk are all in bed, what does that make us? Sirius thought darkly as they turned off the thinly populated street and into a dark side alley. 

The local pubs were still full, spilling light and noise out into the night, but the shops in the threadbare commercial district were closed and shuttered. Street lamps threw pools of buttery yellow onto the cobblestones and the shadows of fluttering moths winked on and off like raindrops on hot pavement.  Outside the light was a land of silence and shadows.

“Oh, I really don’t think this is necessary,” Perkins said for about the tenth time. “I’ll finish the paperwork in the morning, really, and you’ll have it first thing.  It’s just so late and…”

“Tonight,” Moody said curtly.

Sirius stifled a yawn.  He tended to agree with Perkins, since he had to show up for work in a few hours. Moody was not to be budged on this point, however.

The Auror had managed somehow to get the approval for the charms and wards they’d use for the wedding from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement without the normal paperwork, which would be “like giving the rats the keys to the cheese cupboard,” Moody had said.  Sirius didn’t know all the strings that had been pulled, but the head of department, Crouch, had finally been convinced.  Dumbledore had had a hand in it, according to James, who’d sat in on a few meetings.  In the end, Dumbledore and Moody together had vouched for the safety of the wedding guests and Crouch had been willing to accept their word.

The Department of Magical Transportation was another matter.  Creating a Portkey hub required first filing a Portkey Terminus Request form, and then having the specific location inspected.  Without final approval, the wedding invitations would still work, but the Ministry would levy a stiff fine or maybe even shut down the ceremony.  They’d been cracking down on unauthorized Portkeys lately because of several well-publicized kidnapping cases. 

Moody didn’t trust Ebenezer Nott, head of Magical Transportation, so he had waited to file the paperwork until three days before the wedding, after Nott had left for a fortnight’s holiday.  James, meanwhile, had grown angrier with each passing day, worried that the lack of that final approval would ruin things.  And even once they did get approval, distributing all the Portkeys to the guests at the last minute would be difficult.  Sirius wondered whether the Auror’s paranoia had been justified.  Of course, paranoia was to be expected when dealing with Alastor Moody, but had it really been necessary?

Thus Perkins, the head of the Portkey Office in the Department of Magical Transportation hadn’t been happy when Moody and Sirius had appeared in his office at twelve minutes to five asking him to process the Portkey form.  He hadn’t been happy about the “quick trip” to visit the wedding site, which involved Apparating to several pubs in succession (to be fair, there was a bite to eat and a pint thrown in along the way) followed by a ride on a Sirius’s motorbike down many miles of narrow country roads followed by an hour’s walk through fields, ditches and brambles.

“Achoo!” 

Perkins got out a handkerchief and loudly blew his raw, red nose.  Although it was June, he wore a bright blue woolen scarf wrapped around his neck.  He was a middle-aged wizard, already slightly hunched in the shoulders with thinning brown hair combed over a bald spot on the top of his head.  He had probably looked middle-aged from about twenty onward and was rapidly moving toward looking positively ancient. 

“Tramping about fields in the night,” said Perkins with a shiver. “This will bode ill for my rheumatism.  Nothing good is going to come of this, mark my words.”

“’Twill do you good to get out of the office now and then for a bit of fresh air,” Moody said with an off-handed and manic cheerfulness.

“Humph.”  Perkins loudly blew his nose again.  “I’m allergic to hay.  Did I mention that?  And all the sheep dung, not to mention to mention those inconveniently placed standing st--“

“Hush!”  Moody said sharply.  “The less you say about tonight’s little excursion, the healthier it’ll be for you.  Ah, here we are.”

“Here” was apparently supposed to be Chow Lee’s Laundry, from the fading sign in both English and Chinese that hung above the door.  From the outside, the shop looked closed, but when Moody opened the door, light flooded the street and a wave of steamy air and noise hit them.  Stepping into the shop, they saw people laboring at inscrutable machines that groaned and hissed and gave off clouds of steam.  Above this din, voices carried on conversations in Chinese.  Perkins halted just inside the door, eyes wide and nose wrinkled in distaste, and began to sneeze violently.

“Come on, then,” Moody yelled and grabbed the man roughly by the front of his cloak.  No one in the close room paid them any attention as Moody led the way through a battered swinging door, into a room filled with pale lumpy shapes, bags of laundry stacked from the dingy floor up to the low ceiling.  The door swung shut behind them and the relative coolness and silence was a welcome relief.  Moody stumped across the room to a battered metal door that was about shoulder-high and tapped it with his wand.  

“In you go,” he said with gruff cheer.  He pulled Perkins toward the door with one hand and then pushed him in from behind with the other.

“Wait!  You can’t do this!  Where are--”  Perkins wailed as Moody shoved him through the metal door and into the darkness beyond.

“We’re going into the Ministry by way of one of the maintenance entrances,” Moody said to Sirius.  “You next, lad.”

Sirius scrambled through the door before he too got a shove from behind.  It was completely dark and he found himself closed in by walls on a sloping metal surface, a chute of some kind.  Ahead in the darkness he thought he heard a crash and a cry from Perkins.  Marveling at the paranoia of the Auror, he propelled himself forward, down and into darkness.   Moody was right behind him and Sirius scrambled to get out of the way at the bottom of the chute, once he felt the floor disappear.  He landed on his feet, still in darkness, and pulled out his wand.

 “Lumos!” cried Sirius and Moody almost simultaneously.

The light from their wands revealed that Perkins had run afoul of a mop and bucket and was sprawled on the floor, struggling ineffectually to untangle himself.  Sirius cleared away the evil mop and helped Perkins to his feet.  They appeared to be in a small storeroom for cleaning supplies.

“There are other entrances to the Ministry,” Perkins sniffed as he brushed dust from his robes.  This brought on a fit of sneezing.

“Let’s get a move on,” Moody growled at Perkins, who was taking his time dabbing his nose with the handkerchief.  “No one wants to finish up with this more than me.”

“Oh, all right!” snapped the bureaucrat. “Do you mind telling me where we are?”

Moody didn’t answer.  Instead he opened the only other door and cautiously peered outside.  He was a few minutes at it; he’d taken out that mysterious magical eye that he kept close to him at all times and consulted it.  Sirius was still trying to understand how the thing worked and where Moody’d gotten it.

“It’s clear here,” Moody concluded and motioned for the other two to exit, “but let’s be quiet about getting downstairs.”

“It was so much better when they let us Apparate inside the building,” Perkins sniffed as he stood looking around the corridor. “But with all the troubles, I suppose we can’t allow that any more.  Still, one does get lost so frequently….”

“We’re on the second floor now and, yes, I know where your bleeding office is,” Moody grunted and gave the man a gentle poke with his wand.

Perkins gave a long-suffering sigh and followed Moody down the corridor.  Sirius brought up the rear with his wand out, staring into shadowy corners and through the windows of darkened offices.  As they walked along the corridor, the candles set in wall sconces burst into flame, only to extinguish themselves once the men passed by.  The effect was that of darkness constantly nipping at their heels as the candles behind them winked out.  They went down a flight of stairs, along a corridor with four or five jogs that confused Sirius’s sense of direction, then went down three more flights of stairs, and then took several more turns along a corridor on the sixth floor.

“Aha! Here we are,” said Perkins triumphantly, as if Moody had been leading them astray up until this point.

“Shhhh.” 

Moody stopped and motioned for the others to halt as well.  After a long pause, which he slowly turned around, looking and listening intently, he said, “Something doesn’t feel right.” 

“Nonsense,” said Perkins loudly and he marched to a door at the end of the corridor.  Lights flared on the walls around him as he unlocked the office door.   

Sirius barely had time to read Portkey Office in gold letters on the door’s opaque window before something came at them fast, two dark streaks that shot out of a side passageway like Dobermans chasing their prey.

And Perkins was the prey.

Sirius dived toward Perkins just as a curse hit him, causing the man to crumple next to the door.  Sirius dragged him into the office and kicked the door shut.  Behind him, he heard the crackling of more curses in the air.

“Oooooooh.  My legs!  I can’t f--Oh, somebody do something!” Perkins moaned.

The candles in the office lit themselves, showing the bureaucrat sitting in a heap on the floor, whimpering and clutching his legs.

“Stay here,” Sirius growled as he scrambled to his feet.  “Hide under a desk or something.”

“But my legs!” Perkins wailed

“Jellylegs Jinx.  Get out of sight or you’ll be in for worse.”

Perkins gave Sirius a single terrified glance before dragging himself under a nearby desk.  Once he was satisfied that the frightened man would be out of the line of fire, Sirius opened the door and stepped out into the corridor.  He used a quick locking spell, hoping it would hold up the fight didn’t go well.

The air crackled with hellish intensity and smoke filled the corridor as curses flew back and forth.  The walls were scorched with hex-marks.  Through the murk, Sirius made out the Auror’s dragonhide boots.  With that point of reference, he figured out where Moody was sending his curses and launched one of his own in the direction of their attackers.   A strangled cry of pain told him that he hadn’t missed.

“Two of them!” Sirius heard an unfamiliar voice yell.  He ran through a cloud of acrid smoke and nearly collided with Moody who was breathing heavily, but seemed otherwise unharmed.

“Took your bleeding time, boy. I’m knee-deep in shite here and--”

Black cloaks billowed as two forms burst out of the haze and raced away from them, the candles on the walls coming to life in their wake. Sirius and Moody gave chase.  They slowed down only when the corridor turned to the right.  One of their attackers -- they could hear his labored breathing as they approached -- flung open a stairwell door to the left and disappeared, leaving a bloody streak behind.

“Go! Take that one!”  Moody didn't wait for answer.  Instead he hurled a hex at the other black figure pelting down the corridor and gave chase.

The stairwell was pitch black after the door to the corridor closed with a loud bang.  Either there were no magical candles or the man had disabled them.  Sirius hesitated for a moment, itching to transform.  Padfoot was much better suited to hunting in the dark, but he dared not let Moody, or anyone else, see a large black dog running through the corridors of the Ministry.  So, he listened with his imperfect human ears. 

There.  Below.   A snatch of hoarse breathing.  Then silence.

They seemed to be playing a game of cat-and-mouse, but Sirius couldn’t allow his prey to use the stairwell to enter one of the other floors.  Finding him would be nearly impossible, once he got back into the labyrinthine corridors. Sirius shifted the wand to his left hand and felt for the railing with his right.  He recalled from the trip up to the fourth floor that the stairs spiraled and had broad marble handrails.  The mouse had to be caught soon, but Sirius was no cat.  There’d be no silent stalking of the prey for this dog.

With a violent cry that echoed above and below, Sirius swung onto the top of the rail and launched himself downward, feet first.  Light flared from the landing below as the door opened and the black-cloaked figure staggered into the corridor.  The landing was fast approaching.  Sirius leapt from the railing, not thinking about how he was going to land.  His concern was the door that was closing and the man on the other side of it.

“Stupefy!” he cried and let loose a stunning spell through the partly open door.

His boots skidded when they hit the polished marble of the landing.  He pulled in his legs and rolled, pushing the door open with his shoulder.  He tumbled onto the floor of the corridor and on top of the figure in black, who lay sprawled on the floor face-down and struggled weakly beneath him.  The stunning spell had not been completely effective, but enough so that the other wizard didn’t get up immediately when Sirius stood, wand pointed down at him.

“Expelliarmus!”   Sirius panted.  He’d had lots of practice with this particular spell and had learned to make it work no matter how tired or injured he might be.  The other wand flew up and Sirius caught it. 

The Dark wizard was slow to get up.  By this time, Sirius knew in his gut that Moody was not being overly paranoid and that the two attackers were servants of Lord Voldemort.  The fallen man turned over and shakily got to his feet, swaying drunkenly.  There was a small gash on his cheek and a larger wound on one of his shoulders.  Underneath his cloak, the black robes were torn at the shoulder; blood seeped into the fabric, making a wet circle around the wound.  Beneath a layer of soot mixed with blood, the face was young and fair, framed by a head of blond curls.

He can’t be much older than I am, Sirius thought.  Somehow it would have been better to stand before a veteran opponent, one who had chosen Darkness long ago, who had hardened himself to murder and torture over many years.

“Can you walk?”

“I’m not walking for you, fooker,” came the reply in a guttural Irish accent.  Hard blue eyes -- old eyes full of hate -- stared back at him.

“If that’s the way you want it,” Sirius shrugged, then added, “fucker.” 

Thin cords shot out from the end of Sirius’s wand and wrapped themselves around the man’s ankles.  The prisoner winced in pain as more cords bound his arms tightly against his chest, but he didn’t speak.  He continued to glare silently as Sirius levitated him into the stairwell and up one flight of stairs. 

At the door to the fourth floor, Sirius hesitated.  He ended the levitation spell.  The other wizard dropped to the landing with a heavy thud and groaned softly.  Ignoring him, Sirius cracked open the door but heard no sounds and saw no hints of magical energy being released.  Whether those were good signs, he knew not.

“Declan, get him!” shouted the bound man suddenly as Sirius opened the door further.

Sirius had time for the briefest of glances down the corridor before he pulled the door closed.  In that time, he’d seen two figures about ten meters from the stairs, one lying on the floor and the other standing.  Which was which?

“You want to get out there with your mate?  Suits me fine.”  He levitated the man once again and pushed him toward the door.  This time the other man wasn’t going to go quietly.  He squirmed against his bonds and began shouting hoarsely as the door swung open.

“Well, well.  We really want to get out, don’t we?”   Alastor Moody stood grinning like a triumphant Kneazle that had just caught a tasty morsel.  Sirius let out a long breath of gratitude.  Moody gave a perfunctory nod and turned around.

“I don’t think you’ll be so joyful when you see the state your mate’s in,” he called over his shoulder as he limped slowly down the corridor toward the motionless body that lay on the floor.

“You made quick work of it, lad,” Moody said thickly as Sirius approached with his floating prisoner.  He clapped Sirius on the shoulder, but didn’t let go. 

“Are you all right?” Sirius said.  Moody was leaning heavily on him.  Sirius noticed then that the Auror’s robes were tattered from the knees on down and that one of his boots was ripped to shreds.  Blood oozed out from between the slashed leather.

Moody ignored the question, pointing to the bound wizard.  “And who might you be, boyo?”

The young man didn’t answer. He still floated upright because of the levitation spell.  His eyes darted from Moody to the motionless man lying on the floor.  Stunned?  Dead?  Sirius couldn’t tell.

“There’s no hope for your friend, but--”

“Go ahead and kill me too, you bastard!  You can kill a hundred of us, a thousand of us, and it won’t make any difference.  It won’t stop the Dark Lord from taking you all!”  The man’s face contorted and he spat, hitting Moody on the shoulder. 

“Stun him,” Moody said as he wiped the spit from his robes.

Sirius let the man drop to the floor and then called out, “Stupefy.”  His hand shook as he carried out the Auror’s instructions.

“Death Eaters, both of them,” Moody said, still leaning on Sirius.  “Not local boys, though.  I reckon they were brought over because they’re not known in these parts.  Someone figured it’d be easier to get them into the Ministry that way.  And they were obviously watching Magical Transportation, waiting for us.  An inside job, I’d say.  Ah, here comes the cavalry.”

Three cloaked wizards had burst from the stairwell, each yelling out something different.  In the momentary confusion, Sirius asked, “You didn’t--Is he--Is that one… dead?”

“What?”  Moody chortled, although the laughter seemed to cost him something.  He grimaced and put more of his weight on Sirius.  “No, just a Deep Sleep spell.  Now, me, I don’t think we ought to sink to their level, though my fellow Aurors,” he gave a slight nod toward the three newcomers who now clustered around them, “don’t always agree.  The boyo didn’t have to know that, though, did he?”

They found Perkins hiding under the desk as he’d been ordered.  After helping him into a chair and reversing the jinx that had turned his legs to gelatin, Moody insisted that he complete the Portkey form.  The Auror’s face was drained of its normal color and he had to prop himself up on the desk for support.  Sirius wondered how long the man could go on without passing out, but Moody seemed to have a single-minded determination to finish with Perkins.

“There.  Done.  Three copies signed.”  Perkins’s shaking hand laid down the quill.  He took one copy of the form and put it into a drawer, snapping the drawer shut with a show of irritation. “I have had quite enough for one evening, thank you very much, and I should like to go home now.”

“Think that’s wise, do you?”  Moody said as he pocketed the other two copies of the precious form.  “You might consider a little holiday… like your boss.”

“What do you mean?” Perkins said suspiciously as he stood, eyeing the door.

“Well, someplace warm and dry might be… better for your health, at least until this wedding’s over.  I wouldn’t want to see a repeat of tonight’s events, would you?”

Perkins squeaked in terror and sat down again.  Meanwhile Moody was rummaging through the pockets of his robe.

“Spain,” he said, taking out a clinking leather sack and shoving it toward Perkins.  “North Africa, even.  Yes… ever been to Morocco?”

“All secure, Alastor.”  Frank Longbottom entered.  He was one of the three Aurors that had belatedly responded to the alarms set off by the magical dueling in the corridors.

“Mr. Perkins needs an escort home, Frank. Help him pack for his holiday and see that he gets off safely.” Moody sighed and motioned Sirius to his side.  “Ah, there’s a good lad.  I’ll need some help getting to St. Mungo’s.”

“About bloody time,” Sirius muttered as he threw an arm around Moody’s waist and helped him out the door.  The Auror could barely stand up by himself.

“All in a night’s work,” grunted Moody.

They didn’t speak again until they had made it into the lift; Moody did not insist on taking the stairs this time.  “You still think you want to be an Auror, son?” he said, fighting to catch his breath.  A sheen of sweat coated his face, which was deathly white.

Sirius thought about the blond Irishman, about the dead eyes, about the face full of hatred.  “More than anything,” he said softly.

“Well, I haven’t cashed in all my chips yet.  People still owe me a few favors hereabouts.  Perhaps there’s something that can be done about it.”  The old Auror paused, and Sirius himself felt the spasm of pain pass through him.  “Now get me to hospital before I bleed to death.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~