The Dog's Tale

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

It wasn’t unusual to find Sirius Black dressed in Muggle clothing and having a beer in a Muggle pub, but the nearly full glass, that was unusual, and sitting alone at a table near the door, that was unusual.  Of course, the person who’d arranged to meet him here at the Druid’s Folly was rather unusual, too.  And he was late.

Sirius toyed with his pint.  In last ten minutes, the pub had filled with a noisy evening crowd, standing elbow-to-elbow at the bar and occupying the ten or twelve tables in the public room.  Behind the bar a large sign read, “Guinness is good for you”, a sentiment that Sirius heartily agreed with as he sipped his own pint of Guinness.  He felt out of place here, but not because he didn’t know anyone.  On any other night, given any other excuse to visit a pub, that wouldn’t be a problem.  He’d be up at the bar or playing darts or chatting up a girl.  But tonight he wasn’t supposed to get distracted.  He was supposed to meet someone--who was late.

The door opened and Sirius got another soggy wave of the April damp. Although there was a fire burning across the room, from his seat next to the door he didn’t share in the warmth.  After determining that the newcomer, a skinny bloke who looked barely old enough to drink legally, wasn’t the one, he pulled the collar of his jacket up to his chin and looked darkly around the room.  He didn’t think he needed help with the wedding arrangements, but a word in James’s ear from Dumbledore had sealed his fate, pushed him into this uncomfortable corner.  He felt trapped in the way he’d been sixth year, when Snape and his gang had locked him in the second floor bathroom with a hornets’ nest that they’d managed to smuggle into school.

Maybe he’s already here, just hiding somewhere, Sirius thought.  From what he knew about this fellow, the one who was already--he checked his watch--twelve minutes late, he was cautious, bordering on paranoid.

A disguise? Not many witches or wizards were comfortable mixing with Muggles.  Sirius prided himself on his abilities in that regard.  An Auror, one of the top Aurors at the Ministry by all accounts, could pull it off.  There weren’t any other solitary drinkers like himself, though; everyone in the mixed crowd of farmers and the more well dressed sort seemed to belong, at least to watch them laugh and talk with one another. 

The hubbub made him itch to dive in.  He took a drink instead.  Then another.  Fifteen minutes late.

The girls at the next table seemed authentic, he decided after he set down his half-empty glass.  The three of them, all wearing rather short skirts, whispered and sniggered amongst themselves.  Sirius appraised their bare legs.  Unless Polyjuice Potion were involved, these too were genuine.  One of them, a blonde wearing purple lipstick, caught his eye.  He knew that look.  He stared back at her and the chase was on.

Except Sirius couldn’t--not tonight.  He was waiting for the bloody Auror who was seventeen bloody minutes late.

He concentrated on the dart players across the room, trying to follow the game and wishing he could join in. The next time he looked at the table next to his, Purple Lipstick’s friends were getting up, making giggly comments about powdering their noses.  Then she was alone, and she gave him that look.

A word or two won’t do any harm, Sirius thought as he got up.  He might be back at this pub a few times before the wedding and it was always good to know the locals, especially the female locals.

“Not from around here, are you?” She looked up at him from underneath heavily made-up eyelashes.

“Stopped by for a drink...on my way to see my cousin in, er, Froxfield.” 

“You got a car, then?”

“Motorbike.” Sirius jammed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and shrugged, as if it were no big deal.

“I’ve always wanted to ride a motorbike, but me dad thinks they’re too dangerous.” She twirled a strand of hair in her fingers while looking him up and down carefully. “What’s your name, then? I’m Annie.”

“Sid.”

“Well, Sid,” she began with a giggle, but changed her mind and went on in a conspiratorial tone, “I hope that bloke over there is a friend of yours, or else he might nick your pint.”  She gave a suggestive look toward something or someone behind him and whispered, “He doesn’t look too friendly to me.”

“Huh?” Sirius turned around in confusion and there, sitting at the table next to the door, twenty minutes late, was Alastor Moody.

“Shit,” Sirius muttered to himself.  He flashed her a brief smile. “Better see what this bloke wants with my pint.  Yeah, maybe I’ll see you later.” 

There was only one chair at the table next to the door and it was now occupied.  With no place to sit, Sirius looked down at the man. 

“You’re late.”

Moody sat, back to the wall, his legs jutting out in such a way that anyone coming near would have to give him a wide berth.  He wore muddy boots and above them, a pair of mud-splattered trousers.  His wild, dark hair was streaked with gray and his face had the weather-beaten appearance of a farmer who spent a lot of time out of doors; yet a closer look at the leathery skin tattooed with oddly shaped scars didn’t quite fit with that vocation, unless the farmer frequently got tangled in the blades of his thresher or had been mauled by the swine more than once.

“And you’ve got bollocks for brains,” Moody replied softly with a distinct Northern accent.  He yanked a chair away from a nearby table, glaring at the table’s occupants who had a few choice words for him, and motioned Sirius to sit.  “You’d do well to keep away from the skirts, laddie.”

Sirius had the urge to yell something back at him, famous Auror or not, but this wouldn’t get them off to a good start, so he reached for his glass and took a drink instead. 

“Just checking out the locals, you know.”  He set the empty glass down with a challenging thunk.  “No harm in that, is there?”

Moody narrowed his beady eyes thoughtfully.  “’Harm? I’d say it’s dangerous to do your thinking with what’s in your trousers instead of what’s in your head.”

Sirius opened his mouth to speak, but couldn’t.  The room grew dim and spun around him as if he were being sucked into a whirlpool of blacker-than-night nothingness.  His head hit the table.  Somewhere far away, someone laughed.

Damp, wet, dark.  And still spinning.  Sirius took a deep breath, trying to find order in the chaos inside his head, and then opened his eyes.  He lay outside under a cloudy night sky.  The ground beneath him was wet and squishy.  His jeans were soaked. 

He groaned, hands clutching his head, and then sat up.  How long had be been lying there?  His motorbike, seemingly unharmed, stood nearby in front of a dark wall, faintly illuminated by a distant source behind him.  Not a wall, a hedge.  This was the field where he’d left the bike after casting a Muggle-repelling charm as well as several spells meant to deter wizards. 

At least it wasn’t raining anymore.

Sirius got to his feet and turned around cautiously. He wasn’t alone. Light from the village formed a halo behind Moody so that his face was in shadow.  Never mind the face. Even without being able to see the expression, Sirius knew that it wasn’t a cheerful grin. 

“Never turn your back on a drink, lad, else someone’ll put something far worse than a sleeping potion in your pint. Constant vigilance.”  Moody took a silver flask from inside his jacket and raised it in salute before taking a swig.

Bloody hell.  Not off to a very good start, are we? Sirius thought as he brushed grass and mud from his jacket. His breath hovered in front of his face, diamond-like drops condensing in the damp, chilly air.

Moody capped the flask and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.  He put the flask back in his jacket and said in a deep, rumbling voice, “Ah, that’s better. Now, where were we?  Yes...  Dumbledore, he asks me to help with Potter’s wedding.  Concerned about the security, he is, about the safety of one hundred and thirty-seven guests, sitting ducks for some nasty business if things are not…secure.  And how could the Dark Lord resist, when Potter and Evans want to get married in the middle of a bleeding sheep field at noon on the summer solstice?” 

Sirius shrugged. All this was obvious.

“Potter says his best man’s going to see to the security, like it was some little party thrown by overeager students in their common room.  Now, I told Dumbledore that if Potter wants to get himself and a few close friends cursed to pieces, that’s fine by me.  But there’s a lot more at stake here, isn’t there?”

The wedding of the decade, James liked to call it with his usual cheeky pride.  And James had a right to be proud. Lily was more than a “good catch”, as the Hogwarts gossips had labeled her after the engagement had been made public (though not within earshot of Lily or James). Lily was what James needed.  Sirius couldn’t come up with a better way to express it because he didn’t understand all that passed between those two.  He knew James; until recently, he would have said that he knew James better than anyone on earth.  And that meant that he knew the effect that Lily had on James; he could feel it at a gut level every time he saw them together, even if he didn’t understand it.

There was a lot at stake, not only James’s happiness, but also the spirit of the entire wizarding world, in a way.  In these dark times when people didn’t go out much, didn’t gather together in large numbers for fear of attack, holding an open celebration like this was blatant defiance of Lord Voldemort ’s campaign to terrorize and divide the magical community.  If they pulled it off, the wedding would stand out like a blazing torch that refused to be extinguished.

“Who’s coming to this thing, eh?”  Moody continued.  “Five Aurors, the heads of three departments at the Ministry and most of the Hogwarts teaching staff.  Quite a prize for the Dark Lord, I’d say.”

“Well, of--“ Sirius stopped, suddenly irritated for sounding so conciliatory.  All right, that was the politically acceptable thing to do, but he was couldn’t, or wouldn’t.  He crossed his arms stiffly and began again.  “Look, if you don’t want to do this, it’s fine with me. The location is a secret. And as for security, James and I can handle--”

“Handle what?” Moody snorted.  He walked slowly around Sirius. “You couldn’t even meet me in a Muggle pub without getting yourself all bollixed up.  Do you know how many ways you could have been ambushed tonight by a clever wizard with a mind for mischief? And as for keeping it secret, well I don’t put much stock in the secrets that people keep.  Sooner or later, someone somewhere will let something slip.”

Sirius continued to glare at him, angrier and angrier, but afraid to speak for what he might say, for what trouble he might cause for himself as well as for James.

“Good at security, are you? Let’s have a look at this motorbike.”  Moody reached into his shirt pocket.  He pulled out a wad of leather and unwrapped it to reveal a large glass eye that rolled around in his open palm, quivering curiously.  He pointed at the bike and stared down at the eye, concentrating on something that Sirius couldn’t see.

“Ah, Muggle-repelling charm, of course.  Easy to break,” Moody muttered.  Without taking his gaze away from the queer third eye, he produced a wand from somewhere.  There was a swish in the air, red sparks flew out of the wand and the motorbike glowed faintly for an instant.  “Let’s see… What else?  A few other spells besides.   Hmmm.  That one… yes, certainly decent, well executed, not so easy to break.”

Sirius shifted his feet uncomfortably.  The muddy field was slowly swallowing his boots.   He didn’t like the game this Auror was playing, didn’t like being dressed down as if he were a talentless first year back at school.

Moody, meanwhile, had put away his magical eye and was circling the motorbike with his wand held stiffly out.  The bike’s polished black metal winked at Sirius as the other wizard’s shadow played across the chrome and steel body.  Sirius stepped closer, trying to catch the words of muttered incantations.  Moody paid no attention to him, too intent on spell breaking. 

Red, orange, and blue sparks shot from the wand, but these fizzled and died before reaching the bike.  Moody lowered his wand and stepped back, arms folded. 

Not as easy as you thought, eh? Sirius smirked and crossed his arms, unconsciously echoing the Auror’s stance.

For a moment, the muddy field was silent as both men contemplated the large black motorbike glowing faintly from the distant lights, the prize in an undeclared war that had sprung up between the two of them as naturally as ice on the surface of a pond in winter. 

Moody grunted and his head was suddenly wreathed in a luminous cloud of foggy breath. He nodded to himself, raised the wand and murmured one final incantation.  This time no sparks flew, but the surface of the motorbike, from handlebars to tailpipe, glowed white for a few seconds.  There was crackling in the air as of distant fireworks, followed by a single Pop! 

“Decent piece of spell work, that.”  Moody broke the silence after he lowered his wand.  He nodded to Sirius, and then put the wand away. “Combining an amnesia spell with hexes for boils, nausea and blindness was nice, very nice.  Not many wizards could get past all of that.”

Sirius didn’t reply.  His arms had remained tightly folded across his chest throughout Moody’s demonstration of spell-breaking technique.

Moody reached out to pat the motorbike and said, “Now, lad, the--”  He gave a strangled cry, his hand convulsively clutching one of the handlebars.  He seemed stuck.

Sirius paid scant attention to Moody himself, but took one long stride toward the bike and swung his leg as if to kick the engine.   Instead of hitting the bike, however, he hooked his foot under a small loop of wire and tugged.

In an instant, Moody stopped struggling.  He jerked his hand away from the motorbike so violently that he fell backward.

“You might have mentioned that last spell,” Moody growled up at Sirius from a muddy spot on the ground. 

“Not a spell.”  Sirius extended a hand and helped the other man to his feet.

“What the hell was it, then?”  Moody flexed the fingers of one hand, which were moving in a rather random spasmodic dance.

“Extra battery wired to the…that is, electricity.  It’s a Muggle sort of thing,” Sirius finished quickly.  While he was proud of his cleverness, the scowl on Moody’s face was turning nasty.  And the man was legendary for his nastiness.  They were supposed to work together on security for the wedding, so Sirius had better not push any further.

“Is that so?  I want to hear more about this.”  Moody gave a final shake to the affected hand and seemed satisfied with it.  With a sharp laugh, he slapped Sirius on the back and said, “We’ve got some work to do, laddie.”

The sky was dazzlingly overcast.  The glare came from all directions at once, defying anyone to detect the true position of the sun. 

Sirius was glad for the sunglasses, part of the disguise as an elderly Scottish tourist that Moody had decreed for today’s reconnaissance.  He wouldn’t want to be seen by anyone he knew, disguised as he was, but whom could he possibly know here in this landscape of sheep and Muggle tourists?  His own mother wouldn’t recognize him wearing these large plastic sunglasses, the sort favored by old Muggles, which fit with the gray hair, the baggy pants and the godawful plaid Tam o’ Shanter.

They stood in a large field, a flat expanse of bright green turf bounded by the village on one side and by clumps of dark green trees on the others.  A narrow country lane bisected the field.  The fences running alongside the little track kept sheep on one side of the lane and tourists on the other.  On this Saturday afternoon in May, the tourists had come not to see the sheep, which were quite ordinary, but to see the standing stones, remnants of ancient Britain and of an ancient magic, although the lingering magic in the stones was not evident to all.  Scattered about the field, the lumpy gray pillars of rock stood upright like great troll-like shepherds.  Some tourists picnicked; others, like the two disguised wizards, strolled.  One energetic young Muggle, wearing a flowing, multi-colored robe, had climbed on top of one of the stones and sat cross-legged, playing a guitar and singing off-key.

Moody too was dressed as an elderly Scottish gentleman, complete with a bright green and red kilt and a scraggly white beard that would have looked better on a goat.  The disguised Auror shuffled along slowly, leaning heavily on a battered black cane in a convincing imitation of an octogenarian.  The hollow cane was not only part of the disguise, but also held Moody’s wand.  Public use of magic amongst so many Muggles was not legal, of course.  However, the Auror, ever fearful of Dark wizards, wanted to be ready for trouble. 

“Aye, there’s the heart of it,” a white-haired Moody said softly.  As part of his disguise, he had abandoned his slight, but unmistakable, Geordie accent in favor of a Scottish brogue. 

He held the hand-drawn map close to his face, pretending to be near-sighted so that no casual stroller could see the symbols covering the piece of parchment.  Those symbols would have looked exceedingly odd to any of Muggles around them, though perfectly understandable to most wizards.  The map was needed because Moody was concerned about where to place the wards and Muggle-repelling charms to take full advantage of the native magic, while James wanted the ceremony itself, which would need a certain amount of magical energy, to be right at the center of the old magic. 

Sirius and James had worked together for two weeks on the map, an hour or two after dark on most days when they could inconspicuously survey the patterns of magical energy that still resided in the ancient stones.  Although the task wasn’t as challenging as creating the Marauder’s Map, Sirius had enjoyed it for the fun of working with James.  Almost as if they could read each other’s minds, they’d often come to the same conclusion at lightning-fast speed.  That made the mapmaking seem less like work than play.

But where was James today?  Off with Lily picking out cake decorations for the wedding, or something equally stupid, leaving Sirius to deal with the fake Scotsman.

“Too many people here,” Sirius said in a low voice audible only to Moody.  “I don’t see why we need to do this in broad daylight.”

“Accent, boy, you’re forgetting your accent,” Moody whispered harshly. 

“Fuckingridiculous,” Sirius muttered to himself.  He’d been talked into wearing the disguise and into spraying some weird Muggle stuff on his hair to turn it gray, but he wasn’t going to put on an accent as well.  Not that he couldn’t do it.  When he was up north, Sirius could get along tolerably well in most Scottish dialects, except perhaps Glaswegian.  Given the kind of pubs that he liked to visit, he didn’t fancy being called a “focking English wanker” by the Scottish locals.  

“Magic’s not the same at night as it is under full sun.  You’ve got to know these things, else the wards and charms won’t work properly,” Moody said, shaking head slightly, as if talking to a slow child.  “Ah, here we are.”  He stopped and pointed his cane at a nondescript patch of turf.  “Time for lunch.”

They had come to the magical nexus, a patch of short springy turf that had no stone or other marking.  There was nothing to see because the invisible magic from the surrounding standing stones converged at that point.  Sirius stared at him sullenly, then reluctantly laid out the red and green tartan blanket that Moody had handed to him when they’d first met up earlier in the day.

The field was quiet except for the occasional swell of conversation from one group of tourists or another, the incessant buzzing of flies, and the cracked and reedy voice of the guitar-playing Muggle.  Moody made a big show of sitting down, as befitted his elderly persona.  Once seated, he surveyed the surrounding field unhurriedly.  Satisfied, he nodded to himself and then shoved the wicker picnic basket that he’d brought toward Sirius.  He spread the map on the blanket and concentrated on its multicolored lines and symbols.

Sirius realized how hungry he’d become when he dug into the basket, which contained a roasted chicken, several apples and a wedge of Cheddar, all wrapped in an assortment of mismatched napkins.  There had been no time for a bite to eat this morning when he’d woken early--too early for his pounding head and unsettled stomach, the result of a bit too much to drink on Friday night--and then met Moody in Norwich, after which they’d taken a long, complicated path, Apparating and Disapparating through five different places and then finishing with a three-mile walk across the countryside. 

Paranoid bastard, Sirius thought as he tore off a chicken leg.  He was about to take a bite, but he stopped himself.

“Here,” he said, handing the piece of chicken to Moody.

The Auror looked up from the map.  “Thank you, lad.  Nice to see a bit of respect for your elders.”

Just making sure you’re not trying to poison me, old man.  Constant vigilance.

Respect and fear, Sirius had learned, were really two sides of the same coin. Only after Moody had taken a bite and was chewing away contentedly, did Sirius attack the rest of the chicken. 

“Nicely done, this map,” Moody said, pointing the chicken leg down at the parchment.  “Potter’s work mostly, is it?”

Sirius bristled at the obvious insult.  The ghost of a smile on Moody’s face angered him even more, but he swallowed his outrage along with the chicken and smiled back.  “James and I make a good team.”

“So I’ve heard from Dumbledore,” Moody chuckled.  “The headmaster says you’re both top-notch wizards.” 

Moody tossed the chicken bone into the wicker basket and wiped his hands on the moth-eaten woolen waistcoat he wore.  He took out the silver flask from the pocket of his shirt, uncapped it and took a long drink before continuing. 

“That temper of yours, boy, I’ve heard about quite a lot about it, too. Yes, I’ve read your file at the Ministry and it’s got quite a lot to say about your doings. You’re a powerful wizard and smart, sometimes too smart, if I read between the lines.  Your mistakes have cost you, though.  Some people reckon you’re insane, but I don’t think that puts you out of the running for a Ministry job.  Humph. Like that time with the werewolf--”

“That’s not sup--“ Sirius began.

“Yeah, I know.  It’s not supposed to be in your file, and I’m not saying it is there officially, but these things get around.”

“For Merlin’s sake,” Sirius said in what he hoped was a restrained tone, “Snape wasn’t entirely innocent.  That nasty little sneak was trying to get us into trouble and we thought, that is--“

Moody stared at him, his face more inscrutable than usual behind dark sunglasses.  Sirius grabbed the cheese from the basket and tore it in half, just to have something to do with his hands. 

 “--I thought it would be funny to…it was a sort of a joke.”

Snape had started it, after all.

Hogwarts, 1977

James sees him first.  Sirius and Peter are fighting over the trading card from the Chocolate Frog that Peter has just stuffed into his mouth.  They are, all three of them, hiding in the bushes near the Whomping Willow, waiting for the moon to rise after Remus has been escorted by Madam Pomfrey down into the secret tunnel.

“That dirty Slytherin bastard!” James hisses and tugs at Sirius’s robes.

“Where?” Sirius forgets about the card and scans the edge of the Forbidden Forest.  He sees a dark shape flitting between tree trunks, coming closer.  He too recognizes the hooked nose and long greasy black hair.

James is first to step out from behind their cover.  He and Snape had had it in for each other -- on and off the Quidditch pitch -- for years.

“You’d better get back to your dungeon, Snape,” James says, his wand pointed at the Slytherin standing a few meters away.

“Gryffindors out of bounds,” Snape hisses, drawing his own wand.  A familiar curl of the lip replaces the initial look of surprise. “Three…or is it four?”

Sirius doesn’t see who throws the first hex.  By the time he can get his wand into action, James and Snape have already traded curses.  James briefly sets Snape’s hair on fire.  This enrages the Slytherin, who lets loose a bolt of green from his wand. 

James falls to the ground ungracefully in a haze of green light.

“You’re in big trouble,” Peter stammers. “Dueling is against the rules!”

“Merely trying to defend myself,” pants Snape.  As he catches his breath, a smile of pure triumph blossoms on his face.  “Unauthorized dueling--Potter started it, you know.  And covering up for Lupin, no doubt.  Where’s he got to, I wonder?”

“Go tell the headmaster, then,” Sirius growls.  He’s shaking James.  Why won’t James wake up?  What has the slimy bastard done to him?

“The whole school would like to know, don’t you think?” Snape crows.  His wand is still pointed at the three of them.

Sirius glares venomously up at Snape.  He is holding James, whose head lolls heavily against his chest.

“You want to know where Remus is, you fucking piece of Slytherin shit?” Sirius laughs that crazy laugh that makes Peter and Remus nervous and sometimes worries James.

But James, who is in no condition to stop him, only moans and his eyelids flutter open. 

“Sirius, no!” Peter cries and tugs at Sirius’s sleeve, as if that could stop him.

Sirius shoves the smaller boy away.  His world is going dark, collapsing around him.  Suddenly it’s all so simple.

Even before they’d figured out how to join Remus under the full moon, they had all hated Snape.  “Oh, the look on his face if he could see those bloody great fangs,” Sirius would say and everyone, even Remus, would laugh because it was just a joke, a way to blow off steam when those Slytherins had done something and there was no paying them back, at least not right away.

Just a joke.

“You want to know where Remus is?” Sirius says hoarsely.  “Take that long stick, the one over there near the Whomping Willow, and poke at the big knot on the trunk.  Go on, you bastard, you might as well give us all detention.”

As soon as he says this, Sirius forgets about Snape.  His world is shrinking until there is only one bright, flickering light in danger of going out.

Peter jumps up and runs after Snape, who is striding toward the Whomping Willow.

“Don’t listen to him! Don’t!  You ca--“

Snape, an evil grin on his face, pushes Peter aside, knocking him to the ground.

“Ennervate,” Sirius half-chants, half-pleads. He’s shaking James, not paying attention to anything else.

James opens his eyes to the seeing world, the world of the living.  He clutches Sirius’s arms and tries to speak.  Sirius is tongue-tied for a moment at the sight of the spark that’s back in James’s eyes. 

“Sirius!  James!”  Peter sobs as he crawls across the grass toward them.  “He’s done it.  He’s going down there and--look!”

Overhead, the sky darkens and in the west, the sun is dying. Peter points at the light suffusing the eastern horizon. 

“What-what’s he saying?  Who is?  Where’s Snape?”  James looks around in confusion.  Peter points, first to the pregnant eastern sky, and then to the still branches of the Whomping Willow.

James flushes, expelling the last of the hex with a rush of heart-pounding adrenaline.  He looks from Peter’s panicked face to Sirius’s stony grimace.  And then he knows.

“No, oh, no, oh no. Sirius, you didn’t, did you--” James struggles to his feet.  He’s shaky, but his steps become firmer, purposeful, as he runs toward the Whomping Willow.  He uses the stick just as Snape has already done and disappears into the shadowy depths.

From deep within the earth Sirius hears the faint howl of a wolf.

“That was no joke, son,” Moody said quietly,  “not the way I heard it.”

For a moment, there was complete silence:  no other conversation, no guitar-playing Muggle, not even the drone of a fly.  Or, perhaps Sirius had gone temporarily deaf.

“No,” Sirius whispered just as a dissonant guitar-chord was struck in the distance.  He looked down at his lap, where the cheese with which he’d been playing had been reduced to a thousand tiny crumbs, about the right size for an army of ants to carry away. 

“Slimy bastard!” Sirius angrily swept the crumbled cheese from his lap, scattering the bits widely on the blanket and surrounding grass.  He glanced up at Moody, whose impassive face told him nothing.  “James was hurt; he wouldn’t come around and I--I went a bit out of my mind.  I can’t remember what I said, but I must have... Well, I guess you know.”

“I know the black rage that boils up inside you--it can be worse than a well-placed hex from your worst enemy.  You let that anger control you, and you do stupid things, things that’ll get you killed.”

“Or get your friends killed,” said Sirius bitterly.  He had taken a knife from the picnic basket and was jabbing it into the rest of the cheese.

“Control, boy, control,” Moody growled, though not in an unkindly way, as he reached across the wicker basket and took the knife away from Sirius.  “You’ll learn.  Aye, you will.”

Sirius put the remains of the cheese out of sight and bit into an apple instead, while Moody began to explain the complex web of spells for confusion and misdirection that would be wrapped around the wedding party during the ceremony.

“Let’s start with the outer layer,” Moody said, “like an onion, you see?  Muggle-repelling charms should do the trick as far as the village is concerned.  I’ve an idea as to how to hide the whole bleeding wedding party from the Muggles.  Those spells will start here.” He pointed a gnarled finger to the map.  “You think you’re up to that, lad?”

Sirius, surprised by the question, hastily finished the apple he’d been eating and said, “Me?  Do the charms?”

“I’m not talking to the bleeding sheep, am I?  Yes, you.”   Moody laughed dryly.  “You did a decent Muggle-repelling charm on that bike of yours, so I reckon you can do it here. The spell’s got to cover a bigger area, but it’s pretty much the same otherwise.”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” replied Sirius quickly, as if Moody really would give the job away to the nearest sheep if he didn’t answer right away. 

“Keeping Muggles away is only part of it,” Moody continued.  “Stopping wizards, that’s a bigger problem.  And why would a wizard want to gatecrash this here wedding?  There’s only one reason that I can see, and it’s a Dark reason, if you follow me.  So, the next couple of layers are going to be warding spells; that’s what I’ll be working on.  There’s the anchor for the Portkey.  Potter and Evans will set that up, though we’ll have to get approval from Magical Transportation, or they’ll pitch a fit about it. And then whatever Evans wants to do in the way of decorations.  I’ll leave that to her.  Our job is going to be making sure that no one, wizard or Muggle, gets in without an invitation, right?”

“Right. So, where do we start?”  Sirius tried to sound confident about all this, although he hadn’t ever tried such large-scale magic.  The threat was real enough, if they didn’t do it right, lending a sense of gravity and urgency to the whole project.

“I reckon we can get the spells in place in about a week.”  Moody pulled on his fake beard thoughtfully.  “It’s getting the damned paperwork sorted out that’ll take time.  You’ve got to fill out a stack of forms about as high as one of these stones here to use this many charms near a Muggle village.  But we won’t be doing that this time.  No, because there are too many eyes and ears at the Ministry that report to Lord Voldemort.  Avoiding as much of the paperwork, that’s what we need to do and that’ll take even more time.  There’ll be some favors to call in and a spot of bullying to be done in order to cover this up.  Dumbledore should be able to help.”

Moody frowned and then paused for a drink from his silver flask.  “Time and luck are what we need, laddie.”

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 the Dark Lord.  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 the hospital before I bleed to death.”