Black Dog

Chapter One

That winter the weather was exceptionally harsh. Not much snow fell, white Christmases were a thing of the past, but there was fog and frost aplenty, driving rain and a deep, all-pervading chill. Now, spring was on its way, the air was milder, the land was full of the rush and chuckle as the waterlogged ground gave up its moisture, and the windy uplands were alive with the voice of lambs. White fleeced and wobble-legged they followed their mothers or played together in the shelter of the hedges, their little hooves splashing in the puddles that everywhere lay on the turf. Such weather is deadly for lambs. The delicate fleece that can combat the coldest frost becomes wet, the little bodies chill and there are casualties. One such lay abandoned beside a ditch, the mourning ewe having departed to care for its twin, and had been discovered by a vixen. Her cubs weighing heavily within her, she was glad to find this fresh meat. It was too big for her to carry so she pawed at it to turn it over and began to tear at its belly, hurrying to eat as much as she could before she was disturbed by the other larger predator that had recently invaded her territory. Sure enough, before long she scented its approach. She turned and growled, for form's sake as much as anything, then whirled and darted through the hedge like a lick of flame.

Dog watched her go, marking the line of her path for future avoidance, then turned to the carcass of the lamb. His ribs staring through his coat, he looked and was half starved. He placed a paw on the lamb and tore at the meat, gulping down the soft parts and sheering through the bones. In minutes the body was gone and he licked the blood carefully from the grass before turning and making his way back up the hill towards the thicket where he was lairing. Carefully skirting the edges of the fields, keeping to the ditches and the cover of the hedges, Dog limped along, favouring one hind leg. A week or so earlier he had been clipped by a car while crossing a lane at dusk and had crawled to the thicket to recover. There was a stream on the north side of the little wood and a falling tree had landed propped against another, forming a natural shelter, so it was a good spot to lay up and then the lambing had started, the wet weather ensuring an easy source of meat. He slid through a gap in the hedge and lay down in a patch of weak sunlight, stretching his bruised leg with a sigh. Already the pain was less and soon he would be able to resume his long journey.

*

Five hundred yards away, on the hill above the thicket, a young man turned to his father.

"There," he said triumphantly. "Did you see that?"

"All right, you told me so," the farmer said, his face grim. "How many lambs do you think it's taken?"

"A dozen, perhaps. Three in the last week for sure. The bastard. Shall I go back to the house and fetch the shotguns?"

The farmer looked down at the thicket and studied the lie of the land around it, then shook his head.

"No, don't. Did you see the way it moved? An ordinary dog would have cut straight across that field, that one moves like a wild animal. We'd never get close enough and we haven't got the sort of shells that would kill it outright and I'm not having that roaming around wounded!"

His son nodded then gave a sudden crack of laughter. "It explains that daft woman from the holiday home with her talk of having seen a black panther. Lord we were having a good laugh about that in the pub. Pity it isn't one though, we could catch it and sell it to a zoo, but nobody's going to buy an old dog."

"Oh, I don't know," the farmer said, thoughtfully. "A dog that size could be worth quite a bit to the right man."

"Oh, Dad," the young man frowned. "Kill the beast and have done with it."

"Listen, boy," his father spoke softly, his cheeks reddening, "with lambs selling as they are and ewes at three for a pound we can't afford to pass up any chance to make some cash. Come on, let's go home and you can put the kettle on while I make the call."

They walked off down the hill towards the little huddle of farm buildings but the young man looked back more than once, regretting that he had ever drawn the dog to his father's attention.

*

A day or two passed. Two more lambs died and the ground began to dry out a little. At dusk Dog slipped silently through the gap in the hedge and trotted down to drink from the stream. It was time to be moving on. Rest and calm and plenty of meat had done much to soothe the damage to his leg and he turned his nose towards the north and set off towards the line of hills on the horizon. Dog cut through the pasture, the ewes watching him but without panic, and he paused to watch a helter-skelter gang of lambs as they rushed along the line of the ditch, leaping and twisting in a mad celebration of their new little lives. Dog's tail wagged slowly and he trotted on. Under the gate he crawled and across the next field, ploughed and harrowed, to the stile where he paused, on his hind legs, paws on the top bar to look carefully around before leaping lightly over. Immediately he caught the scent of fresh meat. He had eaten well the day before but meat was meat and an opportunity not to be passed up, so he followed his nose along the hedge line. He could smell man everywhere, but this was a farm and so quite usual, and the scent of blood was much stronger. He paused beside the bole of an ash tree and looked carefully around. There was another lamb, newly dead, lying on the grass beside the ditch. He sniffed suspiciously, then a keening cry from overhead made him look up. A buzzard was tilting its wings to spiral down to the carcass. Dog wuffed quietly and watched the bird sheer off then walked cautiously forward to claim his prize. It was a very small lamb, only a few bites, but satisfying nonetheless. As he turned to go back along the hedge he lowered his head applying his nose to the ground. The fox had passed earlier, at dawn perhaps, and there had been rabbits as well. The harsh smell of petrol and metal and rubber made him snort, he'd seen a vehicle pass along the hedge an hour before. He passed the stile and turned across the corner of the field, walking more slowly now, then stopped and stood with all four legs braced and his head hanging. Quickly Dog vomited the drugged meat but it was too late.

*

It did not take long for the farmer and his son and their guest to come down from their vantage point on the hill, lurching a little over the mole hills, the boy leaping out to open the gates as the immense four wheel drive eased through the narrow gaps. It drew up a few yards from where the dog lay and the driver cut the engine.

"You weren't kidding," he said. "That's the biggest dog I've ever seen. Thanks for calling me, mate."

"S'allright, Colin." The farmer followed him from the car and all three stood over the vast black mound of fur.

"Well?" the farmer continued, hopefully. "Is it worth anything to you?"

Colin stooped over the dog and carefully pushed it onto its side and ran expert hands over its limbs and body then turned back its lips to look at its teeth.

"Poor condition, despite all of your lambs, not a youngster either but I can get it back up to weight," he said confidently. "I wonder where it came from?"

"I've been thinking about that," the farmer's son said. "He must have turned up here about a month back, about the time a holidaymaker said she'd run over a black panther. Back in October there was that report in the paper about a black panther being seen near Lingen and before that, remember it was on the National news, about all those sighting in the Cotswolds. Maybe he's heading north!"

"Well, I can give it a lift, as far as Telford, anyway," Colin said with a grin. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a sizeable roll of notes held together with a rubber band and peeled off a few and passed them to the farmer.

"That's - that's very generous of you," the farmer said, eyes widening.

"Business is good," Colin replied with a shrug. "When water's pouring through your ceiling, you'll pay almost anything to have a plumber come and fix it. Now, help me lift the bugger into the cage. I don't want to suddenly find it looking over my shoulder on the Shrewsbury by-pass."

It took quite an effort to lift the animal up into the high boot of the 4x4 but they managed it and laid it in the sturdy wire cage. Colin tucked its paw inside and locked the boot, then went to the driver's door.

"Coming to the next meet?" he asked casually. "It's on the twenty-fifth in Stafford. You know the Doxey industrial estate just off junction fourteen?"

"Twenty-fifth? Sorry," the farmer shook his head, nodded at Colin's expressions of regret and watched him drive away.

"Bastard," his son said as they walked across to close the gate.

"Language," his dad said automatically, he was still counting the notes. "This'll pay the vet's bill with a bit left over. Might get your Mum something nice, eh?"

"Yeah," the boy's angry eyes softened for a moment then narrowed as Colin reached the road and drove away with a blare of the horn and a waving hand.

It was wrong, he thought. Of course they needed the money and Lord knew his Mum deserved something nice for once but - then he remembered a conversation he'd had at college. A conversation that had ended in a shouting match.

"Twenty-fifth, Doxey industrial estate just off the M6, near Stafford," he whispered to himself. He'd make a call of his own at teatime.

*

One hundred and sixty miles away a man was just laying the last of his belongings in his carryall. Still moving haltingly he turned to the stand beside his hospital bed and opened the drawer to remove the thick sheaf of letters and cards. He paused, holding them tightly between his hands, head bowed, then wrapped them in a clean paper bag bearing the 'Honeydukes' logo in flashing multicoloured script and placed them carefully in a side pocket of the carryall. If you had asked him a year ago if he thought he would ever be the object of so much affection he would have stared incredulously. However, in that pile of letters there were at least three marriage proposals plus no end of other less proper suggestions. He smiled. When he got home he'd have to show them to......No....... He zipped the bag with an angry movement, scowling ferociously at the inoffensive object then bent an angry glare on the door as it opened.

"Christ, Remus," the red-headed boy flinched. "I thought full moon was last week?"

"Sorry, Ron," his tired face eased back into a smile. "I was just - thinking."

"Yeah, it happens. Hey, you're looking good - well, better any way. All ready to go?"

"I'm packed," Remus replied, "but whether I'm ready to face the world again I can't say. I thought Harry was coming?"

Ron moved to the window and peered out at the grounds as though he'd never seen them before. Ron had visited him at least three times a week and had spent some of each visit staring out of the window whenever the conversation got onto dangerous ground or the pain grew too much for Remus to bear with grace.

"He's visiting Hermione," Ron said quietly after a moment or two.

"Ah," Remus limped across to him and put an arm around his shoulders. Dusk was falling fast but there was still enough light left to see the daffodils dipping and swooping in the breeze, clumped in great masses of gold beneath the bare but shapely limbs of the trees. Spring was here after a long cold winter and spring, Remus sincerely felt, was a time for renewed hope.

"She will recover," Remus assured him. "It was bad enough for the rest of us, the disorientation, not being sure who or what we were. The loss of magic! I mean, Harry was one of the first to get it back and even he couldn't so much as light a match for three weeks. Thank god we'd kept the medical staff well to the rear. Hermione relied on her brain so much more than the rest of us that she was bound to react badly. Then the were the other - things."

"Oh, Remus," Ron's voice was suddenly very husky. "when she does talk, she blames herself. It was her idea, you see. Dumbledore gave the orders but she was the one who planned it. I don't think she'll ever be able to look you in the eye again."

"She'll have to," Remus told him, "because I plan to see her myself again, as soon as I'm sure I can do it without making a total tit of myself like last time. She suffered as much in her own way as I did in mine, but it doesn't do a patient any good when their visitors go into spasms of hysterical pity every time they come into the room. As I know from experience. Much as I love your mother, Ron, I was so relieved when she spared herself the pain of coming to see me."

"You had every reason to be upset. Hermione was in an awful state and you weren't much better, in no condition for a bloody photo-call. It was a stupid decision on behalf of the new Minister and I haven't let him forget it. And as for Mum, actually," Ron's cheeks suddenly clashed with his hair, "I asked her not to. If you remember, at that point your eyes were still bandaged, so I told her that she had given you the impression that you were horribly scarred."

"That wasn't kind!"

"No, but it stopped her sitting sobbing over you, didn't it, so maybe I'll be forgiven," Ron said ruefully. "Ready now?"

"More than ready? How are we getting home?"

"Ministry driver. I'm still not up to Apparating and even Harry nearly splinched himself last week. So a nice leisurely drive in the country and ..." he reached into the pocket of his robe and withdrew a rolled magazine, "something to read on the way. You made the cover, Mr Lupin, sir."

Remus unrolled the magazine - a Daily Prophet colour supplement - and found himself looking into his own amber eyes. The two dimensional Remus looked sombrely back through the sweeping fall of white streaked hair, mouth set in determined lines and yellow eyes blazing, side-lit, as the photographer had pointed out, to add a little drama and hide the remaining injuries.

"Spectacular, isn't it," Ron nodded to the photo. "I'd fancy you myself, if I swung that way, which I don't."

"This must explain the - er - letters I've been getting," Remus commented. "I'll read the article in the car. Have they managed to spell 'lycanthropy' right this time, or have they fallen back on the usual euphemisms - ravening monsters, blood-crazed creatures of the night, bestial misfits in modern society?"

Ron snorted with laughter as he turned to pick up Remus' bag.

"I think you'll be pleasantly surprised," he grinned. "They've done you proud for once. All of you. Every single 'were' on the battleground that day is listed, with your name at the head of them all. I think - dammit - I know things will be better for your folk from now on." He paused twisting the handle of the bag in his powerful hands and looking at the set shoulders of his old teacher, his friend. "I think you might like to read the bit after that. Page twenty-two. They've done him proud as well."

Remus unrolled the magazine again and flipped over the pages stopping abruptly at a montage of photographs. He heaved a deep breath and smiled back at the face that was laughing up at him.

"An obituary. It's official then."

"Not to Harry," Ron shook his head, "and not to me and not to - you'd be surprised how many."

Remus pressed his lips together firmly and closed the magazine. "The Daily Prophet has got its facts wrong before and, now I'm back on my feet, we'll prove it to be wrong again."

There was a moment or two of intense silence while Ron wondered what he should say. Should he carefully point out that the injuries that put him and Harry in hospital for two months and Remus, who's recovery was complicated by his regular transformations, for six would be unlikely to be survived by anyone without proper medical care? Or should he mention that if someone did not want to be found it might be for a good reason? Or that it might be better for everyone if things stayed as they were with Sirius being celebrated as a hero and no awkward questions asked? But on second thoughts he kept his opinions to himself and, instead, took Remus' elbow in a supporting grip.

"Come on then, grandad," he said, chancing his arm, "let's be going."

Remus gave him a look but accompanied him to the door.

"Yes," he agreed, with a smile that was verging on the smug, "let's get home. I've a lot of letters to answer."