Black Dog

Black Dog

Chapter Three

Animals do not count and have no need of calendars but Dog was well aware when the twenty-fifth arrived. Colin smelled different, tense but excited.

That morning Dog's food was laced with some of the sleeping draught again - not enough to knock him out but enough to make him sleepy and calm and uncoordinated. Colin led him out into a paved yard, tied him to a post and hosed him down. Then he groomed him roughly, getting all the snarls and tangles from his coat and checked his paws and teeth. Even now, in the late afternoon he was still feeling the effects and did not have the will to struggle when he was leashed and muzzled and led across to a large van and pushed into a cage in the back of it. Other dogs soon joined him, each in it's own cage, then the doors were slammed, leaving them in utter darkness and the van moved off.

They swayed and lurched, supported by the tight walls of the cages for what seemed like a very long time. Dog hung his head, feeling terribly sick, and whined his misery but others barked and barked, hysterical with excitement. By the time the van stopped they were hoarse with the barking but the drug had worn off and Dog was feeling a little better, though still very miserable. The doors opened. Colin climbed inside with three other men and they began to manhandle the cages out onto the brightly lit tarmac of an industrial complex. The sky was alight with the harsh yellow sodium lights of a large town and the air was heavy with fumes. Dog sneezed and crouched in his cage as it was lifted onto a trolley and he was wheeled into a large building. There was a high echoing room with a concrete floor and double swing doors with long looping handles at the far end. Along each side the cages were arrayed, the occupants alternately wagging their tails as the men and women stopped to admire them and snarling furiously at each other.

"Hi, Colin. What've you got there?" someone shouted and people came to look at Dog, pointing and laughing. Dog laid his nose on his paws and closed his eyes.

Other vehicles arrived and other cages were brought in, in ones and twos and soon Dog could make out the sound of many voices from a room beyond the double doors. The horrid shriek of a poorly adjusted microphone made him jump then a voice boomed out and two cages were wheeled out followed by the remaining sportsmen and the doors swung closed behind them. There was a pause, a long pause during which Dog shifted uneasily and even the other dogs fell quiet, and then the people roared. The noise was tremendous and almost drowned out the sound of guttural snarling and the shrill screams.

Dog, however, had fixed his attention upon the young man who had just stepped silently through the yard door. Dressed in a ratty old fleece and combat trousers, he pushed his blond dreadlocks out of his eyes with one hand and hefted a scaffolding pole in the other. He looked carefully around the room then darted across to slip the pole behind the handles of the double doors, effectively locking them. Quickly he turned and began to count the cages. Most of the other dogs flung themselves at the bars, wagging or slavering according to their nature, and he avoided them but he paused before Dog's cage and stooped for a closer look.

"You must be the one Dave rang me about," he said, his voice sharp with fury, and he offered the back of his hand to the bars.

His scent was as different from Colin's as fresh spring water from sump oil and Dog pressed towards the bars with an eager whine.

"You poor old sod," the young man whispered, reaching into the cage and gently rubbing his ears. "How the hell did you wind up here?"

He reached into his pocket and produced a mobile phone, pressed a button and spoke a few words, stroking Dog's head all the while.

"OK," he said, "I've locked the doors, they can't get out from here but what about the front? Great. Are the police on their way? What? Give me a minute for fuck's sake, I slashed all the bastards' tyres."

He switched the phone off then he gave Dog a final pat and withdrew his hand.

"Good luck," he whispered and left as silently as he had arrived.

The noise in the other room reached a crescendo then there was a rending crash, a few screams, yells and the sound of breaking glass. Dog whined as he scented blood then blue lights flashed at the window and an amplified voice began to shout. He lay his nose down on his paws again and listened for the young man's voice, but he didn't come back.

Later, men in navy blue clothing came into the room and looked at the cages. Some merely made notes but others went from cage to cage, discussing the inmates with worried looks on their faces.

"It's impossible," one of them said. "There's no way we can rehome these."

Another nodded sadly.

"The fighting dogs will have to be put down," he agreed. "They can't be saved. But some of these others look like family pets. Look, that collie, the lab, a couple of terriers and that - what the hell is that?"

"I don't know, sir," his subordinate replied, smiling as he carefully rubbed Dog's ears, "but it's wagging its tail."

*

Harry shrugged out of his robe and hung it on the rack in the hall.

"Hello," he called, "where is everyone?"

A soft, muffled reply came from the door to his right and he popped his head around the door.

Hermione, wrapped in a blanket was curled up on the couch watching the Muggle television news. She turned her head and smiled up at him.

"Hi. Good day?" she asked.

He took her offered hand and squeezed it gently.

"Not so bad. The department runs itself, I'm just a figurehead, but that means I have the time to do the things I want to that nobody else cares about."

"Ah," Hermione nodded, withdrew her hand and looked away.

Harry sighed and followed a very savoury smell through to the kitchen.

"Young Potter," Remus grinned at him. "I hope you're hungry, I started cooking and got a bit carried away."

"It smells wonderful." Harry lifted a pan lid and inhaled then coughed a little as the fumes caught his throat. "What the hell's that?"

"Sorry, that's my Wolfsbane simmering. Had a good day?"

Harry frowned at his friend and folded his arms.

"Why is everybody so interested in my day, all of a sudden? I did what I normally do - went to the Ministry, moved paper around, got fobbed off by some official, moved more paper around, had lunch with Ron, attended a meeting with some more officials, from Budapest this time though so at least they were polite, and..."

"Then you went back down to Auror headquarters and bothered Draco. Again."

Harry drew breath as though to deny it, then nodded a trifle sheepishly.

"How did you know?" he asked.

"He flooed me," Remus explained.

"And said what?"

"To summarise - 'tell Potter to stop bugging me, we're not at Hogwarts now, I'm doing my best, goddammit, and I'll let him know as soon as we find anything,' except, of course, with a nastier tone, more sarcasm and some very inventive swearing." Remus paused to lift a saucepan from the heat and turn down the gas.

"It sounded quite reasonable to me, Harry," he continued in a lower tone and with a furtive glance towards the sitting room. "There are good professional reasons for Draco to want Sirius found and, besides, he owes him - and Malfoys are as obsessive about paying debts as they are about maintaining grudges. Let Draco do his job in his own way."

Harry let out a long breath.

"I suppose you're right," he said. "Two years ago, if I'd done what I did today, Draco would have hexed me six ways from Sunday. Today he just stood and listened with that infuriatingly superior look on his face, said "We're doing everything we can" and asked two of his men to see me off the premises - gently." He took the bundle of cutlery that Remus handed him and began to lay the kitchen table.

"How's she been?" he asked after a moment.

"Got up at three o'clock, read a bit, helped me do the vegetables. Had a little cry when she tried to make tea and the kettle wouldn't boil but it did get hot so there's some improvement." Remus smiled. "We played that game - Scrabble? She won."

"Naturally," Harry grinned. "Did you play the clean version or the rude version?"

"I'm shocked, Harry." Remus, with a heavy duty cook's knife in one hand and swathed in a blue and white striped apron, managed to look both feral and prim. "The clean version, of course."

Hermione smiled as she heard them both laugh. She hadn't heard Harry laugh in ages, she thought, but then she had only been out of St Mungo's for a week. The hospital authorities had been doubtful about the wisdom of a young witch discharging herself into the care of an equally young wizard, however celebrated, and an acknowledged werewolf but Hermione knew she had been right to trust them. Harry was rarely in the house, working late every evening, but when he was home he was a kind and undemanding companion and during the day she had Remus. Still convalescent, he had appointed himself chief cook and bottle washer, moonlighting, as necessary, as, friend, confidant and nursemaid. Whether his own affliction had made him particularly sympathetic to invalids or it was a natural facet of his personality she didn't know, but he had helped her to wash and dry her hair, had entertained and watched over her and had held her when she cried without ever betraying the slightest impatience. Hermione was more grateful for this than she knew how to express and was guiltily aware that sometimes she took his calm, good nature for granted. She only wished that she could do something to lift the sadness in his eyes and the worry from Harry's.

She sighed and pulled the blanket more closely around her and watched the pictures on the television screen. Muggle television was so comforting. True there were disasters and atrocities but they were just caused by people being awful to other people, not the gut-wrenching evil faced in the magical world. People could be awful though. She grimaced at the report of the raid on a dog-fighting ring somewhere in the north. The men looked sullen and defiant but the poor dogs being carried and dragged to the RSPCA vans looked so bewildered and frightened. Then her blood ran cold. The huge black dog with the pale eyes, leashed and muzzled, disdained to fight the men coaxing him to jump into the van but looked equally confused and lost. Then he was gone and Hermione was left wondering if she had imagined it and, if so, why was she crying? Her sobs rose in volume as her grief and guilt and fear overcame her and Harry and Remus came dashing in from the kitchen and she clung to Remus, incoherent with sorrow. Harry, with a growl of annoyance, turned off the television and knelt at her feet.

"'Mione," he said, "Oh, 'Mione. What's wrong?"

But Hermione, hiding her face in Remus shoulder, was quite unable to answer.

*

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