A Boy and His Dog

The large, black dog reminded Harry of Sirius' Animagus form. He blinked, wondering if it was a mirage of the summer heat, but the dog was still there, black fur a blot against the white of the Little Whinging Church, a small piece of the wizarding world nearly swallowed up by the Muggle neighborhood.

He said, voice breaking to resemble thirteen instead of almost sixteen years old, "Sirius?"

But the dog shook its great shaggy head and slipped behind the shade of a tree in the churchyard. Harry crossed the road, chasing the dog across the parking lot, over a fence, into a grassy plain full of tombstones. Behind a stone angel, the dog finally stopped, and came to him, letting him pet its soft fur.

"Nice to meet you," Harry told the dog, and the dog leaned into his hand as if to say that it would never leave him, not like Sirius did, lost behind the veil. "I think I'll call you Snuffles."

The dog barked.

* * *

Harry spent the rest of the summer roaming round the neighborhood, looking for the dog in the niches of every park, in the dark hearts of blind alleys, around every corner. Soon, his birthday approached, and with it birthday presents from his friends, and Snuffles slipped his mind.

He wasn't reminded of Snuffles until he was back at Hogwarts. On an ordinary night, in the Gryffindor common room, when Ron was pretending to stretch but was really trying to catch a peek of Hermione's parchment behind her barricade of books, Harry said, with his nose buried in his Divination textbook, "There's this prophecy. About me. And Voldemort."

Ron stilled and sank back into his seat. Hermione pushed aside her books to get a clearer view.

He swallowed, couldn't go on, until he thought he heard something, the sound of paws on carpet, but when he looked round there was nothing there. Addressing his book, he said, "He's going to kill me. I know it, because I can't kill him."

"Harry," said Hermione, eyes wide and serious. "You're not making any sense. Why do you think he's going to kill you?"

Harry took a deep breath, put down his copy of 'Death Omens: What to Do When You Know the Worst is Coming,' and faced his friends. He told them about Trelawney's first accurate prophecy, of why Voldemort had tried to kill him as a baby, and how either Voldemort was going to kill him or he was going to kill Voldemort.

Ron was the first to speak. "And you believe that? Trelawney's a fraud. Remember our third year, when she kept predicting how you were going to die? You're still here, aren't you?"

* * *

The strangest thing was, Harry thought he could feel Snuffles' presence at the side of his bed, in the dark of night, when he was the only one awake. He was the only one in the sixth year Gryffindor dorm who suffered from nightmares on a regular basis--green light and a woman's screams; a boy's pointless death in a barren graveyard; a man falling behind a veil; Voldemort's latest victims.

Harry fell asleep to the lullaby of Snuffles breathing down his neck, its presence a silent guard against further nightmares.

* * *

He needed all the sleep he could get. During the day, Hermione was determined to force feed him knowledge. She always managed to track him down, despite having shorter legs and being burdened by a load of books. When she found him, she promptly dragged him off to the library or the common room, whichever was closer, and plunked a stack of books in front of him.

"We're going to be smart about this," Hermione said, face flushed, and eyes gleaming with a fervor he'd only seen when she was talking about S.P.E.W. "And you're going to survive."

"I doubt I can know more spells than Voldemort," said Harry, pushing the books away. "He's got an enormous head start on me. In fact, it doesn't even have to be Voldemort himself. Pretty much any full grown wizard knows more than me."

Hermione reached into the stack and pulled out a thick book. "Fine, then. We'll learn enough to defeat the garden variety Death Eater, and work our way up to Voldemort."

* * *

Harry didn't see Snuffles again until the current Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher was trying to kill him. He should have known, because really, which Defense teacher hadn't tried to kill him? The only one he didn't hold that against was Lupin, because he couldn't control his lycanthropy.

Harry lay on the floor, and calculated the prospects of Hogwarts ever having a sane Defense teacher, when Snuffles emerged from the shadows, and gave him a great lick on his face, and the world dimmed, but then Ron shouted and hexed the Defense teacher, and the world swam back into focus.

* * *

In seventh year, Ron and Harry dropped Divination class. In their last lesson, Trelawney had them examine chicken entrails in order to divine their fortune. Trelawney looked at Harry's entrails, paled, and swooned into a poofy chair. "My dear...it is horrible...I cannot say..."

"What is it, Professor?" asked Lavender Brown.

"...death is following him everywhere, dogging his heels, running him to ground..." muttered Trelawney, eyes twitching and face grimacing as if in pain, or perhaps constipation.

Ron knocked down the table, spilling intestines on the floor. "I've had enough! You're a mad old bat who should be locked up in St. Mungo's."

He stormed out of the tower. Harry got up and followed. Down the ladder of the tower and three corridors away, Ron rounded on him, and shouted in his face, "You're not going to die!"

"My scar is always hurting," said Harry. "I can feel it. How eager he is. How all of his plans are coming together. He could attack any day now. And I'm not ready."

Ron looked as if he was about to hit Harry. "You can't think like that. You just can't--it'll get you killed."

* * *

All throughout seventh year, Harry could see Snuffles in the corner of his eye, a canine shadow that was there from the moment he first woke up, to when he finally collapsed into bed. Snuffles was there in class, yawning so his great big fangs gaped; during meals in the Great Hall, begging for scraps underneath the table; when Harry was with Ron and Hermione, Snuffles was napping away in a corner; in the midst of Quidditch practice, chasing imaginary cats across the green fields.

* * *

Near the end of term, during dinner in the Great Hall, Trelawney made an appearance. She wandered towards the Gryffindor table, hovered around where Ron and Harry were sitting, and blinked as if just noticing them. "My dears, my poor dears," she said in a wispy voice meant to convey resignation to larger forces at work, or perhaps a case of laryngitis, "you may stop coming to class, but you can't escape your destiny."

Across the table, Hermione banged her fork against the table, and stood up. "Yes, you can. Harry didn't die when he was a baby, did he? He's still here."

Trelawney shook her head. "I have been seeing it ever since I first met him." Her eyes, behind her thick glasses, lingered on the scar on Harry's forehead. "The curse is catching up to him."

Ron restrained Hermione's arms, while Harry covered her mouth. Together, they dragged Hermione outside of the Great Hall, so that Trelawney could wander away unscathed. Harry let go of her to hold the door open long enough for Snuffles to slip through. Hermione shrieked incoherently, before calming enough to say, "I can't believe the nerve of her."

"But what if she's right?" said Harry, feeling the warm bulk of Snuffles against his side.

Hermione glared at him as if he'd said something highly offensive. "If you believe that, then you'll make it true. That's the only power omens have."

* * *

For all the build up of training, and years, and anxiety, and deaths, the final confrontation with Voldemort was anti-climactic. Harry took a look at the shriveled figure with funny red eyes and thin slits for nostrils, and could have laughed, did laugh at the absurdity of it all. The Death Eaters begged their Lord to allow them to punish Harry for his irreverence, while the Order members gave him looks of consternation. Only Snuffles, watching in the corner, gave an answering bark of laughter.

As if that had been the signal, Voldemort bellowed in fury and let loose a curse. Throughout the battle, Harry could feel Snuffles nipping at his heels, then at Voldemort's, then pressing at the backs of his knees, and took comfort in the dog's presence.

It was over before Harry knew it; and Ron was chanting in his ear, "Harry, Harry, Voldemort's dead, you did it, he's finally gone, he's dead at last, c'mon, wake up now..."

But Harry wasn't paying attention, because Snuffles was pressing down on him, leaning all its weight against his chest, its muzzle in his face, constricting his breathing, and Harry decided the dog wanted him to follow, so he did, into the enveloping mist.

* * *

"C'mon Harry...you've got to get up, prove that old bat wrong. She's always wrong, always. Even when she's right, she gets it wrong. It wasn't your death she kept seeing, it was V-Voldemort's."

"Hang on Harry, just for a little while, we can get you help, get you to the hospital wing...please, you've just got to--"

"...wasn't the Grim she saw, it was only--"

* * *

Out of the indistinct field of fog, came a great black shape coming towards him, ever closer, bearing down on him with the inevitability of time.

"Snuffles?" Harry said, poised for action.

"No. Sirius," the man said and surprised him with a hug; Harry had grown taller since they'd last met, and instead of having his glasses smushed into Sirius' chest, he could now see over his shoulder. Sirius stepped back and asked, "What took you so long?"

"I had some things to do before I could come," said Harry.

Sirius nodded, and clasped his shoulder. "Well, you're here now, aren't you? Come on, James and Lily are waiting."