Marauders - Always - Part One

CLXVIII: The Old Lupin House

"Get out of here yeh mangy mutt!"

There was a clattering of dust bin lids, a yelp, and a large, shaggy black dog raced out from the alley way, triumphantly carrying the scraps of some thrown out chicken he'd plucked from amongst the garbage out back of a pub in York. He raced down the narrow road, carrying his prize, and ducked down a small hill and under a bridge by a dirty old stream that cut through on the edge of town.

Snuffles settled under the bridge in the dirt, and began ripping at the chicken, tearing the meat from the bones as best as he could with his canine teeth. It would be so much easier to do this as a man, with dexterous fingers, but somehow more disgusting as well, to be eating someone else's cast off food. As a dog it was alright. He wasn't sure what the difference was, and didn't care to think too much about it - he was positively starving and this was the first meal he'd managed to nick in some time.

He didn't know, either, why he'd come to York. From one painful-memory-filled town to the next, he'd gone, as though the grief was driving him to familiar places. He knew Remus would not be there. If Remus had gone to work with the werewolves again, as Sirius suspected was likely from the clues in Remus's last letter to him nearly a month before, then his husband was somewhere in Iceland, most likely, and wouldn't be returning to the Lupin house in York any time soon. Yet Sirius had left the grass behind the old Potter house and come here - to this little picturesque town where Remus had grown up and he, James, and the Potters had stayed for some time after the Potters' first house in Godric's Hollow had been attacked back in the 70s.

He'd written to Remus a couple times since Remus had last written to him.

Please come back to me. Forget Dumbledore. If there is a trace on you from the Ministry then we'll fight Chase Volsung and his entire department of inefficient collectors together. I still remember all the old spells - we could duck up his wand and do some incredible choreographed fighting sequences against the others...

Remus, haven't we spent enough time apart? All I want is you.

But there hadn't been anything in return.

The chicken was cold and Sirius tore at it hungrily. As he ate it, he thought of Remus telling him when they were younger how Lyall Lupin had eaten a great deal of pub chicken when he'd been in the throws of mourning the loss of Hope in their second year. Sirius wondered if this was the pub, and, as he lay in the dirt under the bridge that led from the town up to the lane where the yellow Lupin house sat, if he was eating the very same thing that Lyall had eaten back then.

He felt like he was mourning now, too... but then again, Sirius had been mourning since 1981, hadn't he?

Suddenly there was a sound, a flapping and a scuffling and Snuffles turned 'round to see an owl had landed on the ground behind him and now stood, pecking at the dirt and hopping closer, nervously. Snuffles glanced about for a moment before transforming and the owl fluttered his wings to get out of the way as the dog elongated into a person, and there sat Sirius Black on the dirty bank of the stream. The chicken lay beside him on a stone, and Sirius stared at it a moment, thinking how odd it was that what had looked so appealing as a dog looked positively disgusting now as a person, just as he'd suspected it would. He could still taste the chicken in his mouth and he smacked his lips a bit in distaste before turning to the owl.

"Let me see what you've got there," he said, voice raspy and low, reaching for the letter attached to the bird's leg. He recognized the writing immediately - Harry's handwriting was such a lot like Lily's, just messier, Sirius realized - and he slid his thumb under the wax seal on the back, pulling the letter out of the envelope and shaking it out to see the message.

Dear Sirius,

You told me to keep you posted on what's happening at Hogwarts, so here goes -- I don't know if you've heard but the Triwizard Tournament is happening this year and on Saturday night I got picked as a fourth champion. I don't know who put my name in the Goblet of Fire, because I didn't. The other Hogwarts champion is Cedric Diggory, from Hufflepuff.