I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!! (Yes, finally, I know.) What can I say, school and boyfriends keep me rather busy during the winter. next year might be different, but we'll see. I'm going to try to get as far on this as I can this summer, but I make no promises or guarantees and I warn you right now that the updates will not be regular. I will try though.

You can't really be mad at me, though. At least I'm (finally) writing the sequel instead of fading into non-activity. Besides, I only recently came up with an idea that I actually liked and could come up with an entire plotline for. I've had lots of suggestions, all of which I'm grateful for, but I can see this one working. So, here it finally is folks, the second part to Padfoot and Puma: Puma's Pup.

Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognize, unless of course you read the first one, then I do own a few characters you'll recognize.

It was our annual visit to England, this time for Rion's twelfth birthday . We went every year in celebration of Rion's birthday, ever since he turned five. The first time was harder than I expected; everywhere we went I was haunted by my previous vacation there and I found it incredibly difficult to keep my thoughts focused on the excited little boy in front of me. However, I had told him to pick any place in the world he wanted as our destination for the trip. He had chosen England. I couldn't very well make a five-year-old pick a different place without any explanation, and I was NOT about to explain things. Not to a five-year-old. He was much too young to bear that knowledge, much too innocent and carefree for me to tell him why England was nothing but a scar on my heart.

For his sixth birthday, he wanted to go again. More than he wanted the toy broom, even. I was nervous still, but it was easier that time. By then I had memories of Rion in those places, instead of ghosts from my past. For Rion's seventh birthday: "Take me to England, mommy!" After that it just became tradition.

This year I had tried to convince Rion I had a bad feeling about going. He knows by now that I have rather strong intuitions, and that they're surprisingly accurate. But he knew I was lying almost before I stopped talking. At twelve years old, he could already see my lies. He is ridiculously smart, just like his father. They could both read me like a book if they wanted to. Luckily, or maybe unluckily, I could never decide, I only had one of them to deal with. Anyway, Rion knew I was worrying about the escaped convict from the previous fall. Some Black fellow, or something. He was the first man to escape Western Europe's wizard prison, apparently. (The news had indeed made it all the way to the states, though far less pronounced. However, I was also subscribed to a European newspaper that had a whole section dedicated to the man. Rion saw my reaction to the article, and that was all he needed to see.)

Rion thought I was irrationally worried that we two tourists (though by now we hardly felt the part) would be the unfortunate ones to encounter him and get killed. Even though he didn't kill that one kid he attacked at Hogwarts. Rob….or, no, Ron… Ron Wesley, or something. But I wasn't worried about that at all. Sirius Black was not a dangerous man, not in the slightest, and definitely not to society. Maybe to one or two men, traitors and the like, but not to society.

He was, however, a danger to me. If I ever saw him again… I don't know what I would do…

Either way, Orion would have nothing of it. "Besides, we have to visit Jess and Tyler," he said to me, as if that settled the matter. Jess and Tyler were old friends of mine—friends of the family by now—that had moved to London not long after our tradition started. After they moved, we extended the vacation in order to visit with them. They also had an extraordinary amount of children, and seemed to have a new one every time we visited. Which was another of Rion's "We Have To Go" points: "Didn't they just have another baby a few months ago? We have to meet it!"

"Her," I chastised him, trying very hard to not panic internally. "I think this one is a girl. Amy, I think."

And that was that. We just had to meet Amy, the newest Henderson, the youngest of five—or was it six? Either way, we couldn't possibly skip this year. So, I booked the tickets.

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We did our usual sightseeing. By the fifth trip we weren't sightseeing so much as checking to make sure nothing had changed a lot in a year. There were a few new attractions over the years, but eventually they got integrated into the routine too. It's funny, we had a routine, and yet we never got sick of seeing everything. Nothing ever changes, but it's almost reassuring in a way. He keeps growing and life keeps going, but London's tourist attractions never change.

Once we had spent a few days roaming about England—just like always—we went straight to Jess and Tyler's, spending the rest of vacation in guest rooms that were rapidly becoming storage space or a bedroom for the latest child. There were six kids now, including a set of twins. Sometimes I still forgot who was who, but Rion was pretty good at telling everyone apart and remembering which name belonged to the eldest girl and which one did not. We usually spent about a week with the Hendersons before heading home, and because they lived right near a vast forest, I went running nearly every night. I had had a few slightly dangerous encounters with various creatures (including humans), but by now I knew I could handle pretty much anything the forest could dish out.

I was wild like the forest those nights. I was a cougar, a mountain lion. I was a puma. I was the Puma, to some. At least, when I felt so inclined.

However, I never expected the forest to serve him that second night at Jess and Tyler's.

Originally, I sniffed something vaguely familiar, but it was familiar like déjà vu is—it could be strikingly real, but it was overpoweringly dreamlike. I dismissed it. I had run in these woods many times, and there was always the possibility I was smelling something I hadn't smelt the last few times Rion and I had been in England. It could be anything. Then the scent grew stronger. It was canine…sort of… There was an odd underlay of human male in this strangely familiar scent. It attracted my feline curiousity, and I found myself hunting the odd smell, searching for its source. Eventually I was lead to a bush, were I paused for only a moment. During that pause a giant black dog leapt snarling out at me. I narrowly avoided its teeth, jumping back instinctively and hissing.

My ears perked suddenly. I knew this dog.

He blinked and stopped snarling. He sniffed. He knew me.

We stood staring at each other for a moment before the dog—a shaggy black mutt commonly referred to as Padfoot—transformed into a dirty, malnourished man.

"Rya?" he asked in wonder.

I bolted.

(a/n) okay i know it's kind of short, but you're just going to have to deal with that. it's only the beginning after all! i'll try to update soon!