Summary: (AU SB/NL) After purchasing a dog, Neville gets more than he expected: Sirius Black, in the flesh, sort of. Trouble is, Black's in hiding and he needs Neville's help and the only way he can switch back and forth from being man's best friend and world's worst criminal is with a kiss. Woops, sorry Neville.

Warnings: AU, book spoilers, mild cussing, Slash, and big age differences at the start. If this bothers you then don't continue reading.

Disclaimer: My one and only disclaimer, so read carefully. I don't own anything but the plot. Sorry folks.

DOGBREATH

PREFACE:

Out of Luck

There are important things in your life. Simple things, really. It's the stuff you knew you had to hold on to because without it buddy, you're just shit out of luck. And even at the tender age of nine, when childhood was growing, changing, morphing, to become something truly special in Neville's life, he knew he was lacking. He had the absence of courage it took to question his grandmother, a stern older woman whom he had grown to respect in a way resembling fear, about it. Really, if you wanted to bring around inquiries about your parents, who were as good as dead in her eyes, would you risk it with her temper and mood swings? Neville didn't.

He could only remember her speaking about his father, her son, only a few times in his memory, and every single time was with short gusto of sprit as she recalled his finer points in life. Only once, when she was a tad drunk, did Neville catch her whispering a fierce, "Dammit Frank," with a tear in her eye. It left him curious and strangely empty inside.

There was a hole in his life that even his Gran could not fill. He did not miss them, his parents. How could he, when he couldn't even remember them in a place that wasn't full of blank, white wash walls and the smell of antiseptics? But he knew a hole was there all the same.

He was horrid at making friends. The few he had were at best acquaintances who were far older than him. They did nothing to fill the gap in Neville's life. Far worse than that, he was also dreadful at hiding it. At times even his grandmother had noticed, and when she did she would articulate the finer reasoning of: "Get out of my house and stop moping around, you silly boy."

It was a small blessing though, that he lived in a mostly muggle populated area (you never know who could be hiding out as wizards, though) so he didn't need to embarrass himself further by being an awful magic being as well as a human being all together.

Neville wanted a friend badly, though. Someone who would not mind if he was an alarming mess half the time, someone who could accept him and his flaws, heck, someone who might even like him for it. All of that would be perfect. But Neville was far too old for imaginary friends and he was far too shy to make real ones. He was stuck in a rut.

And, in his grandmother's mind, it made perfect sense for her to pull him out of it. One morning she plopped the local newspaper out infront of him during breakfast, managing to (thankfully) avoid knocking over his juice but failing to miss his rather large bowl of porridge. He gingerly pulled it out, licking his fingers as he looked at the front page. His grandmother was often blunt, but at seeing the headline (SQUIRRLES CAUSE DAMAGE TO SCHOOL PARKING LOT…continued on page nine…) he became confused.

"Keep reading," she instructed him without looking up from her own section of the paper.

He flipped through it, carefully scanning the titles and glancing at the pictures longer than strictly necessary, hoping to find something useful. It was not working. So he started again at the beginning and proceeded to read the whole paper at his own pace, pretending he was doing it for the sake of something to do rather than his fear of disappointing his grandmother so early in the morning.

When he had reached the comics he finally smiled. They were something he enjoyed. It didn't require tons of brain power to understand them, unlike the politics section he had just suffered through. He read the characters' dialogues, wishing on every fiber of his being that he could be in a cartoon or comic, something where the writers would (hopefully) take pity on him and at least make him the sidekick or something. It would be exciting, Neville thought, to be on the other side of the newspaper print and in those images.

Gran cleared her throat, looked pointedly up from her spectacles and said, "Keep going."

Neville flushed, and scooted the paper up closer to hide his pink face. He flipped the page, but not before pulling out the comics and folding the paper in fourths and sticking it in his back pocket. He would read them later.

Only when he had turned the page again, and noticed that his grandmother's brow had smoothed out from her impatient scowl, did he realize he was at last on the right page.

The page was mostly pictures, a collage really, featuring dogs. Big, small, hairy, bald, chubby, skinny, ferocious looking to droopy eyed, and with all the dogs combined there was every color under the rainbow available. It the middle there was the biggest picture that showed a middle aged, balding man with a smile and a shaggy blonde mutt in his lap.

Below the title boasted,

MUTTS TO PUREBREEDS, ALL LOYAL COMPANIONS!

Neville continued to read the small column squeezed on the bottom of the page about the man, Mr. Robinson and his family, who ran a shelter for all animals, but specifically dogs, who they found to be in an abundant amount. There was to be a sale, it promised, and the Robinsons would be grateful if people came down for a look, they would not be disappointed.

"There's a dog for everyone out there," claimed Mr. Robinson. "You just need to know where to look. Here is a good place to start."

Neville looked up at his grandmother while slowly piecing it together. "Gran," he said. "Do you want me to get a dog?"

"You can go after breakfast," was all she said.

One of the lucky things about this town was that in was small; at least that was Neville's opinion. He didn't like riding around in Gran's old minivan. It wouldn't be that bad, except for the color (mustard yellow) and the driver (Gran, of course, whose picture would be underneath stereotypical old people drivers in the dictionary). The exercise was nice. Being out of the stuffy house and away from his grandmother's eyes was a pleasant change. But Neville usually never had a reason to go outside. He had no friends to visit, no relatives near by, and he was too young to have a job. And now that is was summer, he didn't even have school to look forward to.

Maybe now that he was getting a dog he could get out more without feeling awkward. Run in the park or got to the pet store, or even lie out in the sun. He felt too pale.

Neville was touched that his grandmother would be so thoughtful to think about him like this. It was sometimes hard to see that there was, if fact, a grandmother squashed in there under his Gran's hard shell. He'd have to thank her later.

So he set off after cleaning up his breakfast dishes and promising his Gran he'd be back by noon at the latest. She trusted him to be capable enough to do wandless magic if he got stuck in a jam or got in trouble. Neville had no such claims. He walked, being careful not to step in anyone's yard and to stay out of the trash bins. He wanted to take a short cut, hopping fences would have helped, but he feared that even if he was able to do so he would be caught before he made it there.

There. There was the "dog farm" the "dog ranch" the "doggie shelter" the newspaper had boasted about. Neville had passed by it before when he would go to the market with Gran but he never gave it too much thought. Now he wondered.

As he stepped into the gravel road, away from the pavement he just came from, he knew he was close. Closing in, he saw the chain link fences and the huge red barn nestled around a homely house. It was hard not to hear all the noise, and harder yet was it to ignore the smell.

Oh well, thought Neville, what do I have to lose?

Neville would find out, sooner or later, how very wrong he was.