Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, nor any of the other characters that appear in this story!
Chapter 3
Remus stared down at the unconscious body of Macnair with great distaste and extreme worry. He had seen the bite marks on the man's arm, and the bloody claw marks gorged into his face. It was obvious who had done that. What was less than obvious to him was the reason why they were there, if Black was supposed to have helped the Death Eaters capture Harry. Unless… perhaps Black desperately wanted all the glory of kidnapping his own godson for himself?
Remus shook his head in disgust and turned towards the clump of bushes next to Macnair's body, where a number of fresh footprints and paw prints were etched into the sticky mud. As the rain slowed, Remus cast around in search of the one sign of proof- yes, there it was.
It was one of the large footprints, which appeared to have been twisted into the mud almost as if the man had been twirling. And there, right beside it, was a smaller pair.
"Harry," Remus whispered devastatingly. "Where are you?"
Distant shouts from the Aurors reached Remus's ears as he turned away from the awful evidence.
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Harry sucked in his breath and squeezed his watering eyes shut, as if his actions could block out the intense stinging if he couldn't see anything.
"Hang in there, kiddo," Sirius said through gritted teeth, as he gingerly wiped the blood from Harry's left leg. The grotesque look of the flap of skin dangling off Harry's calf made Sirius want to puke. "Bloody hell! How deep is this?"
"It would be nice if you wouldn't narrate everything that's going on," Harry ground out, but squinted an eye open nevertheless.
Sirius grinned sheepishly. "Sorry."
The rag was completely red by now, and they hadn't even started on the other cuts. At least they've stopped bleeding, Harry thought. So far, he hadn't been brave enough to take a peek at the wound Malfoy had inflicted upon him. By the sound of it, he'd probably pass out if he did.
"There!" Sirius exclaimed in triumph. He held up the blood- soaked rag, which dripped onto the filthy floor. "I'll just rinse this off and then we can start on the others."
"Brilliant," Harry muttered, lowering his eyes. He leaned his head against the table as Sirius walked back to the sink. Although Harry barely knew the man, his instincts now told him that Sirius could be trusted. It was almost as if he had known Sirius a long time ago, in another world….
Harry's scar flared angrily, and he slapped his palm against his forehead. A quick glance at the sink told him that Sirius hadn't noticed, as he had busied himself with washing out the rag. As water spurted out and gurgled through the pipes, Harry rubbed at his tingling scar and closed his eyes, sickened.
"Are you still with me, Harry?" Sirius called. Harry nodded, keeping his eyes closed this time. He heard Sirius walk up to him, and felt a hand on his chin. He opened his watering eyes to see Sirius peering at his split lip.
"Ouch," he said. "How did that happen?"
Harry blinked wearily, forcing his mind away from his scar. "Bit through it," he mumbled. At least it was partially true.
Sirius wiped at it gingerly, careful not to reopen the cut. He then gently dabbed the wet rag against his chaffed knees and palms while scanning the rest of Harry's body, which was uninjured except for a few scratches and the swollen lump on Harry's cheek.
"Is there anything else I've missed?" he asked quietly, waiting for some type of reaction from the younger boy.
"Er…." Yes. There is a lot you've missed that you are not going to clean.
"Is that a yes or a no?" Sirius inquired softly, but his eyes were flashing.
"No," Harry managed. He faked a yawn.
"Alright, let's get you into bed and then I'll get you some bandages. Come here." Sirius stood up again and held out his hand. Harry gratefully accepted it, and he was pulled into a standing position. He tried to hide his grimace of pain from the bruises all over his chest, both new and old. Sirius must not have seen it, because he didn't say anything as he helped Harry walk back to the base of the stairs. When they reached the first step, they hesitated.
"Er… maybe I should carry you again," Sirius suggested. Harry was too tired to protest this time, so he swallowed his pride and allowed himself to be hoisted into Sirius's arms.
"Merlin…How much do you normally eat?" Sirius muttered distractedly. Harry could feel his face burning.
"Er… I don't have much of an appetite," he invented quickly, as they traveled up through the ground floor. Harry couldn't see Sirius's face, but he had a feeling that the man's eyebrows had disappeared underneath his hairline yet again. He refrained from commenting, however.
As they walked through the entrance hall and up the next flight of stairs, Sirius muttered to himself, "I wonder if my mum's portrait is still here…."
"What?" Harry inquired, glancing around at the walls for any picture frames. He could see a few small ones lining the hall, but couldn't make out their occupants.
"Before I ran away from home when I was sixteen, my mum had this great ugly painting done of herself to hang in the entrance hall," Sirius explained as they trooped up the next set of steps. "It's pretty obvious why she did it, if you consider the fact that this house perfectly reflects my parents' personalities… full of themselves and their pureblood mania-" he spat the last part grumpily, lost in his own world for a few seconds. "Anyways, I only came back here once after she died, and the moment I stepped into the house her portrait began screaming bloody murder. Apparently, my dear old mum wasn't too happy with the fact that I'd inherited the house instead of my younger brother." Sirius frowned in deep disgust. "She considered me a blood traitor, or something along those lines…." He paused on the third landing and readjusted his grip on Harry's torso.
"I can walk from here," Harry offered quickly, to cover up the awkward silence that had descended upon them. He noticed how Sirius himself wasn't looking very healthy at the moment, and wondered what had happened to the man to make him so thin and dirty and…. Skeletal.
To Harry's surprise, Sirius grinned and replied with a simple, "Nope", regardless of the depressing turn of conversation a few seconds previous.
They were silent for the remainder of the trip. Harry counted two more flights of stairs as Sirius continued upward. Eerie paintings of wizards with dark hair and sharp eyes that followed their slow progress now adorned the walls. The paintings never uttered a single word as they passed, although Harry could have sworn he heard faint whispering coming from behind the canvases.
Sirius was definitely out of shape, because he was wheezing heavily when he next put Harry down. They were in a long, dark hallway that branched out in a fork at the end, with three doors protruding from the depths of the shadows and cobwebs.
"The one furthest down is the bathroom," Sirius said, pointing at the door, "and that one across the hall is my room. This is yours," he added, tapping the wooden door frame with his finger.
Harry looked closer at the nameplate that rested just above his eye level, and could barely make out the first three letters; however, it looked to him as if it spelled out the beginning of Sirius's name. He was about to inquire the reason of which Sirius was giving up his own bedroom for a kid he didn't even know, when Sirius grabbed the snake door handle and swung it open.
The door creaked on its hinges and a belch of dust swirled into their faces. Sirius cursed under his breath in between coughs. Impatiently fanning the dust aside with his hand, he strode into the room to turn on a lamp.
"This room's got muggle electrical power. I installed it when I was fourteen to bother my mum." Sirius flicked the switch at the base of the lamp, and the bulb flared to life. "Cool, huh?"
Harry simply nodded. He'd grown up in the muggle world, so he didn't find the non- magic forms of power quite as interesting as normal wizards did. He grasped onto the door frame and looked around his temporary room with interest; old photos were stuck to the wall behind the bed's wrought iron headboard, and a faded Gryffindor scarf was draped across the opposite wall, pinned up with ordinary muggle thumb tacks. Harry watched as Sirius dusted off the empty mattress and pulled some thin blankets out of the closet.
"This'll have to do…." He said reluctantly. "If only I had my wand…." He began piling pillows against the headboard after he shook out the blankets, in an attempt to make the dingy room as comfortable as possible.
"How come you don't have your wand with you?" Harry asked curiously.
Sirius jerked his head sharply and hit it on the bed frame with a loud clunk. "I- er- well, you see-"
CRASH!
Both of them froze. The noise had come from downstairs.
"What was t-?" Harry began to ask, but he was cut off by a sudden blood curling scream of fury, which may very well have been resonating from the floorboards themselves. Harry jumped back in shock onto Sirius's toes, as the scream grew louder and louder, echoing up through the shadowy hallways.
"That's my mum's portrait!" Sirius exclaimed, trying to talk over the screams. "Something set her off…." His look of surprise immediately faded into a fearful one, and he quickly slid around Harry to peer down the hallway. There was nothing there.
Sirius stuck his hand out behind him and nudged Harry's shoulder. "Get in the room, Harry. Turn the light off." His voice was urgent again.
Harry limped as fast as he could over to the lamp and flicked the switch. They were instantly consumed into darkness.
They both stood completely still and silent for several seconds. The hard pounding in Harry's ears couldn't completely cover the shouting of Sirius's mum, and yet they waited with baited breath for something- anything- to happen. Abruptly, the screams were cut off as if a silencing charm were cast upon the painting, and Harry's heart leapt into his throat.
Harry and Sirius stared at each other through the darkness, frozen, for what seemed like an eternity; and then they heard the unmistakable sounds of someone tramping cautiously up the stairs.
"Bloody hell!" Sirius hissed, his eyes wide. "Harry, get in the closet."
Harry quickly complied, trying to block out the pain in his leg and scar as he quietly scrambled over the bed, with Sirius hot on his heels. Harry yanked the door open and blindly darted towards the back. His hands tore through spider webs and bits of moldy clothing and he stumbled, fighting not to sneeze and give away their position. Sirius tugged the door shut behind them, pitching them into impenetrable blackness. There was a small pop from beside him, and Harry understood that Sirius had transformed back into the bear-like black dog.
They stood in absolute silence; Harry even tried to slow his breathing, paranoid that the sound would carry through the door and out into the hall. He jumped when he felt a cold nose nudge his hand in reassurance, reminding him that he wasn't alone. Harry bit the inside of his cheek as he subconsciously reached through the darkness to scratch the dog behind its ears.
The footsteps finally reached their landing, muffled slightly by the several inches of dust on the carpeted floors. The noises paused outside the bedroom, as if someone was looking inside before moving on to the next room.
"Go check down there-" came the cold whisper of an unfamiliar voice, and it was so uncomfortably close to their hiding place that Harry leapt in surprise. Sirius immediately huddled closer to Harry's legs.
The response that came from a second individual was unintelligible, but the footsteps continued further down the hallway. Whoever these people were, it seemed as though they weren't doing a complete comb of the house- none of the furniture was overturned, no doors (besides those of the bedrooms and bathrooms) were pulled open, not even a muttered Lumos was cast into each room. After five minutes of careless searching and coming up empty handed, the Death Eaters continued up to the next flight of stairs.
It was only when the voices and footsteps were completely out of their range of hearing that Sirius transformed with another pop.
"Are you okay?" he breathed, finding Harry's shoulder in the darkness and giving it a quick squeeze. Harry nodded, but then realized that Sirius couldn't see him.
"I'm fine," he assured him, making an effort to sound convincing.
Sirius was quiet for a few moments, presumably listening for any noises from up above. Hearing none, he turned to his young charge.
"We need to get out of here, and quickly."
It was startling, the prospect of making a run for it when there were at least two Death Eaters roaming the house, but Harry was used to acting rashly in the face of danger.
"Okay," he whispered. Adrenaline was now pumping through his veins like liquid fire. He let out the deep breath of air he had been holding without realizing it, and limped after Sirius to the front of the closet. The man eased the door open and poked his head out, checking to see if the coast was clear; the hallway outside was deserted. Then he turned, snaked an arm around Harry's thin waist, and aided him out into the shadowed hall and onto the stairwell.
They moved as fast as they could despite their exhaustion and injuries, driven by survival instinct. Sirius supported most of Harry's weight as they swept soundlessly down the stairs, save for a few creaks from loose planks of wood. Harry tripped once on the second floor landing but managed to catch himself on the railing just in time. He barely had enough time to regain his balance before Sirius was hauling him downwards again, as silent as the shadows themselves. Harry couldn't help but wonder, with his heart racing feverishly, how the Death Eaters had gotten into the house in the first place; the home of a bunch of pureblood wizards was bound to be deeply warded, wasn't it?
They touched down onto the ground floor at last, and scampered across the entrance hall towards the ancient oak front door. Halfway there, however, they were met with yet another obstacle: Harry's scar spontaneously burst open in pain.
Doubling over in complete agony, with both hands pressed against his skull, Harry fell away from Sirius's side and once again collapsed into the cobwebs and wallpaper snakes. His body folded as he pressed his forehead against his buckling knees. He had never felt this much pain from his scar before! Try as he might, he could not suppress the soft moan from escaping his lips, and resorted to biting the inside of his cheeks in a pitiful attempt to relieve some of his pain.
Dark spots danced in front of his eyes and threatened to completely cover his vision for the second time that night. The pain was peaking, and it was all Harry could do to withhold his scream of agony. He barely registered that warm arms had encased him in a strong embrace, with his face pressed deeply into the front of a filthy black robe.
Gradually, the pain began to melt away until it was nothing more than a soft tingling. Harry reached up to rub his forehead once, panting as if he'd just run a marathon. He raised his head and immediately met the frightened grey eyes of Sirius Black.
"Harry," gasped Sirius, looking far more frightened than Harry had ever seen him so far tonight, "what the hell was that?" The man's voice trembled, and he continued to hold onto the boy tightly, as if he was afraid Harry would evaporate if he let go.
Harry struggled slightly in his embrace, confused about Sirius's antics. Weren't they currently supposed to be running for their lives?
"Sirius, let go!" he moaned, tugging at the man's robes in desperation. This seemed to awaken Sirius from whatever stupor he'd been in, and he reluctantly dropped his arms, but didn't make a move towards the front door. He just stood, staring down at the thirteen year old wizard, alarm etched upon his face.
"Are you sure you're alright?" he asked weakly, concern leaking out of every pore on his body. It was as if he'd completely forgotten about the prowling Death Eaters behind them, as he continued to stare at the boy who had been writhing in pain less than five seconds ago.
"Yes!" Harry insisted, seizing a handful of Sirius's robes and pulling him bodily towards the door, "Now let's go!" They stumbled across the entryway and Harry reached out his free hand, twisting the brass door knob. With a heave, they were expelled out onto the damp concrete steps and into the moist summer air, the magnified smells of damp soil and fresh green grass bombarding their senses.
Their relief didn't last long; for out of the dim grey-blue light of dawn emerged a half circle of twenty hooded and masked figures, wands drawn and pointed directly at the entrance to number 12 Grimmauld Place, and the two wizards standing in front of it.
A/N: Like my evil cliffhanger? Chapter 4 is made up of completely new, unread material because I came up with a brilliant idea and had to change half the rewritten story to fit it in. So now I will be rewriting a lot of the rewritten stuff too! haha, does that make sense? Anyways, it'll be way better than it was before and I'm sure you'll like it.
Please review!!!! (the more reviews I get, the more I write and therefore the sooner chapter 4 will be up!)
