Third Flower Chapter 22: Toxicity

A.N. Rose only curses in French.

Date: February 16, and the wee hours of February 17, 1996.

Those who complained about untranslated French should notice the footnotes at the end of each chapter, now. I hope this is helpful.

The night was very cold, colder even than usual for Wiltshire in mid-February. The sliver of a moon shone only faintly from behind a cloud, next to which the stars glimmered and quivered as if they too were uncomfortably cold. Rose exhaled softly onto her hands to warm them. Tonks heard her, and turned around. They were under strict orders from Mad-Eye to stay silent now that it was past ten o'clock, so Tonks said nothing, but gestured for Rose to hold out her hands. Rose did so, and Tonks waved her wand over them. Immediately, a warm, dry wind like that from a washroom hand-dryer flowed over her hands and wrists. Rose flexed her fingers in relief as the warmth spread up her arms. "Thank you," she breathed almost soundlessly. Tonks just smiled cheerfully, then turned back around to face the gate of Malfoy Manor. Rose could see little of the gate. She put her back against the hedge along which they were all standing, looking up instead into the starry sky. She sighed.

Sirius had not taken their departure well. "We're all just as likely to meet a bad end at Malfoy Manor," he argued. "Death Eaters aren't going to turn me over to the Ministry if they catch me. They'll just murder me, the same as they'll do to any of you." His eyes had fallen on Rose briefly after he said this.

"We're all vulnerable if you're captured, Pads," Lupin had told him. Rose noticed that he did not say, "killed." "They'll sack headquarters. There will be nowhere for us to return to with any safety."

"Besides, I wouldn't put it past Lucius Malfoy to capture you and turn you in for the reward money. And to buy himself favor with the Ministry," Moody put in.

Sirius looked at Rose again and his gaze lingered. She felt him silently asking her to take his side. But she shook her head determinedly, her stomach sinking even as she did so, and said firmly, "Stay, Paddy."

Now as she looked into the sky outside Malfoy Manor, her eyes following Orion's belt and sweeping to Canis, she perceived Lupin's eyes on her. She glanced at him, and though he could not see her expression, she knew he sensed her disquiet, because he leaned in and whispered close to her ear, "He'll get over it, Rose." She smiled at him gratefully, and then sighed and looked back at the gate. They expected the Death Eaters to emerge at any moment, though they could not know when exactly the gathering would conclude. Rose itched for the moment to arrive, even as her stomach was tense with anticipating it. She was sure that whatever followed the Death Eaters' arrival, it could not be more arduous than the wait.

The plan, as Moody had laid it out, was simple. They had set up an anti-Disapparition Jinx surrounding the usual Apparition point. The Apparition point at Malfoy Manor, Kingsley and Moody had discovered, was a circle around six feet in diameter just outside the gates. It existed for the convenience of the family; one could not apparate to any other point on the grounds inside of the woods, which were a dark blur around a quarter mile away from the gate. When Death Eaters exited the gate from the Manor, they would be outside the protective enchantments which kept spells from entering the park in front of the great house. "It keeps spells out," Moody had warned in the drawing room of Grimmauld Place, "but it won't stop spells from inside hitting us. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!"

All the Order members who now lined the edge of the hedge were Disillusioned, but at close range, if they moved quickly, they knew a practiced eye could detect them. "So we hope they don't all come at once," Moody had said, "Or we'll have a hell of a time of deciding whether to stun them before they can disapparate, or hold our fire so the ones inside the gate don't see us." That decision, it was understood, would be one they'd have to make in the moment.

The minutes of silence had become an hour, and then two. Rose ached to be doing something, which made her think of Sirius. He would be pacing the faded rug now, his jaw tense, his grey eyes stormy. He is probably smoking, she thought, part ruefully and part fondly. Every so often,Tonks would turn around and show her a metamorphosed face, which amused Rose when it ceased to startle her. Tonks had done her warming spell several more times on Rose's aching hands before they at least heard the noises they had been waiting for. Low, rough voices could be heard from the path that led to the gate.

The first Death Eater to come through the gate was alone. He wore his mask over his face, as though he'd expected someone would see him, and it would have been comical to watch him try fruitlessly to turn on the spot if the tension hadn't been so palpable. Rose watched him from over Tonks' shoulder; she saw Moody give her a nod after a few moments passed without the sounds of other Death Eaters approaching. Tonks drew her wand and silently stunned the man before he could complete his third attempt at Disappartion.

Moody was cautiously stepping toward his fallen body when two squat Death Eaters, a man and a woman, tramped out of the gate to join him. After one look at their fallen colleague, the two immediately assumed aggressive poses and fired spells in opposite directions. The man's spell was fired in the direction of the woods, but the woman's would have hit Moody had he not produced a Shield Charm which prevented it.

"Over 'ere, 'Lecto," the squat man said in excitement, just as Tonks hit him with a silent Stunning spell. He toppled to the ground. Alecto had lifted her wand before he hit the ground. "Avar-" she began, but Bill had stepped around the Shield Charm's boundary and stunned her. She, too, fell to the ground.

Now they could hear shouts from within the gate. Several spells came from inside the gate, but the Order members had returned to their positions, flat against the hedges, so that they could not be seen. Rose could hear agitated voices just on the other side of the gate.

"It's that Order of the Phoenix out there," one growled.

"Could be the Ministry," pointed out another, slower sounding voice.

"Doesn't matter!" spat a third. "Question is, should we tell Lucius? Or- him?"

"The Dark Lord should not be troubled with trivial facts such as these," drawled a voice which Rose had no trouble recognizing as Severus' Snape's. "A few blood traitors and mudbloods firing Stunning Spells should not concern you either, Nott."

"Yes, Nott, you can go ahead and tell Lucius that you're afraid to step out of his gates. I'm sure he'll offer you a guest bed," the first voice jeered.

"What's going on?" a new voice sounded from further down the path. The other three filled him in. Several more joined until it sounded as if a knot of six or seven Death Eaters were now poised at the edge of the protective enchantments. Kingsley and Moody had not moved. Tonks twiddled her wand in her hand idly as they argued in what they plainly thought were undertones. She perked up, though, when the sly voiced Death Eater said loudly,

"Ah, Wormtail. We are discussing the plan concerning the Department of Mysteries. You you will have nothing to do with that, of course. You go ahead to the Apparition point."

Rose's spine straightened as the squeaky voice she recognized as belonging to Peter Pettigrew stammered, "Y-yes. Well, g-goodnight, then." And suddenly he was emerging on the outside of the gate.

Rose could not stand to wait. She stepped forward and silently cast a disarming charm on Peter. She wanted him conscious this time.

Kingsley stepped forward, seized Peter's startled frame, and returned with him to his side of the gate. Rose strode forward, no longer caring about the need to stay silent, no longer thinking about any part of the plan other than this. "He's mine," she hissed, and held her wand to Peter's shaking throat. "Hello, Peter," she whispered, with as much menace as she could muster.

She saw him grimace and she quickly brought her face close in to his. "If you transform, I will kill you on the spot. Don't think I won't." He made a high pitched noise in his throat. "But if you don't, I'll take you to testify. You will be alive and unharmed. So which do you choose? Do we bury you here on the grounds? Or are you coming with me?"

Pettigrew said nothing, but nodded slowly, his eyes huge. Kingsley looked at Rose, who nodded, and released him. Rose kept her wand pointed directly between Pettigrew's eyes, her eyes refusing to leave his, and backed him up against the hedge.

Suddenly there was a shout and the sound of bodies crashing onto the grounds from the gate. The Death Eaters inside the gate, perhaps hoping that Peter's appearance would provide a sufficient destruction, had apparently decided their best course of action would be to simply barrel through the gate in a blitz. With the Death Eaters' charge, Rose's awareness of the needs of the mission and her friends returned to her mind with force. Her stomach clenched; she held the wand firmly to Peter's face and still did not take her eyes from him, but all around her she heard the sounds of her friends' efforts and conflict. She knew she was terribly vulnerable as she was, and in another moment she knew it forcefully as Kingsley's body landed on her.

Rose changed her wand to her left hand and grabbed at Kingsley with her right. She could not hope to hold him up, but she felt a pulse beating strongly in his neck as he slid slowly against her faltering body. Awkwardly, she allowed to allow him to continue his slow sag onto the ground. Peter's eyes were wildly moving, looking for an opportunity. Rose moved her wand closer to his face.

"Let's go!" the deep-voiced Death Eater's voice rang out. There was the sound of running feet; Rose could feel the breeze from the disillusioned bodies of the Order members who were closest to her as they took off running. Tonks' voice called, "I'm going, Remus!"

Two pairs of dueling wizards remained; Rose could hear Moody's uneven gait behind her as he traded spells with his Death Eater. "I'm here, Rosey," Lupin called, between defensive spells against the sly-voiced Death eater to her left. Just then, something collided with Rose's knees, and in her startlement she look her eyes off Peter to behold a hissing, thrashing white peacock. She looked back at Peter to find him recovering his wand from Kingsley's unconscious form. "Stupify!" she cried, but he dodged her spell and aimed his wand at her. The full moon flashed before her mind

"Petrificus Totalus!" But she had parried with a Shield Charm.

"Incarcerous!" But he dodged the spell.

Back and forth they went, while white peacocks hurtled around like shrieking ghosts at their knees.

Lupin's opponent shouted, "Protego," and took off running. Another peacock knocked into Rose with such force that she skidded and fell to the ground before she could see if Lupin had followed. She got to her feet quickly to find that Peter had disappeared. When she turned, she nearly collided with him.

His arm was around her neck in a moment. She retained a tight grip on her own wand, but she could feel his wand at her temple and knew she did not have time to act.

"Drop your wands!" he shouted, in a voice that still shook with agitation, "Or she dies!"

Rose heard the sounds of wands hitting the ground. She could see Lupin's outline, shimmery and transparent as it was, lifting its hands into the air. She shot Peter a look of supreme loathing which she knew neither he nor anyone else could see. But before Peter could move to collect the fallen wands, he was doubled over and squealing in pain and Rose was suddenly released.

She looked down to see an enormous, snarling, shaggy, black dog pulling Peter away from them by his ankle. They were moving surprisingly fast, considering Peter's earnest efforts to escape.

Rose was about to follow them when she heard a noise behind her. The stunning spell hit Moody before she could turn around to see Lucius Malfoy standing just inside the gate. Remus, who had recovered his wand after the dog's arrival, threw up a Shield Charm while Rose used a levitation charm to move Moody's body away from the gap in hedges. Then, without consulting each other, they both dashed after the dog.

The dog had dragged Peter a good hundred yards by now. They were gaining on him fast, panting and gasping, when a voice rang out from the direction of the woods.

"Stupify!"

The spell missed Rose, but she wheeled around to find the source. The dark-haired Death Eater had pulled his mask down over his face again and had come out of the woods with his lit wand raised high. Rose, who was still Disillusioned, felt her advantage over her opponent and sent a Stunning Spell back at him. He parried, and soon the two were locked in conflict, though around fifty yards separated her. Lupin had reached the dog by now, but both stopped to watch Rose.

The gap between Rose and the Death Eater closed slowly as both of them advanced upon one another, firing spells rapidly. Rose felt increasingly exhilarated, dueling under the starry sky, though the part of her mind which was not completely engaged in the duel felt how odd this was. The Death Eater seemed to move in slow motion; she found she knew intuitively when he would strike, and she even seemed to anticipate which spell he would use. There was a pattern: disarm, body-bind, stun, stun, stun. They moved as in a dance, and suddenly Rose had the advantage.

"Expelliarmus!" The Death Eater's wand flew toward her and fell at her feet. She stooped to pick it up, but they were now so close that he was upon her before she could straighten up. The full weight of the Death Eater landed on her and she cried out in pain. But in seconds, the snarling dog was dragging the man off of her. She struggled to her feet and looked up just in time to see an an extraordinary sight: Peter Pettigrew was rapidly shrinking. His features warped, whiskers shooting out of his face, and in a moment he was gone. Lupin lay inert on the ground.

Rose's back was painful, but she forced herself to run to Lupin's side. "Ennervate." His eyes opened, blearily at first, but she saw memory come back into his expression in a rush. Lupin jumped to his feet and took off after Sirius, who was finding the dark-haired Death Eater much more difficult to drag than Peter.

In a moment, it was over; the man was Stunned, and Sirius was bounding over the grass, nose to the ground, snapping here and there as he went.

"We need to get Mad-Eye and Kingsley," Remus said, though he stopped a moment to watch Sirius' hunt with his jaw clenched. "Putain!1" Rose swore, kicking dirt in frustration, "Quelle merdier!"2 She then ran in a wide arc back toward the spot where the their two comrades lay. Lucius Malfoy was no longer visible at the gate. Lupin reached Mad-Eye first, and Rose went to Kingsley to revive him.

Tonks was injured. It seemed that one of the Death Eaters they were pursuing had turned and struck her with a Stinging Hex, which caused her to trip over an unearthed root. When they found her, she was cradling her swollen face with one hand and gripping her wand with the other; she had removed the Disillusionment charm herself. Bill was nowhere to be seen.

Remus instantly knelt beside Tonks, a look of tender concern on his scarred face. Rose could scarcely bestow them a glance. While Mad-Eye and Kingsley searched for Bill, she ran back to the edge of the wood. She could just make out Sirius' dark form ranging over the cropped lawn. The black dog ran like a crazed thing, nose to the ground, occasionally stopping at a scent and then raising a frustrated bark.

Rose lingered by the edge of the wood, unable to decide what to do. They could not Apparate outside of the wood until the spell wore off at midnight, and she was hesitant to leave the relative shelter of the trees. But would Sirius ever abandon his search for Peter if no one intervened? Rose could easily imagine him continuing to roam over the grounds until sunrise. He would be easy to spot, then. No, Sirius could not be allowed to stay without them, if for no other reason than that 12 Grimmauld Place would be closed to them without Sirius in the company.

She hesitated to raise her voice, in case any Death Eaters lingered on the grounds or in the woods. Still, the dog raced around the frosty grass, huffing and snorting puffs of steam as he went. After a few minutes, Remus appeared beside her. He, too, had had his Disillusionment charm lifted. "Rose? Where's Sirius?"

She just pointed. Lupin followed her finger and sighed. Then, he looked around and then said in a low voice, "I think it's worth a shout. We can't rely on him to come back here of his own accord, not when he's a dog." He raised his voice and shouted, "Padfoot! Come!"

The dog stopped where he was and looked directly at Lupin. But he only gave a heaving breath that sounded like "huh!" and resumed his hunt.

Lupin rolled his eyes. "Why don't you give it a go, Rosey," he said.

Rose raised her voice. "Paddy!" Again, the black dog stopped and looked at them. He returned his head to the ground for a moment and sniffed. "Come on, Paddy, please!" Rose cried. And the dog heaved a snuffling sigh and began to trot reluctantly toward them.

In the end, as Moody decided, the advantages of their mission outweighed the liabilities. They Apparated back to Grimmauld Place in pairs, starting with Moody and Kingsley, then Remus and Tonks, and then Bill, who gripped the hair of the scrawny Death Eater he'd captured. The man's name was Tiberius Fawley, and Bill had Stunned him soon after they'd reached the wood. Rose and Sirius, were the last to Apparate back to the steps of Grimmauld Place, Rose holding the other prize of the evening: the wand of Augustus Rookwood.

Moody was almost as satisfied with the conquest of the wand as with the capture of Fawley. "We can get a good deal of information off that wand using Priori Incantatum," he insisted. Fawley, he said, could be interrogated by Dumbledore, then released into Ministry custody to await a trial.

"I can inform the Ministry that he was found on the Knight Bus," Kingsley decided. "He can be Confunded if he refuses to go along with the story. But the Ministry won't be in the mood to take anyone wearing Death Eater robes at their word."

The swelling on Tonks' face had already begin to go down when Dumbledore arrived. He, Kingsley, Moody, and Fawley retreated into an upstairs bedroom, "For what I'm sure will be a pleasant and productive conversation," Dumbledore said. Tonks and Lupin talked comfortably in the kitchen as Tonks clamped the ice pack firmly onto her face, her ankle having been mended almost instantly. Rose took note of Lupin's arm, which rested lightly on the back of Tonks' chair, and smiled.

Sirius, however, was in no mood to be social. After providing Tonks with ice and all the guests with cold water and whiskey, he strode off, glowering, in the direction of the library. Rose looked at Tonks and Lupin. Lupin looked sympathetic; Tonks rolled her puffy eyes. "He'll have to do his storming and his raging, Rose," she observed. "Best not to get in the way. Why don't you have some firewhiskey in here till it blows over?"

"Thank you, Tonks," Rose replied, smiling as much as her own mood would allow, "but I think I'll go with him. Everyone needs someone to rage at, after all." She went to the library, though not before she had poured two glass of firewhiskey, at Tonks' insistence.

She found Sirius pacing around in the library with a lit cigarette, looking so exactly as she'd imagined him while they'd waited at the entrance to Malfoy Manor that Rose nearly smiled. All thoughts of smiling fell away when his eyes landed on her, however.

They regarded one another in silence for a moment before Sirius said, "Well, I do hope this evening makes my point for me."

"And what point is that, exactly?" Rose asked.

"That you all need me. That you all need all the help you get can on these missions. That it's a damned waste to leave an able-bodied wizard locked up at headquarters."

She shook her head. "I don't really think that's what it accomplished, Sirius."

"Oh no?" he asked icily. "I suppose you'd prefer I'd stayed nicely at home, to learn of your capture or death after the fact, would you?"

"You are so very certain that you single-handedly prevented those things, aren't you?" She flared readily. "But Sirius, the fact that you weren't captured does not justify your having come! Even I know enough about chess to know we can't sacrifice our king to save pawns!"

"Oh, so you're a pawn, are you?" He was very nearly shouting, now. "You, Remus, Tonks, you're all expendable, is that it? What kind of game do you think we're playing?"

"A game that we must win," she replied. "The stakes are too high for these unnecessary heroics, Sirius! We need you here, I need you here-"

"I am not a chess piece!" he shouted. "And I may be a dog but I am not your pet, Rose. I am a man. And men cannot stay locked up when the people they love are threatened. They can't."

Rose did not reply, but stood, arms folded, against a wall of books, looking at him stormily.

Sirius lowered his voice as he continued. "Besides, being a dog, I'm at an advantage in missions like this. I have surprise on my side."

"You had surprise on your side," Rose clarified. "You can hardly expect to have it anymore. There's not a Death Eater out there who won't know now that you're an Animagus. And you'd better hope that Lucius Malfoy doesn't out you to Fudge, once and for all."

"Fine. You'd rather be dead, or captured. I'd have had to find that out from whoever managed to escape, that you were gone, while I'd paced at home." He kicked an end table in disgust.

"And that's another thing," Rose continued more loudly. "Why are you so sure you know what the outcome would have been? One of those maudit paons3 might have knocked Peter over next. Or Remus might have rushed him. Or I might have thought of a way to get out of it myself, Sirius, have you ever thought of that?"

Unlike Sirius, she was not striding around the room, but stood still against the bookcase, arms still tightly crossed, eyes narrowed in fury. "You are not a pet, it is true. You are a man. But Sirius, I am also not a child. I was best in my year at dueling. If I can remind you, I bested Barty Crouch, Jr. last year, and I've been on several missions with the Order already. My capture was hardly a foregone conclusion."

"Well, it looked pretty damned inevitable to me. Twice over, actually," he said, with asperity. His pacing had brought him to a place only a few feet from her now. He leaned toward her, his eyes blazing.

Rose refused to move. "Don't think I don't know what this is really about," she said, staring at him defiantly.

"Oh? And what's that?" he spat.

"You're angry you let Peter get away. You want to blame me because you let him go, to save me. You didn't even wait to see if I needed saving!"

"You did need saving," he insisted. "I'd like to know why you're taking Peter on as a personal challenge, anyway."

"I would have thought that would be obvious!"

His eyes darted at her quickly before he looked away and continued, "But why not let Kingsley capture him, or Mad-Eye? Now he knows you're after him, that you've got a vendetta. You don't know Peter as I do; he's very good at identifying threats. He won't venture out on his own again, that's certain. We actually have less chance at capturing him now."

Rose snorted. "Coming from the man who attempted to murder him in front of four witnesses two years ago! It's not as if he didn't already know that several of us would dearly love to capture or kill him. But mark me, at the next opportunity, on our next mission, I will catch him, and I will hold him."

He shook his head and glared at her. "I'm not letting it happen again, Rose. You don't have to like it."

"Let the record show that I don't," she seethed. "I can't tell you what to do. But know that if you do this again, you're do it for you, Sirius Black, and for no one else." And before he could respond, she turned and strode out of the room.

It wasn't until she was in her nightgown in the Blue Room that Rose remembered, with a twinge of regret, that she'd left her firewhiskey in the library.

Rose had only managed a few hours of restless sleep before she was awakened by a spine-chilling whine. She sat up, her heart pounding, but when she heard it again she knew instantly what it was. She padded down the hall, tieing her dressing gown as she went.

In his room, Sirius was breathing fast. He gripped the sheet convulsively in his sleep, but when he threw back his head to make the sound again, Rose interrupted him. "Paddy! Wake up! You're dreaming!"

This time when he woke with a start, making clawing motions toward her, she was not startled, but simply gazed at him sorrowfully. "Oh," he said, when he regained his senses, "Oh." He lay back on the pillow and closed his eyes a moment, taking deep breaths. Then he opened his eyes and looked at her, though with a guarded expression. "I'm sorry I woke you," he said, stiffly, in English.

"Dear heart, don't be sorry for that," Rose replied, tenderly, in French. He looked at her more closely then, and his eyes softened.

"Paddy," she said, her own eyes filling with tears. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry! I had no right to blame you for something I would have done, in your place. If I were you, and I had known that my friends were in danger, my cousin, and my best friend, and the woman that-" she stopped, unsure how to refer to herself.

"Has my heart," he replied quietly, and her tears spilled over onto her cheeks at that.

He moved his body over, then, and raised his eyebrows at her. She climbed in and sat beside him in his creaky, ancient bed. "I really was in a pinch, you know," she confided, wiping her eyes. "I'd never in my life been so happy to see a dog than when you arrived and dragged Peter away."

He chuckled softly and squeezed her knee.

"I don't know how many of us you saved," she continued. "You might have saved Mooney's life. Maybe Kingsley and Mad-Eye, too. The truth is, I'm glad you came. I was just angry because- because I couldn't stop thinking of what could have happened to you. But I had no cause, you didn't deserve the things I said."

He patted her knee. "It's all right, Rosey. I've said a fair few things I didn't mean when I was angry before. I said a few tonight."

"You didn't say anything I didn't deserve to hear," she answered, still tearful.

"But I didn't have to say them like that. I shouted at you. I'm sorry." His voice was uncharacteristically gentle as he said it.

Rose moved to sit a little closer to him. "But, you're right, of course you're right," she said, shaking her head. "It's not for me or anyone else to tell you what to do. And we can't look on this war as a chess game, with people for pieces. That's what separates us from the Death Eaters. We love each other." Her hand reached in the dark for his and grasped it tightly.

"You weren't wrong about all of it," he said in a low voice. "I was partly just angry about Wormtail. That he'd gotten away again. And somehow I'm angry about Lily and James all over again, about twelve years in Azkaban, because we taught Peter Pettigrew to turn into a rat. I think if I'd caught him tonight I would have swallowed him whole."

"Which wouldn't have done you any good," Rose observed, amused.

"No," he admitted, "But as painful as it would have been, excreting his bones would have been a great satisfaction to me." Rose snorted, and he grinned up at her.

"Since we're confessing," she said, "I think I was also angry because it seemed as if you think I can't handle myself. I thought perhaps you went to Wiltshire because you thought I'd be a liability to the Order. I suppose I'm afraid that because you can remember when I was a little girl, you'd always see me that way."

"I don't make a habit of inviting little girls into my bed," Sirius said, kissing her hand. She chuckled.

After a quiet moment, he went on. "You're very good, you know. At fighting. It was like watching a lethal dance, your duel with Rookwood. You met him, spell for spell. I wouldn't have interfered, if he hadn't charged you; I could see you were better than he was. Why on earth did you Disarm him instead of Stunning him, by the by?"

"I didn't want another body to carry," she replied, and he laughed. "And, Disarming is the first defensive spell I learned. I rather favor it."

Sirius shook his head, smiling. "'I wouldn't cross her,' he said. He knew what a force you were."

"Who said?"

"Ollivander. When I took you to get your wand. You were such a funny little thing then; I was quite fond of you. But Rosey, I am in no doubt that you're a woman grown. And you fight like you were born to it." There was unmistakable pride in his voice.

Rose felt warmth creep up from her stomach to her chest. Abruptly, she put her feet under the sheets and pulled his blanket up over her. "Supposing I stay with you the rest of the night? Keep the Dementors away?"

"Nobody so good at it as you," he said, opening his arms to her. She settled in them eagerly and breathed in the smell of him under the sheets.

"It's ironic," she said after a moment, "Since I still can't produce a Patronus."

"But I can," he whispered in her ear. "All I have to do is look at you. See?" He reached for his wand and turned it in a small, jerking spiral. "Expecto Patronum."

The silver dog which bounded out of his wand did several enthusiastic laps around Sirius' bedroom before it, too, curled up on the bed. Rose watched it for a long time before it finally disappeared with a pop. Its owner gave a small snore, and Rose closed her eyes.

1 "Whore!" often used as an oath, similar to f***

2 "What a fine mess!" Literally, "shit pile."

3 Damned peacocks