First and foremost: this story is Sirius/Remus slash. If you object to slash, please do not read. The rating may change in the future.

Secondly: I own nothing pertaining to Harry Potter. If I did I'd be filthy rich by now; and certain… things… (If you've read #5 you know) wouldn't have happened as they did!

Thirdly: This is my first slashfic. I've never written slash before, so if I do something horrifically stupid, just kick me, 'k? Also, if I extend the storyline up through Order of the Phoenix, this is going to be AU! Well, I mean, it is already, because of the slash, but…

Most importantly: This takes place right after GoF, when Sirius goes to "lay low at Lupin's for a while"

It begins:

            Somewhere in the desolate lonesomeness of the Scottish Highlands, a great black dog trotted wearily onward. He'd been traveling for several days, now, after leaving the (relative) safety of his cave outside of Hogsmeade.

            Dumbledore's words echoed in his mind.

            "Lay low at Lupin's for a while…"

            Lupin… Remus Lupin, werewolf and former Defense Against Dark Arts teacher extraordinaire… he'd also been one of the great black dog's, that is to say, one of Sirius Black's (because, of course, the famous escaped-yet-innocent convicted murderer and the dog, commonly known as Padfoot and occasionally Snuffles, were one and the same) best friends.

            The dog sighed, if dogs could sigh. No, he admitted, that wasn't a particularly accurate assessment. There'd been more than friendship – oh, so much more than friendship – between them, once.

            But that of course had been before It happened. Before Voldemort rose to power, before Peter had double-crossed them and Lily and James had been murdered, before Sirius had been convicted of a crime he didn't commit and packed off to Azkaban for twelve solitary, sanity-threatening years.

            He'd escaped, yes, but nearly the whole world thought him guilty – as Remus had, when Sirius had finally shown himself a year ago. Sirius didn't dwell long on that memory; it smarted still to think of standing there in the Shrieking Shack in Hogsmeade and seeing the look that had been in Remus's eyes. The betrayed sort of anger in those golden orbs had almost been too much to bear…

            Then, of course, they'd discovered his innocence, and for a single, glorious half-hour it had looked as though Sirius was free. Oh, how high his hopes had risen in that half-hour, when Sirius had entertained dreams of living his life the way it was meant to be – of removing his godson, Harry, from the clutches of the foul bilge-rats he called relatives, of being a free man, once and for all, and, too, of catching up with Remus, and finding out if old feelings still lingered with the werewolf as they did with the great black dog. He'd had much hope about that one; upon finding that Sirius was innocent there had been a great change in the look of Lupin's golden eyes…

            Those dreams seemed no more than flights of fancy, fairy stories, now, as he considered them again – because, of course, those dreams had taken place before the disgusting traitor Peter Pettigrew had escaped, dooming Sirius to the ever-vigilant life of a fugitive. No more Harry, no more freedom, no more Remus…

            However bleak those things had seemed then, it was ten times worse now. Voldemort had risen again; the wizarding world was in mortal peril – though, now that he mused a bit, he was going to get to see Remus again, wasn't he?

            Though these definitely weren't the circumstances I'd had in mind… Certainly not… going now meant abandoning (even for a high purpose, it still felt like abandonment to Sirius) the side of his godson, whom Sirius had sworn to himself to protect and who had nearly just been killed and whose life was definitely still in danger. Sirius dearly would have loved to be there, right now, but Dumbledore had sent him away, and one did not disobey the directions of Dumbledore – especially when the world was at stake.

            For a moment, Sirius found it rather amusing that Lupin should be hiding out here, in a virtually unpopulated stretch of country in the northern part of Scotland, when he had lived in France all the while that they were in school and then in London once he'd graduated. I suppose there is no better place for keeping yourself secret… But that thought was fleeting – there were more serious things to think about.

            Although – and it took a long while for him to form this thought, because the mere thought of the thought of it made him feel fantastically guilty, because he should be thinking about more serious things – I should like to see Remus again…

            The idea was immediately quashed by a load of other things, the foremost being worry. Chiefly, worry for Harry's life, with worry about Voldemort bringing up a very close second, and worry for his own situation a nearly nonexistent third, which even then was only confined to thinking about what might happen to Harry if his godfather should be caught.

            Soon, though, he found himself at the door of a small, tidy-looking (if exceedingly old) stone house that seemed to have just been plopped here in the middle of nowhere.

            Remus's place.

That's where the first chapter ends; I haven't got the others written yet… PLEASE REVIEW! I beg of you! Just please BE POLITE! If you don't like my work it's perfectly fine, just use clean language about it…

It's going to get more slashy as time goes by, I expect.