Disclaimer: Love ya, J.K.R. Not stealing, just borrowing.

Introduction and Explanation

This is basically post-OotP denial, he he he. Now this is just my own little project that I happen to enjoy writing and I've already gotten five chapters down. I never planned on posting it here, but it seems to be turning out alright.

Anyway, it's set in the summer before Prisoner of Azkaban. Sirius has just escaped from Azkaban and stumbles upon a city in his travels. There he encounters a Muggle young woman who is having a difficult time fitting in among the city folk. Through one circumstance or another (as you'll hopefully read), she takes him in, not realizing that the big black shaggy dog she's adopting as her pet is actually Sirius Black. After that, I can't spoil, he he he.

That's a very brief summary. Try it out. :)


Disclaimer: Love ya, J.K.R. Not stealing, just borrowing.

Chapter One

He's at Hogwarts...

It was the sole thought that drove Sirius Black to dash through the muddy ground in this hellish weather, half starving and exhausted beyond delerium. He couldn't stop running. Four days and he coulnd't remember doing anything but running. Then again, he couldn't stop, even if he wanted to. The Ministry would have every pawn of theirs out roaming the wide green earth just to get him back. Just to get back the sole person to ever break out of Azkaban. And he knew what they'd have waiting for him if they ever caught him...

He's at Hogwarts.... At Hogwarts....

The rain fell in pellets the size of ping pong balls, sending splatters of mud into Black's eyes as he flew over the ground. The sky above flashed with the lightening accompanying the storm and Sirius cursed it as it briefly shed light on everything shrouded in the dark of night. One of those breif intervals of light could be enough to give him away...

A sharp pain shot up his already aching front leg, and he let out a yelp as blood spattered up around him mingled in the mud. He didn't stop running for half a second. His pace didn't even slow or his form alter to take pressure off his now injured and bleeding front paw. There was simply not enough time to tend to his physical needs.

Hours he ran in his healthless condition, half mad with hunger and yet still fighting the nausea clenching his empty stomach from the taste of his own blood in his mouth. The storm didn't lessen, but strongthened. The wind became strong enough to make the lesser tree branches creak under the force. The rain stung as it hit the dogs sore back. Were anyone around to see him, they would have shot the animal out of the kindness of their hearts. His dripping wet coat hung around a thin malnutritioned body, dirt and blood splashed from the tips of his fur as he moved. Despite the deathly ill appearance of the Animagus, his eyes burned with a fire of determination that not even the God forsaken storm could put out. It was all he had left of himself.

Sirius saw the muddied forest path he'd been traveling end several yards ahead of him. He finally stopped running, panting heavily, limbs trembling from over exertion. Beyond the protection of the forest foliage lie the open, vulnerable streets of a small, bustling city. He couldn't turn back. He had to go on, even if there was danger among populated areas. A spark of anxious excitement flickered in his mind. Populated areas. People. He'd walk among free people for the first time in, what, twelve years?

His legs finally gave out and he dragged himself to lie curled at the base of a tree. Now that he was no longer moving, his hunger seized him full force. Sirius spotted a patch of green grass growing at the root of the tree. He contented himself to nibble on the bitter leaves, having no alternative. Starving and weary, he let himself slink into a half aware state, as close as he would be getting to sleep until he reached Hogwarts.

*

"What did you do to him?" the young man shouted angrily, kneeling beside the fallen form of his best friend.

The unconscious friend lay on the ground with a trail of dark red blood seeping through a cut over his left eye. Seconds ago a rather heavy cooler had miraculously flown from it's spot on a shelf behind the Coutryman's Tavern's bar counter and struck it's victim exactly where the wound bled. Quite a few eyes had beheld the scene and now watched curiously, neither helping the injured customer nor the wide eyed woman standing a foot or two from the victim and his friend.

"I said what did you do to him?" he cried again, furiously.

"N-nothing!" the young woman shouted, though paling at the same time.

The conscious man got to his feet, glaring at her accusingly. "Nothing?? I saw what happened! You threw out your hand and that cooler flew clear across the room at Robert!"

"Are you saying that I willed it to move?" she asked, regaining her usual cool composure.

Inside, she was anything but calm. She knew she had caused the cooler to hit Robert, intentionally or not. This wasn't the first time such an event occured to Roxanne Callisto. This was the seventh occasion of it's supernatural sort, all the previous happenings occuring only in times when she felt great peril or anger.

Robert's friend looked at her darkly. "I don't know how you managed it, but that seems to be the case."

"Ay, she must 'ave been delving in the black art!" cried an old man, rum sloshing over the rim of his mug as he waved it in Roxanne's direction viciously. "Tha devil 'imself workin' through 'er hands!"

Roxanne ignored the drunks word, but a murmur rose among the occupants of the bar. Robert's friend's eyes narrowed at her in deeper suspicion.

"I believe I'll have to ask you take leave of this place, miss," the bar owner said, not daring leave the safety of his spot behind the counter.

"Me leave? Are you blind? None of you saw that git and his friend making rather ungentlemanly advances on me?" she asked, outraged. "You expect me to sit here and not defend myself?"

"Then you did do it," the young man muttered, cursing.

"Can't you ever hold your tongue, Rick?" Roxanne groaned as the stares of the bar customers grew more intense and accusory.

"You watch yourself, Callisto," Rick warned, kneeling back down beside his friend. "I don't care if you are some kind of bloody vampire, it won't help you when we find you."

Roxanne bit back a retort, but allowed a frustrated sigh to escape through her clenched teeth. She turned on her heel and exited the bar, leaving behind a room full of confused and suspicious patrons. The girl didn't allow herself a thought on the matter until she had walked seven blocks to a tall apartment building and entered. Once she climbed a flight of steps and shut the door of Apartment B15 behind her, she threw herself onto her couch. Roxanne hugged a pillow to her chest, eyes closed tight as her thoughts broke free in her mind.

She could have killed that boy today. It could have been the set of large cuttlery sitting precariously close to the thrown cooler that had been propelled at Robert's skull. Maybe he was dead. That cooler had seemed very hefty, the way it dropped to the floor with a loud crash after it bounced off his head. And the speed at which it flitted across the room...

"No..." Roxanne whimpered into the pillow.

No. He wasn't dead. Surely, if the cooler had produced such a small breakage in the skin it hadn't been forceful enough to make a dent in Robert's thick skull. He was alive. But had he been standing a bit more to the left he would have lost an eye... Roxanne shuddered and squeezed the pillow tighter until she feared the down would pop right out of the fabric.

She couldn't help what had happened. Robert and Rick had been torturing her since she transferred to Forgrove University from her old college. They approached her nearly everyday with some crude word or gesture. Once they had nearly become violent and would have surely went the whole way had a policeman not pulled into the college parking lot at that moment. Roxanne was in no way a weak or easily frightened woman, but when she saw the murderous gleam in Robert's eyes that day in the parking lot... Another shudder shook her slender frame. She had always been extra wary of the duo since that day two months ago. So when they tried to bodily advance on her that afternoon in the bar, she'd panicked.

Roxanne didn't understand how she could do what she did. Seven times in her life it had happened. In a moment of high fear or anger, a strange energy would rush through her very veins, and before she knew what was happening, some stationary object would sail from it's spot or one on occasion, burst into flames. The first time had been when she was eight. She'd been walking home from a friends house when she lived in the suburbs when an unfriendly figure approached her. She'd been frightened to death. She cried out and threw out her hands when he got too near and a set of trashcans slammed into her assailant from a nearby pavement. The girl had run as if all hell were on her heels back to her friend's house without another thought on the matter. As time went on she realized what had actually occured. Realized, but not understood. Now over ten years later, at the age of twenty-four, she was no closer to knowing what within her caused these things to happen.

She tossed her pillow aside a few minutes later when she felt her thoughts had settled and walked into her apartments small kitchen to put on some tea. Her apartment was of modest size and modest furnishings. Her living room had enough space for a small entertainment stand containing a television, VCR, radio, and her ever addictive Playstation, a small comfortable gray sofa facing it and a coffee table between the two. A photo of her parents hung beside the doorway to her bedroom and a watercolor painting of a dark, starry night was mounted on the opposite wall beside the entrance to the kitchen. The kitchen was only large enough to walk into seven steps and across four. It had a range, sink, dishwasher (thankfully), counter and refridgerator. Roxanne was grateful to have had enough money to afford even this small living space. Her parents offered to help her with the rent, but she refused. They weren't in a good place, financially, and were already assisting her college funding. A small, cozy spot was all she needed to get by.

While waiting for her tea to brew, Roxanne dropped a stack of books on her living room coffee table as she sat down. She opened the first text to reveal a skychart. She had taken a minor in astronomy since the celestial world around the earth she knew had fascinated her since early childhood. She knew that this world wasn't all there was. There was more to life than the mundane routines and pains and utter monotony. When she expressed these sincere thoughts to others she always recieved the same type of answers. She was a dreamer. Reality was reality and there was nothing magical about it. Nothing.

Somehow Roxanne found that hard to swallow.

The following night, the prior day's events were far from her mind. She was returning from her evening Karate lessons at quarter past eleven. She had stood a half hour longer to help her sensei fix the bookshelf she'd accidentally knocked over during the lesson. Roxanne had never been extremely athletic, but she had taken to karate two years ago, with more interest in the artistic side of it, rather than in the strength she was gaining. After a lesson, her mind would feel so clear and unburdened. Everything would turn out alright. Unfortunatey, it would leave her so mellow and sedated that she often paid little attention to anything other than the clarity in her mind. That was the wrote state of mind for this night.

Roxanne rounded the corner of Muller Street and crossed the road to take the short route to her apartment through Folden Park. The park was dark that night, since the road lights were turned off at ten thirty by the grounds keeper. No one walked through this late anyway. There was no need to run up the electric bill. Except this night there was more than one passer by in the park.

The girl stopped in the middle of the dirt road to look up at the night sky through the foliage. This was the only place in the city she had gotten a clear view of the stars and moon. Streetlights dimmed the stars' radiance and blurred out constellations. But now.... Now she could see the constellation Canis Major shining brightly, not dimmed entirely by the light of the full moon. What a sight...

"Stargazing, Callisto?" a deep voice spoke into her ear, hot breath hitting her neck.

Before Roxanne could cry out, a hand clammped roughly over her mouth. She wildly struggled against her captor, flailing her arms madly. A second person walked around the one restraining her. She immediatly noted the white bandage on his forehead and knew it was Robert. Panic filled her. Could she count on her luck to work again for her in such a short span of time? Not that it mattered. There was nothing to be hurled nearby. She was pretty sure she wouldn't be able to will a tree to uproot itself or a lamp to unscrew from it's stand and fly at Rick.

So she would have to improvise. Roxanne leaned back as far as she could, pushing Rick backward as she did it. He laughed at the attempt.

"What do you think you're---"

The girl suddenly propelled herself forward, bending so that she flipped Rick over her. She landed painfully on the hard road, but she was free from Rick. Roxanne jumped to her feet and dropped into a defensive karate stance. By now Rick was standing and brushing the dirt off his gray shirt, snickering at Robert.

"Look at that. Callisto knows some kung foo," he snorted. "Try that against this, deary."

To Roxanne's dread he slipped a thin switchblade from the back pocket of his jeans, smugly. Robert copied his friend's actions, no humor in his cold, furious eyes. The two boys stalked toward her as she took careful steps backwards from them. She wasn't good enough at karate to feel very confident about this situation. In fact, for the first time in her life, she wished her strange powers would act up and send a nearby tree into flames or throw Rick across the park. She had no such luck as she suddenly found herself backed against a tree, both boys still moving toward her.

So this was it. She would die at the hands of these two low-lifes. As if she couldn't be frightened enough, a sound rose behind the girl that made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. A low, guttural growl came from the brush behind her. She saw Rick and Robert stare at a spot just beyond her, the former amused, the latter somewhat frightened. Before Roxanne could comprehend what was lurking behind her, a streak of black rushed by her head and hit Rick in the chest, knocking him down. His switchblade flew from his hand as he hit the road hard.

Robert backed away from the black beast perched on his friend's chest in horror. Roxanne let her eyes fall on the monster. A large, shaggy black dog stood, fur raised on it's back, fierce eyes glaring murderously at Rick.

"What are you doing? Help me!" he cried to Robert.

"H-help you?? No way, man!" Robert exclaimed, his devotion to his friend only stretching so far.

The black dog gave Robert a feral growl, baring its gleaming white fangs. That was all the boy needed to take off and forget his friend and their vow to pay back Roxanne.

"Coward..." Rick grumbled, pulling back an arm and slapping the dog off of him.

The dog gave a short yip as it fell off of it's victims chest. Rick scrambled along the dirt to grasp his switchblade again. He got to his feet, anger in his eyes. He brushed a line of blood from his lip, turning his murderous glare on the dog. The animal was ready to lunge at him if danger presented itself, fur raised along the ridge of its back.

"Damn mut. You're going to pay for that..." Rick said, grinning maliciously as he raised the switchblade to throw it.

Before the weapon left his grasp, Rick flopped to the ground, unceremoniously. Roxanne stood over his fallen form holding a hefty looking tree branch in her hands. She threw aside the peice of wood and bent to pick up the dropped switch blade. Her eyes flickered as she looked at the lethal object in her hand, then back down at Rick's defenseless body. He would have killed her tonight, if not worse... He would try again, she had no doubt of that much. She could end it right now. She had the right to. It would solve everything...

Roxanne let the weapon fly from her fingers. Half a second later it struck a tree trunk, vibrating from the impact. She'd call the police when she got home, but she'd be damned if she was going to take Rick to a safe place or sink to his level and finish him off. With any luck someone would steal his clothing and valuables before the police reached him.

The girl looked over at the dog standing a few feet away, wagging its long black tail. The same eyes that had been burning with a mad fury were now shining with the friendliness only a dog could project. Roxanne smiled and catiously walked towards the creature.

"Thanks for helping me tonight, pup," she said, holding out a hand for it to sniff.

The dog looked at her hand, then back up at her with no malice in its light eyes. Taking the gesture as an okay, Roxanne knelt down beside the animal and gave it a scratch behind the ears.

"You're a dirty little thing aren't you?" she mused, observing its mud caked fur.

Her eyes narrowed as she took a closer look. The dog looked like it hadn't eaten in days. Among the patches of dirt were flecks of a deep red substance. It was dried blood. Roxanne followed the trail to its source. She nearly gasped when she found the cause of the blood flow. A thick bit of splintered wood was imbedded in the dog's left forepaw.

"You're hurt..." she whispered. "Probably starving, too... Well, I owe you one, don't I? Come on, you can stay with me until you're healed up."

Roxanne stood up and took a few steps backwards, urging the dog to follow. It gave a bark and padded along after her, slightly favoring it's right paw.

The dog followed the woman all the way to her Apartment building where she stopped to unlock the door. Why not take some time to recover? He was safe here for a while, after all. Who would ever think to look for Sirius Black in a Muggle college student's apartment so many miles from Azkaban Prison?

Good? Bad? I'd like to know if you'd care to tell. ^__^