Disclaimed.

Author's note: Review please.

The Basement

By Marz

Chapter 5: Alternative Transportation

Black kept a tight grip on my upper arm the entire way to the bus station. We walked down the block and I looked back at the house. It was gone. There wasn't even a path leading up to the door anymore. As we turned the corner I saw we had been in Grimmauld Place. There were people all around us. I thought of calling for help, but I looked over at Black's other hand and saw he had my wand out. It was mostly hidden by his sleeve, but I didn't think any muggle who might answer my plea for assistance would stand a chance. I started picturing people with their heads mounted on a wall. 

Black hunched over as he walked, as if he were afraid some heavy thing were about to fall on his head. It was a cloudy morning, but the sky seemed unusually unstable to me too. I guess we both had some kind of reverse claustrophobia or something. Black had told me he'd been in prison for twelve years.  I was sort of impressed he was functioning at all.

As we entered the bus station I saw a poster on the door. On one side was a picture of Black, looking filthy and armed and dangerous. On the other side was a picture of me. Under my picture it said I had been abducted almost two months ago. There was a hotline number on the bottom.

674-5656 extension # 384 Ask for agent in charge, Arthur Weasley.

Black saw it too and hurried me along. He hung onto my arm through the ticket line, the line to get on the bus, and as we walk down the isle to our seats. He didn't let go until I was in the window seat and he was in the isle seat, preventing my escape. As we pulled out of the station I saw a short, grandmotherish woman looking at another of the posters that declared me missing. I stared at her very hard and she turned and looked right at me. I saw comprehension on her face, but then the bus sped up and I lost sight of her.   

We spent the entire day on the bus. There was a tiny little bathroom in the back. Black didn't follow me when I went to make use of it. I wanted to write a message on the wall in there, maybe someone with a cellular phone would see it and call Mr. Weasley, but I couldn't remember the number from the poster. I'd looked at very hard but it was just gone from my mind. I remembered the extension was 384, but that wasn't going to do me any good.

When I got back to my seat I formed another escape plan. There was a water bottle in the bag Black had given me.  I took it out and started tipping it back and forth. It made a very loud sloshing sound. I figured it would hasten "the call of nature", and when Black went to the bathroom I could get the driver to stop, and then make a run for it. After half an hour of sloshing I saw my efforts starting to take effect. Black's forehead wrinkled up and he started shifting in his seat. As if the universe was helping me out, we hit about fifty consecutive pot holes.  Black grabbed the water bottle away form me then, but I could see it wouldn't help him. When you have to go, you have to go.

I didn't plan on him hand cuffing me to the arm rest, which he did. I wondered where he'd gotten muggle hand cuffs. When he returned I was still stuck in my seat. Black took a key out of his pocket.  He reached for my arm.

"You remembered to wash your hands, right?" I said.

He snorted, and uncuffed me.

I watched the street signs out the window, but as I never really studied any maps of England, I wasn't sure of where we were. I thought we were traveling to the Northwest though. It was night again when we got out. I could see the ocean from this bus station. I could see the moon reflected on the surface and a little light, that I guessed was a boat, way out on the horizon.

"Look, the ocean," I said to Black.

He looked at me, confused for a moment, then grabbed my arm and tugged me along.

There was another poster of me and Black on the station wall, but no one was really looking at it. I felt exhausted as we walked down the street. I don't know why. All I'd done all day was sit in a padded chair and stare out the window.

I thought we were going to stop some where for the night, but Black just dragged me to the edge of the highway. From his back pack he took a sign and unfolded it. It had the word "Scotland" written on it, large and legible. He let me sit down while he held the sign. I fell asleep, and woke up in the cab of a trunk.

I was in the middle seat, leaned against Black's shoulder. On the other side of me was the driver, an amazingly fat man who seemed to be steering the vehicle with his protruding belly, and eating a large sandwich with his free hands.   In between bites, the driver and Black would talk in low voices. Black was talking with a fake Scottish accent, or maybe it was real and his English accent is fake. I don't know.  The driver said hello to me when he noticed I was conscious, and I said hello back. We got off about an hour later. Black and I both said "Thank you" and the man said "You're welcome, any time". I never knew his name.

We finally did sleep.  We stopped in a run down area. It was mostly warehouses and dumpsters as I saw it. Black picked the lock on the side door of one of the warehouses.  He didn't seem to want to use magic. I guess the Ministry could find us somehow if he did. We found an office near the back of the warehouse, and went in.  There weren't any windows in the office, just four concrete walls, a filing cabinet, a desk, and a chair. There was an open bulb light hanging from the ceiling. Nothing I could use to knock Black out with.

I had a question for him, and I was contemplating whether or not this was a good time for it.  I'd been with Black the entire day, and I was fairly certain he hadn't killed anyone. I decided that this was either a good thing, meaning he was in a good mood and not in a murdering one, or a bad thing, meaning he'd gone the whole day without offing any house elves or muggles and I was the only one near by if got in the mood to decapitate. I didn't think he was going to kill me though, right then anyway. I'd already done plenty of things to piss him off, and it wasn't as if I'd been tortured in retaliation.  He hadn't even threatened to hurt me.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked. He was tearing into a stale piece of bread he'd taken form his bag. He chewed slowly and swallowed before answering.

"I told you already. Peter will kill you."

"No. I mean why do you give a damn if Peter kills me or not? It's not like we know each other."

The corners of Black's mouth turned down. I think he was frowning, but the rest of his face remained mask like. "A long time ago I promise someone I would look out for you," he said.

"Who? Who did you promises?"

"If no one ever told you, then it isn't important." He went back to stuffing bread in his mouth.

 I took some bread out of my pack and started eating too. I wasn't actually hungry, but I didn't have anything better to do. I got sick of eating pretty quick though, all the chewing was making my jaw hurt. I thought I'd try to make conversation again.

"So…er…What are you going to do after you catch Peter?"

He looked at me for a long moment. "When I've killed Peter, it will all be over, and I can end this." His voice was very tired as he said the last part.

"End what?"

"End this empty, dark, cold…" He trailed off and got a very vacant look on his face. After five minutes of this I tried to regain his attention.

"Hey Black!"

He started and glared at me for a second. "Go to sleep. We've got a long way to go tomorrow."

I started to object, but then Black cuffed my ankles together. He turned into a dog and curled up in front of the door, ending his side of the conversation, and my plan to sneak out when he fell asleep.

I stayed awake for a long time, thinking. Maybe Black used to work for Dumbledore, the Headmaster of my school. That would explain how he knew my dad, since my dad used to know Dumbledore. Maybe Black used to be the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts. They never last more then a year, and they tend to leave either dead or crazy.  I drifted off thinking about how he would have taught class. He'd probably just sit behind his desk and stare at the students.   Even if that was his method, he'd still be a better teacher then the Potions Professor, Snape. I sort of laughed at my self then. Here I was kidnapped, chained, and in mortal peril, and I still had the mental energy to dislike Snape.  He really is that bad though.   

Howling woke me up.  I didn't know dogs had nightmares, but I guess they do. Black was rolling around in front of the door, growling, barking, and whining. His legs were kicking as if he were running very fast. The noise was horrible. I figured I ought to wake him up, but then he started snapping his jaws and biting imaginary things, so I didn't want to go near him.

I threw the shoes he had gotten for me. They didn't fit very well, so if a crazy dog tore them to bits, I wouldn't mind all that much. The first shoe bounced off his back with out effect, but the second one nailed him right in the head, and the dog was on its feet in an instant.

It looked at me for a second, and then turned back into Black.  His eyes were wide and I could see the white all around them. He was mumbling that he was sorry, and only stopped after violently shaking his head.  He looked at the shoes.

"You were barking in your sleep," I said.

He nodded, and brought the shoes back to me. He uncuffed my ankles and said we were leaving.

We went back to the highway and Black held out the sign again. It was daytime, but still cloudy. We got several different rides. None of those people paid much attention to me though. The day was mostly uneventful. Something a bit strange did happen in this little town we stopped in, I don't remember the name of it. We were walking up the main street of the town, and there was this little old man walking towards us. He wore plaid golf pants and about twenty mismatched argyle sweaters. He was bent nearly in half, leaning on a cane and carrying a plastic shopping bag full of cans. The bag split open as we were walking by.

It didn't really make sense to me. Black let go of my arm, which he held onto whenever we were in an area where I could run for it. He leaned down and started picking up the escaping cans. I stood there confused for a second, then started picking up cans too. When we had them all he asked the old man if he wanted us to carry them for him. The little old man said yes, and we walked him all the way back to his little old house.

Black and the old man, John Franklin he introduced himself as, talked for a while. Black said he was my uncle and that we were headed up north to visit my grandmother in Scotland. Mr. Franklin talked about the poor quality of shopping bags. I don't think he was listening to Black at all. He let us use the bathroom at his house.   I went first.  Black went in as soon as I got out. He didn't hand cuff me this time though. I thought about running, but then Mr. Franklin started telling me I looked like his grandson Mathew, and he started telling me about how Mathew was killed in a car accident, I couldn't just run out while he was saying that. It was stupid of me not to try, but I never claimed to be brilliant. Black returned and we went back to hitchhiking.  

It got cold as we moved farther North. By the third day of our trip, I was wearing all the shirts Black had given me and I was still freezing. We were out in farmland most of the time. I liked the scenery but it seemed as if the only trucks that would stop for us were filled with farm animals, and we always had to ride in the back. 

I've never seen goats that close before, and I never want to again.  Goats are the creepiest animal. The pupils of their eyes are all strange and lopsided and sideways, and they all thought my hair was food. Black laughed at me as I shoved away yet another hungry goat. The laugh was strained, and sounded more like barking then a noise a human would make. I intern got to laugh at him, as a goat chomped down on that stupid puff ball thing on top of his hat and tried to run off with it. I don't think I ever laughed that hard. When Black finally wrestled his hat away and put it back on his head, this big drip of goat spit fell out the puff ball and landed on his nose. He wiped it off in disgust and flicked it at me, but I was cracking up so hard I didn't care. He sort of chuckled a little bit too.

After the goat truck we ended up in an empty open back dump truck. The driver wouldn't let us sit in the cab, because we smelled so much like goats is my theory. The driver did give us a blanket though. It smelled like dog. I was really looking forward to smelling like a human again. Black handed me the blanket without comment.

As we rolled on through Scotland it started getting windy. I usually sit as far away from him as he'll let me, but even at the other end of truck I could hear his teeth chattering. I sat for about twenty minutes listening to that before it finally got to me.

I crawled across the truck to him and shared out half the blanket to him. We huddled there for a while, trying not to freeze to death.

"This doesn't mean I believe you," I said to him.

"When you see Peter, you will."