Disclaimer: Sirius Black and Remus Lupin both belong to J.K. Rowling...
*Cass bursts into the room foaming at the mouth*
Cass: Nooo, they's MINE, preciousssss! I wants to torture them! I wants to break their scrawny little neckses—
*miscellaneous wizards and officers of the law hurry her away to a nice rubber room*
Anyway. As I was saying before I was so RUDELY INTERRUPTED...they and all trouble pertaining thereto are the property of J.K. Rowling. Now on to the story...
A/N: Presenting another chapter of "Sirius on the Rum"! Actually, at the moment this is probably the story I'm having the hardest time on, so updates may be even slower than they have been of late. I thought parts of the last chapter were a little longwinded, but I fervently hope the story will get better (and funnier), so just bear with me and continue with the encouraging reviews! Sorry I lied about the chapter title again, but little things keep happening in the plot that force me to write whole chapters about them. I can, however, promise you beyond a doubt that the next chapter will be titled "How Much is That Doggie in the Window?"
Dog Days
From a safe distance, Remus Lupin gazed grimly at the Little Whinging pound and pondered his next move. This meant war, of course...if he could work up the courage to somehow storm the place and rescue Sirius before he got himself into trouble—or worse, adopted. The problem at hand was exactly how to get back in with every person in the place watching diligently for any sign of him. Remus decided he should probably go for the most obvious solution first. After all, who would ever expect something so patently idiotic?
He steeled himself for the horror that was to come and marched resolutely up to the building. In the shadows by the door lurked a stereotypical thug, no doubt all too happy to rip him limb from limb if he showed any sign of trespassing. Remus swallowed and forced a rather unconvincing smile as he drew nearer and noted the man's slightly pointed teeth. [What is this, Night of the Living Security Guards?]
Apparently. "Halt! Who goes there?" the guard demanded stoutly. Remus tried his best to stifle a snort at this rather medieval greeting and forced a look of suitable respect and meekness. Actually, it wasn't all that hard, the man probably being a first cousin to King Kong and Godzilla.
"Um, excuse me," Remus piped up, shuffling his feet a little to complete the resemblance to a nervous teenager. He knew his tenor voice worked wonders for him in situations like this, especially when it soared into the upper register. Somehow it always made 450-pound hulks like this guy feel superior, usually putting them off their guard and allowing him to get his way.
The guard looked suspiciously down, emphasizing the 2-foot difference in height. Remus winced slightly. He was very much aware that he'd better make this good if he didn't want a trip to St. Mungo's. "Well, you see, there seems to be some problem. I've come to pick up my pet and for some reason the other guard wouldn't let me in." Twisting his face into an approximation of a smile, Remus "laughed" heartily. "Isn't that wild?"
The Incredible Bulk, as Remus had privately named him, scratched his close-shaven head. Remus held his breath. Now his plan hinged on Cass' employees all having IQs of 25 or thereabouts. Was it too much to hope for?
"Well, uh, duh," the guard mused slowly. "Hmmmm..."
[Spit it out, you idiot!] Remus raged.
The guard came to a decision. "I guess you can come on in," he said, fixing Remus with a wary eye as he held the door open for him. Taking a deep breath and trying his best to feel very brave, he entered The Pound of Doom. The words "if it's the last thing I do" suddenly held new and terrifying meaning.
Once inside, Remus found himself oddly calm. The Rubicon had been crossed and he was sworn to do his duty, come what may. Not to say that the thought of Cass' terrible revenge didn't turn his knees to jelly, but he couldn't turn back now and leave Sirius in the hands of this madwoman! After all, friends were friends, no matter how much one might want to kill them.
As he followed his guide down a hallway he hadn't seen on his previous visit, Remus began to realize just how big the place really was. For the first time, he wondered just how long it would take him to find Sirius, let alone rescue him and get him home in one piece. This undertaking was obviously more serious than he had counted on. Feeling his optimism disappear in a puff of smoke, Remus hunched his shoulders to avoid notice and kept a sharp lookout for any sign of Cass.
They had now reached an enormous corridor lined with cages. Remus took one look at the size of the hallway and gulped, not knowing where to start. Why, Sirius could be in any one of these...it was impossible!
[Now wait just a minute,] Remus chided himself. [What are you saying? You're a Marauder...impossible is your middle name!] The thought of his noble history as a Marauder quickened his step and brought a swashbuckling gleam to his eye. If anyone could break a tipsy bear-sized dog out of his former girlfriend's lair, it was definitely Mr. Moony. What would Mr. Moony do to make the best of a situation like this?
Aha! The first step: actually finding Sirius. [Easier said than done,] Remus thought grimly, intimidated by the endless rows of animals. But then, how hard could it be to find a somewhat drunk canine, especially one as...unusual...as Sirius? Feeling a little silly, he began walking down the nearest row of cages, calling his friend's name and hoping he would be sober enough to respond.
"Sirius? Sirius! Come on, you idiot, I know you're here!" No response. "PADFOOT!" he bellowed in desperation, rattling the bars of the nearest cage and scaring the wits into several nearby Pekinese, who began running in circles yapping their little heads off. Shaking the bars harder, Remus gritted his teeth in frustration and—
—Unexpectedly, the door burst open. As luck would have it, the Pekinese quartet were the dogs nearest the door and thus the first ones out. Before Remus could so much as scream for help, they were on him, their sharp little toenails buffeting him even more mercilessly than their high-pitched squeals, yips, and barks. He went down under their combined 10-pound weight, yelping in surprise as he hit the floor.
The lap dogs were ecstatic; they probably hadn't had this much fun since the garden party they'd attended last year. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for poor Remus, who was accumulating scratches at an alarming rate and in danger of going deaf to boot. He raised his eyes beseechingly to the security guard, only to find the man staring at him with narrowed eyes. Creakily but surely, the wheels in his head were beginning to turn and Remus didn't think he liked the direction they were going in.
"Hey!" the man said sharply, looking like one on whom the light of truth has just dawned. "Boss warned us about you!" Remus gasped, partly from fear that the jig was up and partly because of the set of nails that had just made their mark on his left cheek, joining the war wound he'd received from Cass fifteen years earlier. The Pekinese were still having the time of their lives attacking him; moreover, one had made its way up to his face and apparently enjoyed tap dancing greatly. Groaning, Remus made a weak attempt to brush the dogs off.
At this point, he realized something that dampened his already drenched spirits. The realization was simply that the Pekinese weren't the only animals that had seen fit to make a bid for freedom. In fact, about twenty assorted mammals were now wandering aimlessly around the corridor and generally making things very uncomfortable for any unlucky person who happened to be pinned to the floor by lap dogs. Groaning inwardly, Remus thought, [I'll never find him now...] Then something happened that temporarily drove all thoughts of finding Sirius from his mind.
The dog that had been executing dance steps on his face had extraordinarily long, perfectly groomed hair, which had been tickling Remus' nose for the last ten seconds. At last, he could stand it no longer. He simply had to sneeze...
Unfortunately, animals in packs tend to be totally devoid of sense or reason. Because of this, any unusual noise in the vicinity—for instance, say, a person sneezing—tends to cause mass pandemonium, riots, stampedes, etc. More unfortunately, this is precisely the reaction that Remus' outburst engendered. Most unfortunately, lack of sense often results in nonsensical behavior such as running toward a strange noise rather than away from it.
Remus didn't have time to get out of the way. The Vicious Lap Dogs of Doom were still attacking him with gusto, making it almost impossible for him to notice anything else, much less move. Hearing a strange rushing sort of sound, he looked up in sudden horror and beheld the onslaught of domestic animals bearing down on him. It was, naturally, too late to escape.
Well, he thought, Cass was finally getting her revenge for that last argument. He was about to be overrun with animals...
—And then they hit him. Approximately two hundred and fifty pounds of assorted critters thundered overhead in a rush of barks, mews, whines, yelps, and something that he could have sworn was maniacal laughter. Just his luck—not one of the little beasts was declawed. Remus was sure he would have all sorts of interesting scars to commemorate this night, assuming he lived through it. Of course, that seemed extremely unlikely at the moment, but hope springs eternal.
Amid the bedlam that surrounded him, Remus could dimly hear the security guard running off, no doubt to inform Cass of this latest development. He realized this should probably bother him, but it was hard to think of anything worse than being trampled by escaped animals directly after being attacked by small balls of fluff. As best he could, he curled up into a ball and played dead, trying to ignore his stinging cuts, bruises, scrapes, and other assorted lacerations.
It was over. The flood of fur and claws had swept down the hallway, leaving devastation in its wake, and was now heading for the exit. Weakly, Remus propped himself up on one elbow and thanked his lucky heavenly bodies that he had survived this...unique...experience. Mercifully, even those demonic dogs had been swept away in the crowd and were now out of his hair—literally.
At this point, Remus realized that he would probably be in considerable trouble if he was caught here. In fact, the phrase "a fate worse than death" sprang to mind as singularly appropriate. Slowly and painfully, he got to his feet and began brushing a thick layer of fur off his poor mistreated sweater, which would probably never recover from this trauma. Remus wondered whether he would ever either, for that matter. This surely counted as a traumatic experience...
[Wait a minute. Just one cotton-pickin' minute!] To his great chagrin, Remus suddenly noticed that he hadn't been able to get a good enough look at the stampede to verify that Sirius hadn't been part of it. For all he knew, his friend could now be roaming loose around the pound or the immediate vicinity, meaning that Remus would probably never find him without some sort of finding spell, for which he would need his wand. And, he remembered with even greater chagrin, his wand was currently sitting innocently on the kitchen table at his house, blissfully unaware that it was needed. Why did everything always have to happen to him?
Remus sighed softly, indulging in one of the rare moments of self-pity that had become more and more frequent in the last two hours. Of all the things that could have happened, why did the evening's events have to involve tracking down someone who had been enough of an idiot to get himself drunk while cooking (cooking, for Pete's sake!), having his broomstick of twenty-four years torn to bits by a murderous canine, and running into Cassandra Philips? Surely nobody deserved such a disastrous concatenation of events in such a short time!
Now, where could he hide? He cast about frantically for a safe hiding place, hearing faint footsteps approaching. Perhaps behind those cages? No, too obvious; that would be the first place they would look for him. Which left exactly one spot—the tiny space right behind the door at the far end of the corridor. Could he get there in time? It would be a calculated gamble...
Taking a deep breath, Remus scrambled to his feet, pelted down the hallway, and dived for the shadows behind the large door just as it slammed open. Cass entered in all her terrible glory, trailed by a few understandably nervous employees who cowered and generally tried to avoid notice. Remus could sympathize, knowing he would do the same under the circumstances. He crouched behind the door, panting from his narrow escape and gasping silently from the abrupt pain of the door crashing into his shoulder.
"And just what exactly happened here?" Cass demanded imperiously, striding down the corridor. Wincing at the click of her impossibly high-heeled shoes, Remus tried to make himself smaller and more like a section of wall, still rubbing his shoulder and grimacing. The employees gibbered in pure terror and tried to blame each other for the mishap.
"Well, see, it was all Jones here's fault, ma'am, he was the one that done unlocked them there cages—" "Don't you listen to that lying snake-in-the-grass Smith, he's the one what's responsible for this—"
"ENOUGH!" Cass bellowed, making them all shrink back in fear. "What matters is that approximately two dozen of the animals it is your job to take care of have somehow escaped. I assure you that the responsible party—or parties," her icy gaze swept the ranks— "will pay dearly for this...this...fiasco. However, you do still have a chance to redeem yourselves. Those beasts can't have gone far. AFTER THEM!" The roar shocked her employees into action, and the room was vacated in a matter of seconds, Cass shouting commands at their retreating backs. She surveyed the room and the remaining animals with contempt, turned on her heel, and marched out. Remus breathed again.
Creeping through the maze of hallways, he felt great relief at having survived the latest development in what was shaping up to be the most dangerous experience of his life. Yes, he was retreating once more, but not without hope. For as he scuttled out of the corridor with the cages, he had seen something that made his hopes rise higher than they had since this wretched evening had begun—an enormous mass of black fur looking soulfully at him.
Sirius was safe—for now.
A/N: Cheerful, wasn't it? I'm really sorry it took me so long to update, but I've recently started work on approximately ten other stories that I will hopefully post sometime this summer. This includes updates to "The Marauders' Legacy", which looks really stupid right now with the one chapter it's had since December. About six of those ten stories will be Lord of the Rings, which I'm really looking forward to because it's a whole lot easier to come up with an original plot in that section than in this one. I'm also working on stories for several backwater sections like Foundation and Amber (which are both great series and need all the readers they can get HINT HINT) and some not-so-backwater ones like Series of Unfortunate Events and The Dark is Rising. Guess what? I still need abbreviations and terms! If anyone can give me the definitions for YAOI, C/C, and MST (which I knew once but have sadly forgotten), I would be eternally grateful. Of course, other stuff is welcome too. Just to verify: MPREG means male pregnancy, right? Folks, please forgive me. You may have noticed by now that I don't go for a lot of review feedback at the best of times, and at the moment I want to get this thing posted and since my parents aren't on the Internet I can't access my reviews. I'll give you the sad story on that in the next chapter, which is...*ahem*...Coming Soon: Chapter Seven: How Much is That Doggie in the Window? (for real this time)
P.S. No offense to Pekinese.