Ah, the next chapter!

I don't like it that much, it jumps too much, I think. And Wulf's more in this than I had expected…

There's a cameo in this chapter: Amy's one of my reviewers, who asked to be in this fict. She told me she used to live in Belgium, and there was one time when a black dog walked into her school. That was pretty much all I needed to know. ^_^

The quote is from the movie "Wolf". It doesn't have much to do with the chapter, but I couldn't find a more appropriate one…

Enjoy! And keep reviewing!

August/September 1994.

"The demon wolf is not evil, unless the man he has bitten is evil. And it feels good to be a wolf, doesn't it?"
"Indeed it does."

* * * * *

No, it wasn't good news – but I´ll try and stay out of the papers from now on, and you know what they say: no news is good news.

Speaking of good and bad news: I'm not only corresponding with you, but also with my Godson and your former employer. Both have written me about, well, things that could mean that a certain You-Know-Who's back. So I'm not really pleased to announce that I'm coming back to England. Don't complain, don't try to change my mind, you'll not succeed anyway. Maybe I´ll pay you a visit, maybe not – I want to get to Scotland as fast as I can.

Padfoot, who won't be back in time to see the World Cup after all.

* * * * *

Remus pressed the knife onto the skin of the apple. It sank in it with a soft snap, and he carefully began skinning the apple and cutting it into quarters. He was listening with one ear to the radio at the end of Wulf's bed, calling out commercials before the start of the Quidditch World Cup.

"Almost done?" Wulf asked. His right hand was moving around again, nervously plucking the sheets. His left was laying limply at his side, the tips of the fingers a purplish black. He couldn't use it anymore.

"Don't be impatient," Remus said, and he cut out the core of the apple. He did it exactly the way his mother had done when he was a child, and it felt a bit strange to do it for the older man; Wulf was hardly his child. The Healers at St Mungo's, however, had told Remus to do it this way, and the fact that Wulf hated it gave Remus an extra bit of satisfaction. Call it some kind of revenge.

He finished one quarter and laid it into Wulf's right hand, who immediately bit it in half.

"Stupid, childish way of eating," he muttered, munching.

"That's the way they told me you're eating your apples," Remus shrugged, cutting the next quarter. "If you don't like it, do it yourself." He knew fully well his Alpha couldn't.

Wulf knew too, and it pissed him even more off. He chewed angrily on his piece of apple.

"Why do you keep coming here anyway?" he asked. Remus shrugged again.

"I dunno," he said. "I guess I just like annoying you." He suddenly realised it was true – he did like to annoy Wulf, it was a way to get some revenge. And he also realised, with a strange feeling in his stomach, what a Snape-ish thing it was. Had the Potions Master rubbed off on him? It certainly looked like it.

The small wireless radio Wulf had managed to borrow from the St Mungo's staff (or, more accurately, had demanded to get) was now blaring previews of the upcoming match, with in-depth discussions of the two Quidditch teams and their players.

"You know, my younger brother's at the match now," Remus said, laying another piece of apple in Wulf's hand. 

"And you want me to know this because..?" Wulf replied sarcastically.

"I was just trying to make conversation," Remus bit back, irritably.

"Well, excuse me, but I'm hardly concerned about the trivial little facts of your life, or the whereabouts of your family." Wulf bit the quarter of apple in half. And once again Remus was left with nothing to do but to grit his teeth and attack the other half of the apple with his knife.

"Can't you ever just pretend to be nice?" he asked. Wulf shrugged.

"Am I supposed to?"

"Well, I've visited you practically every day for a week now, and I couldn't help but notice that I seem to be the only one who was visiting you, and maybe, just maybe that has something to do with the fact that you aren't very sociable." The older man scowled, and Remus smirked.

"You done with that apple yet?" Wulf changed the subject.

"I got the last piece right here." Remus gave the quarter to him.

"Took you long enough," Wulf said, munching. "Could've done it faster myself."

"Oh sure. You can't even see." Remus turned the radio, which was calling out the last commercials before the game, a little louder.

"I would still be faster," Wulf insisted.

"Dream on," Remus shrugged. "You'd only cut yourself, and I would get the blame for having your other hand bandaged too."

"Humans," Wulf growled. "Stop thinking like one!" Before Remus knew what was happening, Wulf had reached out and closed his hand around the blade of the small knife. He squeezed hard, letting the knife cut into the ball of his thumb and the palm of his hand.

"You idiot!" Remus scolded. He jumped to his feet, hastily pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and started prying Wulf's hand open. But by the time he had succeeded, he could see the wound healing before his very eyes. After about a minute, all that was left was a faint white line.

"It used to go much faster," Wulf said, feeling the tiny scar with his thumb. "You see, boy? If I hadn't been a werewolf, I would be bleeding all over the bed, like so-called normal people. You keep forgetting that we cannot get hurt!"

"Oh yeah?" Remus bowed forward, until his face was close to Wulf's, and he was staring into those blind eyes, and hissed: "then why are you in the hospital then?"

Wulf opened his mouth, closed it again. Remus felt a grim kind of satisfaction. Leaving the old man to his confused feelings, he packed the skin of the apple in a paper napkin, picked up the knife, and went to return it to the Healer who had given it to him.

She was sitting at a table, writing something on a clipboard. She was slightly older than Remus, with blond hair in a ponytail, and her nametag told Remus her name was Vivian White. When she heard him approach, she wearily looked up at him.

"Scared you away, didn't he?" she sighed.

"Actually, no. I left him temporarily speechless," Remus answered lightly, throwing the napkin in the bin and laying the knife on the table. His remark appeared to have left the Healer temporarily speechless as well.

"You – what? But, that's a miracle! Could you teach me that trick?" The sad thing was that she said it only half-jokingly.

"I simply have him a healthy dose of his own medicine, which was a lethally sarcastic comment, and he was as docile as a lamb. Well, as docile as he can get anyway." She smiled faintly.

"Why are you visiting him so often anyway?" she wanted to know. "Family?"

"Sort of," Remus avoided the subject, but she seemed to guess anyway. "Why?"

"You see, we have this system to contact the family of a patient if things are getting worse. And Mr Talbot – he may not look or act like it, but we don't expect him to see next month. It may sound hard, but it's the truth. So, uhm, if you want to, you know, if you want us to contact you if anything happens…" she trailed off uncertainly. 

"Sure, okay. Do I need to sign my name anywhere?" She gave him a sheet of parchment on which he could fill in his name and address and his relation to Wulf. He hesitated when he came to that last question. Finally, he filled in 'Godson'. It was the closed he could come up with. He handed the sheet to Vivian, who assured him that he would be contacted as soon as anything serious happened, then he wandered back to Wulf's room. 

"The match's about to start," the old man growled. He didn't mention their previous quarrel, and neither did Remus. He sat down and listened to Ludo Bagman announcing the two teams and the referee.

The rest of the evening passed by fairly quietly, save for the enormous outburst of cheering that came when Krum caught the Snitch and Ireland won the Cup.

"That was unexpected," Wulf muttered sleepily, rubbing his left upper-arm. Remus could see that the veins were a darkblue, almost black, but didn't mention it. He got to his feet.

"I got to go," he said. "I´ll probably be back tomorrow."

"Hmm," Wulf answered absentmindedly, blind eyes staring at the end of his bed. He was still massaging his arm, and judging from the look on his face, it was painful. Remus was about to walk out of the door, when Wulf called him back.

"Oh, Lupin? A bit of advice, from a fellow werewolf." Remus turned, expectantly but a little sceptical. Wulf said nothing.

"What?" Remus finally broke the silence.

"Don't get on the wrong side of a guy who just got a silver pocket knife for his birthday," the old man said. He laid down and turned his back towards Remus. His hand was still massaging his left arm.

~*~

The next morning, everything was different.

Remus noticed it first because of his mailbox. It was filled to the rim with not only the Daily Prophet, but also three letters. He took them all out, tossed them on the dinner table and went to make breakfast. News could wait.

He would never finish his breakfast. When he folded the Daily Prophet open and caught sight of the headlines, he immediately forgot about everything to do with tea and toast.

"SCENES OF TERROR AT THE WORLD CUP." Under this alarming headline, there was a photo of the Dark Mark. The picture was black-and-white, but Remus had seen it often enough to know that it was actually green. The sight of it made him feel queasy.

He quickly skimmed the article but found nothing really interesting, nothing that pointed towards more than a few dark wizards having a cruel kind of fun with Muggles. To be honest, Remus had seen and read worse, and now the main news didn't seem directly life-threatening, he ripped the letters open.

The first one was an almost hysterical letter from his mother, very nearly demanding reassurance that he wasn't hurt (as if he'd been anywhere near the World Cup) and that he wasn't going to get hurt either. Obviously, the memory of what Voldemort had done fourteen years ago was still fresh in her mind, just like her anguish over Remus' dangerous work for the Order of the Phoenix. He laid the letter aside, making a mental note to write back as soon as possible. The second letter was a short note from Romulus, merely telling him that he wasn't in any way hurt, that everything had happened practically at the other side of the camping site, and that he was safely home. The third and final letter was from Sirius, and not at all reassuring. He had heard 'things', he said, and he was coming back. Remus was so angry he crumpled the letter to a tiny ball and tossed it to the other side of the room. Whatever Sirius said, and no matter how right he had been proved with today's headlines, Remus didn't want to believe it. He didn't want Sirius back in England, he didn't want to lose him again. He picked up the letter from the floor and read it again.

"Don't complain, don't try to change my mind, you'll not succeed anyway."  Remus unconsciously clenched one hand into a fist. Despite what Sirius said, he'd try to change his mind anyway. Sirius would not come back, not if Remus could help it.

~*~

And then they always say it only rains so much in England, Sirius thought wryly as he trudged through the steadily falling rain. He was in dog-form, and Padfoot could usually take being wet far better than Sirius, but that didn't mean it was any more comfortable.

He trotted through a deep pool of water on one of the sidewalks, and irritably shook the water off his paws. It was the first week of September, but it seemed to be mid-autumn. It made him regret leaving Morocco even more.

His nose caught the heavy, slightly raunchy scent of a chips-van. Those were fairly common, here in Belgium, and he'd nicked some left-over chips once. People didn't seem to mind giving a poor, stray dog some food.

Shelter was something else. Through sheer luck, he and Buckbeak had managed to find a dry place to sleep in an old building that was apparently going to be taken down. It kept them dry, but that was about all. It was bitter cold, and to get at least some food, Sirius was forced to plunder garbage bins.

He rounded a corner and crossed a square, not looking where he was going. It was getting late, he thought, I must be going back soon. Buckbeak will start missing me.

He suddenly walked headlong into something. Shaking his head, Padfoot looked up and saw a double door right in front of him. A school. A warm school. He didn't need to think twice.

Looking sneakily left and right, he pushed the door open with his head and stealthily walked in. He was only going to stay there for a minute or so, to get warm, and he would not go further than the hall.

He was greeted by rows and rows of pegs, on which little coats where hanging. Drawings decorated the walls, and there were large windows through which one could see the classrooms. Padfoot sat down in a corner, half-hidden behind a colourful raincoat. The rain dripped from his fur onto the floor. He was about to lie down when he noticed he wasn't alone. He froze.

There was a girl standing only a few yards away from him, near a door with a pink girl on it. She was staring intently at Padfoot. He guessed that she was around seven or eight years old, and she had shoulder-length light-blond hair. And he saw with a shock that she was walking in his direction.

He looked across his shoulder for a way out, but when he turned around again he stared her in the eyes. He started.

She had greenish eyes, which where looking calmly at him. "That's my raincoat, you know," she said. Padfoot was a bit surprised to notice that she was speaking perfect English, with a slight American accent. She crouched down beside him and reached out to pet his head.

"You're all wet," she noted. "Did you come from outside? We were allowed to stay in at break time, because it was raining. Shall I get you a towel? I'm gonna dry you, come on." With this decision made, she got to her feet and walked away. After a few steps, she turned around to look expectantly at him. She beckoned. "Come on!"

He followed her carefully. The word 'dry' had been too tempting to resist. She opened the door to the girl's toilets and waited for him to go inside. Padfoot whimpered.

"I know it's a girl's toilet," she whispered, looking left and right down the hallway, "but I can't go into the boy's, can I?" Padfoot sighed and resigned.

Once inside, she softly closed the door and walked to the sink. She took the towel from its peg. "Come here boy," she whispered. Padfoot didn't need to be told twice. He pressed his head against the towel and she began rubbing him dry, all the while chatting to him about all sorts of things. Mainly about him. In top-speed.

"You're a big dog," she said, "and all black, and oh, I think this towel's a bit wet, but not wetter than you are, so it shouldn't really hurt, oh sorry, did I hurt your eyes? your nose's supposed to be wet I know because our neighbours have a dog and its nose is wet too our neighbours are funny and I think they are witches but my mom says they're not and I should stop making up strange stories but I don't want to stop wagging your tail so much or else I can't dry it where do you come from I don't think I can keep you – finished!" She hung the now-soaked towel back on its peg and crouched besides Padfoot.

"I think I need to go back to class before my teacher gets worried," she said sadly. She petted his head once more and got to her feet. "C'mon," she beckoned him. He followed her on tiptoe.

As usual when one tries to open a door softly, the door creaked loudly. She anxiously glanced over her shoulder.

"Amy!" someone called from inside a classroom. The girl hastily pushed Padfoot over the threshold.

"Bye-bye," she whispered. She petted his head once more and closed the door behind him, leaving him in the cold rain.

~*~

Sirius sneezed loudly. Rubbing under his nose he glared at Buckbeak, who glared right back.

"Well, I'm sorry I couldn't get His Royal Highness something better to eat," Sirius said sarcastically. "It's not as if I can walk into a supermarket and buy whatever I want!"

Buckbeak snorted and prodded the small pile of left-over food Sirius had managed to scrape together.

The man ignored the hippogriff and turned his attention to his trusted plastic bag. After a few moments of rummaging through it, he took out a nearly-undamaged roadmap, which he'd found at a Muggle gas station, and folded it open. He dug up Fudge's pencil from his pocket (which he'd borrowed to make the crossword) and began marking his route from Morocco up to Waterloo, Belgium. He carefully drew a line from Morocco, eastward towards Egypt (he hadn't been able to resist going there for only a couple of hours, just to be able to say he had been there), then northwards to the "boot" of Italy, Switzerland, a sudden jolt westwards towards France, and then north again to Belgium. He'd seen quite a bit of Europe, he mused. Interesting to tell his grandchildren – "back when granddaddy was an escaped convict…" Or to taunt Remus with – "I have been to Italy and you ha-have no-hot…" Speaking of Remus, hadn't he said something about Waterloo, ages ago? Something about… a guy named Napoleon, and… boots. Wellington boots, or some strange thing like that. Sirius shrugged. Who cared anyway.

He folded his map up again and stacked it away in his bag. He sneezed again. "Darn, looks like I caught a cold," he scolded. Buckbeak eyed him disdainfully.

"And don't you look at me like that. It's not my fault we have to camp here in this north-pole wannabe country." His mood was definitely not improving. He shivered. Time for decision-making. Sirius got to his feet.

"Here's the plan," he told Buckbeak. "I'm going to try and get a few hours of sleep, then we break up camp, I get on your back and you fly the two of us over the Channel to England. Deal?" Buckbeak seemed to understand, and nodded.

"Fine," Sirius said. He spread out his blanket, rolled in it, dressed and all, and closed his eyes. Moments later, he was asleep.       

* * * * *

Padfoot you enormous idiot! Don't you DARE come back now! I don't care if there's danger you think you can save us from, or whatever reason you have, you just have to STAY WHERE YOU ARE!!!

Look, I'm even using three exclamation signs! THAT'S how serious the situation is!

They are still looking for you! I still see 'wanted'-posters whenever I go to Diagon Alley, they still have 'Sirius Black not yet found'-articles in the Daily Prophet. And it's only worse because of that whole Dark Mark-ordeal at the Quidditch World Cup. The Daily Prophet hints that you may have something to do with it.

Padfoot, you know I'm not someone to beg, but please, please reconsider! You're only putting yourself into danger.

Of course, if you're still as stubborn a git as you used to be, you're welcome to pay me a visit. And seeing as I probably won't have been able to talk any sense into you, as usual, I'm afraid that I´ll have nothing to do but to await your arrival. Sigh.

Moony, who's – o c'mon, what a childish way to end a letter!