Padfoot?
by
Padfootz-luvr
A/N: To those who have beared with me throughout the years, I thank you, and I apologize profusely. To those just joining us: Welcome! This story has been a big, fat, work-in-progress for almost three years now, and I almost abandoned it. ALMOST. Then I sat down, re-read what I had written, and, before I knew it, I made the conscious decision to correct all grammatical and punctuation errors, and to add to it a bit, give it more dimension and depth. So now here we are, reader and author, ready to embark on a new, perilous journey. This time, I primise to not abandon the wheel of the ship.
Importaner (it's a word if I'musing it)A/N: I am so sorry about the messed up format of the last chapter! I have been saving them in wordperfect but then I saved the last one as a rich text doc and it just got messed up. Thanks to the anonymous reviewer whose name was a bunch of random letters for pointing it out:grumble: Though if you were to have noticed the previous chapters then you would have noticed that it was just a format mistake and that I'm not actually that stupid :grumble: But anyway! To hell with that...Last chapter was uber short but there was no way to extend it and I had to end it there. I know this is going to disappoint a lot of you but Harry saying "Padfoot" was just him thinking out loud about his dog and Sirius' eyes' resemblance to Padfoot's eyes. Harry is eitehr just not smart enough to make the connection or--and I'm going out on a limb here--his widdle muggley mind just does not jump to the conclusion that his dog is actually a person in disguise. How naive of him. Lol, you know I'm joking! I love you guys, my loverly reviewers and my shameless non-reviewing readers:blows kiss: On with the show! Lonegr chapter for all of yeh.
Disclaimer: :le sigh: I don't own Harry Potter or anythign else you recognize, blah, blah, blah, etc.
Chapter Eight:
Sirius?
"It was a ball,
it was a blast,
it was a shame it couldn't last..."
-Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, the musical
The man, Sirius, paled considerably.
Harry swallowed, shaking his head slightly to clear it. "I-I'm s-sorry," he stammered nervously. He was embarrassed: there was no way this man could be his dog. Even in his mind it sounded absurd. "My...my dog. His name-well, I was outside and went to the car-that's where he was, y-you see, and the door...well, the door, I mean...er...How did you know my name?"
"We-er...I mean...he...you...er..." the giant Hagrid stuttered, apparently lost for an explanation. Sirius was doing the same. "You...I...um...wait...but...er...no, you see...er...your parents..."
"'My parents'?" Harry echoed, ignoring their stammers; he had a feeling that these men just plain stuttered and stammered and sputtered about frequently. His emerald eyes widened considerably at a new prospect; the one of his parents, that is, not the blubbering men before him. "You knew my parents?"
Sirius grimaced slightly and made a noise somewhere between 'er', 'yes' and 'no'.
Hagrid's ruddy-colored face turned chalk-white and his large black eyebrows knitted together.
"You see-what I meant by 'your parents' was...Um...Well...how...? Do...? What...?" Sirius' mind seemed to be conflicting between asking several questions and answering some of Harry's own.
"Right..." Harry started uncertainly. He had come to the conclusion that these two men were very odd indeed, and he should probably resume his search for Padfoot the next morning. "Well, I-"
"POTTER!"
Harry was interrupted by a loud, booming yell that shook the ground floor.The poor boygulped, recognizing the shout to be that of his Uncle's.
Uncle Vernon was thundering down the hall in their direction at an amazing speed for his thick, short legs. He was still clad in his nightclothes, with a bathrobe tied over them and fuzzy slippers on his feet. His small eyes were squinting in protest of the florescent lights, as though he had just arisen from his bed, which, judging by his sleep apparel, he probably had.
Uncle Vernon reached the trio of ebony-hairedfellows furiously, grabbing Harry by the collar and jerking him toward Uncle Vernon's massive body. Uncle Vernon looked up at the other two men, considerably shorter than Sirius, and positively dwarfed by Hagrid's huge height. He had been so busy shouting after Harry he had obviously not noticed them.
Now that he saw them he apologized politely for the interruption and disturbance, though he looked very appraisingly and critically at their odd robe-like clothing and out-of-place appearances, though the latter was mainly directed at Hagrid's giganteum size. "I'm very sorry if he's been bothering you. He's a little disturbed, in the mind, you see, and sometimes we just can't-"
Harry suddenly felt a burst of courage as his uncle insulted him and decided to stand up for himself, something he hadn't done since Dudley had walloped his skull with a wiffle ball bat after Harry had said he was not, as Dudley put it, a 'skinny green-eyed tree frog with ugly black hair and a needle-nose'.
"I am not," Harry said defensively to Uncle Vernon. The portly man stopped his excuses, and turned to look down at the small, thin boy. Harry forced himself not to cringe or blink, and stared his uncle down defiantly. "You, boy, are in no position to be talking back," Uncle Vernon whispered threateningly.
"If you put one more toe out of line-"
"You'll what?" Sirius interjected angrily, and there was a distinctly canine growl in his voice as he spoke. Harry thought it was either quite brave or quite stupid of Sirius to mess with Uncle Vernon, as even without Sirius being so thin Vernon as easily four times as wide and probably weighed around twice as much as the young man.
Before Uncle Vernon could retort, a gasp was heard slightly down the hall, and Aunt Petunia came scurrying up to the group, her hands covering her mouth.
She assessed the situation: her husband was standing, clutching her nephew's collar tightly, and was being glared at by a tall, familiar- looking man with ebony hair and a giant with a jungle of tangled black hair.
"I'm sorry if he has bothered you," Aunt Petunia whimpered, referring to Harry. "Slightly touched in his head, if-"
"So we've heard," Sirius muttered, crossing his arms over his chest.
"I AM NOT!" Harry repeated, more surely and angrily than before. Everyone turned to him, looking as though they had almost forgotten he was there. Harry was encouraged by having their full attention, and ripped himself from his uncle's vice-like grip. "I am not bloody 'disturbed' or 'touched in the head', contrary to what is apparently popular belief!"
Everyone stared at him for a full five seconds before Sirius' face broke into a wide grin; he was apparently very pleased with what Harry had just said. Still smiling broadly, the raven-haired man turned back to Uncle Vernon and opened his mouth to say something else.
Right then, however, Aunt Petunia chose to speak again. "Have I met you before?" she directed this question at Sirius, who suddenly looked very guilty and nervous.
"Uh-no. Definitely not," he assured her. The tall, thin woman pursed her lips and didn't look very convinced, but nodded anyways. "Anyways, well...er...forgot what I was going to say..."
"That's a change," Hagrid muttered under his breath. Sirius elbowed him in the leg, which wasfar easier to reach than his ribs.
"No, I'm...sure I've seen you somewhere..." Aunt Petunia repeated, furrowing her eyebrows and thinking about it. Suddenly she seemed to come to realization. "Oh...that's it!" "
No it's not!" Sirius protested. You've never met me, honestly!"
Petunia ignored him and continued, "You were one of Lily's freak friends...you were best friends with that prat James Potter, the git Lily married-"
"No, I wasn't, I'm not, I mean, well, you see-HEY! Don't call him that!" Sirius suddenly yelled. He pulled from his pocket a long, thin stick made of a dark, almost black wood.
He pointed it at Petunia and Vernon as though threatening them, and it worked! They looked very scared of the stick indeed.
At Sirius' yell, a few rooms opened, and groggy-looking people poked their heads out to see what was causing the commotion.
"I-I mean..." Sirius stuttered, replacing the stick in his pocket and looking around at the opened door. "S-sorry...um...no, I have never heard of a Lily and James Potter before, and I certainly don't know about any Petunia Dursley, nee Evans, and Icertainly don't know about a-"
"Shut up," Hagrid said gruffly, smacking the man on the side of the head. His light hit, though, was quite a bit stronger than he expected, and Sirius nearly fell over.
"Would you stop that? I'm going to get a concussion, man, honestly!" Sirius snapped, rubbing his head where he'd been hit.
"Ihave met you!" Aunt Petunia insisted once more as the doors in the hall shut, satisfied that the noise was dying down.
"Shut up, no you haven't, Petunia," Sirius said curtly. He turned back to Harry and knelt down to his eye level and put his hands on the small boy's shoulders. "We'll find your dog and return him to the car. Don't worry, alright? See ya later, Harry."
With that Sirius and Hagrid walked briskly down the hall and turned a corner. There was a sharp crack and Harry couldn't even hear their footsteps anymore, and that was odd, since Hagrid's footsteps were quite loud.
Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia stared open mouthed in the direction in which the two men had left.
Finally they seemed to snap to their senses, and Uncle Vernon stomped off in the same direction, yelling as he turned the corner: "How do you know which car is mine! If I find my car stolen in the morning I'll-!"
But then he stopped, and turned back to Harry and Aunt Petunia. "They're...gone," he said shortly, sounding quite stumped. He shook it off, and pulled Harry again by the collar into the parking lot, with Petunia following.
They soon found Uncle Vernon's car in the exact same spot, exactly the same as Harry had last seen it except now it was occupied by Padfoot in the backseat and the door was closed and locked.
Vernon Dursley and Petunia Dursleycouldn't seem to decide between being shocked or angry, so they settled for an odd, almost indifferent expression, and would have seemed perfectly normal, except they spoke mainlyin monotones, sounded and moved like robots.
"We should just leave right now," Vernonordered gruffly, sharply pointing for everyone to get into the car.Uncle Vernon started the car and began to reverse it.
Suddenly Petunia let loose a small scream that sounded very much like "Dudley" and (asVernon was stopped, or at least wasalmost stopped)ran back into the motel and to the room they were staying in.
Harry looked questioningly at his uncle, who curtly announced that he would watch the car until morning.
Dudley, however, was perfectly fine and in a very deep sleep, judging by his snores that were echoing down the hall as Harry followed Aunt Petunia into their room.
Harry settled back down on the floor with a blanket beneath him and a pillow; the only other option was sharing a bed with Dudley.
Since it was July, there was really no need for any other blankets, so Harry slept soundly til morning when Uncle Vernon's pounding knocks on the door awoke them all, telling them it was time to check out.
As they were leaving, the clerk at the front desk stopped them with a shout, saying they had mail.
There, he had about a hundred letters addressed to Harry, the Dursley's hotel room on the front. Immediately, Uncle Vernon ordered his family and Harry to get in the car.
They did as they were told, and Harry opened the door to a very tired Padfoot.
Harry was now quite suspicious of Padfoot, though he wasn't sure he had reason to be.
He looked at his dog's eyes and saw they were the same as that man's, Sirius'.
As Vernon continued to drive along, Harry decided to try something.
"Sirius!" he suddenly said. Padfoot, who had a moment before been looking over a sleeping Dudley's mountainous shoulders to see the marvelous suburban view out the window, snapped his head around automatically.
Harry gave his dog a very calculating look as the black dog's very un-canine-like eyes were suddenly filled with shock, guilt, and a hint of fear. Fear of what? Harry wondered...
A/N: Review and stuff...:too tired: I feel like I am a-forgetting...oh yes! One reviewer asked why Sirius couldn't just use his magical magicness to open the cupboard and get food. I meant (in the "Voice in the Kitchen" chapter) to have Harry see a "brown stick" lying in the kitchen--which would obviously be Sirius' wand as Figg wouldn't have one--meaning that he left his wand there. :shrug: I'll go back and ass that real quick, then...