Regulus kept up his search for Pettigrew as long as seemed viably sane. Once the undergrowth had started to slow him down, he'd lost the rat very quickly, and he'd spent the next forty-five minutes pouncing at every little movement, most of which turned out to be just the wind through the grass.
Finally, after reciting a list of curses covering seven years of Defense Against the Dark Arts and at least four different languages and shoving his nose into every little hole and sniffing until he sneezed, Regulus wondered what had happened to Sirius, Remus, and the kids. He would have expected his brother to come looking for him by now, after all. Once he'd chased Remus safely into the thick of the Forbidden Forest, he had no doubt Sirius would realize that finding the rat was more important than anything else they could be doing tonight.
With one last nasty look at the undergrowth, the fox started to bound towards the castle.
He didn't see Sirius or the kids, but at least he didn't see Remus or any sign of a fight either. Actually, the bareness of the grounds was a bit nerve-racking. While he couldn't imagine Sirius coming up to the castle without either Pettigrew or a fight, he also distinctly remembered his brother dropping Snape's wand as he transformed, which meant he was unarmed, and there were dementors and a number of armed and competent adults about the grounds. It could have happened too quickly for him.
Regulus shook his head. He was being ridiculous, of course— paranoid and ridiculous. Sirius was perfectly capable of looking after himself, and he'd survived things that should have killed him.
Still, it wasn't a question of surviving what the dementors had in mind. . . .
Regulus shook his head a second time. Just because Sirius was the only family he had left was no real reason to panic. After he found his brother and came within an inch of murdering him for scaring him this badly, they'd get out of here and wind up on Andromeda's front steps to let her know the one was innocent and the other alive. Meda would probably be happy to let them in for a few hours once everything had been properly explained and they could sit in the living room and find out what career Nymphadora had decided to go into or what bone Ted had last broken . . . normal things. After this insane year, normal sounded very good indeed.
But first he had to actually find Sirius.
As he sniffed around the Whomping Willow, looking for Sirius's scent to follow, he noticed someone coming out of the castle, someone who looked strangely familiar. He kept to fairly tall grass and crept over to see who it was . . . Macnair, an old acquaintance and Death Eater. With an ax. An executioner, then.
Regulus suddenly felt queasy and looked around for any source of hope. Emerging from the woods by the lake were another three shapes. They weren't dementors, and squinting in the dark he could see that, to judge from the four legs and bird of prey profile, one was either a hippogriff or a griffin. Curiously, Regulus crept closer.
The other two shapes proved, to his immense relief, to be Harry and Hermione. He scurried into the light as Hermione tried to mount the hippogriff behind Harry and yipped when no one noticed him.
Both of them turned quickly around, and Hermione toppled gracelessly off the animal in her surprise. "What the—" Harry started.
Regulus transformed before he finished, startling Harry enough he never did complete the sentence. "Do either of you know what's going on?" the man demanded.
Hermione nodded.
"Oh, good . . . I think I just saw an executioner leave the school and needless to say that's made me nervous beyond belief. . . ." Regulus shook his head and realized he hadn't let her get a word in edgewise. "So what is going on?" he added.
"They've got Sirius up in Professor Flitwick's office," Hermione told him quickly. "If Macnair just went to get the dementors, we've got to get Buckbeak up to rescue him."
"Where'd the hippogriff come from?"
"The Ministry was going to behead him, but he's safe, really, and . . . and Dumbledore said that we could save two innocent lives tonight and . . . well, we think he wanted us to rescue Buckbeak, too." She was still speaking quickly, but she didn't sound too sure of herself anymore.
Regulus shook his head. "It doesn't have to be a foolproof plan when it's the only one you've got," he pointed out. "After all, it's not as if. . . ." He shook his head again. "How many people d'you reckon that hippogriff'll carry?"
Harry glanced at Buckbeak. "I dunno. . . ."
"He'd better carry three but I don't think he can handle four," Regulus continued, clearly not listening. "I mean, I can just head back on my own, but Sirius does so many stupid things. . . . Do either of you mind if I just transform and hitch a ride between the two of you?"
Both Harry and Hermione shook their heads.
Regulus bit his lip. There was something missing around here. "Oh, and what happened to Ron?"
"Hospital wing," Harry explained. "Madam Pomfrey says he'll be okay. Now come on, before Macnair gets back!"
Regulus and Hermione both nodded. She mounted the hippogriff and Regulus transformed and leapt into her arms. Hermione adjusted him as best she could and wrapped one arm around Harry, squashing him between the two as Harry nudged the hippogriff into motion. In a few short strides, Buckbeak was spreading steel gray wings and taking off into the sky.
Hermione immediately grabbed Harry more tightly, so Regulus could barely breath. "Oh, I don't like this. . . ." she mumbled.
Regulus whimpered in agreement. He definitely preferred trains or Apparation to any form of air travel, but at least brooms didn't rock from side to side like a ship on a stormy sea.
"There he is!" Harry exclaimed, stopping Buckbeak, or at least stopping him as much as a hippogriff could be stopped in midair. With some difficulty and one horrible moment where Regulus grabbed a mouthful of his robes, afraid the boy would topple bodily off Buckbeak, Harry tapped the window.
Sirius, who was indeed inside, looked up and let his jaw drop. He raced over to the window and tried to wrench it open, even though everyone knew it was locked.
Hermione had somehow managed to retrieve her wand without letting go of either Harry or Regulus. "Stand back!" she shouted to him.
Sirius obliged, and with a shout of "Alohomora!" the window burst open.
Sirius forced his head and shoulders out. "How did you—" He stopped, and a half-scowling and half-admiring looked crossed his face. "Where there's life there's hope," he mumbled. "Dumbledore knew you were coming. I wish he'd be just a bit more explicit, sometimes. . . . Have either of you seen Reggie?"
Regulus poked his head out between the two and made a grumbling sound in the back of his throat to get his brother's attention.
"Oh, good."
"Get on," Harry told him. "There's not much time. Macnair's gone to get the dementors, they'll be here any minute."
Sirius nodded and continued to wriggle out of the window. He used Buckbeak's flank until he was halfway out, then nearly fell when he grabbed Hermione's shoulder. After a few more tense seconds, he had somehow managed to swing his leg over the hippogriff and clamber onto him fully.
"All right," Harry announced, shaking the reign. "Up to the tower— come on!"
Buckbeak took off again with a few more beats of his enormous wings, and again Regulus was pressed between the two kids and burying his head in his paw to keep from accidently pressing it into Hermione's bosom. Then, suddenly, with a clatter off two different kinds of feet, Buckbeak landed on the North Tower.
Regulus felt his stomach drop. It didn't stop in it's proper place but continued falling through the tower and into the dungeons. He wouldn't have been surprised if it kept falling until it reached China and was served as an oriental delicacy. He leapt onto the stones after it at the first available opportunity.
Hermione, looking no less frazzled, still slid to the ground at a slightly more leisurely pace, if only because Sirius was still holding her shoulder and helping her down. Harry pounced off, but he still kept his feet.
Although the last thing he wanted to do was gain height, slight though it might be, Regulus transformed and glanced back at the kids, who were the only two who truly knew what was going on.
"You'd two had better go quick," Harry supplied. "They'll get up to Flitwick's office any moment now and find Sirius missing."
Buckbeak tossed his head as if eager to get going, but Sirius hesitated. "What happened to—"
"Ron's in the hospital wing, Pettigrew's long gone, and no one's seen or heard from Lupin since you chased him into the Forest," Regulus replied.
Sirius nodded, but he still hesitated. "You want back or front?" he asked his brother.
"If you put me in the driver's seat no one's going to steer, because I intend to spend this entire trip with my eyes tightly shut, mumbling curses," Regulus answered, shoving his glasses back up his nose.
"Well, get on!" Harry exclaimed.
Regulus clambered up behind Sirius, who still looked shaken from the night's events. He looked back at the two kids. "How can I ever thank—"
"Just go!" Harry and Hermione exclaimed at the same time.
"They've got a bit of a point, Sirius," Regulus mumbled.
"All right." Sirius still turned back to Harry, a little misty-eyed. "You . . . You're truly your dad's son, Harry. . . ." he managed, and then, finally, he spurred Buckbeak, who raced off the tower, spreading his wings and taking off into the sky.
Hogwarts had faded into the background by the time Sirius glanced back at Regulus, who was cautioning himself not to look down and had, of course, just looked towards the ground and instantly regretted it. "Pretty up here, isn't it?" he asked with a grin.
"Oh, shut up."
Sirius shrugged and managed, no doubt with great effort, to resist the urge to continue to torment his little brother. "So, where to?" he asked. "You know Europe better than I do."
Regulus managed a smile, even this high up with no solid ground underneath him. "While I seem to remember you saying you'd kill me if I ever used the phrase again, the south of France really is lovely this time of year, and there are a couple of villages that know me under one pseudonym or another."
Sirius shot Regulus a mock glare for a moment, then lost his composure and laughed. "All right. South of France it is . . . but first we've got to make one more stop in Britain."
Author's Note: Harry and Dumbledore are the hardest characters for me to write, hands down, and unfortunately this chapter had rather a lot of Harry. . . . Still, you finally found out what happened to Regulus and Peter. Sorry, but there are several canonical things that happened when Peter escaped that are very important and a few more I think may happen in Book 7, so he had to get away. In my original conception for this story, this was the last chapter, and then I realized I couldn't very well leave poor Remus hanging and then I managed to come up with something else for Sirius and Regulus that explained something little in canon I can't believe I'd forgotten. . . . Anyway: imakeeper: I hope this answers your question, and if it doesn't, all I can say is that at the end of chapter 16 it was kind of late for Reggie to give a last minute rescue with rat in hand. Jackline: Well, technically a cliffhanger implies that you're going to continue the scene, but you're right, I probably shouldn't have told you 15 was the last one. . . . Mizz Moony Luver: Actually, I was under the impression Dumbledore had been on the lookout for Horcruxes since 1994, when Harry told him Voldemort said he'd been farther along the path to immortality than anyone. Harry just wasn't included in the search until he knew enough, so not until HBP. (shrugs) And to clarify a question asked in 1994: Of course Sirius is going to be in it; however, simply because I have the space in this one, I'm taking advantage of it to fill in bits of Regulus's backstory (okay, a lot of Regulus's backstory) I otherwise wouldn't. And as always, thanks so much to everyone who reviewed! Until next (and last)chapter, Cheers! — Loki