Sirius cursed aloud for the third time in the last few minutes. He really should have read the article closer. The Weasleys were away in Egypt visiting their eldest son, William. Even though the scent of Wormtail was everywhere in the house, he was gone, probably traveling in Egypt with the family. He had no idea when they would be coming back either. Surely it would be before Hogwarts started, but he couldn't just hang around that long or he would be caught for sure.
However, he could smell all the places that held security charms for the house and he really needed to catch up on some sleep. The time since escaping Azkaban had been a marathon sprint down to the southern coast of England and he needed to recharge and think up a new plan.
So for the next few days, he slept in the attic of the Weasleys' home while the ghoul that lived there hid in the corner, terrified of the huge black dog that he turned into to sleep, ate some incredible food that had been preserved in an ice box, and chased all the gnomes out of their garden. Normally gnomes would be back in a single day, but they must have been sufficiently scared by The Grim to find a new place to live from that day forth.
In the end, Sirius figured that the best way to kill Peter would be to do so at Hogwarts. They might both know that place like the back of their hands, but he had the element of surprise on his side. He also knew Peter would never flee from somewhere like Hogwarts. When he got scared he always tried to hide among others in populated places thinking crowds could be his cover. Hogwarts would be the best place for that.
In the next few days scavenged the Weasleys' house for anything he could use. Arthur has a surprisingly large number of muggle-made knives, so he collected those along with quite a few potions from Molly's lab. The woman had always been good with cooking and brewing.
She never passed up an opportunity to tell people that she had originally got Arthur's attention by brewing a love potion to make him fall in love with her. It led to numerous situations where someone, who heard it for the first time, would kidnap Arthur and force-feed him all manner of purging potions to reverse the effects of mind-altering potions and spells. Sirius and James had done it once themselves with genuine concern and then helped three other people just for the fun of it.
Sirius had always vomited when trying to drink polyjuice but luckily that wasn't the only way to change your appearance. When stealing potions from a middle-aged witch, he was able to get quite a few cosmetic potions too. Hiding the signs on his face of a decade in Azkaban would help him blend into a crowd more easily.
Unfortunately, he needed to make his stay at the home look like a robbery, so he avoided all the alarm wards and trashed the place before leaving. He would send an owl to Gringotts to transfer some money to their vault anonymously. The goblins couldn't give two shits about his criminal status and would certainly make the transfer anonymous for a little extra gold as a 'fee.'
Waiting for nightfall, he applied a few cosmetic potions to make him appear more youthful and started the long journey to Hogwarts. Just as he was on the edge of town, he heard music coming from a pub in the forest. He could smell the muggle aversion charms, signifying it as a wizard hang out. He wouldn't dare go in, but he craved human contact, so he shifted back to his human form and hung out in the bushes as he saw quite a few people enter, most of them with long black hair. Just as he was about to leave, a small girl appeared next to him without making a sound.
"You know, stage fright is a completely normal thing," she told Sirius.
Sirius jumped at her arrival. He stared at the tiny blonde girl next to him who was staring past him and up toward the pub.
"Um… what?"
"Stage fright is defined as nervousness before or during an appearance before an audience. However, this is what you have decided to do with your life, so if you don't go soon, you'll miss your own show."
The girl looked familiar, so he asked, "Are you related to Pandora Lovegood?"
"She was my mother." The girl smiled for a moment and then frowned. "Did you know her?"
"Was?" She had been alive when Sirius had gone to prison. "I'm so sorry, she was a spectacular person."
"Thank you, but you really need to get going before you miss your show." Sirius hadn't noticed someone walking closer to him and the young girl latched onto Sirius's arm and called out, "I've got him! He's over here!"
Sirius struggled in her grip but she had latched on tight and the other man was next to them in a second. Sirius froze, ready to shift into The Grim and run at a moment's notice.
The man looked very unhappy to see Sirius, "Morgana's tits! What the bloody fuck are you doing out here in the bushes, Stubby?" He leaned in closer and sniffed at Sirius, "Why do you smell like lavender?"
This man obviously didn't recognize him and thought he was someone else. So he responded in the same manner as this man had addressed him. "It's better than smelling like ass. I happened to be in a woman's bathroom and this soap was all that was there."
"So you were off getting your wand polished before Miss Luna found you?" He gestured towards Pandora's daughter. "Good work Missy, now get home before your father releases the Dabberblimps to catch you and carry you home," he said in a playful and teasing voice.
"Ok!" she smiled. "It was good to meet you, Stubby!" Then she ran off.
Sirius followed the man up to the pub where there was a big sign out front:
Sirius Black look-alike night! One night only! Featuring The Hobgoblins!
"Who the fuck thought this would be a good idea?" Sirius asked the man escorting him.
"That would be my wife, asshole," the man said. "Though I kinda agree with you."
They got inside and there were dozens of men with long black hair all of them laughing maniacally and drinking heavily. Quite a few women were dressed up like him too with sexy renditions of Azkaban prison uniforms. Maybe the idea wasn't that bad.
"Yo Stubby!" a man on stage called out to him. "Get your ass up here so we can start playing!"
On the stage were two men with electric guitars, modified in some way to work with magic, and another at the drums. All of them were surrounded by empty glasses of alcohol they must have drunk while waiting for him. The only spot open was the one for the lead singer. They thought it was him. Where the fuck was the real guy?
Tossing hesitation aside, Sirius jumped up on stage and asked the lead guitarist, "So what are we playing tonight?"
They all looked at him like he was crazy, with the bassist replying, "How about some of the music we've been performing the last six years?"
Well, that was nothing that Sirius would have ever heard. He tried to dig into his memories of the various muggle concerts he had snuck off to as a kid and the times that Lily and her friend Marlene had dragged all of them to karaoke bars during the summers. Then an idea came to him.
"Nah, I want to do something different. It's Sirius Black night, let's kick things off with Paint it Black and go from there. You tossers can play The Stones, right?"
"Muggle music? You've never wanted to do it before. Hell yeah, let's go!"
The drummer tapped out the beat and they kicked things off with The Rolling Stones. They followed that up with Led Zeppelin's Black Dog, and then ACDC's Back to Black. Everyone in the crowd loved it. Well, almost everyone.
When the last note of Back to Black was struck, Sirius noticed a group of four men, not dressed in prison garb or as imitations of Sirius Black, but in regular robes and with haughty sneers on their faces.
While the crowd was cheering, one of them called out, "Hey asshole! We came here for some music, not that muggle garbage you're vomiting out."
Sirius was caught up in the moment, and replied, "Let me guess? Purebloods?" They didn't respond, but they didn't deny it either. "So which kind of pureblood are you? The ones that fuck their cousins or the ones that lie about it?"
The audience roared with laughter as the men at the bar growled angrily.
"What's wrong? You don't want to admit it? Such serious faces in a crowd of Sirius faces. It's fine, I bet even Sirius Black had a few cousin fucking fantasies. Have you seen the choices he has?"
It was true. Sirius's parents were first cousins and he had grown up thinking that it was perfectly fine to see your cousins as potential mates. It wasn't until he was fifteen that he managed to stop himself from thinking of them as potential spouses, though he could never stop seeing them as hot.
One of the men in the crowd, dressed up to look like him, seemed to think the same thing. "I'd fuck Bellatrix Lestrange," he admitted. "She'd probably kill me, but it might be worth it."
"She'd definitely kill you," someone yelled out, "But it would definitely be worth it. Though I'd take the safer route and shag Narcissa Malfoy."
"We're getting off track!" Sirius yelled. "These cousin-fucking purebloods over here wanted to hear some wizard music. Clear them a space to dance!"
The room gave them a wide berth as Sirius whispered to the other band members, then they started playing a song that sounded like it was for children. The rest of the audience was laughing, and after a minute of them not moving a muscle, Sirius waved his hands for the musicians to stop.
"What's the matter?" he yelled. "Don't you familiar fornicators want to 'Dance Like a Hippogriff?'" There was more laughter from the audience before Sirius yelled again, "You know, if you don't want to dance, you've got another option. You could… shut the fuck up and go home."
Half of the crowd started to chant for them to shut the fuck up while the other chanted for them to go home. It was a beautiful harmony of drunk yelling with them finally leaving the pub. Sirius then kicked off the band by playing Santana's Black Magic Woman and the party started back up again. However, when he was done, he started to feel The Grim clawing its way out and knew that something bad was about to happen.
"I'm going to go take a piss in the woods, and we'll be right back!" Sirius called out, getting cheers from the audience as the rest of the band went to fuel up on more alcohol.
Once he was outside, he let The Grim be his guide and slowly walked in the direction that seemed to satisfy the killer canine in his head. After walking for a few minutes, he heard a muffled scream along with whispers. He snuck towards a small clearing in the woods and found the four purebloods from before. Two of them were holding down a woman in a fake Azkaban prison uniform while the others stared at her lustfully.
"Make sure she doesn't scream," the man who had called out in the pub told the one holding her arms.
"Fuck that guy. We're not cousin fuckers. We'll fuck whoever we want," said the one holding her feet.
The woman was desperately looking for an escape, but while the spokesman of the group started taking off his robes, the last one had his wand pointed directly at her.
"Do you want me to silence her?" the man with the wand asked.
"When it's your turn, sure. For me, I want to hear if she enjoys it," the now naked man replied.
Sirius had seen enough, and The Grim was clawing its way out in his mind, so he just gave in to the sensation and shifted into the red-eyed beast.
The man with the wand went down first. He was knocked sideways and his throat ripped out in a second. He tried to wave his wand as he was dying, but only sparks came out. The two with clothes on jumped back and started to fumble for their wands. The naked man tried digging through the discarded clothes on the ground for his wand. Sirius went for the man who had been holding the woman's hands next. The Grim's claws cut through the man's chest like tissue paper and left him bleeding on the ground as he rounded on his next target. The terrified witch scuttled backward until she was against a tree. The man who had held her feet managed to get hold of his wand only for The Grim to rip his arm off in his jaws. He managed to keep enough of his sanity to pick up the wand with his other hand and try to apparate. That did not end well for him as he splinched himself, leaving everything below his ribcage behind. He was definitely dead.
Some kind of spell splashed against his side and he turned to see the naked man pointing his wand. Whatever he meant to shoot at Sirius hadn't done a damn thing, he probably couldn't focus enough to properly cast any magic. The Grim dodged two more spells before tackling him to the ground and tearing out his throat. Then he looked towards the young woman sitting against the tree. She had her hands over her eyes and was peeking through them as she cried. Sirius trotted closer to her and sniffed her as she begged The Grim not to kill her.
Turning back to the bodies of the men, Sirius sniffed through their clothes before carefully removing a wand from one of their pockets with his teeth and dropping it in front of the young witch before sitting on his haunches and pushing it closer to her with his foot. She stared in shock at what had just happened and hesitantly picked up the wand, embracing it like an old friend before looking back at Sirius, who had his tongue hanging out and a dumb look on his face while blood dripped from his teeth and claws.
Slowly, she reached out with her empty hand and scratched Sirius behind his ear, with his back leg giving a small tap in recognition. She smiled and said, "Good dog," then took off running.
When Sirius got back into the pub, someone called out to him, "What the fuck man? We didn't think you were coming back! Thought you just needed to take a piss!"
Getting back into the swing of things, he replied, "It turned out to be a number three. So it took a bit longer than I thought."
"Is a number three fucking your cousin?" Someone yelled out.
"It wasn't this time, but from now on, yeah, when I want to fuck my cousin, that's a number three."
Sirius was about to get back on stage when he spotted a group of women sitting at the bar. All of them were wearing skin-tight dresses, striped to look like Azkaban prison uniforms. He noticed one was making eyes at him and took him a moment to realize that she was that dishy reporter that had given him the newspaper from the prison, drinking from a steaming green drink in a martini glass. Her hair was let down from the tight bun she wore for work, probably to match all the other people impersonating him for the party's theme. She looked nothing like Sirius Black or any Azkaban inmate he had ever seen, but he didn't care the slightest bit.
He slid between the other men talking to the women like the bars of the door to his cell and onto the stool next to her and asked, "Got any requests before I go on again?"
"You're doing songs with a Black theme?" she asked and took a drink from the glass in her hands, never breaking eye contact with him. "Play me some Johnny Cash, The Man in Black."
Sirius knew the tune but not all the words to that, though he felt that the song fit him well at this moment. He called out the band and asked if they knew it, they did, so he turned back to the reporter and said, "I don't know all the words myself, but how about I improvise for you. I'll give you the Sirius Black version of the song."
"We'll see how it goes," she replied with a saucy smirk and an eyebrow waggle.
The band began to play, and Sirius began to sing:
Well, you wonder why I always dress in black
Why you never see bright colors on my back
And why does my appearance seem to have a somber tone
Well, there's a reason for the things that I have on
I wear the black for the innocent and the beaten down
Living in a darkened fortress on lockdown
I wear it as a prisoner who has long paid for his crime
But is there because he's a after those who have crossed the line
I wear the black for those who've never read
Or listened to the words that Merlin said
About the road to hell paved with good intentions
Why, you'd think staring at me with that mention
Well, we're doing mighty fine, I do suppose
In our streak of lightning brooms and fancy clothes
But just so we're reminded of the ones who are held back
Up front, there ought to be a man in black
I wear it for the victims and lonely old
For the reckless ones whose bad trip left them cold
I wear the black for taking the lives that couldn't have been
Each week we lose a many fine young wizards
And, I wear it for the thousands who have died
Believing that the Dark Lord was on their side
I wear it for another hundred thousand who have died
Believing that there even is a light side
Well, there's things that never will be right I know
And lives need taking everywhere you go
But 'til we start to make a move to make a few things right
You'll never see me wear a suit of white
Ah, I'd love to wear a rainbow every day
And tell the world that everything's okay
But that's not something I could do anymore
As that would make more sound like Dumbledore.
Many people were trying to piece together the lyrics and see what he meant by them. Quite a few people laughed at the last verse that was making fun of the Headmaster of Hogwarts. Everyone cheered and applauded. They continued playing various muggle music for the next hour and a half, trying to make everything about prison or something Black. The entire time he sang he kept eye contact with the reporter at the bar or when she got up to dance. They finished off the set with Elvis Presley's Jailhouse Rock, and the band started packing up their stuff. Sirius slid back into the seat next to the reporter. She had a drink ready for him. He raised the drink and she mirrored him before they drank.
"You know," she began, "I got to meet Black."
"Do tell," Sirius replied. "I'd ask if you went to school with him, but you can't possibly be thirty years old."
"I'm twenty-five. I just missed him at Hogwarts, a year earlier and I would have been a firstie when he was graduating. I was covering Minister Fudge's trip to Azkaban and got to see him in the flesh the day before the escape."
"What was he like?" Sirius asked as he slid a little closer to her. "Would any of these clowns fit the bill?" he gestured to all the people dressed up to look like him.
"It was strange. He looked like he had been in prison for decades, but he acted as if he got there yesterday."
"Acted like it?" Sirius questioned her.
"He flirted with me," she replied as she took an ice cube from her drink and ran it down her neck. "There was still some kind of desire left in him. The dementors seem to strip all purpose from the prisoners so they can't imagine anything outside their cells, but Black still had something left, and a lot of it. It seemed to radiate from his eyes and was breathtakingly hot."
"It's a shame that you'll never get to experience what you're clearly fantasizing about," Sirius said as he took the ice cube from her fingers and ran it down the other side of her neck. "Would you accept a cheap substitute that might pretend as if he had just broken out of prison and come across a stunning woman in a bar?"
She almost purred as the ice dripped down her neck. Taking a deep breath, she looked around the room, then grabbed Sirius by the hand and led him outside. Once they were out of the pub, she took out a key ring from her purse and pulled Sirius into a deep embrace. He drank from her lips in the same way he feasted on the birds when he came ashore after escaping the prison.
When she finally came up for air, she kept her grip on him and said, "There's no place like home."
The two of them were sucked through a portkey and arrived inside the entryway of a small house. Sirius regained his balance from the arrival and pushed her against the wall before kissing her again. He held her face with one hand, while his other explored the curves of her body. The reporter was clutching a coat rack above her with one hand while trying to unbutton Sirius's shirt with the other. Finally, he just helped her and undid it himself.
She started to reach back to undo her dress, but now with two free hands, Sirius spun her around and unzipped it himself, letting it fall to the floor and reveal the entirety of her form. He took a step back to look at her as she posed for him and spun around.
"Been a while since you've seen a naked woman?" she started to play the role he had given to her.
"We do have magazines in prison," Sirius shrugged. She looked a bit annoyed, before he continued, "Though there's nothing like the real thing."
With one smooth motion, he scooped her over his shoulder and carried her to the next room. It turned out to be an office. The next room turned out to be a bathroom. All the reporter's directions were backward as she was facing the opposite way as Sirius and they both laughed as now they ended up in the kitchen. They just stayed there as the first stop of the night in their passionate tryst.
Before the sun rose, Sirius headed for the bathroom. He needed to leave. While this was a pleasant escape, he needed to be headed to Hogwarts and find a place to lay low. Now that he had a wand, stolen from one of the Wizards he murdered, he could travel much faster. He'd have to take it slow, as he hadn't apparated since 1981 and couldn't risk splinching with a longer attempt. Start with the basics.
As he schemed, he looked in the mirror and realized the cosmetic potions to make him look younger had worn off and a haunting reflection stared back at him. He took a final look at the sleeping naked woman in the bed before scratching off a note to leave next to her and fleeing the scene.
When she woke up later and found her companion missing, she shrugged.
"Musicians… What can you say?" she spoke to the empty room. Then picked up the folded note on the bedside table.
Thanks for the wonderful evening. It was everything I needed as a free man.
She shook her head and said to the note, "Still role-playing?" Then continued reading.
I feel like I must now flee the country, with the Aurors on my tail and The Grim stalking my shadow.
Sorry for all the love bites, though I did warn you that I might do that. Thanks for the newspaper.
-Sirius Black
She dropped the note and dressed as quickly as she could before notifying the Aurors.
Xenophillius and his daughter Luna were eating dinner as a special edition of The Daily Prophet was dropped in their paper box.
Luna picked it up and handed it to her father, saying, "Look who finally caught on?"
Her father took the paper and smiled at the headline,
Is Sirius Black actually Stubby Boardman?
Our reporter tells of a sordid affair with the lead singer of the Hobgoblins who revealed his true identity in a note.
Xeno sighed, "We've only been telling them for six years, sugar plum. Can't expect everyone to have the same foresight as your mother."
