AN - Thanks for the comment, guest. I will say that the Slytherin kids are in for a treat. Please, feel free to leave a review on what you like/don't like. Enjoy!
The party in the common room raged on for hours. Fred and George brought an assortment of confections to the mix and one of the older Gryffindor boys pulled some strings with the house elves, getting them several pitchers of pumpkin juice.
Harry found it was a flurry of activity as he was the center of attention for the most part. People made rounds, congratulating him on the victory, talking about his skill with the nimble broom and even a few compliments on the spell he used against the dementors. The few who knew what a Patronus was were very impressed, while the others were just impressed he'd managed any spell.
"It's too bad Scabbers is gone," Ron said loudly. He was seated nearby, talking to a pair of second year girls who were taken in by his forlorn look. Hermione, who was seated between Harry and Mike, rolled her eyes. He was a bit overbearing. "He really loved these Fudge Flies." There was a chorus of "aww's" from the girls.
"I think I'm going to go to bed," Hermione said. Mike and Harry gave her apologizing looks. They'd both talked to Ron, more than once, about the attitude. He insisted that Hermione needed to apologize to him about the loss of Scabbers. For her part, she refused to take all of the blame, saying Ron needed to keep better care of his sickly rat. That Ron was so childish about it was his own doing, and though it frustrated Hermione, she wasn't willing to do anything about it.
"I'd escort you up, but..." Mike let the sentence hang. It was a throwback to an amusing moment earlier on in the year, when he'd bloodied himself up after forgetting that boys were not allowed in the girl's dorm. It was an honest mistake and he'd made it almost a quarter of the way up the stairs before they flattened into a slide and he smashed his face in the process. It was becoming a bit of an inside joke for them. She stood up, bid the boys goodnight, and headed upstairs to her dorm.
The party raged on for another hour or so before things showed any sign of slowing down. The most energetic of the partygoers burned themselves out earlier and turned in for the night. Brad showed up and took the empty spot that Hermione had left.
"So, what do you have in mind for the Slytherins?" Harry asked. It was well past ten and things were winding down quite a bit. People were huddled in groups, finishing off the last of the food and drink. Harry had worked at remaining patient during the party, but he was excited to see Malfoy get into such public trouble.
"Oh, nothing builds character like good ol' fashioned hard work," Brad replied with a grin. "Jason and Eric are filling out the paperwork at the command center." They'd used force on students, unwittingly. It was quite a bit of paperwork. Eric and Jason got the pleasure of report writing for this incident, while Mike and Brad stayed in the common room on their normal duties.
They talked for a short time after that. When Harry decided it was time to rest basically everyone got the same idea. Within a few moments, the common room cleared out. There was a quick snap after they left as a pair of house elves cleaned the mess left behind, then Brad and Mike were alone in the common room. They both chose their preferred sleeping spots and laid back to get some rest.
"RRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" The bloodcurdling scream came from upstairs, waking Brad instantly. He pulled his sidearm from its holster and was up on his feet in a fluid motion, noting that Mike had done the same. The air was eerily silent for a second and Brad briefly wondered if he'd dreamed the scream. "It's him!" Brad started toward the stairs but the sound of footsteps thundering down toward him stopped him.
He braced himself and started to raise his handgun but was too late. The dark robed figure hurtling toward him had his wand up and suddenly, Brad found himself flying across the room. He crashed into the wall, pain shooting up his back.
Pop, pop, pop. Brad heard the trio of shots and knew at least Mike wasn't taken by surprise. He cursed himself silently and pushed himself off the ground just in time to see Mike get struck in the face by a spell. The operator seemed to lose all control of his body, slumping down where he stood and striking his head on a nearby table.
Brad quickly targeted the escaped convict, who hadn't had time to turn away from Mike. Brad squeezed off several shots and was satisfied to see his target fall backward. The Stupefy enchanted rounds probably wouldn't last long against his opponent so he moved fast.
He started toward the downed form of Sirius Black, changing magazines with practiced ease and never changing his aim. As he closed in, he pulled the handgun tight toward himself, still aiming at Black. He used his other hand to roughly yank the man onto his abdomen, wrenching the man's arm behind his back as he planted a knee firmly into the square of his back.
"Uugh." The sigh of pain escaped the convict's lips. Now that Brad was on top of the man, the smell was overpowering. The hard scent of an unwashed body and something that reminded him of a wet dog. Brad wrinkled his nose in disgust as he pushed the barrel of his sidearm into the man's back.
"Don't fucking try anything," he growled. By then, one of the sentries from outside had convinced Sir Cadogan to open up and had made it inside, the other continuing to stand watch and reporting the incident. Soon, the Quick Reaction Force would be mobilized.
"I've got him, sir," the sentry called, meaning that he was targeting the now captive Sirius Black. Brad holstered his sidearm, confident that if it came to a fight, the sentry would put a round in Sirius before things got far. He pulled a set of zip-tie handcuffs from his belt, which he carried specifically for occasions like this, and looped one of the ends around Sirius' wrist, tightening it. He reached for the man's other hand, pulling it behind his body.
"What the-" the sentry called out. "Ahh!" the sentry yelled out. Brad tried to look up- Crack! He felt a searing pain in his side and his body went ridged for a split second. He saw an orange ball of fur attached to the face of the sentry who was struggling to throw it off.
Sirius sensed the opportunity and took advantage of it right away, pushing up from the ground and throwing a stunned Brad off of him. He snatched up his wand from the floor near him and bolted for the opened painting.
Outside the common room, Sgt. Sara Freeman and her counterpart, Cpl. Dennis Malone were at their sentry post. They'd drawn the short straw this time around. Sentry shifts were only six hours long, and they cycled through the infantry enough that there were only about two shifts a week per person. Catching night shift twice in a row this week was a rough one, but so it goes.
They'd remained silent, since there wasn't much to say. Dennis was a polar opposite from Sara. That's not to say he was a bad soldier, far from it. The Spartans took pride in their soldiering. That said, where she was a full-time ass kicker, he was a technician. They were all trained as soldiers and he could hold his own in fight, but he specialized in battlefield communication systems.
Her idea of a good conversation ranged from past exercises and battles to weapons systems. She enjoyed physical exercise and sparring. He was a...well, he was a nerd. He liked everything computers, his idea of fun was number crunching for fuck's sake. How do you connect with that on a personal level?
Pop, pop, pop. Gunshots from inside the common room. Shit was going down. Sara and Dennis immediately shouldered their rifles. Sara knew the protocol. She was in charge, so she needed to report this. Someone had to remain at the post, and since talking on the radio would inhibit her ability to fight, that meant sending Dennis in. Fucking figures.
"Get in there," she said, pointing at the painting. Dennis nodded once and started toward the painting. A muffled thump from inside, like someone hitting a table or wall.
"Wattbird," Dennis said to the painting as he shouldered his rifle. Sir Cadogan turned his nose up at them smugly. "Wattbird, motherfucker, open up. They need help!" As if to punctuate their need for help, another string of muffled gunshots went off.
"It's fucking Wattlebird!" Sgt. Freeman called out to her partner as he struggled. He repeated it and the knight reluctantly opened. As soon as the painting released from the wall, the Corporal pulled it the rest of the way open and entered.
"Guardian, Bulls-eye, shots fired inside the common room!" she almost screamed it, but forced herself to be calm. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Don't panic and work too fast, do it right the first time. Being one of the few girls in the Spartans, she'd had her work cut out for her, proving she was just as capable.
They'd tried, early on in the training program, to give the girls different standards. More time during PT runs, fewer push-ups and pull-ups. She, along with a few of the other girls, showed the instructors where they could stuff those alternate standards. All that work, the last thing she needed was a panicked, girly voice when she made her radio report.
"Guardian copies all, Bulls-eye." The voice that came through was the same, calm one they'd had since deploying here. Seemed like no matter what happened, whoever Guardian was, they were solid as a rock. "QRF is inbound, ETA 3 mikes."
Three minutes could be a long ass time. Unfortunately, the Quick Reaction Force was stationed at the top of the school, next to a pair of helicopters. On order, they could be wheels up and inbound to any location around the school where a threat might be in less than five minutes.
The down side of that was that if the threat happened on say, the third floor, the QRF needed to run all the way down. There was a sense to that too, it was a lot easier to run downstairs than up. It didn't really make that three minutes any faster, though.
Crack! A rifle shot from inside. It sucked staying out at the post. She was sure Sirius Black must be in there. Everything pointed to them needing a hand in there. But if it wasn't Sirius, and he used her absence from the post to sneak somewhere…
"Fuck it," she muttered, turning and shouldering her rifle. She'd deal with the consequences if necessary, but they needed some help. She rounded the open door of the painting and SLAM, she was knocked square on her ass. She was, by most definitions, petite and the sprinting adult that ran into her had more than enough weight behind him to knock her over. He toppled to the ground between her and the staircase and scrambled for the stairs.
She reacted fast, sitting up partway and shouldering her rifle and firing before she was fully aimed. Motherfucker, too fast. The round skipped off the ground behind the crawling convict and she was pretty sure it struck him square in the ass. The stunning enchantment would have been wasted on the ground, but a plastic round to the ass will make you think long and hard about fighting back.
She sat up the rest of the way and heaved herself off the ground with a bit of a struggle. She was strong for her size, but the full battle gear was still heavy and her stubbornness didn't make it any lighter. It just meant she fought through it, like anyone else. She shouldered the rifle and crept to the end of the staircase to see Sirius Black just hitting the end of the stairs leading to the second floor.
She aimed more carefully this time, tracking him but she couldn't get a good shot. He made it around the corner and she threw herself down the stairs after him, keying her radio.
"Guardian, Bulls-eye, HVT sighted heading into the second-floor corridor from my position. Multiple friendlies down, Bulls-eye pursuing." She made it to the end of the stairs and heard Guardian copy her radio traffic. She raised the rifle and started around the corner. She saw his figure as he rounded into an adjacent corridor.
"It's over, give up!" she screamed at him in a commanding voice. She wasn't shrill or feminine, nor was her voice deep. It was, however, loud as hell and she'd stopped more than one incident with that. It was no dice this time, Sirius Black kept running. She sprinted after him, soon nearing the same corner, where she heard a soft whimper.
"Don't move!" she shouted again in that same command voice. She rounded the corner and saw a large, shaggy, black dog. It was whimpering, hopping along with a limp. It looked like the back paw was hurt. Poor thing. The door beyond was open, and she wasn't a veterinarian anyways, so she ran past it and after Sirius.
"Jesus," Brad groaned. He felt like he'd been hit by a truck. Right in the damned ribs. "What the fuck?" He worked himself to a seated position and saw the common room swarming with troops. He recognized Major Price talking to Professor McGonagall and one of the sentries from outside the common room. Mike and the other sentry were being treated by medics.
"Easy, Captain," a voice next to him said. He looked over to see another medic and the QRF commander, Lieutenant Han Tzu. "You took a solid hit, one of the stun rounds."
"Casualties?" Brad asked, standing up painfully. The medic had a look of concerned protest, but didn't stop the operator. The reply came from the QRF commander.
"Three wounded, and you're looking at 'em." The Asian Lieutenant was one of the few Spartans from outside the United States, his parents having been lost during a humanitarian mission in Vietnam. Some rebel group held them for ransom, ultimately killing them. A US Special Forces team, operating on information gleaned from the ransom video, found the group and rescued the rest of the captives. When the military found him, the Spartan program coordinators offered him a chance to keep other kids safe. He took it and never looked back.
"Harry?" Brad noticed that the Lieutenant had used the term wounded.
"Everyone's fine, Captain." Han said. "Black accidentally attacked Ron's bed. We are still working on how he got in...he escaped, too."
"Motherfucker...I had him." His memory of the event flooded back to him. He'd only needed to get one more hand in the flex-cuff and they'd have been set. Then, Crookshanks attacked the sentry, and the sentry panicked and shot Brad. Fucking cats…
"Captain," Major Price walked over, noticing that Brad was up and about. McGonagall followed, close in tow. "Report."
It was a long hour and a half, everyone debriefing, relaying the details of the incident. By the end, they and an absolute picture of what had happened.
One of the Gryffindor students, Neville Longbottom, had written down and lost the passwords for the next week. Sirius had gotten his hands on this password and Sir Cadogan, unfathomably paid little mind to who used the password and let the convict in. Sirius waited in the common room and accidentally attacked the wrong bed, Ron's bed. As he tried to make his escape, having failed to kill Harry, he hit Mike with a sleeping curse and, due to the unlikely and ill-timed assistance of Hermione's cat, escaped from Brad and the sentry.
The next part was the interesting one. With the details provided by Sgt. Freeman, namely, that she saw a black dog, Professor McGonagall provided them with a theory. Apparently, there was a type of wizard called an Animagus, and they could turn into an animal. It was rare, and Sirius wasn't registered as one, but the shoe fit. After inquiring from other incidents, they found there was a correlation with the black dog and Sirius Black incidents.
By the next morning, they'd officially decided to treat Sirius Black as an unregistered Animagus. They were now certain of what they were looking for, and very confident that there would be no further incursion into the castle. The explanation helped ease a lot of consciences. They were glad that a normal wizard wasn't running all over the castle they were guarding. Everyone was now on the lookout, not only for Sirius Black, but for a large black dog as well, and orders were to stun either on sight.
Neville was no longer to be allowed to learn the password. He was to stand at the head of the stairs until someone came along to let him in. Sir Cadogan was unceremoniously taken back to his original place, no longer allowed to cover the entrance to a common room. The Fat Lady was finished with her repairs and had finally been convinced to resume her post.
More interestingly, two stories about the incident circulated like wildfire the following morning, one among students and another among the Spartans.
The first was that of Ron, who woke to see Sirius Black poised over him with a wand pointed at the redhead's face. Sirius had yanked the blankets off of him, searching madly around the bed, as though it would change who was laying in it. He'd angrily asked Ron where Harry was, calling him "the rat," and when Ron shouted, Black seemed to snap out of it, running away.
The next was the story of Sgt. Freeman, who fired off a shot too quick and ricocheted a plastic round into the ass of their foe. It didn't matter to anyone that she'd fired before she aimed, and it didn't matter to anyone that there was no telling exactly where the round landed. By lunchtime, every Spartan was convinced that Sgt. Sara Freeman had shot Sirius Black square in the asshole, and she was a goddamn hero to every one of them.