Connie Amelia Black neé Cartwright had a headache.
If you'd have told her several years ago that she would recieve a visit from the Deputy Headmistress of a school for witches and wizards, become friends with three other witches and create a group called the Royals, the rivals of the Marauders, marry the second in command of the Mauraders who would later be framed for murder and betrayal after the birth of their daughter, lose contact with the children of her best friends only to find them again several years later, discover everything she thought to be true was a lie, her nieces and nephews were capable of a lot of surprising things and were much more mature than most kids their age, and that she'd be learning how to become an animal from said nieces and nephews to break into the most feared wizard prison of them all and free her husband, she'd have laughed in your face, checked if you were feeling okay then had you committed to a psychiatric hospital.
Connie wasn't quite sure how her life had turned out that way and some days she wondered what it would be like if she'd never recieved that visit, but when she looked at her daughter laughing as one of her best friends drank the Animagi Potion, she knew that she wouldn't change it for the world.
"Mummy! Mummy!" Kali cried out, laughter in her tone as she clapped her hands together.
"Aunt Connie!" Rosie giggled. "Look at Momma!"
To Connie's amusement, her best friend was a sloth, looking up at her lazily. Her fur was dark brown, like her hair and her eyes were the same colour as when she was human.
"Your turn Aunt Connie," Rosie beamed. "Please!"
What the hell, Connie said to herself and chugged back the potion. A few seconds later she felt herself shrinking, changing and...was that a tail?! She went to cry out only to hear a bark.
Then she heard Remus chuckle. "Why am I not surprised?" He crouched in front of her. "Sirius is the Grim-like dog, Kali is a puppy, makes sense for you to be a Golden Retriever."
Lola was still pouting half an hour later while they ate lunch, watching a movie for the kids as a bit of relaxation before everything went to hell. Because of her broken leg and the fact she'd refused to let Remus heal it - although she had let up and let him partially heal it a while back so that she could hobble around wothout crutches - Lola hadn't been able to take the animagus potion and discover her form. Again, they'd offered to heal her leg, but she'd remained adamant, so it was her own fault really.
At least, that was until she revealed her reasons now for not wanting it healed.
The kids were on the sofa, all watching some Disney movie, while the adults were around the table. "It'd be so much easier if you let us heal you leg," Connie had said to Lola.
The ginger had shook her head adamantly. "No."
"But why?" Remus asked his sister.
Lola sighed and folded her arms. "We live in a muggle village," she pointed out. "Surrounded by muggles. Muggles whose broken legs take about six weeks or so to heal. Not seconds. Before I just didn't want to do that so soon, but then we moved and I realised we'd been seen by muggles, me with a broken leg. Sure it's healing, but it's not completely. So I can't have it suddenly healed, or people would start asking questions that we don't want to answer."
There was silence, broken only by the sound of the movie and the occasional crunch of popcorn, before Connie spoke. "That's...actually very clever thinking. I did not think of that. Why didn't I think of that?"
Lola smirked. "Because, my dear, I am simply brilliant."
"You wish," Connie scoffed.
"I don't need to wish for something that's already true," Lola retorted.
"So the plan?" Remus interrupted.
"Connie, fancy rescuing your husband?" Lola asked, grinning at her.
Connie opened her mouth to reply, when Courtney interrupted. "No," she said. "We need someone with no reasons to break him out, somebody who has a good alibi."
Silence fell as they all realised what she was implying.
"No," Remus argued. "You're not doing it."
"And why not?" Courtney arched an eyebrow. "It makes sense. I'm supposed to be in America with Rosie, no knowledge of anything going on over here. It's perfect. And you're forgetting, Siri is my friend too."
"And if we do it on a full moon, then Remus has the perfect alibi and I can say I was with him," Connie added. "Keep him company and all that. With Lola's broken leg, she has a good alibi, she'd never be able to get into Azkaban."
"So that's the plan. Who has the getaway car?"
"Me," Connie grinned.
"I still don't like it," Remus muttered.
Courtney smiled at him. "I'll be fine, Love. It's only Siri."
"I'm more worried about the dementors," Remus pointed out.
Shaking her head, Courtney drew her wand. "Expecto Patronum!"
A sleek wolf burst from the tip of her wand and ran round the room, before going up to Remus and butting its head against him. "I'll just think of you," she said with a smile. "You make me happy."
"I do?"
Courtney shrugged. "I guess so. You and Rosie. And all of you lot," she added to the other two.
"You make me happy too," Remus told her, both of them smiling at the other.
Lola and Connie watched eagerly as they stared at each other, before Courtney blushed. "I'll just...go check on the kids."
"Yeah and I'll make tea. Who wants tea? I'm making tea."
Connie and Lola both head-desked at the same time, groaning. "So close," Lola hissed to Connie.
"I suggest we just lock 'em in a cupboard and not let 'em out until they confess their undying love for one another," Connie said to the younger girl with an evil grin.
"Isn't Courtney claustrophobic?" Lola raised an eyebrow.
"Exactly."
"You're evil."
"Thank you."
"But let's wait till we have Sirius back first."
"Fi-ine."
Nobody noticed when a sloth made its way through Azkaban prison three nights later, its claws barely making a sound. For a sloth, it was moving quite fast, before it stopped outside a specific cell. Nobody noticed when the sloth turned into a woman with dark auburn hair and light honey brown eyes, who slid the keys she had swiped from a guard into the lock and turned it.
"Padfoot," she whispered. "Pads, it's me. It's Neenie." The man in the cell only raised his head. "Padfoot, come on."
"Another hallucination," the man murmured. "Wonder why you're Neenie though."
The woman rolled her eyes and glanced around, before darting into the cell and slapping the man upside the head. "Snap out of it Padfoot. We're getting out of here."
"Neenie?" The man blinked, some sense of lucidity appearing in his eyes. "Is it really you?"
"Would you like me to slap you again?" The woman hissed, that enough to reassure the man it was truly her. "Thought not. Now change into Padfoot."
Not willing to risk angering her, the man shifted into a dog that near blended in to the surroundings and obediently followed the woman out of the cell. She locked the cell back up and shifted into a sloth, moving her head as if to say, follow me. The dog-man followed the sloth-woman outside and into the water. The icy coldness quickly sent any further thoughts of it being a hallucination out of the window and to Mars.
Shivering, the dog-man swam after the sloth-woman, icy waves chopping and changing around him.
After what felt like a millennia, the sloth-woman climbed onto dry land and the dog-man followed, shaking himself off when he did.
"Oh Padfoot," a voice sighed, laughter in the tone.
The dog-man turned and laid eyes upon the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. His wife.
Connie threw a blanket over to Courtney to dry herself off with, then rubbed Padfoot down with another one. They didn't want any magic to register when it got out that Sirius was missing.
"Come on," Connie said to the dog. "Let's get you to the car."
In the end, it was Hermione and Luna who came up with the plan. Courtney and Connie would drive down with Kali and Rosie, leaving the others with Lola. They were taking the kids, because Siriusly - how many people take their kids with them when they go to break somebody out of prison? Kali and Rosie had been given a sleeping draught, so that they'd sleep through it, but probably wake up on the way home. Sirius would stay as Padfoot, because nobody knew about his Animagus, meaning the wouldnt be looking for a black dog. They'd decided not to use magic, because that left traces and they didn't want it to be traced back to them.
Padfoot climbed into the car, settled down between the two car seats and promptly fell fast asleep, probably the first nightmare-free dream since he'd been chucked in Azkaban. Connie chuckled and got into the driver's seat, Courtney in the passenger side. As she started up the car, Courtney fell asleep too.
Swimming to and from Azkaban was clearly more tiring than she'd thought.