AN - Sorry about the slow update - my muse got locked in a closet and went into hybernation.

All conversations in this chapter are in English, or a reasonable facimile of...given the speaker.

PHOENIX and DRAGON: Through the World Gate

Chapter 14

The Hog's Head was quiet, it was nearly 9:00 at night, and only a few less than reputable characters lurked in the darker corners. It was mid-winter and a heavy snow was falling, Christmas was past and Valentines Day was still weeks away, so there were few customers. The barkeep, a tall thin man with long stringy grey hair and beard, and wire rimmed glasses, was wiping disinterestedly at the top of the bar with a dirty rag when the front door opened with a bang and a huge figure filled the opening.

"Eve'nin Aberforth," Hagrid called loudly as he walked to the bar, his huge boots hitting the floor like anvils, causing little ripples in the other customer's drinks. "Cold night out 'ere." He brushed snow off the shoulders of his moleskin coat and leaned his pink umbrella against the front of the bar before he sat carefully on a stool, wincing as he heard a threatening creak from the unfortunate piece of furniture. He began rummaging through his seemingly bottomless pockets for his coin purse, emptying various odd objects onto the bar, including a rather rumpled barn owl, before he found it.

"What'll it be Rubeus," the barkeep asked, then poured a tall tumbler full of fire whiskey and slid it across the bar when Hagrid asked for his usual. "Anything new?"

"Filch 'ad 'is 'ands full again with them Weasley twins," Hagrid whispered, looking around to make sure nobody was listening, although his idea of a whisper was loud enough to be heard across the entire bar. "They turned Mrs. Norris blue and stuck 'er to the wall in the dungeons, Professer Snape found 'er right after supper," he confided, his black eyes glinting with humor. "They shouldn't uv' done that! Dumbledore's give'n 'em detention with me every nigh' for a week…won't be able to come back te see yeh till that's over." He stared morosely into his suddenly empty tumbler. "Couldn't le' Filch av' 'em though, he kept muttering about manacles and whips…."

Aberforth snickered, pleased that his brother was having to deal with such rambunctious children. "Their just firsties, aren't they? How much trouble could they possibly cause?"

"Dunno how, but last week they managed to turn all the Slytherins hair red," Hagrid smiled as he remembered how funny it had been. An entire table full of children suddenly realizing their hair was Gryffindor red. "Not that anyone could prove it were them, but Professor Snape was right furious. Never seen 'em so mad…." Hagrid eagerly accepted a refill on his tumbler and took a big swallow. "Week before that everyone in Hufflepuff started barking like dogs during lunch," he started chuckling as he remembered.

A tall man with long black hair rose from a nearby booth and took a seat beside Hagrid, setting an empty bottle of butterbeer on the bar. "Another butterbeer, if you don't mind," the man asked quietly. Hagrid turned to look at the newcomer, realizing he'd never seen him before. The man passed a couple knuts across the bar and took a long drink from the bottle Aberforth passed him. "I heard you talking about a couple pranksters…sounds like they're quite a handful," he commented, turning to look at the half-giant. "You work up at the castle?"

"Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of the Keys and Grounds Keeper at Hogwarts," the big man rumbled proudly. "Pleased to meet yeh…" He stuck out his hand expectantly, waiting for the stranger to introduce himself.

"Bleys Deverell," Myrddin responded, reaching out to shake Hagrid's hand. He winced as he felt the bones in his hand grind together, and pulled it back quickly before it was crushed. "You seem to know a lot about the castle," he commented, sipping his beer.

Hagrid puffed his chest out proudly, and proceeded to tell the stranger everything about the school. Aberforth listened, watching the stranger while wiping absently at various mugs and glasses with the same rag he'd been wiping the bar with.

A number of tumblers of fire whisky later, they had moved to a table in one corner of the pub and talk had turned to other things. Hagrid was sobbing into his beard, wiping his eyes with one huge hand as he explained the events of that terrible Halloween night when the Potter's were attacked in Godric's Hollow.

"Sirius Black, he was poor Harry's Godfather yeh know, wanted me teh give him teh him, but Dumbledore'd told me teh bring 'em… I hated teh do it, yeh know, but Dumbledore trusted me teh bring Harry teh 'em. Great man Dumbledore…." Hagrid stopped to wipe his eyes again and sniffed loudly. "Shouldn't uv done it…those Dursley's were terrible muggles," he continued sadly. "Poor Harry…."

"What happened to Black?" Myrddin asked casually, hoping to get a lead on Gwydion's human godfather. Aberforth's eyes sharpened and he quietly reached for a piece of parchment and a quill.

"Went and blew up a street full of muggles and killed little Peter Pettigrew, the Potter's other friend," Hagrid answered finally, his head starting to droop slightly as the level of fire whiskey in his tumbler got lower. "Took him teh Azkaban…terrible place….," he shuddered suddenly, remembering the time he'd spent there after he was expelled from school, and gulped the remainder of his fire whiskey down.

"Is he still there?" Myrddin sipped at his butterbeer, hoping Hagrid had more information.

"Yeh, he's still there. Can't understand…he was James's best friend, they were like brothers…can't understand how he could give 'em over teh He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named like that."

Myrddin rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Everything he'd heard so far from Hagrid agreed with what he'd heard from other people he'd spoken to, but nobody had told him Sirius was Gwydion's godfather. He looked up as the door of the pub opened and several figures entered, shaking snow off their cloaks. They took seats in a booth nearby, and one of them, a square-jawed wizard with dirty blond hair, walked up to the bar to speak with Aberforth. Myrddin turned back to Hagrid, and refilled the gamekeeper's glass again from the bottle of fire whiskey he'd bought sometime earlier.

"You aren't from around here, are you…," A voice came from behind Myrddin, and he turned to see who was speaking. The blond wizard who had been speaking to Aberforth stepped closer and pulled another chair to the table, taking a seat across from Myrddin beside a now snoring Hagrid. "You've been asking a lot of questions around Hogsmead…mind telling me why?"

"Is it any of your business?" Myrddin asked cautiously, pushing his chair back slightly. "May I ask who you are?"

"Sturgis Podmore, and I'm asking the questions here." The wizard slowly slid his wand out of his cloak pocket, holding it under the table out of sight. "Why have you been asking about the Potters?" He aimed his wand at the stranger, and turned his head slightly to nod at the other three wizards in the booth. They stood, and stepped forward to stand behind and to both sides of Myrddin.

Myrddin glanced sideways as the wizards surrounded him. "Not very friendly, are you," he said calmly, moving his hand from the table to lay it casually in his lap, twisting his wrist to drop a throwing knife out of an arm sheath into his hand as he did so. "

"You're going to have to come with us," one of the wizards behind Myrddin said as he roughly grabbed the half-elf's shoulder. Myrddin pushed his chair back suddenly and grabbed the table, flipping it onto Podmore and knocking him backwards onto the floor. Hagrid woke with a roar and swung his umbrella around, drunkenly pointing it at one of the wizards as he mumbled incoherently.

The situation went downhill from there. Myrddin lashed out with his knife, striking the man holding him across the arm. Sudden yells of "Stupify" rang out, red flashes of light crisscrossed the pub, and people dove for the floor to avoid the curses. Flashes of blue and yellow light marked where Myrddin's spells went in reply.

When the firing finally stopped, Myrddin lay motionless, stunned by four of the wizards at once and in a full body bind, a trickle of blood running across the floor from where he'd hit his head on the corner of a booth as he fell.

"Dumbledore's not going to be happy with this," Dung said as he knelt, reaching to roll the motionless stranger onto his back so he could search through his pockets. "He's injured, we need to get him upstairs." He pulled a wand out of the man's cloak and looked at it curiously before setting it on the floor and casting some sort of charm over it. "Curious…," he muttered.

"What?" Podmore asked impatiently, casting a healing charm onto the stranger to stop the bleeding from his head wound.

"This isn't a wand…there's no core."