Sirius actually managed to resist the urge to wake his brother up at dawn the next morning. How he did so Regulus wasn't sure— patience was hardly one of Sirius's strong suites. "Go hunting," Regulus grumbled when he was woken up. "The task's not until this evening."

Sirius raised an eyebrow. "I already have. I didn't catch anything and I wound up close to Hogwarts. They were dragging a sphinx into the maze."

Regulus sighed. He'd been jerking in and out of nightmares since Sirius had woken him up from the one about the Mark, which was hardly the most restful way to spend his night. "I guess that would take your mind completely off rabbits," he mumbled. "But really, this is the Triwizard Tournament. Did you really expect them to leave the maze empty?"

"No, but, still . . . without actually seeing what they put into it I could tell myself I had an overactive imagination," Sirius pointed out.

"You do." Regulus took his glasses out of his picket and got to his feet. "Now, what are we supposed to do for the rest of the day? I know what we're doing after the task. . . ."

Sirius raised an eyebrow. "And what's that?"

"Congratulating Harry on surviving and heading back to France, so at least one of us can show our face in public without being recognized as a Black."

"Unless something happens," Sirius pointed out.

"All right, I'm usually the pessimist but I'm going to cling to optimism in this instance— he got through the first two tasks, and he's probably better prepared for this one, because he's known what it is for much longer than the other two. It'll be all right."

Sirius shook his head. "They saved it for the third task."

Regulus couldn't argue with that one, really, since he believed the same thing Sirius did, but if it meant occupying his brother's mind with something— anything— but impending crisis, he was prepared to try. Buckbeak, however, interrupted them at that moment by emitting a loud squawk.

Both of them turned around to see what had upset the hippogriff now. Buckbeak was making swipes at a barn owl that didn't seem too happy himself. Muttering, Regulus stalked over and held out his arm for the owl to perch on, moving out of the hippogriff's reach. Sirius went to calm Buckbeak down.

"Damn, I'll be glad when the owls're coming through the kitchen and Buckbeak's in another room," Regulus muttered, taking the letter off of the owl's leg. "I don't quite understand why he hates them so much." The owl hopped from Regulus's arm to his shoulder as if to read the message he'd carried as Regulus unfolded it.

"Yeah . . . what's Harry want the day of the task?" Sirius added.

"This isn't Harry's handwriting."

"Who else knows we're here?" Sirius asked sensibly.

"Dumbledore," Regulus pointed out. "He's asking that we not draw attention to ourselves by showing up on the Quidditch pitch, as there are too many people there already and you are rather hard to miss." He glanced over at the owl. "We aren't sending a reply. There's no point."

The owl cocked his head before launching himself off of Regulus's shoulder and starting back towards the school.

"What else are we supposed to do?" Sirius demanded.

"Look at it logically, Sirius— during the first task we could lurk under the stands and still see what was going on. The second task was around the lake, so it was just a matter of finding a spot that people weren't already occupying. On the other hand, we'd actually have to be in the Quidditch stands to see over twenty foot walls, and the entire school— including the ones known to skip Quidditch games— will be out there for the task, not to mention Beauxbatons students, Durmstrang students, various parents and judges, and possibly a Daily Prophet reporter. There are too many people not to remark on your presence, and when you're going to go charging into the maze the minute something awry happens. . . . It's just a bad idea. It had occurred to me, too, but I knew better than to try to talk you out of it."

Sirius grumbled something under his breath.

"On the other hand, Dumbledore did recommend Hagrid's garden, since that part of the school will be completely deserted and it's a lot closer than the cave."

Sirius muttered something else under his breath, but he nodded.

Sirius was literally pacing a rut into Hagrid's pumpkin patch, and it was beginning to annoy Regulus. He understood the worry, but he didn't understand why pacing did anything to ease it.

Finally, he got annoyed enough to come out from behind the large pumpkin he was using for shade and wander over to Hagrid's back door, changing to human form as he did so. The door swung open when he turned the handle, as he'd half expected it to. "Hagrid really needs to learn to lock his door," he mumbled.

Sirius evidently heard, looked around, and transformed into a man as well. "Reggie, what're you doing?"

"Distracting you. Come on." He stepped through the doorway, and Sirius followed a little reluctantly.

"How did you know Hagrid's door would be open?" he asked.

"I didn't. On the other hand, it doesn't seem like the sort of thing Hagrid would think about, does it? But he might notice the rut you just got through working in his pumpkin patch, since he probably pays a lot more attention to his garden than his door. You're not going to work one in the floor."

Regulus looked absently around. Everything in the cabin seemed to have been built on a scale of one-and-a-half to the average sized person, but then Hagrid was eight feet tall. A boarhound had been lurking by the bed. The dog got to his feet and, whether he somehow recognized inherently that Regulus was a cat person and wouldn't appreciate it or just found Sirius more interesting, wandered right passed Regulus to rub up against Sirius and drool on his jeans.

While Sirius knelt down to pet the dog, Regulus looked around. In the absence of both electricity and a wand, the place had almost taken on the look of an oversize frontier cabin from the late eighteen-hundreds— pre-industrial days. "Cast iron stove," he muttered absently.

Sirius looked up. "What about it?"

Regulus chuckled. "The surprise isn't that he has one, since there's no electricity around here, but that I know how to use one," he answered, looking it over. "Or at least, one that's a little bit smaller."

"When'd you learn?" Sirius demanded. It was the same question he'd asked the first time Regulus had turned on the electrical stove in France.

"There are still out-of-the-way backwaters without a lot of electrical items in the Muggle world," Regulus answered. "And in the wizarding ones these are pretty common in the kitchen— not that you pay a lot of attention to what's in the kitchen, right?"

Sirius nodded absently and checked the tags on the dog's collar. "Fang, eh?" he asked. The dog seemed to grin and wagged his tail. "Well, goodness knows they're big enough to warrant naming you after them."

"Hagrid actually gave one a name suggesting it's vicious?" Regulus asked. He regarded Fang, who was washing Sirius's face, for a moment or two. "And he chooses the one that's not vicious at all. Of course. What was that thing that Filch swore was trying to eat his cat? The one he called Spot?"

"The baby griffin?"

"Yeah. Whatever happened to it?"

"Well, according to Remus, who got on with Hagrid best, he's living in a mountain reserve in Greece," Sirius answered. Fang had rolled onto his back and Sirius was now scratching his belly. "Dumbledore convinced him to give it up so that Filch wouldn't kill it one night."

"Sounds about right." Regulus shook his head and leaned against the stove, watching his brother play with Fang for a few minutes. "Sirius, your hands are shaking."

"Are they?" Sirius looked down at them in surprise, as if he hadn't noticed. "That's why I pace, Reg. I've got too much nervous energy right now not to do something."

Regulus shook his head. "There's got to be a way to calm you down," he mumbled.

"They could cancel the Third Task and not reschedule it," Sirius suggested.

"I have no power over that. On the other hand, I may take a leaf out of Andromeda and Alphard's books and make a pot of tea."

Sirius shook his head. "I suppose getting Hagrid's permission to use his kitchen is out of the question."

"I fully intend to wash everything and put it back where I found it," Regulus answered defensively. "You're just so nervous it's making me nervous."

"I hate not being able to do anything, even more than I hated not catching Peter this time last year," Sirius muttered. "I'll get the teapot. Either my memory's playing tricks on me or he used to keep it on the top shelf."

Hagrid did keep the teapot on the top shelf— Sirius, who was another head taller than his brother, wound up standing on a chair to get it down. The tea bags had been stuffed inside. While Sirius was figuring this out, Regulus got a fire started in the stove with his wand— no point in using matches when he could get it much hotter much faster with a spell.

It was getting dark now, and Sirius borrowed Regulus's wand to light a couple of candles and got back down on the floor with Fang. Regulus was half-tempted to suggest that he transform back into a dog himself— he and Fang would be about the same size, then— and play tug-of-war or something of the sort.

The water began to boil and Regulus turned around. Then he yelped and grabbed his left arm.

Sirius shoved Fang off of him and went over to the stove. "And you told me back in France that you didn't trust me near the stove."

"Sirius," Regulus mumbled.

Sirius didn't appear to hear, and put his hand on his brother's shoulder. "Let go of it and remind me what the spell for burns is. From the sound of it, you got yourself pretty good."

"Sirius, I didn't burn myself," Regulus growled.

Then Sirius seemed to realize what part of his arm Regulus had a hold on. "What's going on?" he asked quietly. With some effort he pried his brother's arm away and pushed up the sleeve to take a look at the Mark. "It's black," he mumbled. "Shouldn't it be red?"

"Normally it is," Regulus answered faintly. "But not now. He's back, Sirius," Regulus muttered, pulling out of his brother's grip and pulling his sleeve back down over the Mark. "He's back and he wants all of us to know."

For a few minutes Sirius just stared at his brother. "Harry," he muttered finally, starting towards the door.

"No, Sirius, listen to me," Regulus growled, grabbing his brother's elbow and trying to stop him. "Whatever's happened to Harry, it happened right in front of Dumbledore. I highly doubt that Voldemort would return right in front of the only man he ever feared. And if he came up with some way to vanish Harry to wherever he needed to kid to be without Dumbledore stopping him. . . . Sirius, there's nothing you can do."

Sirius stiffened in his brother's grip. "Reggie, I can't. . . ."

"Dumbledore knows what he's doing. You're only going to complicate things," Regulus added, hoping that the voice of reason might mean something to Sirius. "Let him handle it."

After another few moments, Sirius relaxed a little, enough that Regulus felt comfortable letting go. He'd started shaking again, though. Regulus pushed him gently towards the table and told him to sit down. Fang put his head in his lap as if he sensed something strange was going on.

Purely because there was no point in not, Regulus finished making the pot of tea and filled two oversized mugs. The rest he poured into a bowl and put on the floor for Fang, who was the only one who drank any of it. Regulus stared at between his mug and his brother, who was up pacing the floor again. Eventually he emptied them both into Fang's bowl so he could wash the pot and cups and put them away before Hagrid got back.

"Sirius," he said quietly when he'd climbed down from the shelves.

Sirius looked over in surprise.

"Maybe . . . maybe we ought to go and find Dumbledore and ask him what's going on. He knows I've got the Mark, so you know something could be wrong with Harry, and he can't blame us for panicking. We can check the quidditch field and his office. He's bound to be around here somewhere. . . ."

Sirius nodded and opened the door a little. He jumped and looked back. "McGonagall's on her way here," he announced. "I think we both need to transform and get out there."

Author's Note: Gearing up for a rather complicated denumonte, here. Next chapter will finally involve some answers, although 1994 is threatening to be a chapter longer than my last prediction. Hopefully I'll know for sure by next week. StarGirl5000: Welcome aboard. And thank you to everyone who reviewed; it really does make my day! Cheers! -- Loki