Chapter Thirty Four
"I suppose you're just dying, aren't you, Snuffles? You and your fur coat," said an almost believably blonde-haired Davie, staring down at Snuffles, the large black dog trotting alongside her better known as Sirius Black - his own wand was wrapped and almost completely hidden in his long, bushy tail. She gave a slight chuckle, looking at Sirius panting in the unusually hot summer air. "Put that slobbery tongue back where it came from, would you? We're almost there."
They seemed to be wading through an overgrown field of wheat and grasses, the latter being waist-high to Davie, who had to take comically high steps to practically wade through the dry brush. The area around them seemed to have been completely devastated by the drought and severe heat of the summer
"Are you really going to gripe about the weather? You're the one who was itching to get out of that house - get it? Itching?" Davie joked, continuing to tromp through the grass. "You know - your fleas and - bloody hell."
Davie stopped in her tracks so abruptly that Sirius hardly had time to react, running into the back of Davie's legs, but even in the form of a dog, it was quickly clear to him that there was something amiss. The brown-yellow sea of dried wheat gave way to a large mass of brown-black, withered plant growth for quite a few yards. Davie stepped into the dead plant to feel an unpleasant, damp squish under her feet. The ground was wet, as though a coat of ice or snow had just melted off of it in the dead of summer.
"I'm going to poke around here a bit, see if there's any sign of what happened here. " Davie said, pulling her wand out of the back pocket of her trousers. "Don't move, Sirius. Sit - stay. Keep and eye out for - ouch!"
Sirius had nipped at the back of Davie's ankle, causing her to yelp in pain and drop her wand, which he caught in his mouth while Davie glared angrily at him. However, before Davie could break into another tirade, the contents of which Sirius could have already predicted, she paused, her expression shifting. She felt the skin on her arms prickle at the sensation of a slight breeze - but any breeze at all had been unheard of for weeks now. There was a certain coldness in the air that was unpleasant and suffocating - and for both Davie and Sirius, unwelcome and familiar - Davie shivered as the temperature seemed to fall lower and lower.
"Give. Me. My. Wand." Davie hissed quietly, but her voice was more urgent and fearful than it was angry. "Sirius, please." Sirius released her wand into her hand, and she gripped it tightly as her eyes darted around shiftily. "Maybe you should go - if someone's here, they shouldn't -"
But before she could finished something large and black swooped from the sky, swirling around them ominously as it was joined by two others - dementors. Davie pointed her wand at each of them but was seized, frozen in place with a strange sort of fear that she had not felt for a long time. She was momentarily shaken to her senses, though, when in a fraction of a second, Sirius was standing next to her as a human, his hand pointed as well.
"RUN!" he yelled authoritatively, grabbing Davie by the crook of her arm and breaking into a sprint. "Can't you run any faster?"
"Are you insane?" Davie yelled at Sirius as they continued running with the dementors close behind them, moving so quickly that they seemed to be slicing through the air like large knives; the tall grasses left small cuts up and down Davie's bare arms. "You can't be in human form around them, they'll recognize you!"
"Well, I couldn't very well have you ride on my back!" Sirius yelled. "For once, Davie, stop bloody arguing and - Davie!"
Davie let out another cry as her foot caught on a stone, twisting at an awkward angle and causing her to fall onto the ground, her arm slipping out of Sirius' grasp. Immediately, out of reflex for both of them, they pointed their wands at the figures and yelled in unison, "Expecto Patronum!"
Two white, glistening, indistinct masses emerged from the wands and shot towards the dementors, shifting clearly into an owl and a large dog as they charged forward, pushing the dementors backwards - Davie's arm, however, began wavering and even over the whistling of the wind that the dementor's seemed to bring into the still night, Sirius could hear her voice, mumbling tremulously.
"Mum - Dad - they can't be -"
They were getting to her, Sirius cursed inwardly. The dementors were forcing the memory of her parents' death on her.
"DAVIE!" he yelled, desperate to catch her attention and shake her from the stupor that the dementors were forcing upon her. Then, in a seemingly out of place choice of words, he called out, "Do you hate my earring that much?"
Something about the question seemed to jolt back into place in Davie's consciousness - her mind was overtaken by the memory of herself and Sirius, taking care of little Tonks as though they were one complete family. Her patronus suddenly surged forward with a fervor it had not possessed even when she had first cast it, and with a shrill, piercing cry into the night air, the dementors shot off, away from the pair. After a few moments of silence, the dog retreated back into Davie's wand, the owl into Sirius'.
"There you go again - you'd think a decade of being an Auror would have made you somewhat less clumsy," Sirius grumbled, tucking his wand away into the fold of the large coat that his dog fur transformed into in his human form. He knelt down next to her to help her to her feet, only to have her swat his hand away weakly, staring at him with eyes full of questions.
"An owl?" she asked, unsure of how to react - her mind shot back to a particular conversation in their fourth year. It had seemed so insignificant, so normal at the time, but now…
"So is everything coming along on the you-know-what?" asked a fifteen-year-old Davina Maddux, sitting down on the arm of the common room couch occupied by Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew. Across the table, Sirius Black and James Potter were lounging on the opposite sofa, their feet propped lazily on the table between the seats. It was rather fortunate indeed that Davie had come to them with the suggestion of being Animagi for Remus' sake, as it was something they'd not have come up with on their own at the time.
"Oh yeah," Sirius said haughtily, casting the girl a grin which she did not even acknowledge. "Coming along wonderfully. As if you had any reason to doubt it, Davie."
"Right," she responded, rolling her eyes in exasperation - she may very well have been good friends with the other boys, except for the fact that it would have required her to be around Sirius Black, whose company she could not always tolerate. Clearing her throat and turning her attention back to Remus, she placed her book down and continued talking, taking particular care to ignore Sirius.
"You know, I sort of wish I'd gotten in on this with you," Davie said casually, before adding with a slightly pained laugh, "but you know I'd botch it up terribly. You know," she lowered her voice considerably. "I'd be an owl."
"An owl!" James chuckled haughtily. "Why? Fancy a career as a mail carrier, Maddux?"
"I'd think of you more as an parrot. Or better yet, an elephant," Sirius chuckled raucously. "Loud and clumsy and always stepping over everything."
"Complete gits, the both of you," Davie retorted, narrowing her eyes in attempt to looking threatening, though the attempt failed as a laugh escaped her lips. "Owls are wise, and resourceful, and useful - and, you know, enigmatic."
"Exactly," Sirius chuckled, balling up a piece of parchment and chucking it towards Davie, who swatted it out of the air and threw it back at him. "And how exactly does that apply to you?"
"That's your patronus?" Davie asked, and there was a slight sharpness to her voice as though she had just been a bit offended. "But - but -"
"Don't even start - are you really going to be a hypocrite about your patronus?A dog?" Sirius said, his grip on Davie's upper arm a bit tighter than was necessary. "Or did your mum and dad have a pet puppy that you failed to tell me about? Come on," he said, giving her arm another tug.
"It's twisted," Davie hissed, a grimace crossing her face as Sirius attempted to pull her up, only to have her ankle give way beneath any weight placed on it. She set herself back on the ground with a pained expression. "Just - just give me a moment."
Davie let out a breath and rolled up the leg of her pants, looking at her ankle; it appeared a bit swollen. Only now, when they were no longer running, did Sirius realize that after the run-in with the dementors, Davie was terribly pale. He knelt next to her again, with a slight pang of guilt for being so brash with her, but before he was able to speak, she spoke up.
"You alright?" she asked in a near-mumble, not able to look at Sirius. "It can't be easy, being around - well, you know - those," she stammered unsurely. "It would've been safer if you'd stayed a dog -"
"Excuse me, which of us is pale as a sheet right now?" Sirius retorted in exasperation, though he felt a sort of pleasant swelling in his chest at the fact that, however grudgingly, Davie had shown some type of concern for him.
"Both of us - you haven't left Grimmauld Place in weeks, so you can't expect to have seen much sunlight, can you?" Davie said with a weak smirk, pulling out her wand and pointing it at her own ankle, conjuring up a makeshift wrap to support her weight. She reached out and pushed herself upwards using Sirius' shoulder, testing her foot slowly.
"Some things never change - you always enjoy giving me a good scare, don't you? Tripping and falling at the most inopportune moments," Sirius pointed out with an impish smirk, before he could help himself. Davie turned around slowly, blinking almost incredulously - he could not keep doing that, she thought. She simply could not promise that her resolve would last if this Sirius continued to act so identically to the Sirius she had always known - always loved.
"It - it really hurts," Davie said hesitantly, gesturing lamely towards her injured ankle. "If I try to Apparate like this, I'm probably going to splinch myself ten ways and then you'll never be able to put me back together again -"
"Alright, Humpty Dumpty, I'm receiving the hint," Sirius smirked, and before she could ask for clarification, he strode over and swept her off of her feet - and before she could protest, she felt the familiar tug in her stomach area and she held fast around Sirius' neck with a yelp as they apparated back into the receiving room at Grimmauld Place.
Remus Lupin gave a chuckle as they caught sight of Davie clinging tightly to Sirius, until they saw the pained expression on Davie's face when she was set down on the closest seat - by this point, it had swollen up to the point that Davie seemed to be nauseated by the pain. Normally, she had a high tolerance for it, but having been weakened considerably by the happenings of the past months, paired with the fact that running into dementors had a stronger effect on her than even she was willing to admit, it was excruciating.
"Dementors," she managed to grimace as though the words itself were a curse. "In East Devon - something about this seems very much amiss."
"You must be delirious from the heat," Snape added derisively - ever since Davie had recovered from the initial state of her arrival, even she was not spared from his condescension. "In your state, I would not be surprised if this was yet another egregious error in your judgment, Merlin knows it wouldn't be the first -"
"Severus!" Davie interrupted in a low, threatening hiss, for reasons Sirius neither knew not cared about.
"I think I know a dementor when I see one better than anyone in this room, Snivellus," Sirius sneered, poised for another lengthy attack on his childhood nemesis. "So while your input is valuable to everyone else, I personally value it only as much at the snot dribbling from your nose -"
"Sirius, please," Davie said, her hand jetting out and grasping Sirius' wrist, her eyes glinting with the same reprimanding spark as in their youth, when Sirius overstepped his bounds in bullying Snape. "This isn't helping."
"Are you sure of what you saw?" Remus asked, approaching Davie carefully. "Maybe you're just mistaken, I'm sure -"
"Remus, really," Davie interrupted, crossing her arms. "You remember the last time the whole lot of you insisted I was wrong, don't you? About Sirius -" she snapped, before she froze midsentence at the guilty looks that crossed most of their faces; this was an issue that still remained unresolved. Davie recalled the day she had left, how she had resolved to never speak to any of them until they had atoned for the way they treated her when she'd insisted upon Sirius' innocence.
"Anyway," she said, though her voice was clearly more stuff than it had been moments earlier; Sirius, all of a sudden, became very aware that he was not the only one who had felt betrayed by all of his friends for their lack of faith, and that in Davie's case, it was all because of him. "I know what I saw."
"If that is the case," Snape spoke up - it seemed strange that to Sirius that Snape, too, had dropped the confrontation at Davie direction. "Then our situation is more delicate than we first believed - dementors roaming the countryside is a problematic circumstance indeed. I'm sure you'd all agree that it is of even more urgency that Black be confined to Headquarters," he added with a nasty grin, and to Sirius' great chagrin, everyone seemed, in fact, to agree.
In any case, the evening was growing late and everyone was retiring to bed - Davie opted to remain in the armchair and allow her ankle to rest the Muggle way before taking magic to it in the morning.
"Really, I only wanted to avoid Kreacher," Davie said, trying to elicit at least a slight laugh from Sirius. "I think I've had enough unpleasantness for one evening without that little darling."
"You're going to give me a heart attack one of these days," Sirius grumbled, obviously displeased that this may very well have been the last time he'd be allowed to leave him own home. "You know, you're more trouble than you're worth."
At this, Davie fell silent, glancing downward abashedly - and Sirius suddenly felt quite a git indeed, without being told. Davie had always had a way of eliciting that reaction in him, and it seemed this too remained unchanged. Sirius had only meant to intimate his frustration at the fact that he could not for the life of him stop acting like a man whose actions were dictated by love, considering that was in fact what he was. The idea of Davie not being worth any amount of effort, however vast, always had and always remain unthinkable for Sirius Black. He moved over and knelt next to the chair, forcing himself into Davie's line of sight.
"I'm only pulling your leg, Davie," he said with a lopsided shadow of a smirk. "I've always appreciated how difficult you can be, haven't I?"
Davie, however, wordlessly whipped out her wand and extinguished the light in the room, shifting so that her back was to Sirius and going to sleep. It wasn't until the next morning, when Davie woke before everyone else in the house with the first beams of sunlight through the shutters, that she realized that Sirius had slept the entire night on the floor next to the sofa. Her anger and offense melted, and while he slept, she limped slowly to the kitchen, fetched a tray bearing two goblets of pumpkin juice and two slices of toast slathered in apple butter, and placed them down on the receiving room table. Sirius awoke to Davie eating silently and not looking at him, but nodding silently to the table where a small scrap of parchment leaned against the goblet of pumpkin juice with his name in Davie's telltale scrawl. A lopsided smile crossed his weatherworn face at the gesture; it had been a very long time indeed since anyone had prepared a meal for him and only him, and the fact that it was Davie made it only all the more striking.
They did not bicker for the remainder of the day, and after this incident, things appeared to go back to normal - or as normal as they could have been under present circumstances for one Sirius Black and one Davina Maddux.
A/N's
Another ridiculous delay, I know - thank you everyone for understanding and still following, despite the fact that I've been unable to update once or twice a week like I used to - two weeks isn't as bad as only having an update every few months, right?
Thank you to Wateranddarkness666 for reviewing the last chapter, as well as everyone who subscribed or favorited the story - this story has officially become the most favorited out of all my stories, and I'm absolutely tickled! I consider it a month-early birthday gift, hee! Until next time, cheers!