Four powerful legs practically flew in the cold landscape, racing alongside the bike. Flames danced along the edges of the canine's mouth.
They had tried, oh how they tried, to keep Sarge back when Steve went to infiltrate the base and cause the distraction.
Sarge wasn't having any of it. With the loss of Bucky, Steve had become Sarge's handler. It wasn't that he didn't like the other soldiers, but he had been closest to Bucky. Almost as close as Steve himself was.
Besides, no one really knew what sort of tricks Sarge could pull if he went all out.
Unknown to the others, Sarge had other reasons for following Steve.
According to his research, this was one of the main bases for Grindlewald and his men. They had been in close contact with HYDRA right before the war ended.
He could deal a massive blow to the dark lord's forces and help Steve with his mission.
Besides...he had to make sure that he got on the plane with Steve, otherwise he'd have to take the long way round to meet up with him again. He did not want to live through sixty years of history dammit!
Twenty he could live with, but sixty was really pushing it. Mostly because there was no way in hell he'd be able to hide his very slow aging.
Most dogs could live up to fifteen, maybe sixteen years. Seventeen at most. Not sixty. If he tried to pretend he was a normal dog he had no illusions they'd do everything in their power to figure out how he lived so long with very little side effects.
He was not an idiot, regardless of his grades.
He didn't even feel the bullets, as his armor shielded him from most of them. A simple wandless charm (and hadn't that been a bitch to figure out how to cast without a wand or the vocal cords to pull it off) made the bullets and energy blasts bounce off.
Steve made short work of the idiots he faced, while Sarge blasted anyone that came within ten feet of him. He was not happy about the muzzle, but at least they didn't suspect wizard.
The HYDRA agents pretty much ignored him once they threw him into a cage. Then again, none of the wizards had bothered to check him, believing he was nothing more than a dog with a genetic quirk who managed to escape one of their many labs. It wasn't like Schmidt knew where they all were, or who ran them. He was just the public face of HYDRA.
Once he was relatively alone, Sarge shifted back into his human form, worked off the muzzle and vanished it...along with the lock. Then he quickly shifted back and waited.
Once he heard the gunshots, Sarge slammed into the door, smashing it open. His fire flame broiled the idiots in the room, and in the narrow corridors his flames were impossible to avoid.
He could clear a hallway faster than any of the soldiers that were storming the base.
Sarge headed straight for the air ship, once he killed every wizard and witch he ran into. He left little parting gifts for anyone who came to investigate the place.
The Hogwarts school crest, with the Potter family crest in place of Gryffindor. It was burned on the walls clear enough for even the soldiers to see. And since he left signs of his passage, it was going to be pretty obvious who had put it there.
Once he was in the plane, he waited patiently for it to start up.
He was quick to follow Steve into the cockpit...and boy wasn't Schmidt surprised to see the dog on the plane.
Sarge would have roasted him, except he had too high of a chance to hit Steve as well.
Instead he decided on an easier route. Anything that could give off that much energy without a container couldn't be safe to handle without something in between it. So it would be very easy for him to remove the cube and launch it at Schmidt using his magic.
Schmidt was too occupied fending off Steve to realize the danger from Sarge.
When he did, it was far too late to do anything about it. The cube slammed into his chest, and the power contained within it ripped him to shreds.
Steve stared at the dog. Sarge woofed.
"You and I are going to have a very long talk later. If there is a later."
Sarge wagged his tail with a canine grin. While Steve went to crash the plane into the ocean, Sarge was making his own preparations.
As they were falling into the icy ocean, Sarge swallowed a small vial of Draught of the Living Death. As it began to take effect, he also put in a modified antidote made by the Weasley twins.
Once he was out of the cold water and his body warmed up, the antidote would drain into his throat, thus waking him up and releasing him from the effects of the first potion.
It was a carefully calculated trick to allow him to safely survive being frozen for sixty years.
Sixty-five years later...
It had taken several decades, but eventually the plane was found. More to the point, Captain America and one of the most decorated canines in Military history were found.
Sergeant Major "Sarge" and Captain Steve Rogers were finally brought home.
Of course that discovery was nothing compared to the realization that both bodies were still technically alive.
In fact, once they started to warm the dog up, his body showed several signs of waking without any input from them.
Within several hours of being removed from the ice, Sarge was already up and trying to find Steve.
Four days later...
Steve knew something was different. For one thing, he was in a bed and there was sunshine. That meant he wasn't still in the plane.
It took him a few moments to realize that there was a radio playing...and something breathing heavily next to him.
He slowly opened up his eyes, and tried to close them before the beast noticed he was up.
There was no escape.
"Sarge, get off!"
Sarge practically tackled Steve on the bed, and was definitely making up for lost time. Steve was thoroughly soaked with dog slobber.
Sarge barked happily.
"Captain Rogers?"
It took Steve a few moments to realize something was off about the broadcast. Namely because he had been at the game that was playing on the radio.
That raised several alarm bells...but the fact Sarge wasn't in attack mode soothed them.
He still didn't let the 'doctor' anywhere near him. Something didn't add up. In fact the more he thought about it, the more he started picking up queues he didn't like.
So much so that he opted to bust out, Sarge hot on his heels.
"Stand down Captain!"
Sarge growled, but stayed within reach of Steve.
Steve looked around and had no idea where he was. It looked like New York, but only vaguely. It was far more advanced than he had ever dreamed of.
"We wanted to break it to you gently. You've been asleep Cap. For almost seventy years."
Steve looked devastated at the news. Sarge nudged him with his nose.
"Wait...how is Sarge alive?"
"You're guess is as good as ours. By our calculations he should have died in the crash," admitted the man.
They had done multiple tests, and aside from being of an unknown canine-species, there was no sign of how he survived not only the crash, but the freezing water. By all accounts the water alone should have killed the dog.
And yet Sarge was not only alive, but mobile within hours of warming up. Once he was up, he damn near tracked down Captain Rogers within minutes and refused to leave his side once he did.
It was the only reason the dog had been allowed in the room when Rogers woke up.
Steve was still in shock, learning how many years he had been stuck in suspended animation with Bucky's dog.
Having Sarge around made it easier to handle the fact he was no longer in a time he recognized. So many things had changed while he was gone. Sarge was a constant he could fall back on.
Going back to his old neighborhood left a pit in his stomach. He couldn't recognize anything at all. It was like he couldn't trust his own memories. And the people...there were actually some idiots who took offense to his presence. Or to Sarge.
Fortunately Sarge was registered as a military-trained dog. People kept giving Steve dirty looks because he didn't bother with a leash, even though S.H.I.E.L.D. had given Sarge all the required shots. Steve knew that Sarge wouldn't go after anyone unless he gave the order. Sarge was so well trained that he didn't need the leash.
For the first few weeks, Steve had a lot of unspoken interference from S.H.I.E.L.D., since he kept forgetting to leash Sarge. It had taken a lot of time to find an apartment that allowed him to keep the dog with him. Fortunately Sarge didn't have any pit bull blood (not that he had anything against the breed, but for some reason a lot of people did), but he was still a big dog.
Considering how many times the dog saved his ass, Steve rarely bought the commercial dog food. Instead he bought cheap cuts of meat from the butchers that would normally be tossed.
Every day Steve went to the local gym, and Sarge would sit nearby. After he worked out, they would take a run, mostly to familiarize themselves with the city. This was usually when Steve got into trouble with the beat cops, because he kept forgetting about leash laws.
Only the ones who came back from military service themselves believed that Sarge was a trained war dog.
Steve despaired ever getting anything but nasty looks from people in the park when they saw Sarge without a leash. The kids loved him (he was amazingly patient with children, never so much as barking at them), but the parents and adults always cast such suspicious looks whenever they saw Sarge without anyone to hold his collar or a leash on him.
For a few months, nothing really seemed to happen. Well, outside of the beat cops slowly becoming used to Sarge. The dog was actually getting their respect, because he had busted a rapist trying to take advantage of the off beat path.
The man was caught and sentenced to jail, and Sarge had gained a new fan who didn't mind him being without handler.
In England...
The survivors of the Blood Wars (as Harry had flippantly called them, and the name had stuck) were finally calming down after the end of the fighting when the news hit.
Potter had somehow been dosed with enough time sand that his whereabouts were unknown. No one, not even the Unspeakables, knew when Potter had disappeared to. However they did have a few clues.
The biggest being that a modified Hogwarts crest was found in a base which held some of Grindlewald's forces. Some of the more depraved and evil witches and wizards who were forced to flee Germany thanks to the hard work of several brave witches and wizards. They hadn't taken the experiments at Auschwitz lying down.
At first glance it looked like a sort of banner saying that a Hogwarts witch or wizard had come to the base during the war and was claiming the kills. Almost like they were claiming a win for the 'good guys'. It was upon closer inspection that they hit a big clue.
The Gryffindor crest was replaced with the Potter crest. And while the Potter family was involved in the fight against Grindlewald, there were no records of any being anywhere near the mountain base. Far from it...most of their fighting took place at the forefront, not the covert kind that would be in that base.
However, there was a Potter that had been temporally displaced to an unknown time period. One who had been in Gryffindor and would likely fit in with any of the muggle soldiers that had been present when the base was stormed by Captain Steve Rogers, aka Captain America.
Every member of the team checked out. Outside of Bucky Barnes, none of the Howling Commandos or the group that supported them stood out.
None of the human members anyway.
However one member did stand out. The canine member of the Howling Commandos named Sergeant, or Sarge for short. The dog was smart, and it's intelligence reported spiked after being captured by HYDRA. More than that, Sarge suddenly gained the ability to breath fire and was able to keep up with a motor bike and deflect shots.
That was not normal, regardless of what experiments were done on a dog. A normal canine would not be able to survive.
An animagus who was tired of hiding useful abilities, however? That was another story.
There was also the description of Sarge.
Black dog with green eyes and uncommon intelligence. It walked into camp one morning and stuck with Bucky Barnes until he went missing during a mission, then he attached himself to Steve Rogers.
He went down with Rogers on the plane, and no one could figure out how he got on the plane without being caught.
All the little clues pointed to Potter somehow ending up during the second World War, right in the middle of enemy territory. The idea he'd attach himself to a group of soldiers wasn't that far fetched. Far from it.
It also didn't help what Potter's animagus form happened to be. It was rare for a witch or wizard to register a magical animal for their form.
Potter lived to defy expectations. His animagus form was a Cerberus or possibly a hellhound that breathed fire. It was rumored that anyone who had a magical animal could use magic while in that form. It took a lot of training and luck though.
Potter had the patience, and if they were right, plenty of reason to learn how to do it.