Chapter 30, everybody! In which Harry gets a dog….

SO. Those of you who follow me on Tumblr might have seen a post I did where I theorized what would have happened had Sirius had just tried rocking up to Harry as Padfoot going "Am good boi!" This is the result. ;)

TroyWeb, thanks for the review! They could….

Mmendoza688, thanks for the review! Ah man I thought that had straightened out. D: Unfortunately I don't know what caused the outage, but I DO very much recommend letting FFN know through their e-mail (support at fanfiction dot com).

Harry Potter © JK Rowling

Snips had tapped on the window and pointed at Hagrid's hut the next day, and Harry and Ron both thought that was a grand idea. Hermione had already disappeared to the library, where she'd probably be until Madame Pince kicked her out—Harry made a mental note to save her something to eat.

In the meantime, though—follow Snips down the castle and out across the grounds, trotting for Hagrid's hut. It was a crisp day, lightly breezy, and seemed fine enough that they ought to try flying later.

Lunch was at Hagrid's, where they discussed the various animals Hagrid had planned for later classes. "Don't want to give too much away, but I reckon you'll like a lot of them."

Harry and Ron agreed that so long as it wasn't like the flobberworm class, it'd be fine.

Where things picked up was when Fang got up, sniffed at the door, and started barking.

"Wha' is it, Fang?" Hagrid asked, getting up. "Need ta go out?" Open the door—

Fang and a big black dog sniffed at each other, chuffed—Fang went out, the big black dog came in, pausing only to pick up a stick before making a beeline for Harry.

Ron dropped his rock cake.

"Um, hello," Harry tried, not sure what to make of this.

The big black dog put the stick on the table, nosed it over.

"Harry," Ron squeaked. "Harry, that's the grim!"

Harry blinked at Ron, looked back at the dog, now making puppy eyes at him. "An omen of death makes that face?"

"Nah," Hagrid said, pulling his chair over and patting the dog before feeling its sides. "Sometimes we get strays what wander onto the grounds. Poor boy's thin, 'e musta been wandrin' around fer a while. Want sommat ta eat, boy?"

The dog's tail started thumping.

"Atsa boy—we'll get yeh set up in a minute."

Indeed, it was less than a minute later that the dog was bolting down a bowl full of food, licking it clean before looking at Hagrid expectantly.

"Don' wanna let 'im eat too much at once, 'e'll get a stomachache," Hagrid counselled. The dog seemed to accept this, pushed against Harry's chest and started whimpering until Harry scratched behind his ears. Ron gingerly inched closer, apparently accepting that yes, this was most likely not a grim.

"He's really friendly," Harry observed. "He must belong to someone."

"But wouldn't he have a collar though?" Ron asked, starting to relax around the dog now that several minutes had gone by without something dire happening.

"Maybe he slipped it."

"Well we'll find out in a bit," Hagrid said. "In the meantime, don' think Fang'll mind sharin' a bunk fer a bit."

"Borf!" the dog barked.

The dog was well-behaved enough, even though it growled when they went around Hagrid's house to say hi to Malfoy working in the Hippogriff stalls.

"D'you need help with that?" Harry asked.

"No I got it," Malfoy said, forking fresh straw into the stalls. "Don't tell Hagrid, but I used vanishing and scourging spells on the last couple of stalls—I'm not supposed to be using magic, but I'd like to be able to stay on my broom for practice later."

That seemed fair to Harry, and he was pretty sure Hagrid would agree. Wave bye to the Hippogriffs, head back up to the castle with Ron.

"Wow," Ron noised. "Who knew a little hard work would turn Malfoy into an almost decent guy?"

"Wuff," the dog noised.

They stopped and looked at the dog, who wagged its tail at them.

"Are dogs allowed in Hogwarts?" Harry asked.

"Probably not," Ron said. "C'mon, dog, let's get you back to Hagrid's."

"At least Gryffindor won't be playing against anyone until after the holidays," Harry observed as they headed back down the lawn.

"Yeah," Ron agreed. "How's practice with the school brooms going?"

"Terrible—I haven't found one yet that feels right. I miss my Nimbus."

The dog whined, looking up at him—licked his hand. "Ew," Harry said, twitching it away.

Hagrid had to keep the dog locked in his house as Harry and Ron went back to the castle—left the common room the next morning to see the dog sitting there, tail thumping when it spotted them.

"You should be at Hagrid's," Harry told it. "Come on, let's go to Hagrid's—trust me, you don't want to go in there—McGonagall's more of a cat person, I think."

He really wasn't sure what to make of the dog making a wheezing noise like it was laughing.

The next couple of weeks had no news on the dog's real owners, no new information on Snips, Hermione refusing to take a break and getting increasingly stressed out, and Malfoy actually being really good with Hippogriffs.

Hagrid finally declared that the stray must have been fully a stray, and that they had a few options—the main one being let it stay.

"'E looks like a good dog," Hagrid said. "Been well behaved, hasn't chewed on me shoes or nothin'."

"He needs a name," Harry said, looking at the dog.

"A good name," Ron agreed.

Coming up with Snuffles after watching him sniff around the hut probably wasn't the best, but it was the one that stuck.

Snuffles also apparently didn't like rats either, since he growled at Ron's tote bag.

"Hey no," Ron said, hugging his tote bag away from Snuffles. "What is this, Scabbers is on his last legs so now everyone picks on him?"

"No being mean to Ron's rat," Harry told Snuffles. "He's sensitive."

The dog snorted but stopped growling—didn't stop shooting glances at Ron's bag.

The incidents with Crookshanks had actually gotten to the point where Ron was keeping Scabbers in a cage when he couldn't feasibly take him with him—Ron kept making dark threats against the cat, which did nothing for him and Hermione's relationship.

"This is going to sound really ugly," Harry said, waking Snuffles by the lake with Snips riding on his shoulder—he was pretty sure neither one of them would report his comments back to Ron or Hermione. "But I'll actually be kind of relieved when Scabbers dies—we'll finally be able to skip out on some of the drama."

"Borf," Snuffles noised, wagging his tail.

Snuffles gained some good weight over the next couple of weeks after that, and a nice red scarf so people wouldn't keep panicking over seeing a grim on school grounds.

Snuffles also followed Harry around whenever he could, ignoring statements such as no stay out of the castle, and had the annoying habit of eating Harry's homework. Although the dumbfounded expressions on the teachers' faces made that a bit easier to swallow.

"I remember James Potter had a dog like that," Slughorn said one day. "Had that same problem. Why if I didn't know any better, I'd say it was the same dog!"

"Borf," Snuffles barked.

Ron, of course, found this amusing. Hermione, of course, did not. Harry was on the fence.

"As fun as it is to actually be able to say I'm sorry, Professor, but my dog ate my homework, I'm going to have to ask you to not eat my homework," Harry told Snuffles one afternoon.

"You can eat my homework," Ron offered—to get lit into by Snips.

Snips and Snuffles was…interesting. With everything else, Snips ranged from tolerating to indifferent—with Snuffles, Snips seemed to be having to actively tamp down aggravation trending towards something stronger. Not that Snips could actually tell him what was wrong.

Also, as Harry predicted, Professor McGonagall wouldn't let Snuffles into the common room.

"No," she said flatly. "Dogs are not listed as pets, it can stay at Hagrid's and as far away from me as possible." Gave Snuffles a narrow-eyed look. "And why does it look like a dog your father had?"

"Maybe he's a magic dog?" Harry asked. "Is there such a thing? How long do magic pets live, anyway?"

"A long time, depending on the animal," Professor McGonagall said, still giving Snuffles a look—the dog finally whined and slinked away towards the entrance and Hagrid's hut.

"I think you hurt his feelings, Professor," Harry offered.

"Better that then waking up to find my slippers mauled," she declared. "Now off to bed with you."

Not that this didn't prevent Snuffles from finding his way into their dorm at a later date, as Harry found out, waking up one morning to a big black dog at the foot of his bed, head resting on a snoring Monster Book of Monsters.

"I'm going to need to get to Hogsmeade soon," Harry said to Snips. "And hope they have obedience classes there."

Snips' response was to find a scrap of paper and roll it up in imitation of a newspaper.

The main topic of discussion was still Sirius Black, mostly because nothing else had knocked it out of the running lately (a dog wandering around Hogwarts wasn't enough, apparently). Luna had been taking it on herself to continue interviewing people in her spare time, asked Harry about it over lunch.

"Sirius Black being caught means the Dementors leave, right?" Harry asked. "I wouldn't mind that."

"Wrr," Snuffles whined.

"Trust me, they're bad news."

"Borf!" Snuffles barked, prompting Fitzherbert to start scribbling.

"Fitzherbert understands Dog?" Ron asked, amused.

"Fitzherbert understands any language that potentially has news," Luna said, looking at the notepad. "'Mr. Snuffles would like to say that he feels that Sirius Black is perhaps misunderstood, as he has heard nothing about him getting a trial.' That would be good to look into. 'Mr. Snuffles would also like to go on the record to declare that he is a good boy.'"

"That's a lot in one borf," Ron observed.

"Dog is a very concise language."

Snips started squawking, pointing at Fitzherbert and jumping up and down—the quill started scribbling madly.

"And now Snips has something to say," Ron said, watching with interest.

"'Mr. Snips would like to declare that messers Potter and Weasley should spend more time studying and less time gleeking off, and that Mr. Snuffles should refrain from eating perfectly good homework,'" Luna recited.

"Taking breaks are just as important as studying," Ron protested—had to dodge a bite aimed at him. "Okay fine! Yeesh!"

"I agree on the homework though," Harry said to Snuffles, prompting him to tip his head and whine. Look at Fitzherbert blankly, prompting the quill to jot something down and show it to Luna.

"'Are you sure you're a teenager?'" Luna read.

"Barely," Harry said, looking at Snuffles. "Check back with me next year."

According to Fitzherbert, Snuffles was okay with that.