The trail—or rather, the scent—led them, as Andrei had expected, to the school. More precisely, to a large hole in the crumbling remains of what had once been either an outbuilding or an annexe—the rubble made it impossible to determine. Though it was quite possible that a few centuries ago, the passage hadn't been underground at all.
"A hole is a burrow," he muttered, scratching the back of his head, and sighed: there was no one here to appreciate what he'd put into that sentence.
"In there?" asked Sirius, back in human form.
"Absolutely not." Hagrid planted himself in front of the opening.
"Well—I wasn't that keen anyway," Sirius admitted. "But I mean—what must be in there."
"Quite," Andrei said, studying his companion carefully.
The Gryffindor shine seems to have been washed off him… mostly. Whether it was the porridge or something else. Hard to say yet—need to talk more before sending him home. Interesting to see how he reacts to the assembled company, particularly Snape. And the fact that Snape has been given his own quarters at Grimmauld—two rooms. Not straight away, admittedly; that was after he fell asleep in the laboratory. But Sirius doesn't know any of this yet. Better prepare him, so it doesn't come as too much of a shock—the last thing I need is for him to go off the rails again. Catching him once was enough.
They talked until nearly evening. Andrei's voice grew slightly hoarse—bringing certain people up to speed was hard work. The story of Regulus was the easiest part; Sirius took the account of his brother's heroism to heart and berated himself for thinking ill of him. He turned out to be quite self-critical, though it was unclear which deserved the credit: the dryad's spring, the porridge, or Azkaban. But then the questions started coming thick and fast, pulling the narrative in all directions. Andrei held firm—especially when Black tried to extract his personal opinions.
"Look—I can speculate about anything I like, but what's worth saying is only what actually happened. Let's stick to facts. Whether I like them or not is my business. And interpreting them—even more so, that's entirely up to you. What's it got to do with me?" Andrei said, at last losing patience.
"You know, Hagrid—I feel like I've ended up in a completely different world," Sirius said, and Andrei tensed: surely not another one?
"And—do you remember anything from that other world?"
"Er— it's all foggy. And honestly, there are things I'd rather not remember," he admitted.
"Why?"
"Embarrassing." Sirius sighed. "Just— genuinely stupid, really. I wish it had all gone differently. But I think it actually went exactly the way it went. How am I going to look my mother in the eye?"
"And Snape?"
Sirius flinched.
"Honestly, I can't picture it. I believe you—I can even feel that you're not lying—but I still can't quite make it real. That my mother— that she'd let a halfblood through the door? I don't know what it would take."
"Your half-dead brother. Half-alive, rather."
"Oh—right." Sirius exhaled heavily. "Still can't picture it. Listen—could I, sort of, be invisible for a bit first? Observe the lay of the land?"
"You're asking me?" Andrei said, genuinely surprised. "Permission?"
"Well—" Black went red.
"How would I know what's better? On one hand, I understand. On the other—if the urge strikes you to go for someone and no one can see you, that's a bit underhanded, don't you think?"
"I'm not going for anyone," Sirius muttered.
"You'll guarantee that?"
"I swear on my magic!"
"You idiot— damn."
"Why?"
"What if you break it? You're still in recovery."
Sirius shook his head, then looked up with clear, surprised eyes.
"You know—you're really nothing like the Headmaster."
"Is that so? Did my beard fall off? Or— you actually thought I was him?" Andrei was genuinely wounded, though he did his best not to show it.
"No, you don't understand. He used to talk at length too—explain everything, just like you do—and when we had questions, he always knew what was right. And told us how things ought to be. And he took oaths. But you say you don't know, and you don't want to take oaths. Right?"
"So what now?"
"I don't even know what to think. I— we were such fools. Peter was right about the Animagus thing. I'm a dog in a lot of ways. And— you saved me! You and Regulus, and everything else." Black circled his wrist in the air, searching for words, and found none. He took a deep breath—Andrei braced himself—and blurted:
"Can I be your dog?"
Andrei just barely managed not to deploy several colourful expressions from his beloved homeland while collecting his jaw from the floor.
"You're a person, lad!" he said, frowning. "You think living as a dog is easy and simple?"
"No, that's not what I meant. I don't want to be a dog. Not the animal form. It's just— there's something inside me, I need to trust someone completely, so that— you know—"
"And to serve someone?" Andrei guessed, and Sirius nodded vigorously.
"Yes, that's exactly it."
"You've really done a number on yourselves with that Animagus business. Don't you understand that's not how it's supposed to work? A person has to decide for themselves who to trust, and how much. And when. Because— everyone can be wrong. Or at least not know everything. No one is ever right about everything, all the time. Why are you looking at me like I've just announced the Second Coming of Merlin?" Andrei slapped his enormous palms against his knees in exasperation. "There is no single truth for everyone and everything."
"All the more reason," Sirius said. "I'm still going to be your dog."
"We're going to treat you," Andrei said firmly. "For all of this. As soon as we work out how. Snape will find a way."
"Is he actually that much of a genius?"
"Did you not hear that he's already a Master?"
"Bloody hell. And I just got a kennel at St Mungo's."
"A self-critical dog suits me," Andrei said. "Think about what you're going to do with yourself—you can't just sit on your mother's neck."
"I'll study. Oh—I enchanted a motorbike, you know. You tried it, right? How was it? And where is it, by the way?"
Andrei sighed. He'd left out this part of the story so far—not out of guilt, but to save time.
"Your motorbike is done for."
And he told the very beginning. Sirius just kept snorting, then unexpectedly grinned:
"So you got knocked on the head too, and that's how you became—like this. And the bike— forget it, I'll enchant a new one. Was even thinking about adding an Invisibility Charm."
The Invisibility problem, incidentally, they solved simply: Sirius would cast the charm on himself, and Andrei would tie a rope to his wand hand—to hold him back from spellcasting and from other "inconvenient impulses," just in case. So they set off looking very much like a real owner and dog. Andrei did ask if this offended Black, but received a perfectly sensible and reasonable reply: the safety of his family and himself was more important than some stupid pride.
The porridge really did a number on him, Andrei thought, before Apparating them both.
***
At Grimmauld everything went surprisingly peacefully—from Andrei's perspective, at any rate.
Sirius Black knew it would be a long time before he quite recovered. Especially after they looked into the potions laboratory, where Lady Black—wrapped in a protective dragon-hide apron—and Severus Snape—halfblood of the Princes, in a Master's workrobe that looked like a simple piece of fabric but had three stories' worth of protections woven in, as Snape had long since informed Hagrid—were hissing at each other in a state of total absorption.
The debate over preparation of some ingredient (chop finely or slice, or better to crush?) was conducted in an atmosphere of warm and deeply venomous engagement, and the expression on both faces made it absolutely clear how much they were both enjoying every moment of it. The most telling detail, though, was that they didn't notice the arrivals at all. Never mind Sirius's charm—they didn't notice Hagrid. Without any charm whatsoever. Which made it more than clear that interrupting them right now was inadvisable.
When they came upstairs to Regulus's study, Sirius dropped the charm and embraced his brother. Regulus held him tight, looking questioningly over his shoulder at Hagrid, who was smiling with satisfaction and running a hand over his finally-properly-combed beard.
"He cured you!" Regulus breathed—reading that smile—and how Sirius's bones didn't crack under his younger brother's enthusiasm was a mystery.
"You'll crush me," Sirius laughed, hoarsely. "You enormous thing. I'm so glad."
"Have you seen Mother yet?"
"Er—no." Sirius glanced sideways at Hagrid.
"They're in the laboratory. We decided not to interrupt—they were rather, you know, productively arguing."
"They're not arguing. That's how they talk. After you dragged this one off to Mungo, Mother actually started opening up to him. Well—hissing at him, more precisely."
"With Snape?" Sirius looked as though he hadn't heard correctly.
And he hadn't, really. Because when the time came for evening tea and they came upstairs, interrupting the exchange of memories, they found Lady Black in the dining room, having a perfectly civil conversation with—Snape and Lupin.
The sight was apparently too much: Sirius's eyes crossed slightly, and he forgot how to breathe.
Lupin could only have come here for me, he thought, and suddenly remembered familiar reassuring jaws, gently gripping the back of his neck. Which means Mother—for me? All this time? For me?
He covered the distance in one move—somewhat ungainly—and sank to his knees at her feet, arms around her, face buried in her skirt. And felt her cool, tense, faintly trembling fingers in his long-uncut hair.
"Get up, Sirius," she began, deliberately expressionless. "A descendant of the Blacks doesn't lower himself to—" Walburga stopped. And unexpectedly, her face lit with a smile—the kind she had not worn in so long she had almost forgotten what to call it. This was the thing they called love, perhaps. And something that had seemed entirely impossible—the love of a son.
The drawing room was empty. There was no one to see.
Extraordinary. Even werewolves understood the meaning of tact. As did half-giants, not to mention halfbloods. And this time she was certain no one was listening at the door. These weren't Blacks. Or Lestranges. And certainly not Malfoys. How strange that life had turned out this way—that salvation had come from precisely that direction, from the very bottom, as she had always thought of it, and yet it was precisely salvation: first for her, and then for the line. From those she had never considered anything near equal. What she had considered them, she could no longer bring herself to say.
How far they had fallen. And how high had risen those she had never imagined rising at all. A warm track ran down her face just as her most beloved and most impossible son began to get to his feet. How it hurt.
His lips pressed clumsy and warm against her cheek, blotting out her tear. When she saw his own wet face, she could not hold on for a minute longer—she wept against his shoulder like a small girl. And he asked forgiveness, sobbing, stroking her hair.
The gathering shadows at Grimmauld Place, number twelve, for the first time in more than a hundred years, were not darkness. Just dusk.
***
In the next room, the younger Black paced from corner to corner, straining to hear through the wall—Snape had already dragged him away from the door once, and Hagrid had managed to shame him. Though not for long—the worry for his mother and his brother kept winning out.
What held him back from returning to the door was some combination of Hagrid's sardonic expression, the position the man had planted himself in, and his own embarrassment—Regulus felt like a schoolboy who was perfectly prepared to make mischief, but not while the teacher was watching. Before he'd had time to be surprised at himself for thinking of a gamekeeper—admittedly a newly intelligent one, but still—as a teacher, the man had stood up and turned to Lupin:
"Do you reckon the tears and the rest of it are winding down?"
"Drying stage," the werewolf reported, with the air of an expert—his nose had been extraordinarily well trained by the Weasley household. "Well, what do you expect—all those years of it building up," he added, turning to Regulus, who could only nod.
Good grief. Outsiders understood them better than they understood themselves. No, this couldn't go on. Regulus lifted his head, stepped a little more firmly than usual, and went to the door.
"Mother. Brother. We do have guests, you know. Perhaps it's time for tea? Making people wait—surely you won't argue that it's poor form?"
Snape detached himself from the armchair in the corner and attempted to escape in the direction of the laboratory, but Hagrid caught him by the arm.
"Where do you think you're going? When will you see anything like this again?"
Severus hissed indignantly, and Andrei had to loosen his grip.
"And besides—I've got something to discuss with you. News. I'm not sure how to put it. You're going to have to come out of hiding. Officially."
Severus, who at the moment was perfectly content with the Black laboratory and library—together with board, lodgings, and reasonably sympathetic company—looked up with displeasure.
"Why exactly?"
"A chance has appeared to obtain basilisk venom."
"Hm." He considered this briefly, apparently weighing options in his head. "I'm in."
"We'll discuss it later. Privately. Just think it over for now."
"Tomorrow most likely—today in—" Severus cast a Tempus and continued: "Half an hour, I need to be in the laboratory."
"How's it coming along?" Andrei was naturally aware of what they were all currently working on: removing that accursed Mark.
"Slowly. But that doesn't mean you should interrupt me this evening."
"Tomorrow, then."
"Ten o'clock at yours?"
"Yes, of course. Though—wait, I'll come and collect you myself. I have a feeling people are looking for you rather harder than usual."
And the relatively quiet family evening continued. Quiet primarily because the eyes of Sirius Black—notoriously the loudest individual in the room—kept going slightly unfocused whenever he looked at the assembled company.
The mistress of the house, too, had a great deal to think about. The guests proved considerate enough to stay for the minimum required time and disperse quietly. Which itself needed some adjustment. Because a werewolf… a half-giant… and Snape… and discretion?
But how perfectly it had been timed.
***
Despite the day having gone well overall, Andrei was uneasy. His doubts were not vague—they were specific and pressing. If a basilisk had crawled out, something had to be done about it. The entire forest—creatures dark and otherwise, and how else to describe the unicorns?—had been in a state for three days. It would come out again. More than once. It had to eat. And Acromantula wasn't exactly being delivered to order.
Andrei sighed. He'd done the right thing removing the Horcrux from the cave, and yet the result had worked against him. Dumbledore probably turned a blind eye to the first Hagrid's more interesting pets deliberately—someone had to keep these things regulated.
Though how regulated was it, really? In the books, the spiders had multiplied beyond all bounds—there was no getting rid of them. Was that because the basilisk had been dormant? Or was this the first major deviation from canon, with more to follow? And what on earth had woken the snake up in the first place?
The question, though, was what to do. How and where to find a Parselmouth, and how to negotiate. Killing a relic creature went against Andrei's instincts almost as strongly as it would have gone against the original Hagrid's. Harry was far too young—what was he going to hiss? Can I have some porridge? Though could he even speak Parseltongue anymore, now that the Horcrux was gone?
Every line of reasoning pointed to the same answer: he needed to find Tom. The Tom who ought to be inside the diary at Malfoy's. Still young—possibly a complete little monster, but at least somewhat rational at this stage, surely? The first Horcrux, brain still more or less intact. Worth trying. Which meant he needed to get Snape out—peel him away from his beloved cauldrons and laboratory, drag him to Malfoy, with whom he'd apparently been in contact.
Although— damn. He needed to secure Snape properly first. Dumbledore had almost certainly filed charges against him, and might be looking himself. And by the standard timeline, the Aurors had been tipped off long ago. So to eliminate all risk: rehabilitation first. As thorough as possible, so the grandfather couldn't get his hands on him. Right—first the Longbottoms, then the Auror Office. And after that: the Malfoys.
The remaining question was which of his thoughts to share with Snape, and which to keep back for now. Andrei took the last swallow of fragrant chamomile tea and set down the cup.
Morning was wiser than evening.