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Captain Jack Harkness, the name in the wallet, was easily identifiable from his wide grin and expensive looking and thoroughly anachronistic white teeth. He beamed widely at Sirius' approach and stood up, holding out his hand.

"Sirius Black, Ministry of Defence." Sirius shook his hand firmly, passed him the leather wallet, then sat down. He put the dog on the floor, and it pranced up and down, protesting furiously.

"You want a drink?" Jack raised his glass to the barman, and scowling, the man brought over another so Jack could slosh liquor into it from the bottle on the table.

The dog snarled. "Ye'd best not get blootered talking to this one, Sirius. He'll 'ave yer trousers off in a second!"

"Angry little guy, isn't he?" Jack gestured at the dog with his glass.

Sirius sipped his whiskey. "You probably heard: the poor bugger got shot in the backside this afternoon. He's not at his best. What's Torchwood doing up here? I wouldn't have thought this was your kind of thing."

Jack raised his eyebrows. "Why wouldn't it be? Strange disappearances, bloody carcasses, unidentified beasties: sounds exactly like a Torchwood case to me. If we're doing the interdepartmental dance, what do you have to offer me?"

Sirius pushed his glass across the table with his finger. "I think it's sentient, whatever it is." He itched for the chance to pick up the scent again, track it, kill it. He rubbed the nape of his neck where the hairs were raised.

Jack was watching him curiously. "Sentient?" he said. "How do you measure that, exactly?"

"Instinct." Sirius swigged down his whiskey. "Mine are quite good, I assure you."

The Doctor turned to face the door, bristling and growling, hackles raised. "I smell blood. Blood and fear."

Sirius pushed his chair back and stood, his hand hovered over his wand.

"Something wrong?" Jack suddenly held a pistol, low and confident.

The door burst open and a man burst in. The pub fell silent at the sight of him, shirtfront splashed bright red, and face horrified.

"We need help at the veterinary!"

The pub burst into activity. Someone thrust a towel at the man, and when his hands were clean, they followed it with a glass of whiskey.

Jack and Sirius looked at each other. Sirius hastily slipped his wand into his pocket. "We'd better go and take a look," he said. "Before they move things. There might be evidence. Scent, that sort of thing."

Jack nodded, and holstered his weapon. "You'd better bring the wee doggie along, he might be helpful. What do you call him?"

Sirius looked down at the black Scottie while his mind reached for a name. "Come on, Dougal. We can investigate. Let's let people look after this man." Before they notice that I'm not the Doctor and you're not Padfoot, he added silently.

The Doctor eyed him sourly. "I'll dougal you, laddie," he said in a low growl, but he followed Sirius out the door.

The injured man was sprawled on the whitewashed step of the veterinary clinic, and there was blood everywhere. Doctor Headley knelt beside him, blood-stained towels wadded up against his body. People came and went in a hurry, bringing more towels, and the stretcher from the cricket club. An ambulance had been summoned, but was not expected in a hurry. Nobody paid any attention to Sirius or Jack; this was clearly a village matter and as such, handled by villagers.

Sirius longed to transform; there must be scent galore here, all of which would be lost by the time the dew came. He nudged the Doctor with his toe. "Go and have a whuffle, see what you can find before everyone tramps all over everything."

The Doctor didn't waste time complaining. He put his nose to the cobblestone road and inhaled deeply. His tail waved back and forth absently as he looked for a scent trail.

Jack stepped over the dog and crouched beside the man for a moment, then returned to Sirius' side. "Definitely some kind of animal attack," he said, indicating the deeply gouged claw marks over the man's cheeks and eyes.

Sirius looked at the man's face. "God, it's Willoughby!"

Jack raised enquiring eyebrows.

"We met him this afternoon," Sirius said. "He's the man that shot me… my dog."

A low growling sound came from the bushes beside the clinic, from which the Doctor's hindquarters protruded.

"What have you got there, Dougal?" Jack reached into the bushes, and pulled out a piece of tatty blood-stained cloth. It had been a herringbone weave originally, and there was something oddly familiar to the cut of the garment. Jack shook it out, and found the collar. "Ah, there's a tag. Excellent - so pleased that people can finally buy off the rack. Makes solving crimes just a bit easier."

Before Sirius could pretend that he didn't understand what Jack was talking about, Jack read the label aloud. "Madame Malkin's Robes for All Occasions" he said, in a wondering tone. "That's baroque. I wonder if they're a costumer? This is some kind of cape-type suit."

Sirius' stomach fell. That complicated matters. He needed to talk with the Doctor, but the Doctor was currently cocking his leg against a lamppost.

Jack took his elbow, looking into his face with concern. "You okay, Sirius? It's not easy, looking at this kind of thing. I would understand if you wanted to head back to the pub."

Sirius shook his head. "I'm all right. I think I might take Dougal for a bit of a walk, see if he can find anything else." He had to get clear of the Muggles, so he could talk this over with the Doctor.

Jack nodded. "I'll get the local plod onto this. There's probably family to contact, too, though I imagine they've got that well in hand." He held the tattered wizard robes away from his body as he walked towards the pub, presumably to call the police station.

"You, with me," Sirius snapped at the Doctor. He walked at a rapid pace across the common, with the dog trotting at his heels. When they were too far from anyone who could hear them, he crouched down, ostensibly to pat his dog. "We've got a problem, and it isn't to do with the time stream," he said.

The Scottie dog pranced angrily. "Change me back, Sirius! I cannae stand being this close to the ground."

Sirius looked over his shoulder: Jack was nowhere to be seen, but Sirius had an instinct he was the kind of man who showed up just when you didn't want him to.

He shook his head, and scruffed the dog's neck. "Can't take the chance, sorry."

"Change me back or I'll bite y'baws off! I'm nae joking, man!!" The Doctor bared his teeth and snarled.

"No, listen. There's other magic users here," said Sirius. "We need to be very careful."

The Doctor sat up on his hind legs and cocked an ear. "Other wizards? Can you nae check for that? A registry? Secret marks on walls, that sort of thing?"

"There'll be people living here among the Muggles, there always are," said Sirius. "It's more a question of them letting me find them."

"Well, send up your wee magic flare. I want to be bipedal again as soon as rrremotely possible." The Doctor rested his hairy chin on Sirius' knee. "I dinnae ken how this got so complicated."

Sirius scratched behind the Doctor's ears in commiseration.

The village square seemed the best place to start. Sirius circled the sign-post in the centre of the village: there were four options, for the four roads leading from the square. He brushed the flaking paint with his fingers, and felt the gentle hum of old, old magic underneath.

The Doctor put his forepaws up on the wood to sniff it, then rapidly sneezed twice."Och, there's a photonic shield up there."

"I've seen this before," said Sirius. He took out his wand. "Revelio!" he whispered, under his breath, and a fifth sign appeared. Pickering Lower, the sign read, and when Sirius said the name out loud, a thin and winding path across the common became visible.

"Right-o," said the Doctor and trotted gamely down the path with his tail high.

Sirius was not prepared for the extent to which a wizarding village was going to make him ache for his past life. He knew this place, even though he'd never been to Pickering Lower, but the higgledy-piggeldy architecture, the pocket-sized post office cum mews, and the noticeboard plastered with tattered, faded signs advertising kittens (V. Large, V. Clever!), looking for someone to fill in on the local Quidditch team (Beaters esp. needed!) were all tremendously familiar, like Hogsmeade, like Godwin's Hollow. The tiny pub was overflowing tonight, and wizards and witches all spilled out in the village square on this warm night with their tankards of butterbeer. It was as familiar as anything he'd seen since travelling with the Doctor. There'd be a grocer, here, with the right kind of food and daily delivery of the Prophet. And maybe a public Floo, he thought, longingly.

A round-faced, balding man noticed them coming down the path first, and nudged his neighbour, sloshing his butterbeer over the top of the tankard. Eventually all eyes were on him and the Doctor as they approached. Sirius was suddenly aware he was dressed as a Muggle, though a florid one, thanks to the Doctor's wardrobe. Still, he was fairly sure nobody would actually take him for a Muggle.

Beside him, the Doctor stopped still, scenting the air. "We going to have a problem, Sirius? They look a nervy bunch." Sirius reached down to pick him up, and he protested. "Put me down! I may need tae defend myself!"

Sirius put his hand on the Doctor's muzzle. "Hush, and we'll fit in just fine. I wouldn't be here if I weren't a wizard, now, would I? So keep quiet and don't give the game up." The Doctor bared his teeth, but thankfully, didn't speak again.

A contingent of men and women came to meet him just as the path expanded out into the village square.

"Evening," a small woman with a wild brush of silver hair said. "You've come up from the Muggles. We don't get a lot of traffic coming that way." There was wariness in her voice, as well as a question.

"I'm sorry to bother you," said Sirius. "There's been some kind of animal attack, and I thought it best to check that the beast didn't come this way. I found some robes, you see, torn and bloodstained."

The news rippled through the village, and more people put down their beer to come and hear what Sirius had to say.

"Someone best find Allaun," a woman said. "He said he had some trouble up near the border."

"We knew there was something up," said the balding, round-faced man, the local healer, Mr Glew, while the barmaid ran to fetch this Allaun. "It's no Muggle beast, that's certain. You should see the trail of things leaving the forest. Anything with a bit of magic sense is packing up and leaving."

Allaun Tittler was a skinny man, with tufted hair in his ears. He hurried to the gathering outside the pub. He looked around with a startled expression.

"This man's from the Muggle end," said the woman, bossily. "He says there was an attack up there, and you said there'd been a bother at the edge of the forest. Allaun, there's been a man attacked! You didn't say anything about the Muggles being attacked!"

The pub crowd murmured unhappily. Sirius didn't blame them; this could easily be seen as a breach of the Statute of Secrecy.

The Doctor extended his nose to sniff at Allaun's elbow, and he sneezed. "I know that scent," he rumbled. "Where do I know that scent?" His body was rigid under Sirius' arm, his whiskers twitching furiously.

Allaun was horrified. "I don't know anything about a Muggle man being attacked! The damn thing rolled me over and over till I couldn't tell up from down. Don't even know what it is – all I can say is it's big. Big and grey and angry as all get out."

"Were you hurt?" asked Sirius. "How did you get away from it in one piece?" From the look of the injuries on poor Willoughby, the creature was a ferocious thing, and there wasn't, as far as he could tell, a scratch on Allaun.

Allaun shuddered. "No, it didn't get me. Though if I hadn't managed to Apparate, I'd probably be in pieces myself. As it was, the beast took my cloak."

Sirius looked all around the village square, where men and women stood listening. Nobody seemed particularly surprised by Allaun's story. "What has been going on here?" he asked.

"It started when the ravens vanished," said Allaun. "Used to have our own flock of puffskeins, but something attacked the nest, and they've all scattered. And I know nobody likes'em but the pixies have been scarce. Between you and me, mate, it takes a lot to scare off a pixie." Allaun served as gamekeeper for the village, keeping the magical creatures of the forest safe from Muggles and Muggles from them.

"It does, indeed," said Sirius. "How long has this been going on?"

The crowd looked at each other. "Couple of weeks?" Mr Glew offered. "No more than that. The night the puffskeins were attacked was the worse of it, and that was three weeks ago. I heard the Muggles lost a bunch of sheep that night. Things started leaving the forest ever since then."

"We've been in to find it," said the woman, Alice Featherfort. "I'm up over the treeline every morning – animagus, you know – and I've not seen a thing. We don't want to bring the Ministry down, you see. Last thing we want is to see Pickering obliviated."

The Doctor wriggled desperately under Sirius' arms, huffing and harrumphing, his legs thrashing in alarm. "It's all right, Dougal," he said, ruffling his ears. "Nobody wants to hurt the Muggles, it's going to be all right."

"Right protective little fellow, isn't he?" said Alice. "Never seen a familiar quite like him before –wherever did you pick him up?"

The Doctor finally managed to launch himself from under Sirius' arms, and landed on the ground with a hefty thud. Then he shook himself all over, and trotted down between the Post Office and the pub.

"Sometimes I think it's more that he picked me up," said Sirius. He pointed at the narrow path which was muddy and grass-tufted. "What's he off after down there?"

Allaun Tittler grimaced. "Listen mate, are you anything to do with the Ministry? Because as Alice says, we don't want trouble. Things have been peaceful here in Pickering Lower, and we'd rather it stayed that way."

Sirius shook his head. "Gentlemen, ladies, I can promise that I'm very much nothing to do with the Ministry for Magic. However, there's a man in Pickering who does a very similar job in the Muggle government, and he's got as keen a nose as Dougal for trouble. I'd be very grateful if you would be frank with me, so I can help you keep things quiet."

"That's the way to the Gribbock place," said Mr Glew. "They're not a bad lot, but they're – they struggle, you know? – and they've only just got their son home from Azkaban."

"What?" said Sirius, faintly. There was a rushing sound in his ears.

Allaun shook his head, mistaking Sirius' shock for dismay. "Fen's a good boy, it's nothing like that. Nothing distasteful, you get me? He just got talking to one of the Muggles, said a bit too much, and wham!" He brought his hand down into his open palm with a sudden clap, and Sirius flinched away, pale and dizzy.

The man leaned in, so he could whisper in Sirius' ear. "They did him for violation of the Statute. I've been helping his parents out, trying to get the boy settled again. Ministry should have left him to us, you see; we take care of our own in Pickering Lower. There isn't any need for a boy that age to go to Azkaban. There's naught but bad things come from there."

The words rolled over him slowly, much more slowly surely than Allaun had said them and with them came a wash of ice-cold terror. They were coming for him, he was sure, with long grey fingers and cold, saline breath. Sirius mumbled something in response, and left, stumbling then running along the muddy path for the dark of the forest ahead. Then he was running on four legs, strong and easy through the night, weaving between trees, ignoring the sting of the wound in his hind leg. He didn't stop, not until a small, scruffy black shape launched itself on him, yapping and barking and jumping at him bodily. He slowed to a trot, and then a stumbling walk, and then he folded up on the leaves under an old oak tree, panting and trembling.

The Doctor was talking to him, in the barking yap of a Scottish terrier but it made no sense at all. He had no urge to bite the Doctor, though, so eventually the Doctor gave up talking and simply plonked his firm little body against his and waited. The dog made a warm spot against Sirius' side, and gradually Sirius' breathing settled.

"I was in a prison," said Sirius, finally, still as Padfoot. "I was in a prison, and it was the worst place you can imagine." It was something he could never have told the Doctor in human form. Human faces show so much emotion, and he didn't think he could bear the shame on his own face, or the pity on the Doctor's.

"I've seen some terrible places," said the Doctor, calmly. "I have nae problem imagining a place so bad that even the name makes you run away. I'm still running from some of them. How d'you think I came to be strolling through the space-time continuum when I found you?"

Sirius settled his head on top of the Doctor's back, and breathed in the by-now familiar smell of the TARDIS that always hung about him, even as a Scottie dog. Electricity and dust, the faint smell of rain, the feeling of a storm gathering a long way distant. Eventually he closed his eyes, heaved a great doggy sigh, and slept.

Something tickled his face, a random, sporadic flutter against his long nose. Beside him, the Doctor twitched his ear, and twitched it again. Sirius pushed him upright, and nosed at his ear.

"Ooh!" the Doctor said, suddenly, realising how dogs dealt with this problem. He lifted his hind leg to scratch at it, then scratched furiously. He closed his eyes, ecstatic. "Och, that's bloody amazing! That's even better than when I'm bipedal. What a revelation!"

Sirius smiled, a big, wide, doggy smile. The Doctor's glee was extremely cheering, much like chocolate when facing Dementors. He gave the Doctor's whiskery face a good lick, fortified by his presence. Then he lifted his nose to scent the air.

"Where are we?" he said, looking around. "How far into the forest did we go?" There were noises now, people gathering at the edge of the woods. His eyesight wasn't as good in dog-form, but even he could make out the cool white glow of wands lighting up the night. The witches and wizards of Pickering Lower were organising a hunting party. He stood, stretched, and shook himself into human form, and he picked up the Doctor. "Best not to be in the forest tonight," he said, and turned them towards Pickering proper.

Chapter One // Chapter Three
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