Postal

Thirteen

"C'mon, Harry, hurry up, will you."

Ron's impatient voice assailed Harry as he hesitated in front of Remus Lupin's fireplace. The library, like the rest of Lupin's thatched cottage, was charming, but old and in a state of disrepair. Staring dubiously at the cracked slate surround, Harry wondered whether the fireplace would be up to the task. Hermione paced slowly behind Ron, absorbed in scanning the Dark Arts titles on the weathered oak shelves of their old professor's library. She didn't look to be in any hurry to leave. Remus sat, one leg draped casually over the other, in the battered club chair across the room. Despite his cropped, prematurely greying hair and his threadbare robes, Lupin looked younger than when they had last seen him nearly a year and a half ago. Probably the cumulative effect of re-encountering his old friend Sirius... and regular administration of Snape's Wolfsbane Potion.

Remus lifted his dark grey eyes from his latest borrowing-by-owl from the Restricted Wizarding Section of the Bodleian Library, a dog-eared volume of The Seven Night Itch: How to Keep the Wolf at Bay by Cyrillus de Vere.

"Don't worry, Harry," he said encouragingly. "Sirius'll be waiting for you at the other end."

An embarrassed flush crept across Harry's face. He wondered if it must be obvious that he had never been entirely comfortable with the idea of traveling by Floo Powder. Lately, he had been secretly lamenting the three-year wait until they were of age to sit for the Apparition Exam and hoped that Apparating was more comfortable and a tad more precise than using the Floo Network. For one thing, one didn't end up covered in soot at one's destination.

With a determined sigh, he cast the silvery-green powder into the grate, glanced at the note in Sirius's hand on the old piece of parchment and concentrated on making each syllable distinct, "The Old Coach House Inn's Shed, the One on the South Side That Leaks."

Harry stepped into the greenish-yellow flames, taking care to tuck in his elbows, and fervently hoping not to end up somewhere as unpleasant as (or worse than) Knockturn Alley. The darkness, the ebb and tide of anti-temporal, anti-gravitational pressure and the whipping wind in his ears ceased abruptly. Blinking and blowing the soot from his fringe and glasses, he found himself in a dank and dingy wooden shed. The afternoon sun crept in through cracks and fissures in the damp rotting walls. Harry remarked that part of the roof on the south side was missing entirely. By the dilapidated door (hanging unsteadily by a single lopsided hinge), stood Sirius, pulling it open a crack to look outside.

"Hi, Harry," he said, glancing back distractedly. "Good. Made it in one piece, I see."

Harry brushed at his robes, verifying that he hadn't lost his wand. "Um. Ron and Hermione are on their w-OW!"

Something tall and heavy crashed into him forcefully from behind. "Sorry, Harry," said Ron, with a grin. Harry replaced his spectacles, grinning back and giving him a friendly shove in return. The boys cleared out of the way and waited a moment for Hermione, who came sputtering through the fireplace a second later, coughing through a cloud of charcoal dust.

"Good God, what a mess!" she cried, swiping at the soot in her eyes. Her efforts succeeded in making her look like a raccoon.

Ron assumed a comic falsetto. "'By the way, you have dirt on your nose. Did you know? Just there.'" Hermione's pinched expression was his cue to leap forward and make a big show of brushing her off. By the time his sleeve made contact with her cheeks, she was blushing profusely. "Our humblest apologies, Your Highness," he continued, this time in his best baritone, "The next time, we shall endeavour to remember the Red Carpet."

She gave Ron a shy, grateful smile. "Well, so long as it flies..."

Harry grinned, shaking his head as he turned away. He knew Ron well enough by now to tell that he often fabricated excuses to get close to their friend, but that he was too shy to do so unless under the pretense of some joke. Well, bravo for him, sighed Harry to himself, I can't even talk properly to Cho... or almost any other girl, for that matter, with or without a handy line.

It occurred to him that he could, of course, consult Sirius, who, according to Remus at dinner the night before, was one of the Great Charmers of Hogwarts. ("Although, old Padfoot here specialized in the ladies," Remus clarified, passing a plate of grilled peppercorn steak and spring onion mash to an uncharacteristically bashful Sirius, "not snakes. That was Malfoy's department.")

"'Coast's all clear," said Sirius, now beckoning to them from the door. "Follow me. If our Location Spell was accurate, Esmerelda's in a building at the other end of the field." He pointed. "That old airplane hangar."

"Where exactly are we?" asked Hermione.

"About 20 miles from Dover. There's an old makeshift Muggle airbase here, although there seem to be plenty of Muggle-repellant spells at work. I doubt any of the Muggles living nearby even knows or remembers it's here. Most of them can't get within 500 yards of the place without suddenly remembering they've left the stove on or the bath running-"

Sirius was cut off by a loud CRACK! from outside.

Peering through one of the larger breaks in the wall, Hermione gasped. "Look!"

The low metal building at the far end had been struck, as if by lightning, and had begun to topple, starting from its left side. In the distance, two hooded figures stood watching as a third directed another jet of red light into the hangar, probably at a supporting beam. The structure teetered dangerously, filling the air with the strange whines and groans of bending steel.

"Quick, follow me! But keep your heads down!" called Sirius. In an instant, he had transformed into the large shaggy black dog and bounded through the door, headlong into the tall grass. Harry, Ron and Hermione followed closely behind at a sprint across the rocky soil. Not at all that easy to do while bent at 90-degree angles to the ground. Ron clutched at a stitch in his side and Hermione's lungs burned as she ran and caught herself wishing for the first time that they had had real Muggle-style physical education classes at Hogwarts. The tall grass whipped at Harry's face as he tried to get a closer look at the figures. One was tall and pale. Probably Lucius Malfoy. The shorter one was bald and stooped with a silver hand that Harry would have recognized anywhere. Wormtail nearly doubled over under the weight of a large sack on his back.

Sirius by this time had sprung onto the back of the closest Death Eater, the short, wiry man who had razed the front half of the building. He fell forward, collapsing under the weight of his canine assailant. A loud thud met their ears as his head made contact with the grainy asphalt.

Harry caught Ron's and Hermione's eyes and motioned for them to focus on Malfoy while he took care of Wormtail. Both Malfoy and Pettigrew had lunged forward toward the cover of the nearby wood when the three raised their wands, uttering a great, hoarse cry, "Stupefy!"

But the curses just grazed the first line of trees a fraction of a second too late. Malfoy, Wormtail and their baggage had Disapparated.

"Dammit!" swore Ron. Just one word in a long string of colourful expletives, cut short by Hermione's raised hand.

"Snuffles has got one of them!" Harry and Ron followed her gaze to the rubble-stewn pavement.

A moan issued from the man beneath Sirius as he dug his heavy black boot into the side of the bald wizard's neck. This was perhaps unnecessary, as the man then seemed to have lost consciousness. The captive's thin, dark, pock-marked face twisted into a nasty scowl as a little pool of blood trickled unattractively from his mouth.

Sirius squinted at the body, tilting his head contemplatively. "He'll live. I think this is Alphonso Wilkes. Sure looks like him."

"Wilkes. Wilkes," muttered Hermione. "That name sounds familiar."

"D'you know him?" asked Harry.

Sirius nodded. "Once upon a time. He was part of Malfoy's little gang: Malfoy, Wilkes and Rosier. Never figured him for the hair loss type, though," he said, looking at Wilkes thoughtfully.

"I thought Lucius Malfoy's buddies were Crabbe's and Goyle's fathers," said Ron.

"Only for your basic beating and bruising, but nothing more complex," replied Sirius, withdrawing his boot and wiping it on the ground. "At school, and later as Death Eaters, they ran together for the serious stuff. Voldemort's special emissaries. Although, Wilkes looks kind of harmless like this... Don't you, Fonz?" He gave Wilkes's shoulder a hard tap with the heel of his boot. This elicited no reaction, but Sirius put a Binding Spell on their quarry, just in case. Harry watched his godfather's lazy, victorious smile until his ears suddenly perked up attentively, as if he were still Padfoot. From the wreckage came the faint squeal of a hinge.

"Watch him for a sec, I'll be right back," said Sirius, drawing his wand and heading cautiously into the remains of the hangar.

Harry leaned over Wilkes's bleeding head and shot a frustrated look at Hermione and Ron. "Well, he's not going to be talking for a while," he sighed. "If Esmerelda's not here, we'll never figure out where to find her. Not without having done a good Tracking Spell."

"Oh, I wouldn't be too sure of that," called Sirius's voice from the side entrance. "We've got the next best thing."

Following his voice, the three turned toward the building and saw him emerge, bright eyes gleaming, less like a dog, more like a bird of prey. Sirius's wand arm invisibly tugged a figure wrapped in a bundle of tightly drawn cords. It hobbled unwillingly at his side, glaring at them indignantly through a tousled crop of white-blond hair.

Three pairs of eyes narrowed as they recognised Draco Malfoy.