GOOD DOG || Sirius Black

(Fifty One: The Lion and the Serpent)

"No." I hissed, temporarily grabbing onto control. But she wasn't going down without a fight.

Alex hurled us at the door, and we burst out into the corridor, gasping, "Okay, New. Looks like we're all in this together."

I curled her hands into fist as I threw her body at a wall, shoving her into the pain centres for a while, "You dare quote High School Musical at me?"

"Oh, I dare." Alex let the wall take her full weight, "I dare so bad, you have no idea."

"No, Fawley." I grimaced, "'Dare' was always my area, don't you remember?"

She wrenched herself out of my grip for a brief second and fell to the floor. There were tears on her cheeks, stung with the wind that whistled through the ruins of her home. But they were tears of laughter.

Alex looked down at her hands, curled into fists on the carpet. She was still laughing, "I never thought I'd be here, doing this. How freaking weird is it?"

Her laughter died as the reins fell back to me, "You've always been like this, Fawley. Arguing with the better half of yourself. This is just an on-the-nose metaphor."

"We have to decide." Alex whispered as she curled us against the wall, "Like Grandma Fawley said. We have to decide what to do. Right now."

"I was thinking ice cream." I offered.

Alex knotted her hands together to stop them moving, "I was thinking-"

"I know what you were thinking." I dragged her mouth to move the way I wanted it to, "And it's stupid. And boring."

"We had a deal."

"I know. Tragic, isn't it?"

Alex gritted her teeth, "We don't know everything. It still stands. You get Regulas. I get the other one."

What I really wanted was to say no, there was no real reason for me to go after the younger brother now. I was free. But for some reason, I found myself agreeing, "Fine. But we still don't know where we're going."

"The Building. Where we got the Shadow Man." Alex exposited, "They'll be there. It's the highest functioning base in London, with the most low level Death Eaters. Regulas wouldn't be able to go anywhere else."

I hated admitting anyone had a point, especially Alex, "So where's your guy?"

Alex didn't even try to work the mouthpiece, she was lost in confusion.

"The guy who can get us stuff so we can break in to the Death Eater clubhouse?" I clarified.

Her face stretched into a smile that was so unlike mine, "You'll see. I'm driving this one."

{===}

The ties were loose.

Sirius was sure. Just a little further and they'd be off. His almost continuous yelling had covered up the sounds of his patchwork attempts to break the rope on the jagged wood of the back of the chair. The screeches of the legs against the floor as he shuffled were so loud that sometimes he had wondered if he could even shout loud enough to get over it.

After all these hours, he was exhausted. His throat was dry and scorched, and his voice was little more than a rasp.

But.

But he'd almost done it, almost got out. And then he could... fight his way through the armies of Death Eaters, find his wand (assuming it hadn't been snapped in half), kick his brother in the nuts, escape wherever he was being held, make his way back to Godric's Hollow somehow, find the creature walking around inside the body of Alex Fawley and passive aggressively comment it out of her.