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English
Series:
Part 5 of Severus Snape and the House of Slytherin
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Published:
2021-06-03
Words:
377
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1/1
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The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-time

Summary:

Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban a few days before Harry’s birthday. Harry saw him when he ran away from Privet Drive on the 6th of August. Where was Sirius in the meantime?

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

It was the damnedest thing. 

Thursday morning, we get a couple of tourists come to the surgery with a stray dog they found on the beach up Keiss way. He was a friendly fellow - hopped into their car easy enough for a chicken sandwich - but he’d obviously been in the wars a bit. Matted fur all over him, skin and bone under that, and a nasty wheeze too. 

Devil knows where he came from - I asked Donny and he says he's not seen hide nor hair of a dog like that in all Caithness, and he's treated every dog here since '63. Pure wolfhound, by the looks of him, but solid black, not like the Murphys' brindled lass over near Corsback. Grey eyes, too, which is rare as hell. No collar, no microchip - for all we know, he fell off a boat and swam for it.

Well, we brought him in and had a look at him, and there didn't seem to be anything that wouldn't heal up with some decent care for a time. We gave him some meloxicam and some amoxicillin and he just about fell asleep on the table, poor lad.  Not a bad thing for us - gave us a chance to do an x-ray and shave off some of those mats so we could treat the sores underneath. 

Poor creature looked mortified when he woke up - you know how dogs hate the cone - but he was a friendly lad, didn't mind the other dogs in the kennel, let us give him a bath with no problems. Didn't even fuss about his medication. Donny and I figured we'd keep him until the pneumonia cleared up and find someone to adopt him to keep feeding him up.

And then Friday night, he goddamn disappeared. 

I don't mean he got out. I mean that Friday evening when I locked the doors, he was in the kennels, and Saturday morning when I opened up, he wasn’t. The door was locked, his kennel was latched shut, even his cone was there. It was like he’d up and vanished into thin air.

Jenny thinks he was a ghost, but I never met a ghost that ate a kilo of dog food and left black hair all over my coat. 

Notes:

I’ve decided that Sirius is an Irish Wolfhound. (I know people often make him a Newfoundland, but I like him being a dog that isn’t as chubby - see www.dog-learn.com/breed-vs-breed/irish-wolfhound-vs-newfoundland/ for a comparison.)

Black wolfhounds look like this: http://i.pinimg.com/originals/e0/4d/ef/e04deffa67d6382fe7cebefe5757f6c1.jpg .

And a SHAVED wolfhound looks like this: www.twitter.com/leighjbryan/status/916889669626863618

According to Wikipedia: “Irish Wolfhounds have a varied range of personalities and are most often noted for their personal quirks and individualism...Wolfhounds often create a strong bond with their family and can become quite destructive or morose if left alone for long periods of time.”

 

To answer some concerns I got when I originally raised this concept: Sirius was NOT in danger of getting neutered in his first 48 hours at the vet practice. Firstly, he was on antibiotics to deal with the sores and the early stages of pneumonia. It’s a bad idea to do surgery on an animal or human when they are ALREADY dealing with bacterial infections if you don’t have to. Secondly, proactive neutering programs for strays are usually a way to manage large populations of feral animals, particularly cats. In this context, it’s more likely to be something that the vet encourages the new owner to do when they adopt the animal. Neutering is not compulsory in the UK. Thirdly, there’s a slight possibility that his owner will be found, and if they intended to use him as a breeding animal, they would NOT be happy with a vet that got him snipped. So...if Sirius had been there for a couple of weeks, maybe. But not in the first couple of days.