Chapter 2

The sound of tapping awoke Sirius from the deepest sleep he could ever remember having. His entire body ached, his head felt like it was being split in two and quite frankly he stank. Clearly he had been drinking last night.

With a huge amount of effort he managed to pull himself up off the hard wooden floor and gaze around the room. His heart started to beat faster when he realised that this wasn't his room, in fact this was clearly the flat of some slob. There were dishes everywhere, papers strewn about and the place stank to high hell. Clearly not a very up scale place, yet it seemed hauntingly familiar.

As he tried to recall where he was and how he got there he continued to take in the flat. Posters of the Chudley Cannons adorned the walls, inter spaced with various arithmetic tables, pages that were clearly torn from Playboy magazines and badly animated and topped off with large posters that advertised the Auror program, all in all the walls were covered, just like the floor.

Ignoring the room for a second he focused on what he'd been doing yesterday, he'd been in Grimmauld Place, but why on earth was he there? He hated his parents house and they certainly wouldn't want to see him! Buckbeak! He'd been tending the Hippogriff! Then Snape had called and he'd gone to the Ministry with the Order, then harry, Bellatrix and the Veil!

Heart pounding Sirius patted himself down, finding that all of his body parts were in place he concurred that he was definitely alive as he was fairly certain that ghosts couldn't soil there trousers as he clearly had.

Still rather panicked he looked about and found that he appeared to be alone in the small flat, the bedroom/sitting room where he had woken up was empty of other people and the small counters in the corner that passed for a kitchen were grimy but empty and the bathroom door was open showing there definitely was no-one here.

Faced with an unknown situation Sirius defaulted to what his Auror training had taught him, he flicked his wrist bringing his wand out of his wrist holster, and then sent a barrage of detection spells around the flat.

A few seconds later he was even more confused. All of the electrical devices were broken, the small shabby fireplace was connected to the floo, the Auror network to be precise, he was completely alone in the flat with no signs of residue magic except for a set of very powerful wards which his spells were saying he had made.

For a while he just stood there, trying to figure out what in the name of Merlin was going on until he once more heard a faint tapping. Spinning around he brought his wand to bear on the small window by the 'kitchen' of the dingy flat, it's tip glowing red with a curse ready to be released, only to find an owl with a newspaper irritably demanding entry.

Another couple of detection spells showed that the owl was really an owl and the paper wasn't cursed in any way, so he opened the window and let the owl in. Immediately the creature dropped the paper in front of him then flew to the small table tucked in the corner and began pecking a small bag. Following the owl he opened the bag to find owl treats and let the creature have a few before finding a five knuts and putting it in the owls pouch used to pay it. Satisfied the small animal zoomed back out of the window and disappeared into the London skyline.

Rather shell shocked still, Sirius watched the owl out of the window and tried to identify whereabouts in London he was.

All of a sudden his headache dissapeared and the world snapped into perfect clarity. He was in Surrey, in his old flat, with his old wand in his hand and everything looked as it did the last day he was here, the morning after James and Lily had died and the day he had gone and found Peter.

Heart racing he ripped open the paper and read the headline with a curious sensation of dread and anticipation.

You Know Who Vanquished!

Harry Potter is Boy-Who-Lived!

He stared at the headline as heard a rushing sound and his vision went black. The stress too much, he feinted dead away.