TBAY: Sirius's Correspondents

[sffcorgi]

No: HPFGUIDX 41607

<'))><

As Corgi floated a little further off the beach, she heard a 
thoughtful voice carrying faintly from somewhere above her.

"That would make sense... Sirius does toss in that apparently 
throwaway phrase 'This is mostly stuff I've found out since I got
out' when he's talking about Barty Crouch Jr's arrest and
imprisonment.  He couldn't have found out about those events from
reading discarded *Daily Prophets*.  I always wondered what his
source of information was.  It didn't occur to me that it would
have been Lupin or someone else via owl post.  But it must have
been, because it's doubtful Padfoot could have overheard this much
detail while rooting around in the garbage behind The Three
Broomsticks."

*Yeah, somebody who understands what I saw!  Sirius has too much
energy to just sit there and read newspapers.*  The auburn-brindle
Corgi wiggled enthusiastically as the woman continued,
 
"Hey, you're one of those corgis, aren't you?  Doesn't the Queen
own some of those?"

'One might say they own Her Majesty, but that's beside the point,'
Corgi replied, and squirmed around to free her tail from where it
was trapped by the pool toy.  'I'm the other kind, a Cardigan.  Not
as rare as a Padfoot, of course, but not terribly common.'
 
The inflated donut drifted closer to the barge, which loomed over 
it.  Thankfully, the Corgi had floated in upwind from the GARBAGE 
SCOW.  Bobbing in the gentle waves, the Dog watched as the woman on 
the deck waved her wand.  Suddenly strange letters appeared 
overlaying the Gryffindor-coloured flowers.

"I dub this vessel SOIL HOCKEY," she says, ceremoniously. "Sirius
Obtains Information at Lupin's Hand. Old Crowd Klatches Entire Year."
 
The corgi is taken aback by the strange acronym, as she craned her 
neck to see the change on her paltry vessel.

'Well... it's kinda weird, but I guess it fits.  Goes all the way
around, too.  In more ways than one -- as I pointed out to some
nice person named Marina, when her letter fell out of the sky at me,
Dumbledore would be strategically unlikely to send somebody as
potentially valuable as Sirius into a situation which would be
likely to end badly with no product.  She suggested Remus was being
surveilled by the MoM, I believe; if Sirius was sent to Remus, and
perhaps to the rest of the Old Crowd, Dumbledore likely felt it was
a safe move, and that none of them were being watched (or likely to
scream for the Hit Wizards if Sirius showed up).  So the "klatch"
part works.  Invite the nice big Doggy in for tea.'

 ><))~>
 
"Oh, and get rid of the dead fish," she tells Corgi.  "It's starting
to stink worse than the SCOW."
 
'Oh.  Sorry.  Thought it was just sleeping (it looked so 
peaceful...).  Maybe it's a One True Way FanFish'n?

'Thinking of sleeping -- and this is a bit of a tangent -- can you 
imagine Sirius, even nice and furry as Padfoot, sleeping in that cave
in the dead of January?  Even if he nested up on those short, why-
can't-boys-write-decent-letters from Harry, whatever he got from 
Dumbledore and presumably the others, and his newspapers, the draft
alone must've been a killer.'

Happily, the Corgi polished her can(N)on as she continued to drift
slowly about, the pool toy riding higher in the water since it had
puffed itself up with pride at being named.


Corgi, @sff.net
Founder of the Dicentra Appreciation Society