A/n: if the first bits of this chapter seem familiar, that is because this is a redo of chapter 15 (with very different results).

I tried to move too quickly with Sirius and fell forward, tumbling into the grass.

The squealing stopped abruptly, and I heard a door slam and feet jump out onto the pavement.

Pushing myself up onto my elbows, I saw the yellow glow of the headlights shining on the waving grass.

Sirius lay beside me, one arm still thrown across my back, his face buried in the ground.

Shit shit shit shit fuck.

I scrambled to my knees, wincing, grabbed Sirius's shoulders, and flipped him over.

"Christ shit." I hooked my finger in his slack mouth and cleared out the little clumps of grass and mud.

"Hello?" An alien voice called from behind us.

I started and jumped to my feet, my bad knee buckling under me. I tried to shield Sirius from view with my body, and my own eyes from the headlights' glare with my forearm.

"Is everything okay?" A man's body, silhouetted by the headlights, took a tentative step forward, towards us.

"Yes," I yelped instinctively.

The man paused, his hand frozen in a half wave.

"I mean-" This man was a Muggle, plainly. My instinct was not to trust him, but right then, a Muggle may have been the best help I could've hoped for in the given situation. "I mean. No."

I stepped aside, revealing Sirius's body lying on the ground. "My brother's hurt. He's unconscious, I-" I reached behind me and felt Moey's hand lock with mine.

"And our little sister-" I knelt down, pulled off my over shirt, and wrapped it tightly around her, making sure it covered her from ears to toes, her tiny nose only barely poking out. "She's disabled. And it's so cold."

I was noticing the temperature for the first time myself, recognizing some of our shaking and trembling for shivering. It was December, after all.

The man shifted, and I could see his head turn back towards his car.

"We were attacked," I said quickly, "back that way." I pointed down the road toward Malfoy Manor. "They stole our car, and beat my brother unconscious, and broke my nose, and - I'm scared they'll come back. We need help."

He didn't say anything.

"Honey?" I heard a woman's voice from the car.

"It's all right," he called back to her. "Just stay in the car."

"Please," I whispered, squeezing Moey's shoulder and feeling at my side for Sirius.

He groaned and shifted slightly.

The man took another step forward, and said, in a soft voice, "Could you come up here for a minute?"

I nodded and took my hand off Moey.

She whimpered, but stayed put. I didn't want him looking at her, not yet.

I limped up to the road, and the man's face became clear. He must have been in his early 30s. Glasses, prickly mustache, ears that poked out from his shaggy hair.

"Wow, you do look bad," he said, his eyebrows arcing sympathetically as he scanned my face.

I could not believe a man whose mustache barely covered his lip had just said that to me. I wanted to roll my eyes. No kidding, jackass, but at least I can wipe the blood off my face. There's nothing that could be done about those ears.

"Please, we need help, I can't carry him, and I don't even know where the next town is."

"Well. There's a town a bit up the road." Henry jutted his thumb over his shoulder. "Back the way we came. It has a hospital, and-" He looked down at Moey, and over at Sirius. "Er, I suppose we might be able to take you back there. Given, you have the little girl and everything." He adjusted his glasses.

I took a deep breath. I was either going to start yelling at him or run out of lies, or both. "Look. We need to get to London." I straightened my back and heard two loud pops. "My brother needs to see a specialist - his specialist in London."

Henry frowned. "Er, it looks like he really needs to go to an accident and emergency."

"No." I wanted to grab him by the lapels and shake him. "He has a blood disorder. That's why - that's why, look, he's unconscious even though he hasn't lost that much blood. He doesn't produce blood like a normal person. God, I knew it was a mistake to try and travel just the three of us, but you just have to help us. I don't know what to do. If he doesn't see his specialist, he'll die."

Henry took a step back. "I think maybe—okay, there's a house back up off the road." He pointed in the direction of the Malfoys'. "We can go up there and ask to use their phone to call 999."

That shocked me better than a slap across the face. "We can't do that," I said. I gave on this git voluntarily doing anything vaguely helpful. Now I was thinking strategically. I stepped forward on the road. Henry's glance flickered back towards his car. His wife and son peered out the window. The little boy's pale face was bland and expressionless. His wife had her hand poised on the windowsill. I think she was wondering whether she ought to lock the doors.

"We can take you to the hospital back in town. They'll be able to help."

"Okay." We needed to be in that car.

Henry helped me picked Sirius up. When I knelt down, getting back up again was hard. My knee felt shot full of holes. Henry put his hand out to me when I stumbled.

It was tricky arranging Sirius in the small back space of Henry's hatchback. He had to push aside his spare tire, while I held Sirius up. We used an oily rag to cushion his head, which we nestled between the corner of the backseat and the tire.

I had noticed something I don't think Henry had. When he pulled up the edge of the tire to push it aside, I saw it. The black glint, easy to miss in the ambient darkness. The dim, fuzzy interior light on the car's ceiling just barely made it shine. I pulled Sirius's legs over it until Henry looked away, and while I arranged his lower body to take pressure off his broken leg, I pulled the tire iron out from under him and stuck it in my waistband. It was hard to hide it with my over shirt gone; James's shirt was too tight on me and the tire iron's bulbous end made a noticeable lump above my hip. When I looked up, the little boy was staring at me over the back of the seat. His dead little eyes were sagging, and he didn't seem to have any eyelashes.

"Okay, so you and your sister can sit in the back, all right?" Henry put his hand on my shoulder. I tore myself away from the boy's empty stare, and Henry and I closed the hatchback.

In the backseat, I put Moey by the window wrapped tight in the over shirt, and I sat in the middle. I was getting real nervous about now. We were starting off, and I had to do something soon. But there were three of them, two of them perfectly healthy adults, and one of them a terrifying and potentially satanic child. I sized him up as he sat next to me. He was probably about nine and skinny. I could get one hand wrapped most of the way around his neck. Judging from the way his mother kept glancing in the backseat, her eyes narrow and her mouth pressed thin and down-turned, she was suspicious I might try to do just that.

Well, she wouldn't have been too far off.

I wrapped my hand around the tire iron and slipped it out of my waistband. Pinpricks ran over my whole body, and my mouth started producing too much saliva.

I grabbed the kid by his arm, and he couldn't even finish the yelp he started before I had him in my lap with the L-shaped end of the tire iron hooked around his neck.

Henry slammed on the brakes and his wife screamed, and I had to shout over her, "Don't stop the car. Turn it around. I'm sorry, I mean - jeez, it's just, you have to take us to London. And if you do, and my brother's okay, then you'll be okay, too." The little boy kept whining and crying. I started to pull the tire iron harder into his neck, but instead I pressed my opposite arm over his body and my hand over his mouth. He tried to bite me, but his jaws were so small, I could hold them closed with my fingers.

"Don't do this; don't hurt him!" the wife cried. "Henry, turn the fucking car around!"

He did. I could see his arms shaking on the steering wheel. The kid kept squirming, and his mum kept yelling at him to stop. Her eyes took up her whole face and vibrated wildly. She never took them off us.

It was cold and getting colder outside, and I was only wearing that thin cotton undershirt, but I was sweating; I could feel the drops running down from my underarms and wetting the shirt.

"Don't slow down and don't stop before I tell you. And if I think you're trying to signal other drivers, or you're driving out of the way, or anything else, I'll snap your sprog's neck in a heartbeat. I've killed people before, and I can do it again. I don't really have anything to lose. If he dies, I mean, if my brother dies, I will too. So I don't mind taking a couple other people out with us."

The wife mumbled some things and she kept telling the kid to be still and be brave and how much she loved him. Then she yelled at Henry to drive faster.

"No, don't drive any faster," I said, tightening my grip around the kid's mouth. "Don't draw any attention to us. I'm really warning you."

"No, don't drive any faster," the wife said.

"Look, lady, you need to turn around."

She hesitated, so I yanked up on the tire iron and the kid squeaked. She faced front right away. "And just don't talk, okay? Look, I know you're scared and all, but this is going to be over soon. You could've just agreed to take me to London when I asked nicely, you know. I mean, really, I tell you he's got a blood disorder and you just—what? And then you tell me to go up to that house?" I shook my head. "You have no idea what you were suggesting." I even laughed.

I just kept talking, whenever I could think of anything to say. When I stopped, the whole car was silent and I wanted to squirm in my seat. Every mile felt like a hundred. The kid's tears rolled over my fingers on their way down his face.

I kind of jiggled him with my good knee, like I thought that might calm him down. I was beginning to feel like a psychopath, and what's worse, I was beginning to realize that once we got to London, I still had no idea how to get to St. Mungo's.

As it turned out, I still had another hour to devise a new plan. Unfortunately, I spent most of that time desperately needing to urinate and thinking that every time Henry scratched his nose or coughed that he was trying to send a distress signal to other motorists. That and, when everyone went silent, listening attentively for the sound of Sirius's breathing. I sent Moey back there to make sure he was doing okay, I mean, to make sure he was still alive. Sometimes he moaned or muttered something garbled. Each time he did, I pulled the tire iron tighter around the kid's neck and didn't notice until I felt him, like Evan had, struggling for breath against my chest.

From the front seat, the kid's mum kept up a constant mumbled chorus of "please don't hurt him" and "God, please save my baby" until I reminded her to be quiet. I don't think Henry had said a word since I pulled out the tire iron.

They reminded me of the family I'd met my first night as a Death Eater. My arms were going numb from holding the kid so long.

By the time we came into the London outskirts, Moey was saying Sirius's breathing was slowing. I didn't dare look in the back. When Henry asked me where we were going, I just said to keep driving.

"You said we had to take you to London!" the mum said, twisting in her seat. It was the first time she had sounded angry.

"Don't look back here! It's soon, we're almost there. We have to go to my brother's specialist. I just don't know, really, how to drive there."

"Excuse me? You don't know how to drive there?"

"Just keep driving until I tell you to stop."

The mum was slow turning around. Her eyes were narrow and critical. "Well, maybe you know what neighborhood it's in?" she asked, her voice calm and polite. "At the moment, we're driving toward central London on the M4. Perhaps it's a neighborhood in that area? Around Piccadilly or Mayfair?"

I hesitated. I ought to know where St. Mungo's was. I'd been there enough recently, with my dad being sick and all. But Apparating, I don't think I'd ever even passed a corner coming or going. I don't think I'd ever noticed a single street sign.

"Er, it's not either of those," I said. But if I didn't know where St. Mungo's was, I did know something. I knew where the Ministry of Magic was. "Whitehall. It's in Whitehall," I said.

Such an expression as I have never seen, a march of great relief, contempt, and surprise in succession, crossed the mum's face.

She pointed out when we turned on the street, and Henry drove slowly down it, so I could squint out the windows looking for a familiar call box. I knew as soon as we got out of the car, and I surrendered the kid to them, they would find the nearest policeman with no delay, or else try to run me over. Either way, I wanted us dropped off as near that call box as possible.

Something strange happened to my senses as we drove down that road. The pavement was near empty, and the only other cars were parked. The hazy glow of the streetlights seemed magnified and bright beyond their power. Wind began to blow frosty powder along the pavement and against the car's windscreen. I thought I saw every facet on the tiny snowflakes caught in the streetlight. I thought I felt the slick walls of the great stone buildings rising out of the ground to meet the sky.

In the back, Moey said that Sirius had stopped shivering.

I spotted the call box soon after that. I got out of the car, still holding the kid by the neck, and watched Henry open the hatchback and unload Sirius. I had him, helped pathetically by Moey, carry Sirius right up the call box and prop him up inside. Then, with Henry standing near the car, small and shaking, I let the kid go. I didn't watch him sprint to the car, but I heard him cry out and stumble on the slippery pavement, and then, finally, I heard the tires squeal and the car drive away, leaving the smell of burning rubber behind it. As if by magic, no one was around to see.

I took Moey's hand and stepped into the call box with her. I had to pick up Sirius and press his cool body against the side so we could all fit. I couldn't really feel his breath on my neck anymore.

I dialed the numbers, and just before the earth swallowed us up, I got a last look at the dull and starless sky.

A/n: First, I'm sorry for jerking you all around with the very long and unannounced hiatus. So guys… this is the end. As you may be able to tell, I decided to go in a little different direction because I was like totally stuck for a year where I was. SORRY BOUT THAT. So yes, some of this chapter you have seen before, and I did edit out the end of the original chapter 15, in which Regulus goes along with Henry's original plan to take them back to the town with the hospital.

I know this ending leaves some questions you know, just wide open. Probably the ones y'all are most curious about include "omg Sirius can't be… can he?" and to a lesser extent what happens to Regulus now. WELL NEVER FEAR DEAR READERS, because there will be a SEQUEL. I'm going to start posting it here soon, it will be called "Epilogue". So, if you're interested, that's coming.

And last but not least, thank you all SO MUCH if you have read this far. I really appreciate you all. There are a lot of things you could be doing on the internet, and it means a lot to me that you're reading this. Reviewers, you know you have a special place in my heart.