Stalking Werewolves || Alice and Sirius
@caniicula
Alice stomped through the front door of Order Headquarters and straight to the grubby parlor where she knew Sirius Black liked to sulk sit when his friends had things to do and he didn’t. Sure enough, Sirius was there, and a quick but sharp glance around the room proved that he was there alone (no one trained by Alastor Moody could fail to assess a room’s potential threats in a glance, not if they wanted to pass his training in one piece), just as Alice had hoped.
She shoved her cloak back -- having been in too much of a hurry to take it off -- and took the thick red file folder from its less-than-subtle-yet-effective hiding spot clamped against her ribs under her injured arm and threw it toward Sirius. It hit the scratched end-table next to him and skidded forward a few inches, stopping perilously close to the saucer of his tea cup (gone cold more than an hour ago, if Alice was any judge), the long black string that tied it closed flopping forward like a dead snake across the fading varnish.
“There it is,” Alice announced, staring down hard at Sirius as if he were somehow at fault for all this -- although for once, he wasn’t. “Everything I could dig out of the Ministry’s files on werewolves outside the registry and unattributed lycanthopic incidents.”
She flopped unceremoniously into the chair next to his, the grace her mother had once worked so hard to instill in her lost for the moment to injury and weariness, and drew her wand to tap the cold kettle on the hearth. She needed tea desperately, and would settle for now for whatever swill Sirius was drinking in lieu of making the effort of fetching herself a better blend (oh, how she missed having house-elves around! but their presence was far too risky at headquarters, everyone agreed -- or enough of them agreed that the rest, like Alice, who had insisted that no house-elf worth the name would betray its masters even in a war, had been out-voted). At least heating tea-water was something she could do with her off-hand, without worrying that she was going to botch the spell.
“Well?” she demanded impatiently of Sirius. “How’s that, then?”
