May 28th, 1895 — Hogwarts Dungeons
During the Hogwarts Coming Out Ball

A man now, legally, and no longer a student. Strictly speaking, Abraxas Crabbe was welcome to the libations of the Great Hall, but given the presence of younger students at the evening's festivities, those libations were limited to champagne. Sirius' flask had already been divested of its contents, and the Hufflepuff had offered to go downstairs and retrieve his.

That seemed like a lifetime ago now.

The last time, Rex had chuckled to himself as the staircase had altered its course, sending him deeper beneath the castle than he intended. With his NEWTs behind him now, the seventh year was finding a shroud of nostalgia had enveloped him; what used to be a minor annoyance was now often rather charming, novel.

Also novel was the corpse on the floor of the dungeon corridor.

Rex's shout of surprise had been lost in the curves of the hallways as the young wizard had hastned to the man's side, assuming he had just collapsed. Not optimal, but certainly not disastrous.

The man didn't stir.

The man was not breathing.

Rex, though, was breathing enough for the both of them, chest heaving up and down as he stared wide-eyed at him, whoever he was, the cold of the stone floor leeching into his rear end through his dress pants as he sat on the floor, as far from the body as the narrow corridor would allow.

Sirius Black/Cassius Lestrange
Invitational to Nicodemus Zabini and Flora Mulciber
Will post for Adult Intervention if/when appropriate!

  

Rex took so long to come back with his flask that Sirius ran out of his silly little champagne flute, and at that point, he was feeling bored enough to go down to the dungeons to try and find his friend. (Coming Out Balls were mostly for the girls, and Sirius' job was mostly to talk about stops on his tour, and accept advise from the other men. Yes, they weren't just going to the boring stops of Europe, but also Dubrovnik, and Istanbul, and perhaps Ankara and Yerevan?)

But one could only talk about Eastern Europe and the Middle East with older men for so long before one became a bit bored, and so he went to find Rex. Sirius was prepping his scold for his friend when he rounded the corner, only to find Rex on the floor, and — someone lying on the floor, looking rather clammy and perhaps dead.

Sirius hissed out a breath. "Fuck," he said.

  

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set by Lady

Fine this was... no, honestly, not at all fine.

The man was dead and Rex had found him and—

Fuck.

The sound jerked the Hufflepuff's attentions away from the body, though any relief he might have felt at the sight of his friend standing there was utterly crumbled by the look on Sirius' face.

(Could they expel you on your last evening in the castle?)

"He-he's dead, I think," Rex offered, eyes locked with Sirius'—anything to stop him from looking back at the... the body. "Was when I got here. Not sure how..."

He let out a strangled sort of laugh, that of a man-who-was-still-a-boy-and-quite-decidedly-panicking.

Sirius Black/Cassius Lestrange

  

The last time Sirius had seen Rex look this panicked, it was when his friend had learned that Andren Lovegood as dead. He took several steps closer so that he was standing in front of Rex, but he could only look at the other young man, rather than directly at the body.

His mouth had gone dry. How had that happened so quickly?

"We should get HB," he said. Phineas would want any excuse to leave the Coming Out Ball; he also had an instinct for avoiding scandal.

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   Aldous Crouch

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set by Lady

Phineas Black was hardly a comforting presence. Even after many years of friendship with Sirius, Rex found the Headmaster vaguely daunting, a position shared by the man's own sons. In this moment, though, the very notion of the man was a balm, enough to allow the Hufflepuff to clamber back to his feet.

Yes. HB would be able to take care of the matter. He was a proper adult, was in charge of the castle anyways, and had a vested interest in Sirius' well-being.

"Yes, yes you're right," he replied hurriedly, nodding. "Go get him? I'll... keep watch."

Rex didn't relish the idea of being left with a body, but he didn't think it should simply be left there for anyone else to find.

Sirius Black/Cassius Lestrange

  

He nodded to Rex, once. Sirius breathed deeply, in and out, on his walk back to the Great Hall.  He occasionally adjusted his suit-jacket and curls to make sure that his appearance was in order. He thought, briefly, that he had never actually asked Phineas for help before. It was an unsettling feeling, to have to rely on someone in his family.

It was easy to spot Phineas in the Great Hall, and Sirius approached his father swiftly, in an attempt to demonstrate his usual confidence. "Headmaster Black?" he said, not actually paying attention to see if he was interrupting something. He felt as if he should lean on his Head Boy credentials instead of trying to act like the adult he now was. "Would you step out with me to take a look at something?"

Elias Grimstone Phineas Black

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   Phineas Black

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set by Lady

Phineas was inching nearer and nearer to offing himself, to be frank, the longer he had to listen to this school governor prattle on. He had been waiting, interminably, to be given a chance to get a word in edgeways and put in his opinion, finally – but they had, instead, been interrupted by another party.

“Sirius.” Sirius, which would have been fine, if he had not interrupted, and in a manner that almost made it sound like there was a problem. But at least he had broken the conversational flow. “Yes, yes, in a moment,” Phineas said impatiently, shooting his son a swift, raised-eyebrow glance to say what?, but also not now, and not in front of this bloody governor. Surely Sirius, of all his children, knew how not to embarrass him.

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   Aldous Crouch, Seraphina Bythesea, Sirius Black

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Fuck, why couldn't Phineas be talking to someone he wanted to dismiss? Sirius held his tongue, but fixed his father with a look that he'd never used on Phineas before: plaintive. The longer they were here, the better the odds that someone would discover Rex — and while Sirius could hardly say that there was a corpse in the corridors, someone shouting as much was going to be the inevitable outcome if he dawdled long enough.

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   Aldous Crouch

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set by Lady

He had been premature in thinking Sirius a fully grown man now, evidently – the look his son gave him was more akin to a kicked puppy. That was, however, strange enough to register as something urgent. So –

“If you will kindly excuse me,” Phineas said curtly, to cut the governor adrift, and started stalking towards the doors of the Great Hall, presuming Sirius would keep up with him. (Had he meant step outside to look at something literally, or was this just a cover for enough privacy to make some foolish request or another?)

They were out of the room now. “Well?” he drawled.

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Oh, thank fuck.

He followed his father, keeping pace, until they left the room. How did he explain this? One of the things he'd learned from his year as Head Boy was that his father appreciated a short explanation; he did not enjoy fluff. So best to just get into it, then.

"Crabbe and I found a corpse," he said, in an undertone. "In the corridors."

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   Aldous Crouch

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set by Lady

“So help me, Sirius,” Phineas muttered through scarcely-moving lips, as a chill trickled down his spine at the thought of another unfortunate (and embarrassing) death in his castle, “– if this is some foolish jape...” One’s last night at Hogwarts might be a time for an ambitious practical joke, but if Phineas had taught his own children one thing, it was surely that he would not suffer being made a fool of.

So – he had to be serious. For Merlin’s sake. If Phineas had been a man to swear, this would have been the time. Instead he jerked his hand in a wordless instruction, show me. As they walked – briskly, head high, unsuspiciously – he gathered the wherewithal to ask, quietly – “Who?”

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That got Phineas' attention, and so Sirius led his father at a brisk walk through the corridors, trying to mimic his father's same normal posture. No one was going to look at them and think that anything had gone wrong; Sirius was determined of this.

His armpits felt damp.

"No one I recognize," Sirius said, as they rounded the corner where they would hopefully come upon Rex and the corpse. "Must be from outside." Thank Merlin.

  

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set by Lady

Rex had returned to his feet and had tried facing the wall, away from The Body, which now loomed so large in his awareness as to be capitalized. When he did, however, he felt as though its eyes were boring into him, into his soul.

How long did it take to retrieve a headmaster?

Thirty years, by the feel of it.

The youth began pacing the length of the corridor, letting the body out of his sight but not out of his presence. Merlin help him, he should have just stayed in the Great Hall.

  

Small mercies. He had to hope it was some poor drunkard who had stumbled into the dungeons and knocked his head on the flagstones, someone of no name and no merit – and preferably not another member of staff. There were only so many deaths on his own doorstep that Phineas – and his reputation – could take.

“Crabbe,” he asserted, in a sharp, barely-muttered greeting, when they came upon Sirius’ friend pacing the corridor. Phineas could see the slumped corpse just beyond him – though Crabbe looked just as white as the corpse. Had he had something to do with it? (He could not help but be hopeful that if it was one of the pair at fault, that...)

A first look at the body, in the dimly-lit corridor, proved the man unknown to Phineas too. And hardly well-dressed enough to be anyone important, thank Merlin. Before he focused on that, however – he rounded on the pair of them, scrutinising them for any expression of guilt, and addressing them in a low tone, thick with distaste. “Did you have something to do with this?”

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