A/N: I do not own Harry Potter. Happy birthday MegMarch1880!

Madam Pomfrey was not amused.

"A dog," she said, examining the deep gashes running down Sirius's ribs.

"A feral one," he said with wide, innocent eyes that didn't fool her for an instant. "I think I startled him."

Remus had identical scratches, although admittedly fewer of them than usual, and she knew exactly where he had gotten emthem./em

"No bites, I trust?" She asked as she started cleaning the wounds a bit more briskly than absolutely necessary. There was no point trying to spell these away.

Sirius winced at the sting. "No bites," he assured her. "He wasn't interested in biting me."

"So you stopped to check this feral dog's gender, did you?" she asked bitingly.

Sirius just blinked up at her, innocent as a lamb.

"And I don't suppose this has anything to do with you coming in covered in fur two months ago."

If his eyes went any wider, she'd have to treat them for strain. "I don't emthink/em that jinx had anything to do with the dog, but since they never caught who did it, I guess we can't be sure . . . "

Jinx, ha! That had been an incomplete animagus transformation, or she'd eat her license.

She could, she supposed, report all this nonsense to Dumbledore, but if the boys thought she'd pass tales, she hated to think what they'd do the next time a prank or a full moon went wrong.

Besides. Surely Dumbledore already knew.

She kept her silence through their schooldays and the war and all the long years after it, until there was no one left to keep the secret for, and then she kept it anyway.

In the middle of all of that though, she treated a lot of "dog" scratches and bruises and wondered in exasperation just who they thought they had fooled.

Madam Pomfrey was not impressed.

The newest Weasley to come into her care looked up at her in trepidation. He held his swollen arm out slightly away from his chest. It was already mottled with unnatural colors.

"A dog bite," she said, mouth pinched.

Ron nodded quickly. "A big one," he said, gesturing wildly before wincing when the movement jarred his arm. "I think it's gotten infected," he added hastily.

"And you didn't come to me at once because . . . ?"

Ron shrank back onto the bed and muttered something about his mother.

Madam Pomfrey was quite sure, based on the pattern of teethmarks, that whatever had bitten him had not been a dog. It required a bit of research to determine that it was not only a dragon but what emkind/em of dragon.

Dragons were not her specialty. They had never specialty. They had never needed to be.

Hagrid, she noticed, was in need of some burn cream.

She did not think this was a coincidence.

Madam Pomfrey thought it was past time for her to retire.

Rose had dragged Scorpius down into the infirmary by the arm. Albus hovered nervously behind them.

Scorpius's arm was covered in bites.

"Was there a dog?" she asked dryly before adjusting her spectacles so she could examine it properly. She didn't see as well as she used to.

All three flinched guiltily. Scorpius recovered first. "Someone was throwing a fanged frisbee."

"It was hexed to be extra vicious," Rose added. Albus nodded in agreement.

Madam Pomfrey peered down at the wounds.

They were, unmistakably, dog bites. Judging by the size and depth of the bites, they had come from a very young dog; judging by the spread, she would not be surprised to learn it had three heads.

She looked up at the three anxious, hopeful faces.

It was not a wound from a werewolf unable to get through a full moon without injury. It was not a spell from corridors turned into the opening stages of a war.

It was not a dragon bite or the result of something hidden in the school. It was not from an escaped convict or a Death Eater calling themselves a professor.

Just a simple, ordinary wound from a forbidden pet.

Although given whose children these were, perhaps she shouldn't count on that.

"A very vicious frisbee," she tutted and pretended not to hear their sighs of relief.