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04/14: Black, Arcturus
Title: Black, in the Smothering Dark
Chapter Title: Black, Arcturus 04/14
Words (this chapter): 6,716
Rating (this chapter): PG-13
Story Info/All Chapters: HERE
Author's Notes: I think it should be noted that I have tried my level best to make this as 'British' as possible, but, alas, I am not British. If you are and you see something said/done anywhere in this fic that makes you go 'homgwtf, we don't say that shit(e)', let me know. I'll probably end up loving you forever.
Beta’d by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
littlevlahgirl and amelancholykiss. Many thanks to both of them.
-x-
Black, in the Smothering Dark
-x-
Chapter Four
Black, Arcturus
-x-
By the day before Harry’s seventeenth birthday, Sirius had forgotten about Snape’s visit, but it was still fresh on his mind. Harry thought about Snape’s parting words over and over and over until he finally worked himself into a furious rage, headed out to the gardens, and started hexing and jinxing anything and everything in sight.
That was how Sirius found him that afternoon after lunch. Harry was back in a t-shirt and jeans and hexing everything from a few straggling garden gnomes to Fred’s prized flower beds. Off to the side, Fred was wringing his hands and grumbling, but refused to step in to save his flowers.
Sirius walked up next to Harry and watched unseen for several minutes before he shrugged and pulled out his own wand. He muttered under his breath and an unsuspecting garden gnome imploded. Harry stopped suddenly and watched.
“That’s dark magic,” he said accusingly.
“No it’s not,” Sirius said, shaking his head. “It’s a house-cleaning charm. A variant of the vanishing charm that we used to use in school to get rid of suspicious evidence after pranks.”
Harry cocked his head to the side. “But it looks like dark magic.”
Sirius shook his head again. “Anything is dark magic if you want it to be. You light your fireplaces with Incendio, but what do you think would happen if you cast it on another person?” He shrugged casually. “It’s not the magic, it’s the intent.”
“But you intended to hurt the garden gnome with that spell,” Harry insisted.
“No, I didn’t,” Sirius said. “I just wanted to see what would happen.”
Harry laughed humourlessly. “So, you’re telling me that I could use Avada Kedavra and it wouldn’t be dark?” he asked sarcastically.
Sirius nodded, quite emphatically. “Of course,” he said. “How do you think livestock is killed for mass consumption? The Ministry grants licenses to wizarding ranchers. There’s a lot of paperwork involved, I understand, but,” he shrugged, “they still use it. It’s better than gutting them with ritual daggers, don’t you think?”
“But that’s different,” Harry insisted.
“How?” Sirius asked with a raised eyebrow. Harry didn’t have an answer for that, so he just flopped down on the grass and stared at the spot where the unfortunate garden gnome had been. He wondered if there was a special plane of existence where all imploded things went. He supposed it was something like a Black Hole. Sirius sat down next to him with his arms draped over his knees and his wand dangling from his fingertips.
“How often do you actually use Ministry-classified dark magic?” Harry asked after several minutes.
“Well, Remus let me use his wand for a couple beheading hexes and a perpetual fire charm when I was still staying in that cave outside Hogsmeade,” he said with a shrug. Harry gaped at him. “I was hungry!” Sirius insisted. “They were rabbits—already dead, anyway. I snapped their necks when I caught them. I just couldn’t stand to eat them with their heads on, so I got rid of the problem,” he finished with a shrug.
“Gross,” Harry decided.
Sirius laughed. “I suppose maybe to you, but I grew up with beheading hexes, you understand. My da took Regulus and me camping sometimes and he always made us take care of our own meals. I wasn’t an animagus then so we had to stun them and then behead them just to kill them.”
“Why didn’t you use Avada Kedavra?” Harry asked, genuinely curious.
“We were like…seven and eight years old, kiddo,” Sirius said with a laugh. “We weren’t magically strong enough to cast that yet. We didn’t learn the Killing Curse until we were ten.”
“Didn’t you have the Underage Use of Magic statute back then?” Harry asked.
“Yeah, of course,” Sirius answered. “That’s been around since the 1940s when some foolish muggle-born kids decided they were going to show all their parents’ friends how to levitate cars. Pure-blood kids, though, sometimes got to use their parents’ wands—which in a lot of cases have the Ministry Magic Regulators removed.”
Harry laughed. “So what happened to those muggle-born kids that levitated the cars?”
Sirius flopped back on the grass and put his hands behind his head. “If I remember correctly, they were expelled and their magic was permanently bound. The muggle-born kids already had statutes for using magic outside of the wizarding world, but they said it was discrimination or something and decided to revolt.” Sirius shrugged awkwardly.
“It was pandemonium…this happened in America, I think, and there was some sort of conspiracy or something. I don’t know, anyway, the kids all did it at the same time. There was probably a couple hundred or so of them. The American aurors were flooded for months trying to straighten that out. Obliviations and forgeries of newspapers and what not. It was hellish. And so, there you have the reasoning behind the underage magic usage clause.”
Harry gaped at his godfather. “Wasn’t that a little harsh? To permanently bind their magic?”
Sirius shrugged again, still lying on the grass. “Not really. They were lucky they didn’t serve time in Kiljoy—that’s the American prison.”
“But they were kids!” Harry insisted.
Sirius shrugged. “And they used massive amounts of magic in front of huge groups of muggles all across the American east coast. It’s illegal.” Sirius turned to Harry and looked at him intently. “You’ve got to understand that more than two-thousand muggles were exposed to magic. The pure-bloods were calling for the binding of all muggle-born children and the Ministries almost agreed to it. It was close for a while. The only thing that stopped it was when the French Minister reminded them that without muggle-born children, new bloodlines wouldn’t form.”
Harry lay down next to Sirius and stared up at the clouds thoughtfully. “Is that why pure-bloods hate the muggle-born so much?” he asked finally.
“Part of it,” Sirius agreed. “It’s still fresh in a lot of minds, you know.” Harry hummed thoughtfully in reply.
-x-
Excerpt from the Journal of a Necromancer, 47th page.
-x-
Other than the after-breakfast conversation with Sirius in the garden, it had been a wonderful day, and when Harry found himself yet again in half-corporeal form in Voldemort’s study the night before his birthday, he couldn’t be arsed to be irritated about it.
He had tried to stay up until midnight to count down, but had been so remarkably tired from all the spell work he’d done—Sirius was teaching him as Harry had asked the week before—that he’d fallen asleep shortly after ten, and Harry had a sneaking suspicion that Voldemort might be an insomniac.
For the past few weeks, every time Harry had arrived, Voldemort had seemed to be deep in thought—as if he were worried about something, and this time was no different. Voldemort was again standing at the window with one scaly white hand absently petting Nagini as he muttered to himself in Parseltongue. Harry couldn’t pick out the words from that distance, but he didn’t think they would be anything good.
He didn’t say anything this time, and instead occupied himself with wandering around the sitting room studying the titles of the books on the shelves and magical maps that were tacked along the panelled walls.
“Where are we?” he asked suddenly. Voldemort spun around, surprised, and narrowed his eyes.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you that it’s rude to not only sneak up on some one, but also to pilfer through their belongings while you do?” he snarled. Harry winced; Voldemort was obviously not in a charitable mood—as if he ever was, really.
He gave him a sheepish smile, and Voldemort narrowed his eyes further, but seemed to accept it as some sort of apology. It wasn’t as if Harry would ever actually apologize to Voldemort for anything, so it was all he would get.
“Ard-Mhéara,” Voldemort answered curtly.
“What?” Harry asked, forgetting his previously question.
“We’re in Ard-Mhéara, the Riddle manor,” Voldemort answered patiently.
Harry nodded thoughtfully, and scanned several more book titles. “I thought your father was a muggle,” he said, ignoring the continued narrowing of the Dark Lord’s red eyes. “I’m just saying that I didn’t think there would be a Riddle Manor, you know. Don’t get all defensive about it,” he finished petulantly.
“Ah,” Voldemort nodded understandingly. He walked over to the chair near the fireplace and conjured their tea while Nagini curled up in his lap. “There wasn’t originally. This used to be the family home of one of my ancestors, many generations back. I renamed it when I was younger—hoping to establish my own line. That never worked out, as you can see,” he added with a sneer.
Harry watched as Voldemort added two sugars, no cream and a healthy dose of cyanide to his tea before he accepted. At first, he’d been slightly offended, but then realised that if he were Voldemort, he’d be poisoning his tea, too, and now found it rather humorous.
“Thank you,” he said, taking his tea with a wry grin. Voldemort smirked back at him as he settled back and sipped his tea from his pewter cup.
“Are you finally interested in wizarding heritages, then?” Voldemort asked after a few minutes. Before Harry could answer, Nagini hissed that she would be out hunting, and after a nod from Voldemort, slithered off his lap. Harry stared at her retreating form for several seconds before he finally spoke.
“I don’t know,” he finally said. “It’s just that, last month, I found out that my mother wasn’t muggle-born. It just kind of made me wonder about my own history.” He shrugged and stared down at his tea cup. It was a gaudy little thing. The tea sets never matched from visit to visit, but they were always a set, except for the one Voldemort used.
“Your mother was not British.” It was not a question, but Harry looked up sharply with a question of his own in his eyes. Voldemort continued casually. “American, if I recall. Younger daughter of the one-time New England Minister of Magic. The Evans family migrated from New York City to Manchester in the late sixties. Assassinated, though the assassin was never found, nor was it ever even determined—or at least, released to the public—whether it was by muggle or wizarding means. The case was closed a mere five days after it was opened,” he finished in a bored tone.
“How do you know that?” Harry asked in a faint voice.
Voldemort shrugged, unconcerned. “I know a lot of things.” His red eyes bore into Harry’s, and he said, “Such as, I know that you are staying with your godfather—believed dead—near Glasgow.”
“Edinburgh,” Harry automatically corrected, though he wasn’t entirely sure exactly how far away from Glasgow River House was.
Voldemort smiled triumphantly. “You would do best to learn not to give away such information to an enemy.”
Harry inhaled sharply. “You tricked me.” Voldemort smiled. “But…you knew anyway…you were just trying to see what I would admit if you caught me off guard.”
“Perhaps,” Voldemort answered noncommittally.
“Why haven’t you come for me yet then? You could have caught me completely unaware.”
“Who says I haven’t?” Voldemort returned.
Harry was getting frantic by now. He wasn’t sure if Voldemort was serious or not. He knew entirely too much and Harry knew entirely too little. “Have you?” he finally asked, breathing heavily, even though it wasn’t necessary to breath at all. He could almost feel a heartbeat—beating frantically in his chest, and assumed it was his own heartbeat back at River House.
Voldemort studied him for several minutes, and the longer he did, the more panicked Harry became. Finally, he answered, “Me? No,” and before Harry could blurt out ‘why not?’ the subject was abruptly changed. “Heritage is a wonderful thing, Potter,” he said, taking another sip of his tea. “Perhaps you should look into yours more thoroughly.”
Harry nodded dumbly and looked down at the dregs of his tea. His fingers started flickering again, and he knew that the shock of what Voldemort had just told him was bringing him back to his body.
“You will be seventeen tomorrow, will you not?” Voldemort asked abruptly, eyeing Harry’s wavering form. Harry nodded, stunned and confused, and Voldemort sent him a manic grin. “Your coming of age…it deserves a celebration. Check the papers tomorrow,” Voldemort said.
“Why?” Harry asked, anxiously. Voldemort grinned mysteriously again.
“A birthday gift for you.”
Harry, rather frightened of what that could be, slipped away and had nightmares the rest of the night.
-x-
Breakfast was waiting for Harry when he stumbled down the stairs, still in his pyjamas, the next morning.
“Happy birthday, kiddo!” Sirius crowed. He was partially hidden by a table piled high with pancakes, owls and presents. He, Ginger and Fred were all wearing little wizard hats with sparkling pom-poms on the top and confetti was falling perpetually from the ceiling like a snow-globe that didn’t need shaking. There was a banner hanging in front of the window with ‘Sweet Seventeen’ rolling across like a marquee. Harry couldn’t help but smile.
“Cheers,” he muttered, somewhat shyly. He’d never had a birthday party of any sort before and even if this one only included his godfather and two house-elves, it was much better than any birthday before. At least he wouldn’t be doing chores today. Or at least, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be.
“Sit down, sit down!” Sirius exclaimed, motioning to the huge stack of pancakes. They were covered in strawberries and blueberries and whipped cream in every colour except white. Sirius waved his wand and seventeen candles appeared on top of the stack of pancakes. “Come on, then. Blow them out.”
Harry did, and since he couldn’t think of anything better to wish for, as he wasn’t exactly wanting for anything, he thought, ‘I wish Sirius and I were really a family.’ All of the candles went out and he laughed before helping himself to some pancakes. It wasn’t exactly a traditional birthday cake, but he’d never had one of those either and the pancakes were really good, anyway. He told Ginger so and she preened.
Afterwards, when Harry was on his third pancake and Sirius couldn’t wait any longer for fear of exploding with excitement, a brightly wrapped package was thrust into his hand. “Open it!” Sirius grinned. Harry looked down at the tag: Happy Birthday, Harry, Love Sirius. He ripped into the paper and smiled.
“Thanks,” he said excitedly. It was a book on defensive magic. Several more packages like this were thrust at him, all with tags reading, respectively: Love, your godfather; Love Snuffles and Love, Padfoot. He got books on all sorts of different magics and even one on proper wizarding etiquette, which he cuffed Sirius for.
There was another package left—a big one wrapped in paper that had little pirate ships that floated around on it, and he struggled as it was thrust into his hands. Sirius sat back with a smug grin as Harry plunked it down on the table and stood on his tip-toes to open the top.
He blushed and laughed when he finally looked inside. There were dozens upon dozens of wizarding porn videos inside, all recorded on a clever new invention called ‘floo disks’ or FDs for short, which, when tossed into a magical fireplace, showed movies like DVDs. “Sirius!” he exclaimed, embarrassed. Sirius guffawed with laughter and pointed inside.
“I didn’t know what you liked,” he explained with a grin, “So I got you a little bit of everything. There’s everything from regular boy-girl sex to boy-boy sex to girl-girl sex to boy-girl-boy to boy-inanimate object to animals,” here, Harry cringed, “to fetishes to kinks to BDSM to cuddling in that box.”
Harry laughed and pulled out Boys With Two Wands which looked to be worth watching if only for gruesome curiosity, and said, “You’re supposed to be acting like a parental figure. You can’t give me porn.” Secretly, though, he was delighted. There was more boy-boy than anything else, he realised with a satisfied grin.
Sirius laughed. “You said you wanted it,” he said with an unrepentant shrug.
Sirius sobered after that and Harry caught it. “What?” he asked.
Sirius fumbled in his pocket. “I have one more present for you,” he said, holding out a small, plain box with a gaudy little white bow stuck to the top. There was no tag on this one and Harry stared at his godfather as he reached out to take it.
“What is it?” he asked stupidly. Sirius bit his lip in reply. Slowly, Harry flipped the lid open and stared in confusion. “It’s a ring,” he said dumbly. It was pretty, he supposed, but it was a little bit…feminine…for his tastes. The band was white gold and there was a delicate collection of emeralds and diamonds set in it. He stared at it in confusion, hoping this wasn’t another wizarding thing and that all pure-blooded male wizards wore women’s jewellery.
“Yeah,” Sirius answered quietly. “It was your mother’s wedding ring. I took it off her finger, you know…that night. I figured I’d give it to you someday. Today seemed a good day, I guess…it’s been sitting in my vault this whole time.”
Harry stared at it for several long minutes before he slipped it on his pinkie finger on his right hand and stared at it some more. He thought that he could almost feel his mother wearing it as it touched his skin. He felt warmer, and didn’t really give a damn about wearing women’s jewellery anymore.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. Sirius coughed and motioned to the owls gathered impatiently around the table.
“You have some letters, too—from your friends, I think.” Harry smiled, grateful for the distraction and beckoned Hedwig over to him first. She had a letter and a small package which Harry opened before reaching for the letter. It was from Hermione and she’d given him a book on French ritual magic. He supposed that he would be able to start his own library after this summer.
After he took the letter from Hedwig, she nipped his fingers gently and jumped off to the other side of the table where some bacon was sitting in a platter.
So his friends didn’t know he wasn’t at the Dursley’s anymore? He was nearly certain that Dumbledore would’ve informed the Order, but he supposed they hadn’t. He probably would’ve received some sort of panicked letter from Ron if he had—asking him what he was doing staying with a Death Eater impersonating his godfather.
It was then that he realised that he’d neglected to write either of his friends all summer and that they were probably going to think him insane when he finally did. That was okay; he’d thought himself insane for a while, too.
The next owl was Pigwidgeon from Ron and Ginny and included a huge sack of Chocolate Frogs along with a similar letter. Ron had been spending most of his time practicing for Quidditch and Ginny had been helping the twins out at the shop, but neither of them mentioned anything about Sirius or him not being at his relatives’ house.
The twins sent him a box of gag-gifts and new products that they were hoping he would consent to testing, and Harry laughed because he really hadn’t expected much else.
And then, a thought occurred to him, and Harry looked back up at his godfather. “Have you read the paper this morning?” he asked.
Sirius shook his head. “Nah—I don’t take the paper. It’s just a gossip rag,” he said, but as if on cue, Errol, the Weasley’s other, older owl flew in and landed right in the middle of the left-over pancakes. Tired as he was, Errol was determined and pulled himself up from the pancakes with an owlish huff. He staggered over to Harry and held his leg out triumphantly.
Harry untied the parchment and as he unrolled it, a newspaper clipping fell out. He suddenly felt his heart starting to beat much faster because Ron would never go against Dumbledore’s wishes and send Harry news if it wasn’t extremely important.
With shaking hands, he read the letter. It wasn’t much, but it was written in a shakily excited scrawl that Harry recognized immediately.
Harry was shaking even more than before. What had happened? Voldemort had warned him the night before that something significant would be in the paper today, but if it was important enough for Ron to go all washy on him like that, then it couldn’t be good. He picked up the article clipping and gaped.
[London] – Last night, 30 July, we here at the Daily Prophet received a floo call from the Ministry offering us breaking news to pass on to our loyal readers.
According to contacts at the Ministry, the story associated with Harry Potter, a.k.a The-Boy-Who-Lived that we have all assumed true for the past sixteen years (The Daily Prophet gave the exclusive story 1 November 1981—see: ‘Death Eater Attack on the Potters: The-Boy-Who-Lived!’) was not true at all!
Sirius Black, accused of betrayal of the Potters and murdering twelve muggles was proclaimed innocent last night after an impromptu questioning under Veritaserum revealed that Sirius Black was, in fact, not the Potters’ secret keeper.
Under Veritaserum, PeterPettigrew, a former friend of James Potter and Sirius Black and believed dead for the past sixteen years, confessed to not only being the secret keeper of the Potters, but also to framing one-time friend Sirius Black in the horrifying confrontation 2 November 1981 that resulted in the deaths of a dozen innocent muggle bystanders.
According to Auror Vanessa Gaffing, who answered a breaking and entering call at the Ministry, Pettigrew was found waiting at the Ministry Reception area twiddling his thumbs. He claimed to have important information and requested, personally, to be given Veritaserum.
Pettigrew was apprehended and currently awaits sentencing in a Ministry holding cell. The sentencing is scheduled for this Friday and is not open to the public.
The Ministry has ordered that Mr. Black be compensated for his wrongful imprisonment (see our story on page 11: ‘Sirius Black Settlement’) of twelve years and that all estates and funds previously frozen be released immediately.
While we here at the Daily Prophet applaud Mr. Black for his stoic resolve and determination all those years ago regarding his innocence, we wonder why Mr. Black was sent to Azkaban without trial to begin with. When asked about this, Ministry representatives refused comment.
After a bit of research, this reporter also discovered that Mr. Black was named Harry Potter’s godfather at Mr. Potter’s birth. We here at the Daily Prophet wonder how our Saviour will take this news. Will the Boy-Who-Lived be furious with the Ministry’s system of operation? This reporter wants to know. –Scott Leadsman
“Oh my god,” Harry whispered.
Sirius was up in an instant. “What? What is it?” he asked frantically. Harry silently handed him the newspaper article. Sirius skimmed it, eyes widening, and then read it again slowly—taking in every word.
“Oh my god,” Sirius repeated. “Oh my god,” he said again, a smile starting to form on his lips. They just looked at each other for several long minutes before Sirius pulled Harry up and started dancing with him around the kitchen, laughing and shouting. Harry couldn’t help but laugh with him.
It was only after they had both exhausted themselves that something occurred to Sirius. “You knew,” he said to Harry. “You asked me if I’d read the paper. How did you know?”
Harry’s eyes widened. “I didn’t know,” he insisted. “I just knew that something was going to be in the newspaper today.”
“Yeah, but how?” Sirius asked, waving a hand in frustration. “How’d you know?”
Harry stared at him, and after a moment’s contemplation, decided to answer. With a fair bit of hesitation, Harry told his godfather about his new connection to Voldemort, their chats, their discussions—almost everything. And for his part, Sirius didn’t start shouting or screaming, but his eyes certainly widened and narrowed appropriately.
At the end, they sat in silence, still a little stunned, before Sirius said, feigning casualness,
“I refuse to owe a favour to a dark lord.” Harry laughed, and the tension was broken.
-x-
Afterwards, Harry had written back to Ron and Hermione explaining where he was and what had happened as much as he was able to because he really didn’t relish the idea of doing it face to face. The barrage of questions and righteous exclamations would’ve been enough to put any wizard in an early grave. Harry figured there had been enough death lately.
He’d offered to take Sirius out to lunch to celebrate but Sirius wouldn’t hear of it because it was Harry’s birthday, so instead, they stayed home for the morning and decided that they would hit some muggle bars that night. Harry had never been and Sirius hadn’t been in nearly two decades, so he figured it was as good as anything for celebrations.
But the day was beautiful, and Harry couldn’t stand to stay inside the house, even with the library calling to him. He didn’t even want to think of what Hermione might say about that. He’d never hear the end of it. She’d just be so bloody…proud of him over it.
After breakfast, Sirius followed him outside and they sat in the garden drinking lemonade and watching the waves crash against the shore. It was warm and sunny and a bloody perfect day.
“But my God, the clouds are like cotton,” Harry muttered, lying in the grass and staring up at the sky. Sirius looked at him kind of funny and Harry decided that his godfather—no matter how much of a muggle lover he might be—had very little appreciation for literature or poetry of any kind. He felt a little bit sorry for him.
Fred, despite Sirius’ best efforts, had done an excellent job on the garden. And there were lilies planted everywhere which Harry appreciated and which Sirius probably did, even though he didn’t mention it at all.
Ginger came out a few minutes later to take in the empty glasses and remind them that lunch would be served at noon, but other than that, they were uninterrupted. It was several minutes later when Sirius started fidgeting uncontrollably. He wasn’t one for sitting still too long. Harry watched, amused, as Sirius first started pulling the grass up and shredding it and then moved on to searching for bugs in the grass.
When he couldn’t take it any longer, Sirius transformed, and bounced around for a few minutes as Padfoot. He got bored of chasing his own tail after a few minutes, and Harry, feeling amusedly sorry for him, called him over and rubbed him behind his ears.
“Good dog,” Harry cooed mockingly and Padfoot growled.
Harry laughed and settled back on the grass again while Padfoot went off in search of something more entertaining. He winced as something hard and sharp dug into his back. The book—he’d left it in his robes the other day and completely forgotten about it.
He flipped through it for a while, cringing at some of the theories on necromancy and getting a little teary-eyed over some of the love letters. They were never addressed by name and they were always signed with an R—except for on one occasion when Harry noticed a letter was signed RR. The page after that was a report detailing a rather gruesome attempt to resurrect said lover with no success and Harry decided he’d had enough.
He just couldn’t read it anymore without sicking up all over the gardens, and he didn’t think Fred would appreciate that very much. Padfoot was no where in sight so he trekked off to the Manor proper and headed for the main library to exchange it for something less…titillating.
Ginger, who was busy cleaning the stone floors of the library by hand, gave him a quelling look and silently dared him to step foot on her newly washed floors.
“I just want to exchange this book,” Harry said helplessly as Ginger continued to stare him down. Honestly, he’d never seen such an overbearing house-elf.
“Ginger asks Little Master to use the second entrance to library, then. Little Master will find it behind portrait of Arcturus Black on the third floor.” Harry cringed again. He had no idea why Fred and Ginger always referred to him as Little Master instead of Harry or even Master Harry, but he couldn’t persuade them otherwise.
He thanked Ginger, tucked the book back into his robes and jogged up the stairs. He’d seen the portrait of Arcturus Black the week before—according to Sirius, he was his paternal grandfather—but he couldn’t quite remember where.
He passed a couple windows that he’d not noticed the first day, but now that he did, realised that the view of the firth was amazing. There were other portraits—another Sirius Black who looked remarkably like Harry’s godfather, Melina Black, Phineas Black the original and several others that were not present in Grimmauld Place. Harry suspected that this was because Grimmauld Place had been Sirius’ mother’s family’s home and not his father’s family’s.
Twenty minutes later, Harry finally found an Arcturus Black. Right in plain view, and he wondered how he’d missed it his first time around. He’d almost forgotten why he was looking in the first place.
“Hello,” Harry said hesitantly. Arcturus Black was a stern looking man and the last thing Harry wanted to do was upset him—portrait or no. Arcturus was currently seated at a writing desk and tapping a quill to his chin in thought. He looked up and stared at Harry—neat, grey hair was tied delicately at his nape, but that was the only delicate thing about the man.
Arcturus did not speak, so Harry, beginning to fidget in his discomfort, opened his mouth again. “I’d like to get to the library…if that’s okay with you, of course.”
Still, Arcturus did not speak. It was when Harry was ready to just turn around and wait for Ginger’s floors to dry, that he finally stood from his writing desk and approached the front of the frame. “Come closer, boy.”
Harry did so, although warily. It was not like a portrait could hurt him, but Arcturus had eyes like a basilisk, and Harry began to doubt himself. Arcturus leaned down and peered at Harry closely, eyes flickering all across Harry’s face. He leaned back and stroked his sharp black goatee thoughtfully, and then, nodded his head once.
The portrait swung inward instead of outward, which Harry found unnerving as Arcturus watched him closely as he stepped through the gilded frame. There was a narrow corridor leading straight ahead with no windows on either side, and just as Harry retrieved his wand for light, the portrait swung shut again with a resounding boom. He jumped, and could hear a low, resonating chuckle from the other side.
Unnerved, he lit his wand and held it out in front of him. He took a few hesitant steps, and when no traps were sprung, he continued on. The corridor wasn’t very long at all, which surprised Harry when he bumped into a wall at the other end, even with his wand lit. He realised that it was an illusion of sorts and remembered that Sirius’ father had been quite the paranoid man. He suspected it ran in the family.
Fumbling, Harry located an uneven panel on the wall in front of him and pushed. The wall was a door, and it creaked. It was heavy and twice as wide as a normal door; he had to end up using his shoulders, but it opened. Harry was immediately assaulted with overly bright sunlight flickering in from the skylights in the library. He winced and then turned to shut the door behind him, wondering how he’d never noticed a door there to begin with, but stopped in his tracks when he saw the door in the light.
There was a tapestry mounted on the inside of the door displaying the Black Family Tree back at least a dozen generations. It was huge and slightly better preserved than the one at Grimmauld Place, but other than the size and state of repair, there was one big difference from this tapestry and the one in London.
There were no scorch marks. At all.
It was completely preserved in its near-original state and Harry was fascinated. It began with Castor Black in 1401 who married Jeanerette Goldstein and had two sons, who in turn branched off and created dozens of other Black lines. There were at least two other Siriuses and several Reguluses even before the tapestry made it to the original Phineas Black on the tapestry at Grimmauld Place.
Harry scanned it slowly, taking in every detail of his godfather’s family and finally putting names and dates to the seven holes he’d seen at Grimmauld Place. He followed it to the right first and all the way down to Andromeda, with a line connecting her to Theodore Tonks and then to Nymphadora. They hadn’t been on the other tapestry and it felt kind of odd to finally see Tonks on a Black Family Tapestry. To her right, Narcissa was linked to Lucius Malfoy with Draco sprouted off below.
Harry sneered and circled back up to the top to follow the next line down. He sat there for nearly an hour and still hadn’t made it to his godfather’s line, but he was in no rush. He had all summer to do whatever he wanted, and at the moment, he wanted to learn a little history. This was much better than Professor Binns’ class.
Harry found himself creating back-stories for all of the Blacks that died young and amused himself with it thoroughly. He’d noticed that when Bellatrix was born, her father was only thirteen years old. He couldn’t tell if he was disgusted or amused by that.
At some point, he’d flopped down in front of the tapestry, cross-legged and leaned back against the door frame for comfort, and so he was surprised when a hand landed on his shoulder. He jumped and turned his head, wondering how Sirius had managed to sneak up on him.
“Hey, kiddo,” Sirius grinned. He was sweaty and his hair was wild in the places that were stuck to his skin with perspiration. “What’cha doin’?”
Harry gestured in front of him. “This one’s complete. And bigger.” An unreadable emotion flickered over Sirius’ eyes as he noticed what had captured Harry’s attention, but it disappeared quickly and he sat down cross-legged next to him.
“I’ve never seen this one,” Sirius admitted, head cocked to the side. “How’d you find it?”
“Ginger was cleaning the main floor of the library when I came in and told me to take the second entrance.”
“What second entrance?” Sirius asked, utterly perplexed. “I mean, my grandfather lived here when I was growing up, and we didn’t visit that often, but I thought Regulus and I would have found all the secret passageways.”
Harry shrugged. “I don’t know how secret it is if Ginger knew about it, but then, she’s a house-elf, so,” he shrugged again. “Anyway, the corridor leading here is behind a portrait of Arcturus Black on the third floor. Just ask, and he’ll let you in…not a very likable bloke, though.”
Harry missed the odd expression that crossed Sirius’ face when he mentioned the portrait letting him through because he’d resumed his study of the tapestry, now only one line away from Sirius’. They studied the tapestry in companionable silence for a while, Sirius interjecting humorous stories as he passed over several ancestors and Harry drifting lower and lower through the generations.
It wasn’t until Harry finally reached the bottom of the last line of Blacks that he broke the silence himself with a sharp intake of breath.
“What?” Sirius asked. Harry didn’t answer, and Sirius looked back and forth between the tapestry and his godson in rapid succession. “What?” he asked again. Harry pointed, at the bottom and slightly to the left where the end of Sirius’ line was. Only—Sirius wasn’t the last of that line of Blacks. Regulus wasn’t even the last of that line.
Instead, there was a single line leading directly from Sirius Black—1960 -, to Castor Black—1980- and no line connecting Sirius to a wife.
“What the bloody fuck…?” Sirius whispered incredulously. He got up from his cross-legged position and leaned on his knees to stare at the tapestry closer. Harry had not moved; he was sitting remarkably still and staring straight at the last name on the tapestry. Sirius looked back at him and managed a sheepish grin.
“I suppose I’ve got a bastard kid somewhere, only…” he shook his head, obviously trying to clear it and tried to grin again, but he looked a little panicked, even to Harry.
“Only what?” Harry whispered, still not looking at his godfather.
“It’s nothing,” Sirius insisted, but the argument sounded weak even to his own ears. His eyebrows were furrowed, but he was still trying to grin foolishly, and the result made him look terribly restless.
Harry finally looked up at him, and Sirius noted that his eyes were intense and blank at the same time. “Only…,” Sirius hesitated, “…only I’ve never been with anyone but your mother.”
-x-
A/N:
1. “But my God, the clouds are like cotton,” is quoted from ‘A Birthday Present’ by Sylvia Plath.
NEXT CHAPTER
comments=love
Chapter Title: Black, Arcturus 04/14
Words (this chapter): 6,716
Rating (this chapter): PG-13
Story Info/All Chapters: HERE
Author's Notes: I think it should be noted that I have tried my level best to make this as 'British' as possible, but, alas, I am not British. If you are and you see something said/done anywhere in this fic that makes you go 'homgwtf, we don't say that shit(e)', let me know. I'll probably end up loving you forever.
Beta’d by
littlevlahgirl and amelancholykiss. Many thanks to both of them. -x-
Black, in the Smothering Dark
-x-
Chapter Four
Black, Arcturus
-x-
By the day before Harry’s seventeenth birthday, Sirius had forgotten about Snape’s visit, but it was still fresh on his mind. Harry thought about Snape’s parting words over and over and over until he finally worked himself into a furious rage, headed out to the gardens, and started hexing and jinxing anything and everything in sight.
That was how Sirius found him that afternoon after lunch. Harry was back in a t-shirt and jeans and hexing everything from a few straggling garden gnomes to Fred’s prized flower beds. Off to the side, Fred was wringing his hands and grumbling, but refused to step in to save his flowers.
Sirius walked up next to Harry and watched unseen for several minutes before he shrugged and pulled out his own wand. He muttered under his breath and an unsuspecting garden gnome imploded. Harry stopped suddenly and watched.
“That’s dark magic,” he said accusingly.
“No it’s not,” Sirius said, shaking his head. “It’s a house-cleaning charm. A variant of the vanishing charm that we used to use in school to get rid of suspicious evidence after pranks.”
Harry cocked his head to the side. “But it looks like dark magic.”
Sirius shook his head again. “Anything is dark magic if you want it to be. You light your fireplaces with Incendio, but what do you think would happen if you cast it on another person?” He shrugged casually. “It’s not the magic, it’s the intent.”
“But you intended to hurt the garden gnome with that spell,” Harry insisted.
“No, I didn’t,” Sirius said. “I just wanted to see what would happen.”
Harry laughed humourlessly. “So, you’re telling me that I could use Avada Kedavra and it wouldn’t be dark?” he asked sarcastically.
Sirius nodded, quite emphatically. “Of course,” he said. “How do you think livestock is killed for mass consumption? The Ministry grants licenses to wizarding ranchers. There’s a lot of paperwork involved, I understand, but,” he shrugged, “they still use it. It’s better than gutting them with ritual daggers, don’t you think?”
“But that’s different,” Harry insisted.
“How?” Sirius asked with a raised eyebrow. Harry didn’t have an answer for that, so he just flopped down on the grass and stared at the spot where the unfortunate garden gnome had been. He wondered if there was a special plane of existence where all imploded things went. He supposed it was something like a Black Hole. Sirius sat down next to him with his arms draped over his knees and his wand dangling from his fingertips.
“How often do you actually use Ministry-classified dark magic?” Harry asked after several minutes.
“Well, Remus let me use his wand for a couple beheading hexes and a perpetual fire charm when I was still staying in that cave outside Hogsmeade,” he said with a shrug. Harry gaped at him. “I was hungry!” Sirius insisted. “They were rabbits—already dead, anyway. I snapped their necks when I caught them. I just couldn’t stand to eat them with their heads on, so I got rid of the problem,” he finished with a shrug.
“Gross,” Harry decided.
Sirius laughed. “I suppose maybe to you, but I grew up with beheading hexes, you understand. My da took Regulus and me camping sometimes and he always made us take care of our own meals. I wasn’t an animagus then so we had to stun them and then behead them just to kill them.”
“Why didn’t you use Avada Kedavra?” Harry asked, genuinely curious.
“We were like…seven and eight years old, kiddo,” Sirius said with a laugh. “We weren’t magically strong enough to cast that yet. We didn’t learn the Killing Curse until we were ten.”
“Didn’t you have the Underage Use of Magic statute back then?” Harry asked.
“Yeah, of course,” Sirius answered. “That’s been around since the 1940s when some foolish muggle-born kids decided they were going to show all their parents’ friends how to levitate cars. Pure-blood kids, though, sometimes got to use their parents’ wands—which in a lot of cases have the Ministry Magic Regulators removed.”
Harry laughed. “So what happened to those muggle-born kids that levitated the cars?”
Sirius flopped back on the grass and put his hands behind his head. “If I remember correctly, they were expelled and their magic was permanently bound. The muggle-born kids already had statutes for using magic outside of the wizarding world, but they said it was discrimination or something and decided to revolt.” Sirius shrugged awkwardly.
“It was pandemonium…this happened in America, I think, and there was some sort of conspiracy or something. I don’t know, anyway, the kids all did it at the same time. There was probably a couple hundred or so of them. The American aurors were flooded for months trying to straighten that out. Obliviations and forgeries of newspapers and what not. It was hellish. And so, there you have the reasoning behind the underage magic usage clause.”
Harry gaped at his godfather. “Wasn’t that a little harsh? To permanently bind their magic?”
Sirius shrugged again, still lying on the grass. “Not really. They were lucky they didn’t serve time in Kiljoy—that’s the American prison.”
“But they were kids!” Harry insisted.
Sirius shrugged. “And they used massive amounts of magic in front of huge groups of muggles all across the American east coast. It’s illegal.” Sirius turned to Harry and looked at him intently. “You’ve got to understand that more than two-thousand muggles were exposed to magic. The pure-bloods were calling for the binding of all muggle-born children and the Ministries almost agreed to it. It was close for a while. The only thing that stopped it was when the French Minister reminded them that without muggle-born children, new bloodlines wouldn’t form.”
Harry lay down next to Sirius and stared up at the clouds thoughtfully. “Is that why pure-bloods hate the muggle-born so much?” he asked finally.
“Part of it,” Sirius agreed. “It’s still fresh in a lot of minds, you know.” Harry hummed thoughtfully in reply.
-x-
Excerpt from the Journal of a Necromancer, 47th page.
11 June, 845
S,
Your son was born today. I am still weary, but I felt you should know immediately. If you were here, I know you would be blissful.
He is beautiful, and looks just like you as I have told you he would. He is small and pink and his eyes are wise even now. Like you, Beloved. He will be like you. I have named him Samuel because I know that you have always hated common names and I was feeling vindictive and amused this afternoon.
I will call him Sam, which is even more common, and I hope that you roll in your grave over it. Perhaps it will convince you to return to me sooner, if only to scold me and call for a renaming ceremony.
The Nag laughs as I write this. She has been badgering me to keep still these last months and I have evaded her each time. I no longer have an excuse to keep still and she no longer has an excuse to nag me, though I know she does it lovingly. She is like a mother hen without chicks—stealing ducklings and other small fowl to care for instead.
The muggles have not yet retreated. No one has left the wards of the village, and I do not believe that they will anytime soon. A man has moved to the village. He is a necromancer and he has given me something new to ponder—as I have nothing else to occupy my time with now except for your son.
It was decided that the muggle-born children will not be admitted to school this year, so classes at Hogwarts will be significantly smaller; my time will be significantly more plentiful as a result. I will leave you to growl in your death while I contemplate this necromancer and his theories.
Yours, spitefully,
R.
-x-
Other than the after-breakfast conversation with Sirius in the garden, it had been a wonderful day, and when Harry found himself yet again in half-corporeal form in Voldemort’s study the night before his birthday, he couldn’t be arsed to be irritated about it.
He had tried to stay up until midnight to count down, but had been so remarkably tired from all the spell work he’d done—Sirius was teaching him as Harry had asked the week before—that he’d fallen asleep shortly after ten, and Harry had a sneaking suspicion that Voldemort might be an insomniac.
For the past few weeks, every time Harry had arrived, Voldemort had seemed to be deep in thought—as if he were worried about something, and this time was no different. Voldemort was again standing at the window with one scaly white hand absently petting Nagini as he muttered to himself in Parseltongue. Harry couldn’t pick out the words from that distance, but he didn’t think they would be anything good.
He didn’t say anything this time, and instead occupied himself with wandering around the sitting room studying the titles of the books on the shelves and magical maps that were tacked along the panelled walls.
“Where are we?” he asked suddenly. Voldemort spun around, surprised, and narrowed his eyes.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you that it’s rude to not only sneak up on some one, but also to pilfer through their belongings while you do?” he snarled. Harry winced; Voldemort was obviously not in a charitable mood—as if he ever was, really.
He gave him a sheepish smile, and Voldemort narrowed his eyes further, but seemed to accept it as some sort of apology. It wasn’t as if Harry would ever actually apologize to Voldemort for anything, so it was all he would get.
“Ard-Mhéara,” Voldemort answered curtly.
“What?” Harry asked, forgetting his previously question.
“We’re in Ard-Mhéara, the Riddle manor,” Voldemort answered patiently.
Harry nodded thoughtfully, and scanned several more book titles. “I thought your father was a muggle,” he said, ignoring the continued narrowing of the Dark Lord’s red eyes. “I’m just saying that I didn’t think there would be a Riddle Manor, you know. Don’t get all defensive about it,” he finished petulantly.
“Ah,” Voldemort nodded understandingly. He walked over to the chair near the fireplace and conjured their tea while Nagini curled up in his lap. “There wasn’t originally. This used to be the family home of one of my ancestors, many generations back. I renamed it when I was younger—hoping to establish my own line. That never worked out, as you can see,” he added with a sneer.
Harry watched as Voldemort added two sugars, no cream and a healthy dose of cyanide to his tea before he accepted. At first, he’d been slightly offended, but then realised that if he were Voldemort, he’d be poisoning his tea, too, and now found it rather humorous.
“Thank you,” he said, taking his tea with a wry grin. Voldemort smirked back at him as he settled back and sipped his tea from his pewter cup.
“Are you finally interested in wizarding heritages, then?” Voldemort asked after a few minutes. Before Harry could answer, Nagini hissed that she would be out hunting, and after a nod from Voldemort, slithered off his lap. Harry stared at her retreating form for several seconds before he finally spoke.
“I don’t know,” he finally said. “It’s just that, last month, I found out that my mother wasn’t muggle-born. It just kind of made me wonder about my own history.” He shrugged and stared down at his tea cup. It was a gaudy little thing. The tea sets never matched from visit to visit, but they were always a set, except for the one Voldemort used.
“Your mother was not British.” It was not a question, but Harry looked up sharply with a question of his own in his eyes. Voldemort continued casually. “American, if I recall. Younger daughter of the one-time New England Minister of Magic. The Evans family migrated from New York City to Manchester in the late sixties. Assassinated, though the assassin was never found, nor was it ever even determined—or at least, released to the public—whether it was by muggle or wizarding means. The case was closed a mere five days after it was opened,” he finished in a bored tone.
“How do you know that?” Harry asked in a faint voice.
Voldemort shrugged, unconcerned. “I know a lot of things.” His red eyes bore into Harry’s, and he said, “Such as, I know that you are staying with your godfather—believed dead—near Glasgow.”
“Edinburgh,” Harry automatically corrected, though he wasn’t entirely sure exactly how far away from Glasgow River House was.
Voldemort smiled triumphantly. “You would do best to learn not to give away such information to an enemy.”
Harry inhaled sharply. “You tricked me.” Voldemort smiled. “But…you knew anyway…you were just trying to see what I would admit if you caught me off guard.”
“Perhaps,” Voldemort answered noncommittally.
“Why haven’t you come for me yet then? You could have caught me completely unaware.”
“Who says I haven’t?” Voldemort returned.
Harry was getting frantic by now. He wasn’t sure if Voldemort was serious or not. He knew entirely too much and Harry knew entirely too little. “Have you?” he finally asked, breathing heavily, even though it wasn’t necessary to breath at all. He could almost feel a heartbeat—beating frantically in his chest, and assumed it was his own heartbeat back at River House.
Voldemort studied him for several minutes, and the longer he did, the more panicked Harry became. Finally, he answered, “Me? No,” and before Harry could blurt out ‘why not?’ the subject was abruptly changed. “Heritage is a wonderful thing, Potter,” he said, taking another sip of his tea. “Perhaps you should look into yours more thoroughly.”
Harry nodded dumbly and looked down at the dregs of his tea. His fingers started flickering again, and he knew that the shock of what Voldemort had just told him was bringing him back to his body.
“You will be seventeen tomorrow, will you not?” Voldemort asked abruptly, eyeing Harry’s wavering form. Harry nodded, stunned and confused, and Voldemort sent him a manic grin. “Your coming of age…it deserves a celebration. Check the papers tomorrow,” Voldemort said.
“Why?” Harry asked, anxiously. Voldemort grinned mysteriously again.
“A birthday gift for you.”
Harry, rather frightened of what that could be, slipped away and had nightmares the rest of the night.
-x-
Breakfast was waiting for Harry when he stumbled down the stairs, still in his pyjamas, the next morning.
“Happy birthday, kiddo!” Sirius crowed. He was partially hidden by a table piled high with pancakes, owls and presents. He, Ginger and Fred were all wearing little wizard hats with sparkling pom-poms on the top and confetti was falling perpetually from the ceiling like a snow-globe that didn’t need shaking. There was a banner hanging in front of the window with ‘Sweet Seventeen’ rolling across like a marquee. Harry couldn’t help but smile.
“Cheers,” he muttered, somewhat shyly. He’d never had a birthday party of any sort before and even if this one only included his godfather and two house-elves, it was much better than any birthday before. At least he wouldn’t be doing chores today. Or at least, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be.
“Sit down, sit down!” Sirius exclaimed, motioning to the huge stack of pancakes. They were covered in strawberries and blueberries and whipped cream in every colour except white. Sirius waved his wand and seventeen candles appeared on top of the stack of pancakes. “Come on, then. Blow them out.”
Harry did, and since he couldn’t think of anything better to wish for, as he wasn’t exactly wanting for anything, he thought, ‘I wish Sirius and I were really a family.’ All of the candles went out and he laughed before helping himself to some pancakes. It wasn’t exactly a traditional birthday cake, but he’d never had one of those either and the pancakes were really good, anyway. He told Ginger so and she preened.
Afterwards, when Harry was on his third pancake and Sirius couldn’t wait any longer for fear of exploding with excitement, a brightly wrapped package was thrust into his hand. “Open it!” Sirius grinned. Harry looked down at the tag: Happy Birthday, Harry, Love Sirius. He ripped into the paper and smiled.
“Thanks,” he said excitedly. It was a book on defensive magic. Several more packages like this were thrust at him, all with tags reading, respectively: Love, your godfather; Love Snuffles and Love, Padfoot. He got books on all sorts of different magics and even one on proper wizarding etiquette, which he cuffed Sirius for.
There was another package left—a big one wrapped in paper that had little pirate ships that floated around on it, and he struggled as it was thrust into his hands. Sirius sat back with a smug grin as Harry plunked it down on the table and stood on his tip-toes to open the top.
He blushed and laughed when he finally looked inside. There were dozens upon dozens of wizarding porn videos inside, all recorded on a clever new invention called ‘floo disks’ or FDs for short, which, when tossed into a magical fireplace, showed movies like DVDs. “Sirius!” he exclaimed, embarrassed. Sirius guffawed with laughter and pointed inside.
“I didn’t know what you liked,” he explained with a grin, “So I got you a little bit of everything. There’s everything from regular boy-girl sex to boy-boy sex to girl-girl sex to boy-girl-boy to boy-inanimate object to animals,” here, Harry cringed, “to fetishes to kinks to BDSM to cuddling in that box.”
Harry laughed and pulled out Boys With Two Wands which looked to be worth watching if only for gruesome curiosity, and said, “You’re supposed to be acting like a parental figure. You can’t give me porn.” Secretly, though, he was delighted. There was more boy-boy than anything else, he realised with a satisfied grin.
Sirius laughed. “You said you wanted it,” he said with an unrepentant shrug.
Sirius sobered after that and Harry caught it. “What?” he asked.
Sirius fumbled in his pocket. “I have one more present for you,” he said, holding out a small, plain box with a gaudy little white bow stuck to the top. There was no tag on this one and Harry stared at his godfather as he reached out to take it.
“What is it?” he asked stupidly. Sirius bit his lip in reply. Slowly, Harry flipped the lid open and stared in confusion. “It’s a ring,” he said dumbly. It was pretty, he supposed, but it was a little bit…feminine…for his tastes. The band was white gold and there was a delicate collection of emeralds and diamonds set in it. He stared at it in confusion, hoping this wasn’t another wizarding thing and that all pure-blooded male wizards wore women’s jewellery.
“Yeah,” Sirius answered quietly. “It was your mother’s wedding ring. I took it off her finger, you know…that night. I figured I’d give it to you someday. Today seemed a good day, I guess…it’s been sitting in my vault this whole time.”
Harry stared at it for several long minutes before he slipped it on his pinkie finger on his right hand and stared at it some more. He thought that he could almost feel his mother wearing it as it touched his skin. He felt warmer, and didn’t really give a damn about wearing women’s jewellery anymore.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. Sirius coughed and motioned to the owls gathered impatiently around the table.
“You have some letters, too—from your friends, I think.” Harry smiled, grateful for the distraction and beckoned Hedwig over to him first. She had a letter and a small package which Harry opened before reaching for the letter. It was from Hermione and she’d given him a book on French ritual magic. He supposed that he would be able to start his own library after this summer.
After he took the letter from Hedwig, she nipped his fingers gently and jumped off to the other side of the table where some bacon was sitting in a platter.
Dear Harry,
How are you? I just got back from France this evening with my parents. It was great and so educational. We saw the Eiffel Tower again, which never ceases to be amazing. I’ve enclosed some pictures I took from the top for you. They’re muggle pictures, but I think you’ll agree with me that the view is still fantastic.
How has your summer been? I hope that your relatives haven’t been treating you too badly. I’ll probably see you at the Burrow later this summer, and we can catch up, but Hedwig’s just arrived, so I better send this off now.
Love, Hermione
So his friends didn’t know he wasn’t at the Dursley’s anymore? He was nearly certain that Dumbledore would’ve informed the Order, but he supposed they hadn’t. He probably would’ve received some sort of panicked letter from Ron if he had—asking him what he was doing staying with a Death Eater impersonating his godfather.
It was then that he realised that he’d neglected to write either of his friends all summer and that they were probably going to think him insane when he finally did. That was okay; he’d thought himself insane for a while, too.
The next owl was Pigwidgeon from Ron and Ginny and included a huge sack of Chocolate Frogs along with a similar letter. Ron had been spending most of his time practicing for Quidditch and Ginny had been helping the twins out at the shop, but neither of them mentioned anything about Sirius or him not being at his relatives’ house.
The twins sent him a box of gag-gifts and new products that they were hoping he would consent to testing, and Harry laughed because he really hadn’t expected much else.
And then, a thought occurred to him, and Harry looked back up at his godfather. “Have you read the paper this morning?” he asked.
Sirius shook his head. “Nah—I don’t take the paper. It’s just a gossip rag,” he said, but as if on cue, Errol, the Weasley’s other, older owl flew in and landed right in the middle of the left-over pancakes. Tired as he was, Errol was determined and pulled himself up from the pancakes with an owlish huff. He staggered over to Harry and held his leg out triumphantly.
Harry untied the parchment and as he unrolled it, a newspaper clipping fell out. He suddenly felt his heart starting to beat much faster because Ron would never go against Dumbledore’s wishes and send Harry news if it wasn’t extremely important.
With shaking hands, he read the letter. It wasn’t much, but it was written in a shakily excited scrawl that Harry recognized immediately.
Harry,
Thought you might want to read this. Happy birthday, mate. I’m always here for you.
Ron
Harry was shaking even more than before. What had happened? Voldemort had warned him the night before that something significant would be in the paper today, but if it was important enough for Ron to go all washy on him like that, then it couldn’t be good. He picked up the article clipping and gaped.
Surprising Confession from Peter Pettigrew
[London] – Last night, 30 July, we here at the Daily Prophet received a floo call from the Ministry offering us breaking news to pass on to our loyal readers.
According to contacts at the Ministry, the story associated with Harry Potter, a.k.a The-Boy-Who-Lived that we have all assumed true for the past sixteen years (The Daily Prophet gave the exclusive story 1 November 1981—see: ‘Death Eater Attack on the Potters: The-Boy-Who-Lived!’) was not true at all!
Sirius Black, accused of betrayal of the Potters and murdering twelve muggles was proclaimed innocent last night after an impromptu questioning under Veritaserum revealed that Sirius Black was, in fact, not the Potters’ secret keeper.
Under Veritaserum, PeterPettigrew, a former friend of James Potter and Sirius Black and believed dead for the past sixteen years, confessed to not only being the secret keeper of the Potters, but also to framing one-time friend Sirius Black in the horrifying confrontation 2 November 1981 that resulted in the deaths of a dozen innocent muggle bystanders.
According to Auror Vanessa Gaffing, who answered a breaking and entering call at the Ministry, Pettigrew was found waiting at the Ministry Reception area twiddling his thumbs. He claimed to have important information and requested, personally, to be given Veritaserum.
Pettigrew was apprehended and currently awaits sentencing in a Ministry holding cell. The sentencing is scheduled for this Friday and is not open to the public.
The Ministry has ordered that Mr. Black be compensated for his wrongful imprisonment (see our story on page 11: ‘Sirius Black Settlement’) of twelve years and that all estates and funds previously frozen be released immediately.
While we here at the Daily Prophet applaud Mr. Black for his stoic resolve and determination all those years ago regarding his innocence, we wonder why Mr. Black was sent to Azkaban without trial to begin with. When asked about this, Ministry representatives refused comment.
After a bit of research, this reporter also discovered that Mr. Black was named Harry Potter’s godfather at Mr. Potter’s birth. We here at the Daily Prophet wonder how our Saviour will take this news. Will the Boy-Who-Lived be furious with the Ministry’s system of operation? This reporter wants to know. –Scott Leadsman
“Oh my god,” Harry whispered.
Sirius was up in an instant. “What? What is it?” he asked frantically. Harry silently handed him the newspaper article. Sirius skimmed it, eyes widening, and then read it again slowly—taking in every word.
“Oh my god,” Sirius repeated. “Oh my god,” he said again, a smile starting to form on his lips. They just looked at each other for several long minutes before Sirius pulled Harry up and started dancing with him around the kitchen, laughing and shouting. Harry couldn’t help but laugh with him.
It was only after they had both exhausted themselves that something occurred to Sirius. “You knew,” he said to Harry. “You asked me if I’d read the paper. How did you know?”
Harry’s eyes widened. “I didn’t know,” he insisted. “I just knew that something was going to be in the newspaper today.”
“Yeah, but how?” Sirius asked, waving a hand in frustration. “How’d you know?”
Harry stared at him, and after a moment’s contemplation, decided to answer. With a fair bit of hesitation, Harry told his godfather about his new connection to Voldemort, their chats, their discussions—almost everything. And for his part, Sirius didn’t start shouting or screaming, but his eyes certainly widened and narrowed appropriately.
At the end, they sat in silence, still a little stunned, before Sirius said, feigning casualness,
“I refuse to owe a favour to a dark lord.” Harry laughed, and the tension was broken.
-x-
Afterwards, Harry had written back to Ron and Hermione explaining where he was and what had happened as much as he was able to because he really didn’t relish the idea of doing it face to face. The barrage of questions and righteous exclamations would’ve been enough to put any wizard in an early grave. Harry figured there had been enough death lately.
He’d offered to take Sirius out to lunch to celebrate but Sirius wouldn’t hear of it because it was Harry’s birthday, so instead, they stayed home for the morning and decided that they would hit some muggle bars that night. Harry had never been and Sirius hadn’t been in nearly two decades, so he figured it was as good as anything for celebrations.
But the day was beautiful, and Harry couldn’t stand to stay inside the house, even with the library calling to him. He didn’t even want to think of what Hermione might say about that. He’d never hear the end of it. She’d just be so bloody…proud of him over it.
After breakfast, Sirius followed him outside and they sat in the garden drinking lemonade and watching the waves crash against the shore. It was warm and sunny and a bloody perfect day.
“But my God, the clouds are like cotton,” Harry muttered, lying in the grass and staring up at the sky. Sirius looked at him kind of funny and Harry decided that his godfather—no matter how much of a muggle lover he might be—had very little appreciation for literature or poetry of any kind. He felt a little bit sorry for him.
Fred, despite Sirius’ best efforts, had done an excellent job on the garden. And there were lilies planted everywhere which Harry appreciated and which Sirius probably did, even though he didn’t mention it at all.
Ginger came out a few minutes later to take in the empty glasses and remind them that lunch would be served at noon, but other than that, they were uninterrupted. It was several minutes later when Sirius started fidgeting uncontrollably. He wasn’t one for sitting still too long. Harry watched, amused, as Sirius first started pulling the grass up and shredding it and then moved on to searching for bugs in the grass.
When he couldn’t take it any longer, Sirius transformed, and bounced around for a few minutes as Padfoot. He got bored of chasing his own tail after a few minutes, and Harry, feeling amusedly sorry for him, called him over and rubbed him behind his ears.
“Good dog,” Harry cooed mockingly and Padfoot growled.
Harry laughed and settled back on the grass again while Padfoot went off in search of something more entertaining. He winced as something hard and sharp dug into his back. The book—he’d left it in his robes the other day and completely forgotten about it.
He flipped through it for a while, cringing at some of the theories on necromancy and getting a little teary-eyed over some of the love letters. They were never addressed by name and they were always signed with an R—except for on one occasion when Harry noticed a letter was signed RR. The page after that was a report detailing a rather gruesome attempt to resurrect said lover with no success and Harry decided he’d had enough.
He just couldn’t read it anymore without sicking up all over the gardens, and he didn’t think Fred would appreciate that very much. Padfoot was no where in sight so he trekked off to the Manor proper and headed for the main library to exchange it for something less…titillating.
Ginger, who was busy cleaning the stone floors of the library by hand, gave him a quelling look and silently dared him to step foot on her newly washed floors.
“I just want to exchange this book,” Harry said helplessly as Ginger continued to stare him down. Honestly, he’d never seen such an overbearing house-elf.
“Ginger asks Little Master to use the second entrance to library, then. Little Master will find it behind portrait of Arcturus Black on the third floor.” Harry cringed again. He had no idea why Fred and Ginger always referred to him as Little Master instead of Harry or even Master Harry, but he couldn’t persuade them otherwise.
He thanked Ginger, tucked the book back into his robes and jogged up the stairs. He’d seen the portrait of Arcturus Black the week before—according to Sirius, he was his paternal grandfather—but he couldn’t quite remember where.
He passed a couple windows that he’d not noticed the first day, but now that he did, realised that the view of the firth was amazing. There were other portraits—another Sirius Black who looked remarkably like Harry’s godfather, Melina Black, Phineas Black the original and several others that were not present in Grimmauld Place. Harry suspected that this was because Grimmauld Place had been Sirius’ mother’s family’s home and not his father’s family’s.
Twenty minutes later, Harry finally found an Arcturus Black. Right in plain view, and he wondered how he’d missed it his first time around. He’d almost forgotten why he was looking in the first place.
“Hello,” Harry said hesitantly. Arcturus Black was a stern looking man and the last thing Harry wanted to do was upset him—portrait or no. Arcturus was currently seated at a writing desk and tapping a quill to his chin in thought. He looked up and stared at Harry—neat, grey hair was tied delicately at his nape, but that was the only delicate thing about the man.
Arcturus did not speak, so Harry, beginning to fidget in his discomfort, opened his mouth again. “I’d like to get to the library…if that’s okay with you, of course.”
Still, Arcturus did not speak. It was when Harry was ready to just turn around and wait for Ginger’s floors to dry, that he finally stood from his writing desk and approached the front of the frame. “Come closer, boy.”
Harry did so, although warily. It was not like a portrait could hurt him, but Arcturus had eyes like a basilisk, and Harry began to doubt himself. Arcturus leaned down and peered at Harry closely, eyes flickering all across Harry’s face. He leaned back and stroked his sharp black goatee thoughtfully, and then, nodded his head once.
The portrait swung inward instead of outward, which Harry found unnerving as Arcturus watched him closely as he stepped through the gilded frame. There was a narrow corridor leading straight ahead with no windows on either side, and just as Harry retrieved his wand for light, the portrait swung shut again with a resounding boom. He jumped, and could hear a low, resonating chuckle from the other side.
Unnerved, he lit his wand and held it out in front of him. He took a few hesitant steps, and when no traps were sprung, he continued on. The corridor wasn’t very long at all, which surprised Harry when he bumped into a wall at the other end, even with his wand lit. He realised that it was an illusion of sorts and remembered that Sirius’ father had been quite the paranoid man. He suspected it ran in the family.
Fumbling, Harry located an uneven panel on the wall in front of him and pushed. The wall was a door, and it creaked. It was heavy and twice as wide as a normal door; he had to end up using his shoulders, but it opened. Harry was immediately assaulted with overly bright sunlight flickering in from the skylights in the library. He winced and then turned to shut the door behind him, wondering how he’d never noticed a door there to begin with, but stopped in his tracks when he saw the door in the light.
There was a tapestry mounted on the inside of the door displaying the Black Family Tree back at least a dozen generations. It was huge and slightly better preserved than the one at Grimmauld Place, but other than the size and state of repair, there was one big difference from this tapestry and the one in London.
There were no scorch marks. At all.
It was completely preserved in its near-original state and Harry was fascinated. It began with Castor Black in 1401 who married Jeanerette Goldstein and had two sons, who in turn branched off and created dozens of other Black lines. There were at least two other Siriuses and several Reguluses even before the tapestry made it to the original Phineas Black on the tapestry at Grimmauld Place.
Harry scanned it slowly, taking in every detail of his godfather’s family and finally putting names and dates to the seven holes he’d seen at Grimmauld Place. He followed it to the right first and all the way down to Andromeda, with a line connecting her to Theodore Tonks and then to Nymphadora. They hadn’t been on the other tapestry and it felt kind of odd to finally see Tonks on a Black Family Tapestry. To her right, Narcissa was linked to Lucius Malfoy with Draco sprouted off below.
Harry sneered and circled back up to the top to follow the next line down. He sat there for nearly an hour and still hadn’t made it to his godfather’s line, but he was in no rush. He had all summer to do whatever he wanted, and at the moment, he wanted to learn a little history. This was much better than Professor Binns’ class.
Harry found himself creating back-stories for all of the Blacks that died young and amused himself with it thoroughly. He’d noticed that when Bellatrix was born, her father was only thirteen years old. He couldn’t tell if he was disgusted or amused by that.
At some point, he’d flopped down in front of the tapestry, cross-legged and leaned back against the door frame for comfort, and so he was surprised when a hand landed on his shoulder. He jumped and turned his head, wondering how Sirius had managed to sneak up on him.
“Hey, kiddo,” Sirius grinned. He was sweaty and his hair was wild in the places that were stuck to his skin with perspiration. “What’cha doin’?”
Harry gestured in front of him. “This one’s complete. And bigger.” An unreadable emotion flickered over Sirius’ eyes as he noticed what had captured Harry’s attention, but it disappeared quickly and he sat down cross-legged next to him.
“I’ve never seen this one,” Sirius admitted, head cocked to the side. “How’d you find it?”
“Ginger was cleaning the main floor of the library when I came in and told me to take the second entrance.”
“What second entrance?” Sirius asked, utterly perplexed. “I mean, my grandfather lived here when I was growing up, and we didn’t visit that often, but I thought Regulus and I would have found all the secret passageways.”
Harry shrugged. “I don’t know how secret it is if Ginger knew about it, but then, she’s a house-elf, so,” he shrugged again. “Anyway, the corridor leading here is behind a portrait of Arcturus Black on the third floor. Just ask, and he’ll let you in…not a very likable bloke, though.”
Harry missed the odd expression that crossed Sirius’ face when he mentioned the portrait letting him through because he’d resumed his study of the tapestry, now only one line away from Sirius’. They studied the tapestry in companionable silence for a while, Sirius interjecting humorous stories as he passed over several ancestors and Harry drifting lower and lower through the generations.
It wasn’t until Harry finally reached the bottom of the last line of Blacks that he broke the silence himself with a sharp intake of breath.
“What?” Sirius asked. Harry didn’t answer, and Sirius looked back and forth between the tapestry and his godson in rapid succession. “What?” he asked again. Harry pointed, at the bottom and slightly to the left where the end of Sirius’ line was. Only—Sirius wasn’t the last of that line of Blacks. Regulus wasn’t even the last of that line.
Instead, there was a single line leading directly from Sirius Black—1960 -, to Castor Black—1980- and no line connecting Sirius to a wife.
“What the bloody fuck…?” Sirius whispered incredulously. He got up from his cross-legged position and leaned on his knees to stare at the tapestry closer. Harry had not moved; he was sitting remarkably still and staring straight at the last name on the tapestry. Sirius looked back at him and managed a sheepish grin.
“I suppose I’ve got a bastard kid somewhere, only…” he shook his head, obviously trying to clear it and tried to grin again, but he looked a little panicked, even to Harry.
“Only what?” Harry whispered, still not looking at his godfather.
“It’s nothing,” Sirius insisted, but the argument sounded weak even to his own ears. His eyebrows were furrowed, but he was still trying to grin foolishly, and the result made him look terribly restless.
Harry finally looked up at him, and Sirius noted that his eyes were intense and blank at the same time. “Only…,” Sirius hesitated, “…only I’ve never been with anyone but your mother.”
-x-
A/N:
1. “But my God, the clouds are like cotton,” is quoted from ‘A Birthday Present’ by Sylvia Plath.
NEXT CHAPTER
comments=love
excellent
(Anonymous) 2006-08-12 10:59 am (UTC)(link)Re: excellent
Re: excellent
I'll give you your DH love in time, my dear. It won't start until they get back to school of course, but you WILL see Draco BEFORE they go back to school. Are you excited? It's going to be a pretty good scene, I think.
THanks again!
Re: excellent
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ima guess, ready...? SS means Salazar Slytherin and RR is Rowena Ravenclaw...? Am i clever? *dont laugh if im wrong* :P
LOL great chapter, cant wait for more! cya xx
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Thanks!
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... i think.... :S
your welcome
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(Anonymous) 2006-08-12 05:13 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
Badgering? Does her name start with H? I know who, R, S and Leo are, so I guess she must be mentioned too ... I wonder, was R's necromancer a Black?
I've found a few minor mistakes in this chapter, so I'm going to point them out because the picky beta reader in me is demanding to be heard.
That’s been around since the 1940s when some foolish muggle-born kids decided they were going to show all their parents’ friends how levitate cars.
This sentence is missing 'to'. You should say how to levitate cars to be grammatically correct.
He’d tried to stay up until midnight to count down, but had been so remarkably tired from all the spell work he’d done—Sirius was teaching him as he’d asked the week before—that he’d fallen asleep shortly after ten
Too much repetition, IMO. Would you mind using the full version, i.e. he had, once in a while?
[London] – Last night, July 30, we here at the Daily Prophet received a floo call from the Ministry offering us breaking news to pass on to our loyal readers.
According to contacts at the Ministry, the story associated with Harry Potter, a.k.a The-Boy-Who-Lived that we have all assumed true for the past sixteen years (The Daily Prophet gave the exclusive story November 1, 1981
Er, in Britain, we write the day before the month, if that makes sense. So, it's not July 30 but 30 July (or 30th July, if you're being formal) and 1(st) November 1981.
Also, I think we here at the Daily Prophet received a floo call from the Ministry offering us breaking news to pass on to our loyal readers sounds a little too informal for a newspaper. I'd think they would be more likely to write something like The Daily Prophet received startling information from the Ministry yesterday evening, never mind that I can't imagine the British press referring to anyone as their 'loyal readers' or, indeed, directly referring to their readers at all.
In this spirit, I think the horrifying confrontation November 2, 1981 should be more along the lines of the horrifying confrontation that took place on 2nd November 1981.
Another strictly British thing is that we don't usually use a dot after prefixes like Mr, Mrs, Dr etc.
Oh, but can I tell you how much I loved the last sentence? “Only…,” Sirius hesitated, “…only I’ve never been with anyone but your mother.” That sounds so dramatic and funny at same time! And knowing what comes next, it's a nice way of breaking the news. Harry would probably faint, thinking he has a bastard half-brother ...
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I was trying to do the newspaper like Rita Skeeter. I'll change it up though. I actually knew about the dates and removing the full stop after hono(u)rifics, I just didn't think about it as I was writing everything up. This chapter was one of the harder ones for me to write for some reason so I didn't read through it for corrections as much as I usually do.
Regardless, I'll change that up...and probably go through the rest of the chapters. I think there's more to change now that you mention it.
R will have more than one necromancer over the course of the fic. I have no idea what clans and what not they came from.
I'll try to change up the contractions from now own. I started contracting 'he/she/they had' in my fics because I read too many badly written ones where people used 'had' incorrectly (It's true!). It put me off the word, I suppose. I'll try to get back in the habit.
I think the last line is really cheesy. But I also think Sirius is pretty cheesy. He would have said something like that instead of what I would have preferred if someone were to ever tell me they were my father: "Well, Harry my boy, after careful scrutiny and consideration of all facts involved (which are 1: you look like me, 2: I fucked your mom) I find that it is statistically impossible for you not to be my progeny."
Of course, my name's not Harry. But I did have this really strange dream last night where I kept changing my name to Holly Robin because I thought it was a cute name and it sort of not quite rhymes with my last name already.
I think that's everything. Let me know if I missed something and ty so much for pointing out those mistakes.
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This chapter was one of the harder ones for me to write for some reason so I didn't read through it for corrections as much as I usually do.
That's perfectly understandable, but I thought you have beta readers? Or are they the plot-and-characterisation-only kind of beta readers?
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Or maybe they sent me the revision and I missed it. I have a tendency to do that. I'm fairly scatter-brained sometimes.
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That makes me really happy. You'll be happy to know that I just updated it again, then.
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And Harry's probably wondering about this other child his mother had... ;)
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^_^
Re: ^_^
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And of course you're very clever regarding your theories.