(no subject)
A warning to anyone named sazzlette: there is no werewolf sex in this story. MOVE RIGHT ALONG.
Squeaked this out just in the nick of time. Literally, my suitcases are in the kitchen. Grr school. *angryface*
Word on the street is that Sirius never actually met Ted or little Nymphadora. To that I say: bah humbug. NEXT THING YOU’LL BE TELLING ME THE EARTH IS ROUND. adsfkfaklsakfdk;jkfl so anyway I suppose this is a bit AU.
Title: The Drowning
Author: guns_and_butter
Pairing(s): Oedipal!fic Gen. No, seriously.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: JKR for the whole shebang, minus my hallucinations. Various quotes stolen from The Decemberists, The Iliad, William Blake, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Summary: Her son had come to her at last. Sirius Black and the women who loved him.
Brightest of all is he, yet for an evil sign is he set, and bringeth much fever upon hapless men.
“He is nearly at the door, Walburga. He will not keep us waiting very much longer.”
She has been waiting for thirty-four years.
This is not her first pregnancy. Five times before, she has felt the twinge and pang of budding life within her body. Five times her cheeks flushed with the bloom of a healthy pregnancy. Five times her breasts grew heavy and her belly swelled beneath her robes, and five times, she woke in the dark to find her body cramping, convulsing, driving out the child within. Five times, she endured the tremors in silence, shuddering white-lipped and clutching hard at blood-soaked sheets.
Five daughters lost.
“Just breathe. It will be very soon now.”
They all thought her barren, she knows. One childless year upon another, and Walburga came to feel her husband’s disappointment in the coldness of his touch, the lacquered frustration in his black gaze. Her father spoke of nothing but Cygnus’s girls
(willowy and clever, each one paler and more delicate than the last)
until Walburga thought she would go mad with envy and resentment. Too many years; too much wasted blood. She withered under the weight of it all: Orion’s bitter disapproval, the despairing sighs of her mother’s portrait, the grim and oppressive contempt of all their fathers.
She did not surrender. She did not lose hope. She ached, and she waited, and when the sickness came to her again after three long years of waiting, she knew the time had come.
Her son had come to her at last.
The pain is nearly overwhelming, throbbing hard in her temples and clawing through her belly. The midwife offered her potions-to speed the baby’s progress, to ease the suffering-but Walburga refused. She has been waiting for this pain all her life. The pressure has grown and swelled for twenty-seven hours and thirty-four years, and now, finally, he is here.
Finally.
“Now, Walburga,” and she bears down hard with what little strength she has left.
She lets out a scream
-savage and ravenous, ancient animal immortal, wild howl of euphoria and mad triumph-
and the child comes.
He splits and sears her as he goes, white-hot agony tearing her flesh as expert hands wrench him from her body. With him goes the last of her strength, and she sags into the bed, boneless and frail.
Darkness.
Awareness returns slowly, blurred and soft around the edges. She hears more than she sees the flurry of activity in the room:
the composed midwife, intent on her work, gently probing and repairing damaged flesh
the assistant, her inaudible murmurs of comfort, the gentle splash of warm water
the faintest discreet scurrying of dutiful house elves
and, soaring over it all, the piercing wail of her child’s displeasure.
Her throat closes at the sound. Her body has killed five daughters, but her son shrieks with life, red-faced and furious. She struggles to focus her gaze, to see for herself what the midwife has already quietly confirmed: the child is whole, strong, unflawed.
Ce que femme veut, Dieu le veut.
The assistant carefully dries the boy, wraps him in a dark green blanket
(carefully preserved these thirty years, predicting the birth of this child as it predicted those of his fathers before him)
and places him in the arms of the nurse, who swiftly sets about quieting him.
At last he has come to her, after all her years of waiting and wanting. Her child. Her heir. Her son.
She calls for Kreacher, voice ragged, and he materializes at her bedside, bowing and muttering flattery in his obsequious way. “Tell your master he has his heir. He is…he will be named Sirius.” Kreacher bows again and slips away, and Walburga closes her eyes once more, allowing herself a faint smile. Sirius. That should please Orion. He was fond of his grandfather, and his pride will appreciate the nod to the Dog Star.
Sirius.
She wishes to hold the boy. She has waited for him for so long, and she aches to touch the damp velvet of his cheek, measure her breath by the tiny rattle of his heart-but the darkness is beckoning once more, warm and gentle, and she can only close her eyes and drift upon its waves.
Blind and deaf, still she knows that the midwife has spoken the truth. He is her son, her firstborn, and he is perfect. Ten delicate fingers clutch at the air, the blanket, the yielding softness of the nurse’s breast. She drinks in the flush of his skin, the wet dark rosebud of his mouth, and he stares back at her with wise eyes, great and round and bluer than a peaceful sea. If only they might keep their color-
-but it is not to be. His eyes will darken within the year. Blue will blur into grey, and her child will grow to cast his tempestuous gaze upon her in hatred, and he will be drowned.
Sirius.
“You must rest,” the midwife says. Something cool and wet trails along Walburga’s face. “You have lost a great deal of blood. The fever-”
“Where is my son?”
“He is with his nurse. He is in perfect health and will live to bring you great pride, but only if you rest.”
Bile rises in her throat. “He has forsaken me.”
“No, Walburga. Your son is here. Look, Hortense is with him. See how he sleeps at her breast.”
Only sleeping.
“Sleep now.”
She waited so long for him.
“You are ill. Please, if you would just lie back-”
The floor is hard under her feet, and cold; it makes her stumble. There is blood under her hands. Sirius. Blood everywhere, slick and hot. The sheets are always so heavy, so slippery between her fingers.
Dieu le veut.
“She’s hurting herself-take hold of her wrists, quickly now-”
Her child is lost. He has rent her in pieces to make his escape, he has drowned in the river of their blood, her son-
“She’s upset-the strain of-”
“Walburga, please, you must rest-”
Sirius.
“He is dead, Walburga. Your madness will not spare you from that truth. He has spit upon this house, and you have cast him out by your own hand.” Her husband’s footsteps pause by the door. “We will not speak of this again.”
Shame of my flesh. Shame of my blood.
“He should have killed me.”
“Rest, Walburga.” The midwife strokes her hair. “Your child is in good hands.”
Sirius, brightest of all.
She twists away and lets the fever take her.
My mother groaned, my father wept:
Into the dangerous world I leapt
Somehow-
and if there’s one thing Andromeda has learned from Sirius and from her daughter, it is that she never wants to know the details
-somehow, Sirius has managed to bite his tongue nearly in half.
“Sit down,” Andromeda says, closing the door. The bathroom is still warm and humid; it smells of soap and little girl.
(She was washing her daughter’s hair when she heard the thumping at the door.)
Sirius sits dutifully on the edge of the bath, looking white-faced and faintly ill. She doesn’t blame him, as she can only imagine how much blood he has swallowed. His lips are painted with it, and there are smears over his chin and along his jaw, browned and sticky from the rain still dripping down his face.
(Ted? Probably it was nothing. Suds slid down Nymphadora’s forehead and into her eye, and she squealed in protest. I told you to keep your eyes closed, didn’t I. Ted?)
Andromeda grips Sirius’s chin gently, tilting his head back slightly. “Open.”
(Probably it was nothing, but sometimes it was something. Ted?)
Sirius obeys with a poorly-masked grimace of discomfort, and Andromeda raises her wand. A muscle twitches in Sirius’s face, fluttering under her fingers. “Lumos.”
(Yeah, I’m going. Quick heavy steps on the stairs, the creak and groan of the front door. Dora shrieked and slapped at the water, suddenly impatient. Andromeda hushed her.)
The damage is not so bad as she feared, though it is unpleasant enough. She is relieved to see that there is already some clotting, black and crusted. There is still a seemingly endless welling of fresh blood from the worst of it, glimmering wet and bright in the light from her wand. She hesitates.
(She could just make out Ted’s voice, raised in surprise. Her hand froze on the back of Nymphadora’s head, leaden with cold terror.)
Should she take him to St. Mungo’s? No, not if she can avoid it. Best to keep this in the family-such as it is-for as long as possible. She’ll just have to deal with this herself. She’s never much had the patience for Healing, but she knows enough to stop the bleeding, at least.
(Nymphadora frowned at her. Mummy, she said, reproachful, and without thinking Andromeda scooped her up from the bath and pressed her close. Wet naked slip of a girl, thin arms winding tight around her neck. Mummy. Why hadn’t she put more wards on the house? Ridiculous-she was being ridiculous. Her fingers went skidding and sliding along the still-soapy curve of her daughter’s back, holding tight.)
She could wake Ted. He’s good at this sort of thing-this sort of thing referring to dealing with injuries, of course, not looking after runaway cousins-but she’s already sent him back to bed, and she hates to wake him again. Besides, he was clearly unnerved by the whole situation. Evidently none of his cousins have ever knocked him up late at night, newly disowned and spitting blood.
(Andromeda? I think you’d better come down.)
Perhaps it’s one of those Muggle things.
In the end, she decides to patch Sirius up with a few minor healing charms and hope for the best. She’ll get Ted to have a look tomorrow.
She inspects her finished handiwork with no small amount of pride. There is still a bit of swelling, but no obvious paralysis or muscle spasms. Not so bad at all.
Satisfied, she turns away to grab a clean flannel from the closet, then moves to the basin. “You probably shouldn’t talk much for now,” she says over her shoulder, wetting the cloth in lukewarm water. “Let us struggle on a while without your words of wisdom.”
She glances at Sirius with a smile, half-expecting a snide reply despite her warning, but he only nods. Exhaustion has tamed him, made him quiet and docile, and he sits quietly, staring at the floor.
His obedience itches uncomfortably under Andromeda’s skin. Suddenly uneasy, she wrings the flannel and returns to her cousin, dabbing at the blood streaked along his face. A cleaning charm would be easier, but she can’t bear the way Sirius flinches when she points her wand at his mouth
(you mad old bitch, Walburga, you wretched old cow)
and anyway, she doesn’t mind. Raising Nymphadora has given her gentle hands and a strong stomach-and after all, what’s a little blood between blood traitors?
The thought makes her laugh despite herself-despite the sudden ache in her chest, the prickle and sting of old scars. If Sirius notices her laughter, he doesn’t mention it. Andromeda goes on scrubbing his face.
Dark stubble scrapes her fingers, and she suddenly realizes that Sirius has aged dramatically in the years since she has seen him-and it has been years. Three, perhaps even four. Of course there was the occasional owl and a Christmas gift or two, but Sirius was at school, and she was so busy with Nymphadora, and he was the heir to a House that had blasted her from its memory, and time just…passed.
And then, out of nowhere, he was sixteen and standing in her doorway at four o’clock in the morning.
For the first time since he arrived, Andromeda takes a moment to really look at him-to study the changes in the stupidly bold, carelessly brilliant, hopelessly Gryffindor cousin she remembers.
Exhaustion and blood smears aside, he is quite as good-looking as she always expected he would be. His face has lost its childish fullness, but there are still clinging traces of his beautiful boyhood in the big eyes, the too-long lashes, that pretty mouth. His hair is as dark as it has always been, longer now-falling out from behind his ears, hanging damp and tangled in his eyes. Orion must have hated that.
And, of course, he’s simply enormous. He seems small enough as he is now, hunched on the edge of the bath, but Andromeda knows that if he were to stand, she would find herself staring at his nose. Unforgivably tall for the little boy who used to fall asleep on her lap after making Regulus cry and running to Andromeda for sanctuary.
Disgusting, really.
Taller, broader, stronger in the face-she understands all that, of course, but still he is Different in some way she can’t define.
Four years.
She glances down at his hands, absently searching out the subtle calluses
(changed now like everything else, long fingers far more accustomed to gripping broom handles than fencing sabers)
and it’s only then that she notices.
“Now what’ve you done to your hands?” She pulls them toward her, holding them up to the light. The palms are scraped raw, hot from swelling, grimy with blood and dirt. “What did you do, then-run here on your hands and knees?”
Sirius pulls back, suddenly alert, and Andromeda knows without question that he is hiding something from her.
Sirius’s lamentable lack of self-control was always a topic of much discussion within the family. They would never breathe a word to their rivals, of course, but it was obvious to anyone with a proper pureblood brain in their head that the heir apparent to the House of Black was indecently hot-blooded. He was too spirited, too foolishly passionate, too quick to anger and heated remarks. His face was painfully open, prone to flushed cheeks and narrowed eyes; Druella used to say, rather spitefully, that Sirius could let his facial expression carry the conversation and save himself the effort of speaking.
This much, at least, has not changed. Andromeda can read a secret in the clench of Sirius’s jaw, the uneasy shift of his gaze, and she knows that if she pushed him now, he would break under her hands.
Instead, she sighs and drops Sirius’s hands, letting the moment pass-for now. “Really though, Sirius, how did you get here? You didn’t take the Knight Bus?”
Sirius stares at her incredulously, and she can’t help smiling at the horrified contempt writ large across his face. Disowned, disgraced, half-dead from exhaustion, a Black is evidently still a Black. “Are you mad?” His voice is hoarse, tongue thick and unwieldy in his mouth.
Andromeda shrugs. “You might have tried it, at least. Imagine the headlines in the Prophet. The scandal of it all might have done your old mum in for good.” She forces a smile, hoping she looks more cheerful than she feels. “So?”
“I Apparated.” He still lies easily, Andromeda notes, though it lacks his usual brazen charm. If she didn’t know better, she might even believe him.
“An excellent answer, if you were seventeen. However, I suspect that even you wouldn’t be so stupid as to Apparate without a license. You’d still be wondering where you left your eyeballs. And don’t give me that look. Believe me, if I ever find out you’ve attempted that sort of magic on your own, you’ll be finding Howlers in your porridge for a month.”
Sirius’s face brightens with the hint of a smile. Andromeda is glad to see it. “Oh, Andie, will you not think of my sterling reputation?”
Andromeda smirks, genuine now. “I’ve heard all about your reputation, Master Black. I imagine you’d get on all right. Your friend Potter would probably set fire to Severus Snape’s pants as a congratulatory gesture.”
“Odd that you should mention that,” Sirius mutters, but his face has fallen, and Andromeda frowns. Her mind is crowded with all the questions he has not answered, and more that she hesitates to ask.
(Now that she thinks about it, she does have to wonder why he didn’t go straight to the Potters. From the little he has told her, they seem to be extraordinarily decent people, and everyone knows that Sirius and James are inseparable these days. Surely they would have taken him in.
Whatever the reason, she’ll have to Floo them tomorrow; they’ll want to know.)
She wants to press him-about the journey, about his hands, about the Potters-but the sag of his shoulders convinces her to wait. He must be shattered. There is nothing that can’t wait until he’s had some sleep.
While she hesitates, Sirius has gone back to staring at the floor. She looks down at the mess of tangled black hair and just marvels at him for a moment, at this oversized confusion of a boy she has watched go from breaking his brother’s toys to breaking rules for the sheer insolent delight of it to breaking his mother’s horrid black heart.
“You know, Sirius, sometimes you are just an idiot,” she says, not unkindly. “All the skill and cheek and clever spellwork in the world can’t change that.”
He looks up quickly, wary and unblinking. He is suddenly, painfully young, anxious and defenseless like the unsure child he never was, and Andromeda is struck with the sudden urge to rip out all of Walburga’s hair and strangle her with it. She suppresses the impulse.
Barely.
“But not tonight.” She tucks a drying strand of hair behind his ear, fingers lingering for a moment against clammy skin. “Tonight you’re brilliant.”
He relaxes a little. He lifts his chin, eyes glinting with a hint of defiance. “I’m always brilliant.”
Andromeda cuffs him gently, rolling her eyes. “You won’t be so brilliant tomorrow unless we find you a bed. It’s a long way here from London, whatever way you came.”
And there, finally: the smile she has been waiting for. Flickering but true, and unnervingly familiar. “Isn’t it?”
And in Life's noisiest hour,
There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee
Virginia Potter lies awake next to her snoring husband, staring into the darkness and thinking of the first time she met Sirius Black.
It’s been hours since she ordered the boys to bed. Sleep tugs at her every now and again, but whenever she is about to succumb to its gentle lull, she thinks of the sick worry on James’s face or Andromeda Tonks’s tight smile or that awful, horrible woman-truly, Virginia has half a mind to show up on the doorstep at Grimmauld Place and throttle her in plain daylight-and then she is back where she started.
Sirius.
Truth be told, she was more than slightly apprehensive of her son’s friendship with such a boy. Four years later, with the two boys melded at the hip and currently curled up asleep in James’s bed, the memory makes her wince-but after all, he was the heir to the House of Black. What was she to expect? She knew that he was James’s housemate, the first Black in generations to be Sorted into a house other than Slytherin. She knew that he and James had become friends, despite something of a rough beginning. She knew that he was a talented fencer and a clever student and a Black.
Above all, she knew the Blacks.
She intended to be cautious, though polite, since it did seem that her son was fond of him. That day at the train station, she was searching for James when she spotted the two of them together, laughing and shoving each other as they pushed through the crowd.
James looked so happy. They both did.
James never had many friends as a child. He was sociable enough, naturally, with a colorful imagination and his father’s easy smile, but he was the only child of a quiet house, properly spoiled and rarely around boys his own age. He never got on well with most other pureblood children, with the exception of the Longbottom boy. Virginia was secretly relieved; Augusta was all right, if a bit gruff, but most of those high society mummies were just awful-insipid, pretentious girls forever cooing over Virginia’s figure
(“And at your age!”)
and leaving their equally horrid progeny to be raised by the house-elves.
Yet there they were, James and Sirius, already inseparable and scuffling like puppies, oblivious to anyone but each other. By the time they dropped their trunks at her feet, she had stopped thinking of them as separate beings: not James and his friend, not her son and the Blacks’, but JamesandSirius, a mischievous creature with two bright grins and entirely too much energy.
James made the necessary introductions just as he had been taught. Virginia enjoyed a surge of pride at her son’s good manners, and so was taken unawares as Sirius ducked his head, brushed a kiss across the back of her hand, and murmured, “Enchanté.” Then he looked her in the eye and flashed a dazzling smile.
She was charmed.
In the end, of course, Sirius was not at all what she expected. Make no mistake: on the surface, he was every bit the pureblood heir, effortlessly cordial and scrupulously well-mannered. And there was something deeper, too-something unmistakably Black. From the start, she understood that Sirius Black was a proud, willful boy, capable of immense cleverness and the most charming cruelty.
But Virginia could tell that there was something different about him. Something sweeter. Something about the warmth in those polished words, and the way that blinding smile went all the way to his eyes.
And, Black or not, it was plain to see that James adored him. They hung on each other’s shoulders, exchanging insults and mysterious grins. She couldn’t help but smile, watching them.
Then the Blacks appeared.
The change in Sirius was remarkable. His shoulders straightened under James’s arm. The laughter drained from his face. His enthusiasm cooled into well-bred civility, and as Sirius returned his father’s nod, Virginia was seized with an irrational urge to keep him away from them-to shield this happy child from his family’s cutting smiles and cold pride. She wanted to grab his hand and her son’s and to flee, to spirit them away to somewhere they would be forever safe and sweet and ageless.
Virginia thinks that if she had known then what she knows now, she would have done it. She would have snatched them up and she would have run, and to hell with the Blacks. She would have stolen Walburga’s son away without a second thought, and if that cold-blooded harpy had taken issue, Virginia would have scratched out her eyes.
Back in her own bed, Virginia sighs and stretches a bit, shaking off the lingering wisps of drowsiness. She’ll find no sleep tonight, not with all that has happened in the last few days. She rises from the bed, careful not to wake Henry. She’ll go look in on the boys, quickly, just to see if they need anything.
It is only slightly surprising that they are not in James’s room, notwithstanding the automatic wrench of fear in her stomach. A quick search of the house finds them in the lounge, dead asleep on the sofa in a sprawl of long legs and sharp elbows. A blank bit of parchment lies abandoned on the coffee table, creased and ink-splattered, together with quills and half-eaten biscuits and a few old books.
The boys are slumped together in an awkward slouch. Sirius’s head has fallen against James’s shoulder; his hair is nearly as untidy as James’s. James himself is snoring, head tilted back to rest uncomfortably on the back of the sofa. No doubt their necks will protest in the morning. She ought to wake them up and shoo them upstairs, into their beds.
She ought to, but she won’t. They look so peaceful, so young
(twelve years old and blossoming, boyish charm and secret smiles)
and they are together, finally, as they should be. Safe.
She slips out of the room to fetch a stack of soft, thick blankets from the hall cupboard. She drapes the blankets over James and Sirius, tucking the edges over their shoulders. The boys will kick them away in the night, no doubt, but they might as well have the warmth while it lasts.
Sirius shifts at her touch, murmurs low and soft into the silence. She pauses, holding her breath. She searches his face for signs of waking, but he settles within moments, relaxing deeper into sleep with a flutter of eyelashes and a quiet sigh into James’s shoulder.
Virginia smiles. Poor child. He must have been exhausted. And so thin! She’ll have to see that he eats properly. She knows for a fact that he is very fond of her fudge.
For now, she leaves him in the able care of her son. She walks quietly up the staircase and back to her bed, sliding slow and careful into the warm space next to her husband.
Sirius will be fine. They will make sure of it-she and James and Henry. James will snore with him and dig an elbow into his face and steal his blanket in the night. In the morning, she will make the boys a proper breakfast, eggs and bacon and fried bread, and she will see to it that Sirius eats every bite. Henry will read the Prophet at the table and grunt at the headlines and unsubtly but successfully engage both boys in an argument about Quidditch or some silly thing. Life will go on. Sirius will smile, and James will pull faces, and Virginia will hug them both rather too hard and rather too often, simply because they are her boys and because she has never been so very proud in all her life.
Squeaked this out just in the nick of time. Literally, my suitcases are in the kitchen. Grr school. *angryface*
Word on the street is that Sirius never actually met Ted or little Nymphadora. To that I say: bah humbug. NEXT THING YOU’LL BE TELLING ME THE EARTH IS ROUND. adsfkfaklsakfdk;jkfl so anyway I suppose this is a bit AU.
Title: The Drowning
Author: guns_and_butter
Pairing(s): Oedipal!fic Gen. No, seriously.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: JKR for the whole shebang, minus my hallucinations. Various quotes stolen from The Decemberists, The Iliad, William Blake, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Summary: Her son had come to her at last. Sirius Black and the women who loved him.
Brightest of all is he, yet for an evil sign is he set, and bringeth much fever upon hapless men.
“He is nearly at the door, Walburga. He will not keep us waiting very much longer.”
She has been waiting for thirty-four years.
This is not her first pregnancy. Five times before, she has felt the twinge and pang of budding life within her body. Five times her cheeks flushed with the bloom of a healthy pregnancy. Five times her breasts grew heavy and her belly swelled beneath her robes, and five times, she woke in the dark to find her body cramping, convulsing, driving out the child within. Five times, she endured the tremors in silence, shuddering white-lipped and clutching hard at blood-soaked sheets.
Five daughters lost.
“Just breathe. It will be very soon now.”
They all thought her barren, she knows. One childless year upon another, and Walburga came to feel her husband’s disappointment in the coldness of his touch, the lacquered frustration in his black gaze. Her father spoke of nothing but Cygnus’s girls
(willowy and clever, each one paler and more delicate than the last)
until Walburga thought she would go mad with envy and resentment. Too many years; too much wasted blood. She withered under the weight of it all: Orion’s bitter disapproval, the despairing sighs of her mother’s portrait, the grim and oppressive contempt of all their fathers.
She did not surrender. She did not lose hope. She ached, and she waited, and when the sickness came to her again after three long years of waiting, she knew the time had come.
Her son had come to her at last.
The pain is nearly overwhelming, throbbing hard in her temples and clawing through her belly. The midwife offered her potions-to speed the baby’s progress, to ease the suffering-but Walburga refused. She has been waiting for this pain all her life. The pressure has grown and swelled for twenty-seven hours and thirty-four years, and now, finally, he is here.
Finally.
“Now, Walburga,” and she bears down hard with what little strength she has left.
She lets out a scream
-savage and ravenous, ancient animal immortal, wild howl of euphoria and mad triumph-
and the child comes.
He splits and sears her as he goes, white-hot agony tearing her flesh as expert hands wrench him from her body. With him goes the last of her strength, and she sags into the bed, boneless and frail.
Darkness.
Awareness returns slowly, blurred and soft around the edges. She hears more than she sees the flurry of activity in the room:
the composed midwife, intent on her work, gently probing and repairing damaged flesh
the assistant, her inaudible murmurs of comfort, the gentle splash of warm water
the faintest discreet scurrying of dutiful house elves
and, soaring over it all, the piercing wail of her child’s displeasure.
Her throat closes at the sound. Her body has killed five daughters, but her son shrieks with life, red-faced and furious. She struggles to focus her gaze, to see for herself what the midwife has already quietly confirmed: the child is whole, strong, unflawed.
Ce que femme veut, Dieu le veut.
The assistant carefully dries the boy, wraps him in a dark green blanket
(carefully preserved these thirty years, predicting the birth of this child as it predicted those of his fathers before him)
and places him in the arms of the nurse, who swiftly sets about quieting him.
At last he has come to her, after all her years of waiting and wanting. Her child. Her heir. Her son.
She calls for Kreacher, voice ragged, and he materializes at her bedside, bowing and muttering flattery in his obsequious way. “Tell your master he has his heir. He is…he will be named Sirius.” Kreacher bows again and slips away, and Walburga closes her eyes once more, allowing herself a faint smile. Sirius. That should please Orion. He was fond of his grandfather, and his pride will appreciate the nod to the Dog Star.
Sirius.
She wishes to hold the boy. She has waited for him for so long, and she aches to touch the damp velvet of his cheek, measure her breath by the tiny rattle of his heart-but the darkness is beckoning once more, warm and gentle, and she can only close her eyes and drift upon its waves.
Blind and deaf, still she knows that the midwife has spoken the truth. He is her son, her firstborn, and he is perfect. Ten delicate fingers clutch at the air, the blanket, the yielding softness of the nurse’s breast. She drinks in the flush of his skin, the wet dark rosebud of his mouth, and he stares back at her with wise eyes, great and round and bluer than a peaceful sea. If only they might keep their color-
-but it is not to be. His eyes will darken within the year. Blue will blur into grey, and her child will grow to cast his tempestuous gaze upon her in hatred, and he will be drowned.
Sirius.
“You must rest,” the midwife says. Something cool and wet trails along Walburga’s face. “You have lost a great deal of blood. The fever-”
“Where is my son?”
“He is with his nurse. He is in perfect health and will live to bring you great pride, but only if you rest.”
Bile rises in her throat. “He has forsaken me.”
“No, Walburga. Your son is here. Look, Hortense is with him. See how he sleeps at her breast.”
Only sleeping.
“Sleep now.”
She waited so long for him.
“You are ill. Please, if you would just lie back-”
The floor is hard under her feet, and cold; it makes her stumble. There is blood under her hands. Sirius. Blood everywhere, slick and hot. The sheets are always so heavy, so slippery between her fingers.
Dieu le veut.
“She’s hurting herself-take hold of her wrists, quickly now-”
Her child is lost. He has rent her in pieces to make his escape, he has drowned in the river of their blood, her son-
“She’s upset-the strain of-”
“Walburga, please, you must rest-”
Sirius.
“He is dead, Walburga. Your madness will not spare you from that truth. He has spit upon this house, and you have cast him out by your own hand.” Her husband’s footsteps pause by the door. “We will not speak of this again.”
Shame of my flesh. Shame of my blood.
“He should have killed me.”
“Rest, Walburga.” The midwife strokes her hair. “Your child is in good hands.”
Sirius, brightest of all.
She twists away and lets the fever take her.
My mother groaned, my father wept:
Into the dangerous world I leapt
Somehow-
and if there’s one thing Andromeda has learned from Sirius and from her daughter, it is that she never wants to know the details
-somehow, Sirius has managed to bite his tongue nearly in half.
“Sit down,” Andromeda says, closing the door. The bathroom is still warm and humid; it smells of soap and little girl.
(She was washing her daughter’s hair when she heard the thumping at the door.)
Sirius sits dutifully on the edge of the bath, looking white-faced and faintly ill. She doesn’t blame him, as she can only imagine how much blood he has swallowed. His lips are painted with it, and there are smears over his chin and along his jaw, browned and sticky from the rain still dripping down his face.
(Ted? Probably it was nothing. Suds slid down Nymphadora’s forehead and into her eye, and she squealed in protest. I told you to keep your eyes closed, didn’t I. Ted?)
Andromeda grips Sirius’s chin gently, tilting his head back slightly. “Open.”
(Probably it was nothing, but sometimes it was something. Ted?)
Sirius obeys with a poorly-masked grimace of discomfort, and Andromeda raises her wand. A muscle twitches in Sirius’s face, fluttering under her fingers. “Lumos.”
(Yeah, I’m going. Quick heavy steps on the stairs, the creak and groan of the front door. Dora shrieked and slapped at the water, suddenly impatient. Andromeda hushed her.)
The damage is not so bad as she feared, though it is unpleasant enough. She is relieved to see that there is already some clotting, black and crusted. There is still a seemingly endless welling of fresh blood from the worst of it, glimmering wet and bright in the light from her wand. She hesitates.
(She could just make out Ted’s voice, raised in surprise. Her hand froze on the back of Nymphadora’s head, leaden with cold terror.)
Should she take him to St. Mungo’s? No, not if she can avoid it. Best to keep this in the family-such as it is-for as long as possible. She’ll just have to deal with this herself. She’s never much had the patience for Healing, but she knows enough to stop the bleeding, at least.
(Nymphadora frowned at her. Mummy, she said, reproachful, and without thinking Andromeda scooped her up from the bath and pressed her close. Wet naked slip of a girl, thin arms winding tight around her neck. Mummy. Why hadn’t she put more wards on the house? Ridiculous-she was being ridiculous. Her fingers went skidding and sliding along the still-soapy curve of her daughter’s back, holding tight.)
She could wake Ted. He’s good at this sort of thing-this sort of thing referring to dealing with injuries, of course, not looking after runaway cousins-but she’s already sent him back to bed, and she hates to wake him again. Besides, he was clearly unnerved by the whole situation. Evidently none of his cousins have ever knocked him up late at night, newly disowned and spitting blood.
(Andromeda? I think you’d better come down.)
Perhaps it’s one of those Muggle things.
In the end, she decides to patch Sirius up with a few minor healing charms and hope for the best. She’ll get Ted to have a look tomorrow.
She inspects her finished handiwork with no small amount of pride. There is still a bit of swelling, but no obvious paralysis or muscle spasms. Not so bad at all.
Satisfied, she turns away to grab a clean flannel from the closet, then moves to the basin. “You probably shouldn’t talk much for now,” she says over her shoulder, wetting the cloth in lukewarm water. “Let us struggle on a while without your words of wisdom.”
She glances at Sirius with a smile, half-expecting a snide reply despite her warning, but he only nods. Exhaustion has tamed him, made him quiet and docile, and he sits quietly, staring at the floor.
His obedience itches uncomfortably under Andromeda’s skin. Suddenly uneasy, she wrings the flannel and returns to her cousin, dabbing at the blood streaked along his face. A cleaning charm would be easier, but she can’t bear the way Sirius flinches when she points her wand at his mouth
(you mad old bitch, Walburga, you wretched old cow)
and anyway, she doesn’t mind. Raising Nymphadora has given her gentle hands and a strong stomach-and after all, what’s a little blood between blood traitors?
The thought makes her laugh despite herself-despite the sudden ache in her chest, the prickle and sting of old scars. If Sirius notices her laughter, he doesn’t mention it. Andromeda goes on scrubbing his face.
Dark stubble scrapes her fingers, and she suddenly realizes that Sirius has aged dramatically in the years since she has seen him-and it has been years. Three, perhaps even four. Of course there was the occasional owl and a Christmas gift or two, but Sirius was at school, and she was so busy with Nymphadora, and he was the heir to a House that had blasted her from its memory, and time just…passed.
And then, out of nowhere, he was sixteen and standing in her doorway at four o’clock in the morning.
For the first time since he arrived, Andromeda takes a moment to really look at him-to study the changes in the stupidly bold, carelessly brilliant, hopelessly Gryffindor cousin she remembers.
Exhaustion and blood smears aside, he is quite as good-looking as she always expected he would be. His face has lost its childish fullness, but there are still clinging traces of his beautiful boyhood in the big eyes, the too-long lashes, that pretty mouth. His hair is as dark as it has always been, longer now-falling out from behind his ears, hanging damp and tangled in his eyes. Orion must have hated that.
And, of course, he’s simply enormous. He seems small enough as he is now, hunched on the edge of the bath, but Andromeda knows that if he were to stand, she would find herself staring at his nose. Unforgivably tall for the little boy who used to fall asleep on her lap after making Regulus cry and running to Andromeda for sanctuary.
Disgusting, really.
Taller, broader, stronger in the face-she understands all that, of course, but still he is Different in some way she can’t define.
Four years.
She glances down at his hands, absently searching out the subtle calluses
(changed now like everything else, long fingers far more accustomed to gripping broom handles than fencing sabers)
and it’s only then that she notices.
“Now what’ve you done to your hands?” She pulls them toward her, holding them up to the light. The palms are scraped raw, hot from swelling, grimy with blood and dirt. “What did you do, then-run here on your hands and knees?”
Sirius pulls back, suddenly alert, and Andromeda knows without question that he is hiding something from her.
Sirius’s lamentable lack of self-control was always a topic of much discussion within the family. They would never breathe a word to their rivals, of course, but it was obvious to anyone with a proper pureblood brain in their head that the heir apparent to the House of Black was indecently hot-blooded. He was too spirited, too foolishly passionate, too quick to anger and heated remarks. His face was painfully open, prone to flushed cheeks and narrowed eyes; Druella used to say, rather spitefully, that Sirius could let his facial expression carry the conversation and save himself the effort of speaking.
This much, at least, has not changed. Andromeda can read a secret in the clench of Sirius’s jaw, the uneasy shift of his gaze, and she knows that if she pushed him now, he would break under her hands.
Instead, she sighs and drops Sirius’s hands, letting the moment pass-for now. “Really though, Sirius, how did you get here? You didn’t take the Knight Bus?”
Sirius stares at her incredulously, and she can’t help smiling at the horrified contempt writ large across his face. Disowned, disgraced, half-dead from exhaustion, a Black is evidently still a Black. “Are you mad?” His voice is hoarse, tongue thick and unwieldy in his mouth.
Andromeda shrugs. “You might have tried it, at least. Imagine the headlines in the Prophet. The scandal of it all might have done your old mum in for good.” She forces a smile, hoping she looks more cheerful than she feels. “So?”
“I Apparated.” He still lies easily, Andromeda notes, though it lacks his usual brazen charm. If she didn’t know better, she might even believe him.
“An excellent answer, if you were seventeen. However, I suspect that even you wouldn’t be so stupid as to Apparate without a license. You’d still be wondering where you left your eyeballs. And don’t give me that look. Believe me, if I ever find out you’ve attempted that sort of magic on your own, you’ll be finding Howlers in your porridge for a month.”
Sirius’s face brightens with the hint of a smile. Andromeda is glad to see it. “Oh, Andie, will you not think of my sterling reputation?”
Andromeda smirks, genuine now. “I’ve heard all about your reputation, Master Black. I imagine you’d get on all right. Your friend Potter would probably set fire to Severus Snape’s pants as a congratulatory gesture.”
“Odd that you should mention that,” Sirius mutters, but his face has fallen, and Andromeda frowns. Her mind is crowded with all the questions he has not answered, and more that she hesitates to ask.
(Now that she thinks about it, she does have to wonder why he didn’t go straight to the Potters. From the little he has told her, they seem to be extraordinarily decent people, and everyone knows that Sirius and James are inseparable these days. Surely they would have taken him in.
Whatever the reason, she’ll have to Floo them tomorrow; they’ll want to know.)
She wants to press him-about the journey, about his hands, about the Potters-but the sag of his shoulders convinces her to wait. He must be shattered. There is nothing that can’t wait until he’s had some sleep.
While she hesitates, Sirius has gone back to staring at the floor. She looks down at the mess of tangled black hair and just marvels at him for a moment, at this oversized confusion of a boy she has watched go from breaking his brother’s toys to breaking rules for the sheer insolent delight of it to breaking his mother’s horrid black heart.
“You know, Sirius, sometimes you are just an idiot,” she says, not unkindly. “All the skill and cheek and clever spellwork in the world can’t change that.”
He looks up quickly, wary and unblinking. He is suddenly, painfully young, anxious and defenseless like the unsure child he never was, and Andromeda is struck with the sudden urge to rip out all of Walburga’s hair and strangle her with it. She suppresses the impulse.
Barely.
“But not tonight.” She tucks a drying strand of hair behind his ear, fingers lingering for a moment against clammy skin. “Tonight you’re brilliant.”
He relaxes a little. He lifts his chin, eyes glinting with a hint of defiance. “I’m always brilliant.”
Andromeda cuffs him gently, rolling her eyes. “You won’t be so brilliant tomorrow unless we find you a bed. It’s a long way here from London, whatever way you came.”
And there, finally: the smile she has been waiting for. Flickering but true, and unnervingly familiar. “Isn’t it?”
And in Life's noisiest hour,
There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee
Virginia Potter lies awake next to her snoring husband, staring into the darkness and thinking of the first time she met Sirius Black.
It’s been hours since she ordered the boys to bed. Sleep tugs at her every now and again, but whenever she is about to succumb to its gentle lull, she thinks of the sick worry on James’s face or Andromeda Tonks’s tight smile or that awful, horrible woman-truly, Virginia has half a mind to show up on the doorstep at Grimmauld Place and throttle her in plain daylight-and then she is back where she started.
Sirius.
Truth be told, she was more than slightly apprehensive of her son’s friendship with such a boy. Four years later, with the two boys melded at the hip and currently curled up asleep in James’s bed, the memory makes her wince-but after all, he was the heir to the House of Black. What was she to expect? She knew that he was James’s housemate, the first Black in generations to be Sorted into a house other than Slytherin. She knew that he and James had become friends, despite something of a rough beginning. She knew that he was a talented fencer and a clever student and a Black.
Above all, she knew the Blacks.
She intended to be cautious, though polite, since it did seem that her son was fond of him. That day at the train station, she was searching for James when she spotted the two of them together, laughing and shoving each other as they pushed through the crowd.
James looked so happy. They both did.
James never had many friends as a child. He was sociable enough, naturally, with a colorful imagination and his father’s easy smile, but he was the only child of a quiet house, properly spoiled and rarely around boys his own age. He never got on well with most other pureblood children, with the exception of the Longbottom boy. Virginia was secretly relieved; Augusta was all right, if a bit gruff, but most of those high society mummies were just awful-insipid, pretentious girls forever cooing over Virginia’s figure
(“And at your age!”)
and leaving their equally horrid progeny to be raised by the house-elves.
Yet there they were, James and Sirius, already inseparable and scuffling like puppies, oblivious to anyone but each other. By the time they dropped their trunks at her feet, she had stopped thinking of them as separate beings: not James and his friend, not her son and the Blacks’, but JamesandSirius, a mischievous creature with two bright grins and entirely too much energy.
James made the necessary introductions just as he had been taught. Virginia enjoyed a surge of pride at her son’s good manners, and so was taken unawares as Sirius ducked his head, brushed a kiss across the back of her hand, and murmured, “Enchanté.” Then he looked her in the eye and flashed a dazzling smile.
She was charmed.
In the end, of course, Sirius was not at all what she expected. Make no mistake: on the surface, he was every bit the pureblood heir, effortlessly cordial and scrupulously well-mannered. And there was something deeper, too-something unmistakably Black. From the start, she understood that Sirius Black was a proud, willful boy, capable of immense cleverness and the most charming cruelty.
But Virginia could tell that there was something different about him. Something sweeter. Something about the warmth in those polished words, and the way that blinding smile went all the way to his eyes.
And, Black or not, it was plain to see that James adored him. They hung on each other’s shoulders, exchanging insults and mysterious grins. She couldn’t help but smile, watching them.
Then the Blacks appeared.
The change in Sirius was remarkable. His shoulders straightened under James’s arm. The laughter drained from his face. His enthusiasm cooled into well-bred civility, and as Sirius returned his father’s nod, Virginia was seized with an irrational urge to keep him away from them-to shield this happy child from his family’s cutting smiles and cold pride. She wanted to grab his hand and her son’s and to flee, to spirit them away to somewhere they would be forever safe and sweet and ageless.
Virginia thinks that if she had known then what she knows now, she would have done it. She would have snatched them up and she would have run, and to hell with the Blacks. She would have stolen Walburga’s son away without a second thought, and if that cold-blooded harpy had taken issue, Virginia would have scratched out her eyes.
Back in her own bed, Virginia sighs and stretches a bit, shaking off the lingering wisps of drowsiness. She’ll find no sleep tonight, not with all that has happened in the last few days. She rises from the bed, careful not to wake Henry. She’ll go look in on the boys, quickly, just to see if they need anything.
It is only slightly surprising that they are not in James’s room, notwithstanding the automatic wrench of fear in her stomach. A quick search of the house finds them in the lounge, dead asleep on the sofa in a sprawl of long legs and sharp elbows. A blank bit of parchment lies abandoned on the coffee table, creased and ink-splattered, together with quills and half-eaten biscuits and a few old books.
The boys are slumped together in an awkward slouch. Sirius’s head has fallen against James’s shoulder; his hair is nearly as untidy as James’s. James himself is snoring, head tilted back to rest uncomfortably on the back of the sofa. No doubt their necks will protest in the morning. She ought to wake them up and shoo them upstairs, into their beds.
She ought to, but she won’t. They look so peaceful, so young
(twelve years old and blossoming, boyish charm and secret smiles)
and they are together, finally, as they should be. Safe.
She slips out of the room to fetch a stack of soft, thick blankets from the hall cupboard. She drapes the blankets over James and Sirius, tucking the edges over their shoulders. The boys will kick them away in the night, no doubt, but they might as well have the warmth while it lasts.
Sirius shifts at her touch, murmurs low and soft into the silence. She pauses, holding her breath. She searches his face for signs of waking, but he settles within moments, relaxing deeper into sleep with a flutter of eyelashes and a quiet sigh into James’s shoulder.
Virginia smiles. Poor child. He must have been exhausted. And so thin! She’ll have to see that he eats properly. She knows for a fact that he is very fond of her fudge.
For now, she leaves him in the able care of her son. She walks quietly up the staircase and back to her bed, sliding slow and careful into the warm space next to her husband.
Sirius will be fine. They will make sure of it-she and James and Henry. James will snore with him and dig an elbow into his face and steal his blanket in the night. In the morning, she will make the boys a proper breakfast, eggs and bacon and fried bread, and she will see to it that Sirius eats every bite. Henry will read the Prophet at the table and grunt at the headlines and unsubtly but successfully engage both boys in an argument about Quidditch or some silly thing. Life will go on. Sirius will smile, and James will pull faces, and Virginia will hug them both rather too hard and rather too often, simply because they are her boys and because she has never been so very proud in all her life.