Flightless Birds
Why don’t you have wings to fly with
Like the swallow, so proud and free?
How the winds are laughing
They laugh with all their might
Laugh and laugh the whole day through
And half a summer’s night
Joan Baez | “Donna Donna”
o0o
“Christmas, I see,” said Vega Black. “That Muggle celebration wasn't practised by wizards back in my day. For us, there was only the Winter Solstice.”
For all their insistence on their own superiority, wizards had absorbed bits and pieces of Muggle culture over the centuries — practising the culture of whom they deemed weak and dim. What an irony.
“Isn't it supposed to be a happy holiday that everybody looks forward to?” Those lustreless eyes glinted, giving Remus a scrutinising look. “Your expression tells otherwise.”
“Because I will have to be away from you?” Remus replied, lacing his tone with a light sarcasm.
Vega responded with a melodic laughter. She adjusted her headpiece, so that it would still sit on her hair like an Elven crown. She was always as cadaverous, as spectrally beautiful every time he saw her, unaffected by time, musing between death and the living world. The Fat Lady referred to Vega as “that macabre marionette", but none of the portraits ever knew her name or had any clue who she was. She never told her own story. It had to be discovered — or, at least, she wanted it to be discovered.
“Was it my descendant again?” she inquired casually.
Remus’s fingers lightly brushed the scruffy surface of the healing potions bottle in his hand. I ordered it from outside Britain, Sirius had whispered to him significantly, a day before The Incident . Please use it for post-transformation healing while you're away from Hogwarts. No, I don’t accept refusals, his brow had hardened. I’m filthy rich, Remus, please abuse that for your advantage. I’m the bourgeoisie, the ruling class that needs to be overthrown, or whatever terminology you would use to call the lot like my family. So take this potion home, or I'll come and bring you back here myself.
“Something bad happened?” Vega’s voice pulled him back from the fond memory. “Don’t sink too deep with a Black — he could devour you alive and spit your bones on the pavement.”
What a cute thing to say to a werewolf, Remus thought.
“It was his mother,” he told her, eventually. “She has severed his wings.”
Vega fell into a cryptic silence. For a moment, he thought she was horrified by the idea, but she was simply studying him with those black, fathomless eyes.
“What could a wingless bird do in the snake den?” she hummed in a sing-song tune. “It either submits, or dies.”
The cruel definiteness in her statement felt like an inescapable fate — a fate that he wanted nothing to do with his friend. “Speaking from your own experience?”
Vega sighed, her tone more or less accusing.“You have no subtlety, do you? So unlike Andromeda. She never spoke about my death so callously.”
Another sigh of nostalgia. Her dark lips hardened into a line, and oh god she was pouting . “She was always sweet to me, though her brown eyes were as indecipherable as yours. You both have the same gaze, you know. Eyes that tell nothing of yourselves, but always trying to unravel the souls of others…”
Remus barely registered her ongoing waxing poetic, his attention slipped through the frosty window. Students were streaming out of the Great Hall, ready on their way to the London Express that would carry them home for the holiday. In only a few hours, he too would be greeted by his mother in the King Cross Station after four months away from home, and the thought of it partially lifted some weight from his chest. It was time he should bid Vega goodbye.
“... carried a wooden box with her, smiling as she told me what was kept in it reminded her of the happiest of memories. She was that sweet — far more than you, young Remus Lupin…”
Remus was unbothered by the admonition. Instead, he let a corner of his mouth tug into a smile.
Got you, Andromeda Black.
o0o
— Yes, Clarence. A man down on earth needs our help.
— Splendid. Is he sick?
— No, worse. He's discouraged. At exactly 10:45 PM tonight, Earth time, Christmas Eve, that man will be thinking seriously of throwing away God's greatest gift. He'll be throwing away his life.
They were broadcasting It's A Wonderful Life on the television, and Remus and Hope sat curled together on the sofa, their eyes glued to the silver screen.
The day had been a productive one for the Lupins: they had done a modest amount of shopping for Christmas, cleaned the flat while John Lennon's Happy Xmas (War is Over) played in the background, put up the Christmas tree and decorated it (a little argument had arisen over whether to drape the tree with bells or stars — Hope favoured the bells, while Remus simply couldn't say no to stars). To his vicious victory, Hope had denied all the dating invitations from her male acquaintances during this time, for she wanted to “spend the few precious days my cariad was home to be with him" and seriously, who were those men to complain about it since she always loved him most?
His mother was enjoying his company, anyway, laughing aloud when he mentioned James's deceased grandfather whose name was Henry Potter — the same name as the avaricious and dirty rich antagonist in It's A Wonderful Life . At the epilogue, Hope cried like she always did everytime they watched it, which made him roll his eyes and pat gently on her shoulders.
“In the Wizarding world, we perhaps wouldn't need an angel to turn back the time,” he said to his mother, after finishing the movie. “James’s father told him that in the Department of Mystery — of the Ministry of Magic, obviously — they are researching a magical object called the Time Turner. Rumour has it that wizards could use the Time Turner to travel back to the past… But it is far too dangerous to use.”
“That thing shouldn't be allowed to exist. It's against the law of the universe,” Hope commented after the shock had passed. Remus must admit, it had crossed his mind several times the possibility he could use the Time Turner to prevent his five-year-old self from being bitten by Fenrir Greyback, but he knew enough to push that thought off his mind. To mess with time is, as Hope had said, to mess with the basic law of the universe.
Even though, it was nice to think that a Time Turner could have saved Witherwings.
The Incident had haunted the Marauders for the rest of their last school days before Christmas and followed them on their train back to London. The message Walburga Black wanted to convey to her son was unmistakable:
In responding to your contumacy towards my direct order, I destroyed one of your dearest things. Think about the consequences of your actions on those who you love before I take another away from you.
Walburga Black knew about her son's affection. And she used it as a weapon to control him. But how was it even possible? How could Hogwarts, the most rigorously protected magical site in Britain, have been so easily infiltrated by an outsider and let such a crime happen right on its ground?
And Remus thought about the jubilant laughter of his friend as he and Witherwings soared together into the sky, the sound of his laugh echoing through the vastness of the Forbidden Forest and into the depth of the mighty mountains. He thought about his silly improvised “God rest yer merry hippogriff” song, about his elation, strong and wild as high winds, when he hugged Witherwings and cackled, “I love you so, so much…”
What a pity.
As a result, the explosive row between James and Sirius following the tragedy had been inevitable.
Returning to that place? Are you raving mad? James was literally fuming, voice wavering between anger and terror as he pleaded with him to stay at the Potters’ instead. You will go home with me, full stop, do not make me repeat this. Walburga Black be damned.
Haven’t you seen what my family is capable of? Sirius had replied with his arms crossed. They didn't think twice before breaking into the best guarded institution in Britain and butchering a giant magical creature. What if they wanted to hurt you, too?
Despite the noble name they always claimed, their method was nothing short of sickening. Mrs. Black had sent her house-elf to deliver the order, and when it was declined, she just initiated the butcher, without warning, without explanation, without negotiation, or any possibility for remedy. There is no second chance with my family , Sirius had once said. It was like the mafias, the cold-blooded “Don Corleone” way. But the Corleones only did it to their luckless enemy. Remus had never heard of parents who did so to their own fifteen-year-old child.
Well, apparently now he had. He could finally begin to process the fact that the Blacks had a tradition of beheading their house-elves when they were too old to carry a tea tray — and hanging their heads on plaques of the walls. Who started the tradition was a witch named Elladora Black, an esteemed Runic scholar of the late 19th century, who had infamously declared that Ancient Runes manuscripts prophesied a world order in which Wizardkind was destined to rule all kinds. What bunch of fucking troll dungs.
He looked at Hope as she yawned her way through the kitchen to the ringing telephone, curly bob hair still smelling of the ginger biscuits they’d baked together. Perhaps her name would never be written in history, and he couldn’t find the right words to express how thankful he was to be her son.
“Oh, for god’s sake!” Hope grumbled furiously in her native language after the call. “That man was a right arsehole! If only ,” she raised a threatening finger at the unpresent man, “If only I could tell him my son is a wizard , he and his cowardly guts would be quaking in front of me!”
Remus’s deep in thought face broke into a smile as he stood up to collect the empty biscuit plates. “Mum, I’m afraid it would be me that he’d find formidable, not you.”
And that man would probably wet his pants if he knew the son of the woman he pursued was actually a werewolf — no offence to the Statute of Secrecy. So far, he’d been managing to hide his illegal status as an unregistered werewolf quite successfully, and he didn't plan to risk it, even only to threaten his mother’s male friend to treat her nicely.
You are the first case in the history of Hogwarts who manages to have done it, Mr. Lupin, Professor Dumbledore had once told him. And Remus was not going to lie that despite the constant dread of being outed, he felt quite proud of himself about it. A natural precedence breaker, as Sirius had called him.
The thoughts of Sirius drifted back to Remus as he washed the dishes and the pile of baking utensils, the knots in his stomach tightening. No letters from Sirius so far, which wasn’t anything new. He wished he’d had James’s compact mirror, which would at least let him know if Sirius was being alright, or whether he’d been punished by his mother. James had given Sirius a twin compact mirror for his fifteenth birthday, a fascinating little magical object that functioned as a Muggle’s telephone, allowing them to communicate when Sirius was being locked away by his family.
It was quite intriguing to watch the notorious Gryffindor duo — the two brash and mercurial troublemakers, two invincible natural forces — worrying sick over one another. Remus remembered the night before they departed for the Christmas break, he had had his raven-haired curling up on Remus’s bed in a semi-lucid state,
I have to go back there, Moony, he had whispered feverishly, still shaken by Witherwings’s death. I can’t let them get a chance to hurt James. They have always hated him…
Weird dreams keep visiting me these days.Sometimes I look at James, and I have this strange premonition that he wouldn’t be in this world for long…
Remus’s hand lingered under the running tap, even after the soap bubbles had been rinsed away. That very same night, he’d let these fingers travel along the silken length of Sirius’s hair as the boy rested his head on Remus’s knee. Those ink-black locks were so cool and unbelievably soft that his hand felt like it was soaked in fresh water. He remembered himself fighting the urge to pull it — just to feel the sense of control over the rivulets that kept slipping through his fingers…
He slowly turned his wrist as the water was pouring down, his muscles tensing hard…
Do you know that I have a similar feeling about you?That I also wouldn’t have you around for long? A burning thought raced through his head so fiercely it accidentally caused magic to flash up the kitchen’s light bulbs. There is something so short-lived and self-destructive about you. As Narcissa had put it, you live everyday as though it is your last day in this world, that your presence, your spirit, your smile has their own momentum.
In the sitting room, the television was still on, casting a ghastly glow across the flat. A nighttime broadcast was replaying the day's science news — something about the latest discovery about a star that was similar to the Sun. The report spoke of astronomers' positivity that this was a good sign for the potential of life elsewhere in this universe.
“Stars spend the majority of their lives burning through their massive energy,” the astronomy expert said in a monotone. “The bigger the star, the faster and brighter its burning phase… until the core collapses and triggers an explosion of a supernovae.
“If the remaining core is less than three times the mass of the Sun, it will be reborn as a neutron star. But if the core's mass exceeds three times, it will continue to collapse… until it becomes a Black Hole.
“And that will be its final death.”
o0o
Some morning close to Christmas Day, Remus and James met up for a drink in the Leaky Cauldron.
James was in awe and a bit jealous of Remus when he showed up at the pub alone, “like a true adult" . James's parents would never let their precious son freely hang out on his own (which explained the presence of the Potters' house maid to keep a watchful eye), while Remus, on the other hand, developed an early self-dependency due to his conditions and his upbringing. Tom, the bald innkeeper of the Leaky Cauldron, recognised James as Fleamont Potter's son at once and graced him with an overly warm greeting, but only gave Remus a slight nod.
By the time he got inside, the pub was buzzing with strange murmurs from patrons.
“Merry Christmas, Moony. No news from our old sport,” James announced as Remus shook the snow from his winter scarf. “Even through my compact mirror,” he added, and Remus bit back his inquiry. The spectacled boy casted a cautious glance towards his parents' housemaid, who pretended to not be watching them, and pulled a folded newspaper from the inside of his cloak, slamming it on the table. “And I think I know why.”
Remus picked up the copy of Daily Prophet , which featured a very catchy headline on the first page: « KEEPING UP WITH THE BLACKS: A SNIPPET INTO THE HIGH SOCIETY LIFE »
An earthquake of about level eight on the Richter scale swept through him.
“James.”
“I know.”
“James.”
“I know, Moony, I know .”
“Can someone explain what all this is about?” Peter complained, wiping the black soot off his nose after the travel by the Floo Network.
“I’ve been getting more afraid to open a newspaper these days,” Remus ripped open the newspaper, too preoccupied to listen to Peter. “James, explain it to Peter, please.”
“Alright, Pete,” James sighed, dropping himself onto a wooden chair. “Remember when I said the Blacks didn’t announce their internal affairs in the biggest press in Britain–– oh nevermind, I was talking to Remus, you weren’t there. This is a fact known among Twenty-Eight families, unanimously understood––”
“––it seemed some masochistic journalist had visited the Blacks' winter house in Norway to write about their ridiculous aristocratic lifestyle,” Remus muttered as his eyes travelled down the article, “which was full of pompous nonsense––”
“Remus,” said James primly, “I was trying to explain to Pete.”
“Oh? Sorry, carry on…”
“Yeah, so,” James turned back to a bewildered Peter, “It is unanimously understood in the pureblood families, and since my mum is a Shafiq––”
“–– Snakeweed Tea was served in the finest of potteries… silken curtains shivered at every blow of the Northern winds… the grandiose pipe organ set the tempo for our pleasant conversation… Fucking hell.”
“Lupin!”
“But it’s nonsensical! Can you believe a word of it?” Remus felt himself struck with the same scepticism as when he'd listened to Narcissa Black rambling about the grace and grandeur of the old life that she missed. “There is a rising blood fascism going on out there, led by a madman who fancies himself the next Hitler, and all what they write about is how the filthy rich are squandering their money!”
“I know the Prophet is a piece of rubbish, but can you let me finish talking to Pete?” James snapped.
“Yeah, right, sorry…”
“ So, ” James turned to Peter again, this time with blue veins across his temples. “My mum said the Blacks never appeared in the newspaper –– at least not directly. This protocol was made to protect the air of mystery they’ve tried to instill for centuries. To make the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black sacred –– as opposed to profane, like most things become when they’re made public by the newspaper, recorded, and printed into thousands of copies which housewives would use to stuff cat’s boxes.”
Remus’s mouth twitched, but he knew better than to interject this time.
“Now, Bellatrix Lestrange is a born Black. But when she made all those vile statements about Muggle-borns in the Prophet , she was under the Lestrange name, not Black. Though it was unprecedented, it was in theory not against the protocol. One can only wipe off their obligation regarding the protocol when they no longer bear the name Black. But this––”
James plucked the newspaper from Remus’s hands, flattening it on the table in front of Peter.
“––is something that’s never happened before.”
Peter peered closer, and found two people posing themselves as if they were in a soulless painting: Mrs. Black in her trademark veil, and none other than their friend, Sirius. The time and place of the article was December 18 — Tromsø, Norway.
“And reporting how they spend the winter in Norway,” continued James, “is like opening the secret chamber.”
“Wait–– so Sirius is in Norway ?” Peter squeaked.
“You––” James slammed his forehead against his palm. “... missed the entire point.” He punctuated each word with a smack.
“But it helps explain something, doesn’t it?” said Remus. “They kidnapped him to Norway, and that's why your compact mirror does not work. The magical connection isn't strong enough to reach anywhere outside Britain.”
“Or his mirror has been eaten by that beast,” James muttered sullenly.
Remus felt ants creeping to his fingertips. Norway intrigued him in any way that it could intrigue a young wizard who got top scores in Dark Creatures Studies, for one singular reason.
Kraken. There were rumours that the Blacks kept this oceanic beast as their domestic animal near their winter house on an isolated Norwegian island. A nasty ancient monster lurking in the cold, dark deep, only obeying the command in Ancient Runes…
It was like away from the Hogwarts walls, Sirius lived in an entirely different world.
“It’s because of the marriage.”
“What?” James frowned.
“The marriage. Look, Narcissa is mentioned twice here.” Remus tapped his finger twice on the article. “The only person mentioned other than the two people in the photo. If you look past all the buzzes about aristocratic lifestyle, which I doubt is their real intention, you’ll see it’s hinted here that the press could be allowed at the betrothal.”
James’s brow drew together. He checked the details up and down, incredulous. “They want to promote that thing?”
“More like make it irreversible. Inevitable.”
“They broke the protocol of mystery because of the marriage.” James spoke his thoughts aloud, his frown deepening. “The marriage must be terribly important to them, otherwise they would have never done it.”
“Solid point. Press intervention is never a simple thing. Exposure to the public eye could give them unimaginable power –– or lead them on a downward path straight to hell. There’s no middle ground.”
“Why? It’s just a marriage,” James rolled his eyes. “Two people with their names in the Ministry marriage registry book, that’s it. To make such a fuss about it… What a bunch of wankers.”
A not-so-subtle sardonic smile split on Remus’s face. “Aw. That’s like saying you care about them.”
“That’s like saying I don’t like Sirius to be at the centre of their plot. Look how grumpy he is here.”
Remus drew back his focus to the photograph, and found a flash of Mrs. Black's triumphant smile below the dark veil, the rest of her face obscured. She was too happy there, in her family's winter house in Norway, her eldest son close by her side, under her control. Victorious and content — with her hands stained in the blood of an innocent life — she must have thought that she had successfully put her son into submission. That Sirius had finally belonged to her.
Come on, Sirius, Remus thought, as though he could somehow telepath to his friend through the photo. You know that would never be true.
But Sirius’s face showed no resistance like Remus wished.
In fact, his face showed nothing at all.
He looked as effortless as ever in a black sailor peacoat. One of his elbows perched on the arm of the chair where he sat, an inborn gracefulness framing his posture. But there were shadows in those hooded eyes, their usual brightness nowhere to be seen, now hollow and unblinking in a vacant stare. His mouth remained sealed and taut, with a faint crease around the corners, harsh and unsympathetic.
For once, he looked like an empty human vessel.
Without warning, Sirius’s gaze in the photo suddenly shifted — those cold, lifeless eyes locked into Remus’s own, looking straight into his very soul.
And Remus, totally unprepared, felt the gravity of this world tilted .
Trying to retrieve his slipped balance, Remus found himself sharply aware of the surrounding noises. The clinking of glass. The scraping of chairs. And so, so many murmurs. Pub-goers were discussing the newest Daily Prophet edition –– some with excitement, some with aversion. Some whispered in awe, some cursed. Some reacted in between, dripping with sarcasm. The Black family in the newspaper! –– it was like something from up high had fallen to the ground with a loud thud . And when they looked at that thing, they feasted on its every bit and piece, chipped away at it until there was nothing left to satisfy them. They laid the Black firstborn on the table, buzzing with rampant speculations about his future of heirdom in the House of Black.
Another Dark wizard in the Wizengamot, just like his forefathers, they said. No one will say no when he forces through another Anti-Muggleborn legislation, in case his cousin hasn't done enough of it.
Sirius's expression didn't change. But those unblinking grey eyes stayed locked to his, silently reaching out for something Remus couldn’t quite catch.
“Hey…” he murmured to the photograph, “Happy Christmas to you, too.”
o0o
It was called the Mirror of Despair. Or, at least that was how his family called this wretched Dark artefact.
Sirius vaguely recalled, from some tedious Acromantula hunting escapades with the Malfoys, his father mentioning the existence of a twin mirror, the Mirror of Desire, which was lost at Hogwarts a long time ago. Abraxas Malfoy had been coaxing his father into selling the Despair to him — as if that creep didn't already have a dungeon-full of twisted Dark artefacts cluttering up the Malfoy Manor. But his father had simply given a smile, and since then never had Malfoy brought up the topic again.
After three and a half years Marauding Hogwarts, Sirius had never come across its twin mirror, the Desire. Nor did he have the slightest intention to look for something that related to that nasty piece of heirloom.
Upon his return to Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, with an unknown punishment awaiting him, he had thought how much they could hurt him more than they had already done. Really, he'd experienced all kinds of twisted punishment they cooked up in this house; it couldn't be so bad.
How very wrong he was.
“—imagine my son, my own son, rubbing up against that Mudblood girl all over,” Mother cried out as she yanked off his shirt, running a finger on his bare skin before pushing him into the bathtub. He was too tired to even fight back. “You can have fun with a toy all you like, but don’t you give a fig about hygiene risks? How much soap would be enough to purify you from that dirt now?” She pointed her wand at him, cold grey eyes glinting as she arrived at a cruel decision. “A couple of hours with the Mirror of Despair will serve you right. Let's see… thirty-six hours should be enough for you to not ever make this mistake again. Now, let's clean you up. Scourgify !”
It was said that being locked in a room with the Despair was about as cosy as being imprisoned in Azkaban. Sirius had never had the pleasure of visiting Azkaban, but it wouldn’t be hard for him to imagine the resemblance.
(He only got the chance to speak to James through the compact mirror only once before pushing it at the bottom of his trunk. This small thing was his only lifeline when they were apart; he must protect it from all the putridities of this house.)
“Got yourself locked up again, little boy?” A snide voice called after him as he followed his father to the attic room, where the Mirror of Despair was placed. “Never seen a Black punished as often as you for your misdemeanors.”
With his skin still prickling from Mother's ruthless Scouring Charm that had scrubbed him raw, Sirius casted a sideways glance at the ashen wall, where the portrait of Phineas Nigellus Black, his great-great-grandfather, was hung in darkness.
“Do you know what's the difference between a human and an animal, boy?” Phineas Nigellus continued in that patronising tone, stroking his pointed beard. “It's that a human has control over his impulses. You, on the other hand, are driven by nothing but your wildest instincts — just like an animal.”
In the good old days, Sirius would have slammed his fist against the wall and started a full-blown shouting match with Phineas Nigellus. But, he was fifteen now. He knew better ways to rile up the former Hogwarts headmaster, and he was desperately in the itch to get a rise out of someone right now.
“You know what, Phinny,” he began in his smoothest voice, “Funny how genetics works… Because if I am an animal, then from whom must I have inherited those wild genes, other than my ancestors?”
Phineas Nigellus's arrogant smirk vanished, much to Sirius's satisfaction. Next to him, the portrait of his great-great-grandmother Ursula Flint Black shrilly gasped in an exaggerated horror, “Oh my, oh my, that cheeky mouth!”
“No one is competing against you for the cheeky mouth award, Ursula,” returned Sirius in a languorous boredom, “after hearing you convince the entire Britain the Weasleys should be marked as ‘blood traitors’. Really––with the amount of crude language you used, I'm surprised you still think you're so dignified.”
“What does a brat that wasn't born until seventy years later even know?” Ursula Black snarled, dropping her pretentious mask. “I will show you what actual crude language is, you ungrateful heathen!”
“I'm wetting myself in excitement now,” he smiled. Then, he turned away, cracking his neck with a slow ease, as if he was preparing himself for a hat-trick. Both Phineas Nigellus and Ursula Black stared at their freakish great-great-grandson, silently perplexed.
Just when they thought he was done with them, he suddenly spun around and lunged forward. “BOO!”
Phineas and Ursula jumped, letting out a yelp in unison (perfect couple, the two of them). Their perfectly in-sync reaction sent Sirius into an eruption of gleeful cackles, which reverberated down the dark hallway. A fleeting thought crossed his mind — if he and Narcissa were to be married, whether or not would they be like this seventy years later? What a sad thought.
“Sirius, don’t be rude to your forefathers.”
His father’s voice echoed from the far end of the tall and long hallway. The tomb-like chill that voice exuded caused the ghostly light from the old-fashioned gas lamps all along the wall to waver. Firelights in this house were always grey. Colourless.
He let out one or two more throaty huffs, then his laughter died out like a blown candle. Beside him, the portraits of Phineas Nigellus and Ursula Black had gone stationary, their faces frozen in a pale death mask — just like the dozens of other age-blackened portraits that lined the wall. A suffocating silence weighed down on all — not even the creaking of the floor could be heard.
In the heavy air and heavy darkness that brooded in this place, Sirius thought he might begin to decay.
“Come,” his father commanded, his voice soft and a little amused.
Sirius couldn’t see him from this point, as Orion Black was obscured by the void of darkness at the end of the long hallway.
“Yes, Father,” he replied, though under his breath suppressed a million curses.
And he continued to walk toward the end of the hallway, where the Despair was waiting for him in the locked attic room.
As Sirius followed his father, he wondered, what the patriarch of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black would see in the Mirror of Despair?
o0o
He could never get used to the cold winter in Tromsø.
This year, it seemed to be even colder than ever. He stood on the balcony for five minutes, and some tendrils of his front hair were already turned white frost. But he didn’t want to go back to the house. Back there, it was a different kind of cold that echoed the same wretchedness and malevolence of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place.
His mother had once told him that the night he was born had been brutally cold. He’d always disliked it, always craving the warmth from his family’s scarce holiday to Marseille.
He craved the warmth in people, too. Peter was warm. Mary was an ever-burning hearth (the thought of her still made him ache a little). And James — James was the entire tropical, equatorial land where summer never ends. Remus, on the other hand, wasn’t warm. Remus was the one who needed warming, but he didn’t often let people do so to him.
Today, the Blacks winter mansion in Tromsø welcomed members of their extended family, in-laws and a couple of guests. Among those were Rodolphus Lestrange, Lucius “Lucien” Malfoy — for he was ‘close to the family’ — and his acquaintance from Eastern Europe, a tall Durmstrang alumnus named Igor Karkaroff, whose smarmy smirk never reached his eyes. Sirius wrinkled his nose.
Sycophants, he thought. All of them — Lestrange, Malfoy, Karkaroff and whatnots — were just a bunch of simpering, shameless sycophants crawling to kiss his family’s arses. The Black arrogance was simply too great that they needed a crowd of top-class bootlickers in their orbit. Uncle Alphard was right; indulgence for sycophancy had been one of the chief causes leading to House Black’s corruption.
Nevertheless, corruption or no, Mother was feeling gracious enough to host a lavish soirée. And Sirius had been helping her with the organisation — the heir of the Black was now expected to co-host the familial events, a new responsibility for a new position as a groom-to-be.
Sirius must admit, all the hours he spent with his father resorting to the Black business paperwork, despite its torturous boredom, were still more enjoyable than this. His brother, on the other hand, always knew exactly what to do to help Mother. Reg liked to organise and compartmentalise everything, enjoying his busy role like it was his little game.
“Chin up! Don't just slump there like a stupid rag doll—No! No! Who told you to eye-roll at your guests! Your manners are less than a peasant’s — how ashamed I am of you!”
Mother had lectured him with her endless rambles about his intolerable attitude, telling him to wipe the oh-so-obvious bored expression off his face, and that the Black heir was not supposed to look like he’d rather be anywhere else in the world but his own family house. But he found it impossible. The whole evening had so far been painfully dull, even with Bella slithering around.
Once upon a time, Sirius, as a thoughtless, wide-eyed child, might have admired Bella for her fiery spirit, for the zeal she stirred up in any gathering that she was a part of. Now those childhood sentiments were long gone; she was no longer anything to him but a despicable, insufferable piece of work.
Bella was currently making a scene of herself, chatting and laughing loudly with Aunt Araminta Meliflua. Araminta, just back from France, was basking in her own glamour. She left behind a rampant public affair in which she was nominated National Best Dressed by the French press.
Having an aunt living in France seemed to be the trend these days, though aunts in general didn’t attempt to force through a Ministry Bill to make Muggle-hunting legal. Short-haired, long-necked, worn in long black dress and jewel bracelets, Araminta deluded herself that all this tailoring could disguise her rotten soul, wilted from the inside. Her terrified house-elf trailed along her, carrying a hideous waterpipe, her favourite shisha. She gripped its serpentine hose as if she was a snake tamer, puffing out clouds of sickening green vapour.
Once or twice, Araminta shot Bella with an envious look that contorted her styled face — for Araminta herself was older, less beautiful, and childless, while her niece Bella just had everything she didn’t have.
“Ma… Madame Lestrange, as we’ve discussed…” Karkaroff stuttered, apparently trying to grasp Bella’s attention, but his words were soon drowned out by the disturbing sound of Grandfather Pollux’s charmed pipe organ, which occupied a whole panel of the room.
Rodolphus Lestrange was glaring at Karkaroff, and Sirius was certain hadn’t Karkaroff been Malfoy’s friend, Lestrange would strangle him right off with bare hands. Not that Bella paid either of them any mind; she was far too busy bragging to Araminta about her new self-invented curse, which she claimed would carve “MUDBLOOD” into the face of Ministry workers who failed to present their blood statement.
“You know what, Aunt Araminta? They’ve got the guts to inquire with me about the arson in London!” Bella laughed derisively, raising her empty glass, and Karkaroff almost tripped over himself in his eagerness to refill it for her. “Those Mudbloods had no idea who they were messing with!”
“Why bother so much, ma charmante nièce ?” Araminta clicked her tongue, a skeletal hand waving in the air as she exhaled the smoke. “Just throw them to our Kraken, et puis c’est fini! Yes, that little beast would be thrilled to have some human flesh to devour…”
And Sirius simply watched. He watched as Karkaroff’s gaze snapped away from Bella, watched as Araminta’s lips curled into a smile of twisted satisfaction when her niece was no longer the centre of a young man’s attention. He watched as colours drained from Karkaroff’s pallid face at the mention of his family’s pet, as Karkaroff’s jaw slackened and his eyes widened in a horrored confusion. When Mother waved a hand and told Uncle Cygnus to “command Kraken to not disturb our guests”, Karkaroff looked like would rather dissolve into thin air for good rather than take that honour.
Trying for an indifferent mask, he leaned against a ticking Gothic grandfather clock, coughing and sipping his drink ungracefully. He clearly didn't realise that grandfather clock’s swinging pendulum was, in fact, a human skull. The moment the skull started to giggle madly, he instantly jumped away with a strangled yelp of disgust.
“Perfect timing for an appetiser!” Mother announced gleefully at the skull's cackle. “Ah, Mr. Karkaroff, I see you have met our family's grandfather clock,” she turned to a horror-stricken Karkaroff, a smile broadening on her half-veiled face. “In the 19th century, a housemaid had died just from hearing its screeches, for that foolish girl had ignored its chime at tea time. Quite a punctual cranking thing, wouldn't you say? But worry not — nobody will die today, since we shall not be neglecting our cocktail hour.”
She flicked her wand, and the Black traditional wine was conjured up from the mansion cellar. An enormous glass jar materialised on the blackwood table, filled with yellow liquid that looked rather sickening under the grey light of gas lamps. Inside the jar, the spectral corpse of an Ashwinder serpent was preserved in the posture of a full-height rise, with its fangs bared and its red slitted eyes sprung wide-open, its long, scaly, gigantic body coiling tightly around the jar interior. An Ashwinder was created only from an unchecked magical fire and would collapse to dust one hour after its birth, which rendered it extremely difficult to catch one while it was alive and freeze it forever in this liquor museum.
“Three-hundred years,” Uncle Cygnus told Karkaroff, as he conjured up a dozen shot glasses and filled them. “This little snake was supposed to live for one hour, and there it is, residing in this jar for three-hundred years.”
Well, to be fair, not everything was abysmally dull. Karkaroff’s current face, for example, was a stock to laugh at; the serpent corpse looked so eerily alive that it often made visitors feel their blood run cold, and when a shot of that yellow-green liquor was delivered to Karkaroff, he looked as though he was about to throw up.
Lucius Malfoy seemed to be blissfully oblivious about his friend's discomfort. He was too busy casting stealthily glances towards Narcissa, Sirius's fiancée ( his fiancée! — now he still thought of the word with a scrawling skin). Cissy pretended to maintain her poised composure, but whenever she thought nobody was looking, she returned the equally passionate looks towards Malfoy's direction. Though both of them had been arranged to marry a different person, they looked as though had nobody been here, they would not hesitate to snog each other senseless right against the floor.
Once or twice, Sirius could feel Malfoy's gaze slided to himself, especially when Sirius’s name was brought up in the conversations, as his family discussed the career path they had mapped out for him, his school grades, his demeanours that they had whipped into shape, his future marriage with Cissy, slicing his life up and passing it around as if he was nothing but a piece of meat — a little pawn in their magnum opus . It got worse when the conversation veered towards his appearance, making him sick with the feeling of being objectified with their clinical comments about his eyes, his nose, his limbs, which part of his body was inherited from which member of this whole fucking inbred family, about his visage as “the epitome of Black beauty", and whether the heir he was expected to sire with Cissy would have his black hair or her Rosier blonde hair.
“Cissy, ma fille ,” Aunt Araminta tried to interject, as if that hag knew anything about parenthood. “I believe childbearing will come as a second nature to you, but it is a difficult process to go through to sire a desirable heir. Do remember to tread carefully; we wouldn't want a Black heir with a non-Black feature, would we?”
Narcissa hid her face away, and Sirius felt a pang of sympathy for her right at that moment. What was the matter with blonde hair, anyway? He recalled, back in childhood, Cissy's standout feature had always been a curious delight to him. Papa, look, a four-year-old him had said excitedly, look at Cissy's hair! It's almost white under the sunlight!
“No offence to the blondes, Monsieur Malfoy. Vous savez chez nous , dark hair has been the Black family trademark since forever,” Araminta gave Malfoy a nasal laugh, and Sirius earnestly wished she would shut up already.
“No offence taken, Madame,” Lucius Malfoy returned an incline of his head, his blandish voice coming out as gratingly plastic. “Fair hair is noble in its own right, though I must admit my opinion might sway when looking at Madame Lestrange and young Sirius here.”
“Don't put too much pressure on poor Cissy, Araminta,” Mother chided with her matriarch tone. “Of course we all have our favourite pigmentation traits, but what’s most important is the character . If anything… unbecoming were to happen to the character of the child, it would more likely be Sirius’s fault than hers.”
She glowered at Sirius sternly as she spoke. Then, she turned to her second son. Her favourite son. “If such an unfortunate thing were to happen, he will always have Regulus by his side for help.”
The look she gave Reg was the kind that one reserved only for the Koh-i-Noor diamond.
“Of all this family, he resembles Orion most. The brightest in his generation, so I’ve been told by Horace Slughorn… He wields impeccable knowledge of the position he holds, what is worthy and befitting of his noble name. You will look after the heir, right, Regulus?”
“My greatest pleasure, Mother.” Reg gave a smile that looked altogether reserved and wheedlesome and self-pleased. Sirius fought back the urge to wipe that smirk off his brother’s face.
This is not a family, he thought. It's a fucking zoo.
All of a sudden, Sirius felt an extreme weariness towards all of them — his so-called family , along with their grovelling classist-elitist minions. He wanted to voice up against them for himself, not letting them pass him around like a plaything. And he definitely would have, hadn’t it been for his temporary muteness, a Dark magical effect that plagued him for a couple of days every time after he was locked up with the Mirror of Despair. How conveniently sinister it was, he thought with pure disdain, the voiceless Despair. He wished James's mirror still worked overseas, because seeing James could ease both the loss of voice and the loneliness in this drowning confinement.
Despite what his parents had done to him — no matter how far their creativity and cruelty were willing to go in order to break him down and tie him to them — his long for freedom would never extinguish. He didn't want to be confined here, wasting time in the company of these people — he wanted to meet his friends, he wanted to go out and live and laugh and play. He wanted to… he wanted to see Witherwings. Flashbacks in the attic room suddenly flooded him again. Sirius shuddered. He didn’t want to think about it now.
So he ripped his mind from this decaying prison, trying to drive the bleak putridity away by thinking of the world beyond these cold walls — a world full of fervour, a free world… He thought of his friends as the pinnacle of that glorious world, wondering what they were doing now. Whenever he saw the glow of a lighthouse amidst the turbulent darkness out there, he couldn't help but miss James grudgingly. Did he and Peter remember to practise for their Operation “Our Furry Little Problems"? Did they bring enough Mandrake leaves with them home? The operation had made some real progress this year, and if it were to succeed, he would have a grand time playing with Remus…
“Sirius?…”
And then there was this tiny little thing, looking up at Sirius with Bella's big, dark eyes.
Little Leta Lestrange II was Bella and Rodolphus's three-year-old daughter, named after a witch from the Lestrange family in the Grindelwald time. The girl looked every bit like a miniature version of her mother.
Go, Sirius threw the kid an unwelcoming look. Go away.
“Sirius, Sirius...” Leta kept calling him, her eyes big and doleful. “It's so cold and scary here.”
Apparently Bella and her husband hadn't bothered to teach the child to address him as “Uncle Sirius". Not that he even cared; keep that “Uncle" thing away from him as far as possible, thank you very much.
Go, away. Sirius pointed a threatening finger in the opposite direction, I’m not in the mood to deal with any of you Lestranges.
But Leta’s mouth twisted into a sulk, as she leaned forward and wrapped her tiny arms around his legs.
A few moments later, Sirius suddenly found himself playing with Leta Lestrange in a corner. He had absolutely no idea how he'd ended up in this.
But well, it wasn’t really his fault that he much preferred the company of a three-year-old to every single adult lurking around here. He and Leta would be content playing in this little world of theirs, shitty parents be damned. He told Kreacher to go fetch Leta some food, as soon as he realised she’d been left empty-stomached the whole evening. The elf obeyed his order in the most scornful manner possible, but then always worshipped Reg as if every grain of dust under his brother’s shoes was divine. Sirius held nothing but contempt for Kreacher and the elf’s sickening grovels to his family.
Do you see him, Leta? He made a gesture to his niece, That's Uncle Reggie. Better call him Uncle, kiddie, he’s such an old man inside that sometimes it's fucking scary.
“Uncle Reggie is scary!” Leta sniggered merrily as she finished the last bit of pumpkin pies; it seemed that this girl had a gift for Legilimency.
That's right, kiddie, he is scarier than a Boogey-man. But hey, how about this? He plucked out a Drooble's Best Blowing Gum, chewed it up and spat the wad onto the wrap paper. Then he showed Leta the chair where Reg had just stood up from, will you go stick this thing on top of his seat?
It didn't take him long to realise, Leta's parents didn't care much about her. Bella had never been the motherly type; egotistical and infatuated, she must have found no room for motherhood among her chaotic maze of plots and passions — especially not for a child conceived with the man she had no love for, whom she only married because he was from a “respectable" pureblooded clan.
And Rodolphus? That pathetic excuse of a man would even go to Azkaban for Bella; it seemed he was incapable of caring for anyone else, least of all a child. They were both young, selfish, and careless; they smashed everything up on their way and then, at the end of the day, retreated into their own twisted obsessions. How could a child find a mother and father in such people?
Shame on that, Sirius thought bitterly. The girl had been born in the wrong family. Another trapped soul of an ancient, rotting bloodline. Another faceless and nameless flower on the Lestrange family tree, deemed insignificant just because she was born female. Where would her life go? Would she turn out mad and cruel like her mother, or would she end up going astray like him — maybe even worse?
“Will you keep her a bit far away from here?” Later Reg appeared next to Sirius, with Leta by his side. He was more lookable now that he didn't wear that faux smile to please their Mother. His voice was cold and emotionless, only a hint of annoyance hidden in his tone. “You see, Bella is— not in a good mood.”
Bella and Mother, the two most prominent women in the House of Black, were rivalling each other in a full-blown argument, their high voices slashing through the room. This had left little Leta terrified.
Sirius opened his mouth to respond, but no sound came out. Instead, he simply gave a curt nod. Even if he hadn't been mute, what would he have to say to his brother? They hadn't been close for years.
Regulus studied him for a moment, then shook his head.
“Brother, why have you always, always… ”
He trailed off. Having nothing more to say, he dropped it and walked away. The whole chain of actions only made Sirius more furious.
Look, kiddie, your Mother is arguing with your Great Aunt Walburga, Sirius coaxed Leta as she ran into his arms. Shhh, don't be afraid, he wanted to tell her, don't they look just funny when they bare their teeth at each other?
“He is the only true heir of Salazar Slytherin!” Bella hissed. “The most powerful Dark wizard of all time, more than Gellert Grindelwald could ever hope to be!”
“Bella, dear, please…” Aunt Druella pleaded with her daughter, but she completely ignored her. Bella had never taken her own mother seriously, unlike her Aunt Walburga, a strong personality, born and died as a Black, whom she respected much more than her married-in Rosier mother. Bella having a spat with Mother was something that had never happened before in this family.
“A commoner with delusions for nobility!” Mother snarled, undaunted to Bella’s madness. “His ambitions might be aligned with those of our family, but Riddle is no wizarding name, let alone a pureblood—”
“A commoner?”
Bella interrupted the matriarch , her chest was heaving up and down.
“He had warned me about this… He had warned me about the unenlightened purebloods who would dare question His purity!” Her voice cracked. “You are blinded, Aunt Walburga! One day, He will achieve far greater than you and this family could ever dream of. And you will deeply regret not swearing your loyalty to Him!”
Aunt Araminta and Uncle Cygnus were gaping at Bella. They must be thinking she'd gone bat shit crazy — as if it was something new. Except for Sirius, no one in this family had ever dared speak to Walburga that way.
If someone had told him a few years ago that Bellatrix , of all people, would someday join his rank, he would’ve laughed and told them, Don’t hold your breath .
And now, when she had finally done so, it wasn’t something to take pride of: she defied a ruthless oppressor to defend an even more ruthless one. Bella had always been a bit cracked, but this was a whole new level of fanaticism.
“Loyalty should belong to the family, not an outsider,” Mother spoke with all the arrogance of a family who thought they were above God. “Fraternising with an esteemed Dark wizard is one thing. But bow your head down to him? Unacceptable .”
Several people in the room drew a shuddering breath.
“Dignity is hard to find in the Wizarding society these days,” Mother’s voice was as hard and cold as Antarctic ice. “This family shall not let itself slip out from it. We would not condone if you ran away with some commoner as well .”
“ Ouh-la-la, ” Aunt Araminta gasped under her breath.
The implication of Walburga’s words fell down on the room with the weight of a guillotine blade. Narcissa let out a small whimper, and Uncle Cygnus with his wife Druella turned ghastly pale, their eyes downcast at the indirect mention of their stray daughter — Bellatrix's sister — Andromeda.
“Mother, we have agreed to not ever bring her up…” Regulus attempted to rise from his chair, but he stopped halfway upon a horrored realisation — his bottoms were glued to the chair by an ultra-sticky wad of chewing gum .
Well done, Leta, Sirius thought.
Bella turned into a blotchy shade of red, but she was undeterred.
“The Dark Lord is no commoner!” She yelled out of paranoia. “He is the greatest, noblest of the purebloods!”
Funny thing she didn't even deny she could be running away with Voldemort, instead going straight to defend his blood purity.
“Is that so?” Walburga wrinkled her nose. “And yet I remember the opposite, back in my Hogwarts days, when he asked for my hand in courtship — to which, of course, I rejected.”
The entire room froze. Bella jaw-slackened, stunned into a deathly silence.
For a while there was no sound, except for those from the majestic self-playing organ. It was like watching a game of cards: Bella's scarlet face, everybody else's ashen face — and Mother's poker player face — the ultimate winner of the game.
Sirius blinked once, and then twice.
And, for the first time in many days, he slipped out a chuckle, low and rasping… before it suddenly erupted into a rich hysterical laughter.
Like a curse broken, Sirius was no longer mute, and oh it was so refreshing to be able to laugh like this again. His exhilarated sound filled the shadowy room, echoing off the towering walls that rose so high that they vanished into the dark, unseeable ceiling. Leta seemed to be very much entertained, smiling and clapping her tiny hands along the rhythm, which only made him laugh louder.
As Sirius’s laughter grew uncontrollable, the melody played by the pipe organ was suddenly twisted, as if an invisible force was meddling up with all the keys. The Black family's crest carved beneath the gleaming pipes — a skull, ravens, armour hand, constellations, and the pronounced motto “TOUJOURS PUR" — seemed to be sprung into life by this diabolical harmony. The organ didn't stop there; it kept plunging into an operatic cacophony, deep bass notes mixed with high and shrieking ones, spiralling into a complete chaos.
Upon the grand organ’s newfound music, something else happened. The Ashwinder wine jar began to crack, but Sirius barely noticed.
He only saw Uncle Cygnus, forever the drunkard, stretching his hand and mouthing an inaudible “NO!”, but it was two late — with a loud “ BANG!” , the jar completely shattered, sending dozens of glass pieces flying across the room, liquor spilling all over the floor and its frowsy smell dispersed. After three hundred years of entrapment, the Ashwinder had finally met its fate, and crumbled into ashes. The pipe organ played a darkly-humourous, funerary cadenza — like a farewell to the ill-fated serpent.
The whole evening had been fucked up royally. All the pretentiousness and rigid ominosity and faux sedation were dismantled like a broken spell the moment the Black heir started to laugh. When the music slowly died down, it revealed someone else's fit of laughter that had also been adding up to this chaos: Bella was on top of her lungs, joining with Sirius in a vocal duet. Two opposite sides of the same mad family were laughing together — though for completely different reasons.
“The Dark Lord,” Bella breathed out in a soft voice, “The Dark Lord and Aunt Walburga! Tut, tut, sweet Salazar, who would imagine!”
Bella’s laughter was like blood spilling out of a wound, all in a crescendo — gradually increasing in loudness and intensity of emotion. Like a staccato, fortissimo, or any kind of musical terms Sirius could think of. Bella was also the one who’d destroyed Andromèdes’s violin after she left the family, though the madness at that time hadn't been conveyed through laughter.
(“This family is insane,” Karkaroff muttered to himself, “Absolutely deranged .”)
At the same time, Mother gritted out “ Sirius !”, while Cissy muttered in horror, “ Bella !” But both Sirius and Bella were already too far-gone, not a shred of sanity left. There was a thin cut on Mother's left cheek, where a shard of glass had sliced through.
“You are lucky that your father is out for a meeting with the Norwegian Minister!” she hissed, her nostrils flaring. “Get upstairs, to your father's study, and stay there until he returns. Kreacher, go take your young master out of my sight!”
“You know what, Mother,” he finally uttered his first words after days being mute, still wheezing with laughter as the elf grappled his wrist with a vicious grip. “If you weren't so ambitious of making my everyday like hell, I would have humbly taken my hat off to you — because, ma'am, that was very possibly the most smashing prank I've ever seen from the Mistress of House Black.”
o0o
When Sirius left his father's study, it was already two o’clock in the morning.
Vicious old Nazi, he grimaced, trying to cover the bloodied back of his left hand with bandage, stung with a festering wound. That quill must be full of Dark magic, he reckoned. His legs were sore from being chained to the chair, forced to spend the whole night writing in his own blood, slicing his hand open. As he limped back to his bedroom, he suddenly remembered he wouldn't sleep alone — Cissy was there, for they were supposed to share a bed like a couple. The sheer thought of this forced domesticity made him want to throw himself into the sea for good and let Kraken finish the job.
Candlelight spilling through their half-closed bedroom was warmer than he'd imagined.
As he nudged open the door with his knee, the sight that greeted him was both strange and familiar: on the shelf, a collection of dolls sat in a neat row, each of which represented a character from the gothic Beedle the Bard's tale, The Warlock’s Hairy Heart. Under the flicker of candles, their eyes were large and eerily sentient, and their twisted shapes casted a looming shadow on the wall.
These little stuffed things had been made by his mother. She was very fond of dolls, having a collection herself in her Grimmauld Place bedroom. Mother's sewing charmwork was abysmal as ever — Sirius thought as he looked absent-minded at the extremely ugly Young Maiden. They used to play with these dolls and reenact the story, from what felt like millenia ago —all the children of the Black: Bella, Cissy, Andromeda, Sirius, and a little Regulus who was by that time too young to join.
“It wasn't my fault that Cissy ran out of the house! She was scared off by the play, and that's stupid! What do you want me to do?”
Mother’s hand collided with his cheek.
“You are treading on thin ice, Sirius. Don't ever think of talking back to me again.”
The slap hurted so much that he was struck dumb, unable to respond. He could only stand there, cupping his stinging cheek with both hands, and stare at Mother's shoes. He was already small compared to her; now he felt even smaller.
“Narcissa is your female cousin. As the man, as the heir, you must protect the women of our family. Do you hear me?”
He made a grunted noise through his lump throat.
“I asked, ‘do you hear me?’ Speak louder!”
“Yes, Mother…”
The little girl from those bygone days was now a young woman, her back turning to him as she sat by the window. Silvery blonde hair cascaded down her shoulders in a soft stream, glowing in the faint candlelight.
She didn't look at him as he entered the room; a violin was held under her chin, her fingers gently strumming its strings with a bow. What had been the reason she’d run away from their play, only to later fall into Andromeda’s indulgent embrace? Oh, right, Sirius remembered, it had been because the Warlock killed the Young Maiden then killed himself, a too-tragic of an ending for a secret romantic like Cissy, who would cover both her ears if a fairy tale didn’t end with a happy wedding.
“Your posture is wrong.”
A moment and he was behind her. He lifted the violin by its scroll, adjusting it between her chest and shoulder. “Now you can properly play.”
But Narcissa wasn't playing anymore. She wrenched away from him, standing up abruptly. The violin fell uncharacteristically into its case.
“For Merlin's sake, what now?” Sirius snarled at her. His temper had forever been his weakness, he knew. But he just couldn’t help it.
But then he stopped short, sensing a faint scent of alcohol. Narcissa had been drinking.
And when she turned her head, he was hit by the realisation that there were unshed tears in her eyes.
His anger faltered. He hated tears, hated what they reminded him of: the locked attic room, the rotting despair, the helplessness. “Hey, don’t cry… Tell me what happened?”
She suddenly whirled around like the Whomping Willow, looking directly into his eyes.
“You! You!” Her face was contorted with anguish, fingers clawing at it as if trying to peel her skin off. “ You are what happened to me!”
Sirius stilled, unable to respond. Or maybe he was just too tired to do so.
“Lucius is engaged to Cytherea Greengrass, and I am confined forever, to… to you …” Her voice broke, and she sank onto the bed, losing all her strength. “I have tried to be good. To be dutiful, a true Black –– even though I'm blonde and wasn’t named after a star or constellation.”
Never had Sirius seen her like this — so vulnerable, so small. If he squinted very tightly, he could still see the vestige of that little girl from those days.
“And our marriage, I thought I could even try it with you.”
Sirius’s eyes went heavy as he stared at her. The silence between them felt like a chasm.
“How deluded I have been,” his cousin said quietly. “The more I try, the more you convince me that it will never work out. I'm so lost, Sirius –– when will anything in my life ever work out?”
Drawing a shaky breath, she lay on the bed and buried her face in her arms, crying. His vision wobbled, and he could see that lost little girl more clearly now.
Long, despairing sounds echoed inside through the window — the distant rumbles of the Norwegian Sea. Without a bottom, without the moon, and no star for navigation. Nothing but a bleak, fathomless abyss that drowned down all the struggles for life. The infinitude — the oblivion.
“Cissy…” He strode across the room to their bed, held his cousin's shoulders and dropped kisses all over her temples, her hair. “Cissy, oh, Cissy… ” He whispered, his bad hand tremulously tucking her hair behind the ear. But he couldn't say anything more, because what else was there for them?
They clutched to each other like drowning people because there was nothing for them to anchor, in the chamber of their long-gone childhood, where nothing seemed to have changed, with the Warlock, Young Maiden, and Poet, and rocking chairs and wooden toys to freeze the time — but simultaneously, everything, everything had changed.
As Sirius had come to understand Narcissa a little — for once, finally, he realised that both of them were flightless birds.