Black Swan Effect

It was blacker than the raven wings of midnight.

Edgar A. Poe | “Ligeia”

o0o

There were some beliefs in the Wizarding world that mirrored those from the Muggle world, though they might take a different form. The more one resembled a pure-blooded wizard, whether in genes or magical prowess, the more privileged they became. 

Even within this hierarchy, there were certain pigmentation traits that hold higher prestige than the others. For wizards, it was the ravenous pitch-black hair that had been all the rage. The colour of the night, of mystery and elegance — quintessentially related to witchcraft. It was like the reverse to the conventional standard of Muggle Europe, where fairer hair was often more desired and black hair was deemed the symbol of the outcasts. 

The darkest hair that Remus had ever seen belonged to Regulus Black. His hair colour was what could only be seen in fictitious Gothic stories, not in reality.

“Young Master Regulus…”

Remus was crouched at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, in a spot he privately called the “Primrose Patch" because of the beautiful primroses that bloomed there. He had just released a flock of Doxies from his glass jar, watching them bursting into the air like little black-and-purple fireworks, when he heard a hoarse, bullfrog-like voice breaking the stillness. The Doxies scattered, leaving Remus alone with whoever the utterer was — whom he recognised later was Kreacher, the Black family's house-elf. He would recognise that nasty house-elf everywhere.

As it seemed, Kreacher was wailing in a guttural misery that could make a person torn between dread, pity, and disgust. 

“ —so heartless, so cruel… Master Sirius is so cruel to Kreacher…” 

His croaking turned into sobbing, each hiccough more miserable than the last, and Remus thought there couldn’t be a sound more pitiful.

“What did Kreacher even do wrong?” The house-elf croaked between his lamenting cries and intermittent gulps for air, “Kreacher just delivered a message from his Mistress, and yet he was put at the receiving end of Master Sirius's wrath… Kreacher took care of Master Sirius when he was but an infant, watching Master Sirius grow up to be an ungrateful boy as he is now… It's been so long Master Sirius hasn't spoken kindly to Kreacher — so long, so long…”

Then came another voice, soothing and gentle, as if to make up for the lack of affection the house-elf must have felt.

“My brother can be very cruel when he wants to, Kreacher,” said Regulus Black patiently. Remus felt a pang of surprise, because over the seldom occasions he'd heard the boy speak, never had Regulus's voice been so gentle. “But I promise you, he will be better soon.” His tone darkened, becoming more personal. “Very soon, you'll see. All we need is patience.”

This statement was eerily familiar, resonating with the cryptic voice spoken in an empty corridor with Narcissa Black. I know he seems— untamable… But he could be nicer once you try to talk to him more patiently… 

Remus’s fingers clenched around his wand. A friend or a foe, he couldn't make out of of this Regulus Black. Many seconds elapsed without any light to be shed, filled only with the occasional cracking of some too-sentient trees.

“Master Regulus is too kind,” said the house-elf hoarsely after the silence, wiping his red-rimmed, swollen eyes. “Master Sirius doesn't deserve a brother like Master Regulus.”

A strange wind wailed by, and the small frame of the house-elf shivered with a whimper.

“If he keeps behaving that way, then he doesn't deserve you either."

Then, not waiting for Kreacher's response, the Slytherin proceeded with a voice like silk. "And you should go back to Berkshire now," he said leadenly, "There are still pressing matters about the betrothal ceremony that you need to help us with.”

The last part of his words was drowned away by a gut-wrenching howl — Kreacher’s terrible outcry of overwhelmed gratitude. With a self-disposal lunge, the elf threw himself harshly onto the wet, rocky earth under the feet of his Master. 

“Master Regulus is of the greatest heart of them all… No one could be more befitting of his noble name than Master Regulus,” he rambled. “Oh, to hear Master Regulus defending Kreacher despite his own brother… Kreacher would be more than honoured to die for Master Regulus!” It was rather terrifying to hear, like a fanatical believer grovelling and praying at the Delphic shrine.  “Now, Kreacher will come back instantly to help his Mistress with the betrothal, as Master Regulus wishes… There are still invitations to send out, bouquets of white roses to order, wine to import from Marseille…”

“And the Bruxa , Kreacher, don't forget we need to summon her from Portugal to execute the most sacred blood magic rituals,” said Regulus Black with a business-like tone. “Aunt Araminta wants the big guest room at the Berkshire estate, but remember to choose a room far away from Grandmother Melania if we want to avoid a public hazard. And we need to arrange two rooms for Uncle Alphard and Lucius Malfoy,” he said the latter name with a twinge of disapproval, as if resenting whoever thought it was a bright idea to invite Narcissa's erstwhile lover, no matter how successfully Malfoy had charmed his way into the Blacks' inner circle. “I don't suppose we've contacted Savatier et Fils Co. , have we? Last time Aunt Druella said the betrothal gown was getting old… Yes, that's right. Go tell Monsieur Savatier and his sons to fix it up, that's important.”

Kreacher drank every drop of word from his Master as if it was the holy anointing oil. “Oh, Kreacher will do anything Master Regulus tells him to, absolutely anything!” croaked the house-elf besottedly. “Master Regulus should be the one to marry Miss Narcissa… Far more mature, far better match…”

“I'm afraid this marriage is a matter of rise or fall to the House of Black, Kreacher.”

Kreacher was immediately silenced. Regulus's voice remained soft, but there was something about it peculiarly repellent. 

“I can see curiosity in your look, and I hate to let you down, but it is also a secret of me and my brother which I do not wish to back off. Between us, there remained—a childhood bet unsettled.”

What an ominous remark. Regulus Black didn't offer more explanation, and the house-elf knew better than asking for it.

When Kreacher Disapparated with a loud “CRACK", Regulus and Remus became the only people left in the Primrose Patch.

Remus didn't move, still keeping himself out of sight behind a gnarled oak tree, luring his counterpart into an illusion that he was here alone. However, the second Black son was not one to underestimate. As soon as he was aware of Remus's presence, with a sharp, whip-like movement, he spurned around and sparked a curse in Remus’s way.

“Petrificus Totalus!”

Had Remus been a mili-second slower, he wouldn't have got enough time to draw out his wand and cast a Shielding Charm. The Shield shimmered in the air between them as the little sparrows in the trees flapped their wings in panic and flew away.

Through the translucent wall of the charm, Regulus Black’s dark good looks stood out saliently. It was an uncanny reminiscence of his brother Sirius, yet softer-edged and more obscuring. But Regulus didn't give his opponent the time to further compare and contrast — his wand was raised again, and Remus instantly acted on instinct.

The first Shielding Charm had given away Remus's location. The second Shielding Charm, this time more prepared, was conjured to block another malevolent curse unmistakably infused with Dark Magic, quick and precise, carrying a single-minded force. Like shooting an arrow, the archer in Remus spoke at the back of his head as Regulus’s dark grey eyes bored on him, serpentine irises narrowed in an intense animosity.

A jet of crimson light sizzled past Remus's ear, missing it by a hair's breadth.

Regulus? We haven’t talked in a long time.

Another bolt of red light, then another, another… Remus's Shield flickered, threatening to dissolve under the merciless assault. It might be a useless observation in this very untimely moment, but despite the viciousness of his attack, never once did the Slytherin trample on those delicate primroses.

Drop it, Reg! Keep boot-licking Mother all you like, but I'm not her puppet anymore!

Regulus Black showed no signs of deflation. The cold detachment was slipping off his face, only to be replaced by something more terrible — a relentlessness that had stayed hidden the whole time, never quite going away. His eyes were cavernous and menacing, as if the gaze alone was sufficient to physically hurt, his hair so unnaturally dark that it didn't reflect the sunlight…

“Jamais Pur”, Regulus, so be it!

And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the attack stopped. 

Remus let out a cold breath he didn't realise he'd been holding, adrenaline still coursing through his veins as he slowly lowered his wand. The stillness felt almost surreal.

When he reckoned it was safe enough to remove the Shielding Charm — wands down and talk, as he liked to put it — Regulus Black had already gone. He left nothing behind but a peaceful Primrose Patch, with those beautiful purple flowers swaying innocently in the cradle of breeze, as if a magical offensive had never occurred here.

o0o

Perhaps James Potter wasn't just being paranoid. The second son of Black might actually have a personal motive, which related to the betrothal between his brother and Narcissa.

As March unfurled itself, the atmosphere between the Marauders only became stranger, like some turbulent nightmare made up by a Lewis Carol character. The winter’s snow had long gone, but the earth remained frozen in patches. The sky was no longer cold and clear, but instead dwelling into a pallid state where the winds would howl a mournful chorus and the grey clouds would form some gloomy curdles. At least the weather seemed to be in harmony with what the heart felt — unlike the people. Students went about with their daily life, playing and laughing with their friends with an enviable teenager carefreeness while Sirius watched them quietly. The betrothal was only a few weeks away.

Around this time, Remus’s charmed turnable would occasionally play some Beatles. In the rare hours between drowning in classwork and bone-fixing after Quidditch, stress-eating and biting the head off anything that moved, Sirius would be found lying stomach-flat on his bed, arm dangling to the floor as he listened to Hey Jude spinned on the portable turntable. 

And everytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain

Don’t carry the world upon your shoulders

For well you know that it’s a fool who play it cool

By making his world a little colder…

With every passing day, he withdrew more into his introspection, and his state of mind became unstable — a slight gust of wind was enough to rile something up within him. He would disappear off to who-knew-where at odd hours, which bothered James to no end, because they couldn't crack one bit of him out of the Marauders’ Map. This only meant two things: he was sneaking out of Hogwarts, or was holing up in the Room of Requirement… doing what?

Nothing could be kept in secret for too long, especially when it came to the most popular students in the school. Some people seemed to have noticed this unspoken tension. Black and Potter, they whispered, the inseparable duo. Never see one without the other. What’s happened to them?

One advantage about Potter and Black inseparability was that it made them almost impossible to mess with. They were already hard to chew singularly, but once they were separated, some tossers decided it was high time to start a fire. Because almost as much as their own popularity, a lot of people in this school wanted to settle the score with Potter and Black — and they couldn't wait to do so.

It was another gloomy morning when Albert Runcorn had pushed his way out of the Ravenclaw crowd, threatening Sirius Black not to get near his girlfriend Mafalda Hopkirk, or he would be thrown off the Astronomy Tower by his little ankles. Such a scandalous accusation couldn't emerge out of the thin air. When Runcorn slipped out it was Severus Snape who'd been his trustworthy source, Sirius said nothing. Only the thin-lipped smile that played on his lips betrayed how low he regarded the Slytherin. His gaze swept over the Ravenclaw, who was stupid enough to believe the slander, offering him the typical Black sneer — the freezing fire that could reduce the recipient’s self-assurance to ashes. 

“Didn't know your sexual fantasies involve your girl getting all the hots with another guy, Runcorn.”

Runcorn turned purple at once out of anger and loss of face. He had a fame of being quite forbidding, but now even that adversary was fading in front of Sirius Black. In a simple English sailor's black turtleneck, Black looked tall, broad-shouldered, and more handsome than he'd ever had the right to. His cheekbones: sharp and upward-slanting. His smile: bored and arrogant. And his words wielded a lecherous edge, an adult-flavoured stench of vocabulary that wasn’t quite fitting for his age, but it made his peers all the more curious. All the eyes now fixed on him, both the admirers and the haters, hung onto his every word. 

“You heard that, folks?” Black suddenly called out loud to the people. “Albert Runcorn was oddly specific about my little ankles. Been thinking about my ankles a lot, haven’t you?”

His audience erupted into a riot of laughter, turning Runcorn's threat into a public joke. Some of them laughed rather nervously — the way Black had paraphrased it made it sound like a shameful, dirty thing. He turned to look at Runcorn, his audience's jeers in the background, a wide, unkind smile on his face. Runcorn fisted at his collar, webs of blue veins pulsing on his hand. “You despicable of a fucker—”

Black didn't flinch. “That’s the point,” he said briskly. “Anything else, before I fall asleep right here on the spot?” His eyes levelled at Runcorn, and his smile was as provoking as it could be. It makes people either want to punch him in the face or kiss him, Hestia Jones from Hufflepuff had once remarked, no middle ground.

Beneath his own anger, the Ravenclaw was frozen from confusion. 

From this proximity, the danger was magnified tenfold. A blade under that curving smile, a trap beneath those precocious eyes... The venom laced in that vague, almost undetectable masculine fragrance...

Runcorn loosened his grip, terrified, and dropped it off as if Black was a fever himself. For a long moment he just stared at the black-sheep Gryffindor, squaring his jaw tight.

Sirius frowned, clearly lost patience with Runcorn for the unresponsiveness, and turned away like a child abandoning an used toy. But the Ravenclaw, humiliated and confused by the unsettling effect Black had unconsciously cast on him, wasn’t finished just yet.

“I get it, alright?” Runcorn yelled after him. “I get the appeal of chasing after dresses, since you’re doomed to have a frigid witch for a fiancée. Honestly, can she actually fuck?”

In a brief second, Runcorn was shoved violently against the wall that one could hear something crack, 

“Shut your fucking mouth." A blackthorn wand was pressed against Runcorn’s throat.

No more mockery, no more sarcasm. Left only the swirling blazes and red-hot blades. For in Sirius's simple, linear thinking, people could criticise Narcissa and her nasty personality all they liked, but hurdles of sexual insults at her would earn no mercy. Streams of cold sweats trickled down Runcorn's temples. He eyed the wand warily, suddenly remembering the victory this wand had snatched from the jaws of Everard Selwyn not long ago. But his desire for getting back had overshadowed his hesitation.

“Protective of her, are you?” the Ravenclaw sneered in a constricted voice. “You'd make a fine incestuous husband, Black, just like the rest of your family.”

“Oh yeah?” Black laughed, baring his too-white teeth. “Even if my inbred children married each other, their recessive-genes offspring would still outsmart Mr. Runcorn here, who thinks he's so intelligent when he swallows every greasy word from Snivellus Snape .”

When Sirius turned away again, he left Albert Runcorn with the courtesy of the most accurate and disgusting Insect Hex that could ever be produced. The Ravenclaw now slumped down the wall, struck dumb and sprouting grotesque feelers, like a hideous parody of Gregor Samsa in Kafka's “Metamorphosis" . 

“Oh, here we go again!” An angry voice echoed down one of the moving staircases. “You think you're so above people, but at the end of the day you’re just another bullying toe-rag, Sirius Black!”

Lily Evans marched over with her bright green eyes gleaming in indignance. Only after several furious attempts could she manage to lift the hex from Runcorn. In people’s impression, it was James Potter that the red-headed Evans girl usually got cross with, although the number of times Sirius Black tested her temper was far from small. However, despite her utmost dismay, the look Evans was giving Black wasn't exactly the repulsed scorn she usually gave the Potter and Black pair at their misdeeds. Instead, it was closer to concern, like she was wondering what had gone wrong.

In front of Lily Evans, Sirius Black seemed to have lost his bit of boyish bravado; his shoulders were tense, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, and the arrogance on his face no longer made him handsome, but quite the contrary. When his eyes searched for Lily's eyes — so strikingly coloured against his dull grey — there was something cornered in them as he looked at her — he still had the nerve to look at her! — almost beseechingly. But when Lily's lips pressed into a thin line, he put his gaze down, and away he walked without another word. His once-confident gait now looked like someone who was standing at the edge of a cliff.

By the end of the afternoon, it had been known around the castle that by standing up for his fiancée cousin, the rebellious Black heir had finally submitted to his fate.

o0o

The tenth of March was drizzling with rain all day.

They were having a cosy celebration in the common room — the laid-back sort of celebration between people who'd known each other for years, though they might not always get along. Marlene’s head was on Lily's lap, a cavalier smile on her face that could make any guy feel threatened. Her fingers reverently played with the Muggle watch Remus had fixed for her, which looked rather stylish on her slender wrist. She was spinning some ridiculous story about a troll, a hag, a leprechaun going into a pub, making Mary tip her head back and bark with the kind of laughter that Alice doubted she’d picked up from Sirius. 

Speaking of him, it'd been long he hadn't laughed like that — at least to Alice's awareness. There was no sight of him today. For four years Alice knew the boys, never once had she seen them miss each other's birthdays.

In the comfortable lull of her friends' chattings, Alice’s thoughts drifted away. She was thinking about how Sirius and Narcissa Black were the most miserable betrothed-to-be couple she'd ever seen. Although Alice herself was a pureblood, little did she know about the intricacies of other purebloods' marital politics, let alone the great House of Black.

But her boyfriend, Frank, had a Great-Great Uncle who'd married a Black lady, Callidora, and it was often said with a shudder that poor Harfang Longbottom had died young to escape his cruel, vain wife. That family was complicated, Alice told herself — incomprehensible. Save Sirius, she had always avoided members of this family as much as she could.

And Alice had kept her resolution well — up until a few days ago, when she had stumbled into Narcissa Black at a Herbology greenhouse, brooding like Persephone  before she married the Lord of Underworlds. Out of impetuosity, Alice had let the Gryffindor spirit take over her and declared to the wide-eyed Narcissa: “It's the twentieth century and you don't even feel tired of being treated like a trading stock?” The Stinging Hex she'd received from the blonde Slytherin still stung until today, although according to what she gathered about the Blacks, Stinging Hexes were just their another way to say “I get what you mean but please do fuck off" .

Remus was perching on an arm of the couch, talking with Lily about some Muggle politics (Alice didn't have a whit of clue who Richard Nixon was, but he didn't sound like a nice bloke). Even so, she could sense a slight absent-mindedness in Remus. All the birthday gifts had been unwrapped, but a very important gift was still missing — one that Remus had been dwelling upon for this whole evening. He was internally unhappy about this, although he'd never say it aloud. Would Sirius Black ever put aside his selfishness and show up as a good friend should? At this moment, Alice felt herself blended into the common resentment of everyone towards the absent Marauder. 

“In Vino Veritas,” a familiar voice echoed impatiently outside the common room.

“You need to say it clearer, boy.”

“You're speaking to a person who's studied Latin since seven years old. Don't lecture me.”

“My my, what a temper. Now move in, boy, and take that suspicious looking trunk with you!”

The Fat Lady portrait swung open, and Sirius Black climbed in.

To everyone’s surprise, Sirius was utterly tattered. He looked as if he'd just crawled up from the Great Lake after wrestling with a mermaid, drenched in rainwater from head to feet. Wet, dishevelled black hair stuck against the fine sides of his face, tendrils curling around his pale neck like dark seaweeds. He was carrying with him a large metal trunk, trailing water and mud on the floor.

At the sight of his friends all staring at him, he froze.

“So now he’s decided to show up,” said James coolly.  

Sirius must have realised his presence drove the atmosphere down, and the sight that welcomed him was not very welcoming. James: standing upright in the room, arms crossed; Peter: curling up on the couch, mouth agape mid-chewing a Bertie Bott's Every Flavour bean; Lily: lounging next to Peter, her gaze cool and rapt; Marlene: head on Lily's lap, blinking with surprise; Mary: sipping pumpkin cider, offering him an impartial look; Alice: an inaudible “Holy shit" under her breath, looking around nervously as if wondering whether she should excuse herself elsewhere. Remus: leaning against the edge of the armchair, arms folded, tie undone for once, an eyebrow raising at the boy who had interrupted his birthday.

“Remus,” Sirius said quietly. Remus’s eyebrow raised even higher. Perhaps because of the drenched state, Remus's name came out as throatier than usual. “Moony.”

A drop of water fell on the floor. And then another. Another.

Remus didn’t respond. His brow stayed high, half-demanding, half-cautious. His hazel eyes flicked towards the trunk.

“Listen, I—” Sirius placed a hand on his wet chest. “I'm sorry for being late to your special day. It's not like I forgot it, but—” he motioned at himself, and then at the trunk. “I didn't want to turn up without a gift, so…”

Sirius looked up to meet Remus's gaze, an ardent look in his eyes. 

“We had some troubles with the delivery, and it's not exactly small,” he explained, “Quite a hassle, this thing. Not that I mind, it’s for your birthday after all.”

There was a little stammer in his speech, but it only intensified the irresistible effect. The look he gave Remus was so earnest. All Remus wanted to do now was to reach out for him.

“You are the biggest wheedler I have ever seen, Sirius,” Remus finally said, un-crossing his arms. 

Sirius gave him a small smile, which made a precarious raindrop slide off his chin. Remus drew out his wand and casted a Drying Charm on Sirius, for the boy appeared to be utterly unaware of himself soaking wet.

“What is in there?” Alice spluttered, breaking the silence. All of them were eyeing the trunk curiously. Lily, who had just been wearing a hard expression two seconds ago, was the first one to shift in her seat out of impatience. Only James didn't seem too enthusiastic with the mysterious gift.

“Can't open it here,” said Sirius tersely, avoiding James’s look. He had managed back the usual haughtiness, even with his messiest interface. “It has been Transfigured to smuggle into the castle, and once Distransfigured, it will stay where it is.”

The girls eyed the trunk with the wary look they reserved only for a Boggart. Before any Acromantula or Lord Voldemort could jump out, it was Peter who first raised his voice.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” he said, glaring at his fellow Marauders. “Let's get it up to our dorm!”

James was still giving Sirius a heavy look when the boy moved up the stairs to their dorm, hauling the trunk behind, followed by Remus and Peter. 

“Potter,” Lily told him, “You should get on your feet.”

Any other time, James would get overhyped for this sudden attention. This time, he simply shrugged. “Right, let's get this over with,” he rose from his seat. The truculent, flirtatious bravado he usually gave her was gone, replaced by an unnatural politeness. “Our apologies. We'll be back in a few minutes.”

It was just that none of the girls there was really the waiting type.

“Hey, Marls, did you hear anything?”

“Shhh, be quiet!”

All they could manage to eavesdrop was a yelp, a muffled laugh, then a long, long silence. The girls leaned themselves closer to the dorm entrance, trying to make out another sound… Until they were interrupted by the thundering footsteps down the stairs, and the mousy head of Peter Pettigrew popped out.

“It's a Grindylow,” he breathed, the ghost of shock in his watery eyes. “It's a ruddy Grindylow!”

Years later, it was also Peter Pettigrew who ran out of Lily Potter's delivery room in St. Mungo and announced the news “It's a boy!”, after which James and Sirius would cry like toddlers while Lily and Remus would roll their eyes. But that was the story of the far future, and so, another story. Now, everyone's attention was riveted on the magical creature hidden in Sirius's no less magical trunk.

Whoever close to Remus Lupin all knew the almost obsession he reserved for Dark Creatures studies — the Lethifold picture hung above his bed's headboard still frightened James half out of his wits until today. But no one had ever come close to guessing he'd secretly want to keep one as a pet.

Peter ran upstairs again, then returned once more within a few minutes. “It's not some ordinary Grindylow,” he told the slack-jawed girls, and a Lily Evans who doubled over on the couch, laughing the air out of her. “It's from Norway, one of the rarest breeds with very beautiful translucent long horns — that's what Remus said, I don't find those horns beautiful one bit.” He disappeared the third time, only to come back with a mischievous smirk. “Remus said, please, he begged you all not to let out one word about the Grindylow or the professors would confiscate it from him. Grindylows are not allowed at Hogwarts, you know.” Then the smirk slipped off his face as he scratched his head nervously. “Hold on a minute, so does that mean I have to share the dorm with a bloody Dark creature?”

Like it or not, that was how on a rainy day in March, a Norwegian Grindylow had become the fifth resident of the Marauders' dormitory. The girls stayed true to their loyalty, protecting Remus and his new pet.

o0o 

His predicament hadn’t been this bad in a long time. It wasn’t just the physical pains –– the full moon was always able to dredge up the darkest emotions in him, making the wolf agitated and restless. “Hey, Moony, hold still.” He woke to a throbbing pain in his head, and someone’s shadow swirling in his vision. The voice was fraught with an undercurrent of tiredness, so that it could appear to be strong. “I’m applying Murtlap Essence to your skin; you hurted yourself quite terribly last night.” The sensation of a cold, damp cloth on his skin sent a shiver down his spine and another stinging wave through his body. It hurt like a bitch. Everything hurt –– outside, inside, up and down. To elude further pains, he clung to that voice like a lifeline. Like a koala curling around an eucalyptus branch. “Shit––it’s okay… I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.” The scent weaved through his delirium –– fresh bergamot, sweat, warm fabric. Warmth . The safe and secured feeling from someone’s body heat –– enveloping him in a dark contentment. A contentment he’d only ever felt in Hope’s embrace. Don’t go to Berkshire , he thought, which turned into, Don’t go back to those people . Then, with the terrifying force of a freight train –– Don’t you ever leave me.

o0o

On a late night at the end of March, Remus Lupin visited the portrait of Vega Black in a very suspicious state.

“Why, lovely evening to you, too!” Vega greeted before frowning. “Though by the looks of it, you're either thoroughly drunk or overdosed on a Cheering Charm.”

Remus chuckled in a rough voice, his face flushing red. “You know what — my friends,” he hiccoughed, “my friends start to suspect I'm secretly dating some bird, all because of how often I disappear off to see you.”

Vega crossed her arms. “Although a portrait cannot smell, I'm most convinced that you're drunk off your face.” Then she spotted a glass bottle looming behind his back, which confirmed her theory. “Firewhiskey? Knotgrass Mead? Champagne?”

“ Champagne? ” Remus laughed to himself satirically, shaking his head. His voice sounded strange and heavily slurred. “People drink champagne when they want to celebrate something, Vega, and I wouldn’t call this a celebration. But, who knows,” he mocked, “maybe I should celebrate for him?”

“What are you on about?”

Remus slowly closed his eyes. He didn’t directly answer her question.

“Tomorrow is the start of the Easter holiday, Vega,” instead he said, taking in a deep, shaky breath. “I need to get myself rat-arsed tonight.”

Vega's frown deepened. “Lupin, I'm thinking perhaps you should be with your friends—”

“Shhhhhhhhhhhh.”

He drawled a long hush that seemed to consume his whole lungs capacity, and placed an index finger on Vega's dark lips, sealing them. 

“The boys don't know about this. I'm drinking alone, enjoying some peaceful moments without getting disturbed by those bastards,” he hiccoughed again. “They've been driving me mad recently. Let me be here with you — the most pleasant company I could have,” he looked up at her, all wide eyes and genuine. “Please?”

Vega heaved out an elegant sigh, fingers resting on the bell sleeves of her gown. 

“My young descendant can be a great menace when he wants,” she tried to appear sympathetic. “Phineas Nigellus was complaining about him the whole winter, Salazar save my ears.”

“Oh, yeah,” A pleasant smile broke on his lips as he let out a chuckle, which became lower and raspier every second. “He is the worst all the damn time,” he bowed his head, “The absolutely worst…”

An awful lapse of seconds passed before he snapped his head up with a neck-breaking motion. He seemed to forget all of what they’d been talking about as his eyes met Vega's almost feverishly.

“I read in a book, Vega, that Edwardian eyes glittered and sparkled, while Victorian eyes always beamed.”

Vega: “...”

“And I wonder how all those moony poets and aestheticians would describe—the eyes of the nineteen fifty nine?” 

His own eyes were scintillating half-mad, and he could’ve fooled anyone into thinking he was sober hadn't it been for his rose-colour cheeks. She wondered if it was him speaking or had the Firewhiskey taken over his delirious mind, because Remus Lupin neither talked much about himself nor revealed his raw feelings. In Vega’s impression since the first time they’d met, he was always composed and indifferent, which sometimes veered towards lacking sentimentality. Right now, he didn’t look like his usual self at all. Would he regret what he’d outpoured tonight when he became sober tomorrow? 

Vega tucked a long lock of hair behind her elven ear, and went quiet for a moment. 

“The eyes of the nineteen fifty nine, Remus, or the eyes of November the third, nineteen fifty nine?” she queried, and almost couldn’t recognise him. His eyes were all swirling with those peculiar shadows.

“You have no idea how special that date is to me,” Remus said, blinking as those dark currents in his eyes fluttered and settled. Vega thought he had such strange eyes — they were almost in different colours, with the left one a shade lighter than the right. 

“Oh, dear, I know what’s so different about you today,” she muttered upon a dawned realisation, “This is the first time I’ve ever seen you look like a fifteen-year-old schoolboy.”

Remus laughed. “People said that to me all the time — that I don’t seem my age.” 

He averted his gaze from Vega to the window, and glaring back at him from the darkness were a few luminous dots from the other Hogwarts towers, and the feeble glow from Hagrid’s Hut.

“An––incident occurred to me when I was very young. After that, it felt like I’d grown fifty years overnight and then stopped ageing,” said Remus with a twinge of bitterness. “Ever since then, I've also become quite apathetic with almost everything in the world. I hardly ever hate anyone, thinking that to be a waste of my energy… Well, fuck that. Right now I really, really hate Narcissa Black.” 

His hand clenched around the Firewhiskey bottle in a white-knucled grip, a maddening heat in his hazel eyes. 

“There were moments when I thought I might’ve been attracted to her — her beauty is like a flame to the moths and her mind is as sharp as a knife, and somewhere beneath it all, there’s still a splinter of a heart. I have been her confidant, and I doubt there are more than a few people whom she’s confided in as much as she has me. But none of that matters to me now. She soon will be the one who has Sirius at her disposal, and despite that she will never love him — not in the way he deserves to be loved.

“So, you see, I'm not very fond of your descendant.” 

The contrast between his vehemence and the soft lines of his features did the strangest things to the harmony of his visage. 

“I hate her, and her fucking mask, and the hollowness of her dreams, and I hate how she ends up lying to herself so thoroughly. I hated her even when I saw her at the hospital wing last week, sicker and more mentally frail with each day closer to the betrothal. All I could think of was how little I cared for her sufferings — she isn’t the only one who suffers, and why shouldn’t she?” 

After his rare moment of such raw emotions, he finished it off in a self-mocking tone, “What a big hypocrite that I am.”

Vega let out a disapproving noise, tapping her fingers on her elbow impatiently.

“Have we reached the hypocrite part yet? I’m still waiting,” she demanded with the supercilious airs of a Countess, though genuinely engrossed in his confession. “I’ve seen more hypocrites than you could imagine, Remus, and you’re not even close to one… Oy, stop drinking .”

“You sound like my friend Lily Evans. Are you sure you haven’t met her?” he laughed once, before wiping a stray drop of whiskey from his mouth with the hem of his sleeve. “Oh god, this Firewhiskey tastes like shit…”

“Is it that bad?” Vega prompted, for the lack of anything else to say.

“Endlessly!” Remus almost knocked the Firewhiskey bottle into the wall, baring his teeth in a mad grin, and Vega wasn’t sure they were on the same page anymore. “He's always been popular with the girls, but I had no feelings about it — at least hardly. But now it seems even the boys notice him. Well, it’s fine, really. He is the walking magnet, and people have the fucking eyes . Does that mean I don’t want to pluck the eyes out of every single one of them? No .”

Vega truly laughed this time; a bell-like thing that echoed melodically in the corridor. 

“You would make a darling in the Middle Ages,” she shook her dark hair back, a gesture that eerily reminded him of Sirius. “Where a single grudge could lead to a few missing body parts.”

Somehow that didn't offend Remus the slightest. “You should at least try to be more annoyed, Vega. I just expressed my utmost disdain for your dear descendant.”

“And your love for another,” said Vega laconically. “It doesn’t matter. Many people hate the Blacks. Our name has been a byword for evil for centuries, and I daresay we thoroughly deserve it. I would react just the same if someone said they hate Sirius or Andromeda to my face — last time it was a tall Ravenclaw who muttered some very amusing curses about Sirius when he trudged through this corridor,” she chuckled. “Do you know that during her Hogwarts years, people used to call Sirius’s mother ‘Wrinkly Wallie’ behind her back?”

“What?” To picture Walburga Black as a school girl, probably without a veil to cover her face, fingers pointing at her from behind…

“Even as a school girl, Walburga already settled for her own method towards public relations. She was often seen wrinkling her nose up to almost everyone — save perhaps Orion,” Vera said in an amused tone people usually reserved for children stories. “It wasn’t even the worst name calling. For me it is five hundred years of hearing a Black name following all varieties of swear words, Remus. I’ve also grown quite, as you said, apathetic to it.”

Remus couldn’t understand Vega’s uncanny knack of being so 'the world is of full of mongrels and I alone am elevated' and still having a heart in understanding people’s vexation. She was a bloody portrait, for Merlin’s sake, yet sometimes it felt like she was even realer a flesh-and-blood person. She had the exact same angle of holding her head, which always exceeded ninety degrees, just like Sirius and Narcissa, and none of them gave the impression they were looking up to anyone. The specific way she carried herself on the small of her back was also theirs. It must’ve run very deep in the blood. 

“Sometimes I let my detachment gone too far,” he began slowly after a very uncomfortable rumble in his stomach, courtesy of the Firewhiskey. “So people end up thinking I don’t give a damn.”

“Well, are they correct?”

“They are — most of the time. But not this. Definitely not this time.” 

Remus grimaced as the alcohol tugged violently at his nerves, turning all his trains of thoughts into a nuisance. 

“He dreads the betrothal day, Vega, he dreads it like a death sentence. These days he doesn't seem like himself anymore. I might not bring up a head-on confrontation like James, but seeing him so out-of-sorts picks on my nerves like nothing else. And fuck ––I don’t know how I can help him.”

“You can’t,” Vega said flatly, almost cruelly, “You can’t marry Narcissa for him. You can’t be the Black heir for him, or carry the world on your shoulders for him.The wind started to blow, Remus –– there’s no stopping it.”

“Are you calling me a naïf now? Just because I’m tired of standing back and watching?” There was bile in his throat; a foul thing. “Do you know what I saw in his diary yesterday, when he fell asleep on my bed and forgot to close it?”

He paused to take a breath, and it sounded muffled as if his nose was stuffed up. “Okay, let’s skip all the Dear diary… part.” What was he doing — spilling out his friend’s secret to a portrait while inebriated? Apart from a moral check, he knew he needed a vial of Pepperup Potion right now.

“When I look at my parents, at how they are two vicious by-products of a bloodline tangled in generational putridities, I can’t help but think to myself — their blood is also flowing through my veins. Minerva doesn’t say it out loud, and James is wrong. They wield all the power they could have on a fifteen-year-old, which leaves me with none. It’s like being binded by an Imperius Curse while conscious.

“Tell me, Vega, what kind of fucked-up diary would that be?”

For a long moment, Vega was silent. A strange contemplative look rose and swirled in her dark, shrewd eyes. She idly rotated the small, grey skull in her hand, holding it like a Queen holding the sovereign’s orb, and if Remus hadn’t been so worked up with the situation, he would be shuddering to think whose skull it was supposed to be. 

“I shall tell you a secret from the House of Black, Lupin. And you shall tell no one.” 

She sounded like a woman who held the world in her sleeves, able to do anything as she pleased without consequences. The alcohol-fuelled buzz stopped thundering in his head, leaving him sharp and silent. Here they were, at this very ungodly hour of the night, trading secrets that weren’t theirs.

“I’m all ears,” he said.

And that was all Vega needed to begin.

“In the eighteenth century, there had been a prophecy. Not an ordinary one — but one given by Pythia Vablatsky herself. Back in those days, prophecies carried a significant weight. It wasn’t so different from how the Ancient Greeks received a Delphic oracle.” 

The rotation of the skull halted to a stop as Vega shifted slightly in her seat, and her voice adopted a lower, emphatic tone. “The prophecy foretold that two hundred years later, a black swan would appear in the Black family and put an end to sixteen centuries of our existence. Do you happen to be familiar with the term ‘black swan’?”

Remus nodded. Rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno, as the Romans had used to say. Muggles used this term, when they wanted to describe something extremely catastrophic and hard-to-predict. 

“That’s why the Blacks are so obsessed about keeping Sirius under their control,” Vega didn’t notice his silence and concluded, “They believe he is the prophesied black swan. They are terrified — and fear could drive people to the extremities we could never have imagined.” 

The phantom of Vega's tragic past seemed to loom closer, revealing the hauntedness of her otherwise ethereal beauty.

“My death marked the point where the family started to sink lower into depravity, but it wasn’t until this prophecy that they went completely deranged,” she told him and smiled; an eerie, haunting thing. “You couldn’t imagine how many Black family members have been disowned, exiled, or even killed for being suspected ‘black swans’, Remus. Now, two hundred years have passed, and the family are being more desperate than ever in their attempt to reverse the prophecy.”

“But the marriage—”

“Intra-marriage is the response to their distrust for Sirius. They don’t want him to build kinship with other clans, fearing that given his undesired tendencies, someday he would use those external affiliations to weaken the family from the inside.” Vega’s eyes shone like candles in the dimly-lit hallway. “But at the same time, they want your dear friend to sire as many children as possible so that, even if he turns out to be a black swan, the House of Black won’t be lost to the ages. So that The Sacred Twenty-Eight won’t become The Twenty-Seven.”

Remus listened to Vega’s revelation, words after words drifting in his mind like a strange, fragmented tune. He was vaguely aware of Vega muttering something like “Twenty-seven won’t do any good, it will break the harmony… Twenty-eight, however, is a sacred number,” but he didn’t actually pay attention anymore.

For a while, he didn’t utter another. Instead, with a soft clunk, he put the empty Firewhiskey bottle down, then slowly slumped to the floor, legs crossed.

“So all of my pains in the arse can be traced their roots back to a stupid prophecy?” He ran a hand through to rumple up his hair, a gesture he didn’t realise he’d picked up from James. “How anti-climatic.”

Vega halted her soliloquy, looking no less than baffled. “Excuse me?”

“Okay, the prophecy said they would perish. So what? What else is new?” Despite his inebriated state, Remus sounded perfectly calm. “Dynasties always fall in the end. We don’t need an oracle of Delphi to tell the history book is just repeating itself.”

Vega opened her mouth to say something, but Remus cut her off. “Your family aren’t Olympian gods, Vega. With or without black swans, your time will end eventually.” His language was no longer so emotionally raw. If anything, it had been resumed to the usual clarity and collectedness. “Now I understand why Sirius has never told us about it. It might have never occurred to him that such a simple, common knowledge could even be called a prophecy. Or has there ever been a prophecy at all? I wouldn’t be surprised, Vega, if everything was just a grand show to feed their illusions.”

Vega pulled the corners of her lips tight. She carefully observed him for a long moment, and in her unblinking eyes there was a cautious surprise — and perhaps a little of new respect.

“Muggle rationalism, I see,” she mused.

 “I’m afraid so,” Remus smiled. “You're speaking to a half-blood after all.” 

The Blacks might think Sirius was a stupid Gryffindor, but Remus thought he was cleverer than the lot of them.

However, prophecy or not, Sirius’s life was still in the palm of his family, and tomorrow he and Narcissa would still head off to Berkshire, preparing to be betrothed. Sirius and Narcissa had entered a more tolerant term after the Christmas holiday — they thought they were being so subtle about it, but no. It seemed the unwilling couple had reached some level of common ground — perhaps it was the beginning of something new between them? What if they, despite how impossible it might seem now, would eventually fall in love? The sheer thought of it made Remus just want to curse out loud. Did Sirius still remember his promise last September, when he'd said he would always be theirs no matter what? How carefree they’d been back then — joking around about Sirius's hypothetical children and Remus's unclehood, all cheap banters and tough bravado. It felt like another lifetime.

“Anyhow, Vega, thank you for trusting me with your family’s secret,” he said finally, stood up, and instantly regretted the visceral headache Firewhiskey had bonuses for him. 

Vega watched him massaging his temples with her brow knitted. If he hadn’t known better, he would suspect she was being worried . “What are you going to do now?”

“Shag somebody.” His mind drifted, briefly, to Amelia Bones, who had made it quite clear that she wanted to try something with him, as an experiment. Yeah, that would do it. That would help him pretend for a short while that all of these things were just his hallucinations, a bad dream no more.

Before he even realised, a drop of tear had already wetted his cheek. He flicked it away.