Orion thought Sirius was like Regulus—a statue made of clay, malleable, easily shaped to fit the Black legacy. A son who could be molded with the right words, the right lessons, the right pressures.
But Walburga knew better.
Sirius was stone. He had to be carved, chipped away piece by piece before he could be polished. True marble. And like all fine stone, he resisted, cracked under the wrong hands, refused to yield to anything less than a sculptor’s patience and force.
She saw it from the beginning, long before Orion. The way his eyes burned instead of gleamed, the way he spoke before thinking, the way he questioned instead of accepted. A flaw in the foundation, but still salvageable.
So she worked. Stripped him down. Cut away the rebellion in sharp, precise strokes. Cold words. Hot curses. Silence when it hurt the most. She taught him the way a Black should be taught- how she and all of her siblings had been taught- through discipline, through tradition. Through the weight of their ancestors pressing down on his shoulders until he had no choice but to carry them.
And for a time, she thought it worked.
He still snarled and snapped like an unruly hound, but he wore the family crest. He listened, even when he seethed. He hadn’t run. Not yet.
But Sirius Black was not marble, not truly.
Marble, once shaped, stays. It hardens into permanence. It takes form and never strays from it. But Sirius… Sirius had fire in his veins, something molten and untamed. She had mistaken him for stone when he was something else entirely.
The night he left, she knew. She had spent sixteen years sculpting him, only to watch him shatter himself with his own two hands. The door slamming behind him was not a son leaving home—it was a monument crumbling, a legacy undone.
And yet, she did not mourn. She did not weep.
She simply turned to Regulus. The son of clay. The son who could still be shaped.
And she began again.
Regulus did not flinch when she turned to him. He did not bristle under her gaze, nor did he burn with that wild, untamed fire that had consumed his brother. He only stood, quiet and steady, waiting.
Walburga saw the difference immediately. He had always been softer, more yielding. A boy who listened. A boy who obeyed. A boy who understood, even without being told, that his purpose was to uphold the Black name, not to defy it.
But clay was fragile in its own way. Too much pressure, and it cracked. Too little, and it failed to hold its shape.
So she was careful. She did not carve Regulus as she had tried to carve Sirius. She molded him instead, pressing her will into him with steady hands, shaping him into what he needed to be.
She whispered the old truths into his ear, let the weight of their ancestors settle around him like armor instead of chains. She guided him, gentle when she needed to be, firm when it was required. And he, dear, obedient Regulus, never pulled away.
Not like Sirius.
Never like Sirius.
When the Dark Lord called, Walburga did not hesitate. Regulus was ready, adamant to join the man he admired. He understood duty, understood what was expected of him.
He took the Mark without question.
He wore his legacy like a second skin.
And for a time, she thought it worked.
But she had made another miscalculation.
Because clay is not stone. It does not hold shape forever. It dries, it cracks, it crumbles under the slightest pressure, the slightest inconvenience. And when Regulus broke, he did so silently, slipping through her fingers like sand before she ever thought to grasp for him.
The night he vanished, she did not rage. She did not scream. She only sat in the silence of a house too large, too empty, and let the weight of it settle.
First Sirius. Now Regulus.
One had shattered. The other had dissolved.
And Walburga Black, for all her sculpting, for all her careful hands and sharper words, was left with nothing but dust.