The last time Sirius was at the flat on Materly Alley was two years ago.
Sirius wants to barge in and demand things, like he had then. The only thing that stops him is Burgess, Uncle Alphard's solicitor, who stands a half a head shorter next to him.
Ever since Sirius’s father died, he keeps remembering the little axioms he grew up with. Blacks don’t act weak. Blacks show no fear. There’s nothing to prove by acting like a child now, unlike at Hogwarts or at Grimmauld Place, where it either nettles people or makes them laugh.
The winter cold, tufts of spun snow, had shrunk the building the last time he saw this door. Now, the late May spring shines sweetly into the narrow entranceway and the building unfurls into the sunlight. Sirius wonders if it's a charm, or if the building is old enough to consciously enjoy the warmth. Grimmauld certainly stretches out languidly when its inhabitants are happy and becomes sharp and strange when they're threatened.
It had been especially sharp and strange two years ago, when Sirius ran from it to Uncle Alphard's flat. There had been a fight between his parents over the supper table at Grimmauld Place, starting with clipped words and roaring quickly into a crescendo which ended with Regulus being sent to bed without pudding. It was hardly a punishment. Sirius doesn’t recall the topic of the argument or whether Regulus had said anything especially awful, only his brother's hurt eyes and parted mouth in the moment of stillness after his father barked the order.
Regulus had left, bowing his head either in respect or in tears. Then, Sirius had shoved his chair squealing back against the cold hardwood, and made such a scene that his mother started screaming, and then his father hexed them both silent. Sirius had slammed the heavy front door so viciously that it resounded up to the seventh floor, and hailed the Knight Bus to take him to Materly Alley.
Uncle Alphard had opened the imposing door, and Sirius had smelled tobacco and the sweetness of clean sheets left to sit in the linen closet for a little too long. His uncle had performed the counterhex, patted his shoulder with a solid hand, and told him to go home. The corridor behind the threshold had been alluring, gleaming with dark wood and whispering with burgundy velvet drapes.
“I want to stay here,” Sirius had said, fifteen and bold as only years in Gryffindor could make him. “I hate her.”
“Walburga loves you very much,” Alphard had said, with finality, as if that negated the fact that Sirius despised her. His voice was smooth, with the same posh accent as Sirius’s entire family.
“Oh, and she loves you, too. Her very favourite brother,” Sirius had said, with cruel delight. “That's why she wants you blasted you off the tapestry.”
But Alphard hadn't raged or started sobbing. Instead, he smiled gently and stroked his moustache. “Yes, I know,” he had said, and his voice didn't waver.
That was right, wasn't it? thinks Sirius as Alphard's solicitor bangs the brass branch doorknocker again. If she didn't love either of them, she would have just pruned the family tree, instead of making empty threats.
He thinks of his cousin and the way that Bella and Cissy still mention an Andy even when they won’t speak the name Andromeda. He thinks of Great-Aunt Cedrella, who married into the Weasley brood, and how Aunt Ceddy was still in his mother's stories about Samhain from when she was a little girl. He wonders if Regulus will tell his children about his brother Sirius one day.
A house elf opens the door and glares suspiciously at the solicitor. Then, she turns and bows to Sirius. “Master is awaiting his nephew,” she squeaks and ushers him in. Mr. Burgess, with a nimbleness which surprises Sirius, manages to slip inside as well. The house elf grumbles but does not protest.
It’s the first time Sirius has been inside the flat. It is still gleaming with candles and dark wood, still covered in jewel-coloured drapes and moving portraits, but the scent is different. Camphor and dust and the thick, dozy smell of someone ill. It makes Sirius want to open all the windows and air it out, order the elf to shake all of the curtains and bake cherry cauldron cakes to fill the rooms with a smell other than sickness.
The sitting room is clean, in the impersonal and sanitized way in which magic keeps things clean. Sirius scowls at the house elf. Letting a house clean itself is almost as bad as not cleaning at all.
The elf stops suddenly when Burgess tries to enter the sickroom. “The mudblood may wait outside, if he pleases,” she says, blocking the entrance.
Burgess takes the slur on the chin, just the corners of his mouth tightening with disapproval. Sirius winces. “Sorry, mate,” he says, but the solicitor shakes his head minutely.
“Never mind, Dandy,” says a hoarse voice. At first Sirius can’t tell who could have possibly spoken. The smooth and unwavering voice of his memories isn't anything like the weak rasp from behind the curtains.
Coming into the room is like stumbling across someone playing charades during Yule. The tableau vivant is perfect for the prompt: illness, infirmity, death. Alphard is lying on a chaise longue, propped up by a down pillow, with a mess of blankets over his thin body. His cheeks are sunken, his moustache shaved clean, and his undereyes stamped with lack of sleep. A pot of tea steams gently, the lemon squeezes itself into the filled teacup next to it. An apothecary of potions bubbles on the shelf against the wall, with a draught screen protecting the volatile ones.
“I would stand to greet you, dear boy,” the man croaks. “But I fear I am incapable of much movement.”
“We'll apparate to St. Mungo's,” says Sirius, immediately, kneeling down next to the chaise. An embroidered pillow pops into place under his knees. “Take my arm, uncle.” Alphard doesn’t.
Sirius shoots his own glare at the solicitor, who is obviously incompetent. Dandy was right after all.
“There's nothing to be done,” says Alphard, breathing slowly. “As if any healer would hear you out in that get-up.”
“I'm a Black,” says Sirius, stubbornly, running a hand over his leather jacket, suddenly uncomfortable in his tight denims. “They'll do anything I ask. Is it a blood curse?”
Lily had gone on and on about ‘sickle sell akneemia’ when one of the Greengrass girls crossed the veil in fifth year, though why sickles could sell for whatever akneemia was is beyond Sirius.
Alphard ignores Sirius’s questions in favour of mocking him. “You're a Black? Not off the tapestry, after all? You seemed to be convinced it would happen, two winters ago.”
“Mr. Orion Black named Mr. Sirius Black his heir in the will,” interrupts Burgess when Sirius doesn't reply. “The estate is in escrow and disowning Mr. Black would give the title to Mr. Cygnus Black.”
“Ah,” says Alphard and closes his eyes. “The will. Wally did tell me. I had forgotten. Prepare the papers, Burgess, if you please.”
Sirius blinks hard, barely paying attention to the sounds of Burgess leaving. “My mother told you? What did she tell you?”
Alphard waves his hand towards a stack of correspondence on a side table. “Orion thought you'd grow out of this phase with the Potters. She disagreed.”
Sirius had left Grimmauld last May, explosively. The school year had ended and he couldn't imagine one more second stuck with his mother. And then his father had fallen ill, and he was too proud to come home. And then his father had died, and he was too shattered to come to the funeral. And now he is in Uncle Alphard's room, watching him die by increments and suddenly remembers Regulus’s shocked face at the supper table.
“What papers is Burgess getting?” asks Sirius, though he knows perfectly well.
“Don't mind that,” says Uncle Alphard. “How many NEWTs did you get?”
“Eight,” says Sirius reluctantly.
“Only one elective? Well, it's not shameful. All outstanding?” His uncle raises an eyebrow, and Sirius notices belatedly that it's speckled with silver. Not even his grandfather’s hair has gone white yet.
“Exceeds Expectations in History of Magic,” he admits.
“Not so bad. We've had Heads of House do worse.” The silent implication is that there have been Heads of House who have done better.
Sirius bristles. “I'm not—”
His uncle's hand is suddenly a vise around Sirius's arm. It's been so long since someone touched him, after the Hades of Snape and the werewolf, that Sirius doesn't even mind that it's painful. “You are,” Alphard says, voice gravelly. “The Blacks need a Head of House and Regulus is ill-suited to lead. He's quiet and obedient. The girls are all married. My sister has some spine, but grief has broken her. You must go back.”
“You never went back,” argues Sirius. “You were your own man.”
“Yes, my very own man, a spare, living off your mother's dower vault and having relatives floo in but never being allowed to visit them. Reviled by polite society, unwanted by the masses. Now, I am dying as my own man and no one my nephew will come to see me. Even my sister will write only letters until she brings my corpse to the mausoleum. What I did was a mistake. I was an example for you and for Andromeda, and I regret it if only for that. A youthful indiscretion shouldn't make up the whole of a life.”
The monologue exhausts Alphard; he wheezes, trying to catch his breath.
“I have another family,” says Sirius, feebly. It’s not true, not really. Yes, he likes the Potters. He loves James; would die for James. But they're not Blacks. He once thought that the Marauders could replace his family, but after Snape, everything is different.
Alphard’s grip tightens, if that's possible. “They will never trust you. In peacetime, yes. But not when a war is coming. Stay with your real family.”
“I hate her.” Sirius echoes himself, two years ago.
Alphard nods, without censure. “So be it. But do you hate the girls? Do you hate Regulus?”
“Of course, I don— you don't understand.”
“I understand plenty.” The grey eyes, with so many stars caught in the irises, look like his father's. Like his mother's. Like his. “I understand Cygnus and Druella have let their daughters run wild. The second your father died, Andromeda went mad chasing a Mudblood. Bellatrix married a Lestrange, which was acceptable then, but Cygnus should have predicted that this conflict would become a war. And now Wally says that Narcissa is marrying a Malfoy, for Merlin's sake.”
Sirius’s skin crawls at hearing his father's words come from his uncle's mouth. He forgets, sometimes, that the two are second cousins. He understands, because he grew up around the idea that blood is the only important thing. And yet, Lily laughs that his family tree is a tumbleweed. Sirius doesn't disagree, not after spending a year with normal people. “What does it matter? I don't want the signet ring. I don't want the Wizengamot seat. Let Cygnus have it.”
“He could have had it and away with you, and we would have been better off, if not for the fools in government,” says Alphard. “Cygnus is too callous to lead us into an ideological war.”
“And I'm not?” asks Sirius, bewildered. All the times his mother called him stubborn, all the times McGonagall tutted at his bullishness, Dumbledore's admonishment after Remus almost killed Snape and Sirius's shout of rage, of I don't care, I wish he had died and Dumbledore's thunderous expression.
“You’re independent. You have a spine. You're able to lead. My cousin brought you up to be his successor. I trust he managed it,” says Alphard, resting his head back against the pillow. “You're only seventeen, Sirius. You don't have to carry the yoke just yet. Pollux and Cygnus will help. But you do have to accept that, one day, you will shoulder it alone.”
The responsibility is a behemoth at the horizon, and Sirius ran from it before. He'd still run from it, he thinks, if he had his friends to catch him after the fall. And maybe they would have, but there's a terrifying chance now that they won't. Remus won’t touch him anymore. Peter seems cautious around him, a little afraid. Sirius thinks about Regulus, trying to talk to him in the corridors until Sirius calls him a snake; of Narcissa smiling gently when she catches him out past curfew, her face shuttering when he spits cruelties at her. Andromeda is nowhere to be found. Bellatrix is married.
The only one who is left exactly the same as before is James, and Sirius thinks that's because James is good at ignoring the things in front of his face when it suits him.
He shuts his eyes and tries not to think about his father’s expression when Sirius left, McGonagall’s disappointment before each detention. He tries not to think about his mother at all.
“She'll never forgive me,” whispers Sirius, almost silent, unable to voice it properly. “Never. I can't go back.”
Alphard considers him. “You're both too proud to reconcile easily. So, don't go back to Grimmauld Place yet. But don't stay with the Potters either. They'll eat away at what you are.”
Sirius feels like the other man has slapped him. There’s only James left. There’s only James.
“Where would you have me go?” hisses Sirius. “If I'm to toss away all my relations and all my friends?”
“Stay here, of course,” says Alphard, and Burgess comes in with the papers which will transfer gold in a vault, shares in businesses, and the flat on Materly Alley from Alphard Black to Sirius Black the Third.
—
Sirius goes back to the Potters anyway, just for a little bit, mostly to make a point. He allows Euphemia and Fleamont to dote on him for the week and a half before graduation. Sirius likes Potter House. He likes the way that the corridors open up with skylights that snake onto the ground so that instead of sky it’s a ceiling of blooming flowers, he likes the mismatched Muggle furniture that’s so saturated with magic that it undulates with joy, he likes the bright mosaics on the walls and the intricate carvings on the wooden shelves and wardrobes.
He tells Euphemia, who is a Crouch by birth if not by name, about going back to his own family. She nods, slowly, because she knows what it’s like to feel torn between a Dark family and a Light one. She tells him that he shouldn't say anything to Fleamont or James just yet and puts a hand gently to his cheek.
Sirius visits Alphard every few days, serves him tea, and tries not to think about the pearly sheen of the pain-relief potions in the cup. Dandy does what she can, but the smell of sickness only gets stronger. Sirius wants to cry, but he doesn't, because the mantras of his childhood feel much more important around a family member.
Blacks don't cry.
Blacks are strong.
No one can hurt a Black, except another Black.
That fades when he's around the Marauders, when he tries to pretend the world under his feet isn't shifting.
In the mornings, he wakes up in the extra room that the Potter House has built for him: a small space with a good window and a four poster bed, and a carpet with swirls and curliques which move to avoid his socks when he steps on it.
James is usually still snoring, and Sirius goes to him and allows his body to fall onto the Gryffindor red sheets. Sometimes, Sirius wants physical affection so much that it hurts; he thinks about crawling under the covers and pressing his back against James’s, sleeping for a little longer. The convenience of magic and the strictness of pureblood customs mean that most wizards in his circles don't touch each other — and, like most things that are forbidden or unnecessary, that's exactly what Sirius wants. Instead, he shifts into Padfoot and licks James' palms until James is laughing and scratching his ears.
Only Padfoot gets this kind of love, thinks Sirius, and then tries to focus on the big English breakfast, complete with hot chai and crispy dosas to mop up the tomato juice.
He, James, Remus, and Peter go flying over Godric’s Hollow in the evenings. Gryffindor had warded the settlement against bad weather, so the original boundaries are still impervious to rain during sunset and sunrise. The warm pink light bathes them, and even Remus’s worst scars wash out into thin neat lines. The sky is still cold that high, and Peter casts heating charms around their group. Sirius is too quick to give up at the finicky charm, usually resorting to throwing hot-up hexes, so he's never asked to warm them up.
James and Peter talk about graduation and girls while Sirius and Remus race each other, silent, worlds between them. When Sirius swoops in to congratulate Remus for winning, Remus tilts his body sideways into a graceful dive, which looks like he's falling into the twinkling lights of Godric's Hollow, and Sirius is left in the air: a lone speck in the soft orange clouds.
A day before the full moon, they apparate illegally to Norway off pure determination, gripping each other tightly so they all arrive in the same place. Sirius feels the wand calluses on Peter's fingers and the solid reassurance of James's hands, and it almost doesn't matter that Remus moved away from him when they made the circle. After they shake off the bang — Lily calls it a sonic boom — of arriving in Norway, they find that Remus splinched the skin off his forearms. Peter, the best of them all at healing, stifles his laughter as he grafts it back together.
When Remus turns, they all run, howling, squeaking, bellowing. It's their last full moon before they're done with Hogwarts and done with childhood. Sirius feels Peter’s claws in the fur at his neck and barks happily. James gores a bear with his antlers and Remus eats, muzzle dripping with dark blood.
The day after, they wake up in a den under a fallen tree. Sirius is the only one who hasn't shifted out of his Animagus form; James and Peter are using him as a pillow. Remus, intentionally, has his head on Peter’s back instead. Residual magic keeps them all from the cold, despite the northern climate.
When Sirius puts himself back into his own skin, the rest scramble back, and only James reaches out a hand to help him to his feet. The leather jacket Sirius wraps around himself isn't a substitute for how warm he felt with his friends on him.
Peter, who cooks for his mother, and James, who hasn't touched a kitchen utensil in his life, argue about how best to make breakfast from forest ingredients. Remus says he'll search for bird eggs and starts loping into the pines. Sirius bounds after him.
It's not as if they haven't spoken since the incident, but there's been a tension in the air between them, like an unacknowledged feud. They walk in silence that grows thick and unwieldy as the seconds pass.
“Accio chicken egg,” says Sirius without casting, just to make Remus laugh.
“You'd break them,” says Remus, his voice quiet and amused.
“A locator spell, then?”
“I've already cast one,” says Remus, unhappy again, as if he has to remind himself to be angry at Sirius. “The intention is a little off, but it'll do.”
“I'm sorry,” says Sirius, though he meant to say something about eagle eggs and Ravenclaw.
Remus looks over at him, coolly surprised. “What are you sorry for?”
Sirius could lie, but impulse isn't something he can resist. “That we're not friends anymore.”
“Not for Snape, then?”
“Not at all,” says Sirius, lightly. Remus’s face goes still and lupine. “I don't give a fig if Snivellus dies. But I am sorry for using you.” It's not quite true: the werewolf isn't Remus, not truly. Sirius can't think of the snarling, snapping thing as the quiet lanky boy in front of him.
Remus sighs, and looks up at a nest in the crook of a tree branch. “It would have been Azkaban for us both.” He reconsiders. “No, not for you, I suppose. Good name and good lawyers.”
“I would have got you out,” argues Sirius, pacing circles around the tree. “I would have stormed in there with curses flying and made them let you go.”
Remus is carefully floating down the eggs with a silent Wingardium Leviosa. “You would have, too,” he acknowledges. “And what would I have done? The trial would have been public. I would be a sentenced murderer and a known werewolf. Where would I go?”
“You'd stay with me,” says Sirius, because it's simple. “I have Uncle Alfie’s pile now, he gave it to me. You'd come live with me and nobody would dare to give you so much as a sideways look.”
Remus looks at him warily. A moment passes and the morning sun drips through the pine needles. “Alright then,” Remus says. The eggs, like tiny speckled blue stones, follow him as he walks back to the others.
—
Uncle Alphard dies in June, on the shortest night of the year. Euphemia touches Sirius’s back gently when the owl comes. He leans into her hand, hungry for the softness of a mother, but it only lasts a few seconds. The note is short and brusque, signed with Burgess’s neat hand.
Sirius goes back to the flat on Materly Alley and spends an hour scribbling on pieces of parchment until he crumples them all up and shouts at Dandy to get him a tome on traditional funerary rites, and some black robes from Twilfitt and Tatting, and a book on hair charms, and a cup of tea.
In the two hours afterwards, he sends the customary notices of death to the heads of the branches of his family and to the Prophet and to all of the Sacred 28, cuts his long curls to his chin with a meat-slicing hex after the haircut charm proves too finicky, and puts on the heavy mourning robes which Dandy collected for him. He notices her sending neat hair-cutting spells at uneven wisps of his hair but doesn't reprimand her. He notices, too, the tear tracks down her grey, wrinkled face, and tells her there's no need for luncheon even though he's starved.
Later that day, Sirius smells cherry cauldron cakes, which probably means that Dandy is borrowing the scent from whenever Sirius tells her they're his preferred pastry. She's his elf now, and she's working doubletime to make this house his as well.
He wants to tell her to stop, that it's not appropriate. He doesn't.
An owl from Grimmauld Place pecks at the window first, before even the Prophet responds with condolences. The words are written by his brother's careful quill. There's nothing about coming to watch over Alphard on his journey to the stars, only the traditional message copied out word-by-word from the same book Sirius read.
He stays in Alphard's old chambers, which are still rich and sumptuous, unlike the sickroom. The world is sluggish and tinny, and Sirius looks down at his hands and doesn't realize they're his.
Since Alphard is persona non grata in polite society, both the wake and the funeral are small and quiet and Sirius doesn't attend. He stays in the bed and looks at the constellations stamped into the velvet canopy. Dandy tells him that Walburga came to get her brother's body after the customary twenty-four hours. It makes Sirius feel sick, but he doesn't regret his seclusion. It would feel perverse to come to this wake when he didn't come to his own father's.
Eventually, Dandy dresses him and he goes to the solicitor alone. He isn't entirely sure what day it is. The will reading consists of Sirius sitting in Burgess's office as he sets out the full contents of the estate and gives them directly to Sirius. Wizarding law is simple in these cases: the inheritor is bound to the inheritance. There is no contesting a magically sealed will, and nobody who would contest even if they could. Burgess barely looks at him, an assistant ushers him out.
The next day, he shows up for breakfast at the Potter House instead of suffering through unseasoned porridge which is traditional for mourning. There's turmeric dal and strong chai, and Sirius feels a bit unsettled, eating normal food in his austere robes. He helps James plan the proposal to Lily, vetoing ideas like Muggle hot air balloons and a ring hidden in cake. Euphemia and Fleamont pretend not to be uncomfortable at the thought of a Muggleborn marrying into their family and simultaneously pretend not to be uncomfortable at the sight of Sirius wearing black robes instead of band t-shirts and leather pants.
James doesn't comment on the clothes beyond a quick look and a clap of his hand against Sirius's shoulder. Sirius wants to lean into the touch, but James is too busy mooning over Lily.
It's only two by the time Sirius leaves, untouched and wanting someone to hold him or scream at him, anything, everything, as long as he feels seen. He doesn’t want to bother Peter, what with his mother, so he goes to visit Remus, in a tiny room in the basement under a seer’s on Knockturn Alley. The space is almost mundane, with mod cons and muggle furniture which doesn't shift to accommodate Sirius when he sits. The floor is something slippery and fake which looks like stone but isn't.
Remus stands among it all, emanating exhaustion, a little wild. He's chronically skinny: magic burns calories and the transformation taxes him severely, let alone the tens of small household spells everyone performs daily.
Sirius realizes he's only ever seen Remus against the backdrop of Hogwarts or magical forests, where he belongs so intrinsically that he may as well have been painted there. To see his friend, a man with power and intelligence enough to keep up with two heirs despite a malady and impure blood, in Knockturn with a ministry-appointed silver cage in the corner of his room is appalling. Even Peter is in a magical family home, albeit with an ailing mother.
“You can't stay here,” Sirius says, because there's nothing else to say. He feels like he's been describing the world in lieu of critical thinking: the sky is blue, women hate heart-shaped jewelry, champagne can only be called that when it comes from the region, Remus can't stay in Knockturn Alley.
“I can't afford anywhere else,” replies Remus, pressing his lips into a thin line.
“It doesn't have to be Azkaban that I get you out of,” says Sirius, slowly, forcing his thoughts into order. “Come to Materly Alley. You can go to Black Moor during your transformation. There's plenty of room on the grounds.”
Remus looks at him. He doesn't stare, only looks, tired and quiet and still a little angry. The distance between them is so much larger than it used to be. Sirius looks down at the metallic embroidery on the cuffs of his robes, then at Remus’s slacks and threadbare sweater. He has the sudden thought of transforming into Padfoot, nosing at Remus's legs, feeling a soft palm on his head. Then, he thinks how much this feels like being a feudal lord, offering sponsorship of a peasant.
“We'll invite Peter, too,” Sirius says instead of any of those things. It's a platitude. They both know Peter won't move anywhere unless his mother passes away.
“I’ll think about it,” says Remus. “You should stop and think about it, too.”
But Sirius doesn't like to stop and think about anything, which is why at a quarter to five, he apparates to his flat, straightens his mourning robes, and takes the floo to Grimmauld Place.
Regulus is pacing around the room with the guest floo and starts when Sirius arrives in a crackle of green flames. Sirius hasn't seen his little brother in a little over a month, but Regulus already looks older. He's shot up like a weed; his hair is growing out from the mourning, neatly combed down his back.
He's wearing dark robes, but not black ones, and their father's signet ring hangs from a thin chain around his neck.
“Sirius!” Regulus exclaims, moves as if to embrace him, hesitates. Instead of a hug, Sirius hears his brother give condolences.
Their father's death and Sirius's lack of involvement lays heavy between them. The room darkens a little, the painted Abraxans on the wallpaper rear and swish their tails.
“And mine to you,” replies Sirius, after a beat. The guilt of ignoring his family stings, bright and sharp; the lack of touch is doubly painful.
“Who were you waiting for?” asks Sirius, taking in the baby fat still on Regulus’s face, the awkwardness of his growing limbs in the new robes, and thinks that his father will never see his sons grow up to be men.
“Barty,” says Regulus. “He said he'd come during visiting hours.”
“Close the floo,” says Sirius, remembering James’s maternal third cousin. Barty has always been a little off, a little too passionate. Madness doesn't only run in the Black family. The house obeys his command. “No point in him only coming for ten minutes. Ill-mannered.”
Regulus shrugs, but his eyes remain on the dark fireplace until they both walk out into the corridor, where the sconces brighten and the hunting dogs in the tapestries run next to them until the fabric runs out, tongues lolling. The threads are still loose where Sirius had a bout of accidental magic and unravelled a quarter of the weave. Powerful and focused magic for a child: his father bought him a toy broomstick as a reward.
“Mother said you wouldn't ever come,” says Regulus.
“I almost didn't,” says Sirius because he's still uncertain as to why he's actually there. For someone to shout at him to leave, probably. The condolence letter wasn't an invitation. Mostly, he wants to see his mother so she can hit him and wake him up from a world which feels like nothing more but echoing corridors.
The floorboards don't creak under his feet, the side tables move out of his way when he purposely tries to bump into them, and he can almost feel his mother's presence far above them.
Regulus stays a step behind. “You're wearing mourning robes,” he says, casually.
“You're not.”
“I wore them for father.” Regulus's voice is pointed.
There's not a lot Sirius can say to that. That he cried in Gryffindor tower for what felt like an age? That he observed the bits of mourning which he could without attracting notice? That his friends expected him to be happy that his father was dead, somehow? That he laughed in public and then bit his cuticles to bloody messes that Peter had to heal in secret? That he went to the astronomy tower every night for weeks, watching his father's constellation move across the sky?
“Will you stay for supper?” asks Regulus, conciliatory, apologetic. “Kreacher can make more than usual.”
Kreacher was all but spitting on the floor at Sirius’s feet by the time he ran away, so Sirius thinks that the chance of the meal being edible is unlikely. He can almost hear the elf muttering about the scion of House Black breaking his poor Mistress’s heart. As if his mother had a heart.
“No.” Sirius looks down the staircase which leads to the entertaining floor: the dining room for formal engagements, a sitting room, a drawing room, a ballroom which expands to three times its size when cards and brandy aren't acceptable diversions. “No, not without warning.”
“Mother will want to see you,” says Regulus, with a shocking amount of sincerity for someone who has seen Sirius and Walburga scream at each other.
Sirius looks at his brother, long-limbed and inquisitive as a young cat, and finds that the floor is sloping invitingly towards the stairs.
“Well, all right,” he says flippantly, though his throat feels shamefully tight with hope.
“Regulus, your father named Sirius the Head of House,” says his mother, half an hour later over the long wooden table. “I've asked our solicitor to send a message out to your brother.”
“I haven't received it yet,” says Sirius.
Walburga doesn't look in his direction. Her eyes gleam in the candlelight. “Orion made his wishes exceedingly clear,” she says, and she sounds old. The flickering flames reflect off the silver in her hair which hadn't been there the last time Sirius saw her. “Sirius is to have the seat under my aegis, even though he's underage.”
No wizard or witch may sit in the Wizengamot if they're under twenty-five, but there are ways around it if a person has a good enough lawyer.
“I can give the vote to grandfather,” says Sirius. Arcturus Black is a force to be reckoned with, and he knows the politics better than a seventeen-year-old.
“And all the gold is in your brother's name,” hisses Walburga, still speaking in Regulus's direction. “So you and I will be reduced to penury should he not reply to the solicitor.”
“Where are the vault keys, Mother?” asks Sirius, thinking that this is actually worse than the tense silence that sometimes falls across the Marauders when an innocent comment veers too close to dangerous territory. That this is worse than James being distracted and Peter being out of reach and Remus staring at him with distrust.
He wants Walburga to jump up on her feet and slap him, screech at him, see him.
Regulus says: “We think they're in the study desk. We can't get into the drawers to check.” He runs a thumb over the signet ring that hangs from his neck. The ring, combined with Walburga's châtelaine, would get him into most places in Grimmauld Place, but some doors open only to the Head of House.
“I'll get them now,” says Sirius, pushing back his chair, but his mother slams a hand down onto the table so hard that the cutlery rattles.
“Sit down, Sirius,” she says, shrilly, still not looking at him. “Kreacher accidentally made the cauldron cakes with cherries today. We'd have to throw them away if you don't stay for dessert.”
Kreacher has probably never done anything by accident in his long and horrible life, and neither Sirius's mother nor his brother like cherries.
And his mother's eyes flick to him, once, and Sirius sees the stars in the slate grey.
When the cakes come to the table, the fruit in it is in the shape of the astral system next to the dog star, like he used to get when he was little. Walburga would go into the kitchens to maintain some semblance of motherly affection, and supervise the creation of her sons’ desserts.
Sirius imagines Walburga feeling him cross the wards, asking Kreacher about it, making her way downstairs to watch over the cakes which nobody in the house likes except him.
He eats spoonfuls of clafoutis and cream and rich red fruit, and sees a vision of Regulus's young pained face two years ago, but also remembers his mother gently showing them both the constellation that houses their stars.
—
After opening all the closed doors and drawers Regulus shows him, Sirius goes back to Alphard's flat and sleeps fitfully in the clean four-poster bed. The signet ring is still clutched in his palm after Regulus handed it over, taking care not to touch his skin in the process.
Something feels wrong, like someone took something out of him, something vital and essential, and Sirius wants it back. His friends won't hold him, his mother won't shout at him, his brother won't ignore him, his father is deaddeaddead. The world is upside down. Everything is a mirror image of itself.
He wakes from dreams of his father teaching him how to balance accounts and all the numbers adding up wrongly, and for a second he thinks that he’s in Gryffindor tower last year and nothing bad has happened yet.
He answers the letter from Walburga's solicitor when it comes. He makes an appointment, signs a sheath of papers, and puts the ring on his little finger. He wonders when he'll wake up from this sad dream.
Dandy brings him glasses of cold water, rye bread, and flavourless soup in the afternoon; traditional fare for mourning, even though he isn't mourning.
It doesn't smell good. Two spoonfuls satisfy him, make his stomach feel tight and painful.
He sits in Uncle Alphard's sickroom, which has been emptied of the ever present potions, and lays back against the chaise longue where his uncle's head rested. The ceiling is high and very white.
He has been running from the grief, leaving it half-felt, but everything is signed and everything is done, and all that's left of his father is the gold ring on his finger. The flicker of optimism in his chest at his mother’s words has been snuffed out by the weight of reality.
He shifts into Padfoot, curls up in a dark ball, and sleeps for hours. He dreams about his father and Uncle Alphard at Black Moor, walking through the grounds, sitting at the French windows, joking about smoking pipes like proper wizards to little Regulus, indulging Sirius’s tantrums, dancing with Walburga at hazy fêtes.
The plates of plain porridge and broth and bread appear and disappear. He eats when he remembers to. He thinks about his father and his uncle and how one day he'll have to stand over his dead mother, too. Dandy has to lead him to the water closet, as if he's a child.
Dandy feeds him bites of food he doesn't recognize.
He misses the full moon.
There are quiet knocks at his door and sometimes, Dandy allows James or Remus or Peter to come in and pet him. Regulus floos in when Sirius is in human form some amount of time later, but Sirius can't understand a word he says.
Eventually, he feels hands as soft as crepe paper smoothing over the fur on his head. He smells the musk of her perfume and he can imagine the flash of her smile as Orion twirls her. “Wake up, Sirius,” she says, and it's not a slap but a caress which leads him up into the light of day.
—
By the time that Sirius is finally capable of getting dressed and going out into the world, he feels flayed and raw. The sunlight is overwhelming when it doesn't filter through gauze curtains. The weight he's lost makes him look gaunt, even though Dandy is very blatantly dosing his meals — slowly adding spice and sugar and meat — with nutrition potions. No wonder mourning food is so plain. He had barely stomached it, let alone anything rich and seasoned.
The grief has had the side effect of lifting the blame some have placed at his feet, which knocks Sirius a touch off balance.
Regulus makes appearances during teatime, bringing a wizarding chess set or cards. Regulus chatters around people he knows, as shy as he is in public, so Sirius is treated to an earful about Barty Crouch, choosing electives and OWL subjects, a secret society created by Slytherin alumni which he's been invited to join, charity galas and Quidditch games.
Peter comes to Materly Alley every week with fresh batches of the nutrition potions, and with funny anecdotes from his applications to Potions masters, and Sirius finds himself able to laugh for short moments.
James brings the Potter house elf to teach Dandy to make roti and chai, but Sirius ends up asking for recipes from his childhood once he starts eating properly again: Yorkshire puddings, baked ham, mince pies, cauldron cakes, lamb chops, trifles, strong cups of English Breakfast.
Even Remus visits him, seemingly forgetting that Sirius almost ruined his life, and reads novels while Sirius slowly catches up on everything that Regulus and his grandfather had dealt with in his absence. Dandy likes Remus, even though he’s a half-blood and a werewolf. She brings him hot chocolate spiked with firewhiskey and brings out the best china when they have luncheon.
The letters are taxing and the responsibilities piled on him are heavy. And yet, something makes Sirius get up every day and fulfill them. He may have inaugurated his first month as Head of House by being utterly useless and making everyone pity him, but the voice of his father has become even clearer. A Head of House must make the difficult decisions, even when he doesn’t want to. A Head of House must do what is best for the family. It’s only that Sirius wants so badly for his friends to be his family too.
The Marauders start going out to Diagon Alley, to dark clubs and sticky bars which Sirius always dreamed of frequenting when he was younger. He often ends up laying listlessly in the streets as a terrifying dog. People scream when they see him, and then his friends have to floo back to the flat and dose Sirius with reviving draughts. Before he shifts back into himself, even Remus pets him, both of his thin hands tangled in long black fur.
By mid-August, Sirius is able to meet with his grandfather at the gentleman's club without dozing off into insensibility. They discuss the tenantry on their lands, their investments in dwarf mines, and about Sirius moving back into Grimmauld Place. The first is easy because Sirius chooses to address every raised concern by paying the appropriate specialist to solve it, the second is incomprehensible and something to be delegated to their goblin, and the third is something he won't hear a word about from anyone.
He hasn't been in Grimmauld since that supper. It's not that Sirius shuns his mother, it's that he's afraid that when he sees her again, she'll ignore him instead of petting his fur or screaming at him. Besides, she hasn't come to see him since that blurry moment when he was Padfoot.
When James casually asks if he's speaking to his mother again, if he's starting to come around to her views, Sirius closes his eyes and sighs and continues not to think about it.
“I don't believe in her shit,” he says. “I don't. Lily's as much a witch as any girl at Hogwarts.”
“It's not just Lily, mate,” says James.
“It's not like your parents are over the moon that you're bringing home a Muggleborn,” snaps Sirius. “And I'm not telling you to renounce them. Drop it, James.”
James does drop it, but Sirius sees the wizarding world becoming more and more polarized, starts hearing about harassment against known Muggleborns in the streets, and whispers about a powerful scholar newly arrived in wizarding Britain from Albania. Regulus is in ecstasies about what he's learning in his little society: wards, charms, blood magic, and a deeper look into wizarding history and customs, of all things. Peter tells Sirius about his Muggleborn cousins, who have picked up and moved across the pond to settle in magical New York.
James proposes to Lily in late September, complete with magical fireworks and champagne. Sirius is running around like a headless chicken for days beforehand, finalizing last minute details like the conjured doves and odd numbers of red roses. She says yes, and cries, nose turning pink against her freckles.
She's the one who mentions Remus’s situation to Sirius, over tea at Materly Alley. James is off running errands, and Lily has started spending a good proportion of her time interrogating Sirius about pureblood wedding customs; he wishes she could just ask Regulus. The subject turns to Remus, eventually.
“He's miserable, poor thing,” she says sympathetically. Her eyes are as green as apples, unnatural in the way only magic can make them.
“Is he still in that awful basement on Knockturn?” asks Sirius, who seems to remember strongly objecting to that room.
“Yes, but the other room is rented out to a hag and she's dreadful. Remus could swear she's eaten a baby once, right in front of him.” Lily is one of the most outwardly magical people Sirius has ever met: she crackles with it when she's upset. She’s upset now, and a spark plays along her fringe.
“What species was it?” asks Sirius, preparing to be outraged.
“It was a little gnome, as far as he could tell,” says Lily, sadly.
“Ah, well,” Sirius tries to summon the outrage again, but garden gnomes are such well-known pests that he can't. “That seems brutal. We need to get him out of there.”
After several weeks of wheedling, pleading, and threatening which culminate with Sirius hiring a magical moving company to collect Remus’s personal effects, Peter and James cheerfully frogmarch a protesting Remus through the ornate door of Materly Alley.
The walls of the building expand as soon as they are faced with the prospect of a guest. Sirius and his friends first find a den filled with red lace and black leather which has the Marauders hooting with laughter as Peter blushes beet red. Then, as if embarrassed, the house quietly creates space for a new door which opens into a modest bedroom, with light green wallpaper and a large window which looks into the courtyard.
Remus staunchly says that he won't be staying for longer than a few days so he can get Sirius settled, as grief has obviously made him temporarily insane. As payback, Sirius gets Burgess to dissolve Remus's lease.
—
The first morning of Remus living in the flat feels soft. Sirius listens to his friend's padding feet in search of the bathroom and hears him greet Dandy in a soft sleepy voice as if he's done so hundreds of times.
In the Hogwarts dormitories, students are expected to clean up after themselves so they can become proficient in household charms. In first year, Remus made fun of him and James for not knowing how to fold socks. James and Sirius had made fun of Remus for his threadbare clothes. Peter had played mediator. But they've all influenced each other since then. Remus may have grown up in a half Muggle house, but he's spent seven summers visiting for at least a week in James’s home, so he's used to the elves drawing baths and the prickle of cleansing potions in the water. Sirius may have not known what a clothes hanger was until he was fifteen, but he is capable of casting a dusting charm and making scrambled eggs without magic.
Sirius tries to stop wishing that Remus would come into his room and rolls out of his bed to follow the smell of soap into his en suite. An imposing tub is filling with bubbles and water, the humidity in the air is like that of a Turkish bath, smelling of gillyweed and eucalyptus.
Dandy pops in with his correspondence and a little table, and Sirius reads letters from his mother's solicitor, letters from Alphard’s tenant who has an infestation of pixies in her walls, and horrifically, a request for an interview with Witch Weekly because apparently now that he’s somewhat back in the aristocracy, he's an eligible bachelor. He drowns that piece of parchment in the bathwater.
Afterwards, he and Remus meet in the dining room for breakfast, sitting across from each other at the long table. There's a spread of fruits, meats, and toast kept warm in enchanted serving platters. Sirius eats a mountain of porridge with brown sugar and cream mechanically while Remus adds jam and butter to his toast, on top of a heap of breakfast meats.
“Should I give a gift, because you're bereaved?” asks Remus. He knows about the custom because some people tried giving Sirius small presents of food when his father died. Sirius had cursed them with increasingly elaborate jinxes and had eaten only mourning fare, claiming a sudden hatred for spices and meat.
“Yeah, the bacon,” says Sirius, flipping through the leaves of the Prophet. He isn't technically grieving at all, aside from the mourning robes which now feel as natural on him as rock ‘n’ roll t-shirts. His hair is growing out already, thick and waving like smoke from a candle; he has to tie it back before eating.
Remus levitates a piece over and Sirius chews on it as he reads an article about reforms on who is eligible to be Supreme Mugwump these days.
“Do you always read the paper over breakfast?” wonders Remus, stabbing a piece of sausage. This is probably a fair question, considering the fact that Sirius has spent the past month struggling to read even one line of his solicitor's letters.
“Uncle Alphard would read the interesting bits out loud,” says Sirius, absently turning a page. By the end, Alphard would cough and splutter if he spoke for longer than a few sentences, so Sirius had taken over the reading. “Iris Brown is marrying into the Parkinsons.”
“Pug-nosed bitch,” murmurs Remus, and Sirius stares at him in surprise. Remus doesn't usually swear. Besides, Sirius remembers Iris being a little gossipy, but not horrible; they had snogged in a broom cupboard exactly once in third year. McGonagall had caught them, which had made his father take him aside and begin explaining his role as an heir.
“She's not awful,” says Sirius. “She's just a touch…” He was going to say prejudiced, but that probably wouldn't go down very well.
They eye each other across the table.
“What has Knockturn turned you into?” Sirius asks, a bit defensive.
“What has being a Black turned you into?” retorts Remus.
Sirius wants to shrug, but years of etiquette lessons have begun to rear their heads after being decidedly ignored, so he only looks at the paper again.
—
A week later, Sirius is laying up at the foot of his bed, paws curled under his torso. Alphard’s room has decidedly become his room. One wall hosts a delicate tapestry of long gone forest in Wales, with a herd of unicorns enchanted to follow a migratory pattern. The other walls aren’t pasted with posters — that was something he had done to agitate his mother — but there are photographs of his friends, laughing and waving, and framed banners of his favourite Quidditch teams exploding with silent fireworks.
Moor and wilderness and blood and chocolate are in his nose. He opens his eyes to see the yellow and blue version of his friend standing above him. Remus's scars stand out against his skin and something in Padfoot’s hindbrain makes him want to growl and show his hackles; the full moon is coming. Instead, Sirius leans his head back onto the sheets and hopes for a scratch under his chin.
“They sent me my security deposit back,” says Remus. “All of it.”
Sirius knew that; Burgess had to fight to get the full sum. It's also why he's Padfoot, not himself. Nobody wants to argue with a dog.
“I'm not your charity case,” says Remus, who seems to be an exception to the rule.
Padfoot sneezes to show exactly what he thinks of that statement. Remus is wearing robes from Sirius's closet, has his hair combed and styled by Sirius's elf, is living on Sirius's galleon. His cheeks are already fuller, healthier, from eating Sirius's food.
“Don't do this for me,” says Remus. “I can get by on my own.”
Since Remus is obviously incapable of stopping himself, Sirius gets up onto four paws. Before his magical core settled, the Grim wasn’t so scary. Big, but not terrifying. Sirius is still a teenager, but he's of age and he's a strong wizard. He usually curls up small when he's in Animagus form, and even that made drunken witches wail on the streets. Now he stretches out as high as he can, and Remus takes a step back.
Sirius stands on the bed, and thinks that if he was on the floor, his muzzle would be at Remus's shoulder. Padfoot may not be as large as Prongs or as deadly as Moony, but he's pure magic. A grim, a gytrash; he's an animal out of a fairytale, guarding brughs and fae circles.
“What's this meant to be?” Remus bites out, but Sirius can hear the shiver of fear. A dark creature would have bristled at the dominance display, but Remus shoves down the werewolf until it barely peeks out. Even so close to the full moon, he doesn’t let his instincts rule him.
Sirius doesn't limit himself to what is reasonable and rational. He never has. Sirius has been brought up to lord his inherent superiority over others, to know that he's meant to have people bow before him, that he's a Black and he's the heir. And though he's rejected most of what he's been taught, he doesn't hate it like Remus hates himself. He doesn't think that Muggles should be as floorboards under his feet, but he does enjoy it when people defer to him because of his name.
Remus is already his, like James and Peter are his. His friends, his charges, his to protect. Now, he just has to make Remus realize it.
Which is why, after a while, Remus tilts his head back and shows his throat. His teeth are gritted, his face shows that Sirius is in for a world of argument when he's human again, but he does it.
All Sirius can think of is the length of that white neck, the Adam's apple sharp and lovely, and what it might feel like to turn human and wrap his hand around it and gently lower Remus to kneel on the ground in front of him. To give the werewolf a collar; the Head of House Black with a dark creature by his side.
Padfoot shakes his head as though he's getting water off his fur. Then, he flops onto the bed and his tail thumps a pattern onto the comforter.
Remus sits and leans back against Padfoot's warm side. Only Padfoot gets this kind of grace, thinks Sirius. Remus probably thinks that the dominance display was instinctual, like the way Remus doesn't truly control the wolf when he’s transformed.
They sit there, in the cool October afternoon, one watching the unicorns migrate across the tapestry and the other watching Sirius jump onto Remus in second year, shouting something and grinning.
Remus’s breathing is shallow until it isn't, until he drifts into a light sleep. He's always tired for a week before the full moon. Pomfrey says it’s because he resists too much, pushes himself too far. At least this next transformation will be one spent running through the stocked wilderness of Black Moor, glutting himself on prey animals meant to be hunted for the Samhain sacrifice. No more silver cages.
Sirius silences himself and shifts back into his own body, feeling the magic shrink him and stretch him back out, until his pale hands are stacked under his cheek and his cold back is against Remus's warm one.
He watches one unicorn kick both hind legs to kill a manticore.
Sirius wants. Exactly what he wants is unclear to him, only that his chest is tugging at him.
Remus rolls over in his sleep, and his arm hugs Sirius's waist. Their legs don't tangle. Remus doesn't press against him. It's just the arm and the top of Remus's chest.
And it's enough. Just this. Just the warmth, the unconscious friendship, the sweetness of touch.
It also makes Sirius want to cry. It seems like everyone only expresses that they love him when they think he's incapable of recognizing it, when he's an animal or when he's insensate with grief or sleep. But he does recognize it. He remembers, and wonders what's wrong with him. Why nobody will want him out loud.
The unicorn herd makes it to the edge of the tapestry and crushes the fragrant grass of a starlit meadow as they lay down.
“Don't think you're getting out of this just because I'm tired and you're grieving,” murmurs a very awake Remus into Sirius’s hair, and holds him a little tighter.
And this is what makes Sirius's heart beat a fearful tattoo into his chest. Not his mother's palms against his cheek, not the love conditional on following the Light, not his uncle's strategic maneuvering: all of that feels right and natural when it's done to him. It's that he used his friend as a weapon, moved everything that was his into this flat, disregarded his autonomy, threatened him, and here Remus is. Here he is.