𝘸𝘢𝘭𝘣𝘶𝘳𝘨𝘢
the first night of summer of 1975
Walburga Black
To the mother, maiden and crone,
After all is said and done, she was alone
There was something said of history books collecting dust on the shelves, was there not? Perhaps it tended to repeat, despite the warnings of the past. Challenging fate was something Walburga had long given up on. She had once believed that she was in control of her own fate, that her choices were her own to make. Now… Now she laughed at the naivety of her childish ideologies. If she were not born a monster, she was molded to be one. Either way, that choice was not her own. Not then, and maybe not even now.
The worst part? Walburga knows this to not be true, she knows she chose to be a monster long ago. She knows it deep within herself, where her secrets are buried and her desires are snuffed out. She refutes the fact, dwindles it down to mere whispering, easily ignored in the face of the others. But late at night, especially when deprived of the moon’s glow, it's harder to forget, to deny.
“How could you?!”
Markings in the stars told Walburga all she needed to know. It was nightly that she checked them from the observatory high in her home. The night seemed stifled, drowsy and forbidding, a combination that hadn’t stolen Walburga’s sky in quite some time. The night's truth was proven with a sound of a knock at her door.
Perhaps it was trite to equate the Black family to their namesakes, or to assign each of them their own moon, sun and sky. Or maybe it was destiny at play. Either way, where there was a star the rest would follow. Walburga Black had found herself in the orbit of Euphemia Shafiq years ago. The memories are that of a teenager's bliss, a bliss she had given up at the age of fifteen. She had sacrificed much for her very own star. And if you were to ask her, she’d swear he was her everything, but those who truly knew Walburga Black knew the truth of her everything, of her royal moon. Knew that she lived in a rundown town, married to a muggle, forsaking everything Walburga knew. So it was no surprise to her when she and her heir stood on the front porch of their family home. The very same home Sirius, the insolent boy, swore to never return to. Her son’s eyes were red rimmed and agony filled, yet Walburga felt no sympathy for the boy. All she could think was ‘Finally,’ as some of her own darkest memories flooded back to her mind with a vengeance.
“I– I didn't mean to, I was just… Mia, I was so angry. I, well I think there is something wrong with me. It was like I couldn-”
She and Sirius stood with the silence, allowing it to consume them under the darkness of the night. They could feel the judgment of the stars, and when they looked up, they saw the sky covering the moon in clouds, shielding him from the view of the Blacks. The lack of moon dressed them in matching chills, which Walburga was observant enough to notice but apathetic enough to ignore.
“Sirius,” Walburga Black was never meant to be a mother. It was the star's distinct breed of irony that she held the name of a fertility goddess. Of course, she had done her duty, gave birth to a son and even another for herself and Orion to corrupt and bleed and morph into the perfect pureblooded heirs. She had failed, because written in the stars was the solemn fact that Walburga Black was never meant to be a mother, never had the maternal urge to hold her children close or wipe their tears back from their face– not when it wasn't needed for the face of the family. And so, the utterance of the Black heir’s name with anything other than still voidance seemed to shock the young man, as well as Walburga herself.
Disheveled did not begin to describe the young heir’s appearance, no, he looked haunted. Oh so beautifully haunted… with his exasperated hollowed cheeks and dark purple beneath his eyes, only accentuating those very specific mangled blues and grays. A mother was never meant to relish in the pain of her children, but as has been covered, Walburga was no mother. And she did relish in the mess that was Sirius Black before her, giving in to her. She did not delude herself to think he was there of his own will, but he was there nonetheless, haunted by his own memories.
“Do not dare say you had no control of yourself. Don’t you dare… you know who had no control of himself? Hm? Moony! Moony had no control of himself and you’ve used that for your own selfish petty revenge,”
Just as his mother, Sirius was tortured with memories of a Potter’s wrathful disappointment, the words of his dearest friend echoing in his mind. And perhaps this is why he is stunned silent before his first love, his first torturer, when her tone sounded of something other than nonchalant disdain. Walburga, the nosy mother, had just peeked into the boy's mind, and there she found a remarkably similar set of eyes with an unfortunate resemblance of saddened rage.
“Mother,” he tried his damndest to keep the word from shaking, but like most things, he failed. He felt Walburga’s eyes on him, and he worried if he looked deeper into them, he’d see nothing but his own looking back.
“Want from you? I want nothing from you, Sirius. If I have to tell you… merlin, sometimes… sometimes I forget just what family you come from, but you never fail to remind me, do you Black?”
Because the truth of the matter is, Sirius is a Black. Even when he is rueful of the fact, it never changes. Even in his rebellion, it remains true. A star may combust, may burn to the ground and change their name, but a star, they shall always remain. Sirius now knew this meant true for even the most stubborn of stars. There was no mistaking Walburga and Sirius as anything other than mother and son, not even when he called another by the same title. They may be a mother and son of battling creeds, but they were mother and son with matching memories and mimicked secrets, but mother and son nonetheless.
“You’ve returned home,” It wasn't an astute observation, but the silence was beginning to grow into something sinister.
“I have, if you and father allow,” It was all false bravado, but Walburga could respect that he was trying to play his part. ‘Finally,’ she thought for the second time that night. She gave him a curt nod, yet did not move to let him inside. Her head tilted slightly to the left, eyes roaming up and down her son in judgment and thought. Her lips were pulled into a tightline, that soon turned to a sour purse.
“Hm, yes. I do believe it's time we are all together… as a family,” that emotion Sirius was so surprised to hear had vanished, whisked away with the wind and in its place was that stillness that constantly plagued him. She stepped out of the way, allowing the boy to enter the brickstone. “And Sirius,” she called, just as he walked past her, causing him to look back. There was something missing from the gray of his eyes, something critical to who her son once was.
“If you embarrass house Black again, it will be the last thing you do,” her threat held no malice, just stone cold truth. And Sirius knew it, he lifted his head a bit higher and his back straightened.
“Yes mother,” was his reply, and Walburga could have reveled in it, could have basked in those emotionless words. She nodded, stopping before him. Her fingers brushed back his curls, an urge she had never once had. “That’s my beautiful boy,” she all but purred before heading to her husband's study to give him the news: The Prodigal Son has returned.