The Punk Rock Heir of The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black
Sirius Black was traumatized. Walburga and Orion’s charming habit of belts, fists and verbal abuse, tied with a terrible heartbreak in his younger years—
had absolutely nothing on this complete and utterly traumatizing betrayal by one James Potter.
“It’s a Broadway musical, Padfoot. Of course I’m going to be gone every night!” James told him for the millionth time as Sirius dramatically flung himself onto the couch.
“But nighttime is our time! It’s Marauder time! What am I supposed to do, let Peter paint my nails? How could you do this to me, Prongs?”
“You knew this would happen if I got the part, stop whining!” James smacked the bottom of Sirius’ feet from where they hung over the couch arm. He shrieked and drew his legs back.
“You’re going to spend all your time with Kingsley and he’ll be your new best friend and you’ll leave me in the dust!” He moaned. “He’ll be your best man at your wedding while I weep in a corner as a guest and the venue will be horrible because Kingsley has no taste—“
“Jesus Christ, Pads.” Fed up, James walked around the couch and sat himself directly on Sirius’ stomach. All the air left him in a wheeze, and he started slapping at any part of James he could reach.
“Geoff me! Traitor!”
“Kingsley won’t be my best friend, and since when am I getting married?” James told him. “He plays my best friend, but he’s a complete dud in reality. And it’s not like you’ve got a job, so whenever I’m free I’ll paint your stupid nails while we watch rom coms with Peter.”
“And now you’re insulting me!” Sirius whined. “I’ve got a job! Art is my job!”
“You live off a trust fund, nepo baby.”
“Inheritance!” Sirius corrected. “My parents—“
“Yeah, yeah, you didn’t have a trust fund because your parents didn’t care. Just like me, right?”
“And now you’re stealing my lines!”
“You’re being ridiculous, Padfoot.” James grinned at him. Sirius scowled. He most certainly was not. James being gone in the evenings posed a real problem. Sirius hated being alone and for years, he and James had lived and spent practically every day together. Now, James got a role in a musical in New York, and suddenly they were moving across the ocean so he could do it.
Sirius didn’t mind the moving part. He, James, and Peter were all sent to a university in England after high school. So moving back home was easy. When his parents died, leaving Sirius more money than he’d need for several lifetimes—moving wherever he damn well pleased was easy.
And wherever James Potter was, that was where Sirius damn well pleased to be.
He just never realized just how many shows Broadway put on, and just how often James would be gone. Rehearsals, which had been going on for a few months, were running during the day. But now, with opening night a month away, rehearsals were turning into nighttime affairs to get the actors used to the late time.
Now Sirius was stuck with the problem—what the hell was be supposed to do with his evenings? Peter was sometimes around, but his recent promotion at the architecture firm meant he was pulling late hours. Mary was a journalistic photographer—stories happened randomly at any time, and one minute, she was hanging out with them, and the next she was setting up a flight to Malaysia in an hour.
He knew his fit with James was a stupid one. He’d never, in a million years, try to tell James not to do something because he didn’t want him to. If anything, Sirius was sickeningly proud of his best friend for getting into the show. James had fallen in love with the script the moment he read it, and was so excited by the prospect of playing Simon, the lead. Sirius was over the moon with him when he got the part.
But he was still sad. He could easily fill the evenings with clubbing, but Sirius loved the quiet ins with James and Peter. A moment’s break from the rush and hustle of the world was often what kept him feeling sane.
“Did you ever apologize to that poor bartender you scared?” James poked his nose, and Sirius swatted him.
“Yes, I did, as a matter of fact.” He said, shoving up his hips and dislodging James from his stomach, who fell to the ground with an ‘oomf’. “I didn’t think he liked me very much.”
“Well, I wouldn’t either if you did that to me—“
“But after, I swear I felt something between us, Prongs!” Sirius interrupted earnestly.
“Oh boy.” James muttered.
“No, listen! He was joking with me towards the end. He gave me so many opportunities to flirt with him!”
“I’ve told you a million times, you can’t flirt at everything on two legs—“
“I didn’t! I swear, I stopped myself! But he gave me so many chances, that has to mean something—“
“Earth to Padfoot.” James waved a hand in his face. “You’re starting to sound delusional.”
“You weren’t there, Jamie.” Sirius insisted. “I could feel sparks between us.”
James rolled his eyes and hauled himself from the floor. Well used to Sirius’ habit of waxing poetic whenever he had a crush, he simply got himself ready for rehearsal while Sirius babbled on.
“God, he’s so pretty.” Sirius sighed dreamily, hugging a pillow to his chest. “He’s got these gorgeous eyes, James. I couldn’t make out the color, it’s too dark in there. And fluffy hair. He’s so tall, his hands are so big, and his waist—“
Sirius could picture him in his mind’s eye, and wanted to ravish him. The form fitting vest showed off such narrow hips and broad shoulders, and the pants he wore ought to be illegal with how nice his ass looked in them. And the mask—Sanguini’s knew what they were doing, masking and gloving their bartenders. It was like a goddamn tease.
“Sirius!” James barked suddenly, rudely disrupting him from his daydream. “Stop fucking the bartender in your head and get your laundry out of the dryer!”
“I wasn’t the one doing the fucking, I’ll have you know!” Sirius hollered back as he sat up. He heard James groan, followed by the sound of him hitting his forehead repeatedly into a wall.
——
After sulking for a while once James left for rehearsal, thoughts of the bartender gave Sirius the idea to go back to Sanguini’s that night while James was at rehearsal. He was going for the atmosphere, certainly not because he wanted to ogle the handsome bar back.
So his disappointment upon seeing two blonde twins behind the counter instead merely confirmed his own lie. He didn’t stay long, and instead found himself in the Arts district of Greenwich, heading for his studio.
It sat above Painter’s Porter, a communal artisan house that taught lessons and housed artists. Sirius knew there were other houses like it in the area, but had never been much inclined to find them. The building used to be an old bank, its rigid architecture and Greek-styled pillars were decorated with splatter work and graffiti from various artists throughout the years.
Inside, the lower and upper studios sat along the three walls in the old offices with glass windows. The center atrium had mounts installed for exhibitions, and the domed ceiling above it was adorned with more graffiti work.
Sirius loved Painter’s Porter—the very idea of making art in a place that sneered at the craft hit his rebellious strings exactly the right way. It was an idea of reclamation, like a giant fuck you to all the old geezers who used to slum it there, counting coins.
His studio sat in a corner office on the second floor. It had the most space, and several canvases were scattered about the paint-stained floors. Sirius breathed in the sharp, definitely toxic smell of oils and solvent and smiled. At least he knew how to spend his evenings now.
——
Sirius might be rich, and there had been moments in his life where he used it to his advantage, but his career in painting had not seen a dime beyond tuition and materials. He vehemently hated people who used their money to get into exhibitions and galleries without having their pieces accepted of their own merit. They were cheats without talent looking to make a quick buck without any love for the craft.
One notable bastard of that sort was Gilderoy Lockhart, a fellow university student in their year. Sirius, James, and Peter hated the bloke’s guts the moment they met—posh, arrogant, and convinced of his own greatness, Lockhart was the sole reason for a majority of the department’s headaches.
He skivved off classes and took credit for other students’ work, gaslighting them into believing they had stolen their work from him. He charmed some of the professors to get out of trouble, and offended several girls with offhanded remarks on their intelligence or talent.
Overall, not a day passed in four years that Sirius didn’t want to rip the fake blonde curls from the twat’s scalp.
He would never say it aloud so as not to give the git the satisfaction, but a big bonus of moving countries was never having to see Gilderoy Lockhart’s ugly mug ever again.
He overheard Lockhart one time boasting about paying his way into several galleries before he'd even left school and giving them work that wasn't his. He remembered fuming for weeks when Lockhart's name started cropping up in the news, speculating if another young artist was on the rise.
It was thankfully short lived. One of the art students Lockhart used to bully, Quirrell, had secretly used his signature into the abstract shapes in one of the paintings Lockhart ripped off from him. When Quirrell stepped forward with an official document matching the signature in the painting, Lockhart's credibility was tanked. Professors who had been charmed by him attempted to defend his integrity, but the damage had been done. Lockhart was basically laughed out of the university.
After graduation, many of the students who actually did the work hit the ground running, getting their art out there, starting websites and social media pages for their studios. Sirius made a bunch stickers of his paintings and starting slapping them all over London—on street signs and lampposts and telephone booths—everywhere.
That was how Hestia Jones found him. She actually called the police on him first. He had climbed up a stone statue in a busy square and planted a sticker on the stone man’s rear when he was informed by Hestia and two police officers that he had just vandalized the ass of her great grandfather.
Sirius couldn’t help laughing, willingly letting the coppers wrangled him down and cuff him. It was only until the police showed Hestia the stickers in his pocket did she demand they uncuff him and state that she wasn’t pressing charges. When asked why, she explained she had seen Sirius’ stickers around the city for months and was impressed by his work, and bold choice in advertisement. She was a curator for a popular gallery in the heart of London, and had been hoping to find him. She suggested adding a website or media tag to his stickers, so to avoid anymore awkward encounters like this.
Sirius never did vandalize a statue after that, although he did take Hestia’s advice and added his instagram tag to his stickers.
Meeting Dadelus Diggle was more intentional than his meeting with Hestia. At the opening night of Hestia’s gallery with his piece, Sirius spotted Diggle laughing with Nicolas Flamel, an extremely famous curator in France. He knew Diggle curated for a few higher end galleries in Edinburgh, but Flamel’s presence meant all of the attention would be drawn to him. Sirius knew if he added himself to the swarm of artists trying to network with Flamel, he’d simply be another face in the crowd.
So, instead, Sirius waited until Diggle was alone, and struck a conversation with him. Dadelus was a kind, funny old man with a cracking wit. They delved into a deep conversation on the merits of classical work in a contemporary age, and suddenly Diggle was dragging him along to make introductions with Flamel, shooing away other artists trying to schmooze (one of which, Sirius smugly noticed, was Gilderoy Lockhart). Sirius charmed the pants off the pair of them, and had not only been the sole recipient of their personal emails, but also two very real and dear friendships.
Diggle and Flamel were both gay men, born and raised during Stonewall and the Gay Liberation Front, and their stories genuinely moved Sirius, who grew up in a household very much like the times Diggle and Flamel lived. They ended up talking until well after the gallery closed, chatting in a cozy 24-hour cafe across the block. Diggle and Flamel argued like the old men they were, and Sirius switched sides every so often just to keep them entertained.
Sirius ended up confiding in them the story of his gay awakening and subsequent heartbreak, a story that still hurt if he thought about it too deeply. It had been sudden and terrifying—with many of unanswered questions. He told them about the boy, how Sirius didn’t even know if he was still alive, how it used to eat away at him.
Flamel had a similar experience, but his partner died unexpectedly due to AIDS, and never told him until the very end. He talked about Albus, how one day he vanished without an explanation for months. Flamel didn’t find him until the day he died—a hospital in Wales called him, saying that Albus was asking for him. When he arrived, all he could do was apologize. He hadn’t wanted Nicolas to get infected because of him, they didn’t know how it was spreading. He was too ashamed of his illness to tell him either. To protect him, he left. Flamel recounted how he’d told Albus it was a fuck up thing to do, how he’d wished they’d had the last few months together instead of him drowning alone.
Albus died a few hours later, and Nicolas Flamel was drowning alone again.
All three of them were crying by the time Flamel finished his story. Diggle was patting his arm and repeating, “so terrible, such a tragedy,” while Sirius scrambled to grab napkins. He couldn’t imagine the fear and loss people like him must have felt during that epidemic. But he was strangely comforted by Flamel’s tale—that others had lost people they cared about without reasons why.
Flamel showed them a photo of him and Albus, years before the illness took him. Sirius couldn’t help but smile—they were handsome, young lads, beaming at the camera with their arms around each other. Love—it sparkled in their eyes even in the grainy photograph—Sirius could see it.
After an appropriate amount of respect for Flamel and his story, Diggle brought them back to a cheery mood with tales of his time as a drag queen, which brought them back to roaring (and a little watery) laughter that nearly had them kicked out of the cafe.
By the time they called it, it was nearly two in the morning. Arms around each other’s shoulders, the three gay men waltzed down the empty cobblestone streets of London, singing loudly to the cloudy sky and quiet buildings.
It was one of Sirius’ favorite memories.
With a few of his pieces getting into galleries in Europe thanks to Diggle, Hestia, and Flamel before he and James moved, Sirius had made sure his rising name moved with him to America. All three of them were more than happy to get him in contact with connections in the States. It helped that James’ parents were curators in New York already, and he had basically been adopted by them since he was fourteen.
Since moving into the city, Sirius had two pieces in exhibits around Manhattan, and was lined up for two more.
He still kept in regular contact with Diggle, Hestia, and Flamel, mostly updates on their lives back and forth. Hestia brought on a few of Sirius’ classmates from university to her gallery, and Diggle and Flamel were currently vacationing in Italy.
He hadn’t told Flamel yet, but his latest piece was in honor of his and Albus' story. Diggle sent him a copy of Flamel’s photo at his request, and Sirius was painstakingly sketching it onto huge canvas in his studio. It was going to be a part of a queer exhibition in SoHo, and he hoped a museum might pick it up from there for their modern day collections.
Sirius sat on his stool and pulled out his paints, staring at the giant canvas before him as colors bloomed in his mind’s eye. This was a story of love and loss and courage. The expression in his style, the colors, and movement all had to reflect that. It was sad, but not hopeless. Old, but not forgotten.
He hoped one day, he’d find a love like Flamel and Albus. Preferably, both of them lived at the end of the story, but he had never seen someone so faithfully in love and gay at the same time. Sirius had been unfortunately exposed only to the dick and dash part of the queer community, and beyond that, the only truly in-love couple he’d ever see were Euphemia and Fleamont.
He desperately wanted what the Potters had, what Flamel and Albus had. He wanted someone he could grow old with, someone who knew every invisible bruise on his body and the memories underneath it. Someone who he could know to the same intrinsic extent.
He didn’t want to drown alone.