Brothers (of Blood and From It)

It’s pouring rain when Leonora steps onto the quidditch pitch for practice.

These early morning drills have more or less become as much of the team's daily schedule as classes are. Though most of her teammates complain, they show up every day, because if there’s one Slytherin value, it’s pride. And pride means not being beaten again by Gryffindor (and especially not by James bloody Potter, who seems to think that being captain gives him an automatic right to the quidditch cup).

Honestly, Leonora thinks this whole house rivalry is a bit childish, but she understands why her fellow students get so wrapped up in it.

She knows that while she was sorted into a house, most of her peers were sorted into a home. They have a connection to the people and the values of their house, something that Leonora never quite found.

But it’s alright. She’s used to having houses instead of homes.

Grimmauld Place is not a home, not like the homes Sirius tells Leonora his friends have. She has never felt any love for the walls she was raised in.

Her body was a house not a home too. She lived in it cautiously, the roof feeling more like a cage than a shelter.

But there wasn’t much Leonora could do about all the empty rooms beneath her skin.

So for now, she shoved all those emotions (anger, loss, scared, empty) into the cellar and locked the door just as her mother had done with Sirius (angry, lost, scared, but always so full of life).

Except Walburga can’t do that anymore.

Because this morning, Sirius was sitting at the Gryffindor table laughing with James Potter and he’s never going back to that house, not now that he’s found his home.

And Leonora is proud of him.

Proud that he found his people, that he’s not alone, that he got away from the family he never fit with (except she’s part of that family he left behind and how is that fair?), proud that he’s living out every dream they said they’d do together.

That gets shoved in the basement too.

Unfortunately, ignoring your trauma does take a bit of concentration. Concentration that, while doing close formation flying drills, should be focused on flying in a close formation.

”BLACK!” Meadows yells as the team touches down. “What the hell was that? You can see a tiny gold ball from a hundred meters in the sky but not your own teammate five feet from your own bloody face?”

Leonora stays silent as the rest of the team glares at her. She can feel Meadows' eyes narrow at her, trying to figure out if this was a mistake or an insult to her coaching. It was common knowledge that Blacks didn’t make mistakes. But all of Slytherin knew that Dorcas Meadows didn’t take insults either. She was a slytherin through and through, and a history of blackmail on her resume made sure everyone knew.

When a minute passes and Leonora still hasn’t responded, Meadows sighs.

“The rest of you, back in the sky. I want seven laps around the pitch. Now.” The others lift off grumbling, and the captain turns back to Leonora.

“Look, you’re the best seeker we’ve had in at least a decade.’’ It looked as if it physically pained her to say that. “We all know that Slytherin isn’t winning the quidditch cup without you.’’

Despite the thinly veiled dislike in her voice, Leonora felt a flash of pride at the somewhat-praise, before catching and bottling the emotion. A Black didn’t feel pride for something so insignificant as quidditch.

“But that out there?’’ Meadows continued. “I don’t care how good you are, if you can’t get your head back into the game, you’re not going to be in the game at all. I’ll mary James fucking Potter before I let you embarrass our team. Get your shit together black.”

…

By evening, the downpour has let up to a drizzle.

It’s cold and miserable sitting on the roof, but most things in Leonoras life seem to be. And at least the patter of water on her back is consistent. She could have used a bit more of that in the last couple months.

Sirius leaving had thrown the entire family out of sync, but Leonora had shouldered the brunt of it. The absence of her brother's chaos in the house reinforced her parents' determination not to make another Sirius, and they’d cracked down on punishment for every glance in the wrong direction.

It was a surprise when Walburga sent a cutting spell down her back, though it probably shouldn’t have been. Leonora knows her mother is cruel, but she always experienced that cruelty second hand. Their parents graded by a curve, ensuring that as long as Sirius was, well, Sirius, Leonora was safe. Because in comparison, every aspect of Leonora will always be better than Sirius in their parents' eyes.

But when Sirius is removed from the equation, Leonora is no longer being graded against another human, she’s being graded against her parents' idea of a perfect heir. And she always seems to be falling just short of their expectations.

She probably could have fixed the cuts up herself, afterall she’d done the same for Sirius more often than not.

But she couldn’t see her own blood without seeing Sirius’, and if her parents had done it maybe she deserved it, but most of all she was tired. Tired of having to take care of herself.

And, for once, she didn’t have to.

She still isn’t sure what exactly to make of Remus Lupin or how he found her on the roof. She’s not sure if she’s happy or not that he did.

She can see why Sirius likes him though. Remus is blunt, where their parents used cherry picked words that didn’t actually mean what they meant. It was refreshing to have someone who thought about their sentences because they cared, rather than because they liked playing politics.

She shivers a bit as rain continues to seep through her clothes. She should probably head inside before she gets sick. The heir to the most ancient and noble house of Black can’t afford to miss classes because she was bested by a cold after all.

As she’s moving to stand though, her foot slips on the wet roof tile and for a shaky moment she thinks she might be able to catch herself. But that moment doesn’t last, and she feels the force of hitting the surface beneath reverberate through her body.

Might as well kick a girl while she’s down. Leonora thinks bitterly, wincing as she sits back up. Her already soaked robes have picked up the grim of whatever has collected on top of the tower, and she can see a bit of blood leaking through the cloth on her elbows where she tried to break the fall.

Nevertheless, she slips back into the tower without further problems, and starts making her way back down to the slytherin common room. It’s a long walk, but with most of the students in the great hall for dinner, it’s quiet.

Quiet is nice.

….

Leonora can only imagine how she looks slinkinging into the dorm room. Soaked and covered in dirt, she’s hardly the picturesque slytherin heir.

The picturesque Slytherin heir would be calm and calculating, not a shaking mess.

They would be graceful and quiet, not slamming themselves onto their bed like a sulking teenager.

They would be observant, and they would notice the four Gryffindors barely keeping quiet under the invisibility cloak that they know about because their brother really shouldn’t leave his letters out on his desk if he doesn’t want them to be read.

They would have figured that Gryffindor was due for another prank soon, and that the Marauders (a stupid name really) had no qualms sneaking into the slytherin dorms.

But Leonora Black was hardly a Leonora, much less the perfect heir to the most ancient noble house of back. So she didn’t hear her brother’s quick intake of breath or James and Peter’s worried glances. And she wouldn’t find the hastily scribbled note on her bedside table until the early hours of mourning.

U OK?

And on the other side:

I’ll be screaming at life tomorrow night on the astronomy tower if you want to come.