Chapter Four Number 12 Grimmauld Place
Walburga Beverly Black was always perfect. Perfect hair, perfect demeanor, perfect dress. Sirius supposed he wouldn’t mind having a perfect mother. Except a perfect woman expects perfection. He knew it was her by her knock on the door. Soft, exactly three times. “Come in,” he called. She stepped through.
She was beautiful, but not in the way you expect a mother to be beautiful. Born from a prestigious wizarding family, she was the epitome of poise and prowess, the very picture of elegance and glamor. She wore an expensive, slim-fitting robe even though she’d hadn’t left the house all day. Her makeup was immaculate; her nails were never chipped. She pretended it was effortless but Sirius knew how much work his mother put into maintaining her flawless appearance. She held her beauty as proof of her worth.
She glanced around the room. Where his older brother's room was a perfect combination of tradition and conformity, with just a touch of his own personality and preferences, Sirius had only ever been able to manage conformity. Sirius had always felt any desire to decorate stifled by the pressure of his family’s expectations. He knew, looking at his mother’s face that in comparison to his brother’s, Sirius’s room looked rather bleak. Lit by a golden glow emanating from the antique chandelier hanging from the ceiling, the only two pieces of furniture were the bed on which Sirius sat, with its sturdy wooden frame and a white sheet, and the matching dresser, which held all the rest of his possessions. Otherwise the room seemed too large and too empty.[7]
His mother sat beside him on the bed that he had made perfectly just for her. Every day he folded down his sheets and blankets just in case she saw it. If she saw it unmade, she wouldn’t shout or nag like other mothers. Just purse her lips and raise her eyebrows ever so slightly. Like it was a point against him in some inspection she was no longer certain he would pass.
“Are you nervous?” she queried.
“No,” he said.
That was the right answer apparently, as she smiled. “Good,” she said. “Regulus will introduce you to the right people.”
Of course there were the right people,[8] Sirius thought numbly.
“Lucius will be there, and both Stephen and Simon are starting this year. You'll like them,” she said it like a fact rather than a command, but Sirius wasn’t sure which she meant it as. He nodded anyway. She smiled.
“You might be surprised how much the Slytherin common room feels like home. Your brother will be there, looking out for you. You are set up for success,” she promised.
Sirius nodded. “It will be great,” he said.
“It will,” his mother asserted. “And you will be great,” she added.
Now that one he was pretty sure was a command.
She stood up. “Well, you should go to bed. You have an early morning ahead of you.”
Sirius nodded. “Goodnight,” he said.
“Goodnight,” she whispered back and closed the door softly behind her.
The moment she left, Sirius ripped the blanket off his perfectly-made bed and threw them to the floor. He pulled off the sheets too, then picked up his blanket from the floor and threw it on his bed with the sheets and collapsed on the crumpled heap. He wanted to scream, to punch the walls, hit something—but he couldn’t. She would hear.
He had thought that maybe at school, maybe there at last he would finally be free, but his mother had already made plans to control him there too. “You might be surprised how much the Slytherin common room feels like home.” That was what she had said. He was trapped. There was no way out.
Unless… What if he wasn’t in Slytherin? He knew there was some kind of test and apparently Hufflepuff took anyone. But he wouldn’t belong in Hufflepuff. He really wanted to be in Gryffindor, but Gryffindor had valued courage. He didn’t know what the test was but he was sure it wasn’t random, it put you where you belonged. Sirius wasn’t brave; he couldn't even stand up to his own mother. The very idea of what she would do if he was sorted into Gryffindor terrified him. He didn’t have courage, all he had was power.[9]
He let out a long sigh and closed his eyes, then fell asleep on the pile of blankets, wondering whether his new friends would care how he made his bed.