Chapter 13
25 July Thursday again
LORD BLACK CAME HERE!!!!! Here! He had his coach and his solicitor and his doctor and all sorts of people with him and Aunt Petunia curtsied a lot and was polite to him and he was still here when Dudley got back from Piers' and UV got in from work, and they were polite too.
Lord Black is SCARY. He was nothing but nice to me, even let me talk to the coachman and explore the whole coach and pet the horses (they're called Granians) and told me not to stand on ceremony with him and, if I wished, call him Grandfather. He scared AP and UV witless, though, only by smiling at them and thanking them for having been so kind to his heir.
That was a huge shock. Apparently, Sirius Black was his grandson and heir cos his son Orion died in an accident, and Sirius was my godfather and named me his heir before betraying my parents to Voldemort and getting sent to Azkaban (the wizard prison, which is really horrible). Lord Black had been trying to find me forever, but he didn't know my mother had a sister, so he didn't think of looking outside the magical world. After tying up a few loose ends (he said he left me plenty of notes to read when I get older) he disinherited Sirius this morning and named me his heir and he had his people spend all last night searching school records to find where I lived. I asked if I could ask how he knew where to look, and he said he simply had one of his servants take a broom and follow Hedwig back.
Lord Black looks like a really old movie star. He's pale, he doesn't look at all healthy and his skin looked really thin and fragile, but he sat up straight and his hands didn't shake and he looked like he could see through stone. He was wearing black robes, but not like the ones I saw at Diagon Alley. These hung a lot better and opened down the front and showed a white shirt, a fancy green and gold tie, a deep red waistcoat and dark grey knitted leggings. If I could wear robes like that, I wouldn't mind robes so much. I think almost everything he was wearing was silk. He had really long hair pulled into a tail in back and he wore a head-thing kind of like what Jewish men wear, also black.
He told me that by the definition they used when he was a boy, I was a pureblood. It used to be that a halfblood was defined as the child of a pureblood and a muggle or the child of two muggleborns or two halfbloods, but the child of a pureblood and a muggleborn or halfblood was a pureblood. He said that this was before the word "mudblood" was used by anyone other than inbred lowlifes like the Gaunts and that he never wanted to hear of me stooping to use it or he'd come back and haunt me. We talked about pureblood supremacy and Voldemort and he pointed out the non-magical nobility considers itself above and apart from the commoners and doesn't want their children marrying them, but that doesn't mean they want them all killed. He smiled at me and said that he was far too old to curry his own Granians, and that he was quite glad that there were so many people out there who were willing to work for money.
He also told me that he was very sick, and it was possible that this might be the only time we ever meet, but that he was happier than he could say that he had lived long enough to hear from me and see me. I asked if Draco Malfoy could have been his heir and he praised me on my reading and said that he could have been, if Sirius hadn't named me, or if he'd disinherited Sirius before finding me, but that there were reasons detailed in his notes why he really wanted to find me. He also said that, while I am far to young to have to worry about marrying, he wanted me to consider any surname on the family tree off-limits (plus Bones and Lovegood) and while he'd look on ecstatically from the afterlife if I got married immediately at seventeen and sired children immediately, he wasn't fool enough to insist on it, nor to try to arrange anything now.
And there's a house set aside for the Black heir that could be mine now if I could convince my family to move to it (AP looked like she might faint at that), or when I came of age I could choose any of the Black properties as my residence, and recommended the town house on Curdzon Way, or the Potter townhouse, also on Curdzon Way, just a couple of houses down. Both nice houses in a green and quiet neighborhood convenient to the London social scene and the Wizengamot.
After that, he said that anything else he would give as advice I could find in his journals, that he'd be engaging a tutor for me to get me up to snuff before September (or as close as possible anyway), and that he wanted to hear about me now. So I sat next to him and told him about myself as much as I could and I tried not to make AP and UV look bad, because he wouldn't be sitting there forever, but he still looked at them thoughtfully every once in a while and they went pale again.
It was after he was done talking to me (he also told me some family stories and described the last Yule celebration he had with all the grandchildren present) that he asked if I would like a better look at the carriage and sent me outside. I don't know what he said to them because I was so excited that I went out and talked to the various men around the coach and explored it (oh, and snake speech is Parseltongue, and a person who can speak it is a Parselmouth, and it's another chthonic thing, and the guys around the coach were impressed that I knew the difference) instead of listening. When I went back in, though, he was getting ready to leave. He gave me a big gold signet ring that I thought I'd have to put on a string around my neck or something, but it shrunk down to fit my finger and he said that only I could take it off, and it was protection from most poisons although I should avoid basilisks and nundu. He actually let me climb up in his lap and hug him, which made him smile. He said that was the first hug he had ever gotten from one of his grandchildren. When they were growing up he was younger and more foolish, and thought different things were important. I have the rest of my life to learn formality, but kindness and affection can't be taught, they just are.
He took both of my hands in his and looked in my eyes and told me that if it were possible, I would see him again, but if it weren't, he was glad to have met me and gotten to know me, and if I am forbidden to go to his funeral, try not to hate the people who forbade me too much, as they were just trying to protect me, but feel free to get even, so long as I didn't get caught. (He agrees with Lazarus Long that hating people is a waste of time. He agrees with Lazarus Long about a lot, actually. I showed him the book and he approved of much of it, said it was very Slytherin, and that I might also enjoy Machiavelli's The Prince as well.)
And then he and his retainers left, although his solicitor stayed. I couldn't hear anything through the door, though, so I finally gave up and came up here to write it all down.
The ring is really wicked. It's smaller than it was, but it's still big and heavy and it's on my right middle finger. It would probably hurt if I punched somebody. It's got the Black coat of arms on it, and the Black motto, Tojours pur, which Lord Black said wasn't just about blood but also purity of intent and focus and such and mentioned the yoga mantra of Be Here Now.
I hope I get to see him again.