hadrian sirius black

“Be safe, you two, and cause loads of trouble, yeah?” Sirius Black asked, grinning broadly at his two children. 

Hadrian - or Harry, as he usually went by - was his son and the elder of the two; a sixth year student who had grown taller than his father at fourteen, and was showing no signs of stopping as he continued to shoot up like a weed. He had a mane of wild black hair which strongly invoked his aunt Bellatrix - a bittersweet thing for Sirius, but a feature his son undeniably owned, wearing it in the exact same half-up style which his aunt had once favoured, and had been widely complimented for.

He was skinny and pallid, like his uncle Regulus, but his cheekbones and the devilish grin he wore were all Sirius - if one could look past the hair and the frame, Harry looked scarily similar to his father. That was, of course, except for his eyes - those were a bright, Avada Kedavra green which he had inherited from his mother.

“Course, dad,” Harry assured him, pulling Sirius into a one-armed hug, which Sirius returned in full before looking down expectantly at Adhara.

Adhara was his daughter, and heading off to Hogwarts for her first year. She looked the very spit of Sirius, much to her mother’s chagrin, with a cascade of wavy black hair, skin which was pale but not pasty and piercing, grey eyes. She had even inherited his less than impressive stature - Sirius had barely topped 5’8” in a family where six foot was an average height, and his daughter didn’t even reach his shoulders; she scarcely even came up to her older brother’s elbows, a fact which had earned her much good-natured teasing from the teenager.

“Yeah, will do,” she murmured, not looking her father in the eyes. Sirius frowned - this meekness wasn’t something he was accustomed to with his daughter, who had been a little hellion for most all of her eleven years of life - and he crouched down slightly so that he was on eye level with her, placing a hand on her shoulder.

“Are you alright, Addy?” he asked concernedly. Her upper lip trembled, and then, all at once, she threw herself at him, wailing about how she didn’t want to go to Hogwarts and how badly she would miss him.

He grunted as his daughter collided with him with the force of a small cannonball, and just barely managed to keep his footing as he wrapped his arms around her, straightening back up.

“It’s going to be alright, Addy,” he assured her, giving her a comforting squeeze. “I’ll write you until you’re sick of me - it’ll be like you never left at all.”

Harry let out a derisive snort at that, and Sirius winced - in his own first year, Harry had left the platform without saying goodbye to anyone except his sister and Molly Weasley, and hadn’t received a letter from his father for over two weeks as Sirius tried to figure out what to say. Far from his proudest moment as a parent, and one which he was glad not to have repeated with Adhara.

“Promise?” she asked, pulling away from him slightly to look him in the eye.

“I promise,” he vowed, meaning it with all of his might. Some of the distress which had overcome his daughter seemed to leave her at that, and she shot him a tentative smile. A nice moment, and one which Harry interrupted almost immediately, in typical fashion.

“Oi! Fred, George, over here!” he bellowed across the platform. Sirius’ eyes snapped up, and he caught sight of a gaggle of redheads entering the platform, two of whom were sprinting full pelt through the crowd to get to his son.

“Harrykins!” one of them exclaimed.

“How absolutely spiffing to see you, mate!” the other followed - Sirius had never been able to tell them apart, although his son seemed to have no trouble differentiating them.

“Good to see you idiots too!” Harry returned, a wide grin on his face. “Tell me about summer at the Burrow?”

Sirius sighed as his son disappeared back in the direction the twins had come from, over towards Molly Weasley, who looked overjoyed to see his son. It was entirely his fault, he knew, but it still stung him slightly how very close Harry was to the Weasley matriarch - closer, he felt at times, than he was with Sirius himself, and certainly more so than he was with his mother.

“Dad?” Adhara asked uncertainly.

“What is it, pup?” he replied, refocusing his attention on his daughter. Adhara, at least, he had not made the same mistakes with - she thought the world of Sirius, and of her mother, as any child growing up in a proper home should. As Harry didn’t went unsaid, even in his mind - it was too difficult a thought to bear.

“What’s wrong with Harry?” she asked, her eyes following her older brother’s retreating back with worry etched into her features. Sirius sighed, wondering what he ought to tell her.

Should he tell her that Harry had spent his first four years of life under the roof of the Burrow, because Sirius had been fool enough to have a son at the age of seventeen, during a war?

Should he tell her that Harry had four other siblings, who he saw a few times a year at most, and that his stepfather had once been Sirius’ best friend? 

Should he tell her that Harry was the product of a troubled home, one which Adhara had never known, with Sirius and her mother being happily married?

“You’d have to ask him,” he told her instead. His relationship with his son was unstable as it was - he doubted Harry would ever forgive him if he betrayed his trust by blabbing all the details of his tumultuous upbringing to his little sister, who Sirius knew Harry worked very hard to keep in the dark about his upbringing; Adhara knew that Harry had a different mother than she did, and that he saw her on occasion - nothing more.

“Alright,” she agreed, although her brows were furrowed. After a moment of silence, she added, “Do you think he’s coming back?”

“We’ll have to see,” he told her, because he didn’t want to lie - Harry had boarded with the twins for the last five years and, though he would like to think that he would make an exception for the year his little sister started Hogwarts, he wasn’t going to hold his breath - Harry hadn’t taken the time to see his younger brother off for his first year at Hogwarts, and he certainly wasn’t seeing his other little sister off, who was going to be in the same year as Adhara - which had the potential to make things highly awkward, as she knew that Adhara was Harry’s little sister, while Adhara didn’t know the same about her.

This was all to say; he didn’t want to give his daughter any false hope. Harry was a good kid, and loved his sister to death, but he knew from personal experience that anger against a parent could lead to siblings getting caught in the crossfire - he himself had abandoned Regulus on the platform on his first day of Hogwarts because his parents had been so unbearable after his sorting.

He decided to spend the last few minutes before Adhara really needed to board the train reminiscing on some of his own exploits at Hogwarts with her, making sure to keep the parts of his past which he would rather not address anonymous, and hoping against hope that Harry would return.

In the end, he needn’t have worried - Harry returned three minutes before the train was due to set off, blissfully Weasley-free. He waved his wand, and two trunks came speeding towards him from where they had been left propped up against the wall, stopping just short of his feet.

“You want me to carry your trunk for you, Addy?” he asked, picking up his own as he spoke.

“No thanks, I’ve got it,” she replied, giving her trunk an ineffectual tug. She let out a huff of frustration, and Harry smirked knowingly at her, but she did not give up - instead, she hefted the thing up with as much power as she had, and managed to get it a few inches off the ground, going slightly red in the face from the effort.

“Drama queen,” Harry muttered, a smile tugging at his lips as he cast a featherweight charm on the trunk. Adhara nearly overbalanced from the sudden lack of weight, but managed to steady herself by aiming a kick at Harry’s shin, which landed true - Sirius was confident she could follow in his footsteps as a beater with motor skills like that.

“Prat,” she replied, sticking her tongue out at him. 

“That makes two of us,” he replied easily, pulling her into his side and ruffling her hair. She let out a squawk of protest and batted his hand away, but didn’t withdraw from his side - it was really quite adorable. Sirius wished that he had a camera on him to immortalise the moment, but alas, no such luck.

Too soon, Adhara was boarding the train, with Harry just a few steps behind her.

“I’ll miss you two,” he called after them both, trying his best not to cry - that would be terribly embarrassing for his children, he was sure.

“I’ll miss you too, dad,” Adhara called back, looking close to tears herself. Harry’s silence was as loud as Adhara’s response, but he tried not to let it bother him - he had at least given Sirius a curt nod, which was better than disappearing into the train as he had done in years prior. It was progress, and that was all he could ask for given the circumstances.  

The train was gone before either of them could stick their heads out of a carriage window for a final goodbye, and Sirius was left idling on a platform which was quickly emptying, not entirely sure what to do with himself. 

Adhara’s mother was at work, and wouldn’t return until the evening, meaning he was going to be alone in the house for the first time in a very long time. He was used to a life full of action, be it working for the Order or wrangling his two little devil-children

He didn’t really know what to do with himself without them - the feeling that there was nothing waiting for him once he left this platform besides an empty home was foreign, and didn’t sit well with him at all. If he was truly desperate, he supposed he could have paid his ageing mother a visit, but that was somehow even less appealing than returning to his deserted house.

“Sirius,” a familiar voice said from behind him, and his body temperature suddenly dropped by ten degrees. His mind now very clear indeed, he sucked in a deep breath and turned around to be met with his son’s emerald green eyes; but this was not his son. It was his mother, a woman with whom he had not spoken in two decades.

“Lily.”

-hadrian sirius black-

“Addy, can you come with me for a second?” Harry asked as the train began moving, his expression unusually tense.

“Uh, sure,” she replied uncertainly, following Harry as he made his way down the carriage before entering an empty compartment.

He slung his trunk into the overhead stowaway with ease - a feat which had Adhara feeling very jealous as she had to climb up onto the seats in order to achieve the same result - before sitting down, patting the space next to him for Adhara to join him.

He said nothing for a moment, just staring directly ahead of him as the train built up speed, looking deep in thought. Then, he let out a sigh which rivalled one of their dad’s in how put upon it sounded, and turned to face her.

“How would you take it if I told you that my mum was Lily Potter?”

Not well, was the answer to that question. 

She thumped him hard in the arm and told him to stop messing with her and, when he finally managed to convince her that he was telling the truth, had a good yell at him for never telling her that the Boy-Who-Lived was his brother - he let her have a go at him without retort, because he figured he probably deserved it.

When she eventually calmed down, however, she immediately asked the single question he had really been hoping she wouldn’t ask, in typical fashion.

“Why do you see her so little, then? I always thought your mum was like a muggle or something, and she didn’t see you much because she couldn’t deal with a magical kid. Surely Lily Potter should be able to see you more often than she does,” Adhara reasoned.

“Ravenclaw,” Harry muttered in a half-hearted attempt to dodge the question, but he knew it wouldn’t work. After a moment of contemplation, he decided to just answer honestly. “I don’t see her because James doesn’t like me. Thinks I’m too much like our dad, apparently. Mum has more kids with him than she does dad, so his word goes,” Harry answered. His tone was clipped, and remarkably bitter for her usually cheerful brother, who could endure even their prejudiced old hag of a grandmother with good grace.

Adhara’s anger suddenly deflated at his words, realising that this was clearly eating away at her older brother - it had obviously not been easy for him to tell her about this, hence why he had kept it from her in the first place. Although…

“Why are you telling me now?” she asked.

“Well, you aren’t the only little sibling I have at Hogwarts. Charlie’s in his fourth year, and Archer’s starting her first. They obviously know you’re my sister, considering, well…” he trailed off, making a gesture between them to indicate the obvious familial resemblance. “I couldn’t very well keep you in the dark about it much longer, or else they might have asked after you - that would have been very weird if you didn’t know I was related to them.”

Adhara nodded; she felt that Harry was keeping some of his reasoning from her, but the explanation he had given was plausible enough, and she didn’t really want to prod when Harry was obviously spent - he looked more exhausted than she had ever seen him from this one conversation.

“That’s not right,” she said after a moment of silence. Harry turned to look at her, brows furrowed, and she elaborated, “She’s your mum. She shouldn’t let her husband stop her from seeing you.”

Harry let out a huff of laughter, but there was no humour in it - it just made him sound tired.

“Well, that’s never stopped anyone before. She made her choices - obviously, she thinks she has enough kids to be getting on with without dealing with me,” he said, his tone biting. “It’s good that you think that way though. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise,” he added after a moment of thought, his tone now much more measured.

Adhara said nothing, unsure if Harry even wanted a response to that. This bitterness was not something she was accustomed to with her older brother; he could be short with their dad a lot of the time, which she didn’t really understand, but he was always kind with her, even in difficult situations - visits to their grandmother came to mind.

After a heavily pregnant pause, Harry sighed and slumped in his seat, pulling Adhara into a shoulder hug.

“Sorry, Addy. That’s my problem to deal with, not yours. Just… don’t mention this in future, yeah? I love Charlie and Archer and the twins, but there’s a reason I don’t mention mum or her husband,” he said. Adhara nodded her assent, and Harry offered her a wide smile.

“Good,” he said, and the dark air which had slowly been seeping into the room suddenly dissipated. “Now, do you want to sit with me, Fred and George, or would you rather go mingle with the other firsties?” he asked.

She gave it a moment’s thought, but in the end decided to accompany Harry on his journey to find Fred and George. There would be time for mingling later - she thought that a train ride with her older brother and her two favourite Weasleys sounded much more appealing than one with some total strangers.

After travelling nearly the full length of the train, they eventually found Fred and George in a compartment with Lee Jordan, poring over some parchment. Harry barged in without knocking, and Lee had a jinx on the tip of his tongue before he realised who the intruder was, while Fred and George just shared amused looks - they had evidently been able to guess that it was Harry without looking.

“Well, well, well,” one twin began.

“The prince of Slytherin returns,” the other concluded, looking up at Harry at the same time, before their gazes flickered over to Adhara.

“And he brings his little snakelet with him!” the first one exclaimed.

“Oh, how precious! Shall we go get Ronniekins and Gin-Gin, Gred?” the other - she thought it might be George, but she couldn’t be sure - asked.

“A tempting proposition, Forge! This cur has upset the status quo - we must return the Weasley to Black ratio back to two to one,” maybe-Fred announced, waving his wand at Harry in mock outrage before leaping to his feet and bounding out of the compartment.

“Galleon says he doesn’t get Ron or Ginny,” Harry wagered George as soon as Fred was out of earshot. George contemplated for a moment, and then shook on the bet, before pulling Harry into a discussion, gesturing to the parchment spread out in front of him.

“So, you’re the infamous Addy Black?” Lee asked while the other two occupants of the compartment were distracted - from the brief snippets of their whispered conversation she could catch, they were discussing something related to magical theory which went way over her head.

“Yep. He talks about me to you?” she asked, somewhat surprised. From what she knew, Harry didn’t spend an awful lot of time around Lee - he was more Fred and George’s friend than Harry’s, and Adhara had never actually met him, unlike the twins, who she had met plenty of times.

“Oh, yes. Any time he mentions something that happened outside of Hogwarts, your name always crops up somewhere down the line. It’s quite sickening, really - almost as bad as how Fred and George go on about their Gin-Gin,” Lee informed her, looking gleeful at the chance to tell her this to her face - she imagined he must have told Ginny something similar when she started Hogwarts two years prior.

“That’s rich coming from you, Lee. Tell us again how much you wish you’d been able to smuggle that stupid tarantula back into Hogwarts again like you did in third year,” Harry mocked, not even looking at the other boy, as he scribbled something down on the end of the parchment.

Lee was about to retort when the compartment door swung open, and Fred reentered with neither Ron nor Ginny in tow. George groaned and flipped his twin brother the bird, while Harry let out a whoop and punched him on the shoulder.

“Turn out your pockets, Georgie boy,” he gloated, snatching the galleon which George reluctantly procured with frightening speed.

“Prat,” George groused, all the while aiming a kick at Fred for losing him the bet. Fred dodged the kick quite gracefully before flopping down in the seat next to him, fixing Adhara with a mischievous stare.

“Addy! It’s been too long, old chap!” he said jovially, giving George a furtive glance. He was evidently communicating wordlessly with his twin, a skill which Adhara would be forever jealous of - she and Harry had spent a long time attempting to learn how to do it, but to no avail - and George suddenly sat up straighter in his seat.

“Too long indeed, Gred! In fact, if memory serves, its been a whole year,” George added, developing that same mischievous glint in his eyes as Fred.

“A year in which Mr. Black here enlisted Gin-Gin against us in our prank war, which simply can’t fly,” Fred said solemnly, leaning forward in his seat. Harry looked as though he already knew what was coming, judging by the resigned expression on his face, but Adhara still had no idea where they were going with this, and looked to Lee for a hint, only to find him hiding a grin behind his hand.

“So, as penance for your brother’s sins, I’m going to need you to tell me all your most embarrassing stories about our dear Harrykins. The train ride to Hogwarts usually takes about seven hours, so spare us no details.”

Adhara’s face split into a wide grin at that, a mirror of Harry’s and her dad’s - she knew, then, that she had made the right choice in sticking with Harry and the twins for this train ride.

“Well, there was this one time…”