Hadrianus Black and The Excessive Amount of Children

“Mother,” Hadrianus greeted, taking a seat in the drawing room.

In the seat across from him, Irma Black raised an eyebrow at him and put down the magazine she had been reading, turning to face him fully.

“Well, well, well, he does have manners, then,” she announced and, when Hadrianus only raised an eyebrow at her, let out a scoff, leaning forward to take the tea cooling on the table in front of her. “Honestly, boy, you expect me to believe that ‘Irma’ is suddenly no longer good enough for you? Whatever it is you have to say, be out with it and be done with this silly charade.”

Hadrianus clucked his tongue, which to an outsider might have been a demonstration of his irritation that his pretence had been seen through, but internally he was chastising himself for not learning his role better. If his own ‘mother’ had realised something was off after speaking a single sentence, what hope did he truly have of remaining undetected?

Still, in this instance, it might be in his favour, as he had some truly groundbreaking news to deliver.

“You’re going to become a grandmother soon,” he answered vaguely, snapping his fingers to summon a house elf. To his displeasure, it was Kreacher who answered the call; the feeling seemed to be mutual, as the old elf narrowed his eyes in dislike at Hadrianus. “Tea, Kreacher,” he ordered, and the elf disappeared without another word.

“How? You never took a wife and, forgive me, I doubt you ever will,” she queried, her ink black eyes boring into him. Kreacher chose that moment to appear with Hadrianus’ tea, which he accepted without a word of thanks and took a sip of, placing it down on the table before answering.

“I never said I’d be the one giving you a grandchild, did I?”

Irma’s eyes narrowed, and she muttered something under her breath which sounded awfully like ‘idiot boy’ before fixing Hadrianus with a piercing stare.

“It’s that younger brother of yours, isn’t it?”

Hadrianus had to suppress a smirk at how, after wrongdoing, Cygnus was suddenly his younger brother rather than Irma’s son. As it was, he bowed his head to hide the slight quirking of his lips which he had been unable to catch.

“Who else? Alphard and I won’t be having children for the foreseeable future, and I’ll be very much surprised if there’s enough fresh blood between Walburga and Orion for them to pump out an heir,” he said blithely. Irma let out a tsk of disapproval at his crass language, but otherwise did not reprimand him, which he took to mean that she was deep in thought.

“Is it a boy or a girl?” she eventually asked. It was not the question Hadrianus had been expecting, and he faltered, because Cygnus hadn’t said - in typical fashion, he had volunteered nothing more than was absolutely necessary for someone else to get him out of hot water.

“He didn’t say. I sent off a letter asking what’s the gender, who’s the godfather and all that tat this morning. I’ll tell you when he writes back,” he promised. Irma nodded, and there was silence for perhaps a minute, before she let out a long-suffering sigh.

“That boy - far too much like his father. He’ll be the death of me,” she bemoaned, before draining her tea and getting to her feet. “Come. We must break the news to your father,” she instructed, before setting off in the direction of the study.

Hadrianus strolled after her, disbelieving that it could be that easy.

Half an hour later, as Pollux Black tore up his study, shouting himself hoarse about idiot boys and insipid little girls, he realised that it was never that easy - and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

-Hadrianus Black and The Excessive Amount of Children-

Dear Hady,

I got a letter from mother saying that father tore up his office after you broke the news. Thanks for dealing with that for me - I owe you one.

Dru had a preliminary with Madam Pomfrey last week - it's still early days yet, but they’re pretty confident the baby’s a girl. We like Bellatrix for a name if it's a girl, although I can’t say I’m not tempted to name her Walburga to spite the cousin-lover - Dru hexed me when I suggested that one though, so I think Bellatrix might be winning.

You’re the godfather, obviously. The godmother’s some family friend of Dru’s, Rowle, I think? You’ll know her better than me, I’m pretty sure she was in your year. I seem to remember something about her telling you she’d rather be buggered by a troll than get married to you, but I must be mistaken, right? That would make the rites very awkward.

Best Wishes,
Cyggie Black

Hadrianus carefully folded up his brother’s missive, eyes flicking up to his parents. His father didn’t seem to realise anything was amiss as he continued to eat his dinner, but Irma was fixing him with a shrewd look which told him he wouldn’t get away with maintaining his silence for long.

Still, he made no effort to relay the information he had been given, mind still reeling. This baby was really going to be Bellatrix Lestrange - or Bellatrix Black, he supposed. No two ways about it. Furthermore, he was going to be her godfather - a prospect he was entirely unsure how he felt about, which was slightly worrying.

He wanted to be revolted, because he knew what she had grown up to do in his own time, but instead he felt… glad? He wasn’t sure if that was the word for it, but he knew that his reaction was not entirely negative - somewhere, deep inside of him, he wanted this to happen, which was a thought he would have to confront later, because he was more concerned with the final paragraph.

The mere mention of the name Rowle had triggered a flood of memories within him of a girl with beady black eyes and a tight, raven ponytail who he had attempted to court at the end of his seventh year in order to appease his family’s increasingly ardent prodding for him to get married.

Rowle had been utterly uninterested, which he later found out was due to the fact that she was a lesbian, but at the time he had believed it an insult, and had redoubled his efforts until the whole thing had culminated into the disaster which Cygnus had poked fun at in his letter, where she had publicly declared buggery from a troll preferable to a marriage with Hadrianus Black.

It had been a fiasco, and his family seemed to realise there was little hope of Hadrianus finding a wife after it had occurred, as the letters concerning potential brides came to an abrupt stop immediately following it.

He hoped to whatever gods looked down upon him that the godmother was not Rowle, and Cygnus was misremembering, but he somehow doubted that was the case. Knowing his little brother, he had probably suggested her specifically to Druella - little prick.

“Any news from Cygnus, dear?” Irma asked politely, apparently having decided that Hadrianus had kept his silence for too long. Pollux looked up sharply from his plate, letting his knife and fork clatter against the table as he fixed Hadrianus with a piercing stare. He breathed out a sigh - it was no wonder he had a flair for the dramatic with parents like these - but began speaking nonetheless.

“They believe the baby’s going to be a girl, and they want to name her Bellatrix. I’m the godfather, and Cygnus thinks Rowle is the godmother, although he’s not sure,” he relayed, cutting a piece off of his steak and sticking it into his mouth so that he would not be obligated to respond for a moment.

“A proper Black name, then. At least the boy has some sense,” Pollux admitted begrudgingly, returning to his food. Irma, however, was eyeing Hadrianus beadily and, when he finished his food, immediately asked the question which he had been hoping she wouldn’t ask.

“Rowle? As in, ‘I’d rather be buggered by a troll than marry you’ Rowle?” She asked, an evil smirk playing across her lips.

“Excuse me?” Pollux asked sharply, once again dropping his cutlery. Irma ignored her husband entirely, leaning forward in her seat to grab Hadrianus’ hand.

“Oh, that must be terrible for you, dear. I can’t believe that Cygnus would allow that spinstress to be the godmother of his child!” she bristled, all the while her mouth was pulled into an evil little smirk. She knew what she was doing, the cow - Pollux had heard nothing of the incident with Rowle at the time it had happened, and Hadrianus had been planning on keeping it that way.

“What in the devils are you talking about, woman?” he demanded, his shrewd grey eyes narrowed as he looked between his wife and son for an explanation.

“Rowle is a girl I attempted to court in seventh year. She was… otherwise inclined,” Hadrianus said curtly, giving his mother the evil eye as he spoke.

“Am I to presume this is why I suddenly stopped receiving betrothal offers for you shortly after your seventeenth birthday?” Pollux asked, looking as though he were about to burst a blood vessel with how tightly his face was set.

“Indeed,” Hadrianus replied, his tone clipped. He attempted to get up, but Pollux cast a jinx at him which stuck his legs to the underside of the table.

“Oh, we aren’t done here boy. Not by a long shot,” his father warned, before diving into a tirade about his idiocy, in both attempting to initiate a courtship without informing him and for keeping the information that it had fallen through from him.

Hadrianus bore it with about as much grace as could be expected - which was to say, very little - and took the first opportunity he got to run off to his room after the jinx was undone.

He was going to curse Cygnus into next week the next time he saw him - maybe his mother too, for good measure. And Druella, for picking bloody Rowle of all people to be Bellatrix’s other godparent.

Satisfied with his plan, he sat down at his desk and began penning a response to Cygnus, containing some thinly veiled threats about what sort of welcome he could expect when he returned home for the summer holidays.

Of course, he had no intention of following through with them, but making Cygnus squirm was the least of the payback he hoped to extract for the ordeal he had just been put through.

Bloody Rowle.

-Hadrianus Black and The Excessive Amount of Children-

Cygnus disembarked from the Hogwarts Express looking as though he’d been run ragged, and Druella looked much worse. She was older than Cygnus, being fifteen as opposed to thirteen, but being a teen mother was a much heavier burden than being a teen father.

Hadrianus had been tasked with the duty of bringing them back to Grimmauld from the Platform, and he quietly slipped Druella a pain-reliever potion as they walked. She smiled gratefully at him, and he pressed a finger to his lips. It was something of a taboo in pureblood society for women to take pain-relievers during pregnancy - something to do with it supposedly making the child weak - but Hadrianus didn’t really care. The girl was only fifteen, for Merlin’s sake - she needed whatever breaks she could catch.

“Tell me if you need more,” he whispered to her, giving her shoulder a reassuring squeeze before tripping Cygnus up, causing him to land face first into a puddle. While he had plenty of compassion to offer to his sister-in-law, his sympathy was limited where irritating little brothers were concerned

Cygnus retaliated by kicking Hadrianus in the shin as soon as he was back on his feet, and they continued trading blows until they were at the door of Grimmauld, at which point Hadrianus cast some charms to make it look like they hadn’t just spent the last ten minutes in a brawl and opened the door.

There was a full family dinner that night, celebrating the news that they would soon be welcoming in a new generation of Blacks.

Sirius, the great-grandfather of the Sirius from Harry Potter’s time and the Black paterfamilias, was seated at the head of the table. To his right were Arcturus and Orion, his immediate heirs, and to his left were Cygnus and Druella, the cause for the festivities.

He did not look well - Hadrianus could remember when he was younger, and his great-uncle had been eagle-eyed and sharp. Now his eyes were rheumy and his hair was white, his body aged far beyond his years - afflicted by a curse, or so the rest of the family whispered when not in his presence.

Still, the dinner went well enough. Sirius gave a speech about the pride to their House the new child would bring, which would have passed for coherent if he hadn’t confused Cygnus with Alphard. There was a lot of uneasy laughter at the slip-up, but after a whispered correction from Arcturus it wasn’t repeated, and the family was content to pretend it hadn’t happened and continue with the meal.

Through some great stroke of misfortune, Hadrianus had ended up seated next to Walburga. Uncle Regulus was to his other side, and looked as though he was contemplating whether or not he would be able to kill himself by sticking his knife through the roof of his mouth.

Aunt Charis and uncle Caspar were seated across from Hadrianus and Walburga respectively, and were so engrossed in their old-people talk that they had nary a glance to spare for their niece and nephew. The seat next to Walburga was empty - aunt Cedrella had sat there once, but she had since been disowned for marrying Septimus Weasley.

Which meant that Hadrianus and Walburga were each the other’s only source for conversation. Lovely, that. Alphard’s voice floated down the table, from where he was laughing at a joke of Orion’s, and Hadrianus found that he had never wanted more for his older brother to die spontaneously and painfully.

“Knut for your thoughts, ‘Burgie?” he asked after a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, leaning across the table to pinch the 1926 Port while aunt Charis was distracted. Walburga scowled at the use of the infantile nickname, but otherwise made no protest as Hadrianus poured a glass for both himself and her, which he thought was an impressive show of restraint for his prickly sister.

“It’s… strange, seeing our little brother becoming a father so soon, don’t you think?” was her eventual reply, shooting a look which was oddly plaintive down the table at Cygnus as she spoke.

“Yes,” he said, taking a thoughtful sip of his wine. “It is. I wouldn’t have expected you of all people to be sad about that, though. Toujours Pur,” he recited, repeating the family motto which Walburga had always been quick to reel off like a broken record to her younger brothers whenever they complained of the familial expectation to produce heirs.

Walburga threw him a dirty look, folding her arms in defiance. It was a gesture he was well familiar with, and he prepared himself for a tirade. However, it never came.

“Yes, Toujours Pur. I never thought any of you would be so young, though. He’s still just a boy,” she said. Hadrianus’ brows knitted, and he took another sip of wine rather than reply. He hadn’t heard Walburga sound so much like she cared in quite a long time.

“Well, that’s just the way of things, isn’t it? Father was only thirteen when he had you, after all,” he eventually said. Walburga licked her lips and didn’t respond - a nervous tic from childhood which she had never really managed to shake. “Drink, before aunt Charis realises we’ve nicked her Port,” Hadrianus urged her, tapping her glass.

“I didn’t ask you to pour me one!” she snapped, but she still took a great draught from her glass regardless. He smirked at her, and she looked as though she wanted to stick her tongue out at him but abhorred the thought of making such an unrefined gesture. 

Walburga had been raised to be the prim, proper daughter of the House of Black, and she did her best to act the part, but Hadrianus knew better. At her core, she was every bit the brash Gryffindor her son had grown up to be in Harry Potter’s world - it was why they were so frequently at odds. All of his siblings had something of a brash streak, but he and Walburga were the worst for it, and far too proud to back down. On one memorable occasion, they had actually come to blows after Hadrianus called her an inbreeder.

Pollux had pulled them apart and yelled himself hoarse about propriety, but Irma had just eyed them knowingly and, after their father had left, she told Hadrianus that he couldn’t afford to be such a blushing schoolboy about a woman’s blouse bunnies in a fight and that Walburga ought to use her weight more effectively.

Hadrianus had turned crimson both at the phrase ‘blouse bunnies’ and at the reminder that he had accidentally grabbed his sister’s breast in their scuffle, which had caused him to falter long enough that Walburga had been able to clobber him over the head, and Walburga sputtered indignantly at their mother’s insinuation that her weight was substantial enough to use in a fight.

Irma, however, had just winked at the both of them before sweeping out of the room, leaving her two vaguely traumatised children to shift awkwardly about on the spot for a minute before muddling through a pair of half-hearted apologies - the first the two siblings had offered each other in living memory.

“You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?” Walburga accused him, her eyes narrowed as she took another drink from her glass.

“Obviously. I think mother’s conditioned me - whenever it seems like we might fight I can hear her in my head talking about blouse bunnies, and then suddenly I want to shrivel up and die more than I want to fight you,” he confessed, draining the last of his wine.

Walburga grimaced, her face colouring with a flush which most certainly could not be attributed to the half glass of wine she had consumed. That whole ordeal had been most embarrassing for the pair of them - Hadrianus had had a period of about a week where he could scarcely be in the same room as Walburga without turning as red as an edam, and Walburga went on some strange diet in an attempt to lose weight for about a month until their mother lost her head at her when she discovered it.

“Pixie dust? Have you lost your mind, girl? Better to have some meat on the bones than put that poison down your gullet!” She had bellowed, loud enough that Hadrianus had heard her from two stories up. Needless to say, Walburga had dropped her diet after that.

“Congratulations,” Walburga muttered, stirring him from his reminiscing. He looked at her, nonplussed, and she huffed but added, “On being made godfather. Merlin knows you’re better for it than our other pillock of a brother.”

Hadrianus blinked at her for a second, before his mouth unfurled into a winning smile.

“I’ll tell Alfie you said that,” he said teasingly, bumping her shoulder. Walburga rolled her eyes but offered no rebuke, which he took to mean that she was in an especially good mood.

“I’m sure you will. It’s just- well, I think you’ll be good for that girl, Bellatrix. It’s not as though Cygnus will be able to look after her at Hogwarts, and she most certainly won’t be staying with Rowle,” she stated matter-of-factly, picking up her glass and drinking the last of her wine.

Hadrianus stilled in his seat at the implication of her words. It had occurred to him, of course, that both of Bellatrix’s parents would still be in Hogwarts when she was born, and that it somehow seemed unlikely that she would be going to stay with Rowle. However, outside of half-formed plots, he’d never seriously considered that Bellatrix might actually be his responsibility during the school year. 

“On second thought, I don’t think I’ll tell Alfie anything about this” he decided, knowing his older brother would likely laugh himself hoarse at Hadrianus becoming a nanny without even intending to. Walburga smirked at him, before turning around in her seat.

She snapped her fingers, causing Kreacher to appear, and whispered something in his ear. When he returned, he was bearing a bottle of 1886 single malt whiskey, and a tray bearing a diamond decanter and two shot glasses.

“You know, ‘Burgie, maybe you aren’t such a backwards inbred after all,” he informed her as she set the bottle and tray on the table. She honest to God tittered at him, and he wondered whether or not she had been drinking long before he had poured her that glass of Port.

Still, she was in his good graces for the moment as she poured them both shots, ignoring the prissy little decanter. His gaze roamed up the table to where Cygnus was sitting, looking distinctly uncomfortable as Sirius gesticulated wildly about something next to him, before he took a sip of the whiskey.

It seemed that, come the close of the year, he would have a baby to steal.