***

The dormitory felt like flying. 

Gryffindors slept four or five each to a circular room, stacked in slim turrets off the main tower -- the older you were, the higher you climbed. Sirius had made his way up after the feast with the other first-year boys, still in somewhat of a daze from the Sorting, to find that he would be rooming with his new friends: his trunk was stowed at the foot of a smallish four-poster bed between Peter and James, with Remus and an empty one on either side. There was a washroom with showers and sinks and towels and another for the toilets, and through the wide windows a rising gibbous moon lit up the grounds for miles in every direction. 

So despite all the eye-smarting crimson and gold, a combination his mother had only ever described as gaudy at best, Sirius Black thought he could probably get used to sleeping in an eyrie rather than a dungeon. 

“These beds are huge.” Peter bounced excitedly to his right. “I’ve never had one with curtains before.” 

“I hate to say it, but I’m hungry.” James sat down on his trunk, pajamas in hand, and began to polish his glasses on his shirt. “Why’d everything have to be cooked with lard?” At dinner he’d performed a funny little revealing spell that had made nearly every dish at the table glow red for a moment, and James sit back with dismay. 

“Does McGonagall know you’re vegetarian?” Remus, who’d hung back in the doorway to perform some sort of star-hugger ritual before entering, now made his way over to the bed on James’s other side. “We’ve got an Head of House now, she’s meant to look out for things like that.” 

Yes, because appealing to the head of the house always worked. 

Sirius rolled his eyes from his bed. “More to the point: do the house-elves know?” 

Peter looked at him, quizzical. “House-elves?” 

“You know, ickle tibbets bound to a family home?” Surely he wasn’t the only one here who knew about house-elves. “They can be nasty little buggers, depending on who their bondholder is -- the one at the townhouse is a nightmare, he’s Mother’s, but the ones at the Marseille estate are all right. The Hogwarts elves would probably be out of their minds to find out a student went hungry at the Welcome Feast.”  

“You didn’t eat much, either,” James pointed out. 

Did other people really just talk about things like that? “Yes, well, becoming the family disappointment rather put me off my appetite, I suppose,” Sirius said waspishly. “Shall we call for vegetables, then?” He sat up straight and felt for the tone of command needed for the summoning. “Requiro --” 

But James interrupted before he could get any further. 

“Stop, stop! What are you doing?!” 

Wasn’t that obvious? “I’m… calling for an elf?” 

“Introduce yourself first!” 

“Sorry?” 

James scoffed -- a bit excessive, Sirius felt. “Don’t you know anything? If you’re going to invoke house magic you’ve got to address the house -- er, castle -- before you can ask for things.” 

Well, that just plain didn’t make sense. “What d’you mean? We’ve all been keyed into the wards and bounds already, we don’t need anything else to activate the spells.” Sirius glanced at the others for support, but Peter and Remus were tracking the back-and-forth in silence, closely as a World Cup Quidditch match, and offered no help in either direction.  

“No,” said James impatiently. “When you’re in a new place you introduce yourself straightaway or it won’t like you, that’s how house magic works!” 

“Is not!”

“Is too!” 

Sirius bristled -- he was a Black, he knew how magic worked. “We’re already students -- look at how our trunks were by our beds! We’ve been accepted and Sorted, so now the magic of the castle is at our disposal, and that includes the elves!” 

“Maybe I don’t know about castle magic, but we’re in a House now too, and I know about house magic,” James retorted. “And house magic says you introduce yourself. Remus knows it too, he did it already.” 

Sirius looked past James to Remus once more -- was that what all the whispery Welsh had been about? But surely that was just superstition? 

Now Remus was shrugging at him. “S’only polite.” 

“Yeah,” said James. “Like what you said on the train. Not protocol, just manners.” 

Sirius looked from James to Remus and back, then at Peter -- whose face reflected the same blank sort of bemusedness he was feeling. He knew what his parents and tutors would say to this: commonly held primitive belief to ascribe to magickal objects or indeed magic as a whole any level of independent will or sentience beyond that essential substance of self which may, in very rare instances, be imbued by a wizard of great power. 

But his tutors weren’t here, and neither were his parents. Not even his brother or his cousins were here, to run off and report him. 

So if Sirius didn’t tell, how would they ever know? 

“Fine, but you and Peter go first,” he said shortly, just to win a little. “Do we do anything special? 

“No, just --” 

“Touch the stone.” This from Remus, in a tone that brooked no argument. 

“Pardon?” 

“We’re on the movables, like. It’s better if you touch the castle body.” Remus looked to James for confirmation. 

And now it was James’s turn to shrug. “I’ve never heard that bit, but it can’t hurt. Us, we just give the space our breath and… here, I’ll show you.” He slid off the bed to sit cross-legged in the middle of the room and placed his palms flat on the floor at his sides. “Is this okay for touching the stone, Remus? Cool.” James closed his eyes and breathed very deeply in and out a few times, then opened his eyes and spoke to the ceiling in a bit of a singsong: “Greetings to the esteemed house -- er, castle -- of Hogwarts. I’m James Potter. It’s our first night in the dormitory and we’ve just been Sorted into Gryffindor and we’re really pleased to be here. Thank you for accepting us into your keeping. I promise to respect the wards and not bring intentional harm to any being within your protection and I look forward to our future together.” He closed his eyes and breathed again. 

Sirius checked: Peter looked uncertain, Remus thoughtful. 

James opened his eyes. “See? Easy. My mum taught it to me ages ago.” 

“But it’s so long,” said Peter. If Sirius whined like that at home he’d get a swift stinging hex across his shoulders. “Is the druid one any shorter?”

“Dunno,” said James. “Is it the same in Cym-ru, Remus?” 

“Mostly. Give your name, offer respect. We’ve got different ones for different places.” 

“But I can’t remember all that!” 

“Sure you can,” said Remus. “Could try and teach you me nain’s, but I don’t think you’d like it any better. It goes ‘Welsh WelsssShhhhhhh Welshhh, Welllllsh --’” Sirius was sure those were words, but he could make neither head nor tail of them -- and apparently neither could the others. It did give him an idea, though. 

“No.” Peter heaved a sigh. “James’s is fine.” 

“Look, it’s easy.” James sounded extremely reassuring. “You just greet the castle, say your name and who you are to the house, then offer gratitude and promise no disrespect. And if it’s somewhere you’re going to live you say you look forward to your future together.” 

“And touch the stone,” Remus added. 

“Right, and touch the stone. And breathe!”  

Sirius had to do his very best to keep from laughing as Peter took his turn -- it helped that the better part of his brain was busy translating, but still. 

“I’m Peter Pettigrew I’m a Gryffindor first-year like James and I -- erm -- oh right, greetings castle -- I promise no disrespect and offer future gratitude for our together. Sorry I messed up, I’m nervous.” 

“Breathe, Pete, you’re all right,” said James. He looked at Sirius. “Your turn.” 

Sirius sat on the floor with only a little bit of a huff, then put his hand to the stone and did James’s whole breathing bit, because if he was really going to do this he should do it properly. “Salutations and greetings to Hogwarts castle,” he said to the top of a windowpane -- in his best Latin. “I am called Sirius Black, and… and I have been Sorted into the House of Gryffindor. Thank you for accepting me into your keeping.” There were prickles in his eyes -- probably dust, or light off the windows. He wanted to check the others’ reactions, or perhaps turn and say see, Remus? but that would ruin the effect, so he’d settle for their very impressed silence. “I promise respect to the wards, and I look forward to our future together.” A soft pulse happened in the stone beneath his palm, something warm and light that made him gasp, then remember to breathe. 

Well. It seemed the arcane Potter-druid ritual had had some effect, after all. 

“Whoa,” said Peter, and it felt like winning, like when he gave the tutor the right answer after Regulus had gotten it wrong. 

“Wicked,” said Remus with a smile that made another pulse go through him, something that felt a lot like during the card game, when James had said we make a pretty good team, don’t we? 

“Show-off,” said James -- but nicer, not in the way Cissy would have said it, and the pulse happened again. 

Sirius beamed back at them all -- and then he remembered another thing, which was the thing that was the reason for this whole thing in the first place. “And esteemed castle, could we speak to a house-elf, if you please?” he said in English, for the others’ benefit. “One of the kitchen ones?” 

CRAK!

After that they had to do the whole song-and-dance all over again before giving the order -- and who’d ever heard of introducing yourself to a house-elf, even if it was the maître de cuisine? At last they finally managed to make it understood that no meat meant no beef or pork or lamb, obviously, but also no poultry or fish or gelatin or soup bones or lard, though butter and milk and honey were all right. Eggs were a bit of a grey area, as James looked sick at the thought of eating one on its own because at home he didn’t, really; none of his family did, but his parents had said it was all right if they were an ingredient in things because he didn’t want to be a bother and --  

“Come off it, Potter,” Sirius admonished. “That’s what house-elves are for.” 

“Can you do that, really? It’s not too much trouble?” James addressed Spatcher directly rather than Sirius, which made Sirius’s chest open up and turn into a sucking void of never-ending emptiness. 

Spatcher bowed and made some assurances to that effect, then disapparated -- because that’s what house-elves were for, Potter, and if James had just listened to him to begin with he could’ve saved the trouble. 

Peter squinched his face up at James once the elf had gone. “Not trying to be funny or nothing, but… what do you eat, then?” 

James shrugged, palms up. “Lots of things, but I bet they don’t know how to make it all here. Guess we’ll see what Spatcher sends up, won’t we?” 

In short order a table appeared in the middle of the room, laden with an eclectic sort of smorgasbord which all glowed green when James did his spell. There was leek and mushroom pie, and potatoes and carrots with rosemary, and stewed greens and green peas and baked beans and even ratatouille, one of Sirius’s special favorites, which none of the others had ever tried before. It was served not with the usual soft white dinner rolls but crusty brown bread in great big loaves, with herbed garlic butter and goat’s cheese. The pièce de resistance, however, was a single great head of cauliflower the size of a Christmas turkey, roasted whole and resting on a bed of greens and wild rice. 

They had great fun hacking it to bite-sized pieces. 

“Will it really be such a disappointment you’re not in Slytherin?” James asked over pudding. “I know it’s a shock, but surely your family will be happy no matter where you’ve been Sorted?”  

Sirius smiled an ugly smile and stabbed a stray bit of cauliflower on the table. “You don’t know my family.” Bella’s eyes hadn’t left him the entire Feast. 

“Tell us, then,” said Peter. “What?” he added when everyone stared at him. “I want to know why people reacted that way at the Sorting, I’d never heard of your family before today.” 

Hadn’t heard of them? Impossible. 

“Atlas Black had seven sons.” Already reticent, Remus had grown still quieter throughout the evening, so when he did speak everybody turned their head to listen -- but he said nothing further. 

Still, at least somebody in Gryffindor knew the tale. 

“Well, go on, then,” said James. 

Remus shook his head. “Not my story.” 

The entire group’s attention fixed on Sirius after that, but it was James who finally said: “All right then, Jester, you tell it.” 

Sirius smiled a very mysterious smile, then, because they were hanging on his every word, and between the meal and his friends the void in his chest felt a little less empty, now. 

“Atlas Black had seven sons,” he said, and paused for dramatic effect. 

Peter fidgeted. 

James cleared his throat. 

Just a moment more… 

     … but he’d never outwait Remus, so best to get on with it. 

“Atlas Black had seven sons,” Sirius continued, before the others got too huffy. “And this was some centuries back, when having too many sons was a real problem, especially if you were head of the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black. One nice proper pureblood English witch was hard enough to find even back then, let alone seven.”  

Now that he had their attention, he let himself fall into the familiar cadence of the story he’d been born into. 

“So what do you do if you’re Atlas Black, with too many sons and not enough brides or inheritance for them all? You send them abroad -- but not with your own money, see. No, Father Atlas was smarter than that. He made an agreement with Gringotts to put his sons on the payroll, and got the Wizengamot to sign off on it. The Muggles were sending people all kinds of places at the time, so they just slipped right in on their transports, and that’s how the Black brothers became the first class of Curse-Breakers.” 

Sirius paused after that reveal, because that part always inspired awestruck reactions. 

“No way,” James breathed, appropriately impressed. “Really? My ajji wants to hex your great-granddad’s balls off!” 

Wait -- what? 

Remus spoke, but not to Sirius: “Your ajji’s not your nan?” 

“No, that’s my dad’s side. The one in Karnataka is my ajji, and my ajji wants to hex Sirius’s great-granddad’s balls off. Bet my nan does too, though.”

“There’s a lot more greats between him and me,” said Sirius. The void was back -- and what had his mother told him, about people who said things like that? 

they envy our status, darling. trolls may covet pearls by nature; this does not mean they deserve them.  

But James Potter didn’t seem a troll. And from the scant details Sirius had gathered, neither did his ajji. 

“What’s a Curse-Breaker?” Peter said this to his pie. 

“They’re a bunch of looters and thieves, is what,” James replied, looking at Sirius. “Half the wealth of the Mughals is sitting under some Englishman’s pasty arse, my ajji says.” 

James Potter’s ajji could suck doxy eggs in Hell. “They’re not looters, they’re intrepid explorers,” Sirius shot back.“They hunt for buried treasure in faraway lands and send it back home.” 

“That sounds cool,” said Peter. 

“Yeah, except it’s someone else’s treasure,” James said pointedly. 

“Lying around where anyone could find it!” 

“Do wizards do finders keepers?” 

“Yes, but no salvage rights if something’s got protections on.” 

“Which it always does,” said James, bringing the aside to the fore. “Because of the curses.”  

Sirius broke in. “Curse-Breaking isn’t salvage, anyway, so it doesn’t matter. By rights they’re looking for goblin-made artifacts under the Law of Reversion, but…” he shrugged, uncomfortable: he hadn’t really thought about it this way before. “Suppose it all ends up in the vaults one way or another.” 

The silence that followed was a little uncomfortable. 

“Anyway --” Time to plow on. “Wherever Gringotts sent his sons, Atlas eventually followed. He visited round to find the most powerful witches from the oldest and richest local pureblood families and offered their fathers a bride-price they wouldn’t refuse. His heir he kept for the set here, and for the youngest he found a princess of the old clans.”  

He had to pause for another interruption as Peter said to Remus: “You’ve got princesses?”

“Not really. Just Anne and Margaret, same as you.” 

“Who?” 

“Muggle princesses.” 

“No, she was a druid princess --” 

“But Remus said they haven’t got princesses!”

At which point Sirius rolled his eyes again. “Yes I know, but it makes a much better story, doesn’t it?” 

“Wait, the Muggles have got princesses? Proper ones?” 

“I dunno what you mean by ‘proper ones,’ but they do wear crowns, sometimes.”

“Well, she was daughter of a clan head, so she was a princess, and her husband was the last son to marry, which meant Atlas got all his daughters eventually.” Sirius looked around -- only Remus’s eyes flickered in recognition, which was probably to be expected. “Apparently he vetted each one personally by making them duel him.” He said this part in the knowing tone his parents used and raised his eyebrows with a meaningful look. 

James was chewing, Peter looked starstruck, and Remus’s expression gave nothing away. 

Damn. He’d figure out what that meant, one of these days.

“Anyway, a few years later he’s a granddad, with a fresh crop of cousins from all the new branches abroad. He brings over a selection of brides for his elder grandsons from among the most promising of the cadet branch granddaughters, and then -- here’s the important bit, see -- he marries some of the foreign granddaughters into the pureblood families here, and sends the main branch granddaughters to shore up the alliances abroad.” 

He looked around again: this was the part where you were supposed to exclaim over what a stroke of genius that was, but none of them were taking the cue. 

Maybe they just didn’t understand? All right then, he’d explain. 

“It sent a message, see,” he said impatiently. “It set a precedent for society accepting the cadet Blacks same as they would any other pureblood, and it didn’t hurt that the foreign granddaughters came with piles and piles of treasure for dowry, all kinds of artifacts and things. And of course he kept his youngest close, just in case he took after him with his spawn.”  

James and Peter both looked confused, again. 

“Seventh son of a seventh son.” Remus’s voice got all deep and whispery as he stared right at Sirius. “Welsh Welssssshhhh something Welsh someTHing something Welshhh, serenity.” 

Merlin’s beard, Remus was so cool. 

“Yeah.” Sirius grinned at Peter and James. “What he said.” 

James squinted. “You never understood that.” 

“Sure I did,” Sirius lied. 

“You didn’t know Welsh before, how’d you start now?

“Just did.” 

“All right, what’d he say, then?”

“He said that seventh sons of seventh sons, they’ve got powers and things. They’re healers, or they’re werewolves -- or both, or they’re immune to werewolf bites, and something that sounded like sereni-- hey!” James had begun to pelt him with candied nuts. “All right, all right, I don’t understand Ancient Welsh or whatever, but that is what he said -- isn’t it, Remus?” 

The corner of Remus’s mouth quirked, just a bit. “More or less.” 

Sirius wanted in on the joke hiding there. 

And speaking of… 

“The joke was on old Azza in the end, though,” he said to the rest. “Delphyne the Red only ever threw daughters -- seven, obviously, and every last one a Slytherin. She’s half the reason the pureblood families in Britain still put out offerings for the Sithe.” 

“What’s the other half?” Peter asked. 

Sirius made his eyes very big. “The Sithe.” 

Peter’s eyes widened to match. “Really?”

“No, the Ollivanders. Wandlore’s one of the old arts, they live out in the wilds with the druids half the year. Anyway, twenty or so generations on and you’ve got the main branch, that’s us, we’re sort of the England-France-Iberia Blacks. The original cadet branches are Carthage, Cairo, Cuzco, Luanda, and Hanoi -- though we’ve added some more since then, and most of the Indochine cousins have decamped to Hong Kong for a bit. And once a year everybody meets up at one of the villas to drink and play matchmaker with the kids. So when people say the Blacks are a family of ‘good breeding,’ well, they mean it.” The void in his chest had opened up again: this story didn’t feel as good this side of the Sorting, somehow. “And every Black who ever went to Hogwarts since the Seven Sisters has been in Slytherin.” 

Somebody’s chair creaked. 

And then Peter said what they were all thinking: “Until you?” 

Merlin’s beard, other people really did just talk about things like this. “Until me,” Sirius confirmed. “And I’m next in line to be the head of it all.” He let his shoulders sag. “Or I’m supposed to be, anyway.” 

“Oh.” 

Sirius slumped in his seat. “All we ever do is travel the world and grab treasure and marry each other, it’s disgusting. Not the treasure bit -- if I could be a Curse-Breaker without marrying one of my cousins I would, but now that I’m a Gryffindor I suppose all I’m good for is charging around like an erumpet in a china shop.” 

“Would you?” James asked with a pointed look. “Would you really be a Curse-Breaker?” 

He probably shouldn’t answer that. “Well, we’ll never find out now, will we? Maybe they’ll put me at the Ministry or something. Can you imagine? The head of the Blacks all in red and gold, strutting the halls like a thrice-charmed matador?” 

Remus smirked at him. “So are you the erumpet, or the matador?” 

“I’m both, man, keep up.” A manic sort of glee was rising in Sirius’s chest to seal off the void, buzzing and crackling with energy. 

For a moment he saw his friends through his family’s eyes, a chorus echoing from every Hall of Portraits in every townhouse or villa or hunting cottage he’d ever been locked in (which was a lot of them). 

Short of stature, spine of pudding, pale as milk, sneered Alcyone. Half-blood son of a pureblood family. Raised by his mudblood mother, and he talks like it, too. Easily manipulated. Useful. 

Of the old blood for certain; note the nut-brown skin and wild, woolly hair, hissed Cepheus. Clean, for a druid. Powerful magic in its way, but undisciplined. Half-blood. Keep to the good side of the clans nevertheless.

Imperfect vision, Deccan coloring, growled Atlas. Old pureblood stock in their country only lately arrived to England -- the Carnatic School are one of the remaining few with their curses yet intact. An advantageous alliance… 

But none of Sirius’s family was here, in the Gryffindor dormitory. Not the portraits, not his brother or parents, not even his cousins. 

His family wasn’t here, and whatever they might say -- none of that was why Peter, Remus, and James were his friends. No, they were his friends because… because they liked him? They didn’t seem to like his family much, but they did seem to like him, which was a little confusing. But Sirius liked it, that warm feeling he got from their attention or praise, and he liked them. He liked them because to Peter and Remus and James, he was just Sirius. 

And he sort of wanted to find out who just Sirius could be. 

***