Chapter 3
“Professor McGonagall,” said Sirius to Minerva after he and Harry came into her office, “the Ministry is saying that Harry and I both have to separate from Remus, and they’ve even nullified my marriage to Remus. Isn’t there anything you can do to help us? Maybe a Fidelius Charm on our house? Remus and I will be the Secret-Keepers.” “I’m afraid I cannot help you,” said Minerva. “I’m already in enough legal trouble for giving Remus a job in direct defiance of the Ministry’s new anti-werewolf legislation. I’ll be in as much trouble as Professor Dumbledore is now, if the Ministry perceives me as having forced one of my students to live in an unsuitable home, as we both know that Professor Dumbledore did in an even worse way than I would ever do.”
“But where can Harry and I go?” asked Sirius. “Can’t anyone in the Order help us?” “What Order?” asked Harry. “I’ll explain later,” said Sirius. “Anyway, Professor, where can Harry and I go?” Minerva thought for a minute, and said, “I’m sorry, Sirius, but the only solution I can think of that wouldn’t be illegal is for you to go to your parents’ old townhouse in London. It is technically yours, now that your parents are dead, as you are the oldest living male in the Black family.” “You can’t make me go there, Professor!” Sirius protested. “You know how my parents hated me! They would never have left the house to me…” “...if your brother Regulus was still alive. I’m aware that they liked him much better than you. But as it is, they had no choice, as you are the oldest living male member of their family—and you would be the only one if you hadn’t adopted Harry. I’m sorry, Sirius. I can’t do anything more to help you without losing a lot more than my job. Dumbledore, as you know, was imprisoned in Azkaban for enabling child abuse, along with the Dursleys being put in a Muggle prison…and I’m sure the same thing would happen to me if I allowed Harry to continue living with Remus.” Sirius replied, “You and I both know how inhumanely the Ministry treats prisoners in Azkaban, with the dementors and all. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, except maybe this ‘Madam Umbridge’ who forced through this anti-werewolf legislation to begin with. And do you seriously believe that allowing our family, including Remus, to stay together is as bad as what Harry went through with the Dursleys?” “I personally do not believe this,” said Minerva McGonagall, “nor does anyone who was a member or ally of the Order. But I can’t risk being sent to Azkaban, as Professor Dumbledore was for what he did to Harry.” Sirius and Harry then Disapparated (Harry again going via Side-Along-Apparition) to Sirius’ family’s townhouse in London, at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place.
Harry could tell, from how derelict the house was, that it had been unoccupied for years; Sirius explained that his father had died before his mother, so no one had lived in the house since his mother died. Just at that moment, the curtains opened, and a woman in a portrait screamed, “YOUUU! BLOOD TRAITOR, ABOMINATION, FAGGOT, SHAME OF MY FLESH!” “ That’s my mother,” explained Sirius as he forced the curtains closed. “I’ll get her down.” He tried his hardest, but eventually told Harry, “She must have put a Permanent Sticking Charm on the back of the canvas. If she knew that I had adopted you, a half-blood, into our family, and that I didn’t throw you out for being friends with the Muggle-born Hermione Granger, who knows what she’d do…you’d better write to Ron and Hermione and tell them about the recent crisis in our family.” Harry went upstairs to his room to do exactly this, after Sirius had shown him which of the house’s many bedrooms was Harry’s.
“When did you escape your parents’ house?” Harry asked, curious whether Sirius had been abused as badly as Harry himself had. “Shouldn’t you have known for a long time that they were abusive? Why didn’t you tell anyone? I willingly told Mrs Figg’s cat what the Dursleys were doing to me, even though I didn’t know that she was Minerva McGonagall in disguise.” “I didn’t realise that I needed to escape until I was 16,” Sirius said. “I had come home the summer after my fifth year, and my parents had found out about my relationship with Remus. You know them pretty well from what I’ve told you, you can guess they weren’t happy. Not only was Remus another bloke and a half-blood, he was also a werewolf—the last person my parents would want me to marry, especially as they didn’t believe that gay marriage should be allowed. They thought that they had to make sure I married a pure-blood witch—so they talked my cousin Narcissa, whom I hated just like my other Slytherin relatives, into giving me a love potion. While I was under the influence of Narcissa’s love potion, we got engaged, and my parents wanted me to marry Narcissa as soon as I turned 17…I even dropped out of Hogwarts to live with my forced fiancée…” “I wonder whether my schoolmate Malfoy would still exist if Lucius had known all of this, if he had known that Narcissa had formerly almost been married to a blood traitor,” Harry commented, “Surely she herself would have been labelled as a blood traitor due to this?” “That’s the thing,” said Sirius. “My parents told Narcissa to also put me under the Imperius Curse if that was what she had to do to make me conform to my family’s pure-blood supremacist beliefs. And Narcissa did it. James knew something was wrong when I wrote to him, at Narcissa’s request, and said that I didn’t know why I had ever been friends with a blood traitor like him. He and his parents tracked me down and gave me an antidote to Narcissa’s love potion.” “What I find most scandalous about this story,” said Harry, “is that you and Narcissa were first cousins and your parents still wanted you two to get married.” “My parents themselves were second cousins,” said Sirius. “Mum didn’t even have to change her last name before she married Dad. My family has often resorted to inbreeding in order to maintain its blood purity.” “This really convinces me that love potions shouldn’t be legal,” replied Harry. “There must be a reason why Professor Snape hasn’t taught us about them in class.” “He knew about all of this, as he was connected to Narcissa through his and Lucius’ mutual membership in the Death Eaters at the time,” said Sirius “Narcissa had been about to marry Lucius when my parents told her to marry me instead—we were willing to practise inbreeding, and Narcissa had been born into the Black family, but the Malfoy family was not willing to resort to inbreeding. Snape had some morals even then, though. So he told Professor Dumbledore what was happening, and used the fact that Professor Dumbledore had done nothing to help me to get Dumbledore sent to Azkaban. It wasn’t only in your case that Dumbledore enabled child abuse.”