Pivotal Point Prologue
December 1970
My dearest Polly,
I’m sorry my letter is so short but I hope it finds you well in the midst of the family’s uproar, though I would be surprised if you aren’t enjoying it. You always did have a penchant for loud ambiances and watching drama unfold. I imagine my father has been giving quite the show, his howlers are still the loudest ones after these past months. My Transfiguration Master is quite amused by them, himself.
I can assure you that I am quite safe, well on my way to integrating my life here for the duration of my apprenticeship, and very much sane - no matter what my Father is telling the family, thank you very much. Germany has been lovely and everything I imagined it would be just as I am sure marriage to Yaxley would not have been. For all that I am sorry for what my broken marriage contract means for your future and that of your brothers and Cissy’s, I cannot find it in myself to regret my decisions.
I am a Black and I will not settle for something that does not make me happy. I know you understand.
One day, I’ll see you again. Possibly not any time soon considering my father will be very set in his ways and your mother is probably antagonizing him. But who knows, maybe Auntie Cassiopeia will convince my father there is no shame in having another unmarried Black in the family and he’ll accept that I have decided to further my studies.
Until then, please write to me about anything and everything - especially Hogwarts. I’ll always look forward to hearing from you!
With much love,
Andromeda Black
P.S. I know you know that I know you know. Big eyed mooncalf.
She snorted, small pale fingers tracing the words as she sat back on the little window nook in her room. It was late that evening but she had just found the letter stashed away in some cloth that Cissy had given her earlier that day for some projects she had self-assigned. Sirius always did tell her she let herself get too absorbed with her projects, and in a way, she was a bit put off that she only just found it.
Though that feeling was temporary, especially as a small smirk grew on her face when she saw Tonks hidden ever so covertly in Andromeda’s signature. It was very subtle, and hardly any change to her original signature, only noticeable when one actually looked at it, herself included. If she hadn’t known that her cousin had secretly eloped and gone to Germany under the guise of an apprenticeship, she probably wouldn’t have been as invested in analyzing the letter.
But she was the one who had slipped the odd comment here and there to get the idea to stick in her dear older cousin’s head. She knew, of course.
Like she knew about many other things.
So is the life of the reborn.
It goes without saying that she should not have existed.
She had her go at life before and unfortunately for her, it had been a very short go. She was a young woman living in 2021, had just landed a job with a big company in the city and was finally living in an apartment of her own. Everything had been going as it was supposed to until it didn’t. Her upstairs neighbor had left the hair straightener on after leaving for a party. Meanwhile, she was already long asleep and well … you can imagine how it ended.
That’s how it should’ve ended. There shouldn’t have been more. No second chance, no rebirth, none of that. She shouldn’t have transmigrated to the Harry Potter universe like some cliche escape from reality. There isn’t supposed to be a Polaris Black, born in November of 1959. There wasn’t supposed to be a new daughter in the Noble House of Black. Yet, now there was.
Now, in a perfect world or scenario, maybe an insignificant addition to the Black family wouldn’t have changed a damn thing. Maybe Polaris could’ve lived on as a quiet daughter who maybe lived in Italy or Russia, maybe she could’ve been a distant relative or she could’ve even been disowned. Whatever. Polaris could have been a super insignificant character to the Harry Potter universe and not have changed a single thing.
But no.
No, oh no - Polaris Eridani Black was born the twin sister of one Sirius Black.
And that changed quite a bit.
Not that she had wanted it to.
When she first came into this life about eleven years ago, she didn’t even know what to make of the Blacks. Truthfully, Polaris had no idea what to make about anything in general. Rebirth wasn’t a concept they went over in school during her first life and neither was waking up in the grand fictional universe of Harry Potter so forgive her if her reaction was absolute hysteria and confusion.
She spent the majority of five to eight months still baffled and out of her wits because magic was huge in her life now. But the part of her mind that often overthought honed in on the family name and slowly considered every single implication that came with it. Her twin was destined to despise the family ideology, then break away from said family to ultimately get locked up in Azkaban for 12 years for a crime he didn’t commit. Her little brother would then become the perfect son and get inducted to the Dark Lord’s cavalry only for him to pull one out from underneath and die trying to destroy the Dark Lord. Her parents would meet their undeniable end - her father unknown but she could only imagine he suffered alone while his wife had gone into racist insanity in her grief of abandonment. The only future that Polaris knew to be in store was ruin, abusive and toxic.
She didn’t have optimistic thoughts when it came to this family (though she shouldn’t have been surprised, her previous family hadn’t been amazing either so it’s clear she had horrible luck with the family lottery). She kept herself alert all the time as a baby, waiting and watching for any sign that she would be reprimanded or abused even at such a young age. Her habit extended to Sirius, keeping an ever watchful eye and trying to intervene if there was anything remotely dangerous or worrisome. She hardly let him out of her sight the moment she was able to grip anything, which eventually became reciprocated by her twin and talked about at any and every family function. The upside of being a baby was that she didn’t have to care about how it looked to others.
However, as time passed and Polaris’s mind was less frazzled with the rebirth concept, she began to notice the way Walburga looked at them.
It had been clear to Polaris that Walburga and Orion had been part of an arranged marriage. However amicable they were with another, the warmth that she knew couples to have was not present. At the very least, they were friends and acknowledged each other with respect. But when Walburga looked at the twins, there was something there that made Polaris stare. It was a warm look, especially affectionate when she looked at Sirius who was a rambunctious child. Every time that she picked up Sirius and Polaris felt her heart drop, she would watch as Walburga would press her face to Sirius’s crown and breathe in contentment, how she would whisper praises and affections that floored Polaris. And when Walburga picked her up?
Her eyes curved with affection but somewhere there was a bit of a sadder emotion, always accompanied by a warm smile that would melt Polaris’s apprehension with curiosity. Walburga would spend hours tracing Polaris’s features, gently tugging on the wavy curls they shared or pressing her lips to Polaris’s forehead. Her whispered affections weren’t as elaborate as the ones she gave Sirius, yet Polaris didn’t think it was out of favoritism, rather it looked like Walburga wanted to tell her something that she just didn’t know how to word.
It wasn’t until Walburga was pregnant again and the twins had just turned one when Polaris came to find out why.
“I was the sister of two boys just like you,” whispered Walburga when she cradled Polaris over the baby bump, running her hand through Polaris’s curls thoughtfully. “I was a daughter amongst sons for a man who craved a position more than his relations and who taught us the same. He taught my brothers how to seize opportunities but never quite saw his daughter, his firstborn. I remember being a young girl and wondering why until I came of marriageable age. For that moment, before I was arranged for your father, there was always a possibility that one day, my name would disappear behind an inferior one and all the opportunities I would have as a Black would disappear."
Walburga’s eyes had gone distant in thought, like her mind was years into the past. Polaris had been too enthralled to bother her, instead waited and watched as her mother came back to the present, looking around the room before settling on her. “I always wanted to be like my father, yet I hold a daughter in my arms with the Black name and can’t help but think what a foolish dream."
Polaris had reached up pat her cheek and when Walburga’s face relaxed into something more content, she found it in herself to believe … just a little bit.
People could change, Polaris told herself then. It might have been a little strange or sudden, but Polaris couldn’t deny it. Things happen, and people could change, and if it took Walburga to have a daughter to make the slightest difference, maybe there was hope that her mother wouldn’t be a screaming racist banshee (though, the racism might never actually disappear considering they were purebloods). But no matter how optimistic the small idea was, it wasn’t a foolproof or concrete sign that their lives will be different. It didn’t change how careful Polaris was or how she guarded her brother, but she wasn’t alarmed when Walburga reached for Sirius, she didn’t flinch at the thought of the two of them being on their own or Walburga holding her.
Life was still uncertain and Polaris - despite being a twenty-seven year old woman in mind in a one year old body- still wasn’t sure how to navigate in her new environment (yes, getting used to a young Kreacher and Kreacher’s mother, Kritta taking care of her had been frightening). Things only really pieced together when Regulus was finally born.
Polaris and Sirius were to finally meet their little brother after six brutal hours in labor. Their father had been the one to take them to Walburga who held the little bundle that Polaris knew to be Regulus. He had set Sirius in the small space beside Walburga who had smiled and angled herself so that Sirius could peer into the bundle. It had been a single moment, fleeting and possibly insignificant in a day to day moment, but the moment was engraved forever in her mind as she held onto the collar of her father’s shirt, feeling the warmth of his hand on her back and the kiss he pressed to her forehead.
There was a click, a very loud click in her mind then, and Polaris knew just how desperately she wanted them to stay like that. This single moment was what her family should be, what she needed it to be.
In truth, Polaris didn’t want to upset too many details that would completely derail the plotline. The idea of playing hero and trying to prevent as many deaths as possible always meant taking the risk of killing others and that was an immense amount of responsibility for other lives and she didn’t want to be the one to potentially make it so that Voldemort actually won. She wasn’t mentally prepared for taking such a huge gamble.
But she wouldn’t be able to live with the guilt of knowing her family would have survived if she had done something.
So she bargained with herself.
She reasoned with herself in that adolescent time, when nothing was expected of her, that it might be in her best interest if she went through with the changes that her life came to signify. If it only affected the family, that is. She’d encourage the chances at an actual family because who’s to say the Blacks didn’t have that opportunity? Besides, what difference would it make if she gave her brothers a slightly nicer home or family? Call it delusional, she called it an investment.
And so she worked on it.
It wasn’t the nicest, of course, but better than Polaris believed it to have possibly been. Their family wasn’t frigid, it wasn’t cuddly and warm by any means either, but Polaris had buffered enough between a better-tempered Walburga and her brothers that their mother was simply a strict parent rather than a helicopter one. From what she had seen, it hadn’t changed anything significant. Having better (probably best to say civil) relations with his family wouldn’t stop Sirius from going to Gryffindor eventually - that boy’s bravery (maybe it was stupidity? There was a really blurred line between the two when it came to Sirius) shown when his favorite hobby was antagonizing their mother. Regulus had still bonded significantly with Kreacher and their parents still despised mudbloods and half-breeds. She felt somewhat reassured if you will.
As for the rest of the Black family, Polaris had been a little more unsure as to how much change her existence brought, though she didn’t imagine it was much because she didn’t really attempt to change anything with them until Andromeda’s escape to Germany. As the youngest daughter of the Black women, she inevitably bonded with her cousins and while Bellatrix would still drown her if given the chance, Andromeda and Narcissa had been quite taken with her. It was because of that bond that Polaris couldn’t let her favorite cousins dim from the best versions of themselves.
That and Polaris always believed that if Andromeda had been a true Slytherin, she would have manipulated her family to keep them to her benefit.
Hence why Polaris always made it a point to lament to Andy how much she wished to travel but knew how separated it would be from family or how she would like to study fashion in Milan but how absorbed she’d be in her work that she wouldn’t have time to connect with family apart from once in a blue moon. Or how Polaris would purposely ask Andy what she was going to do after Hogwarts and ask about what she would like to do with Transfiguration.
Andy was a wonderful older cousin and Polaris would be damned if everyone thought it much more of an honor to be related to Bellatrix rather than Andy.
It would pay off anyways.
Uncle Cygnus could be as mad as he wanted to be (no thanks to her mother and clearly, Polaris could see where her twin got his antics from) and could rock the boat as much as he liked, it didn’t change the fact that the carefully planned betrothal to Yaxley was utterly destroyed. Nor would it ostracize Andy in the sense that their Auntie Cassiopeia would raise hell if Andy was disowned for pursuing her academic passions beyond marriage. Auntie Cassiopeia hated the concept of marriage and the belief that it makes a woman’s entire worth, but she loathed the idea of being held back by incompetent men. She would be Andy’s best defender - completely indisputable.
If she was this way in the original timeline, Polaris had all the more of a reason to raise an eyebrow at Andromeda’s thought process.
Racists and sometimes (okay maybe majority of the time) assholes aside, there was power in the Black name and if one could extort it, all the better.
Her sweet cousin just needed a little reminder, is all.
It was just a tiny detail anyways. Anything to keep the family from combusting later on.
Smiling to herself, Polaris folded up the letter and tucked it away behind a slightly lifted piece of wallpaper hidden behind her headboard. She yawned, stretching and running her hand through her dark wavy hair before slipping under the silk covers.
She would need as much energy as possible tomorrow, she did promise Sirius and Regulus she’d spend all day with them.
-
Little did she know such a “minor” detail had such major consequences.