The Lady of (New) Avalon

8 October, 1976

Sirius lay on his bed in the guest room Dorea had let him redecorate last Christmas (after Bella crucio’d him in front of the entire fucking family), staring at the ceiling and trying not to think. It wasn’t working very well. Attempting to roll over to stare at a wall instead, sending the mattress sloshing and making waves that rocked him around for a moment before settling, didn’t really help.

He’d thought it was a great idea, when he’d first come up with it, to make something like those muggle water beds Ellie had told him were becoming all the rage, make that the centerpiece of the room. Unlike his bedroom at Grimmauld Place, which he’d intended to be as obnoxious and offensive to his (former) mother’s sensibilities as possible, plastered with muggle pin-up girls and Gryffindor House memorabilia, this room was quiet. The walls and carpets were dark — charcoal and a deep, heart’s blood red — the bed recessed into the floor and the cupboards into the walls. The ceiling was absolutely black, a blank canvas for whatever light paintings he might feel like doodling as he lay in bed, trying to fall asleep.

He hated it.

He didn’t know what he’d been thinking.

Okay, he did know what he’d been thinking, that he wanted something completely different, different from the baroque monstrosity that was Grimmauld and the busy mess that was the dorm room he’d shared with seven other boys for the last five years, something that reflected the pain of Bella’s betrayal, and acknowledged Dorea’s interpretation of that night: that he was old enough to take care of himself now. Bella wouldn’t have attacked him like that if she didn’t think he was. So he’d designed this room to be simple and elegant and mature (and mourning), and now he hated every fucking thing about it.

He hated every fucking thing about his life.

He didn’t understand how everything had gone so wrong — his plan to get rid of Snivels and prove his loyalty to Jamie had completely fallen apart. It hadn’t worked, Snivels was still alive and at Hogwarts while Sirius was exiled from everyone who mattered until...he didn’t even know. Had Charlus said they’d take him back on Monday? He thought he might’ve done. Two days. An eternity. Jamie hadn’t even appreciated it, had looked at Sirius like he was a bloody madman, like he didn’t recognize him; Dorea was going to make him talk to a mind healer (he hated legilimency, hated it); and this was somehow even worse than lying in his bed up in Gryffindor Tower, because at least there no one cared about him, no one was worried about him — well, Pete, but if Sirius was being honest, Pete didn’t matter. No one else had noticed that he hadn’t eaten for the better part of a week, hadn’t spoken to any of them or gone to classes, hadn’t gotten out of his bed except to piss, and then only when everyone else was asleep or in class or otherwise having a life. Or if they had noticed, they hadn't cared. ( Jamie hadn’t cared — he’d thought Sirius was being stubborn, asking the elves to bring him food and hiding himself away for attention, when really it was anything but...)

But here, he could feel the weight of Dorea’s concern fucking suffocating him with expectations, obligating him to pretend, whenever she saw him, that he was better now, or at least he understood that what he'd done was wrong, that he wanted to get better. That he wasn’t miserable and didn’t hate himself, and didn’t think, really, that he might be better off dead. That the world would be a better place if he just hadn’t been born.

Or, if he hadn’t been born Sirius Black, at least.

He could’ve been a muggleborn, or a squib even, and his life would be better, he was pretty sure. 

If Cygnus had been his father instead of Orion, he would never have been cursed, and Bella would never have had to save his life and fucking cripple him in the process. Granted, Cygnus probably would have done equally Unforgivable things to him as he had to Bella — everyone knew Bella had killed him, and why, too. But his mother wouldn’t have hated him — not personally, at least — and he wouldn’t have been a disappointment to them all. Not that he wanted to live down to their twisted, dark expectations, but sometimes he thought it would be easier if he could. Just forget trying to be good, trying to be a person Jamie would like, instead of the mad, sadistic fuck-up he knew himself to be, really.

It didn’t matter anyway.

Jamie would never like him. Not like Sirius liked him.

And the worst part was, Sirius hadn’t even realized it until it was too late, and he’d already irreparably fucked up everything for a few minutes of hedonistic pleasure. From out in the cold, it was only too clear how much it meant, being at Jamie’s side. He would do anything James wanted of him, just to be with him, in some capacity. He loved him, okay? Like, cut your heart out, take a killing curse for him love. Like all those stories he’d always thought were just exaggerating for, you know, literary effect, or whatever — like he might actually die if James didn’t acknowledge him.

He wondered, very uncomfortably, if this was how Bella felt about de Mort, because if it was... Well, if it was , then he got it. He did. He would definitely start a war if Jamie wanted him to, okay. If that was what it took to get his attention, to make him see Sirius for...for anything other than just his best mate. (At this point even for Jamie to just see Sirius as his best mate again, really. He had no shame, there were no depths he wouldn’t sink to, he knew it.)

But he never would. Even if he eventually forgave Sirius’s stupid, drunken, lustful betrayal, James would never see him the same way Sirius saw James. Like he was the centre of the fucking universe. The centre of Sirius’s universe, at least. And...that was fine. It really was. He didn’t need James to love him back, not like this — honestly, he’d never wish this on his worst enemy (Gods and Powers, was this how Snivels felt about Evans ? The poor, poor slimeball...) — this was insane , he knew that, and it hurt! He just wanted, needed James to let him back in. Let him be...whatever James wanted him to be. More. Everything. He wanted to be everything James wanted.

Not that that would ever happen. The most he could hope for — the most he could long for, really, wish for, because there really was no hope at all — was that James would let Sirius love him, be his companion, his lover, and even that—

Sirius really didn’t get it, how some people — a rather alarming proportion of people outside the House, really — had such a strong preference for one sex or the other that they wouldn’t even consider a lover with the wrong bits. And Sirius, according to James, had the wrong bits. Even when they were roughhousing and wrestling, excited, hearts pounding, an inch or two from kissing, James didn’t find him attractive (or so he claimed). Because he was male.

If he’d been born a girl, he thought, he might have had a chance. In his deepest moments of self-loathing, he would admit to himself — had admitted to himself — that he and Evans were not really so very different. She would fit right in with his family, honestly, aside from the whole mudblood thing. If arrogant, stuck-up, sarcastic bitches who could kick his arse were Jamie’s type, the only part of the description Sirius was missing was the cunt. (And possibly also the boobs, but he wasn’t deluding himself — if he were a girl, he’d probably look just as androgynous as he already did, just, in the opposite direction.)

If he were a girl...

Okay, that was a mad idea.

Completely fucking mental.

He’d be upending his entire life for– for just a chance — and there was a good chance that Jamie would think this was just as horrifying as him trying to get Snivels expelled but also being completely fine with him being dead (light wizards could be awfully...squeamish, about blood magic) — and...

And he knew it was insane, and it still sounded like a good idea.

Because his life was already completely fucked up — he’d broken the Family Covenant with the Dark, run away from home, fucked his best mate’s girl, was on the verge of failing all his classes because he hadn’t been to a lesson in weeks, and everyone (everyone who mattered) was now fully aware that he was just as mad as any other member of his notoriously insane family. Dorea was going to make him talk to a bloody mind healer, which, no good could come of that. He didn’t need someone fucking around in his mind, he just needed— He needed Jamie to acknowledge his existence, to just fucking see him, that would be a good fucking start.

And it was a chance, the slightest glimmer of hope. And it would be something different, something new, even if Jamie still thought Sirius was insane, and didn’t want him want him, he would at least have to understand that Sirius wasn’t trying to get with the bloody Hellflower — not that Evans was opposed to fucking girls, she and Cassie had been fooling around for ages, but James, being so ridiculously discriminating himself, tended to be a bit blind to everyone else not giving a fuck as long as they were getting fucked.

And he wouldn’t have to go to the mind healer if he wasn’t here in the morning.

That alone might’ve been enough to get him out of bed and dressed, honestly. Though...he wasn’t really sure where to go after that. There was Lorelei, he guessed — Dorea’s mother was not-so-secretly a blood alchemist, the Lestranges had a reputation for a reason — but Lorelei would probably march him right back through the Floo and tell Dorea that he’d lost his fucking mind even more thoroughly than usual. Bella, of course, probably wouldn’t care, but he wasn’t about to go asking her for any favours. He could go to Aquitania, he knew blood alchemy was actually legal there, he could probably just find a professional to do it...if he had money, or knew anyone. And they’d probably want to know why, and probably wouldn’t do it just because, okay, does it really matter?

Oh! Zee! Zee would know someone! Zee knew everyone, really. And she’d been around the House long enough to just accept the mad shite they came up with and go along with it. Or at least, he assumed so — she had been kind of sort of with Bella since Sirius'd been, what, three? Including the entire time she'd been married to whatshisface. Despereaux, that was it. So she had to have come to terms with the Black Madness ages ago.

“Mirabella Zabini’s Residence,” he said quietly, throwing a pinch of Floo powder into the smouldering coals in the main fireplace. Green flames flared to life, and without another thought, he stepped into them.

For a brief moment, he thought she wasn’t going to let him in — obviously he wasn’t keyed into her wards, why would he be? — but just as he thought he was going to get bounced to the nearest public grate, the wards released him to stumble onto her hearth rug, sneezing from the ash. And a few seconds later she appeared in the doorway, tying a tiny dressing gown loosely around her waist — gold silk making her olive skin seem darker and more exotic in the dim light of the dying fire, drawing the eye to the dip between her breasts, slipping open just enough as she stepped forward to give the most tantalizing hints of shadows beneath (really, it would’ve drawn less attention if she were just nude...which was probably exactly why she wasn’t) — giving him a very unimpressed raised eyebrow of disapproval. “Good morning, Sirius. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Oh, the pleasure is all mine,” he murmured, mostly out of habit, letting his eyes skim over the long, smooth length of her legs. She’d obviously been in bed, there was a flat spot in her hair and her eyes had that slightly unfocused, not quite awake yet thing going on, but she was never not the sexiest witch he’d ever met.

“Yes, it is. Why are you calling on me at—” She quickly checked the time. “—half past one in the morning?”

He winced. He’d kind of forgotten that she probably wouldn’t be up in his rush to...well, do something. Anything. “I...need a favour. Or maybe just a name, I don’t know.”

“I’ve been awake for all of two minutes. Please don’t make me guess.”

“I need someone to turn me into a girl.”

She blinked at him, scrunching idly at the flat spot on the side of her head. “Er...human transfiguration isn’t really my strong suit. Aren’t there potions for that?”

“No, not— Permanently.”

That got her attention. “What? Sit,” she said, directing him toward the nearest chair with a nod, and sinking onto the sofa opposite. “Care to explain the sudden urge to get in touch with your feminine side?”

“Not really, no.”

Zee fixed him with a flat, annoyed glare. “Well, you woke me up in the middle of the night to ask for a favour, so tell me or get the fuck out.”

...Right. “Well, okay, it’s kind of a long story, but, there’s this guy, James...”

“Yes, I’m aware of your pathetically obvious unrequited crush on the Potter boy,” she interrupted impatiently.

“Was everyone— No, never mind. Just— I did something stupid, okay, and he won’t talk to me even though I came up with a great plan to get rid of his mortal enemy, and it’s not my fault he almost died or that he didn’t actually die, but it’s been weeks and I’m fucking desperate, okay, and—”

Zee frowned at him, all disapproving and judgmental. Oddly so, he thought. It wasn’t like Snivels had actually died. And it also wasn’t like she’d actually care if he did — she didn’t even know the slimy snake. “So, in an effort to get this boy’s attention, you’ve already attempted to murder someone, and now you’re seriously pursuing a sex change?”

Sirius felt himself going hot in the face. It did sound slightly...excessive, when she put it that way. “Maybe.”

“You do realise those aren’t the sort of courting gifts you give to sane people, right?” she asked, a definite note of concern in her voice.

He groaned. “This was a stupid idea, coming here. Never mind, I’ll... I’ll figure it out for myself, okay. Sorry I woke you.”

He was about halfway out of his chair when she said, “Sit back down.” He sat. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t help you, I’m just saying, he’s not going to appreciate this. Granted, I haven’t met the boy, but assuming he’s not significantly more insane than either of his parents, he’s probably going to find it a bit overwhelming that you’d go to such lengths for him. By which I mean, to be perfectly clear, he will most likely be somewhat repulsed by the gesture.”

“Well, I wouldn’t tell him I did it for him, obviously.” He’d learned his lesson about that from Jamie’s reaction when he told him that the plan to get rid of Snivels was all for him.

A smile twitched at the corner of Zee’s lips. “So, you’re going to try to convince him you did it for yourself?”

“I— Well...” Honestly, Sirius hadn’t really considered how he was going to present it yet. Maybe pretend to be a cousin transferring in, say Sirius had gone on holiday trying to get his head on straight or something. Or, depending on how different he looked after, he might just go back and pretend nothing had changed and it wasn’t a big deal at all, really. “Is it really so big a leap to believe I wish Sirius Black had never been born?”

She sighed. “And I don’t suppose it will help to remind you that when you inevitably come down from this little bout of madness and realise that this was all in vain and will have long-lasting consequences that you haven’t properly considered, you won’t be able to undo it?”

“Well it’s not like I’m going to regret it.” If it came down to it, Sirius didn’t think he’d ever regretted anything, and even if he did he was sure this was a good idea. Or, well, he knew it probably wouldn’t actually fix things with Jamie, but he had to do it, or at least something to shake up...everything, because things, his life as it was was unbearable. “And unexpected consequences are what makes life fun. So, no.”

She sighed (again). “Sometimes you remind me of Bella so much it hurts.”

Sirius had no idea whether that was intended as a compliment or an insult. She mostly just sounded tired. He just sat there for a moment, waiting for her to give him a hint.

“Alright, come on,” she said, rising from her couch with languid, practised grace.

“Um, come on, where, exactly?”

“Well, you didn’t think I was going to do this myself, did you? Because if you hadn’t noticed, I’m hardly an expert blood alchemist or a ritualist.”

“So, wait, you’re actually going to help me?” he asked incredulously, scrambling to his feet.

“Well, I assume you’re entirely unwilling to be dissuaded, and that therefore if I refuse you you’ll run off to Knockturn or Paris and do something even more foolish, so, yes.” Okay, that definitely sounded disapproving. (But she was helping him, so he didn’t care even a little bit.)

She wrapped an arm around his shoulders and, before he could remind her that she wasn’t wearing real clothes, spun them in a tight circle, dragging Sirius into the sickening crush of apparation space and out again without any hint of where exactly they were going.

Which was apparently... What the actual fuck ?

“Zee, I distinctly recall someone telling me it’s rude to apparate into someone else’s bedchamber in the middle of the night,” Bella said drily, not looking up from the bed where she lay, face down and topless, de Mort hovering over her with a scalpel — Sirius didn’t even want to know, he really, really— Oh, who the fuck was he kidding? He inched closer, trying to get a better look at the design the snake-faced Dark Lord — not even trying to look human, here in the privacy of his and Bella’s bedroom — was carving into her back. Something geometric, it looked like.

“That only applies to people who sleep,” de Mort informed her. "Good morning, Mirabella."

“Mm, yes, what he said. Thom. I assume at least one of you knows a permanent sex change ritual?”

“At least one of us knows several." 

"Brill. I'm going back to bed before Danny realizes I'm gone and starts thinking I'm stepping out on him."

"Could just kill him and get it over with," Bella muttered.

"Not yet, it's suspicious if they die too quickly — and besides, I like sneaking around. It's fun." 

She disapparated before Bella could tell her that was completely ridiculous, or Sirius could ask her not to talk about killing her husband in front of him. He was seriously considering becoming an Auror. Unless...did they take recruits who had obviously used blood magic on themselves? It was really fucking illegal, so... Maybe they'd believe he'd gotten it done on the Continent. Or, well, it was probably a moot point, actually — they wouldn't take him at the moment because he was failing his NEWTs. Maybe he'd just try out for the professional duelling circuit like Lovegood was talking about...

"Good morning, Sirius. Or should I say... Have you already chosen a new name for yourself?”

“De Mort,” Sirius muttered, trying not to let his hatred of the evil bastard leak into his thoughts, but he was pretty sure he was doing a shite job of it.

“Sorry, Siri, that one’s taken. Also, not particularly feminine,” Bella noted, rolling onto one elbow to look at him. “I hate to break it to you, but if breaking the Covenant didn’t get you disowned, turning yourself into a girl definitely isn’t going to work.”

“That’s not why—”

De Mort chuckled, even as Sirius cut himself off, trying to come up with a way to explain why without sounding like a complete lunatic. “I’m sure you’re aware there is absolutely no way to explain yourself without sounding exactly as mad as you are. Not that you need bother. Bella doesn’t care, and I already know.”

Creepy fucking legilimens, Sirius thought loudly.

De Mort, being the creepy fuck that he was, slipped I’ve been called worse into his mind in response, disregarding Sirius’s occlumency barriers as though they didn’t exist. “So, do you want to do this, or not?”

“What are you going to ask me for if I say yes?” Sirius asked. Because there were reasons he hadn’t just come to Bella, aside from her being a traitorous bitch — she and de Mort were both crazy, evil psychopaths, he wanted as little to do with them as possible, and they were probably going to ask him for some kind of quid pro quo. Which meant avoiding them would be even harder than it already was. Unless de Mort wanted him to stay out of the war, but he wasn't actually sure he could do that, not if Jamie wouldn't sit it out too, and he definitely wouldn't — brave, noble, stupid stubborn bastard.

...Which would rule out running off to be a professional duelist, too. Shite! Oh, well, he'd figure that out later.

De Mort laughed at him, still doing the thing where he just responded to Sirius's thoughts rather than actually wait for him to say shite aloud. Rude. "No, we wouldn't ask you to stay out of our little game. There are few enough players with any talent to speak of on the Old Goat's side as it is. And this is my house, I can't say I really care how rude it might be to legilimise guests who drop in uninvited."

Well...fine. That was kind of a point. He guessed. "What do you want from me, then?"

The snake-faced creep shrugged. “Nothing in particular at the moment. I’m sure you’ll find some way to make it up to me.”

“I’m not promising you an open-ended favour, de Mort.” He wasn't that desperate. There was still the run off to Aquitania option.

“Fine. I want a copy of your memories pertaining to the soul-magic ritual you boys used to master the animagus transformation.”

“How do you even know about that?”

I’m a creepy legilimens, remember?

“Stop that! And in that case, why don’t you just take them? Since you obviously could.”

“How else should I know what you have to offer that might be of interest to me? And I couldn’t extract them at pensieve-quality levels of detail without you noticing.”

Which wasn’t at all the same as saying that he couldn’t just steal them if he didn’t care about Sirius trying to fight him off while he did it. (De Mort could be surprisingly civil about the weirdest things, Sirius still had no idea how he decided when not to be an arse.) “Fine, then. Done. After the ritual.”

Bella giggled. “I was sure you were going to ask for the memory of the experience,” she murmured to de Mort.

“That I can just steal. I must warn you, Black: Hecate will likely demand some payment herself. It is generally wise to decide ahead of time what you’re willing to offer. How far are you prepared to go for this?”

That...was a good question. He’d kind of assumed they’d use blood alchemy, or some blood alchemy low ritual shite like blood-adopting someone into the House. Probably should’ve guessed de Mort would rather just broker an agreement between Sirius and some god or other. (Though, in that light, that he wouldn’t care so very much about what he was getting out of it did make some sense. Sirius was barely asking more of the snakey bastard than he had of Zee.) 

I do find it amusing that you linger so on my appearance. Especially given that you came here looking for a way to undergo a much more extreme transformation.

Yeah, well, turning yourself into a bloody snake-person was fucking weird, okay. If he was being honest, he kind of got the rest of it. Wanting to set the fucking world on fire and playing games torturing and killing people and mixing up pain and sex and power. He hated that he got it, that there was a sick, twisted part of him that knew what it felt like to want to hurt people, hold ultimate power over their lives, ruin them just because he could. But there was, and he did.

The snake thing, though, was fucking weird.

De Mort smirked at him, the expression twisted and wrong on his serpentine features. “You know, I do enjoy that about you Blacks. The way you haven’t the slightest consideration for consequences.”

Bella made a little questioning hmm?

“Most people asking a favour of someone would take a certain degree of care to avoid insulting them until they’d gotten what they wanted. But there’s no pretense with you. Or with your dear baby cousin. You’re very similar in some ways, you know.”

She sighed. “I had noticed that, yes. Siri, didn't we discuss the topic of insulting my Lord the last time I saw you?"

If you wanted to call crucio-ing someone a discussion. "I wasn't! The snake thing is weird, that's an objective fact."

Bella gave him a silly little smile. "I think it suits him."

Well, it kind of did. Probably better than the version of the face he'd been born with that he usually wore in public. But then, Sirius was kind of used to being surrounded by strikingly beautiful, dark-minded madmen, so he kind of expected anyone too pretty to be evil too. The snake thing was at least honest advertising, though. Sinister and grotesque, the sort of face you might expect a cold-blooded monster to have.

That his weird snake aesthetic suited him didn’t mean it wasn’t weird, it just meant that de Mort was a weirdo.

A weirdo giving him a very peculiar look. Sirius wasn’t sure if he couldn’t read it because it was between two or more expressions, or because reptiles didn’t normally do facial expressions. Wasn’t really their thing, Sirius didn’t think.

“You do amuse me,” he said, so very condescendingly. “That particular combination of dislike and attraction and consequent self-loathing overwhelming the admittedly reasonable fear that I might one day be the cause of your death so thoroughly that you entirely fail to act on it is just so...endearing.” Sirius could not for the life of him tell if de Mort was being sarcastic. “No, I’m not.”

“Yes, well, it’s difficult to act properly afraid when the future’s just a vague hypothetical,” Bella noted. “So!” She sat up properly, stretching her back and shoulders in a way that had to hurt, pulling at the cuts de Mort had been making when Sirius had arrived. “Are we turning little Siri even more thoroughly into a younger, more self-absorbed and depressed copy of me, or not?”

“Oh, shut up, Bella, just because you’re too obsessed with this snakey weirdo to think about anything else doesn’t mean I’m self-absorbed.”

“No, being sixteen makes you self-absorbed. And you are doing this for Dorea’s little Jamie, are you not? Cissy mentioned you’re completely gone for him. Pretty sure that means you have no room to talk about me being obsessive about anyone or anything, ever, for the rest of your life.”

Sirius had no response to that — except perhaps a small degree of surprise that she didn’t seem to think it was unreasonable to turn himself into a girl for what even Zee had obviously thought was a bad reason. But only a small one. Everyone knew Bella was completely insane herself.

Another unnatural smirk tugged at the non-lips of Lord Snakeface’s mouth. “Just to be clear, Mira was entirely correct. As was your initial doubt. Speaking as an objective observer, I can assure you little Jamie Potter will not understand having deliberately emasculated yourself, much less having done it in the hopes of a positive reaction from him. Personally, I think it’s a lovely gesture, but I think we’ve established that I’m a creepy weirdo, so.”

Sirius scowled at him. “I’m still doing it. I’ll tell him it was a potions accident or something. You’re not going to talk me out of it.” Honestly, he was kind of surprised he was trying.

“Yes, well, certain Aspects tend to get tetchy when I ask them to do things to other people who don’t fully understand the consequences of their decisions. But fine.” He stood, pacing toward a small altar on the other side of the room, lighting the candles arranged upon it with a casual wandless charm, began chanting an invocation in a language close enough to the Greek Sirius had learned that he could kind of make out it was mostly inviting the goddess of Magic (referred to by half a dozen different epithets) to join them and hear Sirius’s plea. Not really complex, as far as rituals went. What was complex was the way he was just pouring magic into the room, building... He would almost have thought it was going to be an illusion, except it didn’t have any particular form, visibly or audibly, just a loose magical construction.

Whatever it was intended to do, it didn’t, Sirius didn’t think, because before he reached the end of the invocation a witch shadow-walked into the room, pouncing onto the bed beside Bellatrix, and he broke off, letting it unravel. “Angelos. I distinctly remember telling you that if you returned to Britain, I would devise a fate worse than death for you.”

The witch, who appeared to be perhaps a year or two older than Sirius but whose magical presence was darker and more powerful even than de Mort’s, surrounding him with suffocating cold, grinned at him. “Yes, and you’re a complete tease — I know you haven’t come up with anything yet. But I’m not here to play with your little pet. Sorry, love.” That was directed toward Bella, who was leaning casually on one hand, watching Angelos with a sort of amused tolerance entirely at odds with de Mort’s annoyance. “I heard you need someone to re-write little Siri’s identity, great idea, by the way, I totally approve.” That was directed at Sirius, and suddenly had him questioning this decision in a way Zee and de Mort pointing out the likelihood of its futility hadn’t. “And since he owes me for breaking our Covenant, I thought I’d offer my services.”

Okay, he hadn’t really expected that. “Who are you, exactly?”

“Tommy! Introduce me!”

De Mort sighed. “Sirius, this is Angelos Melini, erstwhile daughter of the House of Black, your many times great-aunt and Avatar of the Primordial Dark. Angel, I believe you already know Sirius.”

Er. Yes. Yes, she did. If she was an Avatar of the Dark — Its priestess, possessed by It, representing It — then she’d be more than familiar with him, given the breaking of the Covenant she’d just mentioned. He swallowed hard. “My Lady,” he offered, bowing somewhat stiffly.

“Mmm, not yours. You turned away from us. We were very annoyed with you. Though, not so much as we might have been, had the House of Black not grown so very boring these past few decades. So, if you truly desire this metamorphosis, we shall grant it to you.”

“...What’s the catch? What do you— You don’t want me to dedicate myself to the Dark again, do you?” Because that wasn’t going to happen any more than him offering an open-ended favour to de Mort.

She smiled sweetly at him, stood to come far too close to him, her fingers walking up his arm, her magic creeping down his spine. Much as he wanted to retreat, just take a step back, away from her, he couldn’t seem to make his body obey him. “No. Much as we did enjoy watching you struggle to fight your natural inclination toward our side of magic, the dissonance in your soul is hardly resolved by so publicly rejecting us. You can’t change who you are, darling. In your heart of hearts there will always be some part of you that knows you belong to us, burning away at you. Well, until you give up this ridiculous flirtation with morality. But either way, we win — you entertain us, or you serve us.”

“So... So, what do you want, then?” he asked, overcome by a sense of deja vu. Hadn’t he just had this conversation?

A small, cold, death-pale hand rose to cup his cheek, eyes sparkling with mirth. “We want your pain. We want you to suffer for us. Make no mistake, love, it hurts to rewrite your fundamental identity. All the more so when it’s done for you, and quickly. And it will be all the worse for it being our power at work, dark magic suffusing every cell in your body, so soon after rejecting us. And you will feel every moment of it. There will be no sweet release of unconsciousness this time, and no turning back once it’s begun.”

That— That should probably be more intimidating than it was. The very idea— It would be like the Cruciatus, he knew. But it couldn’t hurt more than the pain of loving Jamie and his cruel rejection, a dagger driven through Sirius’s heart. It couldn’t hurt more than the helplessness of not knowing what to do, how to make it stop. And if it did, well...good. It... He didn’t want to think anymore or feel anymore or be anymore. He couldn’t live like this. And he deserved it, whatever pain and suffering she might subject him to, turning the fulfillment of his sudden, desperate need into punishment for the blow he’d struck against the Family. He glared his most defiant glare at her. “Do it, then.”

Before the words were entirely out of his mouth, his world dissolved into pain the likes of which he’d only felt once before, when his father had cursed him, nearly killed him, and Bella had called on the Dark, on the power racing through him even now, to save his life. This time, she’d said, he realised, teetering on the brink of insensibility. No escaping into unconsciousness this time. He– he should have realised, should have noticed— He’d been wrong, so very, very wrong, he didn’t want this, he didn’t, not if this was the price, but— 

But it was too late. 

There was no turning back, now. Every moment, every second he thought it could not possibly grow worse, stronger, it did — every nerve not only on fire as with the Cruciatus, but dissolving, melting, as though the frigid magic running through his veins held the heat of the very sun, or every flame and drop of acid in every one of the nine hells. His world narrowed until thought was impossible, until there was nothing but pain, almost transcendent, his consciousness focused down to a single point, everything he was reduced to an eternal instant of unmaking.

He hadn’t noticed it starting to wane until it changed, intensifying (somehow ) yet again, a new note of corruption, of creating something impossible, unnatural, something that shouldn’t be, caught between one state and another, bringing out the sharpness of the destruction of what he used to be, and then, with a sort of snapping feeling, forcing him into a new shape, a new self.

A self which he slowly became aware of, lying on a thin carpet on Bella’s bedroom floor, acutely aware of the hard stone beneath it, or perhaps slowly coalescing there, torn apart and reassembled in ways that felt wrong, heart racing, gasping for air, his chest and abdomen aching as though Cissy had disemboweled him again, every inch of skin tingling, itching, so weak and exhausted from the ordeal he barely managed to roll onto his side to sick up, vomit joining the puddle of...some kind of slime he was lying in — a byproduct, presumably, of the transformation. 

“Ew,” Angelos said, vanishing the mess and kneeling to hover over him, dark hair falling around her face like a curtain, eyes wide in an expression of delight, almost ecstasy. “That was even better than I thought it would be. Just—” She cut herself off with a delighted sigh, stretched out on the rug beside him, her nose inches from his own. There were freckles on it, he noticed — one of those distracted, completely irrelevant things he noticed when he was too tired to focus on anything actually important. “Just perfect. You’re forgiven,” she informed him. 

Her.

She informed her, because Sirius was, he realised, fingers fluttering over his own — her own — body, a girl, now. A very naked girl. Where the fuck had his — her — clothes gone? Not that it mattered, really, he was just cold. She. She was cold. And she hurt in ways that were only too familiar — just weeks ago, when she’d broken the Covenant, her magic had felt like this, like there was some corruption burning away at her very soul.

She pulled at the magic around herself, just letting it flow through her, wash it away. Ease the lingering pain. Not enough that she felt able to sit up, but enough to relax a little, tension bleeding out of her with the lingering dark magic.

“Asteria,” Bella said, apparently out of nowhere, Sirius hadn’t heard her and de Mort talking, at least. “Bellatrix Asteria.”

“Wh-what?” she asked, stuttering slightly as she was taken aback not only by the weakness of her voice, but its pitch, noticeably higher than it had been, sounded odd. As it should, she was sure, given her transformation, but somehow she hadn’t expected it.

“Well, you need a name,” she explained, coming to kneel on Sirius’s other side, de Mort following her.

“I...what?” Sirius said, completely unable to process...anything, really, at the moment. Her head was pounding, and she was—

“Yes, I know, you’re cold,” de Mort said, sounding terribly exasperated. “That does tend to happen lying naked on the floor. Come on, everyone up,” he ordered them, levitating Sirius onto Bella’s bed. He cast a warming charm on her too, which was...nice. Weirdly nice, but nice. “I don’t know why you think I’m such a terrible person,” he complained, which was just...completely ridiculous. Dirty lie. Murderous psychopath starting a fucking war, killing and torturing people for fun...

“Yes, Aster. Terra?”

“Aster,” Bella said firmly. 

“Yes, Aster. I have been known to kill and torture people for fun, but you’ve been known to participate in human sacrifice, so it would be incredibly hypocritical of you to hold that one thing up as an example of my entire character.”

That... She was pretty sure that didn’t make sense, though she couldn’t quite think why. Like, all the words were words she knew, but she couldn’t focus on them, and even if she could she suspected that logic was lacking something, somewhere. “Why’re... Who— Am I Aster?”

“Yes. You’re Bellatrix Asteria.”

“Oh... Okay.” It was okay. She didn’t hate it, Aster. She wouldn’t have picked Bellatrix, but it wasn’t as though she had to use it. Dorea never did.

Dorea...

Dorea was going to be so angry with her, running away so she didn’t have to talk to the mind healer, she realised — another one of those completely irrelevant thoughts.

“Just go to sleep,” de Mort advised her, a hint of compulsion behind the suggestion. Enough to notice, she would’ve maybe tried to resist it just on principle if it didn’t sound like such a good idea, if she wasn’t so tired. The last thing she was aware of — very distantly — was her awareness of the aching pains throughout her body receding, a final foreign thought slipping in along with whatever he was doing so it didn’t hurt too much to sleep — You did well, star-child.

Bella’s bed was surprisingly soft...