Sirius
"…What?" Severus asked, blinking.
"I said pack up your room, have you gone deaf?" Eileen asked impatiently
"No, but I may have accidentally eaten the wrong sort of mushroom, because I've heard you tell me to pack up my room twice now," he retorted. "Oh, no, wait, I haven't had any mushrooms of any sort all week. So I repeat: what?"
"Don't you give me your lip," she said, crossing her arms at him with a fond scowl. "We're moving."
"…Are we? Background? Context? Details? Explanation? Fleshing-out?"
"Your hands have been shaking since you got home, cleverboots."
He stuffed his hands in his pockets automatically. "Have not."
"Don't lie to me till you can fool a drunk pup. I'm not an idiot, nor blind with it."
"I never said you were—"
"And you're not much of an occluder."
"...What? I beat Li—everyone at that stupid game every time."
"Never mind. Point is, don't try keeping secrets from your mam, my lad, it won't get you far." She nearly laughed at the sudden panicked look under his lack of expression, the way that just for a second everything that made him particularly hers was swallowed by sixteen-year-old boy with loosenable floorboards below the bed, and added almost kindly, "I don't give a goblin's charity what you read or who you take up with, Very, so long as your Dark Arts stay defensive."
He stared at her, and said blankly, "Well, obviously. I don't fancy getting my soul et, thanks."
"What about the rest of you?"
His mouth clicked shut. He swallowed, and his hand started shaking again, even in his pocket. All up his arm. Low and looking down, he muttered from under his hair, "No, don't fancy that, much, either."
After a moment, she said, "Albus Dumbledore was my Head of House, did you know?"
If anything, he retreated further. "No, I didn't know that."
"Mm. Had him for Transfigurations. Lovely man. Wonderful with the little kids. Fun, comforting, made everyone feel right at home, kept us all in good order without half trying. Good teacher, too. Made a game of it. He could sort out how everyone learned best, made it easy. But if there was one thing you had to know about him, it was that he had pets."
"Mine does, too," Severus muttered. "About all he does, have pets."
"Had pets," Eileen went on, "and House spirit coming out his ears. Fine for us, of course, but we did hear as he was a bit short with the Slytherins. Not the other two, funnily enough, and even in our House, he never did really trust the ones who wanted to go into politics. Might not even have been House spirit, really. Maybe all that business with Grindelwald, making him think badly of ambition."
He looked at her impatiently. He didn't say well? out loud, but he said it all the same.
"I haven't spoken to him," she said. "Haven't asked him anything about werewolves, or anything of that sort. You won't be asked to explain why you've told me what you haven't told me."
He had flinched, and then relaxed. The look he was giving her wasn't so much suspicious as a mix of I have a dictionary and you're damn right I haven't told you and we're not done with this and well, if you say so, but probably not, you realize, but yes-Mam was winning. "What does he have to do with moving?"
"Your grandfather, on the other hand," she went on, and rolled over his oh, god, more irrelevance groan, "is a right bastard through and through. Didn't want to be associated with a mixed marriage, as you know, or a half-blood—"
"Or a Slytherin, I know, living like this is all my fault, yes, thank you," he snapped, glowering.
"I don't recall your turning my da into a right bastard," she said evenly. "Don't recall your meeting him, in fact. Fairly sure you didn't tell me to marry your da when I ought to have guessed how mine would react, not being about yet. Quite sure I didn't tell you a damn thing about how to ask to be Sorted, or how not to. Do you want information or do you want to whinge and wallow?"
His jaw hung open for a few seconds, and then he shrugged a little, just with his eyebrows, and said dryly, "Information, always, of course."
"Well, then," she said, nodding sharply, and smiled just as dryly. "How much do you think he would have liked being related to a werewolf?"
She saw him thinking so fast he tripped over himself, coming to all the wrong conclusions, convincing himself they were being driven out. "I'm not," he said, eyes huge and anxious and furious, "there were all the tests and there've been moons since—" he choked.
On a spell, if she was any judge. Some days she was amazed no one had strangled that wizard with his own beard yet, but somehow you never thought of it in the same room with him. Probably because all his warmth was real, even if he did crack his spectacles and turn into a complete fumblefingers every time he ran into a conflict of interest. Men.
"Breathe." She waited till he did, and said, "Even the threat of it was enough to make him angry, Very. Not at us, for once." He blinked, and she smiled. Nasty. "We're not back in his good books, don't worry about having to make nice with the old goat. But he did pay the legal fees."
He blinked again. Slower, this time. Thinking fast again, and this time his eyes didn't open all the way, stayed hooded. "Ah." There was a tiny, tiny quirk at one corner of his mouth, a hook of intrigue.
Neither of them looked in the least like her mother, except for the black eyes and when he looked like that. Avoiding a traditional wedding like her mother's was, if she was honest, one of the reasons she'd been willing to risk this life. At least under muggle vows a witch was free to take the best path she could see, however cramping the circumstances. Wasn't forced passive and obedient, or into some ruthless, furtive scramble for humiliating loopholes just to owl a never-seen grandchild a book or robe designated rubbish now and again. Eileen certainly hadn't been thinking of the possibilities of a box out back painted 'Severus's dustbin' when she'd named her boy after her father, just of softening him, but Julilla had turned out to have a quite a mind under that round, placid face, once she'd decided she'd needed one.
"It won't go to the Wizengamot," she assured him. "Ry—that's Orion Black, to you—he never liked a fuss." Had, as she recalled, been quite chuffed about a feisty betrothed who was more than happy to take care of that end of things. Well, you got what you wished for. She had—and she could live with everything she'd wanted, too, they just couldn't with each other. It might even be the same for Ry, but of course she couldn't ask now. "And the boy didn't want his friend exposed, either, of course."
Severus looked like he wanted to agree and was spell-stifled. Instead, he didn't-quite-ask, "They settled, then."
"And," she agreed, "we're moving. So pack up your room."
"Is Da coming?"
She pursed her lips. "We're going to the Wizarding area in the Sherwood. Do that teashop." Severus looked surprised and pleased, which was ridiculous. As if she didn't know how much he liked that forest, or how many shopkeepers on the commercial street already knew he'd cut his own throat before he traded them anything cut-rate. "He wouldn't like it. I'll be back and forth to look after him, see he eats, see he isn't shamed. You know how he gets about who brings the income. We'll work up a story, see how it goes."
He nodded slowly, and pressed a hand against the faded wallpaper, a lingering touch. Then he said, "Right," and went upstairs at a brisk clip.