Disclaimer: It's not mine. JK Rowling created this world; I just play in it.

It's not the first time I've ever found myself staring at the family tapestry, nor the first time I've focused on the holes where the family I knew used to be. It may be the last, though. The holes are so small that you don't notice them at first glance, but on closer inspection it's amazing how tatty they make the tapestry look.

My Uncle Alphard used to call them cigarette burns, comparing Mum's temper tantrums to his own worst habit. Then he'd always look suddenly uncomfortable, pull one out and light up— he almost never smoked his pipe inside the house, since Mum took it away at every opportunity— ushering any kid in the room upwind of his smoke. Once or twice, I thought I heard him murmur, "The only difference is how many people we really hurt doing it."

Now I think I finally understand what he meant by that. After all, when Cygnus came in after Sirius ran away to look at the family tree, he murmured, "Alphard, too?"

I don't think I'd ever sympathized with my uncle more than I did at that moment, watching him reach out to touch the burn between his name and my mother's, as if to make sure the indentation was really there. After all, Alphard and Sirius shared views that no one else in the family agreed with and they were generally at the center of family fights, but at the same time . . . Sirius was my big brother, and Alphard was Cygnus's. It's hard, even now, to think of Sirius as a blood traitor, and I'm sure Cygnus feels the same way about Alphard as the man who assisted that "traitor's" walking out.

After all, isn't family supposed to be the people who forgive you, who pull the loose threads of the tapestry back in rather than pulling them out?

Of course, Alphard and Sirius aren't the only names I know for sure Mum blew off— there's Andromeda's, too. Andromeda . . . Andromeda just fell in love, didn't she? And I'm not sure, even now, that people have any control over that.

I bite my lip. Shortly before he died, Alphard had left a pack of cigarettes in Sirius's room. He never come back to claim them, and Sirius had put them with the keepsakes that reminded him of Meda. They're still there.

After everything that's happened recently, after realizing that the family Mum blew off this tapestry, all the little burns now staring accusingly at me, are right after all, that everything Mum taught me to think is just stupid, I wonder if I ought to count myself among the people who stayed on the tapestry. Whether I ought to go up and get those cigarettes, light one, and add at least one real cigarette burn to the list of forgotten names.

But I can't. I can't just disclaim Dad and Mum and Cygnus as easily as Mum disclaimed Sirius. They're my family, too.

I might not be like my parents anymore, but I'm not like Meda, who gave into love regardless of the consequences, or Sirius, who walked out of the front door knowing that his name would be gone in the morning. I'm more like Alphard, who gave Sirius the means to fly away in his will, but while he was alive couldn't tell Mum she wasn't his big sister anymore. He couldn't tell his family to hell with them, and neither can I.

But telling Bella not to go anywhere near Sirius, stunning her and warning him, might make Mum decide I'm not her son anymore. Not to mention the locket in my pocket, with which I'm going to make the champion of her cause weaker.

But as I turn my back on the thing to go do what I have to do, I can't tell her to do it. I won't turn my back on my family.

Briefly, Sirius flashes through my mind, since that's what I accused him of doing the night he'd walked out, and I can't help but smile grimly.

I won't turn my back on any of it.

Author's Note: Y'know, normally I backclick or shut the book when I see present tense in stories; most of the time I dislike its literary edge. But I have run into a couple of stories where it just felt right for one reason or another. For some reason, past tense felt wrong in this one, and this became the first thing I've written in present tense. I hope, therefore, thatit's not too bad. Anyway, does anyone care to tell me what they think? Cheers! --- Loki