A/N: A plot bunny popped up and I had to try it. If I get any positive feedback, I may do a series of one shots about Bernard pre-Black Books and in his weird wizarding flux. I actually quite like this piece but I really would adore some feedback.
Bernard Black was an unusual man. He ran a bookshop in London and very few relationships. Actually he had only two. A best friend, Fran, and a flatmate/coworker who had grown to be a friend. But there was, you see, a very good reason that Bernard Black had a hard time tolerating others. Bernard Black wasn't raised in the culture he existed in, and that's not just because he spent his Hogwarts years hiding from his family in muggle Ireland instead of England. Bernard Black was a member of the ancient and most a noble house of Black. But don't you dare remind him. He'd left the wizarding world behind. It's not like he'd been too involved in it to begin with, anyway.
Like Sirius, he was rejected by the family. He reached Hogwarts and tensions rose when he became the second Black to be put in a house other than Slytherin. Bernard was placed in Ravenclaw, a house that appreciated the fact that the twelve year old was wise beyond his years. But unlike Sirius, Bernard didn't have friends at school. Sirius had been sent to Azkaban a year before, something his peers wouldn't let him forget. He resented Sirius for being put in Azkaban to begin with. His young mind couldn't accept the idea that his big brother was a murderer. While Bernard turned out to be right, his defense of Sirius earned him more enemies than friends his first year so he eventually refused to mention his brother. Bernard just went through his Hogwarts years immersing himself in his passions. These passions weren't accepted well by his peers either.
Few young wizards cared for the muggle world. Bernard was quite the opposite. He adored it, but loathed the wizarding world. Muggle studies with Professor Quirrel became his favorite course. And poor nervous Quirrel forged an odd camaraderie with the youngest Black. He was the only student that yearned for knowledge about how muggles lived. And Bernard especially fell in love with their literature. Quirrel lent him book after book written by muggles. Bernard still owned a dog eared copy of The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe that he couldn't bring himself to replace, even when he discovered that the man who brought it to him had let Voldemort use his head as a guest house.
Once Bernard's lonely years at Hogwarts came to an end, he found himself working at Flourish and Blotts. And he enjoyed it as much as he could enjoy anything in the wizarding side of things. He also came to live in a flat in muggle London. He only ventured into the wizarding world for work. Bernard was honestly just odd for a wizard. He constantly misplaced his wand and, unwilling to put effort forth to do wandless magic despite his exceptional abilities, he would simply do things the muggle way. And wizards do not react well when one of their own ignores their magical abilities. His only real friend was Tonks, his cousin who was three years his junior.
Work at Flourish and Blotts was routine for Bernard, but five years after he began his job he realized one day out of every year would be extraordinary. In July of 1991, a scraggly haired boy with a lightning bolt scar wandered Diagon Alley. Now, if Sirius Black weren't his brother, Bernard would not have cared that Harry Potter was in Diagon Alley. But every year when Sirius's godson walked into the store, he always seemed most comfortable with Bernard assisting him, perhaps because Bernard always wore a muggle suit instead of wizarding robes. Harry specially preferred Bernard after Sirius escaped and bonded with the boy. Then Harry considered Bernard an extension of his family, something that annoyed the surly Bernard to no end. After two years, Bernard received a letter from Harry asking about a book and somehow the two began to communicate regularly, a fact that pleased Sirius.
It had given Bernard a feeling of vindication when he'd found that Sirius had escaped and even more so when he found that Peter Pettigrew was actually to blame for Lily and James' deaths. He'd discovered it when a black dog followed him home. He'd let the dog in since it reminded him of Sirius's animangus and was shocked when Sirius appeared. Initially, Bernard threw a book at him. But eventually he listened. While Sirius did everything he could to be involved in the effort to defeat Voldemort once the second wizarding war began, Bernard felt it wasn't his fight. Bernard didn't exist amongst wizards outside of work. Until the Black brothers rebuilt a relationship over the three years Sirius was free, with Bernard spending every weekend at Grimmauld place with his brother and rejoining the wizarding world in a minimal way. But he only withdrew more. He owled Harry, but otherwise Bernard resumed his life in muggle London and cut back his hours at Flourish and Blotts. He had inherited money from the same uncle as Sirius, giving him the freedom to work for pleasure, even if he couldn't work in the muggle world. He had no proof of existence in their world.
Bernard had never planned to help in the war. But when Harry Potter told him about the horcruxes and that the golden trio and order of the phoenix would be going to Hogwarts, Bernard felt as if he owed it to Sirius's memory to fight against Lord Voldemort. And Bernard did fight. And Bernard did kill. And Bernard did mourn when the last person who kept him in the wizarding world died. He stood my Tonks' body and cried for her. He cried for Sirius. His only tether left was Harry. And for Bernard, that wasn't enough. The Ministry of Magic acknowledged Bernard's efforts and arranged for him to have records set up in the muggle world. All but a small portion of his wizarding money was converted to English pounds. And then, Bernard was elated to buy a bookshop. He had become cynical. He hated his customers. He hated pretty much everyone when it came down to it. But he quickly befriended a squib, Fran, who covered his lack of backstory by claiming to have gone to school with him. He communicated occasionally with Harry. When Harry's children were born, Bernard agreed to make the occasional visits to the wizarding world, to be sure some part of Sirius was near them. And he spent as much time with Teddy as he could, preferring to take him around muggle London for the day as he told stories about Tonks. And Bernard Black became a cynical chain smoker who drank like a fish, but he finally had found his niche.