Sirius Comes Home
Chapter One: Mrs. Black
Mrs. Odia Celandine Black received all visitors - family and strangers alike - in a large drawing room overlooking the grounds behind 12 Grimmauld Place. The view from that room was the envy of every wizard pureblooded enough to have had the chance to enjoy it. From her window Mrs. Black looked down over gardens set with beds of heavy, fragrant blossoms: foxgloves; blue roses, rare and spicy; and poppies from the far East. Lilies lounged against each other in clumps, preening a little. There were orchards filled with polished apples, greenhouses bursting with ripe fruit, and a small pond well-stocked with mermaids. The Black estate was quite extensive for Magic London, and magical illusion deepened the view, so that parks and fields extended on and on into the distance, almost to the horizon. At the very end of sight, phantom Himalayas rose above a stretch of shining sea.
In contrast, the window overlooking the steps leading to the front door of the Black mansion were kept firmly shuttered, with the velvet drapes drawn. The view would have been unpleasant in any case: although most of the houses opposite had been spared the worst effects of war and pollution, a fog of poverty and defeat seemed to hang over the square, and the neighbourhood had proved itself resistant to even the most determined efforts at gentrification. It was perhaps unsurprising that Mrs. Black chose to ignore this ugly part of muggle London, and had, in fact, not crossed her own doorstep in over fifteen years, preferring to travel by floo-power when travel was necessary. In any event, Mrs. Black could rely on house servants to inform her of goings-on within the neighbourhood of Grimmauld place. Or, when she chose to, Mrs. Black could gaze into the large oval mirror set beside the door of her drawing room, and ask it for a view of her home's front doorstep. But she rarely chose to ask for that particular view.
The interior of Mrs. Black's drawing room was not unimpressive. The chair in which she always sat was backed in rich green silk damask, and had polished armrests in the shape of serpents. This chair was currently set before a desk near the large open window. The desk held signs of recent and vigourous correspondence: it was covered in stacks of parchment (weighted down with a small music box), bottles of venomous-looking ink, and numerous quills. Her wand was on the desk, within easy reach. To Mrs. Black's left were shelves lined with heavy, leather-bound books; to her right was a small decorative table topped with a vase of drooping fetterbush, and a bell glass, in which delicate fragments of bird's down spun in the air, forming and reforming themselves endlessly into two figures dancing the Black Swan pas de deux. The far wall behind Mrs. Black was covered by a tapestry detailing the geneaology of the House of Black for the past nine centuries. At her feet, prostrate on the rich carpet, was a snout-nosed house-elf clad in a tea-towel. In Mrs. Black's carefully reasoned opinion, he did not do the room justice.
"Yes, Mistress! I mean no, Mistress! I mean—"
"- and the drapes must be cleaned and the bed-linens washed. And make sure the rugs are thoroughly – thoroughly – beaten and the floors swept and polished."
"Yes, Mistress!"
"Cook must be instructed to set two extra places at dinner. Narcissa has told me that Lucius Malfoy may dine with us. And my son Sirius is coming home – he will return from his visit to those Potters this afternoon. Make sure the silverware is polished."
"Yes, Mistress!"
"If cook requires ingredients from Diagon Alley you must fetch them yourself. To this end you may leave the house but must return immediately to 12 Grimmauld Place once your purchases are made. You must return by three this afternoon. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Mistress!"
"This is a great responsibility."
"Yes, Mistress!"
Mrs. Black sighed. "Ordinarily such a task would fall to the current Kreacher. Only she – as my personal attendant – should be entrusted to leave this house unsupervised. However, since that unfortunate mishap with the tea-tray last Wednesday it has become clear to me that the current Kreacher can no longer fulfill her obligations as my right hand and major domo to the House of Black. No visitor in my home should ever be required to draw tape-worms from his navel whilst standing on his head. Not even a jumped-up little non-entity like Undersecretary Fudge. That particular incident did the House of Black no credit at all."
The house-elf eyed her. He knew that already.
Mrs. Black continued: "It is clear to me that it is time to appoint a new elf to the position of Kreacher. I have decided that you shall be the replacement. This is a great honour."
"Yes, Mistress!"
"As Kreacher, you will serve as my personal factotum, in any capacity I may require. You are charged with keeping order among the house-servants, tending to their well-being, and organizing their daily routine. But foremost, you are responsible for maintaining the dignity of the House of Black, and defending it from all enemies, internal and external, Wizard and Muggle alike."
"Yes, Mistress!"
"Your first duty in your new position is to behead and mount your predecessor. Give all the elf-heads a good dusting while you're at it: they are a little faded. Once that task is done you must prepare for my son's arrival."
"Y- yes, Mistress!"
Mrs. Black gave him an appraising look. She sighed again. It seemed to her that, despite the efforts she put into her house-elf breeding programme, the quality of the product fell year after year. The one currently at her feet was the unprepossessing best of a very bad lot. Her husband's mother had commanded a legion of Kreachers, all quick and hearty, all jumping to her lightest gesture, all scrambling for the honour of removing the least mote of dust from the path of their mistress. These days, Mrs. Black found each new litter of house-elves to be smaller than the last, with the pups increasingly feeble. They showed an tendency to ignore their duties, instead apparently spending most of their working hours staring blankly into space.
These musings provoked an unpleasant series of thoughts: regrettably, Mrs. Black's own offspring had turned out to be almost as disappointing as her house-elves. Sirius, once her joy, had been increasingly intractable during his visits home: determined to quarrel over her every comment (no matter how innocuous), easy to offend, bullheaded, obstinate, forever tormenting his female cousins, all of whom were more than capable of making nuisances of themselves even without Sirius goading them on.
Of course, Bellatrix, Andromeda, and Narcissa posed an entirely different set of problems, for which Mrs. Black could not really be blamed, although the three girls had been under her care far more that she would have liked, as their mother's numerous visits to St. Mungo's Janus Thickey ward meant that the three girls were frequent (and trying) inhabitants of Grimmauld Place. In Bellatrix, her mother's eccentric temperament had mixed with an obduracy similar to that of Sirius's to produce an unnervingly volatile potion. Unlike Sirius, however, Bellatrix would rarely argue openly with Mrs. Black. Given a direct command she would simply smile, nod, and ignore her aunt's edicts altogether in order to pursue her own entertainments. She was secretive, as well. A case in point: she had established a private laboratory somewhere in the cellars, and when Mrs. Black had tried to install a mirror at the foot of the cellar steps to monitor the girl's comings and goings, Bellatrix had shattered it, in flagrant disobedience of house rules. This sort of sly behaviour was irritating in itself, but Bellatrix combined her erratic manner with a mad, unblinking stare that set Mrs. Black's teeth on edge. The sooner that girl's dowry was settled with the Lestranges, the better.
Her two sisters were an improvement only in the sense that they presented a change in the form of a completely different set of annoying habits. Andromeda had recently passed from a decade-long stormy, sulky phase into an equally disagreeable state of bland indifference to other members of the family. Her social skills would have shocked a troll. In conversation her mouth and nose seemed permanently twisted in a sneer, and when Mrs. Black spoke to her she managed to convey (although the content of her speech was civil enough) a disturbingly thorough contempt that apparently encompassed Mrs. Black, the House of Black, the friends and associates of the House of Black, British Wizard Society in general, and possibly the entire continent of Europe. In her more depressive moments Mrs. Black occasionally wondered where Andromeda had managed to pick up that ability. Conversing face-to-face with Andromeda was one area in which Mrs. Black had been forced to admit to a rare defeat, which meant that all communications with the girl were conducted by written missive, delivered by the house-elves. Aside from routine scryings in her mirror, Mrs. Black rarely saw Andromeda except at dinners, which were especially trying, as the sight of her smirk over the asparagus dish was enough to put off even Mrs. Black's iron digestive system.
The most promising of the three girls was undoubtedly Narcissa, who had always been a mild and obedient child, although disappointingly dull-witted. In this, it must be said, she resembled Mrs. Black's own son, Regulus. Narcissa, however, was pretty, certainly pretty enough to hold the attention of the Malfoy boy, whereas Regulus had Narcissa's slow wits but not her arresting face. He made a poor show compared to Sirius. Each year Mrs. Black's youngest son seemed to become a little weaker, a little more hang-dog, a little slower, a little more inclined to ignore the task at hand to stare off blankly into space. Much like her house-elves, in fact. This one had started to hiccough. She sighed.
"Hic!"
"Enough of this. You must get to work. Make sure that the drapes are cleaned, and the bed-linens are washed. Oh, yes, and the silverware must be polished. And send Regulus to me at once."
"Yes – hic – mistress! Hic!"