With a shriek like a banshee, she drew her wand on her eldest son and hit him with the full force of the Cruciatus Curse.
"You disgrace the house of my fathers," she hissed as she let her wand drop down to her side. "Filthy blood-traitor."
When her son stood up, he stared at her, straight into her face. They scowled deep hatred at each other until the teenage boy with long black hair whipped around and strode into the hallway. When he reached the front door, he turned around to meet his mother's snarling face, inches from his own.
"Don't worry. I won't be disgracing your fucking house anymore." He spoke in a level tone but his voice was laced with contempt. The woman grabbed him viciously by the arm and slapped his face with her free hand.
"Don't you EVER use those disgusting muggle profanities in my home!" she yelled, her voice a few octaves higher than it had been just moments before. But her son seemed to care less now than he ever had. Shaking his mother's hand roughly from his arm, he turned around and blew the front door open with his wand. She shrieked loudly again but he completely ignored her.
"I'm sure you'll be delighted to see the back of me, you ignorant old bitch."
He slammed the door behind him as he crossed the threshold for the last time. When his mother had regained her composure enough to reopen it, she stared down a deserted street. The only thing that she saw was a large black dog, streaking away from the road as fast as it could. With a scream of fury, Walburga Black slammed the door with another resounding crash. A door opened on the upstairs landing as she continued to yell, all the way back to the drawing room.
"Mother?" A tentative voice spoke. "What's happened now?" The tone, although reserved, had a smug and complacent edge to it." But once the youngest brother had entered the drawing room, he no longer required a verbal response to his question. What he saw was enough to silence him.
Walburga stood in the centre of the long room, her wand pointed directly at the bottom of the family tree. The silver lines connecting her name to her eldest son's were unravelling rapidly and seemed to fade as they wound away from his name. Once his name on the tapestry was unlinked to all Black relatives, she aimed her wand directly at it. The resulting bang emitted a large cloud of smoke and when Walburga moved closer to glimpse her handiwork, she smiled in immense satisfaction at the sight of her eldest son's isolated and charred name, singed beyond recognition. Her younger son stood perfectly still, staring at the place where his brother's name had been.
A creak interrupted the silence as the door swung open.
"Master Regulus?" The house-elf made a low bow. "Will you be requiring your emerald robes tomorrow?" Almost in a daze, Regulus shook his head.
"No...thanks Kreacher…" Kreacher made another bow.
"Mistress, dinner will be ready in half an hour." The stony-faced woman spun around, returning her wand to her pocket.
"Good. We shall require only three places at the table from now on."
The delight that suddenly appeared all over the elf's features was undeniable. He made one last bow towards Walburga.
"As Mistress requires."
James Potter was lounging on the sofa in his living room, reading about the merits and drawbacks of the new Nimbus Five Hundred and trying to ignore the History of Magic essay which lay unfinished on the table in front of him. Very unfinished in fact; he still had about three rolls of parchment to go. It wasn't that he didn't know exactly what to write, it was mainly the tempting pull of the spacious garden outside and the Snitch that he had managed to sneak home from Hogwarts a month ago. Glancing at the full moon outside, he had two thoughts. Firstly that it was probably too dark to be flying around on a broomstick trying not to let the Muggles across the road catch sight of him and secondly, that Moony was going to be having a pretty boring transformation this month, without the antics of the other three Marauders to lighten the mood a little. James made a mental note to send him an owl the following morning.
Almost as soon as he had that thought, he was interrupted by a whining coming from outside and a scratching at the bottom of his front door. James had a suspicion but then decided that he couldn't possibly be right about who was coming to visit at nearly one in the morning.
But, as he pulled the door open to reveal a large black dog sitting on the doormat, staring up at him, James realised that his initial assumption had been correct.
"Padfoot!" James grinned and beckoned him inside. "You're lucky my parents didn't answer the door. They'd've thought you were the Grim or something."
Sirius Black shot up into his human form but no trace of amusement was present in his features. A fresh scar ran down the side of his cheek, his shirt was ripped and his unnaturally unkempt hair covered in dust. James stopped dead to stare at his best friend.
"Padfoot, what happened?"
Sirius sighed heavily and did not meet James's eyes.
"I walked out. Couldn't take it anymore."
"What...what did they do?" James asked hesitantly. He knew that Sirius was unlikely to keep it to himself but he wasn't entirely sure if Sirius wanted to tell him yet. After a few seconds of James staring at Sirius and the latter still looking at the floor, he spoke.
"I got an owl from Moony and my mother found out who he actually is. She sent Kreacher up to my room to read my letters. She went ballistic. More furious than she usually is. She told me that his family are blood traitors and that he was a werewolf. I told her that I already knew and that it didn't make any difference."
James listened, holding his breath, glad that Sirius had made it out of that house alive. He'd only heard stories about his best friend's mother and knew that the discovery that her eldest pure-blood son was friendly with a werewolf whose family had a distinct lack of status would only send her over the edge. Sirius appeared to be deep in thought for a few moments before he continued.
"As you can probably imagine, she didn't like that at all. She told me that I was a blood traitor, all the usual stuff. And then…"
Sirius stopped and hung his head, as if he was trying his utmost not to break down completely. James took a step closer but Sirius shook his head desperately and sat down heavily on the sofa. He lifted his eyes, a small action which must have taken a lot of effort and tried once more to get the words out.
"Then she...she used the Cruciatus Curse on me."
James made no sound but his eyes widened in horror. He exhaled slowly. Sirius shook his head again and stared at his lap.
"I mean, I knew she hated me but that much? I'm her son, for Merlin's sake! Most decent people have a hard enough time using that on their enemies." He was silent for a few seconds before continuing. "I suppose that I always knew that they weren't decent people."
James walked slowly towards the sofa and sat down to join his best friend. He laid a consoling hand on Sirius's back.
"Padfoot, I'm sorry."
And Sirius nodded because he knew that there was nothing else to say. In that second, he knew exactly why the dog had run all the way to the Potters' house without even pausing to think. Subconsciously, he had sought comfort and instinctively, he knew exactly where to go. Since he had started at Hogwarts, the Marauders had become the only family he'd ever need.
As Sirius attempted to smile at his best friend, he prayed that he would never lose James. He wasn't quite sure if he'd ever be able to make it through after that. With everything that had been going on in the wizarding world over the past year, the summer had made Sirius feel as though nothing would ever be enough to fight the dark forces which were assembling.
If there was anyone who could live in the moment however, it was Sirius. He had another two years at Hogwarts until it was time to join the real world and no matter what happened in the end, he didn't plan to go down without a fight. Leaving his family was the first conscious step he'd made towards choosing a side.
Author's Note: edited slightly (and hopefully improved) August 2011.