Nothing to be done.
It wasn't an expression he had been raised to hear, but he'd certainly grown accustomed to it in the last decade—the decade that Orion had suspected for some time, with the creeping, silent surety that accompanies all unpleasant truths, would be his last.
This morning the healer had confirmed it.
Fawcett's prognosis could not touch him anymore than the progress of the last half century Orion Black had lived in did. Commitment to tradition, the acknowledged superiority of the old families, the acceptance of the magical world's innate superiority—the values they all held, he thought, whether or not most of them would admit it, and why shouldn't they, it was pure hypocrisy not to—were now synonymous with other ugly phrases. Old-fashioned. Out-dated. Fanaticism.
The world of the Black Family—of elegant and dignified self-assurance, of place—was dying as well. Or if not dying, it was morphing beyond recognition. But he would not live to see the day he would cease to know it. Just as well, for Orion had not been bred for change.
He was tired.
Fingers thrumming on the counter, he took the solid gold pocket watch (as three generations of Black men before him had) out of its case for the third time in ten minutes. A tall man—used to drawing himself up to his full and impressive height when kept waiting—even a stranger would have noticed how stooped he looked. How run down.
There was more than illness at work.
His lined face—handsome in a slightly oppressive Victorian style—still bore the distinctions of breeding in its gallic nose and the expressive eyebrows (now furrowed in irritation—where was that blasted man?) He surveyed the waiting room at St. Mungo's hospital with a haughty, unstudied lack of interest. It was deserted save two other people—a man older than him, skin an unsightly shade of puce, with his stout, red-faced daughter. Orion recognized him vaguely as a retired paper-pusher from the Ministry—Department of Accident Reversals?—Something Belby? He'd been trying to catch Orion's eye since he arrived.
Belby, if recollection served, was not only an upstart, but a tedious one. That was why Mr. Black hovered restively at the front desk where the Welcome Witch, Healer Stebbins, sat, glowering down at her.
"How much longer will this take?" he asked, imperiously.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Black—" She did not look up from the parchment she was pouring over. "We're a bit hard-up for help around here at the moment. More people coming in than we know what to do with."
This statement of the facts, couched so blandly, gave him pause all the same. He'd seen more of the inside of his study than the Ministry in the last few years—but he was no fool.
"Healer Fawcett had a very specific treatment plan for you—but he had a few other patients who've tied him up—"
"Excuse me."
Both turned their heads at the feminine interjection; the girl had walked in from the door directly to Orion's left, so swiftly and quietly he hadn't noticed her. "This probably sounds absurd, but I was wondering if there was any way to get something besides apricots in the fruit bowl." The young witch shot Mr. Black an apologetic smile, which he returned, albeit more grimly.
The girl (for she was no older than twenty) was very pretty, with dark red hair tied in a plait. Her rumpled clothing suggested an all-night vigil at some bedside, but her arresting green eyes were quite awake and cheerful. "I'm sorry, it's just that he's about to wake up and he can be quite difficult about food."
"We are a hospital, not a gourmet eatery," Healer Stebbins informed her, dryly.
"I know that." The young woman's impatience showed, and Orion exchanged a look of solidarity with her. "I would go myself, but I'm under strict orders from my husband to watch him like a hawk." A delighted flush rose to her cheeks at the words, "my husband," suggesting there was novelty there: a newlywed. Her wedding ring—goblin-wrought silver, he could appraise from the corner of his eye—sparkled, though not as much as her eyes. "Look, I'm really doing you a favor by asking you myself, he'll just demand it when he wakes up, and it's not as though you can get rid of him."
The welcome witch heaved a long-suffering sigh and rose from her chair, it squeaked unpleasantly as she pushed it out.
"I can see about our extra stock of fresh foods in the larder—" The witch stalked off, and her harasser could not help but grin triumphantly at the sole witness to her success.
"I'm sorry to cut in," she said to Orion, who was looking at her with a mild, detached curiosity.
"Don't be. I was admiring your proficiency in handling her, actually."
"It helps if they already know the patient's difficult," she grinned, twisting the ring around her finger nervously. He smiled thinly at the girl and pulled out his gold pocket watch again.
Though they both stood in silence for several minutes, Mr. Black felt those green eyes on him every so often, tracing his profile surreptitiously. Orion turned his head sharply, too tired for more than a glare. She saw he had noticed but didn't blush.
"I'm sorry…you just look—have we…?"
The girl trailed off uncertainly, but her expression of fixed recognition unsettled him.
"—A few bananas on the edge and a pear—that's your lot." Healer Stebbins bustled in. "It'll have to do." Orion straightened as Fawcett followed on her heals, shuffling in with two rolls of parchment. He opened his mouth to browbeat the man for keeping him waiting this long, when—
"Oh, thank you so much—this is lovely." She took the fruit from the healer's hand as though it was precious cargo, the man beside her momentarily forgotten. "Sirius will be so grateful."
The watch slipped out of his hands and clattered to the floor.
Apricots were what had plucked at the proverbial elbow at first. That distinct repulsion was carried over from early childhood—the impulsive devouring of a bowlful meant for pies, which had lead to a night of such awful indigestion that for years afterward the entire family could not stomach the sight of them—and he placed the lion shield on the ring when she raised her hand to take the browning fruit—this girl was a Potter, she was married to a Potter.
Just as quickly, shock gave way to anger.
"Mr. Black—Orion! Are you quite alright?" Lily Potter dropped the pear, it rolled six inches toward Stebbins before she snatched it up. The droopy-faced healer holding the parchment gaped at his patient—though whether it was over his ashen face or the throbbing vein in his temple was difficult to say. "I have the…the instructions you wanted—"
"Fawcett—" Black head whipped around; he stared into the other man's eyes, coldly. "Does this institution not benefit from my family's largesse?"
Fawcett looked between his colleague and Lily—the girl remained very still.
"Of course—" he stumbled. "—Of course it does."
"Did my father not fund the construction of an entire wing of this hospital?" he continued, the family haughtiness mingling freely with his anger, creating the impression that Mr. Black would be at home among the best incensed eighteenth century monarchs.
Fawcett held out the parchment feebly, but Orion gave no impression he saw, and so the man lowered it again.
"I…I believe the third floor has a ward named for him—"
"All of this is to say that the name 'Black' means something to you, Fawcett—doesn't it? That never mind extraordinary privileges, I am at least owed basic courtesy."
"Merlin's beard, Orion! What is—?"
"My son is here," he said, cold fury punctuating every word. "Being treated, in this hospital. You know this and yet, for reasons I fail to understand, did not see fit to inform me."
There was a deafening silence.
"The hospital's policy has always been to leave communication up to the discretion of the patient," Fawcett finally said, weakly. "Sirius is—"
"—A willful boy with with a penchant for self-destruction." Then, startling her, he turned and addressed Lily. "Where is he?"
She searched his face for a long moment, as if trying to discern his motive.
"He's right upstairs—I'll take you to him." The girl did not seem disturbed or offended by his imperious demand. "I—I told him he ought to call someone, but he can be so stubborn, Mr. Black—" Her face flushed with embarrassment at his expression. "—Well, I'm sure you know."
Orion said nothing, but the tightness in his shoulders visibly lessened, and he followed her brisk step through the side corridor and up the first staircase on the right. "I'm Lily Ev—Potter, sorry," Lily corrected herself. "I'm still getting used to that."
"I know who you are," Orion murmured back distractedly. The wedding notice had been in the Daily Prophet, and despite two and half years of concerted effort to ignore his eldest's existence, the name 'Potter' had popped out. On October 17, James Potter, son of Fleamont and Euphemia Potter, married Lily Evans, in a private ceremony in Dorset—
No mention of the girl's parents—at the time he had observed, with his habitual caustic detachment, that they thought they were being subtle. There'd been nothing in it about his son, and still Orion had thrown the paper into the fire and gone to bed angry.
They reached the door to a private ward in the south wing. The girl pushed open the door slowly.
"Lily? That you?" The voice was good-humored.
"Yes, darling—it's me," Lily said, glancing back at Mr. Black. "You were asleep, so I—I've just been about the fruit bowl—"
"Oh, have you?" He lay in the bed—perfectly still—with his eyes closed. If not for his speaking, one would have thought him a corpse. There was something distinctly unnatural about that lively voice attached to a statue. "Thank God, I thought I was going to retch from the bloody thing, the smell is revolting—"
Orion slipped into the room behind Lily, taking in the sight of the son he had not seen in over two years with forced placidity. An ugly gash on his right cheek did little to mar the boy's good looks—a classic straight nose, identical to his father's, whose gray eyes—another shared feature—lingered on the heavily bandaged leg, the only thoroughly obvious non-magical injury, and roamed up to his strangely rigid torso.
"—I can't even fling it out the window, that's the worst bit."
Eyes flashing dangerously, his father silently summoned the papers attached to the end of the bed detailing Sirius's condition and began to flip through them.
"What did the healer say?" Lily could have been addressing either of the men in the room; She peered over Orion's shoulder, trying to read. Sirius, blissfully unaware of his second visitor, took the question as meant for him.
"Well, there's good news and bad news. I should be alright in a week—Fawcett's worried about permanent damage, but I'm not. I've had worse than this, remember last summer in Sheffield?" His father's expression blackened. "The bad news is I can't even open my damned eyeballs yet, so I'm rather helpless. The only thing I can feel right now is how uncomfortable the bed is. Did Prongs get my bike?"
The girl—Lily—allowed herself the smallest of eye rolls.
"It's fine, you great prat, you would care more about that than yourself—"
"Why would I waste time worrying about myself when I've got you for that, Evans?" Sirius interrupted, his cheerful voice turning roguish. "No Prongs yet?"
"He'll be here when he can. Sirius—"
"His loss." Sirius poorly masked his disappointment with a flirtatious grin at the ceiling."You should come and join me over here, Lils, I need someone to feed me—and I know you've been looking for an excuse."
"Hold your tongue when you're speaking to a married woman, boy."
It was impossible for Sirius to be any stiller in that moment—and yet he seemed to freeze.
"…Lily?"
"Yes?" She glanced nervously between Black the Elder and his progeny.
"The healer didn't say anything about hallucinations on the report, did he? Because—" The words caught in his throat with an audible swallow. "—Because I could've sworn I just heard my father."
"You…did, Padfoot, darling." Mr. Black's eyes were back on the parchment, pouring over every sickening detail of the prognosis. "I ran into him in the lobby and he came to see you."
"My father doesn't go to St. Mungo's, Evans," Sirius said, reassured that the voice he'd heard had gone silent again. "He doesn't believe in hospitals. I doubt he's approved of a technological advancement since the steam engine—"
"For someone teetering on the edge of paralysis you've lost none of your damned insolence." Any trace of a smile on Sirius's face vanished. His already pale face went ashen. "What, pray tell—" Orion flipped the parchment over. "—Is a 'Winston Suzuki '75'?"
"…What…what are you doing—"
"Answer me."
The order, given by a man used to being obeyed, caught his son off-guard. He reminded Lily of her great-aunt Joan's beloved labrador, the only dog she had ever seen taken aback at being scolded.
"…S'a…motorbike," son told father, in a tight, restrained voice. Orion stood up straighter, and if Sirius could move, she was sure he would have mirrored the motion.
"A what?"
"A motorbike, you know, one of those…it's like a car, only—two wheels, muggles ride them."
"Ah, I see," Orion nodded, deeply sarcastic. "Would this be the same 'motorbike' whose image permanently defaces the top bedroom of my home?" There was a long, ugly pause. "That my son plastered the walls with for the purpose of irritating and upsetting his mother and father?"
"Different motorbike. Same general idea," Sirius replied, dryly.
"Mr. Black—"
"What a comfort it must have been, nearly winking out in a blaze of offensive glory," he cut over Lily, acidly. "I can just see your epitaph: 'Sirius Black, death by one last failed attempt to shock his mother into apoplexy.'"
"Oh, please—don't flatter yourself, dad, pissing you off isn't a high priority for me these days," Sirius shot back, chalky complexion flaring up again. "And if I really wanted to, dying's in the bottom ten of what I'd do."
"It's for the best," Orion observed, wryly. "As you apparently can't even make a success of that."
His son opened his mouth and closed it again, furious, apparently not able to come up with a comeback biting enough to cut his father down to size. Satisfied by this momentary lapse in verbal tete-a-tete, Mr. Black returned to the chart in his hand.
"I assume the muggles who use these wretched 'motorbikes,'" he continued. "Don't generally fall off them from a height of—" He turned the page. "—Thirty-seven feet in the air?"
"Would you stop pretending you don't know what they are? Merlin's balls, you live in the middle of London."
"I would hope the name of wizard is not so degraded that your enchanted claptrap is legal," he said, ignoring his son's comment. "Where did you get it?"
"I don't have to tell you that—"
"Tell me where you got it—" Orion's voice dropped dangerously low. "Or I swear to God…I shall call your mother."
He knew this was low, and even the self-interested part of him that saw the threat's effectiveness chafed at his weakness. Walburga was always the last line of defense, the last resort threat; she might've been the one thing he knew his headstrong son was afraid of.
"She won't come." He was gratified by the uncertain inflection in Sirius's voice. He can't run away this time. The boy's jaw tightened. Prone on the hospital bed, he seemed much younger than he had the last time Orion had seen him.
"Care to wager on that?" He stepped towards the fireplace, with its glittering jar of Floo powder, at the far end of the room—purposefully, so Sirius could not mistake his intent.
The dying man felt younger, too. It was as though someone had prod the smoldering remains of his life's purpose with a fire poker; since that day nearly twenty years ago when Sirius was born, guiding, preparing—and eventually, controlling—his heir had dominated Black family life.
Now it was dominated by his absence.
Walburga and he never spoke of the boy, but every day Orion was reminded. The house was deadeningly still, unnaturally sedate, for Regulus, whether by birth or inclination, was unobtrusive. The obnoxious, petulant stomping in the third floor bedroom above his study, for so long the signifier of Christmas and summer holidays, sounded no more. When he'd noticed how quiet his evening perusal of the Daily Prophet had become that first July, Mr. Black was dimly aware of a burning in his chest that had nothing to do with wounded pride.
But it was not until now, raging at him, that he realized just how much he had missed his eldest.
He took another step—past a Lily who could have been suffering from the same injuries as her best friend, for all she was moving—and took out his gold pocket watch. "It's almost eleven, she will be in her sitting room, writing correspondence, as she always does at this time."
"No—stop!" His voice nearly cracked. "Lily…are you still there?"
"Of course," she said, weakly.
"Could you—" The words caught in his throat. "Could you give us a few minutes alone?"
The girl's expression fell somewhere between relief and guilt.
"Will you—" She glanced over at Orion. "—Be alright?"
"I'm fine, Lily. He just needs to shout and threaten me a bit." Mr. Black scoffed quietly in the corner, hand still gripped around the jar of Floo powder on the mantle.
"Well I'll…I'll be just outside." With one final, uncomfortable look at Mr. Black, she walked out of the room's only door and shut it behind her. Immediately the man strode over and locked them in with magic.
He did not scream or carry on as his son had said he would. For a long time he said nothing at all, only stared at his firstborn, lying prone and half-paralyzed on the hospital bed.
He needed a haircut, badly.
"I bought the bike myself—with the gold Uncle Alphard left me," his son broke the silence. This admission was muted, but if he expected it to set Mr. Black off again, he was left disappointed. "There's not going to be an inquiry in the The Prophet or anything."
"Why would I care about the newspaper?"
He looked down at the roll of parchment again, his eyes drawn to the last three lines: 'the spell combination on the patient is unclear, but Healer Doolittle suspects no fewer than twelve curses, including full body bind and the Cruciatus curse.'
"I mean…your name isn't going to be dragged into it."
"How did this happen?"
"What—what do you mean?" Sirius asked, weakly.
"I mean you didn't curse yourself off of that—thing," Orion snapped. His voice rose so suddenly that Sirius flinched.
"It was just an…accident." Lying was the only family gift that Sirius had not inherited. In this case, he seemed to recognize it, for he did not bother embellishing. "I'm fine."
"You know I have a bottle of veritaserum in my study," Mr. Black said, in a low, dangerous voice. "I could be back in five minutes."
For once, Sirius Black offered no pert remark. His son was as still as he could be.
"If you're so bloody curious," he said, quietly. "Why don't you ask Regulus?"
Orion paled. The cloud of renewed vigor he'd been riding disintegrated; Mr. Black had to lean on the hospital's bland moulding to stay upright.
"What business is it of your brother's?"
"Only he was probably one of them." A muscle in Sirius's jaw tightened painfully. "Or at least he knows. I would like to think Voldemort doesn't send in the fourth-stringers when he's dealing with me."
"Silence!" Orion hissed, and he actually looked around, as if he was afraid that in a room he had locked and secured himself, somebody could hear them. He stalked over to his son's bed, wand held aloft—for what purpose, he couldn't imagine.
There was nothing he could do to the boy that hadn't already been done.
"Sirius…" He fell into the chair next to his son's bed, age and illness regaining their grip over his body. "What in Salazar's name have you gotten yourself into?"
Mr. Black was grateful Sirius could not yet open his eyes and observe this weakness.
"I thought Regulus would've told you by now." An unspoken accusation hung in the air. "Or you might've guessed."
"You—"
"When was the last time you looked up from the paper, father?" he interrupted, bluntly. "In case you haven't noticed, there's a war on. And you—" he choked. "—You're probably the only man who's got a son on both sides."
"What are you trying to prove, opposing the Dark Lo—opposing…him?" he demanded, forcing his shaking hands to grip the brass poster of the hospital bed. "Are you trying to get yourself killed?"
"I'm not trying to prove anything," Sirius answered, defiantly—and Orion knew that if the boy could move, he would have tossed his head defiantly, too. "I'm fighting in this war because it's right."
Out of anyone else's mouth such a proclamation would have sounded trite. Uttered by his eldest son—baldly and matter-of-factly, in the true Black style—it was almost cogent.
He had never seen Sirius's rebellion—his friendship with blood-traitors, his love of all things muggle, his incessant, nearly relentless need to throw off the family's traditions—as anything more than youthful folly. That the handsome, graceful, electric young man in front of him—in spite of all his best efforts, still a Black, far more of a Black than Regulus—truly believed it was not something he had ever allowed himself to consider. These "convictions" had always been for the purpose of provoking Walburga and him, just as his nursery-age antics were.
That his son truly did not care what he thought had never crossed Orion's mind.
"What do you know of your brother's doings?"
"More than you, I expect," Sirius snorted. "He…I suppose he thought he had to tempt me with something…"
He trailed off unsteadily; the dynamism of his words jarring with his rigid appearance.
"Sirius—"
"He sent Regulus to recruit me." He felt his father's burning stare through his eyeballs, and so he plunged on. "Of course, Reg didn't make that much of an effort, knowing me, but he had to try…I think," he winced. "That this might be payback for my answer."
"Which was?"
Sirius smiled, grimly.
" 'Piss off.' "
Any color left in Mr. Black's face drained completely.
His first compulsion—to scream at the boy, to shake him around the shoulders for the recklessness he is sure will get him killed one day (Sirius never could keep his mouth shut, always had to have the last word, even if it meant getting boxed about the ears)—was dampened by a second thought, following quickly on its heels. The realization gripped his mind and refused to be dislodged.
They did this to my son.
This was his son, purest of ancestry, noble of blood. The eldest son of the eldest son of the eldest son.
Wayward Prince of the Black Family.
"That's what you said, is it?" he asked, his voice dangerously calm. "Those exact words?"
"Of course," he boasted, proudly. "And if given the chance, I'd say them again."
Mr. Black's eyes bulged in anger.
"Regretfully, you won't have the chance," he said, curtly. "I shall go out and speak to Fawcett again, and after I've received your discharge papers, you will return to Grimmauld Place with me."
"Excuse me?" Sirius let out a nearly hysterical laugh. "Where do you get off—I'm of age—"
"You are a danger to yourself and everyone else," his father said, voice rising to the uncontrolled timbre of his son's. "To say nothing of this 'bike' of yours, which is undoubtedly illegal and you should probably be up in front of the Ministry for—"
"Lay off my bike." It had begun to dawn on Sirius that his father really meant to carry him out of the hospital by force and lock him in his childhood bedroom. "And I'd have to be mad to want to go back to that house."
"Luckily, few would argue with my evaluation of your mental competency," his father replied, coldly. "I doubt even Fawcett will disagree with my assessment."
"Not if you threaten to cut St. Mungo's off from all those hefty sums of Black gold you keep lobbing at it—"
"Where did you think your uncle's gold came from, hm?" he asked, pointedly; Sirius grimaced at him. "Doesn't seem to have stopped you from collecting that hefty bequest."
His son didn't reply.
"Where are you living now?"
"I don't have to—"
"You know I can find out, boy."
The boy's mouth flattened into a thin line. Mr. Black could guess at the internal debate—not to admit where he was living now was to admit that they still mattered, that they might have power over him—
That he cared.
"I've…got a flat. In London."
"Where?"
"In…Lisson Grove."
Lisson—Lisson Grove? He was just across Regent's Park from them—less than a mile away from the house. Orion thought of what Walburga would say if she knew the boy was so close and felt his heart turn to iron in his chest.
"Lisson Grove," he repeated, coldly. "How adventurous of you."
"I'm sorry, I didn't realize that the Blacks owned the entire effing city of effing London—" his son exploded in a familiar burst of adolescent rage. "I've got as much right to—you think I haven't thought about changing my—"
The silencing spell he cast choked the words right out of Sirius's throat.
"I will lift it," he said, voice dangerously quiet. "When you're ready to speak sensibly."
Sirius turned red with frustration, struggling in vain against an incantation that had been used on him countless times as a form of punishment in his childhood. He had always hated being made to be quiet more than anything—they had never needed to do the same to Regulus, who did not, as a rule, speak unless spoken to.
A minute of exhausting attempts of nonverbal, wandless magic later, the color in his son's face returned to normal and his head stilled. The sulky expression he wore was familiar—it was as close to admitting defeat as his eldest ever got.
Wordlessly, Mr. Black lifted the spell and walked back towards the fireplace. Bits of last week's Daily Prophet lay, shriveled, at the bottom of the grate.
"She'll never let you."
Exhausted, Orion looked up.
"She…" His son's voice wavered. "I might as well be dead to her. I'm worse than dead."
He turned around and took a step towards the bed.
"Your mother—"
"Don't pretend you don't remember what she said to me that night."
"…Many things were said."
Orion would never make him understand what he had done to them—how he had wounded them both so.
"She said I was never to come back. She won't let you—"
"Believe it or not," Orion snapped—and he could hear the same unsteadiness in his own voice, the loss of control only Sirius could bring out. "I don't need your mother's permission."
"Don't you?" Sirius snorted, derisively. "I've never seen you go against her before." Another silent accusation. You just stood there, father. You just stood there and didn't contradict any of it.
"Why'd you even marry her? You don't love her."
He remembered the day his father had told him he was to wed Walburga—four years his senior, austerely beautiful—but cold, so cold. There had been no choice.
That wasn't how it was done in their family.
Sirius's own marriage was being planned when he had run off—a last-ditch effort to save him from the looming disaster, from himself, for despite his shameful sorting and the owls twice a week, he was still handsome, charming, bright—and, by right of birth and breeding, heir to the Black Family. Walburga was convinced that marriage would straighten him out, and she wanted the thing done in haste—perhaps sensing the need to tie him down quickly, lest he slip out of her grasp.
Narcissa had been briefly considered—but beyond the age difference between them—she was nearly five years older, and at 16 and 20 the difference was particularly obvious—Orion could think of few ideas more ludicrous than his wild son married to Cissy—the most sedate of Cygnus's daughters. He had laughed when she suggested it—and then Lucius Malfoy had begun courting Narcissa, and that catastrophe was abandoned.
"If only Bellatrix were five years younger."
It seemed even more perverse, considering how like Walburga Bella was—but then, like his mother, Bellatrix had the advantage of being one of the few things that the boy was legitimately afraid of. That was why the idea was so appealing to his wife—she thought of Sirius as a wild horse that needed only to be broken in.
He could still recall that final argument between them with perfect clarity.
Usually he took sanctuary from their volcanic arguments in his study—he and Regulus were the unwilling spectators of the family, he knew the boy would hide in the kitchen because it blocked the noise best—but not that night. Talk of betrothal had been fanning the flames all summer; the fights between mother and son had now escalated to a level of viciousness exponentially greater than any that had come before.
He could stand back no longer.
"I don't matter to you—for people who care so much about family, you don't give a damn about me—I'm supposed to be your son!"
"No son of mine would speak to his mother as you have."
At those words, Sirius had recoiled in shock—as though his father had struck him.
Orion had that expression fixed in his mind. It was not hot-blooded rage or mulish self-righteousness, the favorite pairing of his son's teenage years…he had wounded the boy, really hurt him. However much he claimed to hate the traditions—their ideals, blood purity, the Black hauteur that came to him so naturally—the one family virtue he had never doubted was loyalty.
Perhaps it was the influence of his scruffy schoolboy gang, or something innate to him—but Orion knew that his son had been more shocked by the implication of his father's words than anything else.
However much he might claim to hate them, Sirius had never considered that his relationship with his family was conditional.
"No son of mine…"
After all—no Black had ever been disowned—not in the strictest sense of the term. Blacks made their own choices and lived with the consequences; the burned holes on the tree were the evidence of that choice. Sirius had left before he could be the first Black who was kicked out.
"I did what my father asked of me," Mr. Black said, finally. "I did my duty."
I put family above everything else.
"What does duty matter?" his son asked, quietly.
"What's that one, papa?" the seven-year-old boy asked, perched on his father's knee. It was a rare treat indeed that he be allowed in the study after tea time, and per usual, he was already abusing the privilege.
His father glanced up from his paper at the spot on the ceiling where his son pointed.
"That's Arcturus," he said, looking back down at his paper. "Grandfather."
"What about that one?"
He looked up again, annoyed.
"That's Vega," he answered, smoothly. "Would you like me to call your mother, hm? Or Kreacher?"
Sirius gave him a chastened look.
"No…" He grinned toothily at his father and tugged at the sleeve of his father's robes. "Just one more, please?"
Orion supposed that he had brought this upon himself by allowing the boy to come in here with him in the first place. Walburga was even more guilty of indulging their first-born than he, and it was already proving a problem—Sirius Orion had turned quite willful.
It was for his own good if the boy thought his father enjoyed his company less than he did.
"Fine. Then off to bath—" Sirius made a disgruntled 'hm', noise, in obvious imitation of his papa."—And bed. Now, which one?"
He turned and looked at the beautifully twinkling map of the heavens.
"Which one is me?"
"Oh, that's easy—" He turned the little boy's head in the direction of the dog star. "You're the brightest."
His breath caught.
"I'm that one?" Orion nodded. "Where are you?"
Momentarily forgetting that he only promised one more, he pointed at the Hunter.
"We're very close," Sirius said, in awe. "Father—why am I the brightest?"
"Because—" He stood up, scooping the boy under one arm in the process. He had the good sense not to squeal. "—When your grandfather and I are gone, you'll be head of the family."
"What does that mean?"
"Well…" He set Sirius on his feet and herded him towards the door. "…It will be your duty to light the way for the rest of the Blacks. And to teach your son after you."
"You mean like you do?"
There was no answer, then or now, that would have satisfied him.
In a display of strength he was not yet supposed to have, Sirius wrenched open his eyes and looked at his father for the first time in nearly three years.
For a moment, looking into the pale grey eyes (identical to his own) Orion was frozen to the spot. Each waited for the other to speak, the silence stretched on interminably. It was nothing new.
They had never known what to say to each other when it mattered most.
Sirius blinked, experimentally, and his eyes moved from his father's to the rest of his face. Orion watched his son's expression change as he took in the papery skin and pallid complexion, the stooped shoulders—all the outward signs of illness so obvious even someone as obtuse as Sirius couldn't miss them.
He blinked and turned away.
"If you don't understand that, I failed you even more than I believed," Orion said, coldly, hand clenching around the parchment.
Mr. Black dropped the scroll with the prognosis on the bedside table and fastened his cloak, dragging his eyes away from the bed. All of Orion's fight had drained out of him like water from a broken hosepipe; he longed to be back at Grimmauld Place, alone in the quiet and dark of his study, away from those searching eyes that even now he could still feel on his back.
He resolved to say nothing else—leave his son and heir with those distant, cold, intractable words that he hoped, savagely, had wounded the boy as much as he had wounded them. Walburga muttered in his ear: That will teach him respect, he needs discipline, Orion, it's the only thing that works on the likes of him—and her murmurings turned to angry, bitter sobs the that echoed through the House of his Fathers.
With a swish of his cloak he turned to the door, pulled out his wand to lift the spell he'd placed on it.
"The Black name won't protect you, father," the voice from the bed behind him said. He stopped at the threshold but did not turn around. "Nothing can—not from him."
With a shaky jerk of his wand, Orion Black removed the enchantment and left without saying goodbye.
He would return in the morning and begin the arrangements.