A/N: Word of warning that this family council, much like the last, will be split over 2-3 chapters. If you prefer reading in chunks, I recommend coming back in 3 weeks and reading them all together then. Additionally, if any reader knows of a way to add pictures, please let me know! I've sketched out a master family tree for my own benefit, and think that you'd all find it useful as well (particularly in chapters like these). If I have to start an Instagram just for this fic, I'll feel horribly awkward about it, but I'm willing. Just let me know!
A moment of appreciation for all of you who have taken the time to read, review, follow, favorite, and share this story! When I first picked up my pen (read: keyboard) with this idea, I had really low expectations. Now, I talk about you guys all the time and you've been the bright spots of my week. Please keep sharing your opinions and your ideas going forward- and thank you so much for inspiring me to keep writing!
That's enough sap from me now- cheers, thanks again, and have a WONDERFUL week!
January 9, 1982
Black Manor, Somerset
Standing still in the center of Black Manor's Head of House office which she had so recently taken over from her older cousin, Cassiopeia Black stared intently at the family tapestry. In the weeks since her blood and magic had subverted Albus Dumbledore's ill-fated attempt to alter it, nothing else seemed to have been tainted. Frankly, Cassiopeia still wasn't sure if this was because Dumbledore had been struck down by the family magic before he could fully accomplish his goal, or if the family tapestry was really just impervious to meddling on the part of outsiders.
It was one of a half dozen questions she hoped to have answered by the end of the day.
Stepping forward, Cassiopeia ran a long finger across the line that bound she and her siblings together, then down the line that connected Dorea's silver apple to her son's, finally ending on young Harry Potter's vibrant green outline. Tiny purple sparks danced from the fabric of the tapestry, and the Black Materfamilias smiled. The child remains safe, and happy.
Cassiopeia and Isla had spent several extremely long evenings discussing Harry Potter, his current caretaker, and the best time to bring him back into the fold.
"We mustn't rush it, unless the boy is unhappy or needs otherwise must," Isla had cautioned regretfully. "If we rush now, we may lose him later."
"I defer to your judgement on the matter- you're the master of subtlety, not I," Cassiopeia had murmured, brow furrowed as her dearest friend's lips quirked upward at the unexpected praise. "But I do feel that Dorea would be displeased."
"Displeased indeed," Cassiopeia murmured again now, pressing her hand to the vaguely steaming silver border around her younger sister's youthful image. "None of this is as you would have done, but you're just going to have to watch and see how my latest experiments progress anyways."
"Is Missy Cassiopeia being ready?"
Cassiopeia cast a chilling smile over her shoulder at her house elf. "I do believe, Pip, that the real question here is: Are they?"
Raising the ceremonial knife that had been waiting in her other hand, the Materfamilias quickly slashed open her palm and watched as fresh blood was drawn to fill the family crest on the tapestry's trunk.
It was time for her second family council to begin.
Family councils, always a serious occasion, had been held in the largest dining room of Black Manor for as long as Cassiopeia could remember. Featuring a congregation of Blacks from around the country, satellite and contract family members, and even potential suitors, those councils had been made up of a minimum of 30 people and as such there was nowhere else they could all fit. As such it had been rather eye opening (regarding the family's plight, that is) when only two months prior, the manor's smallest dining room had been more appropriate for the motley crew of Blacks who had emerged from the Blood War (relatively) unscathed.
But things were already changing.
Much like the now more heavily laden limbs of the silver-trunked tree on the family tapestry, the long table of the third largest dining room groaned under the weight of over 20 place settings and enough tea to feed them all.
(Pip, well aware of both the expected length of the event and the relatively soothing effect that vast quantities of food had on people, had put together an almost ridiculous spread: brioche tea sandwiches with salmon/cucumber and chocolate/almond/raspberry fillings, butter pecan crumpets, an excess of battenberg cake, three different types of deviled eggs, dozens of scones with cream and jam, hot and flaky hand pies, citrus madeleines, chevre and walnut tartlets, turkey waldorf bites, no less than a dozen varieties of tea, champagne of a good vintage, and milk for the little ones expected to attend. There was additionally a very high-stacked plate of biscuits directly in front of her mistress' seat.)
Munching on a shortbread biscuit, her case board lying in wait beneath a pale linen sheet behind her, Cassiopeia watched as her recently expanded family were delivered by magic and left to flounder through determining their place at the table.
Melania and Arcturus were first (of course, living there, it'd have been almost awkward not to be). Cassiopeia had noted when she arrived that they seemed oddly tense, as if some odd disagreement had come between them and they were unsure how it would resolve.
(She didn't need to consult anyone's tea leaves to guess what that might have spurred from.)
The previous paterfamilias and matriarch waited to seat themselves towards the middle of the table till their daughter and her husband arrived. Lucretia and Ignatius both bowed briefly down the table in acknowledgement of the family Head, and Lucretia called out some
A staccato set of cracks of magic and Cassiopeia's closest relations were delivered en masse. Pollux, trapped in the midst of them all, very hesitantly side stepped till he was on the edge of the vast crowd composed primarily of Grangers and very hesitantly offered his younger brother his hand.
"Why, Pollux," Marius returned the hand with no small amount of surprise. (He held very little ill will towards this particular relative, despite the total hand-washing Pollux had done when Marius had left for the muggle world- it was hard to bear hatred for a man so resolutely determined to try to please everyone around him, for better or worse.) "How have you been, brother? Our sister fusses that she doesn't see you."
"I hardly fuss about lack of visitors," Cassiopeia interjected drily. "Rather, I fuss when I see wasted potential."
Arcturus, irritable: "Pollux has enough to deal with without you breathing down his neck."
Marius, exasperated: "Pollux has had a rather trying time lately, don't you think?"
Startled, the pair turned to glare at one another across the room.
Remembering the violent food fight of their last family meeting, Pollux looked from his cousin to his brother, gulped, and, in a moment of surprising initiative, turned to welcome the relatively neutral Helen and Daniel. "A pleasure to see you again, Helen, Daniel, and Heir."
"Ah, yes, the dragon rider." Arriving silently, Cygnus moved to take a seat at the end of the table without pausing to acknowledge his Head of House. "Still have a tongue tie curse on that last name, do you?"
Daniel and Helen exchanged a brief look before Daniel smiled widely, pulling a chair out for his wife near the head of the table. "You can stick with Dragon Rider."
Cygnus huffed.
A sudden crack of magic delivered Callidora, and, to much of the table's surprise, three other Longbottoms as well. Callidora's husband and her children's feelings had clearly changed regarding her maiden family- not only had Harfang allowed himself to be magically pulled through the link, their eldest son and daughter had come too. Edmund Longbottom was well known for his international work conserving rare magical flora and fauna, and his sister Lysandra was a healer with a near-marital dedication to improving pediatric care. When they inclined their heads in Cassiopeia's direction, she smiled cheerfully- as Callidora's marriage contract had been intentionally written to stop the Longbottoms from being beholden to the Black family's instruction, their interest in the family council was quite a coupe.
Opening up the family council to the full family, rather than only blood and ranking members, had been the right choice this time.
The Malfoy and Tonks families arrived side by side, Andromeda and Narcissa in nearly matching jewel toned robes and their husbands with perfectly opposite expressions: Lucius sneered around the room with a level of irritation that suggested he'd been interrupted while working on his scale model manor while Ted smiled and waved cheerfully down the table with no concern for the nearly palpable tension in the air. It was young Nymphadora who stole the show however- no sooner had she bowed formally (just as Auntie Cissy had insisted she learn at tea the week prior) to her two-times-great aunt than she was being mobbed by her younger cousins.
"Dora! Dora! Dora!" Hermione squealed, hopping off of her chair next to Cassiopeia to bodily throw herself at the older girl.
"My cousin," Draco muttered mutinously, shooting a glare in Hermione's direction as he tugged one of Nympadora's arms to his little chest.
(Nymphadora had become the clear leader of the play group in thanks to both age and metamorphmagus ability- none of the toddlers could resist the faces she pulled at them. Unfortunately for both Draco and Hermione, while Nymphadora was their favorite, Blaise was most certainly hers. She found his habit of combining multiple languages into long babbling sentences to be every bit as chaotic as one could ask for.)
"Don't despair grandson, there are enough questionable characters here to go around," Cygnus muttered from his seat, only to wince when Callidora cheerfully kicked him under the table. "Why you-,"
"Pleasant as ever, father. Really, the most questionable person I see here is you. And maybe-," Andromeda glanced from her brother-in-law to her sister and cut herself off. Lucius flipped his long ponytail behind his shoulder and glowered in her direction knowingly.
"Draco, Dora and Hermione are both your cousins," Narcissa said patiently, laying her palm gently on the top of her son's head as she ignored the fuss going on around her.
"And I'm not a tug of rope," Nymphadora grumbled mutinously, carefully disengaging both smaller children. Faced with their downtrodden expressions, she huffed and turned her nose into a pig snout. "Happy now?"
The delighted baby giggles made the entire room smile, and from his seat Pollux stared at the group in surprise. "That is quite the talent, great-granddaughter."
Abandoning her family with little concern, Nymphadora scrambled into the seat beside him. "It's awesome, right? Daddy says it's like a comic book superhero power, but better 'cause it's me."
"Have you learned how to change your voice along with your features yet?"
The child stared in amazement. "I can do that?"
Pollux nodded firmly. "Oh, most definitely. The last metamorphmagus in our family is said to have perfected the technique, and I in fact have possession of their journals."
Unnoticed at the end of the table, Cassiopeia and Marius exchanged a long, pleased look.
A final crack of magic, this time quite loud, interrupted the conversations taking place along the table and the entirety of the room turned in their seats as one to stare at the pair in the doorway.
Alphard, cheerful as ever in his rather scandalously cut American robes, grinned and waved. The ends of his shoulder length hair were looking a bit fried, as if a house elf had accidentally electrocuted him just a bit over breakfast, and he was huffing out gasping breaths of air that suggested he had just pulled quite an A-level prank to escape the guards in his home. But none of these things drew a single person's eye, because for all of his boisterousness, Alphard was not a recently released and dubiously innocent prisoner of Azkaban.
Sirius Black had, at Hogwarts, been voted the most attractive boy in his year more than one time. His long dark curls, aristocratic features, and stormy eyes crackling with family magic made him enigmatic, and his prowess on both the Quidditch pitch and the battle field had made him strong and limber. If his looks didn't impress, his devil-may-care attitude and cheerful good-nature certainly did.
But that Sirius Black was no more. That Sirius Black had been whittled away by 54 horrible days in Azkaban spent drowning in guilt for a crime he did not commit, burdened by the knowledge that the small family he had built for himself had completely deteriorated.
This Sirius Black was a far cry from the picture of health (though Alphard had done his best to both clean and feed him up, some wounds took more time than magic to heal). His hair was longer, his eyes were haunted. The robes Alphard had gotten him hung off his frame despite the tailoring charms in them, and he rather looked like a particularly strong gust of wind might blow him over.
But this Sirius Black did have one thing in common with his prior self: an unfettered sense of humor tied to a penchant for mischief.
"Hullo there, family. Long time no see."
Cassiopeia eyed him, bemused. The boy will do nicely for our plans, after all. "Sirius Black, we are pleased to have you join us. Find your seat."
There was a final spluttering crack of magic that apparently signaled a failed delivery, and then, finally, the magical tension in the room eased.
"A single broken call- who among us is missing?" Cassiopeia intoned formally, despite knowing full well who she had sent only the weakest call to.
From Marius (who'd been instructed beforehand): "Harry Potter, location kept safe."
Cassiopeia's stormy eyes flashed with magic, and her lips spread into a dangerous smile. "Then it is with this accounting that the Black family comes to council."