Author's note: Yes, this week is about self-indulgent everyone lives!AUs because finals are the absolute worst and I need to feed my brain the fictional equivalent of chicken noodle soup. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns the canon, world, and characters portrayed below and you can tell I'm not J.K. Rowling because #transrights

Hogwarts: Assignment #8, Write about a confrontation between family members

Content Warnings: Mentions past abuse, canon chracter deaths, canon prejudice, language

Your Turn To Carry The Baggage

The house had been quiet, which was how Walburga liked it. Quiet meant that the godforsaken band of rebels, half-breeds, traitors, and ragamuffins that called themselves an Order and dared to model themselves after a creature as beautiful and lovely as the phoenix were no longer desecrating the house. Quiet meant that the Potter boy, his Mudblood, and that raggedy freckled blood-traitor were not using her house to hide from the authorities that would rightfully have them tried for their crimes against wizards and witches everywhere. Quiet meant that the house was allowed to remain as ancient and noble as the House that had embodied it, and Walburga could take comfort in that where she could not take comfort in having successfully secured that nobility's legacy through a decent and legitimate heir.

Quiet was good. Quiet was graceful. Quiet was—

Interrupted. The front door of Number 12 Grimmauld Place opened and slammed far louder than it must.

Walburga's eyes shot open.

"Trespasser!" she screeched, though every other portrait in the house must have heard the shameless intrusion just as loudly. "Trespasser! Who dares trespass into the sanctious home of the most ancient and noble House of Black? Who dares—"

"Oh, come off it you old hag," a familiar voice said. "It's hardly trespassing when the bloody deed is in my name."

"You!" Walburga cried instead, rage boiling in her being so fiercely she wanted to peel herself from the canvas she'd been oiled and pigmented onto. "I told you to get out of this house twenty-five long, godforsaken, years ago! I told you never to show yourself in this place that you had dishonoured so and—"

"Well, that ship sailed years ago, didn't it you cranky old shrew?" Sirius said from the hall. When he turned into the hall where she hung and faced her, that audacious and irritatingly smug smile was on his face. That garishly shaggy hair of his was secured in a bun that was almost respectable, though the effect was ruined by the wear and tear on his awful Muggle leather jacket. He had a hideous helmet tucked under his arm, some plastic concoction with a visor, and his boots were treading mud in her home—all over the beautiful antique carpet that had belonged to Gregorius the Wise himself! There was mud speckling the hem of those damned denim pants that Muggles always wore, too. Walburga had banned them from her house when her boys had been tennagers, and had never bothered to learn what they were called.

"What, with me living in here for the better part of a year and all," Sirius said, peeling off a pair of riding gloves and tucking them in his back pocket. "Or did you forget about that? Merlin knows I try to, and Firewhisky helps."

"Get out of this house, you absolute embarrassment—you—you—"

She had not been forced to lay eyes on her disappointment of a son in years, now. Years of pent up anger and rage and shame were pouring out of her all at once, like a fire sparked at the mere sight of it.

"You pathetic excuse for a son!" she finished after scrambling to find the words through her blind rage. Once she got started, she simply kept slinging them in this awful man's direction. "You disgraceful, arrogant, shameless, hedonistic—"

"That's the first thing you've said something even remotely true about me," Sirius said. He drew his wand. "You might as well quit while you're ahead, Mother dearest. Petrificus Portrait Effigius Totalus!"

Walburga had not known that she had a throat through which to breathe as a portrait. She had always been conscious of the mouth through which she spoke, of course, but for the first time since she had passed away and woken up in her gilded frame she felt her throat freeze up. She did not panic, as she may have done if she had been alive and concerned about breathing. No, but she knew that she could no longer speak—which was infuriating. After all the precautions she had taken…

"There we go," Sirius said, cracking a grin. "Merlin, I always knew there had to be a way to shut up a portrait. If I hadn't been quite so depressed, maybe I could have cooked up this spell years ago. That would have helped make the absolute ordeal of staying in this rancid shack far more tolerable, but the important thing is that my beautiful mind cracked it and we're here now."

Walburga wanted to scream so badly, it was the most vivid sensation her body had had since she had died. Sirius grinned smugly and put the motorcycle helmet down, tucking his hands in his back pocket. Walburga was disgusted to notice that he was wearing nail polish on his fingertips, like some simpleminded Muggle bitch.

"So," he said. "There are some things I thought you should know. Not for your benefit, but for mine. See, I'd nearly shed the need to give a single fuck about you when I ran away—but you said some rather colourful and nasty things last time I was here, and I've put together quite a good life for myself since then. A very relaxing, easygoing life that gives me plenty of time to be a petty little bitch."

Sirius reached into the messenger bag hanging over his shoulder. He pulled up a copy of The Daily Prophet.

"First thing you should know, I got a full pardon and an official apology for being thrown in Azkaban," he said, lifting the copy of the paper up to her. He flipped through the pages lazily, as if he had all the time in the world which drove Walburga mad. Oh, the second she broke out of his stupid little curse…

He stopped at one page and his eyes glided over the article.

"Full pardon," he nodded, pointing out the words. "Yup, and a massive settlement for damages too, so I'll essentially be rolling in Galleons until I die. Maybe even then, I'll ask to be buried in a golden coffin. Oh, and then there's that Order of Merlin First Class I nicked, for all of that betraying-of-my-blood and frolicking around with the Order of the Phoenix that I did. I keep it above the fireplace. I always forget to polish it, though—my husband does that for me. Oh right!"

He put the paper back in the bag and flashed his left hand to Walburga. There was a simple bronze band with a single black stone resting on the ring finger.

"Married," Sirius said. "Super married. Yeah, married to the Minister of Magic, actually. Good man, very handsome. Incredible kisser. Not very photogenic though, so I'll let you use your imagination for that one. He sees me right through all the bullshit, including my own. Love of my life, really."

Sirius's voice went quieter as he said the last part, without the grandeur and camp he had so obviously wanted to bring to this little demonstration of his. It made her blood absolutely boil, just boil.

Sirius cleared his throat.

"Anyways, another nice thing about being married to the Minister of Magic is that you basically get to do whatever you want. Got a fair bit of traveling done, sometimes as the Minister's eye candy and sometimes on my own. Saw the world past the musty frame you tried to put on it. Didn't get to see my godson grow up, but I get to see him become one hell of a man now. He named his first son after me, you know—it's absolutely mad. He's an Auror, works to clean up the world of people like you, and he's twice as good as I ever could dream of being. He also sneaks me into the Ministry archives quite a bit, which is how I got my hands on this."

He reached into that damned ratty bag of his and took out a leather journal.

"It belonged to Regulus," Sirius said coolly. "When they emptied his Gringotts vault, it all went to Ministry storage—in the Sacred 28 Fonds. And this is so, so juicy to tell you—but you raised two good men, against your best efforts."

Sirius ran his fingers over the journal's spine.

"It's all written in code of course. I suppose Regulus learned enough from this damned nightmare of a house to know how to hide. But I have all the time in the world, you know, and I remember my brother. All that Cursebreaker training helped me break his code, too. And it turns out that in the end your beautiful, exemplary, prodigal second son was just as much an embarrassment as I was. He didn't disappear in an Order hit, Mother dearest. He died hunting a Horcrux. He was right under your precious Dark Lord's nose when he realized who and what he was, when he turned back to the light and laid down his life to kill a piece of that twisted man's twisted fucking soul."

Sirius's throat caught as he said it, for a moment.

"Anyways, I don't know… I don't know everything about it, obviously. Not even Kreacher did, although it did give the old elf and I something to bond about. I don't know if this makes up for whatever else he did while he was a Death Eater. But it does mean I was lying when I said I only had the one Order of Merlin First Class on my mantle—because I've got his, too. And that one I polish every day."

Sirius grinned wickedly. She simply narrowed her eyes and let the bile accumulate in her throat.

"You were a shite person and a shite parent, but you weren't shite enough to make two hateful little bigots in your image. No matter how hard you tried."

Walburga did not know what she would say to this, even if she could open her mouth. But she did know that if she could spit poison at Sirius, she would not hesitate. She would set this house on fire if he was in it, at this point.

"Anyways, I suppose that's why I wanted to swing by," Sirius shrugged. "Because you were such a poor example of a parent and now I—wait, I haven't even told you what I'm proudest of. What the absolute best thing to happen to me, now or ever, was."

He fished his wallet out of the bag this time and retrieved a small photograph of a little girl, no more than three, her hair braided down against her scalp with colourful, plastic beads dangling on the end. She was wearing yellow rain boots, tiny Quidditch robes that were still too big for her, and blowing bubbles at the camera. She was making herself laugh as she did, so she ran out of breath and had to try blowing the bubbles more than once—which only made her laugh harder…

Sirius only showed her the picture for a moment, turning it back towards himself so he looked down and smiled.

"Her name is Celeste," he said fondly. "Celeste Aaliyah Shacklebolt—yeah, that's right, your precious and noble name dies with me, I would never do something like that to this little girl. She's… if I could bottle up the amount of happiness she sheds in a single second and sell it on Diagon Alley, the world would be a phenomenal place. It's incredible. She's incredible. I would go through all the bullshit you and the world put me through again if I knew it led to her."

Sirius looked up from the picture.

"I didn't come here to tell you this because you deserve to know anything. " he said. "I'm telling you this so I can get it out of my system, once and for all, and focus on being better than you ever were—knowing that you know how good I look without you. Because I don't have time to be bitter and petty, I have a whole life to live and a family to love in spite of you. You gave me so much baggage for so long, but I'm going to be busy now so I thought I'd give you something to carry."

He tucked the photograph in his wallet with care and slipped it in his back pocket.

"Anyways," Sirius said, clearing his throat. "I'm not sure when that spell I made up will wear off, but presumably it will. Or maybe it won't. Either way, see you in hell, mother."

And with that, her idiot son left her hanging.

WC: 2094