The first day of Sirius's suspension wasn't too bad, primarily because he slept through the entire thing.

He likely would have slept through a good portion of the second morning too, except that his mother sent Kreacher to wake him just before breakfast. He considered ignoring the summons and rolling over for more sleep, but his stomach revolted at the idea. Given that it was the first time in more than a week that he'd had any sort of appetite, it did not take much more than a grumble to get him up and moving.

He was still bleary eyed when he finally sat down next to his mother in an unbuttoned robe and wild hair that he had only half run his fingers through. The adults seemed content not to mention his appearance, although his mother looked like she'd been put off her breakfast at the sight of him. He'd piled enough onto his plate to feed any two growing teenage boys by the time his father broke the silence.

"What are you planning to do today, Sirius? Surely you have a lot of schoolwork?"

Sirius swallowed his mouthful of sausage. "No. You heard McGonagall—I'll get zeroes for anything due while I'm out of school this week."

"That is no excuse not to do the work," interjected Arcturus, not bothering to mask how unhappy he was. Somehow his posture was even more erect than usual, and the flash of his eyes made Sirius sit up even straighter by reflex. "You may not get marks for the work, but the material will still be on your OWLs."

It took Sirius several seconds to get over his surprise that his grandfather had voluntarily spoken to him at all, it had been so long since he had done it. After a slight pause, he managed to say, "I'm ahead in all of my classes."

"Then it sounds like you will have plenty of time for revision."

"It's Sunday," Sirius bit out through clenched teeth.

Arcturus's expressive gray eyes seemed to darken a shade as he and his grandson glared at one another over the top of Walburga's head. Sirius was sure that his own eyes, which he had inherited from the man himself, held an identical glint of stubborn fury.

"And if you were at school where you belong," his grandfather began with deliberate, measured syllables, but couldn't seem to keep his voice from rising with every word, "then you could spend your Sunday lazing about or, no doubt, being led into trouble by your filthy friends. But you are not at school, because you got suspended."

Sirius shrugged carelessly. "Honestly, I'm usually the one leading them into trouble…."

"Sirius!" cried his mother. From her tone of voice alone he would have guessed that she was angry, but from the way her fingers were bruising his thigh and her fingernails were beginning to dig into his skin through his well-made trousers, he knew that she was afraid of her father-in-law's reaction.

"Father, we have already discussed this with Sirius," broke in Orion. He paused briefly to glance at Walburga and Sirius from across the table, before meeting his father's glare. "I'll thank you to leave our son to us."

"I have left your son to you for sixteen years! I have barely interfered! Look how well that's turned out!"

Sirius could not hold back a snort at that notion that his grandfather had ever once been able to keep his nose out of anything to do with him, not that he tried particularly hard to keep it in. Arcturus threw out his arm in a broad, sweeping motion in Sirius's general direction, as if Sirius had just proved his point.

"This is just a minor incident—" began Orion, but he was rendered speechless when, in a completely uncharacteristic display, his father slammed his fist down on the oak table so forcefully that all their heavy silver dishes clanked and thudded against the wood.

"HE IS OUT OF CONTROL!" roared Arcturus.

The last time Sirius had seen his grandfather so out of sorts, he had been trying to hold the German dueling instructor's ribcage together with his bare hands. Now, as then, Sirius found that all he could muster was a cool, bored stare as Arcturus managed to rein in his temper almost as quickly as he had lost it in the first place.

Walburga let out a little hmph and lifted her chin. "I assure you, there is nothing wrong with my son."

His grandfather's mouth worked unpleasantly for several seconds as he pondered a response, but, with apparent effort, he turned his steely gaze back onto Orion.

"And have you spoken to your son about his little Mudblood trollop?"

"She's nothing, just a bit of fun," replied Orion before Sirius had a chance to say anything. He met Sirius's startled look with a worried expression of his own. "Sirius told me about her ages ago."

"You knew about her!" cried Arcturus in shock.

"How do you know about her?" Sirius returned.

The patriarch reached into the inner pocket of his robe and produced a small stack of parchment, which he held gingerly between the tips of two meticulously manicured fingernails, as if he had dug them out of a trash heap.

"Are those..." Sirius began, but it was clear what they were. Sirius recognized Janice's large, loopy handwriting even from several seats down the table, and even if had not recognized her handwriting he still would have known the first letter was from Janice since she was the only person who wrote to him on lavender colored parchment. He shut his eyes briefly to gather himself, trying desperately to employ every trick his uncle had taught him during their Occulumency lessons. "You read my mail? You had no right!"

"You are child!" proclaimed Arcturus. "You have no rights!"

Sirius's pulse pounded heavily behind his eardrums. "Give them to me."

"No." Arcturus drew out the word slowly and deliberately, and from the look on his face Sirius could tell that he was enjoying exercising that little bit of control.

Before he had consciously thought it through (although, to be fair, even if he had thought it through, he still would have done it), Sirius had risen from his chair and wandlessly, wordlessly summoned the letters. They flew out of Arcturus's loose grasp and into Sirius's hand with a wild flair of magic that rattled Sirius's silverware off his plate and made the hair on his arms stand on end.

Arcturus leapt from his seat with his wand drawn, and although Sirius stood proudly and seemingly unafraid, facing his grandfather without drawing his own wand, his parents had both drawn theirs. Sirius could see Orion's arm shaking slightly, but from the way he was assessing his father with cool determination Sirius never would have guessed he was frightened if he had not noticed the trembling. Walburga, for her part, had angled her body in front of Sirius's, though since Sirius's head and shoulders towered over hers and he was at least half again as wide as she was, he really wasn't sure what good she thought it would do.

She pointed her wand directly at her father-in-law and declared, "I will kill you. I swear on our forefathers: if you harm one hair on his head, I will kill you."

Arcturus had all the appearance of an angry hippogriff pawing at the ground, unsure of which insult it wanted to avenge first.

"You would defend his behavior?" he demanded of Walburga. "You?"

She tossed her head defiantly, flicking a few shining curls out of her face with practiced ease. "What is there to defend? He knows that he ought not to have lost his temper in front of witnesses, but nobody cares if he cursed some filthy little Mudblood. He cursed that Rosier boy when he was a first year and you rewarded him with a dueling instructor for that, and Rosier is a pure-blood, despite where his mother comes from."

"He is in a relationship with a Mudblood!" cried Arcturus, as if he were trying to explain something to a particularly stupid infant.

"She isn't a Mudblood," Sirius informed the room, but no one seemed to be listening.

"What if he is? He is a healthy, handsome teenage boy. Who else would he dally with? Pure-blood girls?" Walburga let out a little sniff full of disdain, though Sirius wasn't sure whether it was directed more at Arcturus or at himself. "I am not ignorant of such things."

If his grandfather were this angry about his relationship with Janice, Sirius could only imagine how angry he would be if Sirius were to say that he had spent all his free time up until recently trying to convince Rabastan Lestrange to fuck him up the ass. The thought of saying so aloud swirled around his brain for a few moments before he wisely let it go—his mother might look the other way about him shagging some girl, but she certainly wouldn't look the other way at him being interest in men, and Sirius was not even sure how his father would react.

Arcturus snorted. "He is wild, insubordinate, hot-headed—"

"In other words, he's a Gryffindor," put in Orion with a sardonic roll of his eyes.

"It is behavior unbecoming of a Black!"

"Oh, and what's your other option? Regulus?" Sirius laughed, though the sound that emerged from his throat was rather more a growl than a laugh and was utterly devoid of any of his usual good humor. He could feel the tension in his neck and shoulders and blood was still whooshing in his ears. "Is this still about the whole Death Eater thing? Because between the two of us, you do realize that I'm not the brother who is so eager to please everyone that he'd likely to go along with whatever his friends want? I am also not the one who literally spends all of my time at school surrounded by future Death Eaters."

The adults had all swiveled their heads to look at him, as if in their argument with each other they had momentarily forgotten that he was standing there.

Inspiration and a powerful desire for vengeance came over him then. He had protected his cousins and Rabastan before, on that awful afternoon when Arcturus had dismissed Dolohov and threatened to disown Sirius if he ever became a Death Eater. He had been afraid that if his grandfather was willing to disown the heir of his house over it (or at least to threaten that he would), then he certainly would have been willing to stop Sirius from seeing Bellatrix or Rabastan if he knew they were already Death Eaters. And he had desperately wanted to keep seeing them, especially Rabastan.

But now... What reason did he have to protect them now, or to want to see them? He had absolutely none. Not now. Not anymore.

In fact, he had a rather powerful motivation to want to hurt them all at least as much as they had hurt him.

"Bellatrix is a Death Eater," he announced calmly, staring directly into his grandfather's eyes, which widened in disbelief. "She's got that ugly mark on her arm and everything. Rodolphus too, and Rabastan, and of course Lucius and Mr. Lestrange and Mr. Malfoy. Narcissa isn't a Death Eater as far as I know, but she is well aware that her sister and future husband are."

"What?" Arcturus breathed out, barely above a whisper.

Walburga was staring at Sirius with a look of horror painted across her usually pristine face, and in her surprise she had let her arm fall so that her wand was aimed rather more at Arcturus's water goblet than at his chest.

"Yeah, but the best part is that Bellatrix, Rodolphus, and Rabastan's job is to recruit younger kids to be Death Eaters," Sirius continued gleefully. The slack, sick expression on his grandfather's face was for Sirius like air to a drowning man, so, with reckless abandon, he added, "That's what all of their parties have been about. You know, the parties Regulus and I attended all summer? I bet my filthy Gryffindor friends and Mudblood girlfriend are starting to look pretty good to you now, huh?"

This speech was met with absolute silence, and his question went unanswered. Sirius had counted to eleven before finally, with stiff movements, as if it took great effort for him to do so, Arcturus turned and stalked toward the door. Just before he rounded the corner and disappeared out of sight, he turned back and swept his gaze over all of them, pausing to assess Sirius with a cold, flinty stare before lifting his chin and pinning his son with an angry look.

"You mark my words," he said in a low, stony voice. "If you do not take him in hand, that boy will ruin this family. You know what you have to do… and if you don't do it, I will."

Sirius had no idea what his grandfather meant, nor did he particularly care. His father had gone sickly gray, but Sirius hardly noticed.

He had a few more glorious seconds to revel in the chaos he had caused. Then, from next to him, in a tone utterly devoid of the usual warmth she used towards Sirius, his mother called for her house-elf.

"Kreacher!" she cried. The elf had materialized into existence next to her before she had finished saying his entire name. "Take Sirius to his room."

Sirius turned in surprise.

"What? I'm being punished for telling the truth now?" he demanded as he side-stepped the house-elf and jerked his arm away from its grasping hands.

Other than a flash of her nearly black eyes, Walburga did not respond, and the next moment Kreacher managed to pinch a bit of Sirius's skin between his spindly fingers with surprising strength. Between one gut-lurching moment and the next, Sirius went from glaring at the side of his mother's face to blinking at his still unmade bed.

Sirius hissed out a belated breath and shook his arm violently to dislodge Kreacher's fingers. He would certainly have a bruise, and he would be surprised if the little beast had not drawn blood even through his thick cashmere robe. He narrowed his eyes at the house-elf, who was watching him with ghoulish satisfaction.

"You could at least fetch my plate," said Sirius, whose mostly empty stomach unpleasantly reminded him that he had only managed a few bites at the table.

"Kreacher won't," the elf replied, a slight flush suffusing his unnaturally pale skin. "The young master upset my mistress, he did, and Kreacher's mistress never said that Kreacher had to bring the ungrateful brat any food."

"I doubt that my mother wants me to go hun—" But the house-elf popped out of the room before he could finish.

"Fantastic," Sirius addressed his room at large. "Just brilliant."

His guts twisted painfully, but he knew that it would not do any good to call the house-elf back or try to leave his bedroom. With a sigh, he threw himself backwards onto his bed and sorted through the stack of mail that was still clutched in his hand. The letters were creased from being crushed between Sirius's fingers, but he might as well see what all the fuss had been about. Janice had scented her lavender parchment with a hint of the perfume she always wore, and she had written with deep pink ink and drawn little hearts instead of dots over the I's in his name. He couldn't help a smirk at the thought of his uptight grandfather reading such a letter.

Dear Sirius,

I heard about what happened when I came down to breakfast this morning. The whole school is talking about it. You haven't really been expelled, have you? Nobody in Gryffindor seems to know, not even your friends. Remus said that you left with Professor McGonagall and never came back, but I'm sure that they would not expel you just for a little curse. You're the top of our year in nearly every class!

Please write back as soon as you can so I don't keep worrying!

How are you? I'm sorry—I should have asked that first thing. Are your parents very angry? Is it awful?

I bought the books as your birthday present, but I think you will enjoy them more while you're stuck at home. You will be back by your birthday, won't you? The next Hogsmeade visit is the day after. I have been planning something special for you.

I have to finish this letter now or I won't make it to the owlery before class. Please write back soon!

All my love,

Janice

Sirius sighed and let his head flop gracelessly back onto his pillow, the letter falling from his fingers to land haphazardly across his chest. Based on his grandfather's reaction, Sirius had expected something at least vaguely pornographic. Though now that he gave the matter more thought, he supposed that his grandfather would not be upset at all about him having sex with a Mudblood. After all, hadn't the man always told him that he was not to sleep with pure-blood girls? No, what bothered Arcturus must be the fact, evident in Janice's letter, that he was in an actual relationship with a supposed Muggle-born.

As for the books Janice had apparently sent with her owl, he could only presume that Arcturus had taken them. If they were Muggle fantasy books or books about Muggle technology, as the books Janice gave him often were, then that was probably why his grandfather assumed Janice had Muggle parents.

James, Remus, and Peter had written a joint letter asking him what had happened. The letter was really from Remus, although he had allowed the other two boys to sign their names at the bottom. Sirius was sure that James was too morose about their inevitable loss to Slytherin to care overmuch whether his best friend had actually been expelled, and Peter likely saw no reason to write separately if Remus had already written him.

He had also received a short note from Evan Rosier.

Sirius,

I heard that you got sent home last night. That red-headed Mudblood was telling Snape that you have probably been expelled, but I doubt that. Let me know what I should do about our project.

Hope you're alright!

Evan

It was easy to reply to his friends' and Evan's letters. He wrote back to tell them that he had only been suspended for the week and would tell them more when he was back at school. To Evan he added that he would be receiving a zero for their Arithmancy presentation on Wednesday morning, but the other boy should apply to Peter or Remus (when James was nowhere around) to retrieve Sirius's half of their project out of his trunk and should write to him directly if there were any last-minute problems.

Sirius had more difficulty responding to his girlfriend, as he had to break it to her that he was banned from participating in Hogsmeade visits for the rest of the school year and also that his grandfather had confiscated the birthday present she had sent him. Still, it was better for him to tell her now, by letter, when he was going to be far away for another week and she'd have time to process the news and calm down before he saw her face to face.

Gryffindors may be known for bravery and recklessness, but Sirius was not stupid.

For the next few days Walburga did not seem at all inclined to let Sirius leave his bedroom, let alone the house. Kreacher delivered his meals to his room, always plates piled high with the foods the elf knew Sirius liked the least, and Sirius was not even allowed to go to the library to choose something new to read. The only things he could do were practice the Dark Arts, his dueling forms, and his Animagus transformation.

As the days passed by, he became aware of a persistent tug in his chest that he had not even realized had been there before. He only noticed it at that point because the more Dark magic he cast, the less persistent the feeling became. His skin had felt tight and uncomfortable for weeks now, but he realized that he had not been aware of exactly how much the lack of regularly casting Dark spells had been affecting him. Maybe some of his reactions recently—his short temper, in particular—had been because he was suffering from Dark magic withdrawals.

In any case, after just a few days of practice, he felt better than he had in months.

This newfound relaxation also seemed to help immensely with his meditation for the Animagus transformation. Of course, the fact that he had nothing to do all day but sit in his bedroom also helped a lot—it was pretty easy to meditate when he didn't have classes, homework, friends, rivals, pranks, girlfriends, and Quidditch to take up any of his headspace.

On Tuesday morning, he finally received a letter from James, who had not even bothered with salutations or Sirius's name but just went right into it.

290 to 160. It was terrible. We only had 160 because I caught the Snitch. Otherwise it'd have been 440 to 10. Euan only blocked two goals, and I'm pretty sure those were both accidents.

Robards is milking this for all it's worth—he went around for days acting like his throat was too raw to handle solid foods. Ridiculous.

What time will you get back on Saturday?

James

Sirius knew that it was not, in fact, ridiculous that Robards had been complaining for days after Sirius had attacked him. That was a nasty little curse he had used, one he had found in a really old book in the library at Grimmauld Place.

Of course, there was no way he was going to tell James that. James had a very thin, blurry line in his mind between what he considered good fun and what he considered Definitely Evil Dark Magic. Sirius had not yet managed to discern any sort of rhyme or reason in how James decided what was harmless tomfoolery and what was malicious and evil. But if James had decided that this particular curse was fair game, then Sirius was not going to correct him.

The next morning, he received a panicked owl from Iris Hornby. She had clearly realized only that morning that Sirius had done all the work on their Ancient Runes project by himself while she tried to flirt with him, and that she only had a vague idea what he had done to their amulet and no earthly clue how he had done it. Sirius took as much pleasure as he could, which was rather a lot, in sending the owl away without any reply at all.

He also received an owl from Bellatrix. It was the ninth one he had received in three days, after his mother had apparently gone to tea with her nieces and told them all about what Sirius had told Arcturus. Predictably, each letter was less articulate and more measurably insane than the last. From what Sirius could tell, his cousin was still angry with him for being angry with her that she had interfered in his relationship with Rabastan, she was incensed that he had told Arcturus the truth about her activities for the Dark Lord, and above all she was enraged that he had not responded to any of her previous owls to acknowledge how furious she was.

Sirius carelessly folded her latest letter in half and scrawled a messy reply on the back.

Dear Bellatrix,

Kindly go fuck yourself.

Sirius

At that point he felt like he could not stand another hour in his room at Grimmauld Place. Besides, no doubt Bellatrix would tell his mother all about his response to her owl, obviously leaving out all the raving mad letters she had sent to provoke him, and Sirius had absolutely no intention of being there when Walburga got home.

Grandfather Arcturus was away for the day, as the Wizengamot was in session. His father was away on a business trip. (Sirius presumed that he had not been at all sorry to go, as he had not even said goodbye before leaving.) And his mother always left shortly after breakfast to tend to some wedding related thing or other, though Sirius had no idea what sort of planning they could possibly still find to do every day this close to the wedding, when they had been planning for months by now.

All he had to do was get past his locked door. Whatever Kreacher had done, none of the Unlocking Charms Sirius knew had any effect against it. Of course, that didn't keep Sirius from blasting the doorknob clear through the door, where it landed in the hallway with a heavy thunk, leaving an empty hole and a bunch of splinters in its place.

The house-elf was the only remaining obstacle to freedom, and unfortunately he was not out of the house like Sirius had hoped. He appeared at the top of the stairs right in front of where the heads of the Blacks' former house-elves were mounted to the wall.

"My mistress ordered Master Sirius to stay in his room! What is he doing out here?"

Kreacher seemed to be caught somewhere between incredulity and indignation that Sirius (or anyone, for that matter) would think of disobeying Walburga. Sirius heaved a sigh as he peered over Kreacher's head at the front door, which tempted him from the bottom of the landing.

"I'm going out," he told his mother's servant, and Kreacher's bulbous nose turned red with fury. "You can't do anything to stop me, so you might as well get out of the way."

"Oh, yes Kreacher can," declared the elf. He wrapped his spindly fingers around Sirius's wrist. "Kreacher can take the unruly brat back to his room where he belongs!"

"Let go!" cried Sirius as he shook his arm to dislodge the elf. "Mother only ordered you to take me to my room the one time! You don't have permission to manhandle me whenever you like!"

The elf had his enormous ears pressed back against his head like an angry dog, and he grit his teeth against Sirius's violent shakes and brought up his hand to snap his fingers. Sirius wrapped his free hand around Kreacher's and squeezed as hard as he could to prevent the elf from Apparating them or using any other magic. The house-elf only came up to Sirius's waist, but he was deceptively strong. They wrestled for several long seconds, with Sirius demanding that Kreacher let him go and Kreacher demanding that he return to his room, until finally Sirius resorted to picking him up completely off the floor and turned to slam him into the wall.

Kreacher's skull bounced off the wall right next to his mother's shrunken head. He let out a miserable howl, but Sirius yanked him forward and then hurled him back up against the wall again, and again, until he fell silent.

"Fuck." Sirius let Kreacher's limp body fall face-up onto the thick carpet of the landing. For good measure, he repeated, "Fuck."

Sirius was determined that he was never going to tell anyone about this, ever. It was too humiliating.

The portrait of Great Great Great Grandfather Rigel tugged sharply on his frilly green and silver collar and glared imperiously down at Sirius. "Fisticuffs with a house-elf? You ought to have just taken out your wand and killed the filth for putting his hands on you."

"He ought not to have disobeyed his mother in the first place!" piped up Great Aunt Elladora.

All the portraits lining the grand stairway felt that they needed to have their say, and Sirius was more than happy to take the stairs down two at a time to escape the cacophony of voices. A few of his ancestors followed him down the stairs, running through portraits and pushing and shoving at one another trying to get a better position, but fortunately they could not follow him through the Floo.

Sirius tried to enjoy his day in Diagon Alley, but his black mood was definitely not improved by the sidelong glances and even, not infrequently, open stares he got from other shoppers. This was one of those times when he wished that either his family were less recognizable or that the population of the wizarding world were larger, so there would not be so many people who recognized him on sight and wondered why he was not in school.

By the time he had made his way through a few shops and bought two scoops of his favorite Earl Gray and lavender ice cream, he was beyond tired of Diagon Alley. He made a quick stop by Gringotts and then wasted no more time shouldering his way through the crowds and through the front door of the Leaky Cauldron, immediately heading in the opposite direction from Alphard and Dolohov's house—he loved them both (well, maybe love was a bit of a stretch towards Dolohov, but he definitely intensely liked the man), but today he just wanted to be alone.

And, above all, anonymous.

Sirius took a right at the end of the block rather than wait to cross the street, then meandered his way down the sidewalk ever further away from Charring Cross Road. He passed a couple of restaurants and storefronts that he had no interest in visiting—a luggage shop, a comic book store, what appeared to be a small art gallery—before he crossed the street in the direction of the pedestrian signal at the next intersection.

He was determined to get himself good and lost in Muggle London. Choosing which way to go based entirely on the flow of traffic seemed as good an option as any.

Muggle London was as exciting and full of new sights as it ever seemed to be, no matter how many times he had made the trip to his uncle's house over the last couple of summers. Muggles were fascinating and ingenious creatures, and Sirius found himself going into a shop that sold sleek leather wristwatches, one that displayed a dazzling array of something called electric guitars, and another full of furniture in ugly patterns and bizarre shades of orange and green that Sirius believed were a joke until the rather sensitive woman who seemed to be in charge ushered him back out the door.

It turned out that Muggles also had some rather useful ideas, such as the pens and neatly bound notebooks he found in an upscale stationary store tucked away in the middle of a narrow street of redbrick buildings. Although the proprietor seemed initially reluctant to have a teenager in his store, Sirius's enthusiasm and pointed questions about ink flow and different types of nibs quickly won him over.

He appeared momentarily skeptical when Sirius expressed his intent to purchase a glossy, deep maroon pen with gold-plated fastenings and asked whether he could try it. However, after the man blinked rapidly several times, he let his gaze drop to more deliberately examine the quality of Sirius's clothes, and of course he could not fail to notice the elaborate lion's head ring on Sirius's right hand, which quite obviously had to have been custom commissioned and had two large rubies for eyes.

Sirius left the shop with the pen and a handsome leatherbound notebook to match and with his pocket £300 lighter.

He soon found himself in a small park, with close cut lawns and flowerbeds that were rather bare at the moment but presumably pleasant during other seasons throughout the year. He took a seat on a bench near the entrance, where he had an unobstructed view of both the street and the path bisecting the park, and watched the Muggles walk by: professionals in funny, drab-colored suits, rushing to and fro; mothers pushing prams; young men near Sirius's age kicking balls around on any available bit of grass; and, to Sirius's immense gratification, girls in skirts so ridiculously short that he could see their legs clear up to the tops of their thighs.

When he finally got home, the entry hall was dark, which was more than a little unusual. His mother usually insisted that Kreacher keep the massive chandelier lit between dusk and when she retired to her bedroom, even though Grandfather Arcturus thought the expense was frivolous and ridiculous.

He had his foot on the first step when the door to the ground floor drawing room opened to reveal Walburga.

"Sirius." She said his name so peculiarly, as if she were disappointed to see him and trying to hide it, that Sirius was immediately on edge. "We expected you through the Floo."

He had not held out an enormous amount of hope that he would be able to sneak his purchases up to his room before being waylaid by his mother, but he had held out some hope.

"Of course, Mother. Let me just take my bags to my bedroom and I—"

"What is that? I don't recognize the name," she snapped at the sight of the shopping bag in his hand. "You were in Muggle London!"

She could not possibly have sounded any more disgusted had she been accusing him of performing fellatio on a goblin. Her calm, if disappointed, façade had disappeared between one breath and the next, and Sirius felt it best to stay silent and allow her to say whatever it was she wanted to say without interruption. She, being Walburga Black, quickly obliged.

"What is wrong with you? You got suspended from school, snuck out of the house, attacked my house-elf, went to Muggle London… and that note you wrote to your poor cousin… I, I feel like I do not even know you anymore!"

Sirius sincerely wondered how Bellatrix would react to know that she ranked lower on his mother's list of grievances than Kreacher.

Mother and son stared at one another through the shadows. The glow of light from the open door behind her might have caused Walburga to resemble a fairy or perhaps an angel from Muggle mythology, but her delicate features were arranged into such an ugly expression that she could not have been described as beautiful at all. Finally, after several tortuous seconds, she seemed to come to some sort of decision, because her face smoothed out and she took a deep breath.

"Come into the drawing room, Sirius," she ordered, then spun on her heel and strode back in without waiting to see if he would comply.

Sirius's first and strongest instinct was to turn around and run back out of the house the way he had come in, but he knew that he could not avoid the confrontation forever. He might as well get it over with now before his parents managed to get even more upset. He managed to walk across the narrow hallway and enter the drawing room without even dragging his feet. He came up short, right inside the door, at the sight of his mother standing alone next to the new sofa. He had thought that his father had returned and would be waiting for him inside, that both of his parents had been waiting for him to come home so they could read him the riot act over what he had written to Bellatrix.

"What-?" he began, but his mother was not paying attention to him. She was staring at something over his shoulder.

Sirius wheeled around just as his grandfather closed the door behind them with a solid click.

"Is it true?" He stepped out of the shadows and right into Sirius's personal space, leaning forward so that their faces were inches apart. Sirius was so taken aback by this, and by the wild, enraged gleam of his grandfather's dark eyes, that it took everything he had not to take a step backward and he very nearly missed what Arcturus said next. "You and the Lestrange boy. Is it true?"

Sirius's stomach plummeted to the floor. He barely managed to croak out a weak, "What?"

"IS IT TRUE?" roared Arcturus, spittle flying from his mouth and misting across Sirius's face.

All the air had been sucked out of the room. In the five—or maybe it was fifteen, or fifty—seconds that Sirius stood gaping at his grandfather, the man seemed to lose all semblance of patience. He lunged forward and grabbed hold of Sirius's shoulders with bruising force. They were virtually the same height, but Arcturus was a full-grown man and Sirius was disadvantaged by the lithe, still-developing muscles of youth. They grappled for a moment, with Arcturus's fingers digging into the meat of Sirius's shoulders and one of his thumbs painfully slipping beneath his collarbone, before Sirius managed to duck out of his grandfather's grasp and spin away.

For one brief, euphoric moment Sirius silently thanked Jack Thomas, the Quidditch captain prior to James, for introducing him to the world of Muggle exercise, and Antonin Dolohov for training Sirius to dodge curses by throwing a bunch of nasty ones at him until he learned to get out of the way.

Then his legs were pinned together from knee to ankle, and his arms were pinned at his sides, and he toppled over. His elbow hit the ground first, the thick, padded rug that covered the drawing room floor doing very little to stop his arm from snapping beneath his weight, and his head bounced painfully off the floor a moment later.

He was dazed, or perhaps too much in shock, to immediately cry out.

Then his mother's clear "Mobilicorpus" wrenched him upright a few seconds later, and he howled out at both the physical pain and the deep, sick sense of betrayal.

Hadn't his mother said only days ago that if Arcturus hurt Sirius she would kill him?

It only took one look at the fervent, revolted look on her face for Sirius to understand that she'd said that before someone had told her that her son was a sexual deviant.

She put him in one of the stiff, Victorian-style chairs that flanked the fireplace, and his grandfather was immediately there again. Sirius gritted his teeth together defiantly and managed something of a growl instead of the whimper that threatened to escape, but he was too weak to resist when Arcturus seized him around the throat and forced his head upwards. The older man squeezed until Sirius's eyes involuntarily popped open.

"Legilimens."

Sirius was not the best Occulumens around. He was a superior with his wand work and spellcasting, the absolute top of his class in practical work in Transfiguration, virtually tied with Snape in Defense Against the Dark Arts, and second only to Lily Evans in Charms. When it came to bookwork and written exams he was always at or near the top in all his classes, except Potions (which he couldn't be arsed about). Dolohov had assured him that he was a decent duelist and might grow into a good one, which translated from Dolohov-speak to English meant that he was a better-than-good duelist and had the potential to be a great one. He was even a pretty good flier and Catcher, though certainly not good enough to go professional.

But none of his myriad talents lay in the realm of mind magics, such as Occulumency and the meditation required for the Animagus transformation. He could probably have kept his grandfather from stumbling across the information about Rabastan in his mind if his grandfather had not known to look for it, but he had absolutely no hope of keeping Arcturus from seeing what the man was directly, intentionally looking to find.

Sirius watched as though he were looking at a magical painting as Rabastan backed him into the wall of a narrow back alley in Hogsmeade.

"It's an intimate thing, you know, letting somebody use your wand. Usually only done between close family and lovers," he heard Rabastan say to him as the other boy leaned down close to his face. "Why would you have thought to come to me? Are you going to convince me the same way you convinced the girl?"

Although he knew what happened next, it was fascinating to be able to view the alarmed, wide-eyed expression on his own face as an observer before Rabastan crashed their mouths together.

Then the world tilted on its axis and suddenly he saw his memory-self pressed against yet another dirty brick wall, clutching his fingers in Rabastan's hair as they shared a salacious kiss, their dancing tongues both clearly visible in Sirius's mouth. That was a bit too much for Sirius to see, and he felt his physical body jerk desperately against his restraints as he mentally tried to resist his grandfather's probing. Unfortunately, his relatively subpar Occulumency skills compared to Arcturus's skill in Legilimency, combined with the emotional turmoil of his mother's betrayal and having to relive his relationship with his ex-friend, made it impossible for him to get his grandfather out of his head.

He desperately, wildly tried to think of something else—anything else—but he failed, and Arcturus relentlessly followed Sirius's train of thought until they were both watching Sirius writhe on rumpled, gray silk sheets as Rabastan wrapped his large hand around the base of Sirius's cock and eagerly sucked the other half into his mouth.

"STOP IT!" roared Sirius. He was focusing on the intricate carvings on the bedpost rather than looking at the spectacle in front of him, although he could not shut out the little whimpers and moans he heard himself making. "GET OUT OF MY HEAD! GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!"

There was no way that this tactic could actually force such a skilled Legilimens as Arcturus out of his head. However, apparently his grandfather had seen enough anyway, for the next second Sirius found himself thrown backwards into the stiff chair, his head and arm both throbbing in equal measure, as the man stared at him with a look of such revulsion and rage that Sirius would have felt afraid if he had more than a few seconds to process it.

"No," the man uttered as he straightened and took two steps back. "No! Crucio!"

Sirius had fallen into a fire, and his skin was being burned off his bones. If he survived, he would surely be a charred lump of disfigured flesh and would never have to worry about who he wanted to shag ever again... He would be lucky to survive, if by some miracle his head did not explode... He could not remember who he was or where he was or why he was... Death would be a sweet, welcome relief.

The pain abruptly ended and left him panting for much needed breath. His throat was raw from screaming.

"That's enough!" The voice pierced his consciousness, high and sharp and angry. "An Unforgivable, Arcturus?"

"It is all true. Everything Bellatrix said is true," returned another voice, this one much deeper and just as angry.

There was a pause, and Sirius managed to crack one of his eyes open just enough to see his mother's pinched face and his grandfather's stony countenance both peering at him. Walburga's mouth twisted unpleasantly, until she turned away from him and Sirius couldn't see anything except her stiff back and tense shoulders.

"We cannot very well reform the boy using the Cruciatus Curse," she said. Her voice was becoming harder for Sirius to make out over the pounding in his skull as she walked to the other side of the room. "We will betroth him to a respectable girl. They will be made to marry as soon as he finishes Hogwarts."

"No…" Sirius moaned out once he finally managed to get his throat to work. It hurt to verbalize even that much, but it was nothing to what he had just experienced. "I won't…"

He was not sure what spell his mother hit him with, whether she had meant to do it or was just so exceedingly angry that she had overpowered whatever she had intended to do, but the blow to his chest knocked the rest of the air out of him. He and the chair he was sitting in skidded across the floor several inches until the chair leg snagged on the edge of the rug and the momentum sent him toppling sideways. Sirius had no way to catch himself with his arms bound. His ribs smashed against the wooden arm of the chair, and he was not able to keep his head from bouncing off the floor a second time.

As if nothing had happened, Walburga continued, "That worked for Orion. We will have to monitor him constantly, of course."

Arcturus snorted and turned to face his daughter-in-law. "My son believed himself to be in love with a Half-blood trollop, which was easy enough to sort out with a few bouts of the Cruciatus Curse and a public engagement to you. Your son is a pervert, which is not as easily fixed, especially not if you refuse to let me do what needs to be done."

Sirius inched towards the fireplace. It was only a couple of feet away, but it would have been difficult to go that far with his arms and legs bound and the stars dancing in his vision, even if he did not have stabbing pains shooting up his arm and across his ribcage with every movement. The next biggest problem, once he got there, was that the Floo powder was on the mantle, far out of his reach from where he lay prone on the floor. He flopped gracelessly onto his back and glared up at the heavy silver canister, gritting his teeth in concentration.

"Accio Floo canister," he thought frantically. "ACCIO FLOO CANISTER!"

The canister toppled off the mantle and barely avoided landing directly on Sirius's face, instead crashing onto the stone hearth right next to his head. Green powder puffed up in a great, glittery cloud all around him. He hacked and spluttered, then groaned as the movement jostled his ribs.

The noise had also attracted the other occupants of the drawing room, who had been standing at the other end arguing over what to do. Sirius saw the glow of spells in his peripheral vision, and he knew he had no more time.

With a cry of pain and a great, desperate effort, he heaved his upper body into the roaring green flames and choked out his destination.

He legs banged violently against the fireplace at Grimmauld Place as his body was sucked the rest of the way into the chimney, and no matter how much he tried to curl himself into a ball his shoulders and legs kept banging into passing fireplaces. Fortunately, he managed to tuck his chin so close to his chest that he avoided hitting his head—he was pretty sure that he was already quite brain damaged enough from having his head bashed twice against the floor.

He was screaming when he was thrown out of the fireplace to skid across the polished hardwood floor of his uncle's ballroom, right into the middle of a group training session.

Afterward Sirius would never be able to remember all the events clearly, but he would never be able to forget the expressions on the faces around him, even if he did not recognize most of them. He would definitely never be able to erase the memory of the few faces he did recognize—Will Avery's father, Evan Rosier, Sr., the elder Mr. Lestrange who looked so like his younger son.

Above all, he would always remember the way that Dolohov picked him up from the hard floor and cradled his body against the man's powerful chest, and how helpless he had felt being carried from the room like a small child, and the man's normally harsh, cruel voice murmuring, "It's okay, lad. It's okay. I've got you."

Sirius returned to consciousness abruptly, as if waking suddenly from a nightmare. Of course, there was no nightmare, only the devastating reality of what had happened.

"You're in Tony's mother's house," came a smooth voice, and Sirius turned his head to see his uncle sitting in a chair on the other side of the small room with one leg crossed over his knee. "And you're in his childhood bed. I'm quite jealous, you know—when we were kids, I spent quite a lot of time dreaming about being in that bed."

Normally Sirius would have found that funny, or maybe he would have feigned disgust, but in that moment he could not seem to muster up any sort of emotion. He was just numb.

"We brought you here because Arcturus and my sister don't know where Antonin grew up, even if it crossed their minds to look for you with me." Alphard leaned forward to peer more closely at his face and frowned at what he seemed to find there. After a moment, he continued, "It's a good thing we did, too, because Walburga showed up at our house looking for you earlier this morning."

Sirius blinked and swallowed. His throat still hurt. "They know I'm with you?"

"No. If they had honestly thought you were likely to be with me, they would have shown up last night not long after you arrived, but it took my sister until this morning to check. I think they were just looking for you anywhere they thought you might conceivably have gone."

Something clicked in Sirius's mind then, and he croaked, "How long was I asleep?"

"Almost a full twenty-four hours," replied his uncle matter-of-factly. "You probably would have woken sooner, but I gave you a potion to keep you asleep. We had to Vanish and regrow the bones in your arm and one of your legs."

Sirius closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the pillow. He did not want to think about his injuries or what had caused them.

After a few seconds, he asked, "But what about all the people who saw me? Won't they tell my mother or grandfather where I am?"

"No. No, they won't." Sirius opened his eyed again and saw Dolohov standing in the doorway, his muscular frame making the small room seem even smaller. He smiled a savage, feral smile. "I told them I'd remove limbs they wouldn't be able to grow back if they did. That probably won't stop them from mentioning something to Orion about it, whenever they see him, because they're old school chums. But he didn't have anything to do with it, did he?"

Sirius mutely shook his head.

Alphard sighed and leaned back in his chair. "We thought not. I know I did not get the entire story from my sister—honestly, I may have gotten more if I had not completely lost it when she mentioned why they had punished you, as if I, of all people, would understand why she tortured her own son for liking men…. But I got the distinct impression that she is desperate to find you before Orion gets home and she has to explain to him what she did and that they can't find you."

Sirius was not particularly optimistic that his father would have a better reaction that his grandfather and mother had. But the man had always seemed to be against letting Arcturus punish Sirius, so perhaps he would be angry at their methods, if not their reasons.

"I was reckless," he broke the silence, his throat still throbbing in protest with every word, "and impulsive, and I should have known that Bellatrix would tell my mother everything if I pushed her. I was just so angry, and I wanted to hurt her as much as she hurt me…. My grandfather used the Cruciatus Curse on me. Did you know that? And my mother, she"—his voice cracked, and he convulsively swallowed again, though it did nothing to relieve the aching in his throat—"she tied me up for him."

It was not Uncle Alphard who responded, as Sirius had expected it would be. Instead, Dolohov crossed the room in barely two long strides and sat on the edge of the mattress more gingerly than Sirius would have given a man of his size credit for. It was far less awkward when he took one of Sirius's hands between his two much larger ones than Sirius would have thought, if he had ever had any notion that Dolohov would do such a thing until that moment.

"It's not your fault, son." The way Dolohov patted Sirius's hand was completely at odds with the murderous gleam in his eyes. "There is no way you could have told them or that they could have found out that would have justified what they did."

Sirius was not so sure of that, but he was also not willing to argue the point. Or to say much of anything else, given the hot poker somebody had shoved into his windpipe. So he just nodded and turned his head away from the two men, closing his eyes and effectively ending the conversation.

He would have to go back to Hogwarts in a couple of days and face the entire student body and all of his professors as if his entire world had not been yanked from beneath him. He would have to face his future and whether he would ever be able to go home—and whether he would want to go even if he could. He would have to rebuild his mask of arrogant, even cocky self-assurance and act like nothing was wrong, even if really everything was wrong. But he did not have to do any of it right that moment, and right that moment he just wanted to wallow in his misery alone.