Atlas Black had likely been born knowing that his life was not going to be easy.
If rumor were true he'd come out screaming louder than the healers had ever heard a baby scream, as though the cruciatus curse had been coursing through his body the way it had ran through his mother forcing her into early labor.
His grandmother though had said that once she took him in she got him calmed quickly enough. Whether that was out of comfort or fear he wasn't certain. She wasn't the warmest of guardians, but he believed she loved him at the least.
Life wasn't easy though, not for Atlas.
The weight of what had all come in his family prior to his birth loomed heavier than he liked. It all piling upon him in the pressure to do his name and grandmother proud.
The two of them were all that was truly left of the Black name, everyone else who was alive was either married into new names or disinherited and rotting away in a prison.
His own father had failed in the end, to the bitter remorse of Walburga Black. She'd go on occasionally about how proud she and his grandfather had been when Regulus had joined the Death Eaters, a sentiment now shared only in the tightest and most careful of circles, but then their beloved son had faltered, failed, and died a disgrace for it.
She always finished any conversation of his father with a sip of her drink before she'd reach to grip Atlas, usually on the jaw so he had to meet her gaze, and she'd say "I know you will not make the same mistakes." And then she'd loosen her grip, only after she knew he'd heard her fully, and pat his cheek with a smile.
That was the heaviest weight upon him he thinks.
The ghost of his father and the knowledge that he can not falter the same way. He could not falter period. Not if he wanted Walburga happy, wanted her proud.
It was all that had ever been drilled into his mind, that he was the last hope for the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. The last hope for Walburga and her ambitions. He would be the one to carry their family forward, to bring it into success once again.
So it wasn't easy, threading the delicate line that was his life. He could always tell when he was swaying to far, when he was too much like the disappointments that had come before.
The only little bit of respite he got from it all was Hogwarts.
And even that wasn't always easy, it had taken time to be a place that Atlas could at least find some relief from the weight.
Even the first day had been hard, when his name had been called and he'd walked up to the stool and had the old sorting hat placed upon his head. Hearing its voice in his mind as it mused over his thoughts, surface and deep. Trying to decipher which house would fair him best, but he already knew the house he had to be in.
He had sat on that stool though and for a moment the hat began to muse over 'Gryffindor' in his head. A curious lilt to its voice as though it was comparing him to another member of the Black family that Atlas did not want to be compared to.
It was barely a second before Atlas begged it not to subject him to that fate.
Not with the words of warning his grandmother had left him with before he'd boarded the train, not with all the years he'd spent hearing of his uncles downfall starting when this very hat called that very house.
He heard the hats musing and struck with the resounding fear of what would happen to him if it followed it.
But then after a beat of heavy silence it shouted out "Slytherin" to the Great Hall and while Atlas still felt the weight of his grandmother's expectations, that particular weighted fear fell away with the thought that his grandmother would be happy for now.
He'd walked down the steps towards the table of green and silver with his chin raised and back straight in the way his grandmother always reminded him to hold himself.
Settling into Slytherin house wasn't the hardest thing he faced, he already knew most of his housemates as they all seemed to flock in the same high end circles.
He didn't much care for any of them though. That he knew even before he started sharing a common room with them and seeing them on a daily basis.
He especially came to not care for Draco Malfoy, who seemed determined even at eleven to make sure everyone knew just how great he was and how much better he was than everyone.
He was just git really in Atlas's opinion, great or better or not at the end of the day there was only so much Atlas could listen to Draco Malfoy gossip and rag on the rest of the student body and beyond. Especially as the first few years went on and he got more and more into just ragging on Harry Potter.
Atlas didn't know what to think of Harry Potter, he didn't really care to think on the boy at all if he were honest. The only thing he could note was that perhaps the boy had at least a similar level of difficulty to his life. Both of them parentless, and left to carry on some heavy burden. Atlas one of a legacy, and for Harry that of a heroic deed done in the cradle.
Though where Atlas preferred to loom in the background and avoid any unnecessary extra trouble, Harry seems to seek it out. If the fact that at the end of their second year he took it upon himself to find the Chamber of Secrets and fight a basilisk was any evidence.
When Atlas had heard that particular story he'd found himself looking over at the table of Gryffindors, most of them lauding and cheering on their boy-who-lived hero, and wondered what the hat saw in him to even consider that house. Bunch of reckless idiots who have no caution towards their own life.
That was when he'd pretty much decided it'd be best to steer clear of Gryffindors if possible, not that he interacted with them much anyways outside of the few shared classes and even then he didn't seek out interactions with them there either. But his grandmother always said it was good to have principles one stood by. And avoiding Gryffindors to keep the level of trouble down to the base amount Atlas shouldered already seemed like a decent enough principle, one Walburga would approve of as well if she knew he'd thought of it.
It was by the end of his second year that he'd settled into Hogwarts as a respite from the pressures of the House of Black.
He excelled in his classes, both out of enjoyment and the need too lest he upset his grandmother with poor marks. He found the best spots around the school to just be alone, usually with a book, and where people wouldn't happen upon him even if they were looking for him. And he established himself enough amongst his housemates in the ways he needed to.
He ingratiated himself just enough with the proper ones that his grandmother would want him to form friendships with, not that he'd want to call most any of them friends, but also established fairly clearly that he did not care for them beyond that small sociably acceptable necessity.
Meaning when he did sit out in the common room he was rarely bothered.
Not to say that some didn't try on occasion.
Draco seemed to be under the impression that because they were of some relation that he was excluded from Atlas's dislike for considerate social interaction. Often settling himself and his little gang of friends around wherever Atlas has settled in the common room or in the Great Hall.
Pansy Parkinson was ever the social climber, either of her own accord or at the pushing of parents, and the Black family was one of the most notable and eldest of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. She didn't bother with him as much as she did Malfoy clearly smart enough to see where her efforts were best spent most of the time, but she did on occasion try her hand at garnering some amount of attention from him.
Theodore Nott would try on occasion just like Pansy, though unlike Pansy he at least had a better sense of when Atlas was receptive to putting in the performative social activity that was required of him as an heir of a pureblooded family. Perhaps it was because like Atlas, Theo was the sole heir of his family with his father being on the older spectrum and his mother being dead. No other possibility for a spare there.
He wouldn't call any of them friends, but they were at least colleagues. And he would have to interact with them for the rest of his life with them all being in the pureblooded society. Thus not alienating them was a burden he must bear, along with the many others that fell upon his shoulders.
And he was getting better at handling them. Which had made him at least the bare minimum of optimistic as his summer rounded out and he neared the beginning of his third year. He's not truly built for optimism, as it often led to a level of disappointment he just doesn't care for, but he at the least wasn't dreading the year ahead.
Until of course one morning in late August when Kreacher sheepishly came to Walburga while they were sitting in the lounge after dinner, Atlas reading and his grandmother sipping her wine, and informed her that a few Ministry officials and Aurors were at the door.
Walburga had kept a stoney face through the whole of the interview. The only sign of anything emotional being when they first revealed their reasoning for coming to Grimmauld Place, her hand tightening on the stem of her glass to the point where Atlas was surprised it hadn't shattered.
He'd sat, listening and looking over the group as they asked various questions. They didn't even address him, focused upon Walburga as the best source of information in this regard.
It was only when they'd left that Walburga lost her composure. Returning to the lounge after walking them out and immediately grabbing the bottle of the wine she'd been drinking and throwing it hard and brutal into the fireplace. A flash of fire as the alcohol hit flame and the crashing sound of glass shattering filling the room. Atlas had flinched, but kept his face cool as his grandmother steamed and stewed around him.
It wasn't long before she sent him to his room.
But before he'd left the lounge she'd grabbed him, hand tight on his face and grey eyes piercing deep into his. Harsh and cold, and full of years of bitterness. She looked him over, eyes narrowing, and spoke.
"Do not disappoint me."
Atlas Black's life was never easy.
He had so much weighing upon him from the moment he was born. The weight of his father's demise, his families future, his grandmothers pride.
And now, as he heads into his third year at Hogwarts, he has the weight of an uncle who had been disowned at sixteen and arrested at twenty-one looming over him.
Because Sirius Black had broken out of Azkaban.
And Atlas fucking hated him for it.
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