Author's note: It's me! No, really! (Three years after the last time I published anything...)

Welcome to my newest endeavour, Toujours Pur! I am so excited to share this story, which I've been working on sporadically for years now. Toujours Pur aims to tell the story of the Black family from 1853 to 2006, through five generations and twenty-nine point-of-view characters. It's the most ambitious project I've ever attempted, and I don't know how it will go, but I can't wait to try.

Some housekeeping: I have about eight chapters written already, which should be enough of a buffer for me to be able to post a chapter a week. I'll aim to post sometime on Sundays. I have also just opened an account on Ao3, so come and find me at TheChasm if you like!

Some tips for reading this story itself: I am aiming for Toujours Pur like most of my work, to be entirely canon-compliant, meaning that our main characters all appear on J.K. Rowling's Black family tree. Some readers might enjoy following along with the family tree, which will be helpful in keeping characters straight, but be warned that this will naturally involve spoiling yourself a little re: death dates and marriages in particular. My hope is that the story should be understandable enough without knowing the family tree yourself (no comment on whether or not I can draw the whole thing from memory). Frustratingly, the Blacks had a tendency to reuse names through the generations, but I've used nicknames (and in once case just flat-out renaming someone) to hopefully keep things clear. For instance, the Sirius Black we meet in this chapter is not the Marauder, but his great-great-great uncle Sirius Black I, who was born in 1845 (well over a century before Sirius III).

Since I've brought her up, I would also like to take a moment to state that J.K. Rowling is a transphobe and a TERF, and her views are abhorrent and in no way shared by me. Like so many fans who grew up with Harry Potter, I was dismayed and disappointed to learn about her bigotry, and even pondered whether it was worth continuing to write HP fanfiction. But I came to the conclusion that fanfiction is our way of reclaiming this story, of remaking the Wizarding World as one where everyone truly does have a place at Hogwarts. So: trans women are women (clue's in the name), Rowling is wrong, and please feel free not to follow me if you disagree :)

With everything out of the way, thanks so much for reading – I can't wait for you to come on this journey with me!


A Fatal Lullaby

Sirius Black was a beautiful child.

Everyone agreed on this: his beauty was not just in his soft black curls, which his indulgent mother allowed to fall to his shoulders; it was not just in the fine patrician cheekbones, nor was it solely the skin so pale it seemed near translucent nor the large dark eyes. Perhaps it was the smile that so often graced the tiny rosebud mouth, or the voice that was very gentle and quiet, especially for a seven-year-old. It was hard to say for sure. But there was something very winsome about Little Sirius (so called although he was the oldest of four children and just not little any more, Mama!), and the whole household adored him: his frail, softly-spoken mother; his three younger siblings, Phineas, Elladora and baby Iola; the human servants and even the lowly house-elves.

Little Sirius was a perceptive boy, and he knew that life was very hard for his mother, pregnant by sixteen and widowed by twenty-four. She'd loved his boyish father (already more of a vague memory than a real person) deeply, but she'd been utterly unsuited to life as the matriarch of the Black family, and a difficult pregnancy with her youngest child, born some eight months after her husband's death, had culminated in a nightmarish labour and left her bedridden for at least ten days every month. Sirius hadn't been allowed in the birth room, but he still remembered the screaming.

When his mother did come downstairs, though, it was like the sun had come out. She was so small and pretty, with her lovely soft fair hair so different from his own, and her beautiful voice and smile. Sirius wasn't allowed to sit in her lap, but he liked to lean against her knees and let her run her fingers through his hair while he showed her the work his tutor had set him, or else read to her from one of his storybooks. His mother was his favourite person in the whole world.

He loved the baby, too: Iola was coming up to her first birthday, already babbling a little and just learning how to stand upright. He spent many hours with her under the watchful eye of her nurse, holding her tiny fingers and encouraging her to take a few steps, but she always fell over as soon as she tried. She was a healthy baby, plump and growing quickly, and sometimes Sirius thought she must have taken all their mother's strength for her own. Phineas certainly thought so. When Sirius tried to convince his brother to come and play with the baby, Phineas had given a disdainful sniff and declared, "She's the brat who hurt mother."

"She isn't a brat!" Sirius had cried. "Don't you dare ever call her that again, Phineas Nigellus Black!"

But Phineas had just shrugged his round five-year-old shoulders and walked off to play with Elladora, leaving Sirius feeling unnerved. It wasn't Iola's fault that Mama was so sick. It wasn't. And after that little incident, he resolved to spend as much time with the baby as possible.

But he knew it couldn't last forever. He'd turn eight this December, and after that came nine, and then ten, and then eleven, and soon after that he'd have to go to Hogwarts. Mama promised he'd love Hogwarts. She said he was already a natural at magic, and sometimes she let even him play with her wand and clapped when he made a shower of golden sparks come out of the end. She told him all about the Hogwarts Express, about the Great Hall, about Sorting. "Your father was in Slytherin," she said. "And I was a Ravenclaw. I fancy you'll be a Hufflepuff, sweetheart."

"Disgraceful," sniffed one of the aunts, who was sitting in Mama's sickroom. She'd said she would come and help Mama, but so far all she'd done was make nasty remarks. "Blacks are always in Slytherin, Ella. A child in Hufflepuff! It's preposterous."

His mother only smiled, but Little Sirius decided then that he didn't much like the aunts, nor the uncles, either. His father had had a lot of siblings, but he'd been the only brother to marry – which meant that Sirius was the heir of the family, not any mean old aunt. And when he was grown-up, he'd make sure Blacks could be in whatever House they wanted, and just do whatever they wanted. Just to spite the aunts.

He didn't say any of this out loud, though. Mama always told him to keep mean thoughts to himself and try not to upset anyone. So he curled up on the bed beside her and told her what he'd learned in his French lesson that day.

All the same, Sirius wasn't sure he was looking forward to going to Hogwarts, so he decided to just be glad it was still four whole years away. Who would talk to Mama when he was gone? Who would play with Iola? He decided to make sure Phineas knew exactly what to do when he went away. It wasn't easy, being the oldest one.

His eighth summer was long and hot. Their mother hadn't come down in days, and Sirius was growing tired of drifting aimlessly around the big London house. His father had bought it for his growing family, and then died before he could make any improvements, so most of the rooms were still unfurnished and there were some Sirius had never even been into. He didn't know many other wizard children, but he was sure their houses were more interesting than his. The only special thing about Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place was that the Muggles outside couldn't see it.

One sweltering afternoon, with his younger siblings all napping, Little Sirius decided to explore. He crept over to one of the doors on the second floor that had always been closed. It was locked, but when he pressed his hand to the lock there was a burst of something warm beneath his fingers and then the door swung open.

The room inside was completely dark, with thick black curtains blocking out the sunlight, and wonderfully cool. Sirius took a breath. What if every room in the house was as interesting as this one? As his eyes adjusted to the darkness he began to make out glass cabinets filled with odd curios, a comfortable velvet couch and a row of mysterious wooden chests on the floor. He made his way over to the first of these, kneeling to trace his fingers over the letters carved into the lid. C-Y-G-N-U-S. After a moment, he recognised this as his father's name. Maybe some of his father's things were in here!

He eased open the lid of the chest, groping blindly about inside it. His fingers brushed a glass bottle, a scrap of silk, something ominously furry... and a smooth, cool wooden box, shaped like the chest but in miniature. Heart hammering in his throat, he drew it out. It was surprisingly heavy, considering that he could hold it in his two small hands, but strangely enough, it didn't rattle when he shook it. Wondering what could be inside, he prised it open.

Immediately the room was filled with a gentle tinkling, and Sirius felt a delighted smile creep across his face. Music! He loved music. He thought he could remember his mother sitting at the old piano, but that was long ago, before Iola's birth, before even his father's death. He hadn't heard music in a long time since.

This music was very soft and slow, and Sirius sat cross-legged on the floor, soaking the pretty tune in. It really was quite cold in this room. Very cold. Vaguely, Sirius wondered if he should go somewhere warmer, but the music was so lovely to listen to...

His limbs felt rather heavy. Little Sirius' mind was sluggish and slow, but he remembered, suddenly, the inviting velvet couch in the corner of the room. He could do with a nap, probably. Merlin, it was cold in here. So cold that he didn't even shiver as he half-crawled, half-dragged himself towards the couch, heaving himself up to slump down on the soft cushions. It was very comfortable. And the music was so soothing, so soporific.

He was too far gone to notice when the melody cut off with a self-satisfied note, and he never heard his mother's scream.