1996 and 1997: Albus Dumbledore is dying, trying to maneuver the Order into saving lives and giving a better chance of success to Harry if he can't get rid of all the horcruxes in time, researching and hunting intel.

There are conversations, too, held in the private enclosure of the Headmaster's office. With Sirius and Regulus Black, with one without the other, with the portrait of their great-great-grandfather, with Harry Potter, with Eleanor Rowle, with jane Mauss, with so many people.

Some of these discussions are well-known - some are less obviously relevant.

They happened, still.


One chapter is one conversation, and I'll try to always situate it regarding the main story "Unclaimed Darkness" in the notes. You don't necessarily need to read this to understand the main story, but it's not true the other way around.

Lore, world-building, foreshadowing perhaps. Always Dumbledore and another person/individual/etc, perhaps two other people.

First chapter is directly after chapter 35 of Unclaimed Darkness.


Chapter 1: Thrice a devil

Phineas Nigellus Black was not, as it was, "Phineas Nigellus Black" – Phineas Nigellus Black was but a portrait of the wizard once called so.

Phineas Nigellus, however – portrait or not – was part of Hogwarts' history, part of its defences, too. All portraits residing within the castle participated to its safety – they saw, they heard, they couldn't be destroyed lest all the frames within Hogwarts were to be destroyed too, and what needed reporting, they reported.

Phineas Nigellus was, moreover, linked to his other frame in Grimmauld Place – and through Grimmauld and the identity of the subject he was a painting of, Phineas Nigellus had access to Black Manor's basement, to the mural full of the echoes and memories of all Blacks in history. To, in a way, the true consciousness of his subject.

Phineas Nigellus wasn't a person, no, of course not – but as far as portraits went, he was perhaps the amongst the closest to qualify.

He knew more of who his subject used to be than paintings should, surely.

Albus Dumbledore eyed the empty frame in his office. It was difficult to say if a portrait could truly think and feel, if the internal processes necessary could be given reality or merely illusion – but Phineas Nigellus was definitely one of those portraits that blurred the line between magical image and true conscience.

Albus shook his head slowly – all these thoughts for a simple, unimportant reason: the portrait had frowned distastefully and bolted out of the headmaster's office a few minutes ago, and the old wizard could only guess two reasons for such an abrupt exit: the first one went by "Sirius Black", and the other was the first one's brother.

The headmaster banished back the enchanted stone safe he'd called upon – an enormous cube of light stone, with Celtic knots engraved – to store Voldemort's horcrux, just like he'd stored the remnants of the diary and the ring. The safe fell into dust, its true body deep under the castle, carved in the ground itself six centuries prior. The dust disappeared in a gust of magical wind. The door to that safe – the cube – could only be summoned from within the Headmaster's office, though anyone with the instructions could make it appear if they gained access to the office.

Albus should probably spend a few hours devising a second layer of security, just in case.

It reminded him of the Mirror of Erised – when he'd used it for the philosopher's Stone, the old wizard had made it the door to a similar type of safe, but with different conditions of opening, obviously. Breaking the door – the mirror – to force it open would only have destroyed the passageway.

In truth, the trials before the Mirror of Erised had been more of a way to buy time, to let someone come and apprehend whoever was trying to pry the philosopher's stone out of the mirror – and they'd also been there because enchanting the mirror into being a door hadn't been Albus' first idea of a safe. He'd only thought of it after finding Harry gazing into the Mirror of Erised, unable to access what he wanted.

The best would have been to destroy the stone right away, the moment the Flamels had gotten hints of Voldemort lurking around their Parisian house – but the stone was Nicolas' property, and it hadn't been Albus' place to force his friend into it.

Nicolas had needed time to make peace with the choice he'd eventually made – to let it end, finally – before truly destroying his creation, he had needed somewhere to lock it up where Voldemort wouldn't be able to obtain it, somewhere where he might still come and see the stone, but be unable to use it, to let temptation push him into making some more elixir, just a few months more, just a bit longer... Nicolas had always yearned to see more, to know what would happen next. Letting himself die hadn't been an easy decision for him.

Maybe Albus could create a new safe, with a door that would only open for someone wishing to destroy the object desired?

A project to contemplate, but not – not right now.

Instead, Albus went to sit back at his desk, a quill in his good hand – but no paper, no parchment, it wasn't time to write yet – waiting.

A couple of minutes later, Phineas Nigellus Black, former Headmaster of Hogwarts and befuddling portrait in these days, reappeared within his frame, his face grim and announcing a forceful opinion to come.

Albus politely looked at the portrait, waiting.

"You must ban him from the grounds."

Albus' eyebrows rose.

"I will presume you are speaking of Sirius, and not Regulus."

The portrait scoffed.

"Of course I am talking about the thrice-accursed head of the House of Black! Sirius cursed Draco Malfoy, the son of his own cousin, with a promise of death! As headmaster you cannot let him walk the grounds if he is going to endanger the lives of your students, not if you know about it!"

Albus blinked, glanced at the silver sphere hovering near the door. There had been a small alert to a minor wound while he'd been dealing with the stone safe – but Severus had gotten it and nothing bigger had appeared, so Albus had thought he'd ask the potion master at dinner about what had happened.

What had Sirius been up to – and what did Phineas mean by "a promise of death"?

He'd rather have Sirius' version of the events before doing anything too drastic, though. Merlin knew that the portrait had a deep aversion for his great-great-grandson – something that had gotten worse in the last months. It sometimes was countered slightly by the Black family pride, but generally speaking...

Well. Let's just say that Albus was starting to doubt it was only a matter of Sorting or running away.

"...I will speak to him."

"Make sure he clears that bloody dagger, at the very least!"

...More elements to consider. There was a dagger painted in the painting's background, on a desktop, and it looked enough like the one Sirius had been using since back during the first war.

Albus didn't answer, this time – he'd have a more pleasant time getting the details out of Sirius than out of the portrait of the man's great-great-grandfather. Phineas Nigellus wasn't exactly charming, and his good manners were only there to say he wasn't being outright rude.

No, what Albus Dumbledore did, this time, was keep looking at the portrait.

"Phineas, I must ask..."

If he was going to live through the portrait's ill temper, he might as well know why.

"...Why is it that you are so aggressively disapproving of Sirius? We both know that Draco Malfoy is tasked with endangering Hogwarts, and in your time that would have warranted a much harsher response than what I am working on, or even than a threat from your scion."

Phineas Nigellus Black had still been the Herbology professor when Albus himself had been a student at Hogwarts. Then, the same year he'd started teaching, the older wizard had become Headmaster. They both knew what the old wizard was talking about.

Phineas' eyes narrowed.

"He left the home of his ancestors in a huff, scorned everything his blood defined in him, and almost ended our familial line!"

Albus hummed. Portraits of Hogwarts couldn't lie to the headmaster, so all this was true – but nothing forced them to volunteer information unless explicitly asked to.

The old wizard hadn't asked for a complete list of all the reasons the portrait so despised the descendant his subject had never met – Sirius and Regulus' mother had barely been born that Phineas Nigellus Black had left this world.

Maybe Albus hadn't been explicit enough.

"And yet you hated him already, the first time I had him come in this office."

Sirius having been Sorted in Gryffindor hardly warranted such a hostile reaction.

The portrait huffed.

"He is headstrong, convinced of his own righteousness, certain of knowing as much or more than his elders, insolently slippery, and uncaring of diverging opinions."

Albus almost laughed there – a chuckle still escaped him.

"So he is a Black. Usually such a fact gets your approval rather than your scorn, Phineas."

Was it a flicker of hesitation that Albus had just glimpsed on the portrait's face? He couldn't tell for certain.

Phineas seemed to shift gears, in response to the current headmaster's comment.

"There is such a thing as too much of a Black."

"Oh? And what is 'too much', exactly?"

The portrait gritted his teeth, but still answered. Maybe he was catching onto the fact that Albus wouldn't let himself be led astray, no matter how many evasions Phineas tried.

"There was that business with the werewolf and your half-blood potion professor."

"You know perfectly well that Severus had, how to say it, hum, yes, greatly encouraged Sirius to tell him what he wanted to know, and that he only came to complain because he didn't like the results of that knowledge. I wouldn't count your great-great-grandson's behavior that night as entirely typical of his attitude towards others."

The boy still shouldn't have done what he'd done – hence the following punishments – but magical influence had been at play – and Severus had caused it all to begin with. He'd wanted to know, he'd wanted power over his school nemeses. He'd done what he thought would give him that power – but the headmaster had noticed what Severus had done.

That was the reason the boy had kept quiet afterwards; because revealing the truth about Remus Lupin or the guilt of Sirius Black would have exposed his own guilt in the event.

Phineas' portrait waved Albus' point aside, irritated.

"Yes, there was that potion the other boy had brewed, I didn't forget. Maybe my great-great-grandson wouldn't have acted so if not prompted, but it does not change the fact that he had the capacity to act as he did. My issue here isn't whether he made the choice or not, but that he had the idea at all."

Albus frowned – but the portrait wasn't done yet, and the old wizard wasn't going to interrupt him when he was finally talking without prompting.

Phineas' face grew cold.

"I was there, the day he left Grimmauld, and I was there the night before. I watched him stand at his parents' bedroom door, knife in hand. I saw his face then, and he saw me. I know exactly what he was thinking about, Dumbledore!"

...Albus hadn't known about that – making the necessary assumptions, knowing Sirius, wasn't that difficult for someone like him – and he wasn't sure that it was his place to know.

Or Phineas' place to tell, but he guessed it was too late for either of those considerations, now.

"Sirius did nothing, though."

Anger and disdain – and was that fear, hidden behind the scorn? – contorted the portrait's lines.

"I know what he is, do you hear me!?"

"What an odd way to speak of your blood and flesh!"

Phineas Nigellus' portrait started – and immediately glared at his neighbor, who was peering through her frame and into their conversation.

The other portraits were oddly silent, Albus noticed then. Usually there would be a very low hum as they'd go about their own imitations of life without minding the happenings out of their paintings.

"Mind your own blood relations, Antonia! Oh, what am I saying, you don't have any!"

"Phineas!"

Albus closed the portraits' curtains – except for the irritable Black's – for privacy with a flick of his wand. Optimistically that would prevent more offenses from being uttered.

"You will present Antonia your excuses once we are done with this conversation."

Phineas glared at him too.

"Do not treat me as if I was one of your teenaged students, Dumbledore."

"Then do not act like one. You ought to have outgrown lashing out in a mood, by now."

The portrait's glare lessened a bit, and after a long moment, Phineas scowled and went to sit in the armchair in his background.

"I said, I know what Sirius is, and he isn't some innocent soul, regardless of whatever you see in him. Thrice a devil, as I said before: he is a firstborn, he is a twinless twin, and worst of all he is the birth and the end of the House of Black."

Albus summoned a seat – this seemed to be some long reflection to be had, regardless of its accuracy, and he was one hundred and fifteen.

That was likely old enough to warrant sitting down.

"Enlighten me."

Phineas threw him an unconvinced glance – but he'd been the one to initiate this conversation, and the portrait was unlikely to be satisfied until he'd said his piece.

He might remain unsatisfied afterwards, too, but at least he wouldn't be able to blame Albus for not having listened to him.

"You have been a teacher here for decades, much longer than myself, too. How many Blacks have you seen in these halls?"

"Well, including my years as a student? I was in the same year as your second son, if you remember."

Phineas didn't answer – Albus hadn't expected him to. The arguments between the former headmaster and the son he'd named after himself, Phineas Alshain Black, had been noteworthy in the entire school.

Ten years out of school, Albus had heard it said that his classmate had been disowned by his father.

"I suppose you are only counting blood-related Blacks? Three while I was myself a student, then twenty-one from 1906 to this day."

The portrait pursed his lips.

"You must have noticed, then. There is a certain mold to our bloodline, a truth to who we are, how we look, how we act. What our magic is like, too."

It wasn't only a matter of resemblance between parents and children, the way Phineas meant it. Such a resemblance would generally fade away through generations, sometimes appearing back, but not always, not necessarily.

All members of the family kept coming back to what everyone knew about the Blacks – even those who broke away were still so very, very Black.

There could be differences – but some of the rest remained, and when it didn't, it came back.

"You do tend to stay remarkably close to the same form, like variations of the same formula."

No true evolution, aside from the general changes seen in the entire human race.

There the portrait visibly hesitated.

"... It is not only an impression. We have... Blacks by Blood have an echo inside them, something we can feel in each other, and it is more or less present depending on the individual, but it is always there. The stronger one of us feels, the most like the rest of the family they are. As a portrait, I cannot feel the echo in others anymore, but I can tell you nonetheless, that Bellatrix and Sirius have the strongest echoes in the last two centuries. Sirius more so than his cousin."

Phineas took a few seconds to gaze into nothing.

"The stronger the echo, the most inhumane the mind. I do not reject my family, or who we are even with that echo, but there is such a thing as 'too strong' an echo."

Albus could only indicate that he understood – not that he agreed, or that he had any way to check it. If only the family could feel that echo, Albus was powerless to examine it himself. Oh, he probably had some Black ancestors up his own family line – every purebloods and halfbloods did, in this country – but they were centuries removed, and the old wizard certainly wasn't part of the Black family by Blood.

"I see... When you say 'inhumane', Phineas, what do you mean exactly?"

"A lack of... No, not quite. Empathy, yes, we do understand what others feel and that it can be as strong as what we do feel, but we also have the ability to go right over it when it pleases us, there is a lack of caring unless we want to. There is cruelty, too, the willingness to murder and maim, and no remorse to show for it."

Albus couldn't help but think that it aligned neatly with the Blacks' ease with dark magic, their immunity to its mental effects. What Phineas was saying sounded, in all honesty, like the entire bloodline had been designed for cold efficiency.

It also described Sirius perfectly – and his cousin, too. A bit less so his brother and others cousins – but Phineas had said Bellatrix Black and Sirius were more "Black" than the others in the family.

It was a bit too much of a coincidence – too many generations afflicted in the same way – to completely discard the portrait's conclusions.

Phineas wasn't done, of course:

"Firstborns by Blood and by Name, in our family, always have a stronger echo than the rest of the family, like they took the lion's share and their siblings were left with the remains. Bellatrix and Sirius are both firstborns, Dumbledore. Once damned."

Sirius and Bellatrix, once again.

Who else had been a firstborn, amongst the Blacks Albus had known over the decades?

Nymphadora, but she wasn't by Name.

...Sirius Black, Phineas' oldest child – and great-great-grandfather of the current Sirius. Arcturus Black, the last lord. Callidora Black, mother of Dahlia and David Longbottom. Pollux Black, Sirius' other grandfather, with convictions of his own. Lucretia Black, Sirius' aunt who'd married a Prewett, Molly's uncle.

Walburga Black, of course.

All of them with implacable personalities, with the willingness to do what they considered right – no matter the price.

The rest of the family wasn't much different, but they did display more doubts, more restraint in some ways. Remorse, even.

Albus had just spent time with both Sirius and Regulus, and when the youngest brother had talked about himself, he hadn't denied any of what Phineas was talking about, yet he'd also showed vulnerabilities that his brother had assuredly never felt at all – Sirius had his own set of issues, and it seemed they all stemmed from an hereditary affliction, if you were to believe the portrait of the boys' ancestor.

"As for the matter of twinless twins..."

Albus blinked. He'd almost forgotten – Phineas had made a point of calling his great-great-grandson "thrice accursed", and then he'd started explaining why.

The first damnation was being a firstborn of the House of Black, apparently.

Here came the second damnation.

The portrait was looking somewhere to the left of his frame, towards the background unpainted at the edge of the canvas. Albus did wonder, for a fleeting moment, how much of a performance this was all – if portraits did such things out of habit, or if they saw more than what truly existed in their confined worlds.

"There are no twins in the Black family, you see. And when there are, there still aren't, because one of the twins dies in the womb, granting their magic to their sibling instead, as well as their soul. Sirius is the eighth case of such a thing happening in our family. He is twice as powerful as he should be, at the price of his sister's life and soul. Twice damned."

Albus could admit to being caught by surprise. He'd never heard of such a thing about the Blacks – but then again, it made sense for them not to advertise that part of their family legacy. Who wanted to have it known that you'd lost a child, that something – some curse, some unknown blight – would always take one of two children away from their mother?

Who wanted it known that they had been the reason their sibling had never been born?

Thinking about it, though...

Sirius had never been completely at ease around twins, had he? He hid it well – it wasn't obvious, in fact it couldn't be seen at all, but when twins were there in the room with him... He didn't look comfortable, either. It could be for other reasons, it was impossible to tell – but it was there.

It had been true with Fabian and Gideon, back during the first war, and it was true today too, when Fred and George Weasley spent an entire summer in Grimmauld Place.

Albus offered a thin smile at the portrait who'd started spilling all his descendant's secrets. The old wizard certainly hoped – and yet not, because that would cause problems – that whatever issue Phineas had with Sirius over Draco Malfoy was grave enough to warrant such a reaction, or else...

If the portrait was blowing this all out of proportions, Sirius would be unappreciative to learn all that had been told about him – and how his ancestor considered him a monstrous existence thrice over, apparently.

"And your last point, Phineas?"

The portrait had said "thrice a devil", had he not?

And the last point had been "the birth and the end of the House of Black".

Whatever that was supposed to mean.

The portrait's face twitched slightly – not enough to show a particular emotion, not enough to be readable, but it twitched. The former Headmaster didn't usually let any emotion he didn't wish to be seen on his face – he also didn't usually insult his fellow portraits, so yes, something was really making him uneasy in this conversation, something about Sirius, Something Albus couldn't really understand yet.

Maybe he never would. Different people were put on the spot by different things.

The old wizard, himself, barely remembered what it felt like to trust anyone implicitly, to be able to confide in someone without immediately wondering if you were making a mistake, if this wouldn't end with blood on your hands, if perhaps you should better have kept quiet.

If the person in front of you truly shared the same goals as you, the same principles, the same limits – or if you'd have an unpleasant surprise one day, like finding out that your closest confidant, the one you almost gave your heart to, only wanted power for power, and not to change the world into something better.

Portraits, at least, had no interest in actively betraying anyone.

They weren't necessarily on your side per se, but there was also no personal gain to be claimed through betrayal, not for them. They weren't people, no matter how closely they resembled them.

Phineas, here, wasn't truly Phineas Nigellus Black – even if he held the man's mind and knowledge.

His fears too, apparently.

"I had an older brother, Dumbledore. His name was Sirius, and I named my eldest after him."

Ah, if Albus looked it up, he was confident he'd find a handful of Sirius Black littered through the family's history. It was, after all, the brightest star in the sky, and a likely name to pick for a line of witches and wizards with considerable pride and power who'd made it a habit to name most of their children after stars.

The old wizard, however, had never heard of this particular Sirius Black – in fact, Phineas Nigellus had been the lord of his House, even after he'd made his eldest son his delegate at the Wizengamot.

The portrait most likely picked up on the polite interest on Albus' face, because Phineas scowled – half-heartedly, like he couldn't muster enough emotion, if it could be so called in a portrait, to truly be angry, like some other feeling was using most of his emotional response.

"You likely haven't heard of him, my brother never made it to Hogwarts. Not because he was a squib, or sick, but because he died when I was six."

Phineas stood up from his seat, and moved back to the forefront of his painting, his eyes boring aggressively in Albus' head.

"Our family owns a large black diamond, brought to England by our earliest known ancestors, Morëlen and Ivoril of the Darke Beyond. Sirius and I, we were looking at it while our mother was spending time with our uncle and aunts at the manor, when my brother reached for it. At first, nothing happened."

Such a statement generally implied that the inactivity wouldn't last – and this story ended with the death of a child, so Albus was already anticipating an unpleasant outcome to Phineas Black's brother grabbing for their family's heirloom.

Heirlooms could be dangerous things to play with.

The rest of the story didn't disappoint – however that tied into the current Sirius Black's situation, the old wizard had no idea, but they would eventually get to the point; as a teacher, Phineas Black had been nothing if not thorough. Sometimes, painfully meticulous, too.

"We looked at it from all angles, and then Sirius thought we should try touching the gemstone with raw, rough magic, the kind of charged mist children sometimes manifest when they don't know yet what to do with their power."

Albus sighed:

"It triggered an enchantment or a curse of some kind, didn't it?"

"Of course it did! That stone was almost twenty-four centuries old, tied to our bloodline and family magic!"

The portrait took a moment to breathe – there was no point in anger, not if he wished to reach the end of his argument.

"...And Sirius was Sirius. He was a firstborn, and even then he was remarkably similar to the rest of the family, more so than our father or our grandfather. Maybe the diamond wouldn't have reacted to my magic alone, but his? Of course it did react to his."

Phineas closed his eyes for a moment – just a moment, just long enough to imagine the scene again, perhaps.

"Something came out, or something came through, I do not know, but something came and took over my brother. I could still see him underneath, similar, oh so similar to whatever had just taken a hold of him, but still... still different. The voice didn't use the same tones, the look in his eyes was colder and ancient, even his face seemed blurred at the edges, like another visage that didn't quite fit had been put over his. Close, almost him, and yet not."

Albus had stilled in his seat.

He didn't like the sound of this. It had connotations of possession, of things too old to have names, of beings that should not be and yet were.

It made it sound like the entire Black bloodline was a vessel for some intricate remains of...

The name of Black meant several things, including a propensity for the Dark Arts and an unnatural – or perhaps inhuman, otherworldly – agreement with their very nature of corruption. The old wizard had just had that discussion with the Black brothers, less than one hour ago. He knew this already.

What no one knew was why the family had that peculiar relationship with dark magic, where that gift – that curse, perhaps, if Phineas' story was to be believed – came from.

It wasn't unusual. The origins of most family magics had been lost to time and tales, and even those who did remember their own were never quite sure of the veracity of their familial retelling of the story. Some hereditary gifts, perhaps, were nothing more than a quirk dutifully passing magical preferences along no matter what, despite the odds.

The portrait's original subject, Albus' professor Phineas Nigellus Black, may have discovered the truth of his own family magic, if what he was leading to was true – and it seemed like an ugly truth.

"It spoke to me through my brother, that day. Sirius was bleeding from the eyes and the ears and the eyes, blood was slowly pooling in his mouth, like his body could not quite accommodate that Thing, and It spoke to me, staring me down with curious amusement. It didn't seem to care at all that Its host was hurting."

Albus brought his fingertips together, and asked:

"...Phineas. Was it an It, or a They?"

A thing, or an individual?

The old wizard already had a suspicion, of course.

The portrait's face twitched with disgust.

"It was a He, if you must know. That Thing..."

Albus didn't correct the old Black headmaster. He had needed information, not politeness towards a being that had likely caused the death of a child in front of his brother.

"...that Thing smiled at me with Sirius' bloodied teeth, and It said: 'So this is where my blood disappeared off to. I'd been wondering, child of mine. But, ah. This one... Your brother, I take it? This one is close, but he is not me yet. Two or three generations, I should think.' And it disappeared, back into the diamond, or wherever it came from."

Not me yet.

Ominously unpleasant, considering the path Phineas' argument had taken all this while.

"...What about your brother?"

Phineas sniffed – as close to an expression of grief as the man he was copying would have allowed himself to show, probably.

"Sirius survived, but not... Not for long. He got weaker, he wasn't healing quite right. Two months later, we went to bury him in the graves alley west of the manor."

The portrait paused for a moment, but it was obvious he wasn't finished with his tale.

It wasn't yet time to ask how it tied back to Sirius – Sirius Orion Black, the one alive today, the one Phineas kept being exceptionally wary of, not Phineas' brother nor his son.

"That was where I saw it. At the end of the alley, where the oldest generations are buried, there are two statues standing face to face. The Ancestors, Morëlen and Ivoril. But when I looked, after Sirius' burial, there were three statues. Another figure was standing behind them, at the very end of the alley, facing the entire family line and their graves, grand and terrible and so perfectly Black that even my brother had been but a pale copy, drifting just a bit left of this original. I recognized It immediately, too, and no one else could see the statue at all."

Albus frowned.

"It was him? The one who had taken over your brother?"

Phineas laughed – sharp and cold, just like his great-great-grandson when Sirius chose to laugh at something horrible, something that he found unamusing and terrible, but ironic and full of self-destruction.

"Of course it was! The others couldn't see It at all, not my younger sisters, not my mother, not the rest of our relatives, but I could see Him, the one before the Ancestors, and I knew!"

The portrait had almost screamed that part, and they found themselves staring at each other without anything to reduce the intensity of the moment.

Difficult to offer a pepper imp to a portrait.

Phineas let out a long breath, and started speaking again. Slowly, with measured words.

"But the worst part, Dumbledore, isn't the statues of our oldest blood and the fact that the origin of our line had possessed my brother and caused his death. The worst part is that, one hundred and six years later, my great-grandson came to my portrait with a newborn named like my brother and my son, and that day I saw It again."

Albus closed his eyes – to think, to let it all calm down, not to let himself be swept up by what the portrait had already decided to be the truth.

Oh, the old wizard knew exactly what Phineas meant, here – but he had to ask, to make the portrait say it, because Albus didn't want, Albus couldn't make it sound like he agreed with the former headmaster's portrait.

Phineas' conclusions sounded tangible – but they weren't the only possible explanation.

Sirius' face was what came to his closed eyelids, and Albus decided he wasn't worse off opening them back.

"You saw the hidden statue again?"

Of course the portrait hadn't seen the statue again, not unless it had moved into Grimmauld Place itself, or perhaps Black Manor. A graves alley usually didn't have paintings for portraits to spy on funerals, and Albus doubted the one at Black Manor was much different on that particular point.

Still.

The portrait scoffed.

"You know perfectly well what I mean, Dumbledore! I saw It, Him, the One Before, and it was the child in Orion's arm. Sirius Orion Black, unlike the rest of the family, isn't simply an echo, he is Him entirely! Nothing but Him, only Him. That Thing had said of my brother that he wasn't quite him yet, and four generations later, my great-great-grandson is exactly what It had been waiting for! Maybe the accursed scion doesn't have the memories of being that Thing, but they share a body, a mind and a soul. Should he ever activate the black diamond, he would be the perfect host, and even if he doesn't, they remain the same. He is too much of a Black, I'll say it one more time, and you will not be able to pretend I did not warn you."

Albus forced a genial – understanding, polite – smile onto his face.

"You recognized him when Sirius was but a newborn? I was under the impression the ancestor you'd witnessed through your brother was older than that, more... ancient."

It was a weak argument to make, but the old wizard didn't want to let himself be convinced.

He had once let himself believe the worst of Sirius Black – convinced, to be honest, by some very dubious circumstances – when he should have at least gone and asked the man himself for what had happened; he wasn't going to condemn him for being a potential dark lord – or otherwise inhumane being – reincarnated.

What mattered here were Sirius' actions, and who he was today – not who he might have been in another life, some way or another.

Phineas' portrait pinched his lips. His eyes narrowed.

"And yet he looks exactly like the one I saw back then, today. The differences are inconsequential, barely noticeable at all, accidents in body rather than mind or magic. His countenance is the same, and his inhumanity is recognizable amongst thousands. His feats of magic remind me of the cold, sharp brush of the Thing's power. You may not be convinced, Dumbledore, but I became a scholar, instead of dedicating myself to my title of Lord Black, to understand what had taken my brother, what was plaguing my family's shadows. I studied our magic, our blood and our minds for decades, and what I found was that the Ancestors had most likely been cursed by Morelën's father to never be free of him, to repeat the same pattern again and again and again, until their blood gave birth to a child exactly like the One Before. The firstborns, the twinless twins, they are all consequences of that curse tied into our family magic, or perhaps they are the conductors of that curse through the generations past."

Albus didn't ask why anyone would do such a thing – acts of cruelty were rarely meaningful, if the portrait's theory was right, and if Albus' own suspicions were right instead, then whoever that One Before had been, he wasn't the first or the last to reach for immortality in unconventional ways.

To be fair, there were no conventional ways to search for the key to eternal life.

Still, usually such a quest didn't involve two thousand and five hundred years and an entire bloodline before seeing results.

"When you spoke of Sirius being the birth and the end of the House of Black..."

The portrait still looked like he suspected Albus of disbelief, but he answered anyway:

"Our entire bloodline's goal has been to see Him born again, selecting the same physical, personal and magical traits over and over again, and it has happened at last. He created us, in blood and in shape, and now we've reached the end He set for us millennia ago. With His birth, our bloodline has no role left to play, no meaning beyond the mundane."

...Albus wasn't certain how that was supposed to be a bad thing – especially with how Phineas' portrait was expressing his subject's resentment over his entire existence having been manipulated into being such – so he refrained from commenting.

The real Phineas Black had probably struggled with contradictory feelings over the matter of his discoveries until his death, and that had been all the portrait had left to work with when his great-great-grandson had been born three decades later.

Albus sighed and stood up.

"Phineas... If you truly worry about Sirius' link to the entity you met back then, perhaps you should talk with him about it, but I will not be the one to do this for you. In the end, I don't mind much how your descendant came into being as he is, as long as he isn't making others suffer for it."

Phineas almost interrupted here – his mouth opened slightly, and he had that look on his face – but Albus caught his own mistake and added:

"Indiscriminately and without reason nor limits."

They both knew that Sirius' moral compass was slightly skewed, there was no point pretending otherwise. Still, he wasn't targetting innocents, and for now – in the current circumstances, with Voldemort doing exactly that out there – that was all Albus could ask for, really.

Perhaps it would be better for the current Black lord to be a bit more normal, all in all – but that wasn't who he was, and they would have to live with it.

"I will ask him about Draco Malfoy, but the rest is on you. Make your own choices, Phineas."

Perhaps that was asking a lot of a portrait – but he'd been able to choose telling Albus all this, so.