TITLE: Forever Pure

AUTHOR: The Grynne

SUMMARY: The End of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black

DISCLAIMER: All credit for the characters and circumstance goes to J. K. Rowling

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Spoilers for "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"! Forget Harry; this is the real tragedy of the book. I can't believe Sirius is dead!

The house was full of dead souls and dark memories. In an unlit room somewhere hung a huge and ancient tapestry, its creeping roots of gold thread signifying lives spread across centuries; a family proud and saturnine. A number of tiny scorched patches were scattered about, disgraced names that had been wiped out in anger. But family was still family, and the tapestry had been created by old magic that did not forget.

As cold eyes watched from the canvases of eminently placed portraits, the weaving seemed to come to life in one very small portion at the bottom of the family tree, right beside one of the burn marks. It untangled itself until that part of its surface was squirming with delicately uprooted skeins - green and maroon and aristocratic blue. Then the threads started to mend again. When it was done, in the changed spot were a newly glittering red Latin cross and that day's date, which was connected by a thin line to another date, blackened but still readable.

And that was it; that was all there was to show that the last direct member of the Noble House of Black was dead. No one alive was there to see it except the twisted and triumphant house-elf, Kreacher, and he was elsewhere.

Then without a sound the great-great-grandfather of Sirius Black appeared in the tapestry room. His portrait was hung on the very opposite end of the room but from that position he could still see the blood-red cross next to his descendant's place on the tree. He looked at it for a very long time.

'Good riddance, that tainted, vile sore of my flesh! All other traitors and corrupters of our illustrious and pure line follow -'

'BE SILENT!' Phineas Nigellus' voice suddenly thundered through the house, piercing the heavy shadows and every rotting crack and hollow. The screeching stopped and there was a shocked hush. Spiders had frozen and the furniture seemed to be holding its breath. Inside his den Kreacher scrambled to his feet and bolted out as fast as he could.

'Master?'

Phineas' sharply handsome face turned. 'Did you have a hand in this, servant?' he said expressionlessly.

Raising his head slightly from his prostration on the floor, Kreacher grinned uncertainly and nodded.

'Well. Then you can finish it.'

Kreacher's filthy face split into an insane and subservient smile. 'Whatever the noble master orders.'

**

'Do it.'

The house-elf howled in misery but he had no choice; he could only obey the ancestor. The lighted candle in his trembling hand, he held it up to the corner of the great tapestry. In a few seconds, bright yellow flames were licking across it, swallowing up the names indifferently, and destroying the record forever.

'The curtains, Kreacher.'

The shrieks of the old woman, Phineas Nigellus' great-granddaughter, joined the house-elf's cries. Soon every portrait in the house was screaming. In Kreacher's den, the silver of a hundred family crests melted. Wood and carpet burned. As the paint at the edges of his portrait began to bubble, Phineas almost had a moment of weakness. Then he remembered that the House of Black was dead.

'Now, stay. Kreacher.'

And the fire surged through the house, driving away the darkness and the wicked spirits, until it was a bright torch against the sky, a brilliant white, clean and pure.