Series - Elysium: The Retelling of Nielliun Morne
Chapter III - Ill Progeny
A/N - I completely invented Mnemosyne Potion to serve my own twisted purposes, no reference from J.K.R. whatsoever. Therefore, I'll explain it briefly. If you didn't check the appendix right from the off, "mnemosyne" means "memory" in Greek. When directly inhaled it (a little like a hallucinogen) warps the nerves of the mind and acts as a catalyst to fire delusional messages. Seamlessly, the user will be transported into their own memories. You the reader will be stuck in Sirius' memories for a very long time but, in all truth, it was only a few minutes that Sirius was in the trance. Some wizards use it purposely as a means of escapism and some use it as a weapon on others because, if the brew is slightly altered, it can be used for memory modification. However, it's not exactly healthy if used frequently. I liked it better than the idea of a Pensieve and it was more original than just starting the story with "Sirius was born". Although that's about what I'm going to do now.
The chapters that deal with the years before Sirius went to Hogwarts will be pretty short and are just there for some character establishment (there's miles of words on family history in this chapter... it's not as boring as it sounds!). I don't throw in a lot of OC's, but the few that I do are pivotal.
I'm really beginning to ramble here. Er... let's get on with the story.
Ill Progeny
"Blood traitor, abomination, shame of my flesh!" - Mrs. Black, Order of the Phoenix*
22nd November, 1959 at approximately 4 o'clock in the morning, Tesiphone and Janus Black were granted with a firstborn son.
"His name will be Sirius, after his great-uncle. It is, after all, the name of a star and this boy was certainly born high," echoed a hearty voice throughout the sterile-white private maternity ward at St. Mungo's Hospital. "And his middle name, darling?"
"Phineas. In hopes that he will enter the fraternity of Slytherin." Tesiphone's voice was weak with her exertion, but managed to maintain a brittle note.
"Sirius Phineas Black."
Wide, curious, dark grey eyes peeked from behind sable swaddling and tiny, round fingers flexed at flushed cheeks. He surveyed the world for the first time.
~
9th April, 1964 at approximately noon, Sirius, at the tender age of four, found himself wrenched from a solitary game of Aurors and Goblins-- in which he portrayed all parts-- and Floo powered to the very same uniform hospital ward.
"And a name for the child?" his towering father said to his reclining mother.
"Regulus-- another star worthy of the name Black."
"No one in the family bears that name."
"Well and he will be Janus, for you, as well. There's nothing like naming a son after his father."
Sirius' father beamed. "So it is! Regulus Janus Black."
The four year old, mildly bewildered and very apprehensive, clung to the hem of his father's emerald robes, mostly unnoticed, but he himself taking note of everything, especially this wailing, pink newcomer.
~
"Great little fellows, aren't they, Tess? Siri and Reggie?" Sirius' uncle said thickly, indulging in another glass of crimson Cabernet.
"Alec. Those nicknames are abominable. It's unrefined," replied his mother tersely, setting a tray of kingly, dark, bitter Belgian chocolates down on the coffee table. Sirius distinctly saw his cousin Andromeda sidle over while his mother's back was briefly turned and promptly disrupt the elaborate, symmetrical layout of sweets by nicking the very centre one. He had a terrible time of it not laughing when he spotted the look on his mother's face as she turned and found her display mussed. His glee faded when she shot him an accusatory look.
"Refined? And when was the last time you bothered to call me Alecto or Meg Megaera?"
Tesiphone Black ignored her brother and swept away brusquely.
It was Christmas Eve and Sirius was an excitable nine.
The dark, debauched interior of Number 12 Grimmauld Place was dressed regally to the occasion and yet it was not nearly merry or bright enough to satisfy the tastes of a child giddy with the anticipation of a grand holiday. In this house, Christmas was not so much a celebration as an excuse to gather the family, display the wealth, and talk of righteousness.
Every clawed gas sconce and every serpent candelabra had been lit, black wax hanging like stalactites from the candles' perches. Everything had been cleaned and polished so that you could see your reflection in every ebony table and every silver spoon and carafe. Dangerous and frightening articles-- the likes of which included shrunken heads, carnivorous books, and whole collections of poisons-- had been stowed in massive china cabinets and on high shelves in lieu of children, but they were nonetheless very visible and imposing. The dozens of portraits and tapestries had been meticulously inspected and dusted. There were knotty garlands of mountain pine and hemlock twisted about the banisters and doorframes and a twelve-foot black fir stood in the corner of the high-ceilinged room. Countless tiny, red candles floated among the branches, giving off a forge-like glow, ornate decorations of silver and garnet in the forms of nine-pointed stars, drakes, crescents, and snakes hung sparsely from the boughs, and black ribbon had been draped about the tree. Seven separate, neat piles of green-wrapped, silver-bowed packages sat below it, the tree towering over the gifts like a beast protecting her unhatched eggs. Soon, there would be a royal feast in the formal dining room. The three house elves had been working themselves to distraction for a fortnight.
The family was in rare form this night. Both his father's family and his mother's family were present and it had been years since they'd all found it in their hearts to come. The many-chambered house was fit to burst with houseguests and Sirius was frankly impressed that the quarters were capable of accommodating not only their bodies, but everyone's massive egos.
Sirius' maternal grandparents had both been dead for some years. They had been the patriarch and matriarch of a small, but rather well-to-do, Northern Irish pureblood clan-- the line of Devlin. They had owned a magnificent home on the limits of Belfast with, supposedly, all their gold hoarded in the cellar, being oddly suspicious of the bank. Their source of wealth had been a thriving business of breeding Winged Horses, mainly Granians and Thestrals. According to the records, this had been the family trade since the 16th Century. Before this, nothing could be traced of the Devlins, but four centuries was quite enough to establish a family as pure.
Sirius' mother's parents had left their wealth equally to their three children. Since Tesiphone was the eldest, she should have become mistress of the manor, but she had relinquished her status as a Devlin and taken on the much more profound name of Black. Her ancestry was not muddy in any way, but she took great pride in the fact that she had risen with marriage and that her offspring were as pure as the driven snow. In the event of Tesiphone moving house to London, the residence of the manor was delegated to the second eldest, Megaera. Sirius' Aunt Meg was an eccentric woman. She was nearly as proud as her sister, to be sure, but flaunted it much more subtly. She was short, thin, auburn haired, pallid, and eternally dressed in old-fashioned, lacy robes. She had a habit of tipping her cigarette ashes on anything she pleased and looking at you appraisingly as though you were a horse at auction that's too dim to know he's being judged. She was unmarried, but had two twin daughters only a mite older than Sirius. Her version of events told that, as a young woman, she had come in with a pureblood man for a short while before discovering he was already married. They'd renounced each other at the news of the pregnancy. Sirius thought his mother was doubtful of her sister's girls' purity, but they were dubiously accepted into the family as Devlins. The youngest sibling was Alecto-- a soft, rounded man with brown hair and tiny wire spectacles. Sirius could tolerate his Uncle Alec more than most of the family because he lost all inhibitions and pretences with the presence of alcohol. He was just as rich as the rest of them, mostly running the Devlin Equine Brokerage himself. He lived in a Belfast townhouse with his wife Eugenie-- a pureblood of the Weasley line. Everyone knew that she was not possessive of the same level of wizarding pride as the rest of them, but she politely held her tongue and did not protest when the subject arose. Uncle Alec had a strange habit of assigning pet names to everyone he'd ever come in contact with-- something that everyone else thought established him as not right in the head. Sirius and his cousin Andromeda, in fact, had come up with a list of silly names for him, their favourite and the most far-fetched being Alphard.
While the Devlins had a few dodgy areas, the Blacks were as unadulterated as Westminster pedigree dogs. There was no more untainted family in Great Britain. They could be traced to the 11th Century with the coming of William the Conqueror from Normandy. A wizard ancestor had come to Saxon England with the Conqueror as an officer of the army and had brought the family motto "Toujours Pur" with him. That's how it had started. Currently, the Black circle needed no means of income that required work. Sirius' grandfather and father owned shares in every wizarding company and commodity that was worth laying hands on-- from the WWN to a fourth of the Wigtown Wanderers Quidditch team.
Sirius' grandfather-- an immensely tall, wizened, aged man with long white hair and shrewd black eyes-- was present this Christmas Eve, currently talking finances with his father. His grandmother was sitting silently in a corner, braiding and in turn undoing the tassels of her shawl. Gran was tiny, frail and skittish, not hesitating to clap you with her walking stick if she was startled. Janus' younger brother, Fitzwilliam Black, was a very large man. He was broad-shouldered, heavy-legged, and had a square, rock-like jaw and hooded eyes. He had married Elladora Zabini, a very disturbing and often unpredictable woman, and they had three evenly-spaced daughters. Sirius was deathly afraid of both his living grandparents and Uncle Fitzwilliam and Aunt Elladora as a child. But his father's brother lived not very far away in Henley-on-Thames, so he saw much more of them than he saw of Aunt Meg or her twins.
"Dinner will be served in just fifteen minutes or so," Sirius' mother said, assaulting the room with her domineering presence as she entered again.
"Peckish, Sirius? Yeah, I'm hungry, too," said Andromeda quietly to her cousin, her bright eyes dancing around at everyone in the room. Andromeda was five years older than Sirius and in her 3rd Year at Hogwarts. In what the family called a "freak accident for which the school should be prosecuted", she's been Sorted into Hufflepuff House. Sirius liked her all the more for this.
"Yeah, missed lunch today because Bellatrix was in a temper and I... took to the attic," he replied under his breath.
"Don't you worry about her," said Andromeda, twitching her head at her sister-- a 7th Year Slytherin at Hogwarts who looked remarkably like her father and was currently boxing Regulus' ears for no apparent reason. "She's in a tizzy because I slipped Wartcap Powder in her shoes this morning. Thinking of an Engorging Spell on her hat next." She laughed, and then suddenly looked very grim. "You don't reckon we'll be dining on roast Chimaera haunches and Muggle hearts tonight, do you?"
Also feigning real concern, Sirius said, "No. I think it's actually goose."
And it was goose, naturally. Goose and mince pies and boiled potatoes in butter and parsley and croissants and pudding and crystallised plums and all sorts of other things. The seven total children did not talk much, but were silent due either to sullenness or an inability to speak over the food they shovelled into their mouths. The adults carefully diced their meat, took polite sips of sparkling water and wine, and wiped their mouths, talking amongst themselves.
"Have you heard that Slytherin House now has the least number of students in the school?" said Uncle Fitzwilliam.
The adults, all of which had been in Slytherin but Aunt Eugenie, looked at Elladora incredulously.
"Well, that can't be anyone's fault. It's the Sorting Hat that--"
Eugenie was drowned out immediately. "Outrageous," said Sirius' father. "This new bloke Dumbledore that's taking over must be rigging something. Anyone can see that he's a--"
"Thinks he'll faze out the Slytherin influence, does he? People won't stand for--"
"Heard he's becoming more lax with admissions than in the history of the--"
In the end, they decided that everything was the new Headmaster's liability, but that it was just as well that Slytherin would probably be more exclusive with less members. It made it that much more of an honour to slip through the conniving Muggle-lover's plans and show your true colours.
"Hufflepuff knocked the pants off Slytherin in the last Quidditch match of the term," mumbled Andromeda to Sirius around a mouthful of pudding.
"Did you say something?" Uncle Fitzwilliam said, eying his daughter as though she were something suspicious and alien.
"No, sir," replied Andromeda, expertly donning her innocent face.
After dinner they all exited the dining room for the drawing room so that the house elves could clean up unseen. This was an unspoken habit that they were all used to.
Not an hour later they sent off the younger members of the family for bed and Sirius was sure that their conversation took interesting turns once sensitive ears were out of hearing.
Unfortunately, he had to share his bedroom with Regulus because the twins, Ignigena and Fetialia, had taken over his room. The four year old Regulus was bouncing up and down excitedly in his pyjamas, squeaking about Christmas, before Sirius told him to shut up or suffer the penalties. Sirius himself was happy about Christmas in spite of himself. The Blacks may not have provided a ginger-bread perfect, sparkling Yule, but that did not change the fact that he'd be receiving presents the next morning. He had a hard time getting to sleep, but eventually drifted off.
Sirius sat surrounded by green wrapping, toying with a six-inch-long squirming model of a Romanian Longhorn dragon that technically had been given to Regulus and lazily licking a blood pop (which, contrary to popular belief, tasted of cinnamon). Andromeda was sitting next to him and inspecting every inch of every piece that had come with her beautiful, but slightly sinister, new marble chess set. The blonde, dainty eight-year-old Narcissa was looking at herself in an enchanted mirror that continually called her everything from "Princess" to "Undisputed Empress of the Known Universe". Andromeda looked thoroughly disgusted with this.
It had been a good haul and a good morning. Andromeda had refrained from torturing her sister on the holiday and Bellatrix was at least not openly violent. The adults were indolent and banal as they watched their children. Most of the wives had received dazzling, Goblin-wrought jewellery studded with large diamonds from their husbands and most of the husbands had received new formal robes or a box of the finest cigars or whatnot from their wives.
But Sirius should have known by his age that not even Christmas could be too ideal in the Black household. It came not in the form of a row or a punishment, but something much more subtle and much more deadly.
Sirius and Andromeda had been sneaking about in the hallway (silver ribbons stuck in their hair and dragging from their ankles, butterbeer clutched in their hands, tickling the sleeping portraits of ancestors to see if they could be coaxed into a giggle-- which they couldn't), when they heard voices issuing from the sub-basement kitchen. Sirius' mother and his Aunt Elladora had gone down for some reason or another.
Andromeda held her finger over her lips to signify stealth and crept quietly toward the slightly ajar door that led down the steps to the kitchen. Sirius thought this was a risky business. He knew from experience that eavesdropping was punishable by more than a sit in the corner where his mother was concerned.
"... and who knows who's pure these days. I swear, Mudbloods should have their foreheads branded," a woman's voice, his mother's, was saying.
Andromeda looked exasperated and made to turn. "Just more pureblood claptrap--" she said, but stopped when they heard something else. The cousins' interest perked.
"Sometimes I think my own daughter will surface turncoat one of these days. Andromeda doesn't even have the self-respect to be ashamed that she's in Hufflepuff. I've caught that girl rolling her eyes more than once," said Aunt Elladora waspishly.
Sirius looked at Andromeda, wide-eyed, but could not interpret her face.
"It's not your fault, Elladora. It never is. Sometimes even the best of families are cursed with radical children. You must try your best while she's young because she won't listen to a word when she's older. They're easily brainwashed by talk of equality and progressivism at her age. You've got to counteract it."
"I know. I know. But I'm having a hard time controlling what kind of a crowd she pays company with at Hogwarts. I try to set Bellatrix-- wonderful young girl-- as a guard, but Andromeda continually avoids her and she'll be graduating after this year. "
"Ah. It's not just you has this problem. We must keep a close eye on all of them."
"Yes. I don't worry myself about Narcissa. She's not the patriot Bellatrix is, but she'll follow the right path. But your sister's girls..."
Sirius' mother made a choking noise. "Don't remind me, Elladora. For their own sake, they must hope they're Sorted into Slytherin, show some proper pride, and make respectable marriages, or they're doomed. Questionable background."
"But doesn't Meg claim...?"
"Oh, she claims. I know my sister's not exactly a blood traitor herself, but I don't doubt there's a skeleton in the closet somewhere. She was young when she got herself in that condition. Who knows, it might have been any Muggle-born or half-breed that duped her and fathered them. She won't elaborate on the subject."
Aunt Elladora murmured accord and Tesiphone continued.
"But I was thinking of something a little closer to home. Janus is concerned about Sirius."
By this time, Sirius and Andromeda were staring horrified at each other, glued to the spot, Christmas and butterbeer forgotten.
Sirius' mother's voice sounded cool and casual. "You'd think Sirius was bred by Muggles the way he acts. I know already we're going to have trouble with him."
"It's a shame, Tesiphone. Your firstborn..."
"I will not be an iota surprised if that boy's Sorted into Gryffindor or befriends a Mudblood or marries a mermaid or some nonsense! He shows no respect and Janus fears he'll turn on us."
Andromeda had absently clutched Sirius shoulder and she was shaking with rage. Sirius, on the other hand, was not angry but sadder than he'd ever been. The boy that had been so elated with the simple pleasures of Christmas had just discovered that he was unloved. "My own parents hate me..." he thought to himself, looking at the floor.
Elladora's voice drifted through the crack in the door again. "Ah. There's a few ill progeny in every generation. They'll be weeded out in time."
A/N - Just go ahead and tell me if that was pointless. I know that some stuff dragged, but it's really, really necessary that you know that much boring stuff about Sirius' family. The main point, of course, was Tesiphone and Elladora's chilling conversation at the end. You'll notice that the main theme of each chapter will usually be the title (how novel!).
Let me just say that I DO NOT fancy myself the same Fetialia as the Fetialia in this story (you'll see more of her later). It's just that I liked the name for her and I thought also that the name was appropriate for me because it means "mediator between war and peace" and I try to keep a balance between angst and humour in my stories. So, I'm not delusional or anything.
Thanks to my reviewers:
BellethePhilosopher'sCookie
toril moon
Dude Where's My Cheese
Katyla
[Anonymous] Fan
Thanks ever so much for your support! I can't believe I actually made people cry!
