Two: A Black Secret

Sirius gave James a short wave while his cousin, Andromeda, dragged him and his brother by the hands and off the Bones's estate. He broke into a grin as James waved back with the rest of his package of Fizzing Whizbees in his hand. The bloke stole my other stash…excellent move, didn't even see him do it. He has some potential…

Avoiding the rest of the guests' looks, which ranged from pitying to downright accusatory, Sirius clenched his jaw and stared at his scruffed shoes, noticing that Regelus did the same, his face very red. Why does Dad have to cause a commotion everywhere he goes? He isn't helping our situation…

"Don't look down, boys," Andromeda said, her back-length, fine black hair swaying as she held her head high. The Black family's dark eyes in her face were glittering with pride. "You don't have anything to be ashamed about – you both did absolutely nothing wrong." She pointedly glared at Mr. and Mrs. Pummings, who wore the worst of the accusatory looks, as she said this.

Regelus didn't seem to hear or believe their cousin, for he still remained focused on a particular patch of weeds to the park's far corner as they managed to make it through the determinedly silent crowd and reach the high stone gates. Sirius, however, glanced back at the guests, who were now pretending as if nothing had happened and were attempting to aimlessly chat once more, as if talking about de-gnoming their gardens could bring a sense of security back into the party.

"My family isn't into the dark arts," Sirius blurted out, startling not only the party's guests (specifically Mrs. Bones, who appeared terrified that he had spoken), but his cousin and brother as well.

"What are you doing?" hissed Regelus, flushing even brighter. Andromeda merely looked at Sirius, as though she knew how much Sirius needed to say this, even if it was a lie. Sometimes lies comfort better than the truth, especially to the liars.

"We would never do anything that would hurt wizardkind," Sirius went on, swallowing as he met each wondering gaze of the party guests. Far across the park, he noticed James examining him too, and Sirius wondered if their momentary friendship had been reduced to nothing after his parents' tirade. To his surprise, Sirius felt a pang of regret.

"Anyway…. just thought I'd clear that up…" Nodding in the uncomfortable quiet before him, Sirius turned around and joined his family, letting Andromeda put an arm around him as she held out a rusted silver ashtray that served as their portkey home.

A tug of his stomach, a dizzying spin – and Sirius saw the lush verdure of the Bones' manor park vanish before his eyes, replaced by the cold, dark and sullenly silent foyer of the Black family ancestral home.

It wasn't so much that the room was cold by temperature – it was, after all, mid-August – but the air of the once great manor of the Black blood-line was cold by deadened emotions, numb memories, and sharp attempts to hide both. The portraits of his ancestors, severe and arrogant, glared back at him from the expensive wall-papered walls; real ivory vases full of orchids were placed at either end table at the front door, and a rolling emerald carpet greeted them as they stepped into the front hallway. Sirius had never seen this house as a home, but a place that he had grown accustomed to live in until something better came along, hopefully complete freedom. As he looked around the entrance of his house, he began to again feel the usual suffocation that settled over him whenever he was here.

"Your parents should already be here," said Andromeda, who had instinctively acquired the tone of detachment that she had to adopt whenever she was near her aunt, uncle, or parents; emotions were never particularly encouraged in their family. "I'll leave you to it, then – I promised Mother that'd I'd get back before dinner…she only let me come with you guys so I could meet the rest of the pure-blood families, and she's expecting me home immediately."

"'Bye," said Sirius and Regelus monotonously, nodding.

"Give my regards to Uncle Cadfan and Aunt Winifred," Andromeda added, her voice devoid of any affection. As she looked at Sirius though, she gave him a subtle wink and turned around, shutting the heavy ebony door behind her.

"We should've asked her to give our regards to Uncle Nicodemus and Aunt Gretna, and Bella and Cissy too," said Regelus, his small face furrowing into an anxious frown. "Do you think Mother and Father will get angry?"

"Who cares," Sirius said recklessly, throwing off his shoes into a basket near the door and watching them magically disappear to his room. "It's us who should be mad – Father embarrassed us by his whole tirade, and we get stuck with meeting everyone's angry looks after they conveniently left."

"Well, excuse us for trying to leave without tainting your good name," said his mother's familiar frosty voice behind him. "I assure you we did it with quite good intentions."

"Mother, we completely understand –" Regelus began, paling at the sight of his mother's seething anger, her hands high on her hips as she stared at them with hard green eyes.

"Your Father and I left so as to signify the difference between ourselves and ours sons, who had no part of the…disagreement between Edmund Bones and us. No matter where we go, both of you will be received with high honor – you are Blacks, after all…at least, as far as I know," she added with a disdainful wrinkling of her nose as she glared at Sirius.

"Oh, so you mean you're not my biological parents?" asked Sirius impudently.

When Winifred Black became angry, she never allowed anyone to see her as such - Probably because it might spoil her "good name", Sirius thought – except for the one she became angry with. Without a word, taking Sirius by the arm with her pincer-like fingers, Mrs. Black marched him to his room, leaving a horrified yet relieved Regelus in the front hallway. Up the carpeted stairs they went, past the plates of decapitated House-Elves and more portraits of dead ancestors who wore the same look of abhorrence they always did when they saw Sirius, and to the first door on the left of the upstairs corridor. Mrs. Black pushed her son into his room, snapping the door behind them as she followed him in.

"DON'T YOU DARE TAKE THAT TONE WITH ME, SIRIUS ORPHEUS BLACK!" she screamed as soon as Sirius landed on the floor with a thump. "I'VE RAISED YOU AS MY SON, AND YOU WILL RESPECT ME AS SUCH! YOU ARE A BLACK, THROUGH AND THROUGH, WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT!"

"WELL, I DON'T LIKE IT!" Sirius bellowed back, ignoring the untamed look that had transformed his mother's delicately made-up face. "I WISH I HAD NEVER BEEN BORN A BLACK! ALL YOU AND DAD DO IS MAKE MY LIFE MISERABLE!"

Heaving with seething fury, Winifred stared at her son, her green eyes ablaze – but abruptly, her face morphed into one of cold graciousness and even, faint affection. "Well," she lowered her voice, making it thick as she continued, "Do you really mean that, Sirius? After all we've given you, after all we've expected for you, knowing that you have the potential to carry our name to the highest powerful role in our world…you really believe that we hate you so much?" Bulky tears welled up in her eyes, and she gave a dramatic sigh and dabbed her marble-white face with a perfectly sewn lace handkerchief.

Sirius hesitated…he hated to see his mother cry. He growled inwardly as a flood of guilt rushed over him, and unconsciously, as though his heart had betrayed the fuming thoughts still racing in his mind, he placed his arms awkwardly around his mother's neck.

Mrs. Black patted him on the head, planting a hard kiss on his forehead while continuing to dab at nonexistent tears. "Oh, Sirius, I knew you didn't mean that. You always know when you're in the wrong. Your father and I care for you deeply, and have never wished you ill will in anything." She gave a heaving sob for deeper effect.

"I'm sorry, Mother," said Sirius, lowering his eyes.

"It's all right, I forgive you. Now, wouldn't you like to make Mother happy in repentance for your unseemly outburst?"

Unaccustomed to have his mother continue to hug him for this long, Sirius instinctively answered, "Of course."

"Wonderful," Mrs. Black said, her brisk tone returning as she unhooked her son's arms and straightened her stylish black robes. "I want you to continue your studying of the Black family history."

"Oh, Mother –"

The severe look returned to Winifred Black's face. "Don't you want to make Mother happy, Sirius? Your family history and genealogy are very important to you, aren't they? You are proud to be a Black, aren't you?"

Sirius swallowed, feeling the familiar suffocation of the house envelop him once more. "Yes, of course, Mother."

"Then go and study as you're told. Now."

Coughing as thick coats of dust settled into his face, Sirius turned to the page he had left off the day before with a grimace. The huge, dragon-hide book of 3,000 pages growled as if it knew Sirius would've rather been wrestling with a Hippogriff than studying its lengthy pages of Black family history. I wonder if it can tell my parents that I'm only on page fifty-six, Sirius thought dryly.

Complex family trees and genealogies that were traced since before the Founders created the magic world stared back at Sirius's weary face. Everything looked the same to him: the names that had been passed down from generation to generation (Sirius had been named after his paternal grandfather), the families they had married into, and even the places of birth were all similar – the Black family had never been one for change. But the one thing that was ever constant in the whole book (Sirius knew this because he had flipped through it just to see how much more boring it could get) was the reiteration of the word "pure-blood." The Black family was as pure, as refined, as cultivated, as old as the very best of wizarding families, maybe even the best. It was the most loyal, the most devoted, and most trustworthy family of the Ministry of Magic and its environs – or so the grimy Black Family history book told Sirius.

But Sirius could not wholly believe that were true, even though he had always wished it to be. He had always had a feeling that his family had been hiding something from him, something that they didn't want him to know about…yet. For Sirius wasn't stupid: he knew that several of the "trinkets" he had found on the manor while he was playing when he was young weren't "little nothings," as his father had explained before he swiftly confiscated them. And they weren't something that his family didn't wish him to know about either; if his mother hadn't wanted him to see rusty, spiked instruments that looked like they could cut his finger off within a second, candles that oozed green liquid which Sirius was sure was poisoned, and a biting silver snuffbox filled with Wartcap powder which Sirius had debated to use on Regelus before his mother caught him, then she would've properly hidden them away. Even in his eleven year-old mind, Sirius knew his parents were trying to goad his curiosity so that he would want to know what those little nothings were, for some reason.

Apart from those items, the Black manor was as normal as any other wealthy, pureblood mansion. But, like a broken melody, there was something irrevocably wrong about the entire picture, as if Cadfan and Winifred Black were not all that they appeared to be.

I'm probably just going mad, Sirius thought, shaking his head that was encrusted with dust and causing it to fly everywhere. Reading can do that to you – just like it did to that old man Albus Dumbledore Father keeps muttering about. He closed the book shut, its thud echoing around the large library. Because no windows were constructed in the room, the only light came from the tall iron candleholders that were splattered all over the room, making the shadows of the numerous books stacked neatly into the built-in ebony bookshelves dance over the jade marble floor.

Glancing at the gothic-style clock over the French doors, Sirius sighed and laid his head on the cool marble-top desk. He figured if he stayed there for a while, his mother would think that he had remained for the entire three hours she had dictated, instead of the hour Sirius had only spent on studying. He didn't know why he would always fall into his mother's manipulation. You'd think that with eleven years of experience with his parents, Sirius would have learned to avoid their calculating spider webs. However, Sirius always held a faint hope that one day, his mother would actually cry for him, that she would actually mean to hug him and to hold him as he had seen other mothers do with their children. In a way, Sirius supposed, he was as much of a liar as his parents since he didn't want to admit the truths he knew about them. And this revelation only caused him to feel worse.

Hurried footsteps suddenly padded down the hallway, and Sirius, noticing that he had left the doors open, hastily opened the book again and made himself appear to be studying. His father's broad shoulders and erect, stiff frame passed the shadow of the doorway. Cadfan Black paused in his steps, turned around, and stuck his head into the library. His face was identical to Sirius's in every way save a four-inch scar cut diagonally across his the back part of his neck, barely visible in the dark corridor. Sirius had always admired his father for that scar – he was sure it was a mark of some great battle or duel. In fact, Sirius admired anything about his father…except his bad temper, as shown in the Bone family's party that morning.

"What are you doing in here, son?" asked Mr. Black in his usual quiet, firm voice.

He's so different when he's angry, Sirius thought, suppressing a shudder as he remembered this morning. "Studying," Sirius croaked, his throat caked with dust. Clearing it, Sirius continued, "Mother told me to…am I in your way, Father?"

Mr. Black hesitated, glancing in the direction of the front door. "Not exactly…I am expecting the Malfoys any minute, and I would rather hold the meeting in here. But you can stay."

At least someone around here treats me like I'm my age, Sirius thought with a gleeful smile as he shut the book again with a relish and stood up to straighten his robes. Father hardly lets me in on any of his meetings…I wonder what it's about this time?

"Marcellus and his son Lucius are coming," Mr. Black went on, as if he had known what Sirius was thinking. "We have some very important issues to discuss…issues that are quickly becoming more urgent to operate. All of that studying you've been doing for this summer will finally be seeing its fruits."

Oblivious to his son's puzzled look, Cadfan Black smoothed his gleaming black hair back in a distracted gesture and went to sit down in the rigid, velvet-covered armchair to Sirius's right. His long dark green robes settled over the floor as he crossed his legs and settled into a thoughtful reverie.

"Call Kreacher, Sirius," Mr. Black murmured. "Tell him to bring some wine."

Biting down on his tongue, Sirius forced himself to get up and ring the bell just outside of the library's French doors. Immediately the aged, sourly wrinkled leathered body of a House-Elf appeared before him, its black eyes glittering with disdain as he glowered at Sirius, who glared back at the one being who could make his life just as miserable as his mother could. Personally, Sirius thought that Kreacher was secretly lusting for his mother with all of his praise of her, but he kept that to himself.

"Father wants some wine with four glasses," Sirius spat, making sure that some of his spit went on Kreacher's malevolent face. "And when the Malfoys arrive, show them into the library."

Kreacher merely continued to glare at him, used to such tirades. "Kreacher will obey, yes he will, unlike the disobedient delinquent of an eldest son that tries my mistress so, who dares not to be proud of being part of the most noble and ancient house of Black –"

"Oh, shut your trap," Sirius snapped, slamming the library doors in the House-Elf's face.

"The Malfoy are coming to speak about some recent news in our connected circles, Sirius," Mr. Black went on as if there had been no interruption. His steady gaze followed his son as he sat down in the armchair next to him. "Marcellus is coming to offer us some advice."

"Why do we need advice from the Malfoys?" asked Sirius, arching his eyebrows.

"Because they have several connections into…" Mr. Black licked his lips, rubbing his cleanly shaven chin, "Into what we will talk about today. This will aid you in your attendance to Hogwarts this year, son."

Sirius's eyes lit up. "So I am going to Hogwarts, not Durmstrang?"

Mr. Black sniffed in disdain. "Hogwarts has the superior education by far, despite its authorities, and my sons will only have the best. The…specific lessons that you might have learned at Durmstrang can easily be taught to you at home. And actually, I would prefer for you to learn them at home, considering present events."

"What lessons?" asked Sirius suspiciously.

Before his father could answer, Kreacher opened the double doors, bowed so deeply that his long pointed ears touched the marble floor, and croaked, "Mr. Marcellus Malfoy and his son Lucius to see you, master."

Two pale blond figures trailed inside out of the hallway's darkness, their features outlined by the tongues of flame flickering from the library's numerous candles. To Sirius, father and son looked like clones of each other: Marcellus's icy gray eyes, smooth hair and pale skin were mirrored in the younger image of fourteen year-old Lucius. Even in the guarded way that they moved, the stubborn twist of their chins, and in the cool smiles pasted on their faces were the same, except that Lucius did not have the creases of time and experience that had worked their way into Marcellus's expression.

Sirius had never trusted such cunning masked by smoothness that he only knew too well.

"Marcellus, Lucius," Mr. Black greeted them, standing up with Sirius following him. "Welcome. Please, sit down."

"It is good to see you again, Cadfan, young Sirius," Mr. Malfoy replied, nodding and taking a seat across from the Blacks, indicating with an iron cane set with a silver snake that Lucius should do the same. Lucius coolly raised his eyebrows and nodded at Sirius in his own manner of greeting, while Sirius pasted on a smile.

Kreacher bustled into the library, his ancient hands holding up a silver tray of four full goblets and a very old bottle of the Black's best wine. Everyone took a glass and sipped, settling comfortably into their chairs as old associates who, though neither family held any true friendship for the other, upheld the required esteemed relations between the very oldest of pureblood families.

"Now then," began Mr. Black, "We should get to the point. You know I don't like to dawdle in any of my affairs, Marcellus."

"Then let me start with the most important point, Cadfan. I came to you a few days ago to tell of certain appearance of our old…friends. You admitted an interest, and dare I say, knowledge, of what has been happening. I think you may understand my method of caution for saying this, but…tell me what you know, and I well tell you what you want to find out."

Mr. Black met his gaze silently, and Sirius knew he was debating on the way to say what he wanted to. Without swerving his eyes, he ordered, "Kreacher, leave the tray on the end table and go. Make sure to shut the door well on your way out, and allow no one to disturb us."

"Yes, master," Kreacher croaked, leering at Sirius as he bowed once more and exited the room with his back facing the hallway. The doors shut quietly behind him.

"Marcellus," Cadfan Black began, carefully looking at his wine glass, "I know there is much to find out, but I will also take your own cautious stance and say only what I know will attract your attention. The dark forces are assembling as we speak, headed by a new leader no one knows of. I am not sure how, when, or where, but I am sure of what will be happening…the forces assembling are of creatures and wizards that some say are meant solely for destruction. Although they are weak and scattered now, they may one day become stronger. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

Sirius sat frozen to his seat, listening to Marcellus replying to his father's admission as if this were as normal conversation as the weather. Dark forces? Creatures and wizards joined together? But purebloods never allied with magical creatures, they're beneath us, right? What was so important that this had to happen – and there was actually a leader to all of this? Why didn't I guess that my parents would be associated with something like this? he thought, dazed as he stared at his father. The signs were always there…why didn't I want to see them?

His racing thoughts were jarred as he heard Marcellus's side of the conversation. "…and Hogwarts is still the safest place to be. That is why Lucius is going to continue his education there," he added, placing an arm heavily on his son's shoulder, who sat straighter and met Sirius's proud expression with a haughty look of his own.

"Unfortunately, Dumbledore is still keeping an eye on us Slytherins, Father," said Lucius, wrinkling his fine nose.

"Figures," Cadfan sneered. "He was always a mudblood lover. He doesn't know when he sees royal blood when it's under his long, poky nose."

Sirius laughed along with the Malfoys, feeling a tug of discomfort. Why was Dumbledore suspicious of the Slytherins if he had no good reason not to? Would he be under the Headmaster's eye too when he entered Hogwarts? After all, no Black has ever been sorted outside of Slytherin house…

"Besides, I hear he is a half-blood," Marcellus said, as if this explained everything. "Yes, he will be a problem. But as I am saying, Cadfan, if our pureblood connections assemble, our forces will be invincible. This leader that is rising is said to be extremely powerful. No one knows who he is, however…he's been in hiding for several years, and is just now revealing himself to a select few."

"The few who will be faithful to him, especially in his quest to retain the honor of being a pureblood," Mr. Black went on, sipping his wine musingly. "Our family has been looking for an opportunity like this for a long time…"

"As has ours," Mr. Malfoy continued, giving them a wry smile. "It is high time someone powerful enough to lead us has risen. I will find out more, and I will certainly come and tell you everything I discover."

Mr. Black nodded slowly. "Yes…thank you, Marcellus. Sirius," he added, turning to look at his bemused son for the first time in the hour they had been talking, "I have allowed you to stay here for this conversation because I want you to know what you been born into, the honors that you have received because of your family. You are to go to Hogwarts this fall, and you will tell me everything that might prove useful to our families, do you understand? Prove to me that you are the son I have always known you to be."

Swallowing and not knowing whether to glow or recoil from this praise, Sirius managed to say, "Of course, Father."

Now Hogwarts didn't seem to be the faint twinkle of hope in Sirius's future, holding a possible friendship with James Potter, a boy unlike Sirius had ever met…it possessed a foreboding dread for him instead, only emphasized by the cool, approving smiles from the Malfoys and his own father.