Disclaimer: The Harry Potter Series and its extensive franchise belong exclusively to J. and all the parties that she happened to allow copyright. I own none of the characters, nor the settings, nor some of the quotes from the fifth book. I'm just playing around a bit with her characters within her HP world.

A/N: Thank you, guys, for leaving kudos, bookmarking and commenting on this story. I apologised for the late update (And after hypocritical promises the likes of 'weekly updates' as well). Here's the chapter 6. Enjoy!

WARNING: There will be a lack of Hermione in this chapter.

In which everyone got to witness first hand the distress that was Sirius's A+ Parenting, the barmy town that was his profession, the queer intrusiveness that was an inherent trait of the Black family, and the questionable sexual preferences that was his potential fiancées' fantasy. Just his luck that Tom also reached that age whereupon he started fancying himself a God.

The very first lesson Sirius taught Tom Riddle was 'Stupidity was contagious'. Contrary to Hermione's suspicions of cult callings and indecency in the making and vulgarity at its finest, all Sirius ever did to the kid inside that room were talking to him. About the world. About family. And about the things people did for love. Or the lack of it. It wasn't harangues, per se, nor hymns, nor moralistic fairytales. He left Hermione to that. What he did was balancing her view for Voldy. People often thought, wrongly, that the way to 'cure' those like Tom (manipulative psychopaths with constant homicidal impulse) was to pile on them a mountain of morally-corrected lessons and to shower them with unconditional love, so that they could somehow be redeemed and became reasonable and functional members of the society. What they didn't know was that there were no cure for such a thing. People's natures were like rubber bands. They had a certain shape to them the very moment they were created. As they grew, said shape would grew taut in several directions until the very form of it started changing temporarily. Nevertheless, once the force that pull them disappeared, the general shape of it would bounce right back to its original form. Worse yet, pulling it too much into any direction would only fostering its inevitable tendency to bounce back in the other direction, given the natural elasticity. Tom's rubber band, for instance, was probably ten percent reasonable ('Good' - if one had to use the fairytale's vocabulary) and ninety percent questionable ('Bad', in other words). If Sirius left his education entirely to Hermione, she would resolutely pull him into the 'good', 'kind', and 'productive' human being route. But his rubber band wasn't really of that form, and excessive effort in forcing it would only drive him even further into the opposite direction. Hence the importance of Sirius's so-called 'grey' input.

If he would turn evil and horrible anyway, then the very least they could do was to have a certain amount of influence on the direction of such villainisation.

But he digressed. Sirius was reminding Tom, once more, of their very first lesson together:

"Stupidity is contagious, Tom." He said, fingers drumming on the table and eyes staring straight at the dark orbs of the boy before him.

Tom was eight now, tall for his age and 'pretty enough to piss people off just looking at him' (and here he quoted Hermione, inserting some of her original teeth gritting and nose scrunching). Black hair, dark eyes, fair skin, the boy was bigger and healthier than most kids his age (and of course he had to. If eight years worth of Unspeakable salary couldn't fatten him up enough to be at least twice the size of him living in the orphanage - the other timeline - then Sirius would be exceptionally offended).

Sirius didn't often repeat lessons (it's monotonous and inane), but this was a special case. Tom was eight now, and would be spending one year in Muggle Primary School. It was redundant, this arrangement, seeing as Hermione had, in her fervour, drilled in Tom's head all primary education by the time he turned seven and had even started a bit on secondary education at the beginning of this year. But...his daughter was freaking out. She was twenty-three and she barged into his bedroom one night ranting hysterically about the severe lack of human interaction and insisting emphatically that she was having grey hair. She did not, of course. Yet the very fact that she kept insisting so and trying to tear out her hair for him to see it was a testament to her mounting hysteria. Tom was taking his tolls on her, Sirius could see, and Hermione needed a vacation.

Not wanting to waste those pretty twelve N.E.W.T.s (his daughter was a bloody sensation after her test, even Black cousins wanted to curry favours now), Hermione decided to be a temporary Curse Breaker for a year (How was that a vacation was beyond him). It would be one year of periodical days off, and three hundred out of three hundred and sixty five days per years spending in Egypt, Maya, and about a dozen of other exotic places, and, of course, the entire thing made it impossible for her to take care of a child.

Sirius sincerely doubted the possibility of the house not burning down if he were to take a year off to take care of Tom for her. A few hours per day seemed quite enough for the both of them already. Hence, the primary school. It would not be a boarding school. (Again, Sirius sincerely doubted the possibility of Tom not burning it down by the second week). But it would help occupy the kid when Sirius was at work. Besides, Voldy ought to be exposed to the Muggles soon, anyhow. Broadening his horizon might stay his hands and teach him the important lessons that idiots existed in both Muggle and magical world, so in case he still wanted to barreling on the route of human termination, he should at least do it indiscriminately. (Hermione would disapproved, Sirius knew. But Hermione was also a bit too fond of Tom, and kept forgetting that he was more of a dangerous dinosaur being kept in a reasonably small cage with lions as jailers than an actual family member.)

"Yes. I know." The boy frowned at him, book clutching closer to his chest, "You have told me before."

Sirius fixed him with a warning look:

"And I am also repeating it now. So that you know how to conduct yourself at school."

Tom had been livid when first introduced to the idea that Hermione would leave him and that he had to mingled with inferiors for an entire year. He had to get used to it, though, because Sirius didn't tolerate off-aged tantrums and he was still strong enough to shackle the boy whenever his moods got the better of him.

Tom's lips twitched into a small smirk:

"To avoid them all and make sure that their germs can't contaminate me?"

"No." Sirius clicked his tongue and said, "But it is necessary that you determine what kind of people they are ASAP, and categorise whether or not they are morons. If they are, stay away from them. If they aren't...well let's see what you can glean and learn from them."

"From Muggles?" Tom's face was marginally distorted from disgust now.

Sirius gave him a glare:

"Oh? And none of the Blacks or Malfoys or Bulstrodes are stupid?"

That shut the kid up, but not without a lot of skepticism. Sirius ignored his reactions and continued:

"Just as the magical world has both decent folks and disgusting deficiencies in our midst, the Muggle world also has both interesting people and unsavoury morons of different types. You going to school is to experience it first hand and to start seeing the world in a more objective light."

Tom stared at him for a long moment and shrugged non-committaly:

"I thought it was because Hermione is tired of me and you are terrified of babysitting?"

Sirius curled his lips back into a smile full of teeth:

"That, too. But if Hermione was truly tired of you, I would have made certain that you attend Muggle school diligently for all three years left before Hogwarts." He took the book from Tom's hand and shifted through it a bit, "But since she only wants a short vacation, I don't see any harm in having you experiencing a year of Muggle education. You need to meet more people than Blacks and purebloods anyway."

He avoided the word 'friend'. Sirius knew, with great certainty, that Tom never had friends (not in the previous timeline, and not in this one, either).

The boy crossed his arms in a perfect imitation of Arcturus Black (not the cute one who was Sirius's brother, by the way) and shrugged:

"If you say so, Sirius."

Sirius was half a second away from clobbering the brat for being flippant, but he thought about how meaningless the gesture would be to someone such as Tom, and refrained.

"Do me proud, kid. Remember..."

Tom recited in that suppressed impatient way of his:

"Limited bullying. No disclosing magic. No fraternising with idiots. No ritual mating with snakes."

"And...?"

"Scream 'rape' at suspicious adults who approached." Then the boy scowled, "Wait, but I'm eight years old. Aren't I a bit too old to do that?"

Sirius gave him a pitied look:

"The use of that word has little to do with age, Tom, and everything to do with the level of prettiness we have. Even I still scream 'rape' at random people sometimes."

Interestingly enough, Voldy did wonderful at school. Now Sirius knew that he would do excellent at Hogwarts, charming the socks of professors and lording over the student body without so much as an effort (even more easily this time around, when he had the backing of the Black name and the whispers of Slytherin's heirship behind him). But Muggle school was an entirely different story. Sirius had never really hoped that the kid would have any reason to flash his Good Boy persona at Muggles. Yet he did, and in a flawless way, too. Maybe Hermione's influence on him wasn't as flimsy as Sirius thought.

Aside from that, their father-son awkward bonding time was getting excruciating. Sirius didn't cook, so they ate out most time, at Diagon Alley, with waitresses cooing over Tom and fawning over him at random intervals. Sirius also didn't do laundry (not that often, anyhow), so his household spells on that front were sloshy and messy and worthy of the unrestrained look of disapprobation Voldy gave him whenever Sirius attempted the deed. But they survived, somehow. They endured each other, endured the nuisance that was the Blacks' meddlesomeness, and endured the occasional flares of epic dramatics that Sirius's colleagues embarked on.

One perfect example for such dramas was the Unspeakables' shameless house-calling intrusion on their humble abode one fine Saturday. It was four thirty in the morning and there were much outrage going on.

"Look at the bleeding clock!" Said Sirius, half naked, half screeching and one hundred percent indignant.

"Oh my! How quaint, Little Siri! Never take you for a person with such huge dose of Victorian nostalgia." Said the pregnant Leticia Lovegood, belly protruding impossibly and getting dangerously close to the handrail wherein Tom once hide a disguised Coronella austriaca to surprise Hermione (She nearly got a heart attack, his poor daughter).

"Near morning now, mate. You really should try to improve your biological clock, Siri. The Department of Mysteries is a kingdom of overtime work." Said Finley Bode, clicking his tongue condescendingly and patting Sirius's back affectionately as if they were the best of friends (they were most certainly not).

"Can I let my pet loose on them?" Asked Tom, voice half confused with sleep and half malicious with the prospect of blood-letting. Sirius gave him a warning look, before turning back to their uninvited guests.

"Why are you here?" Said Sirius, annoyed and itching to kick them out of the house in the most unceremonious way possible.

"Look! Pigeons!" Said Lovegood, like nobody's business.

"Oooooh. Pretty. How come there are pigeons at this time of year, Sirius?" Said Bode, as easily distracted as ever.

Sirius could feel a vein throbbing painfully on his forehead. Finally, he could somewhat understand Hermione's annoyance at his own nonsensical train of thoughts. Unspeakables were all freaks. Brilliant freaks but freaks nonetheless. You couldn't believe what Sirius had to stumble upon everyday on his way to his own desk.

Just this week, he had stepped on the Exploding Poops that was supposed to be a reversed improvement of Amortentia. According to its crazed creator, Baldwin Dagworth-Granger (whose sole purpose in life was to prove that his grandfather Hector's notion of impossible love potion was bullshit) of the Love Chamber, the gooey substance, once being stepped upon, would explode spectacularly and gift its stepper with a powerful aroma that induced infatuations of the highest level from everyone around him/her. Sirius had been skeptical, even as Griffiths, Powell, and even Parkinson started looking at him with mournful adoration when he passed them on the hall. It simply wasn't very persuasive, as Griffiths was affianced to Hepzibah Smith, Powell was fifty-two and a spinster, and Parkinson had been suffering from a somewhat abusive marriage with a first cousin that had been rumored to also be her half brother. But then he had to rethink it, as even Reynolds, Macmillan, Lovegood and random Aurors started sending him perfumed love letters with hair in them. To the best of his knowledge, Reynolds was asexual, Lovegood was several months pregnant, Macmillan was married to a man who was neither gross nor her brother, and Aurors found Sirius outlandish and suspicious.

And if that wasn't enough of evidence as to the bedlam that was Sirius's workplace, two months ago, Powell from the Thought Chamber redecorated the entire department office and arranged a bunch of booby traps with an interesting explosive potion that supposed to turn a person's closest dream into reality. It was a work in process, obviously, but the workplace was a pandemonium on that day. Lovegood grew a pair of rabbit ears and started singing every time she open her mouth, Bode turned into an Anubis - though a bit reversed, with the body of a dog and his face making fascinating opinions, Griffiths had hair of Rapunzel and a crossbow big enough to put a hole in the head of a very obese person (*cough* Hepzibah *cough*), Reynolds transformed into a toddler, Baldwin could not stop farting Amortentia (though that might only be him), and Sirius turned into a woman. Truthfully speaking, it was hilarious for half of the day. He had bigger boobs than most actual women and beautiful enough to make fools of many men and women inside and outside his department. But then Sirius needed to relieve himself, and the experience turned traumatised instead. Describing the details would be crude, but in the end, Sirius concluded that though he loved women, he could not ever get used to being one in this lifetime. If the Powell's potion didn't expired by the end of the second day, Sirius and his other colleagues would have ganged up on Powell and tortured her till she did something to reverse it.

Yet those were still not the worst examples of it. A few months back, even before Hermione left to find herself amongst abbos and Neanderthals, Griffiths and Reynolds, from the Death Chamber, somehow summoned a Chupacabra the size of a Behemoth and accidentally let him loose on the Department. Parkinson nearly lost an arm, Powell did lose an ear, Bode broke his wand and the only thing that stopped the damn monster from massacring them all were Baldwin's Eureka as he threw a new improved Amortentia potion of his on the Chupacabra's head, rendering it confused with love for Lovegood (who was standing the closest) and creating enough chances for Sirius and the two Death Unspeakables to try to vanish it.

At the end of the day, Sirius strongly believed that he must be an all-around amazing person, to be able to keep his sanity working in that kind of environment.

Returning to the surprise house-calling and sure enough, Lovegood, still cooing over the pigeons on the windowsills of his house, ignored him entirely and moved to the window.

Sirius grounded his teeth and rounded on Bode instead:

"Is there a reason for your intrusion on my property at this unholy hour?"

Bode, at least, snapped out of his queer fascination with pigeons and gave Sirius a 'Oh-yes-thanks-Merlin-you-remind-me!' look, before saying loudly, signalling badly at Tom still blearily staring at them up from the staircase:

"Uh YES! Of course we do! You know…the thing you asked us a few months back…" Another stop, and several unsuccessful winking and gesturing not very discreetly at Tom, who looked at Bode like he was a failure as a human being but still felt suspicious enough that the kid refused to burke from his position.

Sirius vaguely remembered what he had asked them, and blanched for a few seconds before telling Tom:

"Go back to bed, Tom. It's Unspeakables business."

The boy gave a light scowl, before shuffling away, yawns in place. As an afterthought, Sirius called after him:

"And no spying! Either by yourself or your snakes!"

He would have to put up a sound-proofed barrier, he knew, but it wouldn't hurt to remind the kid beforehand.

After Tom's door clicked shut, Sirius herded Lovegood and Bode into the sitting room.

"So?" Sirius locked the door behind his colleagues and do three different sound-proofed spells before asking.

Bode looked grave and Lovegood looked apologetic, and Sirius knew all the answer he needed. He faltered in his steps, but pressed on and dropped into his salon with an exhausted sigh.

Bode cleared his throat and said:

"Just as you have suspected, Sirius, there were some... technicalities relating to the Veil. The results just came out, but it seems that you and your daughter are...not going to be aging anytime soon."

That was a roundabout way of saying that the Veil has officially made them immortal. Contrary to popular beliefs, that did not make Sirius felt better.

Immortality was only sweet to people of little consequence, or people who had decided to hole himself/herself into a hut in the woods and wait until time pass them by (no offense, Flamel). Neither of those were a choice to Sirius, nor Hermione. They were reknown unregistered Time Travellers, for fuck's sakes. He was a bloody salaried bureaucrat who had also constantly been at the center of the pureblood society's rumour mills. He had at least five scandals to his name (three relating to the speculations about his non-existent sex life but okay!), a criminal record a mile long (apparently, unauthorised dueling Aurors because they gave you stink eyes were a capital crime now), and an official employee file filled with biological evidences and many original discoveries and formulations of spells that was his trademark. Hermione broke a great number of records with her exceptional N.E.W.T.s result and her hexing of potential betrothed(s). Inconspicuousness was a wonderful but bleeding delusional dream.

And then there was Tom. One of their grand missions was to impacting his rise as the evil Dark Lord of the latter half of the century. Instead, they would be there, flaunting their ridiculous immortality and eternal youth at a psychopath with an extreme Thanatophobia case. The sheer hypocrisy of it made him cringe.

"But that was straight on, Siri. How did you know?" Lovegood was asking him, absent smile and soothing eyes in place.

How did he not know, really? When after eight years and his daughter still looked like an (pretty but) awkward teenager and he did not have any lines on his face even though he was nearing his fifties now. The Blacks excellent genes could only explain so much.

"...the spells woven on it was incredible... no idea how to proceed though... no authorised travels through the Veil anymore..."

Bode was still delving into the complicated research process of the Veil and time, but Sirius no longer listened to him.

"Cease now, Alistair." Said Lovegood, voice calm, "Siri needs time to process all this. We will leave now, and come back later, when he was more himself."

Sirius snapped his gaze back to her, more than a bit grateful. Lovegood smiled at him:

"And never you mind about the confidentiality. We're Unspeakables."

Sirius decided against telling Hermione. At least not yet. His daughter would throw a wobbly and Merlin forbid she got anymore hysterical than she already so often had.

He had to tell her, he knew. Just not today, nor tomorrow. Nor before she finished her vacation.

So he launched himself into his work instead, seeing as his efforts at babysitting couldn't get any better than what it was now. He visited the Blacks more often, too, so that Tom could frolic about with other children his age without having to constantly bounded by magic secrecy. If he knew these visits would lead to this presumptuous intrusiveness, he would never have done so and took Tom to his colleagues' houses instead.

"I don't see my eligibility has anything to do with you, nephew." Sirius growled at his namesake (actually, he was the namesake, but never mind the mind-blown inconsistency of time travelling) and tried his hardest not to jump out of his seat in disgust like a skittish maiden.

The Other Sirius calmly crossed his arms and looked beseechingly at Sirius (this was becoming rather confusing):

"Uncle, please. It is just a meeting, is all. You can meet her and see how it goes. That family has been nagging me for a potential match for ages. And the only Black's male remotely eligible at this point is you."

"What about that Marius kid of Cygnus?" Asked Sirius, teeth gritting.

"That's one a Squib." The Other Sirius spat as if it was vile to even say the word, "And he is three years younger than her, in any case."

Sirius was aghast:

"Three years...! Bloody Merlin's tits, Sirius! Is she nineteen? What kind of cradle robber do you think I am?"

His supposed nephew's eyes flashed:

"And how old are you, uncle?" The old man looked at him hungrily, as if he could drill a hole into his head and extract the secret of eternal youth from it, "It was well-established that you were thirty back when you first landed back here. But uncle," His voice turned vindictive now, "I don't really think you look any older than back then, no? Mortality rate in Middle Age should have been shorter than now, so was the longevity of youth. And yet..."

A shiver ran across Sirius's back. He stared intently at the lined face of his supposed nephew and forced himself not to balk at the blatant greed on his face. A deep breath, face maintaining the blank expression from before, Sirius said:

"I will go meet the Greengrass girl. For the family. But, nephew," He stood up, eyes shattering cold and mouth tightened into a sneer that would have made his mother proud, "The next time you buy information from my colleague, there will be consequence."

He turned and walked away, before turning his head back as an afterthought:

"Accidental Squib aside, isn't Cygnus's branch much more powerful than yours as of late?"

Sirius walked away before seeing Sirius II's reactions to his off-handed threat. It was no threat, really. Aside from Orion Black (his future-past-kind-of father, who was following Tom around like a pet dog at this exact moment), he would not hesitate to cripple the whole Sirius II line if any shit of this magnitude came about again. The Wizarding World of this decade has no lack of Blacks, after all.

The Greengrass girl was...well, a girl. She was younger than his daughter, not in looks, but in the way she held herself, the wavering smile that she offered him when they first encountered, and the occasional squirms that she must have thought no one could see. She was attractive, he had to give her that (even though the very fact that he was evaluating a girl younger than his kid made him want to vomit). She also had a predictable habit of glancing furtively at Cantankerus Nott two tables over, then turning to him and blushing spectacularly like a toddler caught with her fingers in a jar. Needless to say, Sirius disliked her to bits.

"Why are you here, child, if all you ever do is making us both uncomfortable with your blatant infatuation with Cantankerus Nott?" He asked, more curious than angry.

Startled, she blinked rapidly at him with green eyes nearly glazed over (Must have been an endangered specie in the Greengrass family, this one).

"I don't... I..." She stumbled, flushing somewhat, "I mean, I do not mind, you know, the... involvement between you two."

It felt like lightning struck him squarely in the face, blasting off both skins and eyeballs at the same time. Sirius nearly jumped off of his seat:

"What involvement? What are you talking about? Whoever the fuck...?"

He ditched the entire veneer of aristocratic politeness. Screw politeness! Someone (many someone, by the showing of things) somewhere had been thinking about the disgusting possibility of him, Sirius Black, and bloody filthy Cantankerus Nott in an involvement and that was not okay!

Valeria Greengrass blinked owlishly at him:

"You don't know?"

Of course he didn't know. There would have been blood if he caught even a whiff of any such revolting rumours. It wasn't the fact that they think he was bent whereas he was ramrod ruler straight that made him so outraged. In fact, he did dabble in this and that before, and concluded that he could bend occasionally (one of his greatest teenage crushes was a boy, whom he was still having certain fuzzy feelings for every once in a while) and super straight most other time (note again: Bella, Jean something and some dozen or so women). No, the fact that made him so grossed out was that Nott was the supposed object of his affection. Merlin's beard, if he had wanted a man to warm his bed, he would have chosen Malfoy, who - despite the irritating narcissistic tendencies - were at least pretty, of acceptable conducts, semi-infatuated with him, and had never penned anything as obnoxious as a Pure-Blood Directory, thank you very much.

Valeria Greengrass was still talking, face more eager than she had any right to be:

"But the things they said! There are talks about how you and him got all...physical inside an abandoned sections of the Ministry?"

"Because we were...!" Unauthorised dueling each other. That was the fourth time, by the way, and the last three had gotten into both Sirius's and Nott's criminal records. The prick would get suspended from the Department of Law

Enforcement, and Sirius would have to deal with house-arrest if this information got out. So he held his tongue, even though the thought of people gossiping about his supposed intimacy with Nott made him want to kill something. "It was an academic discussion. No one was getting intimate with anyone. I would appreciate it if you refrain from spreading such slandering rumours."

The Greengrass girl has the gall to look skeptical, but she nodded mutely at his murderous glare and muttered indistinctly afterwards:

"...shame. I'd love to try a three-way with you two."

Sirius's eyebrows twitched and he swore to himself that he would run naked around Diagon alley before letting his supposed nephew robbed him into doing something like this ever again.

When he went to pick Tom up from number 12 Grimmauld Place, Sirius finally found out why Voldy was being such a Good Boy at Muggle school. Eavesdropping on children should have made him more ashamed about himself, but after the disastrous meeting with Valeria Greengrass, nothing would be considered embarrassing for him anymore. As he stood outside the playroom, he heard Orion's high-pitched whine:

"...boring, Tom! Are you sure it's worthy of our attention?"

"Either control your pitch of voice like a civilised human being," Tom's voice sounded bored and flat, "or don't bother to enter the conversation and embarrass us all."

"He's right." An older voice now, but mind-blown enough, entirely sycophantic to Tom, "Whines are for dogs and babies. You are six now, Orion."

"You seems really interested in that Muggle book, Tom." Another mild but scratchy voice quipped, "The Bi...Bible, eh? Is that what they are teaching you in that Muggle School?"

That quipped Sirius's interest. What was Voldy doing with a Muggle's sacred scripture? That Muggle school probably taught it in between the classes, but Sirius was of the impression that that particular kind of subjects would have Tom torturing teachers to get out of. Was he wrong?

"What do you think Muggles deemed the worst crime a human being can commit?" Tom's voice was thoughtful, near nonsensical with how much he digressed from the current topic.

"Ugh...killing family members?" A hesitant older voice inputted.

"Burning down their church?" Another contributed.

"Incestuous conducts?" Sirius recognised this voice.

He put a Disillusionment Charm on himself and stuck his head in the doorway just in time to see the entire room giving young Alphard Black a look of profound incredulity. Well, no one of a sane mind would start criticising incest in the House of Incestuous Happenings that was the Black family's stronghold. Except for his esteemed uncle, apparently.

Tom put an end to it with an impatient snap of the closed book:

"No. The worst crime a person can commit is," The dramatic stretch of silence was just so... Voldy that even Sirius wouldn't help the smile making it way to his face, "fornicating with mammals."

The silence ensuing was tight and uncomfortable. Even Sirius felt uncomfortable. Then...

"What are mammals?" Asked Alphard Black.

"I want to go to the bathroom." Said Orion Black.

"So specific. Does it mean it's alright with reptiles then?" No. It was not. Stop talking, Walburga.

"What about birds? I know a wizard who sexually harassed his owls..." Sirius sincerely questioned the parenting qualifications of Belvina Black and Violetta Bulstrode if they allowed their kid to make acquaintances of such questionable kind.

"Is camel a mammal?" Asked Alphard Black, still determined to get a proper definition of mammals out of his cousins.

"Right! I know another wizard who had tried to have sex with his camels!" Again, exactly what kind of acquaintances was that kid making?

"I want to go to the bathroom!" Wailed Orion Black.

Sirius had to massage his forehead. Listening to these children's conversation is killing his brain cells.

"Sit down, Orion. If I want an equivalent of that saying in the magical world," Tom asked, conversational now, "what would it be?"

The children looked at each other, and shrugged:

"The worst crime a magical citizen can commit?"

"Yes?" Tom's voice was somewhat patronising now.

"Ugh... Fornicating with Muggles?"

Tom was evidently as annoyed as Sirius himself, as he threw the book at Abraxas's (Such an outrage! Why was peacocks' spawn hanging out with Sirius's kid again?) head and grumbled:

"Don't be a moron! That would hardly fly with Muggle-sympathisers in our midst, no?"

Walburga (His mother lived just as she had died, being a nuisance to everyone.) recoiled and screamed:

"What do you mean? Why do we need to please those blood traitors?"

Tom looked to be deep in thought, and he started opening the book again. When he spoke, his voice was contemplating:

"The Muggles are…united. A huge percentages of Muggles are devoted to their God and believing this Bible to be The Book of Truth. Wizards like us don't have this belief."

Dorea shrugged and said:

"We don't need God, Tom. We are magical enough to be our own God."

"That is true." Tom looked directly at her and hummed, "But what if we make one anyway?"

Sirius felt just as confused as the rest of the kids inside that room.

Tom continued, eyes gleaming in that way that made Sirius a bit squeamish:

"Shall we create a magical scripture together? One that unites the magical world and propels us to seats of power in the future?"

Ah. Eight years old and his kid is already strategising world conquest.

At that moment, a nasty smell blasted off the air around them. The children squealed noisily and Orion Black (his father -shame upon shame) concluded forlornly:

"I told you I need to go to the bathroom."

Sirius sincerely hoped that Tom would, at the very least, reconsider his choice of companions in world conquest later.