Chapter 19
Sirius had the basics in a multitude of foreign languages - Russian, German, and French prominent among them. His linguistic education started in early childhood and was geared mostly towards maintaining a polite conversation at a high level though. As a result, while his vocabulary might be lacking in other regards, he could converse with a spot-on pronunciation and accent. He was forced to practice greetings and other fixed phrases to perfection, since, in Walburga's words, 'a noble scion of your standing can afford no less'.
Now, after taking the knowledge of multiple muggle professors from different universities Sirius estimated he was pretty at the level of proficiency similar to that of a native speaker in no less than 5 languages. He was blown away by the results of what his stray thought and ensuing experimentation led to.
The idea first came to him when he was researching rituals. The choice of ingredients for a ritual was based on a plethora of different criteria. You needed a thorough understanding of their characteristics and interactions to even begin comprehending how it all worked. So, Sirius was forced to brush up on his herbology, potions, and transfiguration to get the basics for what was basically pretty advanced alchemy.
But he quickly got fed up with all the studying. His passion for all things magic did not extend to its less glamorous branches. Sirius never had enough patience to pursue something for years before having anything of real value to show for it. He needed instant feedback that what he was doing was having the desired effect, otherwise, he would lose motivation.
So when his attempts at comprehending how the rituals work, just based on some unrelated notes on the subject, inevitably failed, Sirius just said fuck it and moved on. But even after the whole ritual fiasco ended in complete success, despite the risks, it stayed in Sirius' head.
It wasn't like he didn't want to be competent in all branches of magic. He just wasn't sure that it was possible to master so many different things in a lifetime, even if he mustered the patience for working on potions. He definitely didn't want to become a colloquial 'jack of all trades master of none'.
But he wasn't able to just give up the idea, no matter how hard he tried to convince himself otherwise. So, it continued to eat away at him throughout his daily life, whenever he had an idle moment to himself it would pop up in his mind, until he came up with a faint outline of an idea. Since it was obviously nigh impossible to learn this much by yourself, the only other option would be to get other people's skills and knowledge to complement your own. The only way to do that, that Sirius could think of, would be to extract directly from their minds, utilizing the mind arts.
But he didn't want to take people's memories and experiences, just the very essence of their knowledge in a specific field. He wanted to live his life to the fullest and experience all of the things he had missed due to his imprisonment. Absorbing whole lifetimes of memories from a bunch of older people run the risk of ruining all of that for him. The chance of becoming bitter and disillusioned about life and losing interest in his goals was a serious risk associated with this idea.
But he stuck with it, dedicating some time to mind arts every day. Going out and diving into random muggles' minds quickly became a habit and after a few weeks of practice, he was feeling confident enough to attempt what he did a few nights ago.
It wasn't exactly smooth or effortless, but the result was beyond anything that Sirius hoped for. He took a man's whole skillset in his chosen field, accumulated over decades of dedicated effort, in a matter of minutes.
Sirius spent the whole night apparating around the country like a toddler on crack, repeating the process on a slew of different experts and scientists. Looking back now, it had felt as if he had been totally intoxicated. Saying that his memories of the time were hazy was an understatement.
It was definitely an addictive feeling. If Sirius liked the gratification he got from mastering magic gradually by himself, he loved this. The instant power rush he felt from amassing knowledge at this rate was out of this world.
After having gone beyond what was generally possible for a single person and possessing a ridiculous breadth of knowledge, Sirius' understanding of the world worked had jumped dramatically. After becoming a well-rounded expert in physics, chemistry, biology, and a few other fields, alchemy and rituals should no longer pose such an insurmountable challenge to him.
But contentment wasn't really what Sirius felt at that moment. No, after going all around England and a few surrounding countries in a mad frenzy, legilimizing muggles left and right without a care in the world about authorities, Sirius only felt greed for more. Imagining the possibilities of doing the same with wizards almost made him salivate.
Gone were the days when he would be disturbed by his own thoughts and aspirations. A couple of years ago he might have felt conflicted about this, but right now he couldn't care less. In the last couple of months, he had acknowledged his own hunger for power and came to terms with it. It no longer really bothered him and he felt bewildered he used to view it as something negative.
Considering the rest of his immediate family he couldn't be judged too harshly, being fairly tame in comparison. A little selfishness, arrogance, and hunger for power were hardly the end of the world in Sirius' book.
During Hogwarts or even his early childhood, Sirius was somewhat selfish and lacked empathy, to the point of being almost completely insensitive to other people's pain or discomfort. He was called 'cruel' or 'vicious' more than a few times back then, even if it always ended with him being just young and irresponsible.
In his youth, he did not care overly much for other people's opinions if they differed too much from his own, not really even taking them into consideration before discarding them as insignificant or wrong. He surrounded himself with people of similar interests, who willingly followed his lead and did not try to dissuade him from doing anything he set his mind to at the moment.
Even now his 'empathy' and 'consideration' of others were more of a learned skill and a habit than anything else. He only ever truly cared about a couple of people in his life. With time James became like a true brother to him and there were times when he put his needs before his own. But those people were few and far in between, and as for the rest, Sirius had no fucks to give.
After what he went through during the war, his stay in Azkaban, and his time on the run, he came to a realization. People did not really care about him as long as he was out of their sight. Most of the so-called empathy stemmed from people's own unease from witnessing something. As long as they did not have to directly see most people would be quick to forget about somebody else's misfortune. So he, in turn, saw no reason to place other people's well-being before his own aspirations. It was a long and excruciating lesson, but he definitely would not be forgetting it anytime soon. If he wanted things to go in his favor he would have to ensure that himself.
And the only way to do that was to become powerful enough to be the person in control. His ambition was all that he had to keep him going and now that he had regained the chance to do things his way he would jump in feet first. He did not come back to the past only to waste his new chance at life by suppressing his own instincts and desires.
And that mindset was how Sirius found himself back in his basement training room after a sleepless night he spent mentally raping people. Despite his exhaustion, his adrenaline was still running too high for him to simply lay down to sleep.
Shrugging off the suit he wore for his endeavor in the muggle world he transfigured his remaining clothing into simple shorts and a t-shirt. With another flick of his wand, the training dummies located around the room came to life and stepped forward. He took a moment to lightly stretch but ultimately he was just itching to cast some powerful spells and let off some steam.
When he stepped into the dueling arena all the dummies surrounding him exploded into motion. They were of his own design, at least partially, as he based his own on the amalgamation of basic enchantments he found in various books. These were the umpteenth version of that first draft - as Sirius had the unfortunate habit of using quite destructive spells he had opportunities to re-do and improve those aplenty. He mostly focused on refining their programming and durability. Their physical capabilities were quite satisfactory, but their 'intelligence' left a lot to be desired.
It was something of an undeveloped magical field as well. Simple commands based on singular conditions were easy enough to do. Things like judging an optimal distance, avoiding projectiles, sending them at targets, boxing someone in, and the like, were not much of a challenge to figure out either. But trying to make the dummies work in tandem and use different enchantments based on complicated and vague circumstances was not easy at all. Despite those issues, Sirius felt like he was making steady progress as each iteration would be just slightly better than the last.
A testimony to that would be how he had to jump and roll around like a jackass, trying to avoid projectiles coming at him from different directions. He basically 'hard-coded' - as a muggle scientist he recently mind-raped would put it - the dummies to use various formations interchangeably and added a random element to it. It was hardly an elegant or optimal solution but it proved to be an effective training tool, and he was done banging his head against the wall, trying to make his creations super responsive to the environment or intelligent. He just wanted them to fulfill their imagined purpose and they definitely did that right now.
In the end, he barely clutched the win from the team of dummies. With most of them laying in pieces on the ground, the remaining three reformed into a triangular formation with one at the head and the other two flanking it. Sirius immediately fired a combination of physically destructive spells, ranging from exploding hexes to cutting and bludgeoning curses. The trio used their in-built shield option, but under the onslaught, it only held for a second or two. The torso of one of the dummies twisted violently and an arm of another flew off before Sirius was forced to duck as a spell came towards him.
But the distraction only delayed the inevitable. Sirius wasted no time and the earth erupted bursting with stone roots which quickly dragged the literally disarmed dummy underneath, and a modified freezing charm literally froze the other one solid for a brief moment before the follow-up curse shattered it to pieces.
Sirius grinned as he heaved with his palms on his knees, supporting him from collapsing. Adding prank spells to the rotation was definitely the right idea. It gave him more motivation than the usual stunners and the like, which would be easily undone by the house-elf he had on standby. Looking like a clown for the rest of the day as a result of a spell with no easy counter was way more motivating in contrast.
He initially planned to get in some physical training as well, since he missed yesterday's session, but the brief bout under increased gravity was enough to get that idea out of his mind. Even the slightest increase in gravity made for an exponentially harder workout, he found out the hard way.
Trudging up the stairs and feeling like shit, he was ready for a long soak in the bath and a solid five-hour rest. As he walked through the hallway he heard voices coming from the living room and decided he should at least say hello to Andi and the kids since he hadn't seen her for a few days.
However, as he entered the room and saw the occupants he froze. Not only was Amelia here, but so was Isabelle Greengrass. Despite the fact that she did not react positively upon learning of his history with the pretty blond witch if the prolonged argument that ensued was any indication, Amelia suddenly seemed hell-bent on including the younger woman in their get-togethers. He had no idea what this was about, but it seemed Amelia had a dramatic change of mind since here they sat, once again talking quite amicably.
Even more unexpectedly there was another visitor in the form of Narcissa Black, recently Malfoy. He hoped to speak with her after Lucius was imprisoned, but she failed to reach out to him at all. It seemed they would finally get the chance to clear the air and, hopefully, reconcile as a family.
As all the occupants of the room suddenly focused their attention on him, he suddenly felt quite awkward standing there, in a soaked t-shirt, his face dripping with sweat. The unimpressed stares Narcissa and Andi leveled at him did not help him feel more welcome.
"Uhm... Sorry about my attire, I was not informed we were expecting guests." Sirius floundered and raised a questioning eyebrow at Andromeda. "Just wanted to say hi before heading to bed. It's been a long day. Or two as it happens." Sighing, he realized that he wouldn't be able to just make himself scarce and go to sleep. Running a hand through his hair, he continued. "I'll go clean myself up a bit and come back down. Give me a moment ladies."
After a two-minute shower and a change of wardrobe, he headed back down to the living room, however reluctantly.
The women were seated on the sofas near the fireplace where he saw them previously, but as he ventured deeper into the room he saw the kids for the first time. Harry and Nymphadora were laying on the ground in the company of another toddler, blond-haired and pale, which he presumed was the spawn of Malfoy. They paid little attention to Sirius' entrance, all of their focus taken by a little, black kneazle which they were gathered around. As they all seemed to be having the time of their life, Sirius switched his attention back to the adults and continued on his way.
"Hello again ladies." He gave his best charming smile, kissing Amelia in greeting and hugging the other three, including his blond cousin's surprise at the unexpected gesture. "Isabelle, can't say I expected to see you here. What led to this unexpected development?" The latter part of the statement was addressed more so to Amelia than to the blonde.
She rolled her eyes at him, recognizing the nearly exact same statement he made the last time she visited. She just ignored him and turned back to Andi. Sirius raised an eyebrow. She was getting more and more comfortable around him.
"Narcissa nice to see you as well. It's been a while." He smirked at his cousin.
"Indeed. It has been too long." Despite trying to sound confident, he could tell that she was nervous and unsure of what to say or how to act. They were never close and considering all the pranks he pulled on her specifically as well as the Slytherin house as a whole, he couldn't blame her for being a little stiff around him.
Sirius resolved himself for another long night. The others did not share his fatigue and he couldn't exactly just ghost all of them when they were all gathered here together without provoking the ire of the women in his life. As he engaged in a polite small talk with his cousin, the forced exchange was almost making him visibly cringe. It was clear that both of them felt awkward, but hopefully, that would decrease with time or the evening would drag on even more.
END
