A/N:
Written for QLFC Season 10 Round 6
Team : Tutshill Tornadoes
Position : Chaser 2
Prompt : Jenny of Oldstones
Optional Prompts:
5.(relationship type) siblings
8.(character) Marius Black
13. (theme) Death
Word Count: 1244
Warning: Mention of disowning
Marius Black stared at the tall, red-brick façade of 12 Grimmauld Place, his eyes moving over the house he had not seen in half a century. He stared at the front steps, willing his feet to move, but they couldn't seem to obey him.
He turned and looked around the street again, as if hoping someone would come and take him away from here, tell him he didn't belong here and that this house was no place for a filthy Squib like him. But no-one came. Who would? They were all gone.
Taking a deep breath, squaring his shoulders as if for a fight, he lifted one foot and placed it on the first step. It was odd, how even after all these years, this place was still so familiar.
With another deep breath, he opened the door. The smell that welcomed him was stale, the first sign that the ancient house was leaving behind its days of luxury and surrendering to neglect and decay.
Marius surveyed the long hallway, dark when it had once been filled with burning lamps and scented candles, the chandelier glittering dully in the gloom. The ornate frames of the portraits lining the wall seemed to be in need of dusting, and he could see that even the carpet was beginning to lose its opulence.
Marius hadn't expected to feel this much emotion upon seeing the house stripped of its former glory, but his roots were still embedded here, in the house where his forefathers had lived for centuries, and where he'd been raised himself, before he was thrown out in disgrace.
"YOU!"
The scream sliced through the gloom. Marius stiffened, searching for the source of the sound, thinking that it had been a mistake to come here. He shouldn't have been so foolish.
But his eyes couldn't find the person who'd screamed. Instead, they landed on one of the portraits on the wall, a life-sized painting of a woman in black, disturbingly realistic.
"How dare you come back here, you filthy Sqiub! How dare you shame this house with your presence! Vile, worthless brat…"
As the woman continued to rant, Marius stared at her, trying to remember her. She was in her late fifties or early sixties, so he must have seen her at some point before he'd been disowned. He looked at her narrowed, crow-black eyes, the stern set of her lips and brow, and the greying hair that threatened to fall out of the black cap.
An image of a sullen girl, dark-haired and dark-eyed, her hair coming apart from its plait in wild curls, came into his mind.
"Wal…burga?" he said in disbelief.
That seemed to incense her even more. "How dare you say my name! How dare you befoul it with your filthy, Squib tongue, you…"
He glanced wearily towards the other portraits. They were all starting to wake up, and he could see they were reacting the same way Walburga's portrait was.
He should leave. It had been a mistake to even think of coming here again. Even if those who had cast him out were dead, he should've known they wouldn't be entirely gone. He was thankful none of them had a ghost to wander around the place.
He turned to leave, but his gaze was drawn to the upstairs rooms, and the strings of memory and curiosity tugged him in their direction.
He started to climb the stairs, resisting the urge to clamp his hands over his ears to block the commotion the portraits were causing, shouting vile words and insults at him.
He shuddered at the heads of house-elves mounted on the walls. Everywhere he looked, he saw Death's markings imprinted on this house, the remnants of people who'd long since left this world. It had quickly devolved into a place of gloom and disrepair after Walburga's death, where it had once been a place of grandeur and pride.
He arrived at the first floor and headed towards one of the drawing rooms, where he knew the Black family tapestry was hung.
He stood in front of it, scanning the embroidery, spotting new faces and names he couldn't remember.
His eyes searched until they found it, the black scorch mark where his name was once stitched. He hadn't been there to see them do it.
He looked around once again, noting a new black mark where Alphard, Walburga's younger brother should have been, and another on her eldest son, Sirius's, name.
He frowned. Sirius, according to the rumours flying around, had been a supporter of You-Know-Who. Why would Walburga, with her prominent hatred of non-wizards, disown a son who was no doubt following in her footsteps?
As he stood there, his mind was overcome with a memory of him standing in the same place, only he was still a child, and there was a girl beside him.
He tried to push the memory away, but it still lingered.
He'd liked to come up here with his youngest sister, Dorea. He remembered of how they'd leave their parents and their uncles and aunts downstairs and come up here to look at the tree, trying to memorise all the names imprinted on it and find out which families they were related to, so they'd know which families they were to associate with when they finally went to Hogwarts.
He'd always been closest to Dorea, especially when they had been the only ones who were too young to attend Hogwarts.
He remembered the last time they'd come up here together, before he would turn eleven. He'd been nervous, looking at the black circles that marked the disowned and disgraced members of their family, wondering if he was going to end up like them because he hadn't shown any signs of magic yet.
"Don't worry," Dorea had told him, slipping her little hand into his. "You'll get your letter soon and go to Hogwarts. And then I'll get to go the year after."
But his eleventh birthday, then his twelfth, had come and went, and there had been no letter. There had been lots of communication with the Headmaster, trying to work out if there had been a mistake, or the letter had got lost.
But in the end, it had been obvious that there had been no mistake.
Dorea had received her letter, though, and she'd gone to Hogwarts. And with every year she spent there, she began to distance herself from him. She'd never resorted to the name calling or bullying some of their cousins, and even siblings, enjoyed, but she never stood up for him either. And she never held his hand the way she used to and told him it was okay that he didn't have magic like the rest of them.
When his parents had thrown him out, disgraced and ashamed, she had done nothing.
Marius shut himself away from the old pain, the one that hadn't surfaced in nearly fifty years. Turning away from the tapestry of what had once been his family, he flew out of the room and down the stairs, past the screaming, outraged portraits. He emerged out of the house into crisp, evening air, but there was still a strange warmth on his cheeks.
Dimly, he realised he'd started to cry.
He turned once more towards the house, and with one last, haunted glance, he spun, wiping his cheeks gruffly, and walked away from the ancestral home of an ancient family that was gone.