Conniption: A fit of hysterical excitement or anger
March 21, 1976
Sirius ran away in December. The twentieth of December. Regulus had rounded on her with the furious question of "why didn't you stop him?" but she had not even flinched.
"Because, be it on the streets in or in some blood traitor or half-breed's den, he will die out of this house. And Blacks have a notorious sense of self-preservation," she had told her youngest son with the stoic manner so ingrained in her.
But Sirius was not back by Christmas. Nor even by New Year's. She didn't find it strange, though. No doubt he was still too ashamed. He had always been extraordinarily good at sulking in corners and stubbornly averse to slinking back with his tail between his legs, no matter the benefits it might serve. But it was only a matter of time.
Her husband didn't think so. By New Year's he had quite moved on. Sirius was gone, no longer their problem. They had always known it was coming, hadn't they? They'd tried their hardest, but there had been something born in him that they couldn't rectify.
But still she did not remove him from the family tree. One taste of the real world and he would be sick from the sourness, she was sure. Sirius had never been good at enduring. His childhood was one long stream of complaints and howling in her memory. He would be back, and he would finally have had some sense knocked into him the hard way.
Perhaps that was why the letter pushed her over the edge. She stood quite still as she read her youngest son's neat pen. Sirius said he'd gone home for Easter. He'd come back to school with his hair finally trimmed properly, ragged Muggle trainers replaced with proper dress shoes, and hadn't gotten into a fight once since term started. Regulus was impressed. He hadn't thought his mother would be right.
But she hadn't been right. Because Sirius hadn't been home. Mrs. Potter had politely owled them to at least let them know of their son's whereabouts at Christmas. And it looked like she had succeeded everywhere Walburga had failed. There was a split second when she realized he was never coming back and before she convinced herself it was because she was never taking him back, and it was that second that must have ignited her.
She screamed at the top of her lungs. She threw the letter into the fire and stormed up to that foul bedroom of his. But no matter how many flames she threw at the posters, pictures, and banners plastering his walls, none of them would catch fire. And so she threw things instead, ripped pages from discarded books, all the while shrieking about what disgusting traitor he had turned out to be. By the time she flew into the drawing room, her hair was a mess, her eyes were quite popping, and any evidence of stoicism that ought to have been instilled in her was long, long gone.
She found the name embroidered in gold at the base of the tapestry and this time there was a satisfactory flash of flame, a scorching smell, and all evidence of him and his betrayals was blasted away.
A/N: Don't you think Walburga was a nice fit for this word? :) Review PLEASE! :D