Part 6
Still, Severus couldn't believe it.
Oh, what had he done?
He had been talking to someone about his secret.
To someone who wasn't Minerva.
He had told Remus Lupin about his secret.
About Katie.
His best-kept secret of his life.
And Remus, he had reacted like a true friend.
Understood why it was a secret.
Needed to remain a secret.
Now, he knew, Remus would keep it.
Would not talk about it.
Apart from talking to Severus, and to him at least talking out loud about what was bothering him did him a world of good.
All the time he was accompanied by fear.
This fear that someone would find out the truth.
About him and Katie.
The latter had just walked through the house, lost in thought, and now there she was, in this room, examining the family tree.
Her family.
You see, she was a Black.
Child of Bellatrix.
To a woman who had brought so much destruction and pain to the magical world.
But still she was her mother.
A mother she didn't know.
With the tips of her fingers, she ran over her mother's name.
Bellatrix Lestrange, née Black.
"My lunatic cousin," she heard a voice behind her.
And Katie turned and looked up into the face of Sirius Black.
Well, her great cousin.
Except he didn't know.
No one knew.
He also didn't know that he had actually lost his entire inheritance to Katie.
When Sirius had run away from his childhood home, his mother had not only disowned him, but had declared that the next heir to the noble House of Black would be the firstborn child of her wonderful niece, Bellatrix.
And Katie was the firstborn.
The one and only true heir to the Black fortune.
Just no one knew it.
In fact, no one was allowed to know about her.
Well, she had to stay Katie Bell.
Orphan.
Granddaughter of Minerva McGonagall.
Had to hide the fact that she was the daughter of Severus Snape and Bellatrix Lestrange.
Needed to keep quiet that she was Catelyn Belladonna Eileen Snape Black.