Chapter 3: Be it a trial or the truth

Sirius closed the door behind him, and his eyes went to the girl – fifteen or so, and so, so alike in terms of looks that Sirius had to wonder, had his twin sister not been stillborn – had he been stillborn, and not her – would she have looked like just like that?

The girl, for her part, had her eyes strained on him, and a rather distressed look on her face.

If the way she was clenching at her blade was anything – and how came Moody hadn't taken that away, too? Did all the children still have their wands, too? – she did not seem that reassured to be facing a slightly older male clone of herself.

Which was probably understandable, because her own father – and yes, it was him, but at the same time... it wasn't – had to be older by at least a decade and a half.

Sirius approached cautiously, his hands well in sight, and his wand in its holster.

The girl didn't say a word.

So he'd need to do it first.

"Hello. Do... Do you know who I am?"

The girl's eyes hesitated on his face – she almost said something, but then didn't, and eventually she just shook her head to say no.

Well. At least she could understand English. Which seemed obvious enough, what with him being supposedly her father, but.

The more he looked at her, the more convinced he was that something wasn't adding up – more so than with any of the other kids.

There was her manner of clothing – rich, but not quite modern enough, whether by wizarding or muggle standards – the blade – and yes, looking at it from close enough only confirmed it, it was a piece of human rib at the handle – the intricate hand jewelry – he hadn't noticed it from afar, but it was hard to miss now, especially with the rubies – and, more than anything else, the way she was looking at... everything.

Like she wasn't used to seeing the world as it now was. Something close, perhaps, but nothing quite like that.

Sirius put both his hands on the interrogation table – let her see what he was doing, that he had no weapon, nothing to hide – and asked:

"Tell me your name, I'll tell you mine. Alright?"

He noticed how her eyes seemed to be taking him all in, details by details – as if trying to equate his appearance to something she knew, something that wasn't a mirror. She only had to age him a little, he guessed, and she'd have her answer. Perhaps add a scar or two, or cut the hair differently. A beard, maybe.

"My name is Nashira."

Sirius' eyebrows rose up. Well. He may not have gone for the star names with Dana and Fania, but apparently some of the children did have traditional names – though the Blacks tended to favor the western names for stars, it wasn't unheard of to use the arab names, especially for girls.

"Constellation of Capricornus, bearer of good news. Nice."

Then he took a deep breath, acutely aware of the girl's stare.

He'd made her a promise, hadn't he?

"Mine's Sirius, from the constellation Canis Major. The brightest star in the night sky."

He made a pause, there, and looked at her as she seemed both surprised – and not at all.

"But you knew that already, didn't you?"

"I..."

The girl – Nashira had to stop, to breathe, to take it all in.

And instead of continuing, she made to hand him her blade.

Sirius frowned – he guessed that was a good thing, she trusted him enough to let go of her weapon. But what she meant by that, exactly, he had no idea. You didn't just hand over your saber, on top of letting go of it.

Nashira bit her lower lip, and pushed the blade a bit more towards him, almost into his hands now.

"Hold it. Please."

So Sirius did what she asked – hoping he wouldn't get hit with a blood curse, or something of the kind, the moment he'd touch the rib, because that sounded like something his family would do, and who said he'd been the one to raise that girl. For all he knew, she came from a future where Voldemort had won, he'd been killed, and Bellatrix had been raising his daughter.

Or not at all, but the risk was there.

The moment his fingers touched the handle – the bone which made about a third of the handle – Sirius felt a weird tingling through his entire skeleton. The rib sparkled silver and black – colors of the House of Black – and Sirius let go of the weapon immediately.

A phantom ache around his thoracic cage – left, lower half – told him enough.

The blade clanked as it fell on the interrogation table, but Nashira's eyes didn't leave Sirius' hands.

He wasn't quite sure how pale he was right now, but it seemed obvious enough that this, this...

"That bone is mine."

Nashira's eyes snapped to hold onto his. They were equally silver, solid and dangerous – but not right now. Right now they were looking for something in his eyes.

The girl nodded.

"Yes. Broken rib during a battle. Dad got it back with a bone-growing potion, but... There was an enemy, wraiths which could only be freed with the bones of their master's blood, the One Before. So Dad thought it'd be a better idea to make something for me to defend myself with, if needed, instead of getting rid of his rib bone."

That... brought a lot of questions. The name, the One Before. It wasn't quite familiar, but... Arcturus may be able to tell him more. From the sound of what Nashira was telling him, the Blacks were descended from that One Before – if his bones could cut it against the wraiths, they had to be.

Sirius, of course, knew the stories of his House. The first Ancestors, a couple who'd come from somewhere else, far, far away, him a magician, and her able to make intricate craft with magic woven into it, and they had started the House of Darke in the British Isles two millenia and a half ago. Whether or not the name of the House, back then, had already meant what it meant now was a mystery which would probably have to remain unsolved.

But no one in the family knew what had come before the first Ancestors.

Which seemed in theme with the name Nashira had just said – the One Before.

But, that was for later.

"Alright. So, somehow you needed a blade, and your father made one from one of my, of his ribs, which is entirely not terrifying news. Got it. Now, this is the part where I try to explain to you what's happening exactly, and I can already warn you... You probably won't like it."

After those words, Sirius winced – it was true, all too true, but it didn't make it easier to say.

Nashira looked like she wanted her saber back, if only because it was familiar to her – which nothing else seemed to be, not even her father, because he wasn't quite her father yet, and may never be – but the girl only gritted her teeth, and stonily listened.

"I suppose you saw the other children? The teenagers who ended up here with you? You saw them... well enough?"

She nodded – of course she had, she'd walked alongside them all the way to the Auror Office, and of course she'd seen. It wasn't hard to see.

"I suppose you noticed some things, then, didn't you?"

A moment of silence, before she could bring herself to say it.

Still, she would speak, because she had seen, she had noticed, and she knew what her fath... what Sirius was talking about.

And if there was something Nashira never did, it was backing down from a challenge. Be it a trial or the truth – and, in this case, she was starting to suspect that it was both. She may have seen how everything was weird, different from what she knew, but she remembered enough from the adults' tales of their homeland.

But that wasn't what Sirius was asking about, and Nashira was perhaps getting ahead of herself, no matter her suspicions about where she was.

"We all looked a bit alike, at least."

Sirius nodded, and thought that was probably even truer from her point of view. The children may have different mothers, but they were all his – and Nashira looked so much like him it hurt. Even the teenagers who looked the less like Sirius still had something of him, be it physical attributes or facial expressions.

"Like brothers and sisters, wouldn't you say?"

He watched as the girl nodded, convinced by those words, and yet utterly uncomprehending of how that could have happened. It had to be even weirder for her, who appeared to be an only child – at least, most of the others were already used to having siblings.

Well.

Now he had to go ahead and say it, didn't he?

"I was in an accident, just before you got... transported here. A magical accident. A machine got struck with stray magic, and me with it. It was a machine that dealt with time, and what could or could not have been, what may still be. And when the accident happened, well. The machine somehow materialized various children I could have had, had my life taken a particular path."

Nashira's jaw almost fell open, but the girl stopped the motion before she could really think about it. Neither her mother nor her father had ever liked being caught by surprise, or not being in control, and Nashira was true to her upbringing on that point. Even if she truly hadn't expected that – nor knew what to do about it – she wasn't going to let it show any more than necessary.

...Her parents.

She went back through the words her fathe... Sirius had just said, and something took hold of her guts – a disquietingly cold grip, the feeling of wrongness that even being certain of having been brought to another world had not achieved.

"Things that could have been..."

Her eyes left Sirius', as she spoke back his words. Her gaze fell upon his hands instead – her father's were slightly thinner, with both age and his years in Azkaban – and Nashira realized how young Sirius really was. He looked like he'd barely reached adulthood, like life hadn't spat on him and thrown him into another world – the world of their Ancestors, the world of the One Before – yet.

Oh, she recognized the look in his eyes, still. He was perhaps twenty, which meant three decades younger than her father, but he already had the look of a warrior, of someone who knew their world was on the brink of war – a nasty shudder went down her spine, and she realized, the war she'd always known to be coming back home, it was already here, in this time.

It had started years before, her father had told her once. Months, maybe, after he'd started school.

She was here, now, and it wasn't the same war, it wasn't the same world – this Sirius wasn't, would never be her father, not like that – and that was reality.

But before everything, she needed to tell him about what she'd just realized.

To ask Sirius if it truly meant what she thought, the words he'd just said.

"Does... Does it mean I don't really exist? Me, my world, my parents... If that's things that could have been..."

Sirius looked at her with burgeoning understanding – and she didn't like it, she didn't like seeing her father's face, so young, so unlike him and yet not as he understood exactly what had scared her.

What was still scaring her, just the thought of it.

It seemed ridiculous, said out loud like that. She was here, wasn't she? How could she not exist, then? How could everything she'd ever known only be a possibility in time, a dream cast aside as possible, but not real?

Nashira was only fifteen, and at that age, the children of the Midnight Court didn't learn about time magic – that was something only a few decided to pursue, when they were much older, when they had a lot more knowledge and experience than a teenager like herself could claim to.

Still, sometimes they would hear about it – or about Time itself – from the teachers, the researchers, even from Gandalf when he'd come by the Citadel. In stories, in pieces of advice, in long-winded discussions about what magic could and shouldn't do.

Nashira saw her fa... saw Sirius hesitate for a moment – probably wondering about what to say to a teenage girl who was his and yet not, who might as well have been told she was but the illusion of a dream given flesh and bones.

"I... don't know, if your world, your timeline truly exists or not, somewhere else. Maybe it does. But the problem is more that it doesn't exist here, in this time, and you haven't been misplaced across worlds, Nashira. The accident didn't steal you from your existence, see. It took a possibility, and made it real..."

Just as real as the shock he'd felt when he'd recognized his own rib bone in the handle of the girl's blade.

"If there's a place where your world exists, Nashira... I'm afraid the Nashira Black from that world is still there, and there's nothing for you to go back to, even if we could find a way to send you there."

Oh, of course, he didn't know – no one did, it hadn't been planed, none of this had been – that, but that was the most likely outcome. And giving hope, well. It was a good thing... sometimes.

Not when it only led to people hoping for the impossible for decades, and forgetting to live their life.

Sirius watched as the girl – his girl, kind of – took a shaky breath, and her eyes took on a suspiciously moist quality – but she didn't cry. Not yet, not now.

Instead, a look of determination swept away her unshed tears – as well as a quick swab at them by her right hand, but let's not talk about that.

"O... okay."

Gryffindor, Sirius thought with a small smile. She didn't just look like him, then.

"So, what do I... what do I do, then?"

To be frank, Sirius still had so many questions – her mother, her life, the him he wasn't yet, and, most importantly, whatever made him think Nashira wasn't from wizarding Britain at all – but it wasn't the moment. He had to deal with all the other children – he hoped Smith and James and Dana were not having as difficult a time dealing with them – and Nashira had to take in the reality of her situation, so it really wasn't the moment to hound her with more questions.

Right. Everything was going well – not – and Sirius had a brilliant – maybe – family life ahead of him.

Not that he had a lot of positive experience in that domain.

So he gave his daughter a half-convincing smirk.

"Your great-grandfather Arcturus offered Black Manor, so that I can house the lot of you children without having five teenagers in the same room. Which means we're all going to live with the Lord of the House of Black, it's going to be a blast... Anyway. You only have to fill out a Statement of Existence, so that the Ministry of Magic may acknowledge your identity, and then I'm taking care of all of you. Well, no, then you leave this interrogation room, go to see Arcturus who is waiting outside, get to know the others while I finish explaining all that to your brothers and sisters, because you're only the second teenager I spoke with today, I have three other people explaining, but there are eighteen of you, so..."

He trailed off at that point, eyes squinted as if contemplating something, and Nashira felt something weird happen inside her chest. The thought of meeting Arcturus Black... Not only the man had been dead by the time she'd been born, but Nashira and her father had also been living in another world entirely. She didn't know anyone from her close family, apart from Nymphadora and her daughter.

Her world might be the one her family had originated from, but this was where they all lived, where they'd lived for the last millennia.

Sirius got her attention back with a snap of his fingers, and Nashira started a bit.

"Questions before you get to fill out a form?"

"I... Yes! Do I..."

Nashira saw his eyebrows arch up as she fumbled with her words. She had so many questions – their family, the things her father and cousin had told her about them, this world in general – but right now, there was only one thing:

"Do I get to go to Hogwarts?"

Sirius looked at her a bit dumbfounded, then broke into a bright smile – if he wanted a confirmation that Nashira wasn't from around here, he definitely had it, now. She looked like someone who'd heard a lot about Hogwarts, but had never set a foot there herself.

"Sure! It's the end of July, so I have one whole month to cook up something with the Headmaster about accepting you lot at school even if it's not your first year."

He saw her perk up at the thought, and handed her the Statement of Existence.

"Okay, so let's fill this out, and then I'll leave you with Grandfather and Fania and whoever is already out amongst the other kids, alright? The sooner we're done with all this, the sooner we can leave the Ministry and start knowing everyone!"

Nashira and Sirius spent the next three minutes filling out the form – first and second names, Nashira Circe, family name, Black, daughter of Sirius Orion Black and Selene of Stonehold, age today, fifteen, birthday, the sixth of January, etc – finally signing it with the statement itself – "I swear, on my knowledge and soul, of the truth of my existence" – with a delightful life quill – which made Sirius wince, but acknowledging a person into existence for the Ministry's magic without them being born was a complicated affair, and using a life quill made it all much faster.

Sirius gave Nashira an energy square – usual auror food, great for giving a boost but hard on the body if taken too often – as they rose from their chairs to leave the interrogation room.

"Sorry about that."

The girl only grunted, unsure of what to say on the matter anyway.

Sirius opened the door for her, and they were greeted by the sight of Arcturus sitting with a baby in his arms – still unnerving for Sirius, but not quite new – next to the teenager from Room 13 – who looked slightly uncomfortable, but did lighten up a bit as his eyes fell on Sirius – and the indian-looking siblings from Room 11 – the boy had calmed down, but was still clenching his sister's robe in his fist, his eyes stuck on Arcturus.

Sirius gave Nashira a light shove, who looked at him for a moment before stumbling to join the rest of her – hopefully, one day they would really be – family. Then he went and put down her Statement of Existence with the five others.

His eyes caught his grandfather's, and the old man decided to inform him of the state of things.

"Potter went to Room 5 after he finished with Altair, come on, boy, say Hi to Sirius, please –"

The blue-eyed teenager with a star name offered him a crooked, vaguely uncertain smile, and Sirius nodded, unsure of what to say – he'd felt like that a lot, since this had all started, and did hope it would get better with time, because the children were going to need him, one way or another, and for now he didn't know what to do about it...

Arcturus went on, his right arm disentangling itself from Stefania, who didn't seem to mind and went on sleeping all the same. With a minute gesture, the older wizard pointed at the two other children present.

"Varsha and Shivansh just joined us, and Smith went on to Room 8, to deal with your triplets –"

With those words, Arcturus spared a suspicious glance at the see-through wall of said room – probably just as weirded out by the possibility of having triplets when they never managed twins in the family, and just as unwilling to show it as Sirius – while his grandson rolled his eyes and decided to instead wave awkwardly at the brother and sister – indian first names, this time.

"And Dana isn't out of Room 2 yet, so it leaves you with Room 6."

Which was clearly a dismissal, because Arcturus didn't want to spend more time than necessary stuck in the Auror Office.

"Right."

Sirius squinted at the older man – he still couldn't believe Arcturus of all people had ever held his baby-self in his arms, but apparently that was true nevertheless.

"Well, Grandfather. This is Nashira. Please do look after her while I'm not here."

"Who do you think I am."

It wasn't even a question, and they both knew it. Arcturus hardly bothered with an interrogative intonation at the end of his sentence.

So Sirius answered, just as deadpan.

"A Black."

And on those words, he left the corridor, closing the door to Room 6 behind him.

So. Nashira is from one of those stories I never started, and may never actually write, but do know this: Lord of the Rings crossover where Sirius gets chucked at Middle-Earth after the Veil and about 20 years before the events we all know. It is not in the same continuity as "The journey back home", mostly because Sirius remains determinedly human, but as I tend to harmonize my fics, yes there are common elements in the meeting of those two worlds.

Also, I'm not writing all the meetings with the children, only the ones Sirius is in, so we're having one more chapter of this, and then we'll discover the other children in other circumstances.

I've decided that life quills are what Umbridge based her blood quills on. Since they aren't used for, you know, torture, there are no injuries, but they are a bit draining and unpleasant to use.