Chapter 5: Revelation

Sirius looked back at his grandfather – at the children at his side, at the family he'd somehow gained, perhaps for good – and hesitated.

It wasn't a logical kind of hesitation. Arcturus and the kids weren't going anywhere without him, and talking to James and Smith – his colleagues, a fellow auror trainee and an auror supervisor – was absolutely normal, especially if he was going to need to leave early. It wasn't about logic – it was about feelings.

Whatever they had to tell him, it'd need to be said away from the children – maybe just a room over, maybe in the corridor – but the point was, Sirius would have to leave them. And since he'd first spoken to Dana, he had always been with at least one of the children.

On his part, he wasn't sure how he'd react, if he turned away and they popped out of existence while he wasn't looking – something which could still happen, any moment, and he really wished the unspeakables would find something about that soon enough, be it that the kids would only remain for a week or that they'd stay here, in this world, just so that Sirius would know and be able to prepare accordingly.

On the children's part, well. They had to be lost enough as it was, and taking away one figure of – relative – stability might not be in their interests.

Still, he needed to speak with James and Smith, so he would.

Deep breath, and Sirius nodded. Smith and his best friend led him into interrogation room number 1, and closed the door behind them.

Almost immediately, James sighed and ran his hand in his hair, barely not knocking down his glasses in the process. That had to mean something, because the former quidditch player wasn't clumsy at all, unlike Peter who sometimes tripped on his shoelaces if he wasn't careful enough.

"Okay, what's your plan, for all that?"

Sirius blinked slowly – he understood the question, he understood why the question, but honestly, he didn't know what to answer to that.

James scrunched up his nose.

"I mean, you're taking care of them, very well, but you don't have the slightest idea how to handle, what, nearly twenty kids? You'd be better off asking one of the professors at Hogwarts, because I don't know anyone with that many..."

A look at the closed door.

"...teenagers."

Three winces.

Technically, Sirius was still a teenager, too, and would remain so for a bit longer than three months.

"Listen, if they stay... If they stay, I'm raising them, I guess. I'll go and see a few people, ask for advice, hire a nanny or a dozen, cut back on some extracurriculars for a while..."

A significant look, and James made a face but nodded. Of course Sirius wouldn't be able to be quite as involved with the Order of the Phoenix, at least as long as none of this ran smoothly enough. Especially not if he was to live with his grandfather.

He expected to still be on call for absolute emergencies – he'd have to hash out something with Dumbledore, but that could wait, for now James could relay his decision to the Order – but he couldn't just let the children with Arcturus all the time.

His grandfather might not be quite as taken with Voldemort's rhetoric as his mother was, but that didn't mean his ideas about blood purity and what was acceptable were all that great either. In truth, Sirius wasn't even quite certain of what Arcturus Black believed in, because the Black family had a thing with not outright saying anything unless outsiders come up with guesses no one liked. For all he knew, his grandfather might be tolerant of muggleborns – not quite the same as accepting, or unconcerned by them – and just let everyone believe what they wanted – or not.

Hence why Sirius needed to monitor most of the time spent with Arcturus.

But back to the conversation at hand:

"Alright. Still, we have a few other things to tell you. I'm sure you'd rather get to know the children by yourself, but I feel I do need to inform you of some things which came up while filling out the Statements of Existence."

Smith nodded next to James.

"Like the fact that the four children Dana took care of are apparently Eleanor Rowle's."

Sirius stared at the auror, unsure of what to say as he racked his memory for his mother's genealogy lessons – recognizing halfblooded and pureblooded names, being able to distinguish old blood purebloods and halfbloods by name alone, memorizing the Sacred Twenty-Eight families and the thirty-seven Noble Houses family trees, et caetera. All in all, a useful study – though boring – which would have probably been more interesting if Mother had taught him so that he could appropriately judge the families' magical tendencies – upbringing, foreign origins, family magic – and not to make horrible comments about blood choices.

Then he made a face as he found Eleanor Rowle.

Easy enough, really, the Rowles were both a Noble House and amongst the sacred Twenty-Eight as defined by Cantankerus Nott.

"She's thirteen!"

Smith gave him a grave look.

"Indeed. I do hope you waited a bit before getting into a relationship with her. A six-years gap isn't that terrible... if you're both above thirty."

Sirius shuddered at the thought – he didn't think he knew Eleanor Rowle, though they may have crossed paths during his last year at Hogwarts – and didn't comment.

"Anything else?"

James looked annoyed for a moment, then almost gleeful, then mostly preoccupied, and Sirius wasn't exactly sure why. It looked like his best friend had just thought of something hilarious about whatever he needed to tell him, then promptly started worrying about Sirius' reaction to it.

That usually did not bode well.

"Well, Padfoot, dear, I must tell you, the three kids in room 5?"

Sirius would have taken a step back – or possibly walked out of the room – at the way James said "dear", but he guessed he needed to hear this.

Maybe.

"The two girls with french first names and their younger brother?"

"Uh uh."

"What about them?"

A pause, and James pushed his glasses back on his nose. Said glasses did not need being pushed back on any nose, much less James Potter's, so that was a manifestation of hesitancy.

Something James thought hilarious, but Sirius might not.

But in the end, nothing really stopped James when something needed to be said – especially not when the receiver of that information didn't want to hear it.

"Well, to begin with, their father is named Alec Carlisle."

What.

"What?"

Smith too looked vaguely confused.

Of course she was. Sirius was too.

The point of the whole thing – however accidental it had been – was that they were all Sirius' children. If they weren't, what the hell were the three of them doing here?

And the older girl, Marianne, and the boy had the Blacks' silver eyes. So yeah, there could be cousins, somewhere – disowned a few generations ago, probably – who would have those children one day, but still.

Of the younger generation, only Sirius and Regulus had the silver eyes – Bellatrix and Andromeda's were black, like their father's, and Narcissa had her mother's blue eyes. Occasionally, distant cousins would showcase the unique Black silver – probably something to do with having two silver-eyed Black ancestors, but anyway.

Sirius didn't know of any Alec Carlisle. Maybe their mother was the one with Black blood, then.

But however nice that theory turned out to be, well. It didn't explain how they were here, again.

James, as it was, looked like he badly wanted to drop the bomb – he'd figured it out, the asshole, and he'd started with Carlisle because he knew it would confuse them.

"So, yeah, Sirius isn't their father."

Go on, asshat.

"But..."

A look at Smith, and Sirius could tell the witch was starting to get fed up with James' antics. Something which, actually, she made sure to tell him out loud.

"Potter, if you do that with Scrimgeour and Fawley when you have to report, I can assure you they will make sure you do an additional six months at the end of your training."

For half a second, James faltered – three years was a long time to be training, but the Auror Training Program was rigorous and that was probably for the best, considering what their job asked of them – but Sirius could see he still thought the suspense and their fretting were worth it.

Which did make Sirius wonder how James' shadowing of his two supervisors was going, but that was a question for another time.

"James."

"Fine... As I was saying, their father is Alec Carlisle, but what's really interesting is their mother's name. She's Adhara Black."

Sirius forgot to breathe for a moment.

Adhara. Not just a cousin with the same name as her, but Adhara.

Smith's eyebrows rose high, and the witch looked like this was only marginally explaining things. He guessed it did, from anyone else's point of view.

Sirius hadn't even told his friends about all of it – about Adhara and him, about his twin sister, about why he didn't have a twin sister. James couldn't quite understand, that was the truth of it, because he didn't know. Not what truly mattered.

As far as the two others knew, Adhara Black was a family member, perhaps, but she wasn't him, so the kids shouldn't be here.

Smith coughed.

"I'm sorry, I don't know of any Adhara Black?"

Before Sirius could say anything – how did you even start explaining that, anyway? – James beamed and answered for him.

Apparently his best friend had investigated – or rather, had asked the three children themselves, which was a lot easier – when he'd heard the apparently-a-Black-but-never-heard-of-her's identity from Marianne, Adrienne and Procyon.

"That's where it gets wild: she's Sirius, if, you know, Sirius had been a girl!"

Sirius-who-wasn't-a-girl felt his heart plummet. That wasn't quite... It was almost true, but, no, not really. He'd never told the Marauders, not entirely, so of course James would reach that conclusion, but he couldn't... He couldn't...

Smith snorted at that.

"Hell of a time knot to divert the timeline, then. You're sure about that?"

James nodded, looking half-serious, half-delighted with the news.

"I asked Marianne, and yes. Adhara Black, eldest child of Orion and Walburga Black, born on the 3rd of November 1959, older sister to Regulus Black, does not have a brother called Sirius. It's a whole alternate universe where Sirius' soul went to a female body, and the children are there because they're technically Sirius', and that's brilliant! I mean –"

He couldn't let it go on like that.

It wasn't the truth, and Adhara didn't deserve that.

"She's my twin sister."

Sirius had just blurted it out, like that.

He hadn't ever said those words. Not once in nineteen years. There hadn't ever been anyone to tell – his family knew already, and it was better left unsaid, and his friends did know he had no sister, and he wasn't going to volunteer that piece of information. He hadn't known how to say it.

He still didn't.

But from the way James was staring at him – from the cautious look Smith was giving him – from logic alone, it was obvious there was no way out, this time.

There hadn't ever been a way out, but so far, Sirius had managed not to get in at all.

He needed to say it, now.

"The... The Black family can't have twins. Ever. Since the beginning of the House of Darke, two millennia and a half ago, we've had six pairs of twins, except one of the two babies was always stillborn. Vega and Cygnus Darke, then Lyra, Altair and Hyades Black. And... And me. That's six children, for six pairs of twins. We're the twinless twins of the House of Black."

James looked shocked – that Sirius had never told him that, that he'd never known, that such a secret could exist, Sirius didn't know, but he could guess.

"Adhara would have been your twin sister, if...?"

"If we weren't Blacks, yes."

"Then... I guess in her world, she was the one who survived, and you were the one who was stillborn?"

Sirius gulped – thought of Antares, Hyades and Almaric, back there with his grandfather. He'd never thought... No one in his family would have ever believed it possible. His mother had immediately resigned herself, when she'd learned she was pregnant with twins. Of course, triplets were rare, very rare, so it wasn't weird it had never happened in the family before them, but still – if they couldn't have twins, why could they have triplets?

Something magical was behind this – they'd always suspected, but now Sirius knew for sure – or else the restriction wouldn't be on sets of two only. Something in their bloodline, yes, but of the magical variety, not of the physical variety.

Sirius was ridiculously happy for the triplets, that they hadn't known this gnawing feeling – of knowing that you'd stolen, one way or another, your sibling's life.

"Probably."

James pursed his lips, and started a question:

"Why didn't you tell u..."

Smith, however, hadn't lost of sight the logical outcome to Sirius' revelation. The witch thought the two friends could deal with their relationship goals later on, because if, indeed, Adhara wasn't Sirius as a girl, but the twin sister who died when he lived, it brought back another problem.

"Then why are the three children here, if you aren't their mother?"

That was a really weird question to ask, while having your eyes stuck on a very male wizard – even if Black was very handsome, in a sleek, elegant kind of way, Smith wasn't afraid to admit, his face stood just the other side from the line to femininity.

That question being so weird was probably what stopped Potter from going on about his hurt feelings about not being privy to everything.

At that, though, Black winced, and caught a strand of dark hair with his left hand, as he started twirling it half-consciously.

"Because I am. Adhara isn't me, but..."

That didn't make any sense, but Smith told herself she'd let him finish before pointing that out. Black did seem to have figured it out, and so far, it seemed logical that he'd be the expert on his own familial relationships – however hypothetical those might be.

If the darkening look on his face was any indication of what was to come, well. Smith would probably not like the explanation at all – but it wouldn't make it any less true.

"When one of the twins dies in the womb, the other one becomes stronger. The twinless twins in our family are always, always magically powerful, to a point you could say we're twice past a normal wizard's level as far as raw power is concerned; we get magically exhausted twice slower than most people. It's been established for a few centuries already that we absorb our twin's magic when they die."

Well.

No wonder Black didn't want to talk about it. Either he'd caused his twin sister's death while in the womb – if one of the babies killed the other by absorbing their powers – or he'd unwillingly preyed on her cadaver by stealing the residual magic after she'd died – if the absorption only happened after the death of the baby.

Who would want to talk about that?

Better not to point it out. Black probably knew, anyway. He'd most likely understood a long time ago. That was the kind of things teenagers tended to dwell on, when left to deal with it by themselves.

So Smith decided to simply continue with the actual problem, instead of looking too deeply into an immutable, if terrifying, familial fact.

"You reckon Adhara and you, despite being twins instead of being the same person with a different gender, have the same exact magical signature, and that's what the machine latched onto?"

The smile Black gave her in answer was absolutely filled with self-loathing.

"That, or, according to a few more theories from my ancestors, though this one is untested, I actually absorbed Adhara's soul alongside her magic, and on the children's side of the story, their Adhara absorbed mine, which would mean that despite all, we are, indeed, the same person. Because we both stole the other's soul to fortify our own."

...And another thing Smith wasn't going to dwell on too long.

Potter looked about as dumbfounded with the theory as she felt – soul-stealing amongst babies, Helga, what the hell was wrong with the House of Black? – so they just stood there in silence for a moment.

For understandable reasons, Black didn't look like he wanted to speak anymore.

So the witch decided she'd just throw her remaining pieces of intel about Black's gaggle of children – right, there, that was how you did it, how you made it funny instead of downright horrifying.

"Anyway. Nothing much to say about room 11, except that they've named Padma Patil as their mother, which is also weird because there isn't a Padma in the Patil family, but I'm letting you investigate that one on your own. As long as Varsha and Shivansh haven't lied on their Statements of Existence, that's none of my business."

There, she turned to Potter. He'd told them about one of the interrogation rooms he'd visited – and hadn't that been a good laugh? – so now was the time to disclose what he'd learned in the other one.

"What about room 13, Potter?"

At that, the other auror trainee in the room – Arcea and Rufus had their hands full with that one, from what she'd heard, not that Black wasn't a special kind of headache either – jolted, and looked very uncomfortable.

He almost looked like he didn't want to meet his friend's eyes, but did it anyway because he was stubborn like that.

"Right. Altair. I'm not entirely sure of what's going on with him, Sirius, but he does remind me of you in ways I'd rather not see in anyone else. His mother is Esta Goldhorn, and apparently his birth was 'a matter between her and Walburga Black's desire to see the family line remain pure', which is not an answer I like, least of all because you aren't included in that statement. I... also wouldn't recommend telling Goldhorn about her son, ever, and Altair seems adamant in not wanting to see her ever again?"

Smith's eyes migrated from Potter to watch Black's composure as it went on. She thought she probably didn't want to know what Potter meant by seeing his friend in Altair Black and immediately linking that to a disastrous relationship with Walburga Black – neither for the child nor for his father.

Everyone knew Sirius Black had a complicated relationship with his parents. The witch remembered very well the day the Department of Magical Law Enforcement had learnt about the situation at 12, Grimmauld Place – namely, that they were missing a child, and said child had taken refuge at Fleamont and Euphemia Potter's house – and the adjustments in guardianship necessary. They'd had to interview Orion and Walburga Black – not the aurors' job, but the Auror Office did come under the DMLE, so Smith knew people and heard gossip like anyone else – then the Potters, and finally Sirius Black himself.

Some questions had been left unanswered, that day.

That being said, there was still one thing to address: room 8, the triplets' mother.

Varsha and Shivansh are indeed the children of a (then-)15-years-old Padma Patil who got time-stranded in 1975, and decided she'd make the most of it by keeping an eye on known Death Eater Sirius Black before he could betray the Potters to Voldemort, based on admittedly limited intel, and who eventually fell in love with said known-to-become Death Eater (who really isn't, but she couldn't know that).