Chapter 11: The would-be Juliet-retrieval expedition

When Sirius popped back – wearing something else than his auror robes – with the newcomer kids to see how it was all going, the children finally all had a room – after a few deliberations, they'd all ended up sharing bedrooms. Siblings were most often together, but some, like Nashira and Dana, had ended up alone and decided to bunk up together. Procyon, the boy who'd kicked a fuss about sharing a room with his sisters – Adhara's kids – had squinted at the blue-eyed boy named Altair, and had eventually asked if he'd share with him.

Altair had looked very, very relieved.

Right now the teenagers were going through their meager belongings – Nashira with her sword and hand jewelry, the triplets' dungbombs which Sirius had side-eyed suspiciously, and whatever else they'd had in their pockets.

Hyades, the girl amongst the triplets, had been clutching a large book – it looked like a grimoire, honestly, and that had to mean she had extra-big pockets, because Sirius hadn't noticed it before. Varsha – the Indian-looking girl who apparently knew about time travel in a way Sirius just didn't seem able to decipher yet – had taken out a deck of cards and was playing with her younger brother and the blond boy named Aldebaran in the sitting area at the end of the East wing.

The children hadn't gotten here with a trunk full of their personal stuff – and even less so with the contents of their entire bedroom at home.

Speaking of which, Sirius would need to go and get some of his stuff from his flat near Picadilly Circus Station. He wasn't going to let go of the flat – he might need it in between shifts at the Auror Office, and anyway it could always be useful as a safehouse for the Order.

The young wizard coughed to get everyone's attention – one of the girls didn't look up from what she was doing, but one out of eighteen wasn't too bad, considering.

"I'm going to pick up Juliet. She's... She's an orphan I'm going to adopt, and she's with her caregiver right now. We'll be back before dinner, and..."

One of the triplets jumped in his seat, and before Sirius could finish his sentence the boy was asking:

"Can I come?"

Sirius blinked at him, and wondered if some of them did, in fact, know Juliet – or a version of her, at the very least, older and with more time in her life. He was planning to adopt her, after all.

"I'm not sure it's a good idea... Almaric, is it? She has no idea of what happened, of who you are, so I need to explain it all to her before I bring her to the manor. It's not going to be easy, she's only five years old. I don't want her to be too confused."

The boy's silver eyes narrowed, as if he was trying to find a valid argument against Sirius' point.

Elizabeth, the girl who'd kept on scribbling on a piece of parchment, looked up and made a face, scrunching up her nose – she looked a bit like Narcissa when she did that. Of course, she also looked like Sirius when she did that, but that was not to be acknowledged this day.

"Maybe it'll be easier for her to understand with an example. A few of us, not too many. Just so that she can start getting used to our presence before..."

Elizabeth eyed the sitting area, the dozen and a half teenagers lounging about, looking all the more like Blacks no matter how you looked at it. She wasn't necessarily wrong with her assessment of the shock that might be for Juliet, getting here and seeing all those unknown would-be siblings.

The girl, Sirius thought, was one of the youngest children. The one who looked like him with a blond wig on, from the group of four kids.

...Eleanor Rowle's kids. Goddamn it, he hoped they'd met when she'd gotten past her twenties, because they had an almost-seven-years gap between them.

Focus. Juliet. Going to the flat in London.

Elizabeth squinted.

"Who knows Juliet, anyway?"

And she raised her hand in answer to her own question. Her eyes searched for her siblings – obviously – but also, interestingly enough, for Adhara's kids.

All seven of them raised a hand, as did the triplets. They shared a look of vague surprise, and a few eyebrows were raised.

The others – those who didn't know Juliet, apparently – looked a bit lost.

One of Adhara's children, Adrienne, put down her hand and looked at Sirius.

"You could take some of us, no? We get that she's not exactly the one we remember, she's... younger, and all, but we do know her. Obviously he wants to go, and Elizabeth too. One for each group, maybe? Who's up to go?"

And she looked at her older sister and younger brother. The boy shrugged, ill at ease with the attention, and Marianne tilted her head with a smile.

"I'll go, if you want, Adrienne. I know you aren't... ready... to see her if she's not the Juliet we know, so..."

Her sister's face contorted, and she mumbled under her breath:

"As if you're ready for that, yourself."

Marianne's smile didn't waver, and she rose to her feet.

"Of course I'm not, but unlike you, I don't need to have everything under control when I speak to other people."

She ignored Sirius' raised eyebrows as she went to stand next to him, gesturing at the two other teens who'd expressed an interest in coming.

"Well, are you coming?"

Elizabeth folded her piece of parchment and put it in her pockets before getting up, her eyes searching her father's face – Marianne hadn't waited for his approval, with her usual tranquil certitude that her proposition would be accepted. Her oldest cousin – present, because Alshain wasn't here, him, because he wasn't Sirius or Adhara's child, only Regulus' – was usually right in her assumptions, but still.

Sirius – Dad-but-not-Dad – looked a bit unsure of what to do, and yet, amused. It was weird, seeing him so young, all sharp edges but none of them broken – and when Sirius Black's edges broke, the breaks were sharp and dangerous. He was younger than the Juliet Elizabeth knew, younger than Alshain, barely older than Lamia.

Still. He was her father, and whether he knew it or not, Elizabeth would respect his choices.

The boy who was to come with Elizabeth and Marianne, from the triplets, had jumped on his feet and joined the would-be Juliet-retrieval expedition without a thought for a possible refusal, she noticed dryly.

Elizabeth, herself, moved calmly, ready to go back and sit down if their father said no.

He didn't.

Instead, he gave them an exasperated smile and shook his head.

"Well, then. I suppose we're going."

Then, looking at the others:

"I leave you in Grandmother and Grandfather's care, please do not start anything rude while I'm absent. Good manners ask that you refrain from shenanigans the first day you stay at someone else's place, unless they start it, of course."

An amused snort, and everyone's eyes shifted onto Melania Black, who had been observing the discussion from a corner of the sitting area, standing next to a high window.

"Does this mean common courtesy encourages you to start shenanigans on the second day, then?"

Sirius' answer was said with an absolutely innocent look on his face, as if he was dispensing commonly-known wisdom.

"Well, it would be impolite to act like stuck-up people who don't even want to be here for the entire duration of your stay, I should think."

Melania laughed.

"It does explain so much about your childhood, Sirius."

Her grandson offered her a crooked smile, before focusing back on the three teenagers who would accompany him to Redmarsh Cross.

"Let's get at it, or we'll be late and Cornelia won't want to watch Juliet again."

As they started down the stairs, Almaric asked:

"Can't we keep her with us? I mean, there are enough of us to babysit her for the rest of the holidays!"

The boy wasn't wrong, of course – and Sirius did want to try that, especially if Grandfather wasn't going to oppose his adoption of Juliet – but he still had to go to work.

"And what of when you all leave for Hogwarts, every one of you except Fania? Even if Juliet doesn't have to go back to her caregiver for the summer, I'll still need someone to take care of her and the baby when I'm at work if your great-grandparents cannot for whatever reason."

Before Almaric could think of more to say – if he had more to say – Sirius reached for the floo powder box on the chimney mantel.

"Are we taking the floo?"

This time, it was Elizabeth asking. Sirius was slowly realizing that he'd have to get used to answering – or ignoring, if he could get away with it – questions about everything and anything, all the time, now that he had three handfuls and a half of children. Juliet... Juliet was quiet enough, for now – and he hoped she'd get past that, past the nightmares and the fear – so he hadn't learned how to deal with that yet, but now?

"I'm not side-along apparating three of you. And even if I could, I still wouldn't, because apparition can wreck your health if you are too young to have a fully developed body, so it's best kept for emergencies only."

All three children took some floo powder – good thing, they all knew how to use it – and Marianne looked at hers with a curious look on her face.

"Where are we going?"

Sirius checked his watch – the gold one, the one Mr Potter had given him on his seventeenth birthday. Almost five o'clock.

"Redmarsh Cross. It's one of the mixed villages, so the muggles there don't much question strange happenings, but you should still try to act... inconspicuous. You can't quite know which kind of muggles we'll cross paths with there, and the wizarding world isn't yet afloat with rumors about you. The public chimney is outside the local owl post office. I'm going first, of course."

"Redmarsh Cross?"

Sirius confirmed the village's name – mispronouncing could get you sent to another place with the exact name you'd said, but fortunately such a coincidence didn't happen often, or, and that was the most likely case, it would send you to an open chimney near your destination.

"Near" your destination wasn't good enough, especially if some civilian had their fireplace's wards down for a reason or another and you appeared right into their living room.

The young man squinted at the teens – he didn't think they'd try and get anywhere else, but who knew? He certainly didn't know them.

"No funny business. I meant it, when I said shenanigans aren't for the first day in. Even if, for some reason, you want to go and see some other place, you don't take advantage of the fact that I'm going first to do it. It's a civil war outside, and we don't know who might be waiting on the other side."

He saw the two girls share a look, but he didn't know them enough – he didn't know them at all – to be able to tell what that look meant. Only – and that was interesting – that they were comfortable enough to share looks.

The boy scoffed and made a face.

"Where would we go, anyway?"

Sirius pinched his nose.

It wasn't just children he'd have to deal with, now. There were nineteen of them, including Juliet – it sounded more and more like a holiday camp. One was a baby, one was a traumatized five-years-old, and six were pre-teens and eleven were teenagers. Eighteen were Blacks, and at least seven of them were firstborns.

Puberty might be the death of him, long before a Death Eater could actually manage to kill him.

Sirius' eyes roamed over the three teens before him. Marianne – sixteen, seemingly responsible enough, calm, eldest daughter of Adhara – Elizabeth – twelve, calculating and controlled, third child of Eleanor Rowle – and Almaric – thirteen, mischievous, and apparently guarded when cornered, one of the triplets of Rose Evans.

The boy acted a bit like Sirius would have at the same age, but he was less cautious in his secrecy, making it obvious that he had secrets even if he wouldn't give them up. He was, perhaps, more frank in his dislikes.

Then Sirius would be painfully honest too – he had never had any difficulties doing that.

"I don't know, Almaric. That's the point. I don't know you, I don't know where you would go, I don't know if you can follow an order if it hasn't been explained beforehand, I don't know where to find you if you don't, and I don't even know your qualities and your failings."

The boy looked a bit hurt, and yet unsure of what to say to that.

"But..."

"That means I can't trust you. Not because you don't deserve to be trusted, but because I can't know if you do, and I can't anticipate what you might do even if I could, in fact, trust you."

Almaric glared at him, and – ah, Sirius could recognize that look, that ruthlessness.

"We don't know you either."

Those simple, obvious words – and everything they implied.

The fact that they all knew a different version of him, that they couldn't expect of him what they could of their father – or, in Marianne's case, of her uncle-who-was-never-born. That they couldn't trust him, either, because for all they knew... Well. Some of the Sirius Blacks they knew might still have been a possibility in his future, but it wasn't the case for all of them. Dana had said it herself: he'd never met her mother – which meant he would never be the man her father was, their history had branched out already. Harfang and Orion were the same: their father never became an auror.

The roads to some of these futures had closed long before the children had appeared in the Ministry of Magic this morning, and the children's appearance had closed off the other ones – because none of their futures included magically-appearing siblings in his present.

Anyway.

Sirius gave his son – so, so weird – a smile that was probably sharper than necessary.

"And you don't know each other either, aside from your actual siblings. Do you want to try and strike out on your own, lest you be betrayed by the others? If you are acting on your doubts where I'm concerned, maybe you should do as much with everyone else."

Almaric squinted at him and pursed his lips, looking all too aware of the fact that he didn't have more to add to this verbal sparring.

It was either try it out with everyone, including Sirius, or try and manage with only his brother and sister – and, since Sirius was a responsible-if-somewhat-cruel adult, if the boy decided to be a brat, all he'd really achieve would be to get sent back to Grandmother for this outing. Because Sirius wasn't going to let the triplets out in the world on their own when there were terrorists going around, not just to prove a point.

Hearing no answer from Almaric, Sirius turned back to the fireplace and concluded:

"No? Then I guess we'll have to try and get to know each other."

The fire turned green when the floo powder activated the network, and Sirius walked inside it, enunciating clearly "Redmarsh Cross".

The world turned around him, and when it started slowing down he walked out into a small village with a large blue sky overhead. A quick look around and he moved away from the public chimney, waiting for the kids to follow him, careful not to leave the square of red cobblestone delimiting the area protected by a concealment ward.

Mixed villages like Redmarsh Cross – or Godric's Hollow – had a significant wizarding population, but also housed muggles inhabitants. Mostly, they were direct families of muggleborns who had chosen to relocate after discovering their children's magical powers to facilitate the child's integration into wizarding society, squibs who didn't want to let go of their roots, or muggle spouses of mixed marriages. Almost everyone in those villages knew about witches and wizards, and had magical trinkets allowing them to see past the various enchantments protecting the Statute of Secrecy – and simply knowing about it all to begin with did tend to weaken the effects of most perception charms.

However, since the villages themselves couldn't be covered in muggle-repelling spells, ordinary muggles could wander in too, or have temporary business to conduct here.

Therefore, some precautions had to be taken regarding the most obvious uses of daily magic, for everyone's safety – such as, keep the public chimney out of sight and don't all step out of the concealment wards when unknown muggles could notice you popping into existence.

Luckily, none seemed to be around today. Sirius could distinguish a few people milling about in the street, but the back alley itself was deserted. When Adrienne, followed by Almaric, and finally Marianne, popped out of the fireplace, the four of them managed to leave the concealment ward and insert themselves into the village's population.

As they walked to the house of Juliet's caregiver, Sirius noticed a few people giving him a funny look – he grimaced, and proceeded to ignore them. Who cared if they recognized him, and who cared if he'd needed to borrow one of his grandfather's old robes, and who cared if he had three teenagers sharing some of the Black features with him, when none were supposed to exist? – though, technically, Sirius and Regulus were still teenagers themselves.

...Of course, Sirius did care, if it meant people were noticing them and would soon talk about it. But that ship had sailed long ago, probably in the Ministry lift, or perhaps even before that – he couldn't remember if there had been witnesses about when he'd been knocked out and the children had been brought into existence.

To distract himself from the prospect of becoming a target of – more – gossip, he gathered the children's attention back onto himself.

"Cornelia runs a small business taking care of half a dozen magical children while their parents work. The way I understand it, she wants to open a primary school for our lot one day, but for now she's keeping discreet, since that's as muggle-inspired as it could get and she doesn't know where to find other people to recruit in her endeavor without trumpeting it for all to hear..."

Sirius noticed Almaric frowning at the thought, which had him wonder if any of the kids had, in fact, gone to primary school. The standard way to teach math and reading, as well as a few other basic, more-or-less-magical subjects to children in the wizarding world was either homeschooling or businesses like Cornelia's – and the rich, pureblood way was expensive tutors who each handled one aspect of learning.

Sirius, of course, had gotten the tutors. Unlike Orion and Walburga Black, James' parents had been willing to let their son make friends without monitoring their acquaintances, and so they'd sent him to Devon's local caregiver from seven years old. Peter had gone to muggle primary school, because his muggleborn father had convinced his – not rich or old blood – pureblood mother to give it a try.

Remus had been to muggle primary school, too – except his parents had needed to move him every few months, when the teachers started questioning his chronic absences, bruises and tiredness. In six years, he'd gone to nine different schools, and hadn't been able to make any lasting friends.

A wizarding primary school wasn't necessarily a bad idea, Sirius thought once again. If he could wrangle his grandfather – no, for that kind of thing he might want to talk to his grandmother instead – into supporting it, maybe Cornelia could manage her dream. Then, children would get to know each other earlier, and everyone would have access to the same basis of knowledge.

...Maybe not a large-scale school like Hogwarts, though. No one would be willing to put their children in boarding school that young, and getting children to come every day from every corner of the United kingdom – and of Ireland – could prove complicated, considering daily side-along apparition was a bad idea with children. But they could break it down into several smaller, more local schools, with specialized teachers and a dozen children a year, if...

It really wasn't the moment to think about all that, Sirius decided as his eyes fell on Cornelia's house. He had enough issues that needed dealing with right now to address – nineteen of them, precisely – and that was without counting on the rest of the family and the ongoing civil war.

What he had to do, now, was to get Juliet – without letting her think he might not want her anymore for some reason.

"Well, here we are."

Marianne, Elizabeth and Almaric stayed behind him as he rang the wards, but he could hear them whispering amongst themselves.

Before anyone asks: yes, I said I'd get back to Unclaimed Darkness when I finished H&H, and I still intend to, but

- my computer broke, and by that I mean my hard drive is dead. I'm still seeing if I can get my files back - including the 70-pages-long notes I spent months writing as I went back through UD. I'd rather be sure I really can't before starting it all from scratch

- real life is complicated and I'm leaving my job because it's really not good for me, which means I have more time but I'm also getting stressed because I don't know what happens next