Chapter 22: Bertie Bott's and Baffling Bonbons
The Longbottoms took a moment to ensure that they had, in fact, done all the shopping needed for their group – shoes, several sets of clothes, and Harfang had discreetly slipped away to look for a small gift the children could all share while his wife took care of guiding their charges through Madam Malkin's – just as the children's – "father" did not seem to be the right word, considering the circumstances – as Callidora's young cousin wandered back from the Magical Menagerie, spotting them almost immediately.
Callidora frowned at the thought of getting pets for the kids: it was much too soon for something like that, her cousin's grandson didn't really know any of them, and adding several animals to the household seemed like a terrible idea when everyone already needed to get used to living with so many children. Besides, Black Manor already had a selection of magical dogs running half-free on the domain, several species of birds living in the trees, fairies around the fountain clearing, and...
...Right. Sirius, if she remembered right, had a gift with animals – to the point that if he hadn't been a Black, she'd look into it being familial magic. Maybe it was about that, then. The pet his uncle Alphard had gotten him back when Sirius was very young might be getting on in years, now.
Not everything was about the children, and even if their appearing-out-of-nowhere act had fundamentally changed her young cousin's life, the problems he'd had before that were still there.
That, unfortunately, included the war.
The boy – he was of age, true, but looking at him Callidora could only notice how young that was, barely older than the oldest children here – nodded at them and asked how far along they were.
"About done, actually. We're supposed to go to Rosa Lee Teabag to meet or wait for the others."
Sirius hummed and looked over their little group of Blacks.
"Let's get going, then. There's... Oh, Adrienne's here, uh? She still has to drop by the healing desk, I'll go with her while you handle the others, if that's alright?"
The aforementioned girl – black hair shaggier than the other kids or Sirius, freckles, brown eyes and glasses – had overheard her name and looked their way. Sirius waved at her before pointing meaningfully at his own eyes. She frowned a moment, then shrugged.
The teenagers followed behind the adults as they headed for the well-known, middle-class tea shop – a place where you didn't have to worry about bringing a lot of children, mostly. You could find an iteration of Rosa Lee Teabag in most places with a high wizarding population, be it Hogsmeade or a mixed village, but the Diagon Alley teashop was the original one, dating back to 1857.
Sirius and Adrienne let the rest of the group go ahead when they reached the healing desk – they could see the outdoor tables – absolutely empty – of the teashop from there, too.
The healing desk was little more than a stall, if not for its permanence and the very small space it occupied between the Whizz Hard Books office and Amanuensis Quills. There was, quite literally, a desk occupying the bottom half of what should have been a door, a copper lantern lit up with a strong blue flame and a tired wizard sitting on a high stool behind the counter.
Most people didn't go to a healer in person to make appointments, mostly because private healers had the tendency not to be anywhere you'd look for them unless they were already handling a patient. You either went to St Mungo's for emergencies or long care, or consulted a healing desk to know who could see you and when – there was one in the reception area of St Mungo's, for after.
The tired wizard blinked at Sirius and Adrienne when they stopped right in front of his desk.
"...Good day, sir, miss. Do you need an appointment with a healer?"
"Sure. She needs to see an acelogist before September, for her glasses."
The registrar took a moment to blink again.
"...Of course. Do you have a preferred healer?"
Adrienne shook her head and he didn't ask for details.
Instead, he reached under the counter and pulled out a thin notebook. Opening it fully on the desk, angled so that his clients could see better, the wizard pointed at the six names in the margin:
"...I have seven free appointment times before September. Colin Redwood has unfortunately been reported missing since April, and Callidora Pucey was regrettably sentenced to six years in Azkaban for voluntarily giving a cursed prosthetic to one of her patients. Laura Rosevear is currently on vacation somewhere unspecified, where she is unlikely to be harassed by criminals demanding she take part in their organ harvesting schemes. Paige Shacklebolt is newly certified and could see your sister next Thursday or in August. Lincoln Maleau has the time on the sixteenth of August, nine, ten, or eleven o'clock. Edric Thomas has two open appointments next Wednesday, if..."
"Healer Shacklebolt would do, thank you. On Thursday."
Sirius had been a bit taken aback by the registrar calling Adrienne his sister – but he guessed it was the most logical assumption, considering their respective ages and what they both looked like. If you had no idea of who Sirius was, of the fact that he didn't have a sister...
The tired wizard nodded to himself and fished a quill from under the counter. Its tip shone light blue as he turned the notebook around and started writing.
"Name, please?"
Adrienne answered before Sirius could decide on the surname that would make things easier.
"Adrienne Black."
The wizard looked up for a moment, blinked – and blinked again. Then he shrugged and noted down the girl's appointment without saying anything. The ink seemed to seep into the page, disappearing for a moment before reappearing, darker. Magical notebooks, all linked together, then.
Once that piece of business done, Sirius and Adrienne left the tired registrar to his counter-keeping.
Adrienne thoughtfully commented that back home, her dad was the one with glasses.
Sirius hummed in answer:
"I guess it makes sense... I don't have glasses, neither should Adhara, I suppose... How bad is it?"
"...Bad enough that Procyon and I need our glasses all the time, but we still have a better sight than Har... Well, than James Potter. We're not far or near-sighted, it's more like everything is a little wonky, one line is in several places at the same time if we don't put on our glasses."
"That's, hmm... astigmatism, right?"
Adrienne threw him an appreciative look.
"I only know that because Larita, my girlfriend for a few weeks in sixth year, had astigmatism. I was curious about why she wasn't wearing her glasses all the time. Oh, do you have any charms on those? I know James has a charmed bridge that prevents them from slipping off the nose easily."
Adrienne made a face that made it clear she was still a teenager.
"That, and wear-and-tear protection. I wanted the rain protection too, but apparently you can't have that charm built into your glasses when you have wonky vision..."
"Well, at least you can take clear-sight potions as often as you want. Near and far-sighted people can't do that, they risk worsening their vision if they did."
Clear-sight potions corrected someone's vision completely, letting them forgo their glasses, but they only lasted a couple of hours, maybe three. Depending on the defect you had to correct, you also couldn't take them too often – and they were expensive. Someone would have to be terribly vain or painfully self-conscious to try and substitute their glasses for a continuous use of such potions.
Mostly they were used by athletes during competitions and for punctual events.
Adrienne stopped in her tracks as they got close enough to see the others' faces at the tables.
Sirius stopped too and turned around curiously.
"Would you mind if some of us got Sorted in Slytherin?"
The man – so young, so much younger than her uncle, barely older than her cousin Lamia – didn't answer right away, and Adrienne waited patiently. She didn't think he would truly mind, deep down, not even now, before everything happened to make him the wizard she'd grown up around, but she wasn't sure he knew that himself.
"Slytherin House? I... Probably not? Sure, I'd have liked you all in Gryffindor, so that we could talk about the common room and a lot of other things, and you wouldn't have to be separated like that..."
Oh. She'd never thought of it, because her mom and the Regulus from her world had both been in Slytherin, them, but Uncle Sirius and Uncle Regulus had been separated while at school.
On some points it had probably been easier for Uncle Sirius, in Gryffindor, but on that one...
"...But honestly, that doesn't sound credible, considering."
She didn't ask considering what. Maybe he was talking about his own personality, which wasn't that different from the rest of the House of Black, fundamentally. Maybe it was because of the children's other parents, who weren't necessarily Gryffindor themselves – Adrienne's father was a hufflepuff. Maybe it was a simple question of statistics, because in the end, there were eighteen of them.
Nineteen, if you counted Juliet. Who, as it happened, had been a Slytherin alumna back home.
Sirius was looking absently at the sky as he finished:
"Mostly I'd be a bit worried that you'd end up with some unsavory characters at school. There are assholes everywhere, of course, not just in Slytherin, but it's been getting worse there, over the last years. There are fewer and fewer reputable Slytherins and more and more of them end up on the other side. And even if it's perhaps two-fifths of the House, well. That's already a lot."
The young wizard – two years ago, he'd still be in school, he knew exactly what he was talking about – shook his head and grinned – as if to chase away his legitimate concerns.
"Why, were you worried?"
Adrienne kept silent for a moment. She thought of her mom, of her uncles – of the one who was, in many ways, another version of her mum, and of the one who'd fallen in with those unsavory characters within Slytherin House once upon a time. When she finally spoke, her voice was quiet:
"It's more that, well. You're yo..."
They'd decided, Lamia and Marianne and their younger siblings, that they wouldn't tell him right away that Mom and Uncle Sirius' realities had collided and they'd ended up living in the same world. It was too complicated – too cruel, too, because such an impossibility was unlikely to happen twice – to explain, and they already had enough to get used to, the kids and the adults both.
She couldn't say that he was younger, that the him she knew had most likely mellowed out – as much as you could call Uncle Sirius mellow, which wasn't much – by the time she was born.
Sirius, though, understood her hesitation differently:
"Eh, I get it, don't worry. Of course I'm proud of having been in Gryffindor, and I've been rooting for our team in quidditch and all that, but this is different. I'm not in school anymore, and as long as you're doing school things, I don't care in which House any of you are. What I'd have a problem with is if you took to the problematic sides of Slytherin, or of any other House for the matter."
The young man gave her a wry smile.
"Gryffindors sometimes forget to question their righteousness. Hufflepuffs' loyalty isn't necessarily to the right people. Ravenclaws might forget that the search for knowledge doesn't excuse everything. But these days, it's Slytherin's problems that are more obvious, their own interests coming before anything else. As long as you stay away from such extremes, I won't really mind."
"...Okay."
"Come on, let's join the others. I see Grandfather and Ms Rosier finished up too."
He was right. Their group had grown twice as big and was using three tables now. The children all had glasses of neverending beetlejuice – a good option when you had to wait for a while, because it tasted good but you could only drink it sip by sip or your tongue started tingling unpleasantly – and Harfang Longbottom and Ms Rosier were drinking from cups of tea, Callidora was holding a tisane, and the oldest Black hadn't chosen a drink at all, rather drumming his fingers next to a dry biscuit.
Sirius noted the large box of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans as he sat next to Nashira.
"Oh, you stopped by Sugarplum's?"
Arcturus made a face and looked disdainfully at the candies.
"The younger children wanted something to share with everyone, and Theresa seems to think these are not some sort of ridiculous dare-inducing traps."
Said witch swatted good-naturedly at the old wizard, and Sirius decided this was the perfect opportunity to force his grandfather to eat a sweet he quite evidently didn't like at all. His conversation with Adrienne had just inspired him, too.
Both his grandmothers arrived then – Juliet let go of Melania's hand to sit on him instead.
"Alright, time for a game! As soon as Lucretia and the last ones get there..."
"Oh, you have an idea?"
Sirius nodded at his grandmother as Melania sat carefully, still holding onto Fania.
"Yes, something to get to know the children better. A... team thing. They'll have to make the team leaders recognize what team they are on without saying the words outright, and once someone has used one type of hint the others can't use it too."
"...And what are the teams?"
"Hogwarts Houses! Grandfather can lead Slytherin, Callidora gets Ravenclaw, Ms Rosier for Hufflepuff, and Harfang can be the token Gryffindor. I'm refereeing. Rules are: can't say the House name, the Head of House's, the usual personality traits. No cunning or wise, no loyal or courageous. No meaningful eye contact either. If you cheat you have to eat a Bertie Bott's, if you get recognized everyone else has to eat one. Team leaders can talk amongst themselves to decide on a House."
Grandmother Irma looked around the four tables they were currently occupying.
"What about those who aren't yet Sorted? And the other adults?"
Lucretia and her group wandered in right that instant – or perhaps a bit before that, because Sirius' aunt seemed to have heard most of the rule-laying he'd been doing;
"Irma, Mother and I can amuse ourselves feeding the team leaders Baffling Bonbons after each child has been identified, so that they won't be certain of who's on whose side at any point."
Sirius barked a laugh:
"That's absolutely evil, let's do that!"
Melania seemed much less enthusiastic, and slightly concerned – suspicious – by the fact that her daughter walked around with Baffling bonbons.
"...What do you buy those candies for, Lucretia?"
Her daughter answered with a blithe smile and no particular need to look her parents in the eyes.
"Ignatius and I like playing games where the participants aren't sure of what's happening."
That didn't seem to reassure Melania, who reiterated:
"What kind of games, Lucretia?"
Seeing where this was going, Sirius interrupted as if nothing had been asked at all.
"And for the youngest four and Nashira, hmm... Right! You don't listen in and at the end you have to guess who said what based on who is on which team. I'll need to write them down..."
"In that case, Sirius, I'll go and get more drinks for those who just arrived. And maybe Melania and I can keep those who won't play right away entertained, can't we?"
"...Sure. Tea for me. And take that table over here, so you won't overhear everything."
Grandmother Irma stood up and headed inside the teashop. Melania got up too. The three younger boys and Nashira hesitantly followed her. Sirius knew this wasn't a perfect game, far from it, but he'd cooked it up in under ten minutes and at least everyone got something to do at some point.
Juliet, her, didn't seem very enthused and only reluctantly made to stand up.
Sirius caught her hands and pushed her back down on his lap.
"Hey, if you just want to watch, we can do that too, Juliet. Or you can distribute the beans when needed! Do you want to do that instead?"
The girl nodded quietly. Sirius shook his head at Grandmother Melania, who only smiled.
"Alright, let's get at it! Just an example before we start: if I was a player, I'd say 'lion', and then no one could say 'badger', 'snake' or 'eagle'. Spineo!"
Sirius' wand started spinning in the middle of the table, faster and faster, until it did slow down...
Pointing at Harfang. The boy gave it a raised eyebrow and a single word:
"Blue."
Callidora laughed out loud.
"That one is mine, then. Short and precise. Ravenclaw."
Juliet gave everyone but Harfang a Bertie Bott's bean, then moved over to Melania and Irma and the others who weren't playing yet to give them their own beans. Arcturus made a face, almost spat an "Artichoke!", and eyed warily the grin on his daughter's face as she handed him a Baffling Bonbon.
As soon as Juliet came back, Sirius sent his wand spinning again: Lamia.
"I've been told I follow in the steps of my father."
Oh, Circe. McGonagall was going to sneak into Black Manor to curse him in his sleep, probably.
Elizabeth said she liked watching the lake from underneath while sitting comfortably in an armchair. It had Grandfather Arcturus smirking and stating "Slytherin" while anyone who'd never seen the common room there just shared perplexed looks – Sirius pretended to, because he wasn't supposed to have gone down there.
The wand next landed on Almaric, who chewed on his lower lip and frowned as he tried:
"I don't care if hearing the truth upset some people, I won't lie to let them believe themselves right."
Ms Rosier and Callidora exchanged uncertain looks, and Harfang attempted a "Ravenclaw", but that wasn't it. Hyades jabbed him lightly in the side while mouthing "misleading!".
The boy scowled and crossed his arms, waiting for his next chance.
His sister, on the other hand, took hers with a graceful: "Charms is my favorite class" that had Sirius squinting, but technically she hadn't said Flitwick's name so he allowed it.
Grandfather Arcturus, still dazed by the latest bonbon he'd had, asked if it was the Hufflepuff Head of House, but Harfang and Ms Rosier both said Ravenclaw before he could fumble it.
Alastor was next with "Dad chose my first name appropriately."
Sirius smirked as none of the team leaders figured it out. The answer was obvious when you knew Moody personally, but much less so when you didn't. Ms Rosier guessed Gryffindor instead, so the boy tried to find another revealing sentence for the next time the wand would spin onto him.
It was Adrienne's turn then. In the light of their earlier conversation Sirius found himself curious.
"Excellence mustn't exclude decency, decency doesn't excuse naivety."
That had Arcturus nodding along, and Slytherin was soon decided on.
Then it was Alastor's turn again, and this time he managed better with a "trust once broken cannot be bought again", though Harfang and Callidora almost argued over Slytherin instead of Hufflepuff. It had Elizabeth raising her eyebrows at her brother, who only shrugged.
Varsha looked Sirius right in the eyes – in a weirdly intense way – as she told her bit, crystal clear:
"Fear isn't to be scorned, it is to be overcome."
Antares had all the adults looking concerned when he mumble "I don't like it when my classmates say I'm a better version of my dad because I'm right where I belong", though everyone agreed readily on Slytherin – and Sirius made a face, because honestly...
When the wand landed on Altair, the boy took a moment to think.
"...No one expected it when the Sorting Hat sent me to one of the tables in the middle."
That wasn't the most efficient, but it did rule out Gryffindor and Slytherin – and most people wouldn't have been that surprised to see a Black in Ravenclaw, it did happen occasionally, look at Callidora. After a moment of pondering Silence, Ms Rosier smiled and said "Hufflepuff".
Dana went next, a sarcastic smile on her lips.
"Sadly, a lot of my housemates don't understand that being the greatest and lying about being the greatest are not the same thing."
Ouch. Sirius wasn't the only one to wince at that. Dana shrugged:
"First choice was 'my Sorting surprised no one', but Altair just beat me to it."
Finally it was Almaric's turn again, who rolled his eyes and decided to be blunt:
"I will hex whoever tries to hurt someone else."
Callidora coughed and Sirius' grandfather grunted a "Gryffindor."
As Procyon came next, he threw "I can't wait to show those slytherins that they won't win the Quidditch Cup anymore." It got a strangled laugh from Harfang – the wizard almost choked on his drink. Only a gryffindor would use that to state their House.
They finished with Marianne, who took a sip of her neverending beetlejuice first.
"I only wish to help anyone who needs it."
There was a short squabble between "Gryffindor" and "Hufflepuff", but the adults agreed quickly enough, nonetheless, that the way the teenager had formulated it tended towards Hufflepuff.
Marianne only smiled, and Sirius sighed.
"Juliet, when you give the others their beans, tell them it's their turn, alright?"
The "game" had done its job so far, he believed, and once the youngest and Nashira caught up, they'd be able to go back to the Manor while having learned a little about everyone. Who found easy and obvious solutions to a playful problem, who had less of an aptitude for such games, who believed what in regards to their own House at Hogwarts...
And he'd gotten his grandfather to reluctantly eat Bertie Bott's and Baffling Bonbons, so.