Black Mask

by Ieyre

Christmas 1979—danger, secrets, lies and their shared history loom large over the Blacks' first Yuletide season as a reunited family. While life as a fugitive proves bleaker—and more boring—than Regulus could have imagined, a botched espionage mission at Malfoy Manor draws Sirius deeper into the Black family web. [Sequel to 'In the Black']

9. Chapter 9

"The teenage Sirius had plastered the walls with so many posters and pictures that little of the walls' silvery-gray silk was visible. Harry could only assume that Sirius's parents had been unable to remove the Permanent Sticking Charm that kept them on the wall, because he was sure they would not have appreciated their eldest son's taste in decoration. Sirius seemed to have gone out of his way to annoy his parents.

There were several large Gryffindor banners, faded scarlet and gold, just to underline his difference from all the rest of the Slytherin family. There were many pictures of Muggle motorcycles, and also (Harry had to admire Sirius's nerve) several posters of bikini-clad Muggle girls."

- J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

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CHAPTER 9

---

Mr. Black watched Dumbledore pace up and down the length of his office, feeling that his hair would be as gray as the old man's before he was through with this ritual. He had been observing the action since the wizard had emerged from the pensieve ten minutes before, and the muffled silence of that room was broken only by the occasional murmuring or muttering to himself.

The headmaster's former pupil could make no sense of it. Orion didn't know why he hadn't left—only that leaving had seemed too much like running away, and that through the dull fuzziness of the alcohol that was already wearing off, he could still hear Sirius's accusations ringing in his ears.

He wanted another drink—if only to stave off his dark thoughts and the premature hangover that was already pounding in his temple.

Abruptly, Dumbledore ceased retracing his own steps and turned towards his reluctant guest. He gave Orion a piercing look, almost as if he'd forgotten the younger man was still there—and that the sight of him was a reminder of entirely different problem he had to solve.

"Well?" Mr. Black asked, straightening up in his chair. "Do you—can you make sense of it?"

Professor Dumbledore was crossing back around to his seat behind the desk, so Orion couldn't catch sight of his expression at the question.

"I have some idea—theories, rather." He settled comfortably into his chair and steepled his fingers. Dumbledore hummed in that purposefully pleasant and vague manner that had annoyed Orion even when he was a schoolboy. "Several—they may or may not be correct."

Perhaps it was the effect of having been kept in suspense for so long, but when he fixed Orion with his patented mild smile, Mr. Black found it even more unbearable than normal.

"Considering that you saw fit to put my son's life at risk to get that—" He threw a hostile look to the basin where his own memory still glimmered. "—You don't seem all that certain. Or all that interested in its contents."

Interested in discussing its contents with him was the subtext Mr. Black hadn't even realized was present in his words until they'd already left his mouth, and no amount of indignant sputtering could reclaim them. Dumbledore pretended not to notice the wholly unsuitable accusation that he had not allowed Orion into his confidences.

"Oh, I am interested," the old wizard said, his voice soothing and patient. "Very much."

Dumbledore tilted his fine-boned elder wood wand into he pensieve, and the perfect image of the card room—Orion's own memory of the previous night, burned into his eyes—rose from the stone basin. A table of men—men he knew well, or thought he knew well. His people. The sound of conversation was distant, muffled. The Black patriarch found himself transfixed by the image of his own face, hardly able to recognize the composed mask he found there.

Was that how he looked to the world?

Mr. Black looked up and saw that it was he that Dumbledore was watching, not the memory, but the genuine article.

"Your recollections will keep." He touched the silver liquid again, and it fell smoothly back into the basin. "I have more pressing concerns, for the present."

Orion's temper stirred—more 'pressing concerns' than the information he'd extracted from his younger son and sent the elder to fetch?

"Like what?" he asked, acidly.

"Like you." Dumbledore replied, softly. "I was wondering how you were—getting on."

Orion stared at him—every time he thought this man could sink no lower, he topped himself.

"How I'm 'getting on'?" he repeated, incredulous. "What am I to take that to mean?"

The older man looked as though he was fighting back a smile.

"It's an inquiry as to your well being." He folded his hands neatly in front of his chest while Orion's swelled with indignance. "The custom of asking is quite ordinary."

"Well, in this case it's unnecessary and unwanted!" Mr. Black replied, feeling as peevish and cross as his eldest son—probably due to the adverse effect of the boy's presence. "I don't know what possibly could have prompted you to believe otherwise."

"I would think that fairly obvious," Dumbledore remarked, in a mild voice, peering down his crooked nose at his companion. "Last night you were with most of your family for the first time since—the night your younger son brought you to your elder's door."

Orion blinked and pulled his gaze away from Dumbledore's, instead focusing on a spot on the wall.

"And? What of it?"

"Deceit is not in your nature, Orion. And being under that much scrutiny can be trying." Dumbledore had the audacity to look at him with concern. "As you are living a double-life—"

"—You seem very eager to discuss my family's personal business!" Orion snapped, coldly. "I myself would rather discuss the—Death Eaters." He stumbled over the phrase, as if he found it in bad taste to utter aloud. Mr. Black narrowed his eyes and gave the older man a hard look.

"Though in this case," he continued, not hiding his bitterness. "There doesn't appear to be much of a difference."

Dumbledore looked up at him. If he heard the needling tone—and he was such a wily old wizard it was impossible to think it could have escaped him—he refused to take the bait.

Orion's lip curled.

"You must not trust me," he said, after a moment.

Dumbledore leaned forward in his chair, expression as placid as ever.

"What makes you think that?"

What a sly non-denial—and so neatly phrased! Orion could almost admire it. He crossed his arms in front of his chest and scowled.

"I can't imagine any other reason why you wouldn't see fit to tell me that my niece's husbands were with—them."

Dumbledore, to his credit, didn't bother denying it.

"Who told you?" he asked, voice tinged with mild curiosity. "Was it Sirius?"

At the very thought of his progeny confiding in him, Orion let out a dour laugh.

"Hardly! My son was not in a particularly revealing mood." He tapped the rim of his empty glass, eyebrows furrowed, pensively. "I gleaned just enough from him to guess the rest. I had already caught Rabastan Lestrange sneaking into the library for a clandestine meeting with—someone."

Who that 'someone' was didn't need to be said—the sneer of disapproving contempt said more than words. He had never cared much for either of his nephews-in-law—it was somewhat a relief not be constrained by the law of custom to have to pretend to like them more than he did.

Merlin knew this man didn't give a damn.

"Frank said that you told him they—that is, he and Sirius—were expected." Dumbledore lowered his steepled fingers onto the table. "Who tipped you off?"

"Lucius Malfoy." Mr. Black jerked his head in the direction of the pensieve. "He and Rodolphus were—not making much effort to keep their voices down." His expression blackened. "The Lestranges never have been known for discretion."

At this, the headmaster seemed troubled—but unsurprised. He was still staring thoughtfully at Orion, face a smooth blank.

"If you sent my son after them, it follows you knew." Orion drew himself up, more out of habit than any real attempt to intimidate. "And yet you said nothing." Mr. Black's nostrils flared. "Don't you think I was owed the truth?"

Dumbledore nodded, conceding the point affably.

"Perhaps. It was my idea to keep it from you, at any rate. I thought it better, given your choice to remain in society, that you know as little as possible. But—" He paused a fraction of a second, and his voice grew a little colder. "—Forgive me, Orion—I find it difficult to believe a man of your intellect was entirely without suspicions."

Orion felt the sting of the pointed accusation as keenly as a whip-crack. It might not have been shouted at him, but it was no less of a rebuke. He stared at Dumbledore, momentarily at a loss, forced to ask the question of himself—had he known? All those nights Regulus was out of the house, had come home late—he could hear him walking up the steps to his bedroom, that unassuming timid step, so different from the defiant stomp of his older brother. He had gotten up from the desk to check only once. The sight of Regulus's blood-shot eyes, the white face, the strangled whisper with which he had wished his father goodnight—all that had disquieted him so much that from then on, he had ceased stirring from his chambers after dark.

Could it still be called turning a blind eye when it was staring you in the face?

"Do you think they knew it was him?" he asked, gripping his glass firmly. "The boy, I mean."

"I doubt it." Dumbledore leaned back in his chair—Orion found the image arresting. He had never seen him so informal. "If Lucius had known the second man was your son, it's unlikely he would've set you on his trail."

"It wasn't his idea to involve me, though—it was my father's, and he had the tip from Abraxas Malfoy."

"Really?" He furrowed his brow. "What did Arcturus know?"

"Not much. He thought they were gatecrashers," Orion said, leaning his elbow against the desk, staring absently into the pensive. "If he'd known one of them was his grandson, believe me—he'd probably have tried to catch Sirius himself."

He smiled, thinly—in that event, the boy would've certainly gotten the thrashing he'd be angling for.

Dumbledore sighed. The phoenix in the corner stirred on its perch, letting out a soft cooing noise. Its master looked over at the creature, frowning. His eyes were clouded and his expression more troubled than Orion had ever seen.

"If they were expecting anyone, it would be Frank Longbottom." He turned his face back towards Orion, looking a little chagrined. "He is an Auror of some renown—this is the kind of mission they would expect him to be on. Sirius, on the other hand…"

The old man trailed off, wearily. Orion felt the anger of last night—the anger that had built-up like a shaken fizzy drink as he paced up and down in his study, the anger that he had managed to suppress in favor of the more pressing paternal rage he had accumulated—stir up again.

His anger at the man who had put his son in danger in the first place might've run less hot, but it was no less potent.

"You should not have sent him to do this," he said, bluntly.

Dumbledore sighed again.

"I believe you're right." Mr. Black's grim frown slid off his face, replaced with a look of surprise. "Everything taken in the balance…it was a mistake."

This admission only made Orion more furious.

"Then why did you do it?" he demanded, rising out of his chair.

"I thought, under the circumstances—" Dumbledore paused—just long enough to give the man towering above him a piercing look. "That what Sirius needed was a show of confidence."

Orion remained frozen and stoically silent—but Dumbledore, penetrating as he was, seemed to read the truth in his companion's face.

"I still believe that's what he needs. Though—" The old man's eyes narrowed a fraction, Orion shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "—I don't believe he needs it from me."

The delicate suggestion hung in the air between Professor Dumbledore and Mr. Black.

"What he needs is discipline—" Orion groused, waspishly, sitting back down. "And to be—reigned in, for once."

Dumbledore didn't argue with him—for that he was grateful. Though he would never admit it to his former teacher, he was very aware that if that were true, it was his fault and not the boy's headmaster.

And if the fault was his, it fell to him to remedy his error. He had every intention of doing so—he only hoped it wasn't too late.

They sat together in silence, Mr. Black nursing the empty glass. He could tell the wily old wizard was resisting the urge to offer him another—to tease him. If he did, Dumbledore would be lucky not to have the finest mead in the country dripping down his beard.

"How long has he been—working for you in this way?" He spat out, after another long silence. "I suppose you waited until he was of age—or has he been spying for you since he ran off?"

"He joined the Order after he graduated, with the rest of his friends. There are no Hogwarts students in our ranks."

"What a comfort that must be to the parents."

Mr. Black's heavy sarcasm went unremarked upon.

"I do not recruit among school-age children, Orion," Dumbledore replied, cooly. "Which is more than Lord Voldemort can say."

The dark-haired wizard recoiled, as if he had been burned—furious, but before he could express his indignation, the other man steepled his fingers and looked up at the ceiling.

"What does your father think of all this?"

This complete change of tact momentarily surprised the man across the desk from him, and had the desired effect of disarming him into answering.

"I've never discussed it with him,"—he knew without Dumbledore saying it what he was referring to. "Blacks don't take sides in wars that aren't their own."

At least, not openly—and not as a whole. Regulus and Sirius were living proof of that, and Orion was sure Arcturus had more than an idea that his only two grandsons were on opposite sides. There was very little that got past him.

"Isn't this your war, Orion?"

He thought for a long moment before replying.

"It wasn't." Orion raised an eyebrow. "At least, I didn't think it was. I'm less sure, now."

"What changed?"

"Necessity is the mother of reinvention." Orion gestured to the memory and gave a droll smile. "And I have a need. If I leave my family's future in the hands of my son and his rascally friends, as you seem to have, I fear the lot of us will be dead by New Years."

"And what about Walburga?" Dumbledore asked, curiously. "Surely she must have an opinion."

"What, about politics?" Orion asked, laughing. "She doesn't, believe me. It's the one subject she actually defers to me on."

Dumbledore smiled.

"And how has she been holding up?"

Mr. Black laughed, bleakly.

"Admirably, considering the circumstances. One thing can be said for that woman, she'll always make the best of any situation, no matter how dire." Mr. Black looked up from the desk at Dumbledore, expression wry. "She's annoyed with me because I couldn't free her from the tedious obligation of hosting our family on Christmas Eve. She'd rather spend the day with her worthless progeny. You can see her priorities are well-met."

Dumbledore's mustache twitched.

"An understandable preference, from a mother."

Orion shook his head.

"It doesn't come from a place of sentiment, believe me." He looked out the window. The snow was falling thickly—not even the tree tops or the gamekeeper's hut was visible now. The sill was at least four inches thick with it.

The walk back to the village would be a long one.

"She thinks if she takes her eyes off of him for even a moment, he'll run away again."

He ran a hand through his hair, distractedly—not meeting Albus Dumbledore's eye. He didn't need to to know what he'd find there.

"How long do we have?" Mr. Black asked, quietly. "Truly?"

"Lord Voldemort remains encamped in the north. I can't be certain—" Dumbledore folded his arms behind his back and rose from the table. "I would say you can rely on at least a week before he returns. After that—well, there's no way to be certain. He could call Regulus at any time."

The boy's father nodded, slowly. It was what he had expected, but to hear the reality of their situation uttered in that cold and bloodless style—was more comforting than having it bellowed at him by Sirius.

"That's more than I could have hoped for." He tapped his fingers on the desk, staring at the bird, again. It had an unnerving expression of pity that reminded him unpleasantly of its master. "I knew this couldn't go on for long. There's nothing for it."

Looking up at Dumbledore now, Mr. Black felt as though he was the older of the two men. He stood up, trying to recover his wounded dignity—all brisk no-nonsense. It was a sham, but Albus Dumbledore, in a misguided attempt at his own special brand of kindness, was determined to humor him in it.

For that—and nothing else—he was grateful.

"Where will you go?"

"The continent, I think. I've a few connections, still—I've begun to make discreet enquiries." He sighed. "The trouble is that she's not going to want to leave without both of them, and he won't want to come."

Dumbledore's bright blue eyes lingered on his face, his slumped shoulders—his entire being.

"Have you spoken to your wife?"

"No." Mr. Black smiled—but it was a sad smile, now. "I thought I'd give Walburga her Christmas, at least. There's not much else I can do for her."

"I'm not referring to your plans to leave the country, Orion."

Mr. Black's breath caught in his throat—for Dumbledore was looking at him with such pity that it made the question of what he was referring to unmistakable.

"Consign your interfering in my private affairs to the ones that concern the damned war."

He smoothed out his winter cloak, picking up his wand to dry out the rest of it—determinedly not meeting the other man's gaze. Dumbledore continued staring at him piercingly, but his expression was otherwise calm.

"As you wish." Dumbledore picked up the glass vial and funneled the silvery liquid back into it. "But I think you ought to speak to your family."

"Regulus is very frail still, and my wife has quite enough to worry about without—"

"—Sirius would want to know, too," he interrupted, bluntly.

Mr. Black's lip curled.

"Considering he told me this morning he longs for my imminent demise, I have no desire to inform that whelp he may yet get his wish."

The sharpness of this statement signaled, unequivocally, that the audience was at an end. Dumbledore held out the memory to its owner. The very sight of it repulsed Orion.

"I thought you needed that."

"Not anymore." Dumbledore pressed it gently into the younger wizard's hand. It was with the utmost reluctance that Orion Black let his finger curl around the hard glass.

"If you're giving this back to me…I take it you understood it."

Orion stared at his own recollection—the one he would gladly have never placed back in its rightful place, if he had his druthers. It was better forgotten.

Dumbledore smiled, serenely.

"Oh, no—not at all. No more than you did, I'm sure."

He walked around the other side of the desk. Mr. Black stared at him in astonishment.

"Then why—"

"—The only person who can tell us what it means is the Death Eater the message was intended for in the first place." Dumbledore stroked his beard. "I can do nothing with it."

"What do you expect me to do?"

"Well…you could ask him, for a start."

Mr. Black swallowed. His mouth felt unnaturally dry.

Slowly, Orion took out his wand and uncorked the vial, placing the memory back into his temple gently. He glared at Albus Dumbledore—but without much feeling. The old man clasped him gently on the shoulder—and to his own surprise, Mr. Black didn't jerk away.

"If I do this—and I am not for a minute saying I will—" Orion shoved the empty vial back into his pocket. "—I want it understood that it won't be for you."

Professor Dumbledore smiled—but the eyes behind his spectacles shined with an unmistakeable cunning. It wasn't something people said about him much, but Orion was beginning to feel he should get more credit for it.

The old Muggle-lover really ought to have been in Slytherin.

"I would expect nothing less."

---

"I don't know what all the fuss is about, Minerva—hardly seems the sort of thing we need to get Albus involved with—"

Mopping his brow, the portly wizard with the walrus mustache had to jog to keep up with his dark-haired colleague, who was briskly walking down the hallway of the castle surrounded aura of determination—and even then she was at least three strides ahead of him.

"Well, Horace," Minerva McGonagall said, through pursed lips. "As you refuse to punish your students in their wrongdoing—"

"—Alleged wrongdoing!"

"—It falls to me to ask the headmaster to intervene." She jerked her head in front of her, hawklike gaze fixed on what was in front of her. "And I intend to."

The man following close at her heels muttered and huffed something under his breath ("Balderdash—damned nonsense, if you ask me!") but he did not bother arguing with her. As he was in that moment so short of breath he could hardly get out a word, it would've been difficult, in any case.

Minerva rolled her eyes and quickened her pace. The thing that was most frustrating about Horace Slughorn was that one never knew if he was being deliberately obtuse or not. Beneath his affable, rotund exterior was a man Minerva McGonagall knew capable of the shrewdest calculation imaginable, and what was worse—he could slip in and out of modes effortlessly.

It made him, at times, a rather trying colleague—particularly for a woman who prided herself on straight-forwardness as much as the no-nonsense Transfiguration professor did. She knew Dumbledore had a soft-spot for him, when all was said and done—and she had long-since nursed a suspicion he enjoyed siding with Horace Slughorn just to annoy her.

"An incident that has five witnesses is hardly an 'alleged'—"

They had just turned the corner of the corridor leading to Dumbledore's office—the destination where the behavior and punishment of Donald Strickland and Augustus Nott would be debated—when the stone gargoyle that guarded the door sprang aside, and a middle-aged man shuffled out.

He looked vaguely familiar, but Minerva didn't immediately recognize the distinguished-looking dark-haired wizard—albeit wearing a hang-dog expression—who was pulling his traveling cloak around him and surreptitiously looking in the direction of the main hall. Horace stopped dead in his tracks.

"Merlin's beard!" He leaned forward, then shouted across the hall, voice jubilant, "That isn't—is that Orion Black?"

Mr. Black stumbled and tripped half-way down the last step—but Slughorn was so quick he was able to catch him by the arm before he fell. It was a close shave, and he had to use one hand to catch the metal bracket of a torch.

"Steady on, Orion, m'boy, steady on—" Horace tugged him up by the elbow and dusted him off, unnecessarily. Slughorn chortled good-naturedly. "No sea legs yet, eh?"

The man straightened up, trying in haste to recover his dignity. By nature, at least, Professor McGonagall thought he had a more than enough to spare, but by the time Minerva had reached them he had mostly succeeded in the task. She didn't know Orion Black by anything more than reputation, but she thought he looked rather haggard and disheveled, and quite at a loss as to how he had ended up with Horace Slughorn at his elbow.

"I apologize, Professor Slughorn, I—" He took out a fine gold pocket watch and fumbled with it. "You—you startled me."

The Head of Slytherin House waved one pudgy finger in his former student's face.

"Horace—how many times must I tell you, call me Horace. I haven't been your professor in over thirty years, man!" His bright eyes brimmed with affection. The unexpected appearance of an elusive old favorite had apparently banished his sour mood over his current charges' disciplinary hearing. "It's been an age, my dear boy—how are you? What's all the news?"

To this inquiry Orion Black muttered a few semi-coherent platitudes.

"And how's Walburga?"

At the mention of his wife, Orion's expression chilled perceptibly.

"She's well," he said, shortly. "Enjoying her…customary good health."

"Excellent, excellent—good to hear—" He stepped back from Orion, looking every bit the spider who has unexpectedly come across a particularly succulent fly, and doesn't quite know what to do with himself, yet. "But—what, eh—brings you here?"

He managed to pose the question with just the right amount of studied, easy casualness—but McGonagall couldn't help noticing how his shrewd eyes darted between Orion's face and the staircase leading up to Dumbledore's office.

Minerva, taking pity on the wizard (and seeing the undisguised eagerness on her colleague's face, and the younger man's discomfort at it), interrupted the line of inquiry by clearing her throat loudly behind Slughorn's left shoulder.

Horace had all but forgotten she was there, for when he turned around to find the source of the intrusive noise, he started.

"Oh, Minerva—I'd completely—" He made a vague gesture between the witch and wizard. "You know Orion Black, don't you?"

At the sight of her, Mr. Black slipped the smooth and impenetrable mask she had long associated with his family back on. They locked eyes, and he nodded, perfectly polite—though a tad distant.

"We've…corresponded," he said, in a flat voice.

There was an awkward pause. Mr. Black suddenly recovered the usual senses of a man of his age and position, and stepped in front of the stone gargoyle, as if to let them pass.

"I don't wish to detain you, if you have an appointment with the headmaster—"

"—Now wait just a moment!" Slughorn crossed his arms and gave the taller man the suspicious look of an old schoolmaster. "You weren't going to come all this way and not see me, were you?"

"I—that is, I wasn't—"

But before Mr. Black could even begin mounting a defense of himself, Horace had pulled him closer by his shoulder. He peered into the taller man's face with real consternation.

"I say—are you quite alright, my boy?" He rubbed his hands together, anxiously. "You don't look yourself at all."

The surprise at finding him in such an odd position having worn off, the old potions master was now observing his former pupil with faint alarm. Under this unwanted scrutiny, Orion shifted his gaze to Professor McGonagall—and found she was watching him just as closely, though with more curiosity than concern.

He forced himself to look back at Slughorn.

"I'm…perfectly well," he muttered, without much conviction. Slughorn exchanged a look of disbelief with his colleague—it was obvious from the expression on Minerva's face that she saw the lie for what it was, as Horace did. "I beg you—not concern yourself."

"Oh, come now! You're pale as death." He squeezed Orion's shoulder affectionately—and with a firm grip. He was a surprisingly strong man, under all his vanity. "I can't let you go back out in that unpleasantness just yet. It's practically a blizzard out there."

Horace Slughorn clapped his hands together, in the studied manner of someone pretending they have just had a completely spontaneous idea.

"Whatever it is that's ailing you, I'm sure it's nothing a good, strong whisky can't cure."

Orion Black smiled, thinly.

"If only that were true. Whisky cannot rid me of—" Mr. Black cut himself off, ran a hand through his hair, and looking between the two professors, gave them identical ironic looks. His eyes settled on McGonagall, still watching him with faint curiosity.

"I feel I owe you an apology."

McGonagall blinked swiftly, utterly taken aback at being addressed, thusly. Mr. Black was in deadly earnest—though careful examination also suggested he was laughing—at himself, not her.

"What—whatever for?"

"All those owls—I was sure you must've been exaggerating. But now—" He laughed, dryly. "Now I think it more likely you were holding back. I'm amazed this castle is still standing."

For a moment Professor McGonagall simply stared at him, mouth slightly open—not sure if she understood exactly what it was the man was referring to (she felt she did, but that was—well, impossible!) when Horace let out a booming laugh.

"Oh—I see how it is!" He clapped his protege on the shoulder, jovially. "The boys aren't giving you that much trouble, are they?"

You could have cut glass with his look, it was so hard. The wrinkles between Professor McGonagall's eyebrows grew more pronounced.

"Who else?" Mr. Black asked, his voice as dry and brittle as autumn leaves. Minerva and Horace exchanged a look. "They're in a competition to see which can drive me to the madhouse first."

Horace frowned.

"Oh, I don't believe that of Regulus—he was always such a well-behaved lad—and besides—" Horace tilted his head, thoughtfully. "He's in Marseille, isn't he? I had a letter from him just yesterday."

Orion's expression darkened.

"My youngest is quite the correspondent," he said, eyes flickering with repressed emotion. He turned them to McGonagall again. "I notice you aren't leaping to the other one's defense."

She arched her eyebrow, with some humor.

"No, of course not—you know him too well." His mouth twisted in an ironic smile. "I don't suppose you'd take him back, would you?"

In spite of her surprise, Minerva felt the corner of her mouth twitch upwards.

"Seven years were quite long enough, Mr. Black."

Mr. Black let out a tired laugh and smiled, ruefully, clearly unsurprised by her answer. He and the witch looked at each other, mutual understanding evident—the man who had been both their potions' masters shook his head and tutted loudly.

"Oh—bosh, Minerva! You're all talk. Sirius is a charming boy—a bit of a rabble-rouser, I'll grant, but I know you're quite as fond of him as I am." Horace leaned over to Orion, in a conspiratorial fashion, round eyes still fixed on McGonagall. "Why—you told me yourself just last week that Sirius Black was one of the brightest students you ever taught."

He spoke these words in a definitive tone, for it was true that if there was one thing Minerva McGonagall was not known for, it was idle flattery. Mr. Black, she noted, with some amusement, did not seem quite as impressed with this supposed compliment of his eldest son's abilities. There was something refreshing about it—for most parents she spoke to couldn't believe their children ever capable of wrong-doing.

"He and James Potter were also two of the worst-behaved students I've ever taught," Minerva added, dryly. "I am less concerned with what magic my students are capable of than the use they put it to, Horace."

"In the case of my elder son, I think that was, on the whole—wise."

Since she had become an Animagus, people often told Minerva that she had begun to look more and more catlike. She, for her part, thought there had always been something of the feline about her, and at that cryptic remark she gave Orion Black a look of suspicion that would not have seemed out of place in a back alley, hiss to follow. The wizard—he really did have the haughty look of his family in spades, and no matter how many Blacks she taught, it always made her bristle—seemed to be laughing at some private joke—at her expense, this time.

She didn't like it one bit.

"I don't know what you mean," McGonagall replied, her voice colder.

"As for his Transfiguration, I must commend you—his skills are prodigious. As to how he has used them, however—" He paused here, a curious and terribly Slytherin look on his face, and folded his arms behind his back. "—Well, I wouldn't trouble yourself over it. I have it well in hand, and as you say—happily, the boy's not your concern anymore."

Her eyebrows shot clear up into her hairline. Horace, still hovering at her right, cleared his throat. The potions master's darted back and forth between them. Slughorn's awkwardness battled his insatiable curiosity—for he loved gossip, above all else, particularly when it involved pet students—and there was no more glamorous a grouping than the Blacks, among his very favorites.

They satisfied his taste for melodrama, above all else.

"I think that drink is order, Orion—"

"—I am sorry, but I really don't have time, professor," Mr. Black interrupted him, firmly. "I have a dinner, I must get back to London."

"Nonsense." Slughorn shook his head and wagged a finger, sternly—or as stern as he ever could be. "It will fortify your strength!"

"But—"

"—I insist." Slughorn's grin grew teasing. "If you're truly that worried about Walburga, I'll write a note for her myself, with your excuses."

Mr. Black dropped the steel-spine act and slumped his shoulders—his old head-of-house had a hand clamped firmly on his arm, and obviously had no intention of letting go.

"I thought you had a meeting with Dumbledore." He turned back to McGonagall, giving her a look of silent appeal. "Both of you—isn't it terribly important?"

Horace flapped his hands in the air, airily.

"Oh, Minerva will make my excuses—" He winked at his colleague, cheerily. "Won't you?"

"What will I tell him, Horace?" Minerva asked, her voice clipped, hawk-eyes still fixed on Orion Black. "This meeting was your idea."

"You'll think of something—and anyway, Albus will understand."

Yes, Minerva thought, as she exchanged a stilted goodbye with the two men and then watched Horace steer his former pupil down the hall, immune to Orion Black's attempt to dislodge himself from his old professor's hold. Albus certainly would understand.

Far better than she did.

---

"Where could your father be?"

The wax of the tallow candle at the center of her otherwise beautifully laid dining room table dripping onto the table cloth was the only reply Mrs. Black got to her question. It was the third variation on it she had voiced in the thirty minutes that had passed since seven had come and gone—seven being significant as it was the hour they had kept for family dinners since they were married. She could count on one hand the number of times Orion had not entered the dining room precisely at the stroke of the hour in all those years.

And yet, here he was—a full half hour late.

Mrs. Black looked down at her elf, waiting expectantly at her feet—and whose leathery face, vexed and worried in equal turn, mirrored the unease she felt in the pit of her stomach.

"There's nothing for it, Kreacher—" Walburga said, briskly. "If he's not here by a quarter till, you'll have to go ahead and—serve the lobster tails."

The elf nodded and hurried off to the kitchen to check on the starter. This left Mrs. Black with her children, flanked on either side of her at the dining room table. One of them was fiddling with the frayed edge of the table cloth, while the other sat, back ramrod straight, staring into his second glass of wine.

"It's not like Father to…be this late," Regulus finally said, in a soft voice.

Walburga blinked and turned to her younger son. She was a little surprised he had been the one to broach the silence, even if it was such an unassuming remark as that. He had not spoken a word since they had sat down a half-hour before. This was not unusual in and of itself—he had always been a quiet boy—but he had been particularly monosyllabic this evening, since she'd arrived an hour earlier to oversee the final preparations for dinner and check on the boys were both safely in the flat.

From the sullen looks he kept shooting at his brother across the table, she guessed that this particularly taciturn mood must trace its origin to some quarrel the boys had had.

"It's not like him to be late at all," she snapped—though those who knew her well would be able to see the bare trace of anxiety in her tightly-strung voice. "His food will be ruined, at any rate."

She had ostensibly been addressing Regulus, but he had returned to his task of silently glowering at his brother.

Annoyed, Walburga turned to the elder of her children. Sirius, by contrast, was looking handsomely bored and haughty, and pointedly ignoring his younger brother with the kind of studied aloofness that would have made his paternal grandfather proud. He wore a surly expression she knew of old, and had been steadily drinking on the quiet since they sat down.

Both of her sons had dark circles around their eyes. The elf had reported to her that the elder young master had spent much of the afternoon shut up in his room in a high dudgeon. From his sulky mien, his sharp-eyed mother guessed he hadn't managed the nap he clearly needed. Staring idly between her children, Walburga wondered if she was going to have to start slipping sleeping draught into the after-dinner brandy, just to guarantee her children got the proper amount of rest.

She considered Sirius thoughtfully for a moment, and cleared her throat.

"You wouldn't have any idea where your father is, would you, Sirius Orion?"

Sirius shrugged, altogether missing the sly and probing look his mama was giving him.

"None whatsoever." He took a swig of wine and leaned back in his chair—some of the old insolence that Orion had seemingly cured him of returning in his father's absence. "Maybe he's with his mistress."

Regulus opened his mouth and let out a strangled defense of Orion's honor—but Walburga shot him a quelling look and just as quickly he obediently fell silent. The matriarch turned back towards her other son, who was now eyeing her with his customary insolent defiance, practically begging for an argument.

She rolled her eyes heavenward instead. Orion with a mistress—what an absurd thought (as if he would dare!) Sirius could be such a child—she knew full well to acknowledge his ridiculous provoking remarks would be doing exactly as he wanted.

And anyway, she had more pressing concerns regarding her family's activities, at present.

"What did you get up to today?"

Sirius lowered his wine glass to the table and gave her a wary look. He seemed disappointed she had not taken the bait on his mistress crack.

"I thought we agreed to save the pleasantries until all parties were present to save ourselves needless repetition."

She furrowed her brow. Already Mrs. Black felt her resolution not to let him provoke her tested. Still—patience was better, in this case.

"Is it a pleasantry that I should be curious how you occupy yourself?" she asked, dryly. "You weren't here this afternoon when I came by. The girl seemed to think you had an appointment."

A flicker of anxiety passed over his face, and he leaned forward in the chair again. Regulus hazarded another glance up from his bare china plate.

"I was…shopping."

Her eyes narrowed a fraction.

"And that's all?"

"Yes, that's all," he retorted, picking the goblet up and taking another gulp. "Trust me, it was enough to keep me busy for the day."

Walburga gave him a long, cool and silent stare. It was the kind of look that some enterprising warlock could have harnessed the energy from to drill through ice caverns of Minsk.

Her son swallowed.

"Well—" His mother picked up her own goblet and took a prim sip from it. "If you say so."

Sirius stared back, uneasy. He felt a pang of that telltale, primal dread that only she could bring about—but a banging knock at the front door to his flat blessedly prevented him from dwelling on it.

Walburga sprang to her feet and whirled around, pulling out her wand, instinctively defensive. There was another series of bangs, and then the door flew open and hit the back wall. As soon as she recognized the tall figure in the door Mrs. Black relaxed, lowering her wand arm and placing her hands on her hips.

"Orion Black—where have you been?" Walburga scolded her husband, her voice severe. "We'll be lucky if the lobster isn't ruined. And what's happened to your cloak—?"

Mr. Black stood stock-still in the doorway, his cloak and hat completely soaked through—and by the looks of it, frozen. She crossed the room to him in a flash, and without being asked, began to strip him of these wet garments.

"I'm sorry for it," Orion said, in a heavy voice, as his wife helped him out of his cloak with a rather forceful pull. "But it couldn't be helped. I was—detained."

He looked tired, and a little red in the face—but from his icy exterior, that could easily be chocked up to the cold—but nothing else in the expression or manner of the middle-aged husband and father of two suggested anything out of the common way.

Apart from his being late, of course—which was enough to make both of his children and wife, above all, suspicious.

"Where were you?" Walburga repeated, more insistently. "I was about to send out a search party."

He sighed and pulled a letter out of the interior pocket of his robes and handed it to her.

"This is for you." She snatched it out of his outstretched hands. Her body was somewhat blocking their view, but both of their sons had their necks craned around her, trying to see. "It should explain everything."

Walburga tore the seal and pulled out the parchment. The second she recognized the handwriting she rolled her eyes and folded up the note again, not bothering to read it.

"Oh, really—that's who you were with? I was starting to think—" She shook her head and banished the stray thought from it with a relieved sigh. "Anyway, you're here now. At last we can eat."

She moved to the doorway to call for Kreacher to come in and begin serving the lobster tails—the first course. While she was occupied with this necessary domestic management, Orion took a few steps into the room towards the dining room table that Walburga had taken to setting up in the cramped sitting room every night for their meals. His tired eyes rested on the laden table where his sons sat across from each other, a slowly melting candle between them.

Regulus offered his father a tremulous smile and mumbled a soft greeting. Orion gave the boy a look that he didn't immediately recognize—but then just as quickly his face rested into the usual neutral look, and he nodded, stiffly.

"Good evening, Regulus."

The other figure at the table, by contrast, had frozen like a statue the second his father had come in the house, and was now, jaw tight, grinding his teeth and studiously avoiding looking anywhere near his face. Walburga, busy fussing over her husband's state of general dishabille, hardly noticed.

"Sirius Orion—" She called over her shoulder as she walked the cloak over to the rack, wand occupied with drying it out. "Aren't you going to say 'hello' to your father?"

Mr. Black's eyes moved away from Regulus and onto his older brother. The second their eyes met, Regulus felt as though the room dropped ten degrees.

"Hello, sir."

The words were flat and toneless, and there was an odd formality to it completely antithetical to Sirius. More unusual was his face, which was usually so animated—for it was a blank. Orion stared back, cooly.

The resemblance between them in that moment was uncanny.

"Good evening, Sirius." His voice was light and casual—but when he turned to look at his younger son, the teenager instantly saw the storm behind his eyes. "It's good to see both my sons looking so—well."

He took his place at the head of the table, elegantly laying out his napkin on his lap with a single wave of his wand. Regulus was acutely aware of some unspoken tension between the other two men—but he could not also help but notice on his father's end, at least—it extended to him as well.

When Walburga came back to the table, Kreacher at her heels with a platter-full of magnificent stuffed lobster tails in his wiry arms, she still had the crumpled parchment in her hands.

Now that her concern at the reason for his absence had dissipated, Mrs. Black's irritation at her husband had returned with full-force.

"Would you like me to pour you a glass of wine—?" Walburga leaned over the table and pretended to sniff the air. "Or have you had enough for the night? You smell like a distillery."

Regulus and Sirius exchanged look of identical surprise—Orion rarely drank to excess, but now that it had been pointed out, they could hardly fail to notice the heavy smell of liquor that had begun to punctuate the room on his arrival.

Mr. Black returned her sarcastic look with one of long-suffering patience.

"You know how he is. I couldn't refuse him when he offered." Walburga snorted—Orion gestured to the letter still crushed in her hand. "You will eventually read that, I take it?"

She sat back down in her chair and smoothed her skirts with unnecessary aggression.

"I don't see what that old fool could possibly want from me," Walburga said, jerking her wand at the elf that he should serve them the food. At once the lobster vanished from the tureen and reappeared on the family's plates, and three of the four Blacks picked up their utensils. Only Sirius seemed uninterested in the delicacy before him. He was still staring intently at his father, who, predictably, ignored him.

"A visit," Orion told his wife, voice dry, as he began to cut his food. "You're overdue one. And now he's had his claws in me and gotten the idea in his head, he won't take 'no' for an answer—"

"—Well, he'll have to! I have quite enough on my hands as it is!" She tossed her head and turned to her sons. "Your father kept us waiting for half-an-hour because he was too busy carousing with Horace Slughorn to be on time."

"You were up in Scotland today?"

Orion looked up from the delicate forkful of crustacean an six inches from his face. Sirius had his eyes fixed on his father's.

"Did I not make it abundantly clear—" Mr. Black slipped the fork into his mouth and chewed carefully. "—That at meals you are not to speak unless spoken to by your mother or me?"

Sirius didn't reply.

"Did you hear me?"

"Yes."

"Yes—what?"

Sirius glared.

"Yes, sir," he said, through gritted teeth. "I heard you—loud and clear."

"Then I wonder at you not answering me," Mr. Black said, in a bland voice. "You do realize that you are also to answer promptly when asked a direct question, I trust?"

"I—understand completely, Father."

He could not resist infusing the patronymic with sarcasm. Orion gave him a withering look.

"I'm glad to hear it," he said, blandly, dabbing politely at his mouth before meeting his quietly seething son's gaze again. His eyes were hard as flint, two polished diamonds. "As far as my whereabouts go—whether I travel to Scotland, Wales or Timbuktu, unless I tell you otherwise, it is nothing whatsoever to you, and you and your brother would do well to put it out of your heads. Is that understood?"

Regulus started—he had been watching the exchange with growing unease, and at the mention of his name—and Orion shifting his eyes in his direction, the teenager flinched.

"Of course, sir." Sirius snatched the silverware off the table and stabbed his lobster tail moodily. "It's already forgotten."

The family ate the rest of the starter in silence. Regulus felt the unspoken tension between his father and brother only grow—it hung in the air between them, in every look, every exchange, and he could not help himself from watching it, fascinated. He looked to his mother to see if she had picked up on it, but Walburga seemed to not notice anything particular about the rancor between her husband and firstborn—they were already at loggerheads so often, nothing seemed all that unusual—though her eyes did seem a bit more hawkishly trained on the pair of them than usual.

"On the subject of today—" Mrs. Black said, as Kreacher was clearing away the plates and bringing out the soup course. "—Just before you got in, Sirius was telling his brother and I how he spent the whole day shopping. Can you imagine such a thing?"

Orion looked around at the taller of the two boys—currently caught someplace between sullen glare and panicked attempt to catch his father's eye and head off disaster.

"It boggles the mind," Mr. Black said, dryly. "He never seemed to enjoy you dragging him about on your excursions as a child. I wonder what could have prompted it."

As he had already had enough humiliation for a lifetime in the past day, Sirius could not take the ignominy of his parents talking about him as if he were an idiot child, incapable of explaining himself. Sirius opened his mouth—then after a sharp and vindictive look from his father, shut it again. He contented himself by silently swearing like a sailor and imagining sticking pins in an Orion-shaped doll.

Walburga sprinkled some pepper on her pea soup, utterly unconcerned with her fuming child.

"Personally," she remarked, in a light tone of voice. "I'm more curious to know what kind of shopping he thought he would do in the drawing room of our home."

There was an awkward silence where all the men at the table froze. Mrs. Black alone continued eating her soup, with the feminine and graceful manners she had employed since she was a child. Her husband's flushed face lost its color—but when he recovered himself, he instantly turned on his son. Sirius already had his palms raised in the air.

"For the record, I didn't tell her anything."

"Hold your tongue, boy," Orion hissed, furiously. "Unless you'd like me remove it for you—"

"—What I would like to know, Orion Black," Walburga cut in, icily. "Is if your son lied to me about coming to Grimmauld Place this morning when I was out for his own sake…or because his father instructed him to."

Orion set his spoon down on the table in front of him resolutely. Regulus, meanwhile, was mouthing silent questions to Sirius—whose only response was nod furiously and kick him under the table.

"I didn't tell him to lie about anything," Mr. Black said, carefully. "And certainly not to you."

Sirius let out a whoop of disbelieving laughter—what, did the old man think he was going to willingly take the fall for this?

To hell with that.

"That's rich! You may not have said it to me directly, but it was heavily implied. Why else would you have told me to come when you knew she'd be out?" Sirius snorted, then narrowed his eyes in suspicion at his mother. "How did you even know I was there?"

Mrs. Black gave him a scornful look.

"I am your mother—and you leave your mark wherever you go, Sirius Orion." She turned back to her husband, ignoring the yelp of protest that came from the red-faced stripling sitting next to her—she had bigger fish to fry than him. "Honestly, Orion—I don't know where you get these notions. What if someone had to come to call when he was there? I cannot see what on earth was so important that you had to summon him like that—particularly without consulting me, first."

Mr. Black resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He knew full well that the real source of her anger was not that Sirius had come by the house—it was that he, the supposed patriarch, had not managed to corral their eldest son into his old room and lock the door.

He sighed.

"Well—since I am left with no other choice—" He shot Sirius a scathing look. "I will tell you. Of course, I had hoped to surprise you—"

"Surprise me with what?" Walburga snapped, impatiently.

Orion picked his spoon and returned ladled himself some of the pale green soup. Both his sons watched him—Sirius with anticipation, Regulus fear—to see if he could manage the impossible feat of escaping this encounter unscathed.

"I decided—in preparation for his reinstatement—that it was time to begin instructing him in the duties and responsibilities that are part and parcel to the office of head of the family, and so I called him to the house to begin his…education." He glanced up from the bowl to see her reaction—now his wife was the one on the back-foot. "Frankly, I thought you'd be more pleased."

Mrs. Black blinked at her husband, who had gone from suspiciously defensive to placidly calm in a matter of moments.

"Is—is that true, Sirius Orion?" Walburga asked, perplexed, turning to the boy (whose face had drained of all color). "Is that what you were doing at the house?"

"Go on, boy—tell her." Orion raised a single eyebrow tauntingly. "Didn't I give you some family papers to look over and errands to run for me?"

It took all of Sirius's self control not the hurl the spoon.

"I—" The cold, hard look of warning Mr. Black threw his son across the table stifled the string of profanities he would have so dearly loved to utter. "—Yes, you did."

He practically had to force the words out of his mouth.

"So then—the shopping you were doing this afternoon—" Walburga glanced back at her husband, as if she was not quite sure that this could be what he meant, and she needed him to standby for clarification. "That was for your father?"

Sirius let out a long sigh and slumped back in his chair.

"…Yes," he muttered, tapping his spoon against the edge of the plate. "It was."

Walburga stared at him for a long, hard moment—her eldest was the worst liar by far of the family, and his reaction to this line of inquiry had all the telltale signs of willful petulance that signaled her headstrong eldest was annoyed and embarrassed at his father showing a bit of paternal backbone.

As well he should. Mrs. Black smiled and visibly relaxed.

"Why didn't you say so in the first place?" She shook her head, exasperation obvious. "This does explain your behavior today."

"What behavior?" Orion asked, a hint of warning in his voice.

"The elf said he's been shut up in his room all afternoon, sulking—Regulus had to convince him to eat lunch." She surveyed Sirius critically—this explanation was clearly not to his liking, if his churlish expression was anything to go by. "Now I see the cause—he was in a mood because you gave him chores to do."

"I was not in a—"

"—It's very sensible of you to start right away on him, Orion," Mrs. Black cut off her son, approvingly. "Though I still think you ought to have told me. I'd have had the elf lay out lunch for the two of you."

Orion gave her a wry look.

"I'll be sure to always inform you of your progeny's movements in future," he remarked, dryly—but Walburga had already turned back to her son—and she had never had a good ear to hear her husband's irony, anyway—particularly when the explanation that had been presented to her satisfied her sense of how things should be. "I plan to keep a very close eye on him."

She would believe what she wanted to believe—in that respect she was a very easy woman to lie to, and Sirius could only glare at her husband, the undisputed master of the delicate half-truth, and fantasize about how utterly livid she would be when she realized what an absolute corker she'd been fed.

As this was a fantasy, the fact that he was complicit in said lie was something he could ignore.

"Don't look like that, Sirius Black!" Walburga scolded him, severely. "It is perfectly natural and right that you should do errands for your father. Frankly, all this running about with no responsibility that you've grown accustomed to is what's unusual. You need structure and order."

"What I need is a Colt .45," Sirius muttered, under his breath—but not quietly enough.

"What in Merlin's name are you talking about?" His mother asked, turning to her husband for help. Orion shrugged, unconcerned. "What is that?"

"Nothing."

"It's a sort of gun," Regulus supplied, quietly. "They're—a kind of weapon Muggles use."

The other three Blacks stared at him in surprise.

"How do you know that?"

Regulus's eyes flitted guiltily to the blank-screened boxy object in the corner of the room, than back at his mother.

"One—picks these things up."

Mrs. Black chose to interpret that as 'rubbish his elder brother had fed him', as she usually did on the rare occasion that Regulus spoke of forbidden knowledge.

"And what exactly does this—thing—do?" she asked, her voice deeply suspicious.

Regulus quickly explained, as he understood it, the basic functions of a handgun. By the end of his terse explication (picked up from a half-hour television western he had managed to sneak in while Sirius was in their room and Kreacher in the kitchen), his parents looked equally horrified—though this seemed to have less to do with the gun itself than the fact that their younger son knew about this crude Muggle artifact in the first place.

"How barbaric!" Walburga's eyes flashed at Sirius. "What on earth do you mean speaking of such a thing at our table? And what possible use could you have for one?"

One glance at his father was enough to disabuse Sirius of the notion that explaining his murder-suicide joke to his mother was a good idea.

"Nothing—no reason." He stirred his tepid soup and sighed. "I'm sorry for bringing it up."

They passed the rest of the soup course in near silence—the only sounds being the occasional murmur from one of the parents on the quality of the food.

Regulus gave his elder brother a pitying look across the table as Kreacher served the main course—a rather magnificent rack of lamb with roasted turnips and potatoes surrounding it on a silver tray a foot long. The unpleasantness of the argument between his brother and parents—and the palpable tension between Sirius and Orion, which had reached a toxicity level even Walburga couldn't have missed—had reached such a noxious level, that Regulus felt he ought to help clear the air.

"How was grandfather's birthday party?"

The second the words left Regulus's mouth he knew they were a mistake. A thunderously angry cloud passed over Orion's face, and Sirius—who he had expected to be happy that he had changed the subject to something as innocent as a family function—kicked him so hard under the table he jumped, and on the heels of this began shaking his head from side-to-side as furiously as was possible without drawing the attention of Walburga.

Only Mrs. Black failed to notice—she was neatly cutting a roasted carrot in half. When the woman looked up, there was a vague trace of annoyance on her face at the question, but it was not anything beyond the usual.

"Oh, much the same as it always is," Mrs. Black said, vaguely. "You know how these things go."

"It was a tedious affair," Mr. Black cut in, coldly, as he aggressively sawed straight through his lamb bone. His eyes flashed as they turned on his elder son—who abruptly froze in place and went pale. "An interminable evening."

His wife let out a feminine noise of disbelief.

"You certainly stayed late at that 'tedious affair'," Walburga remarked, dryly, taking a bite from her turnip. "I didn't even hear you come in."

"I didn't get back until two," Orion said, gloomily. "My father kept losing hands and insisting we play another round."

Mrs. Black wrinkled her nose, biting back the waspish remark she would have liked to make about her father-in-law.

"Of course he did." She spotted the confusion on her younger son's face—and mistook the grimace on the older's for the same emotion. "Your father got wrangled into playing cards last night, of all things."

Sirius kicked him under the table again. This time Regulus ignored it.

"You were playing cards at grandfather's birthday? But…" Regulus frowned—very aware that there was something odd about the story. "That's not like him. He doesn't usually gamble."

"Well, that was Abraxas Malfoy's doing—he's a great gambler, always has been—" Walburga nibbled her lamb. "—so when the festivities moved to his house, he convinced your grandfather it would be a grand idea for him to spend half his birthday betting the family fortune."

Regulus dropped his knife and fork on his plate with an unholy clatter.

"The party was at Malfoy Manor?"

He quickly turned towards his brother—Sirius had abandoned kicking in favor making short, violent slashing motions at chest level and jerking his head to his left surreptitiously. Regulus's eyes darted from his elder brother to the direction he was gesturing to, and met his father's icy gaze. His face lost all color at the expression he found there.

"It was a last minute change," Orion said, coldly. "Lucius and his father kindly hosted us."

Regulus's eyes were wide as saucers—he looked between his father and brother a couple times, now full-blown horrified.

"So then—" Sirius shook his head and mouthed 'shut up' at Regulus. "But was it him who—" He nodded, furiously, once again jerking his head in the general direction of the head of the table. Orion cleared his throat loudly just as Regulus blanched.

"You seem to want to communicate some critical information to your younger brother, Sirius," Orion said, his voice heavily sarcastic. "Would you care to share it with the rest of us?"

Sirius dropped his hand on the table and turned his head slowly, meeting his father's gaze, evenly.

"There's nothing to share," Sirius replied, glibly raising one eyebrow to his father, by way of challenge. "I'll just speak to him after dinner—sir."

Orion's lip curled.

Walburga could hardly ignore her entire family having a silent conversation of which she had no part, and so she abandoned her own lamb and cleared her throat, drawing the attention of all three men back to her.

"The two of you should not be whispering to each other at the table, honestly," she chided. "I thought we raised you with better manners."

Regulus, biting his lip nervously, broke eye contact with his father and turned to her, eyes full of apology.

"Was—was everyone in the family there?" he said, in barely more than a squeak. "At the—party?"

"Oh, most everyone—apart from you." She toyed with her fork, idly. "They all asked after you, Regulus—you were quite missed."

"Your cousins' husbands had a message for you, Regulus."

Regulus froze like a deer. Sirius, who had been mutilating a turnip on his plate, looked up from the monstrosity he'd created.

"Did they, s-sir?" Regulus's voice faltered. Though he'd seen that had expression on his father's face dozens of times, Orion had never looked at him like that before. "What—what was it?"

Mr. Black said nothing for a long moment.

"Oh, nothing all that interesting." He wiped his mouth gently with the corner of his napkin. "Lucius and Rodolphus were just…very disappointed not to see you, and—I think there was something about hoping you'll be back in London for some party on the twenty-third."

He continued to stare at his son. Regulus blushed crimson, but—to his credit he held the older man's gaze, refusing even to blink.

"I'll be sure to write them both notes in the morning with my regrets, sir."

Abruptly, Orion's temper flared up again.

"I think you've spent quite enough time writing letters," he snapped, tossing his knife on the plate with an uncharacteristic lack of manners. "You'd be better occupied helping your brother go through that correspondence I gave him than copying out any more of your own."

Regulus flinched and looked across the table, reflexively—only to find Sirius scrutinizing him in much the same way. The brothers exchanged looks of misery.

Mrs. Black noticed the downcast pall over her two boys—the root cause of which was clearly their irascible father, who had decided for Merlin knew what reason to spend this dinner snapping at everyone on the slightest pretext.

"I think he has time to do both," Walburga interjected, frowning. "And if Lucius invited him, it would be rude not to respond."

Orion shrugged and tersely resumed tearing into the lamb chop with a vindictive energy his wife failed to grasp the source of. Perhaps it was something his father had said to him—or Slughorn. She found it hard to imagine him stewing on what they had argued about—she had long since stopped thinking Orion was much interested in her opinions or wishes when they conflicted with his own.

Whatever was the cause of his sour mood, it wasn't worth dragging the mood of his wife and children down with him.

"I did think of something amusing that happened at the party," Walburga remarked, a few minutes later, at another interminable lull in the conversation. "This will make you laugh, boys."

Neither one of her sons had ever heard her utter that phrase—and as she was a woman basically devoid of a sense of humor, neither had ever laughed at a comment of hers—at least not any that were intended to provoke such a reaction.

"Your father caught himself a prowler in the house."

Sirius lowered the forkful of lamb he was forcing himself to eat for lack of anything else to do with his hands—save reaching for his wand and apparating from the table to the far reaches of the Outer Hebrides.

"What—what do you mean, Mother?" Regulus asked her, nervously glancing between Orion and Sirius, who again both looked semi-murderous—but now they were avoiding looking each other in the eye at all costs. "Was there someone who…shouldn't…"

He trailed off, awkwardly.

"Oh—it's nothing like that!" Walburga waved her hand, airily. "It was a dog, of all things. Some stray that got into the house. I caught your father conversing with it."

Regulus gave his father a sideways look—but when he tried to catch Sirius's eye, he found his brother staring resolutely at the china plate in front of him. His forehead was scrunched up—a sure sign he was trying, with some difficulty, to control his emotions—and it was turning beet red.

"I was doing no such thing," Orion said, tersely. "I was leashing the pest, so I could remove it."

Walburga snorted—arguing the point with her husband meant that she had as of yet not noticed that her eldest son was struggling to keep his famous gunpowder temper in check—and failing.

"You were talking to it! I was looking for you, and I heard shouting through the wall—and I open the door and it's only you and that animal."

Regulus's mouth fell open.

"It was…a particular difficult mongrel to corral. I can't imagine how it managed to sneak its way into the house," he said, eyes crackling with barely-suppressed anger as they flicked to the spot where his older son sat. "Eventually I had to muzzle it and drag it out by force."

Regulus stared between his brother and father—a horrible second wave of realization washed over him, and he began to quietly mouth questions in his brother's direction. Sirius was gripping the edge of his silver knife so hard Reggie thought he might snap it in half.

"I still don't think it was a stray." She looked over at her boys and addressed them, with the confidence of an expert. "Mark my words, that creature had breeding."

"Your mother is convinced the animal in question bore some passing resemblance to the famed 'Black hounds' your great-grandfather bred—one of the family, as it were. Personally—" Orion twirled his fork in his fingers, expression thoughtful. "—I cannot imagine anything so mangy or dull-witted coming from the Black family. Of course…I could be wrong."

Sirius stabbed his fork into a stray potato with so much force it nearly cracked the dish.

"I suppose one or two might've gotten loose and left a few descendants roaming about the countryside. But I believe Cygnus kept his whelps penned in the backyard," Orion remarked, dryly—still staring squarely at his elder son, trembling with anger. "I think we could all learn a lesson on managing wayward creatures from him."

Sirius roughly pushed out his chair and stood up.

"I'm not feeling well." His eyes glittered in his pale face, fixed in a hard look of intense anger solely channelled in Orion's direction. "I want to go to bed. Can I go, sir?"

Sirius didn't bother waiting for his father's answer before he gave a significant look to his younger brother and nodded toward the door. Regulus, caught his eye, and in a rare moment of boldness, also stood up.

"I'm—I'm also not feeling—" He was stammering badly, something he always did when he was anxious. "I think I need to rest—may I please—be excused, Father?"

Orion looked from Sirius to Regulus, grim resolve in his lined face. In the dim and flickering light of the candle on the table, his cheeks appeared more sunken than usual.

Mr. Black wasn't smiling.

"You both look perfectly healthy to me," he said, coldly, before turning to his wife. "Let's ask your mother for her opinion. What do you think, Walburga?"

Walburga had been watching the exchange with curiosity and—seeing the non-verbal communication between her sons, concern. Her desire for her sons to get along was at war with a long-felt worry in the back of her mind—that if they grew too close, her tried and true strategy for managing them—i.e. keeping them pitted against one another—would lose all effectiveness.

They clearly wanted to get away from the table because they were in each other's confidences about something—she would file that thought away to examine it later.

Mrs. Black stood up and placed one hand on each of her boys' cheeks.

"Neither of them feel warm—"

"Well, there we have it—" Orion said, sleekly. "As you don't appear to be keeling over, you'll stay and finish your dinner with your mother and I. Now sit back down, both of you."

Regulus fell back into his chair, brown eyes set in a look of helpless anxiety.

Sirius didn't move. He looked to his mother—but he could see at once that she was not going to interfere. She had always wanted her husband to take the reigns in discipline, and now that his father had discovered his inner-taskmaster, she was not about to take them back.

Orion's lip twisted in an ironic smile.

"I told you to sit…boy."

Fuming silently, Sirius sank back down in the chair. He locked eyes with his brother across the table. The look of incredulous understanding—coupled with a disapproval that lay somewhere between indignant and amazed—suggested to the elder of the two Black children that full meaning of the embarrassing double-entendre had not been lost on Regulus.

He kicked Reg under the table again and silently mouthed the word 'later' to him.

"If either of us are sick at the table," Sirius said, turning to address his mother. "You know who to thank."

Walburga was not impressed.

"Nonsense. You'll do nothing of the kind—it wouldn't be toward. And anyway, everyone in our family has very strong constitutions, isn't that so, Orion?"

She nodded to her husband, the wish for affirmation inherent in her look. He stared at her queerly for a moment before answering.

"Very—robust."

His voice was uncharacteristically subdued, though Regulus appeared to be the only one at the table who picked up on it—he looked up from the china plate where the Black family crest was just visible under a sauce and gave his father a penetrating stare.

Orion didn't even noticed he was being watched.

"I suppose," Mr. Black said, in the theatrically tired voice he had always put on when he was eager to move the conversation along. "That we have quite exhausted your sons' interest in the subject of last night's gathering, which is why they are so eager to leave the table."

Neither Sirius nor Regulus dared argue with him.

"I think their father is the one is tripping over himself to change the subject." She remarked, delicately cutting up a potato and spearing it on her fork. Though the main course had hardly been in front of them for very long, it was obvious nobody besides her was much interested in the food. "And I think I know why he's in such a dreadful mood."

Mr. Black, long used to his wife's needling manner of ferreting the truth from the men in her family, refused to rise to the bait of asking her what she meant.

She set her knife and fork down and looked up at him, gaze straightforward—or as much as it ever was, with her.

"Did you lose very badly at cards?" There was just the barest hint of sarcasm in her voice. "Will we have to sell the house?"

She waved her wand at the house elf, and he began to clear the plates and set out the salad course. Orion raised one eyebrow, elegantly.

"Oh, I don't think so." Mr. Black leaned a little back in his chair, expression thoughtful. Both of his sons were staring at him—Sirius with open and hungry curiosity, Regulus disquiet. "I may not have won the bank…but I wouldn't say I came away from the table completely empty-handed."

Walburga's eye roll and tart remark about how she would check the family accounts later to get a substantial answer to this question prevented her from noticing the mocking smile her husband leveled at their older son. He was fully aware of it, and when Sirius opened his mouth, only a well-aimed kick from Reggie prevented him from the imprudent rejoinder he would otherwise have made.

They watched Kreacher set out the salad that was meant to be a refreshing palate cleanser for the meal that none of them had enjoyed, much. The three men all eyed each other warily—the only ray of hope was a general lull in conversation between courses which suggested that the subject of last night's grand social engagement might have petered out altogether.

Walburga had different ideas, of course.

"By the way, Orion—" Mrs. Black cut into the blood orange that was the centerpiece of her fruit salad with gusto. "During that game, did you find out from Rodolphus where Bella was, by chance?"

Orion paused, fork raised midway between the plate and his mouth. Regulus knocked his goblet onto the tablecloth. Blood-red wine seeped over the linen, but he hardly noticed.

"Bellatrix wasn't there?" Reg asked his brother, urgently. "But where—"

Sirius let out a strategic cough and jerked his head significantly—Regulus turned red and stammered, realizing too late his mistake in addressing him and not their parents. He turned towards his mother—avoided meeting Orion's steely eyes—and repeated the question.

"She wasn't. I thought it very odd. Especially considering Rodolphus and Rabastan were, though the two of them did turn up dreadfully late, I never saw them come in—" Walburga again looked at her husband, who had set down his fork rather resolutely, and was wearing one of his customary closed-off expressions that gave the impression he was doing hard thinking. "I thought he might've told you where she was."

Orion shrugged.

"I asked. He only said she wasn't ill. Nothing else."

Sirius grew very still, and his brother, recovering his color, busied himself with mopping up the wine stain with his napkin. Mr. Black's tone was just casually dismissive enough to stir his wife's tendency to harp.

"Well, I think that is very singular—a husband going to his wife's family's party, and bringing his brother instead!" she observed, to no one in particular. "And I don't know what's gotten into Bella. I'll have to talk to Cygnus about her. That's the third event in a row she's missed—it's not like her to neglect her responsibilities to the family."

Sirius couldn't help himself—he stifled a laugh into his goblet. Rather than muffling the sound, all this attempt at dissembling did was cause him to spray it over his plate and draw the attention of his entire immediate family.

Orion cleared his throat loudly, and his son—still choking on the wine—regained control of himself. His mother goggled at him, while Kreacher gave him a disapproving look from the floor.

"And what, pray tell, is so amusing, Sirius Orion Black?"

Sirius took a long time wiping his face, but when he removed the cloth napkin, he had managed to school his expression as well.

"Nothing, Mother." His lip twitched. "Nothing—at all."

He looked at the wall—the sarcastic smile still visible to her even in profile. Walburga narrowed her eyes. She couldn't let anyone have the last word in the best of times, and on the rare occasions when when one of her immediate family had dared laugh at her, she had not taken it lying down.

"No—you were sniggering at me, and I want to know the reason why." She rapped her wand against her palm, and a trail of sparks flew out the end. "What about me wondering why your cousin missed your grandfather's party could possibly make you laugh?"

For a moment Sirius only stared at her—creeping incredulity that she would ask such a question, and then—he smirked.

"It's just, well—" He leaned back in his chair. It was not a kind expression that he wore, or even one of amusement. He was looking at his mother with a distinctly condescending superiority.

"—I think Bellatrix has bigger priorities than 'the family' these days, Mother."

He let the legs of his chair fall back down on the floor with a clunk.

"What on earth do you mean by that?" Walburga demanded, scowling at him in disapproval—whether it was for his indolent table manners or his cryptic remarks, none could say. "What could be more important for a young woman than her family? And moreover—what could you possibly have to say about it?"

Baffled, she turned to her younger son and husband for support—and found each of them looking at Sirius with far more comprehension than she could own to.

Orion had his eyes trained on the boy—a look of warning. Regulus, pale and grave, had sunk so low in his chair that only the top his forehead was visible over the top of the table.

"I think that's something we would all like to know," Mr. Black said, voice tight. "Why don't you explain to your mother what you mean?"

Sirius let out another little derisive laugh and tossed his head.

"I think she should ask Regulus—"

"—She asked you."

Father and son stared at each other for a long moment, locked in a silent battle of wills. Sirius broke eye contact first. The young man let out a long sigh, and turned his eyes around to his mother, still staring at him, expectantly—though there was a title flicker of anxiety in her eyes as well.

He shrugged his shoulders once more, affecting an air of nonchalantness.

"I just meant, well—Bella's been married for eight years. You can't expect her to go running back home to every family to-do because her father bids her." Sirius spoke in a clinical and dispassionate tone that suggested he was, on the whole, indifferent to the matter. He stabbed a tomato on his plate and held it up in the air, circumspectly. "I mean, she's not even really a Black anymore, is she?"

He tossed the fork back on his plate. Walburga stared at her son with a fresh look of understanding—as if she was only now coming to see where it was that she had gone wrong with him.

"Is that what you think?" she asked, uncomprehendingly. "That because Bellatrix is married, she isn't part of the family?"

"Well, strictly speaking…she's not a Black," her son pointed out, archly. "She's a Lestrange, now—just like Narcissa's a Malfoy." He wrinkled his nose in distaste at the name Cissy had willingly relinquished 'Black' for. "I'll grant that it's a bit of a lateral move—"

"—Your cousins are still Blacks by blood and always will be." Walburga narrowed her eyes at him. "Where did you get this queer notion that Narcissa and Bellatrix's marriages have removed them from the family?"

"Well—their sister's certainly did." Walburga's eyes flashed dangerously at the mention of her wayward niece and the unfortunate misalliance that had scandalized the family nearly a decade before. Sirius took another swig from his goblet. "And for the record, Andromeda cared a hell of a lot more about your brother and his wife than Bellatrix ever has."

Every night Mrs. Black had to fight her natural urge to rise to his bait—for as myopic as she could be, even Walburga was not blind to how poorly Sirius was taking to his coerced transition back into his rightful place in the family, and she was desperate to walk away from at least one meal with no hurt feelings or scars between them.

She swallowed the tart reply she had at the ready and merely clenched her jaw.

"The point is," the matriarch of the family said, in a voice of forced calm. "That family is about more than the name. It is something that is part of you no matter who you marry or where you go—or with whom you associate. You will be a Black until the day you die."

On another day, or in another life, Sirius might've taken this moment to point out the rank and unfettered hypocrisy of such a declaration from a woman whose clan had removed people from the family tree for the sin of marrying or thinking incorrectly countless times. Today, however, he only looked at her, oddly calm.

"You know…your brother once said almost the exact same thing to me."

A deathly silence fell over the table. Walburga remained expressionless, though the light from the candles danced in her eyes. The other three all watched her in expectation—Orion with concern, Regulus anxiety—and Sirius with that reckless instability, the desire for a fight that was always roiling just beneath the surface.

His mother tossed her head let out an airy and demonstrably false laugh.

"Did he? Well, Cygnus has his moments of wisdom." She turned back to her salad with a feminine wave of the hand. "Few and far between though they are."

"I wasn't talking about Cygnus."

Walburga's shoulders tensed—the air around her seemed to actually freeze over, and when she looked up from her plate she no longer bore any pretense of not understanding him. Her expression became dangerously frosty as she surveyed her eldest son—still staring at her with that stubborn defiance which had always infuriated and impressed in equal measures.

"As he's the only brother I have," she said, coldly. "I can't imagine who you mean."

She gave a silent look to her husband—permission for Orion to intervene if he so chose. Mr. Black had been watching this exchange of volleys like a game of squash, for he knew well how much her temper would flare up at any perceived need she had for help.

He cleared his throat. Sirius ignored him.

"I was talking about Alph—"

"—The real material point," Mrs. Black interrupted him, voice louder, two angry splotches of color on each cheek. "Is that a good marriage expands one's family."

Sirius burst into mirthless laughter again.

"Rodolphus and Lucius aren't a good addition to anything," Sirius sneered, contemptuously. "And they certainly aren't my family."

His father gently set down his knife and fork.

"They are your married to your first cousins—so yes, by marriage, they are. You seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that your feelings about anything matter on this point." He spoke with the maddening patience of a schoolmaster with an unruly pupil who needed to be set down. "Family is a definitional term. It is or isn't. Whether you like them or not is immaterial—"

"—You've already told me all this," Sirius interrupted him, quietly. "This morning, if you recall."

Walburga pursed her lips. Orion considered his son seriously for a moment. Sirius remained unwavering in his look—though the boy's fingers trembled slightly, gripped around the salad fork in his left hand.

Mr. Black sighed.

"Some lessons bear repeating."

His son didn't argue, and his face was far from the usual expressive. His eyes looked quite blank, mouth set in an impenetrable thin and grim line.

"I don't know where all this criticizing of Bella comes from, Sirius Orion." Walburga observed, off-handedly, as she tapped her wand on the side of the plate, splitting a pomegranate into fourths. "When she always was such a favorite of yours."

Her eldest son looked up from the lettuce he was mangling on his plate, open-mouthed.

"No, she wasn't." Regulus was trying to catch his eye, but he was so fixated on his mother that he didn't notice. "Andromeda was always the one I liked best."

Walburga raised an eyebrow—allowing the mention of her disgraced niece pass without comment.

"When you were older, perhaps—but when you were a little boy you adored Bellatrix," Mrs. Black told, matter-of-factly. Sirius stirred fitfully in his chair. "People used to mistake you for brother and sister—no wonder, the way you followed her around. You were quite devoted."

"That's not true—"

"—Of course, it's no surprise, really." Walburga plowed over him, immune to the fact that her son's face had gone chalk white at these observations. "Cut from the same cloth. She's very willful and headstrong, too." She turned to her husband, expression thoughtful. "Your sister's like that, also. It must be something about eldest children in our family—"

He banged both hands on the table so hard one of the candles toppled over.

"I am nothing like Bellatrix, and I would thank you not to compare me to her!"

Sirius's brother and parents all stared at him. He realized, vaguely, that he was standing, having knocked his goblet onto the lion's share of his salad (now soaked through with wine), that his fists were clenched so hard that his knuckles were white, and that he was breathing so hard he might've just run up a mountain.

His father gaped at him. Orion was for once without criticism—his silver eyes were widened in surprise, and if Sirius hadn't known better, he would have thought he saw alarm there as well, for the vehement and imperious tone with which he had half-shouted those words at his mother was disturbing to more than one party at the table.

Walburga tilted her head in a superior fashion. Her catlike eyes narrowed.

"Do you know how I knew you were in the house today?"

Sirius stared at her, and he unclenched his fist, curled around his wand. He dropped his arms weakly to his sides.

"No," he answered, honestly.

"The cushions from the sofa in the drawing room were all over the floor—had been kicked off, in fact."

Orion cursed softly under his breath at his eldest son's lack of discretion—but the boy ignored him in favor of Walburga.

Sirius sat back down in his chair, still transfixed by her, perturbed. His mother wore that maddeningly self-assured look he had never been able to stomach.

"So?" he asked, stupidly.

"So—that was something Bellatrix used to do when she was a little girl." Sirius sucked in a hard breath. "You must've picked it up from her, you started doing it out of nowhere when you were about three or four. You used to sneak down into the drawing room when we had Druella and the girls for tea. And you always mimicked her in everything."

"That doesn't—that doesn't prove anything!"

Walburga blinked at him. For once she seemed more surprised than offended.

"There's no need to get so worked up about it," his mother told him, patiently. "I'm sure you don't remember—but I do."

"I am not worked up." He tossed his salad fork into the inedible mess on his plate. "I just—don't happen to see it."

"See what?"

"A resemblance between me and Bellatrix, of course!"

She shook her head and tutted, maternally. He was clearly in a mood, and humoring him further would only get the boy more worked up.

"Well, I am your mother, Sirius Orion." The ghost of a superior, arch smile slipped over her face. "I daresay I can see you more clearly than you see yourself."

For once, Sirius had no sharp rejoinder—no pithy comeback. He glared at his mother, momentarily struck dumb—still looking angry, but as was so often the case in any sparring match between them, Sirius had been effectively blunted. She met his mulish glare with the haughty indifference of a queen surveying one of her subjects.

"At any rate—" She went back to delicately cutting up the scant greens on her plate. "You're far too old to make such a mess in the drawing room—and it was quite imprudent of you. I walked into the room with your cousin, and when she set eyes on it I was certain she had the same thought that I did."

Sirius let out a dismissive little snort under his breath.

"I doubt if Narcissa's powers of imagination really extend far enough to think I'd be invited back into that house, Mother." Orion exchanged a look of surprise with Regulus, which Sirius, absorbed with bickering with his mother, didn't notice. "And even on the off-chance Cissy did think I'd been there, she'd do everything in her power not to spread it around, believe me."

She waved her fork at him in a chastening manner.

"You should not underestimate her, and anyway, who knows what she'll say to that friend of hers? They're becoming quite thick as thieves, I wouldn't put it past Cissy to confide anything in her."

"What friend?" Orion dropped his serviette into his lap. "What are you talking about?"

His wife looked around at him, momentarily confused—then a flash of remembrance crossed her face.

"That's right—I hadn't gotten around to telling you all yet." She addressed the boys specifically. "Your cousin is staying with us for the week leading up to the Christmas party, and she's brought a friend—"

"—What friend are you speaking of?" Mr. Black repeated, with more urgency—Walburga huffed with suppressed impatience at being interrupted a second time.

"That Battancourt girl, of course—who else could it be?" Orion's face froze in the expression of one who is having their worst fears confirmed. Sitting diagonally across from him at the table, one of his sons was busying himself with pushing an orange pip across his plate with his knife and not looking in his father's direction.

"She's staying at the house?" His eyes unconsciously darted to Sirius, who sensed the look even without raising his head to meet it and froze in the act of pushing the pip under a spinach leaf. "When exactly did this all come about?"

Walburga clearly found her husband's demands for information tedious, for she turned to address the servant first.

"Kreacher—clear the salads away—and bring out the cheese and fruit, and then the gâteau with the brandy." When her gray eyes raised from the floor and met her husband's, the look she found there was far less supplicating than her devoted elf's. He looked unaccountably irked, for what reason she could scarce imagine. "It's all been arranged. I thought you spoke to Lucius last night."

"He asked me if we could entertain his wife for the week," Mr. Black seethed. "He said nothing about foisting some school-girl miss she's taken a shine to on us. Were they even going to ask?"

Walburga, affronted by the suggestion their niece had such poor manners, gave him a withering look.

"Narcissa did before the girl arrived at the Jarvey—she met us for lunch and came back with Cissy and I." At this news her husband groaned—but as she was used to heading off arguments about entertaining guests and anything else that might interfere with the solitude and silence he craved, Mrs. Black already had a line of defense at the ready. "It's better this way, Orion. She can amuse Narcissa, and they'll be out most nights with Lucius and his set—I think he's meeting them in London tomorrow. You'll won't even know they're there. It's good timing, really, when you think of it."

"This is hardly good timing." His wife gave him one of her deliberately obtuse looks—one never knew if they were genuine or by design—and he set his mouth in a grim line. Regulus, meanwhile, had busied himself with feeding Kreacher a crust of bread under the table—but the reddening tips of his ears were just visible over the table cloth. "For reasons I hardly feel I need to explain to you, Walburga, the timing could not possibly be worse."

She shrugged, carelessly.

"Well, we can't back out now. The girls' trunks will have arrived by now—I left them with a light supper. I'm sure they're settled in and playing whist or sewing or something like that." She vanished the remains of the food off her plate with a flick of her wand and quirked her eyebrow in Orion's direction. "I don't see why you're in such a flutter over it. What reason do you have to object to the girl?"

It was at that moment that Sirius chose to take a sip of wine that inopportunely went down the wrong windpipe. He coughed loudly, drawing the attention of everyone else at the table—most especially his father.

Mr. Black stared at his son for a long moment, then back at his wife. He looked as though he would have dearly loved to remark on how the presence of a companion for their niece in the house would make it easier for her to sneak off to visit her fugitive children, but he decided to restrain himself.

"It's not her I object to, precisely," he said, in an opaque tone. "It's—but I suppose it's done and can't be helped."

They each helped themselves to generous portions of cheese and sliced fruit—Sirius only because he knew that if he did not, Walburga would make a point of demanding the reason he did not sample a bit of every one of the fifteen dishes she put out for her meals, as if he was deliberately insulting her from abstaining from even one of them.

"Is it—Colette Battancourt who is staying at the house, Mother?"

They all stared at Regulus, the most unlikely person to break any silence.

"How do you know her?" Orion asked, genuinely perplexed. His more timid son, in direct contrast to his overbearing brother, was rendered momentarily mute from the question, couched in slightly aggrieved tones.

"I met her at a party last summer at—at Danden Hall."

Sirius cleared his throat and adopted a cherubically innocent expression that didn't fool his father or brother for an instant.

"So, erm—this girl you're all talking about—" he said, in a just-too casual voice. "Who exactly is she?"

His father instantly saw red.

"It is none of your business who she is," he snapped, coldly. "And if I have to tell you not to speak unless you've been spoken to one more time, boy—"

"—Oh, for goodness' sake, Orion!" Walburga cut him off, exasperated, dropping her knife onto the table with a clatter. "He was only asking a question out of curiosity! If you intend to grouse at him every time he tries to contribute we'll never have a moment's peace at dinner, honestly."

His jaw tightened, but he said nothing in reply. Both his children knew that after arguing in public and any altercation with Arcturus, her cutting him down in front of them was the thing he hated most in the world.

She drew herself up, and ignoring the silent anger radiating off her husband, turned towards Sirius. He flashed a small smile of polite gratitude at her—and was also careful to ignore his father. That left Regulus as the only witness to Orion quietly seething at the pair of them.

"She's a witch from Normandy who is a friend of your cousin's—the great-niece of Eugenie Fawley—and she's visiting from the Continent for Christmas." Mrs. Black patted her mouth daintily with her napkin. "She's been staying with the Malfoys for the past view days, but the girls decided to come up to London for a change of scene."

"But why?" Sirius asked, bluntly skipping over any clarifying questions about how his older cousin should have become friends with such an unlikely person. "I mean—what reason could she possibly have to come here now—to this country? England's hardly what I'd call a jolly holiday spot."

His mother frowned, unable—or more likely, unwilling—to see his point.

"Well, her grandmother was a Fawley—Eulalie—before she married into the Battancourts she was a friend of your grandmother Melania's, actually—" The furrow in Sirius's brow became more pronounced. "—So I suppose she has people here, distant cousins and the like. Though…" Walburga tossed her head, dismissively. "I'd guess they sent her over with some idea of making an eligible English match for her."

"What makes you think that?" Sirius asked, slyly. "She, er—an old maid, is she?"

"Oh, no—she couldn't be any older than Regulus—it's just that Narcissa keeps hinting at it, and after an afternoon spent with the girl, I wouldn't be surprised if her parents thought she was in danger of becoming one."

"She's very nice," Regulus interjected, quietly. Sirius grinned across the table at his brother—but Walburga, who could count the number of times her youngest had contradicted her on one hand, didn't seem to even register the comment was meant to be rebuke—however gentle—of hers.

"She's not totally hopeless—she could be doing better with what she's got, naturally, if she were my daughter I'd have taught her how to fix her hair—but I am surprised they sent her over here when she's so fresh. The family's very old and well established in France, and she's so young—you'd think they'd want her in Paris for the season—but then—" She paused just long enough to give the effect of having come to an idea out of nowhere. "—Maybe there's no money, and everyone in France knows it."

"It's well known that the Battancourts are land rich and cash poor," Mr. Black informed them all—he may have had no interest in personal gossip, but he was an excellent source of knowledge on every magical family in Europe. "Acres of estate and no gold to keep it up."

"Didn't they say she was an only child?" Orion shrugged—he was still focused on Sirius, who was absorbing all this new information with far keener interest than his father would have liked. "You'd think she'd be an heiress."

"Narcissa told me that there's some trouble with her father's estate," Regulus piped up, again. "She can't inherit because she's a girl."

Sirius gave his brother a thoughtful sideways look and guffawed.

"What, just because she's a bird she gets cut out?" Sirius slouched in his chair. "Well, that's typically medieval. She must be a pureblood, like us."

His father glared at him, and he sat up straight again.

"Since you know nothing of the particulars of the Battancourt family's financial arrangements," he remarked, dryly. "Perhaps you ought to keep your opinions on the subject to yourself."

His son leered at him and rolled a grape across his plate.

"She's a very odd girl." Walburga spread some fig jam on a cracker. "Bookish. She was late because she dawdled at Flourish and Blotts of all places." Mrs. Black rolled her eyes. "In my day girls never owned to reading novels. It wasn't done."

"Cissy says she…writes things."

O-ho. Sirius rounded on his brother, interest piqued.

"Really? What sorts of things?" he pressed. Regulus, like his mother, was visibly surprised at the interest Sirius showed, but like her was too pleased to question his brother's motives in asking—in spite of Orion's apparent hostility in the face of Sirius keeping this line of questioning open.

"She didn't say, exactly—I think sort of…sketches of people she meets. Narcissa caught her doodling one on a serviette and asked her about it."

Sirius laughed.

"Maybe she thinks Narcissa would be a good villainess in a ghost story. I can't imagine any other reason a budding novelist would want to hang around with Ciss."

His father loudly cleared his throat.

"This sudden interest in your cousin's social set is quite the startling development." Orion made no effort to veil the withering sarcasm in his voice. "In the past you always were so unequivocal in your distaste for all her friends. What could have changed, for you, I wonder?"

His eyes glinted dangerously at his elder son—who nibbled a piece of camembert, the corner of his mouth turned up.

"Well—if you had your way they'd be my social set, too, wouldn't they? So I figured I'd better start doing my research ahead of my big—uh, debut in society." Sirius took a generous helping from the bottle of brandy—and poured some for his father as well. He pushed the unwanted glass in Orion's direction. "And you know, Father—with age does come changes in perspective. Maybe if I were to meet this Colette Battancourt I'd even like her."

Orion looked at the glass for a moment—from his expression, you might've thought Sirius had poured poison in it—and he pushed the goblet away from himself again, unsmiling.

"You might." He offered Sirius a thin smile. "It's a shame you'll have no opportunity."

Sirius inelegantly untangled himself from the chair around which he had indolently draped the arm holding his brandy glass. Across from him at the table, Regulus observed the exchange over his wine glass, his brown eyes wide with concern.

"What do you mean?" Sirius asked, voice sullen.

"Because, my boy—" he father replied, serenely plucking the glass of brandy up off the table and savoring its scent. "This Christmas you'll be far too busy learning about your responsibilities and duties to this family to keep society with anyone not in this room." His eyes narrowed. "Not that in Ms. Battancourt's case, you'd have much cause to cross her path—assuming you're behaving yourself, of course."

Orion's voice thrummed with repressed anger—so much so that Walburga, supervising the distribution of the grotesquely elaborate black and white chocolate gâteaus—one of the many fancy sweets she had been trying to soften Sirius with the past week—glanced up from the task to watch the sparring men.

Sirius gritted his teeth.

"There's always the new year."

"Yes, there is." Sirius blanched—for there was no mistaking the finality and steel in his father's voice. Orion's lined features were set with fresh determination—the resolve that, for all his age and weariness, his son had never seen there before. "And in this family, I think I can safely say there's more than one new leaf that will be turned over come January."

The promise—or threat, depending on the perspective of the listener—hung in the air around the table. Whatever happened, they all knew that the détente of the last three years was at an end. Sirius fixed him with a stubborn, irascible stare that was so like his mother even she recognized it—but just then Kreacher placed the chocolate confection in front of him, and the young wizard had an excuse to look away from his father's sharp eyes boring into his skull and still claim he was not defeated.

It was a beautifully made dessert—just as exquisite as everything Walburga ever put on her table. It almost looked too pretty to eat.

"Well?" Sirius looked up from the cake—only to find his mother watching him with anticipation. "Aren't you going to try it?"

"I'm not hungry."

Walburga leaned across the table and pushed the plate towards him, entreatingly. She had that typically bull-headed look on her face that said as far as dessert was concerned, it was not up for debate.

"Nonsense. There's marzipan in the filling—that's your favorite."

He sighed and glanced up at Regulus. His brother pointed to his plate and gave him a pleading look.

"Yeah—alright." He tapped his spoon on the plate. "I'll have a—little."

Sirius took a hearty bite of the confection—and immediately let out a cry of involuntary delight at the taste. When he looked back at Walburga, mouth full of chocolate and almond paste and the spongecake fingers that lined the bowl, he was alarmed by the look of satisfied pleasure he found there.

Far more disconcerting than pissing off Orion was the thought of pleasing her.

"Well?" his mother asked. He chewed thoughtfully and swallowed.

"Scrumptious," Sirius muttered, reluctantly. It was—and he could not see a way of getting around the truth. She had it made with the express purpose of appealing to his tastes, after all—and try as he might to deny it, she knew them well.

He took another bite, attempting to ignore the shameless triumph on his mother's face. So it was good cake. There was no harm in good cake, even if she had made it especially for him. He was not a child anymore, and sweets were not enough to get him back under her thumb, if that's what she thought she was doing.

That being said—he took another large bite, savoring the rich almond paste—was there amaretto in it? Damn, it was good!—Sirius was definitely going to finish this.

After all—the night was young, and he would need his strength.

---

Colette felt only slightly guilty at having told Narcissa—who had wanted to write a note to her husband, letting Lucius know they had safely arrived—that she would be perfectly happy to entertain herself for a little while, as she wished to explore the house out of an acute interest in its architecture and great family history. Her lack of guilt at this fib sprang from the fact that she would have wanted to do so even if a mysterious stranger hadn't tipped her off to the existence of a hidden staircase that lead to the kitchen and fireplace through which she intended to sneak out to meet him.

Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place was not like any house she had ever been in before.

Oh, she had been to grand places—the main town house of the Battancourts in Paris was even larger than this house, and certainly more opulent—but her father's family favored large French windows that let in plenty of light, crystalline ceilings and doors, mirrors with frames of gold in the Rococo style, and everything, of course, always très français.

Battancourt houses had none of the dark corners and Victorian gloom of this place, the velvet curtains that hid the light and made the shadows long—they had no scope for mystery.

She felt, without knowing precisely why, that this house had held many a secret in its long history.

As she climbed the creaky steps to the third-floor landing, Colette shivered with delicious excitement. Perhaps the hidden staircase was concealed behind a panel, or there was a secret trigger to open it, like in her favorite gothic mystery The Jeweled Scepter of du Maurier—the book her late Battancourt grandfather had given her for her twelfth birthday on the sly, and which she had read by wand-light a dozen times under the covers of her bed at night.

She was so lost in thoughts of gothic mystery—and reminiscences of a childhood spent stealthily navigating getting around the strict rules that dictated every aspect of a young witch's life and education—that it took her a moment to realize she had reached the top of the house and the very ordinary landing with two very ordinary doors—no hidden passages in sight.

If I didn't have to look for it, though, it wouldn't be much of a secret, now, would it? she thought, reasonably. Putting aside her love of the fantastic, at her heart Colette was a practical and sensible young woman.

It must be through one of the doors. The witch's eyes fell on the one closest to her, which had a small handwritten sign next to it.

Do Not Enter

Without the Express Permission Of

Regulus Arcturus Black

She smiled, remembering the timid boy she'd met the summer before. Colette imagined him painstakingly copying out this warning to potential intruders. Narcissa's cousin must've had more nerve in him than outward appearance suggested, to have dared put up such a sign for his parents—unless this warning was meant for someone besides them. She doubted the house elf was the one who sneaked into his bed chamber, for when he'd served them tea and gotten their supper ready, Kreacher had been almost as enthusiastic as Narcissa in his praise of 'young Master Regulus'.

Colette's gaze shifted to the other door, and upon reading the single embossed word on the metal plate, she gasped.

Sirius

Of course. When she had asked what was on the floor above where her room was situated, Narcissa had told her Regulus slept up there, but it only made sense that—

She traced a finger over the dusty monogrammed copper plate—Colette supposed she shouldn't be surprised that Mrs. Malfoy had neglected to mention that there had once been a second occupant of this floor, but staring at the tarnish on the letters, she felt an unaccountable pang of melancholy. The girl was overcome with a nearly irresistible—and completely irrational—desire to pull out her rowan wand and perform a scourging spell on it, to polish away the years of neglect.

Reluctantly, she dragged her eyes away from the nameplate on the elder son's room. Ms. Battancourt glanced around the landing, curiously. It was completely empty except for the two bedroom doors and the staircase that lead back down to her room. If there really was a hidden passage to the kitchen, it followed that it truly would have to be hidden behind one of the two doors.

She looked between them, weighing her options—and then, predictably, seized the handle of the elder son's bedroom.

To Colette's immense surprise—and excitement—it turned.

The door creaked only a little as she pushed it. The room was pitch dark—an unlit chandelier, just visible from the dim light of the gas lamps in the hallway, hung from the ceiling, as did the aging gas lamp she could just make out was next to the door. Colette pulled out her wand and, fumbling a little nervously, glancing over her shoulder (she was not going to lose her nerve now, not when she was so close!) murmured a spell to light both.

When her eyes adjusted to the new brightness, a riot of red and gold assaulted them. There were banners draped all over the room—along with so many pictures and clippings that she could not make out the color of the wallpaper. Colette took a step into the room to get a closer look and blushed bright scarlet when she realized what was pinned up on the south wall.

A collage of Muggle girls dressed it barely more than their under garments. The young Frenchwoman, her face still burning—her second-cousin Antoinette would laugh and call her a little prude, as she had last spring at their Easter party, when Antonie had described what she'd done with her brother's best friend in Sardinia and Colette had nearly fainted—averted her eyes from the lewd pictures to a collection of no less perplexing images nearby.

It was a two-wheeled Muggle contraption she had seen a few times in the streets of Rouen and Paris. There were dozens of pictures of them, more even (Colette thought, ruefully) than the girls.

So…the teenaged Sirius Black had liked, even been fascinated by Muggle things—and, more extraordinarily, had not been afraid to show it. Colette wondered at his nerve (it certainly put his brother's sign to shame) to tack these pictures up on the wall of his mother and father's house…she could not imagine being daring enough to even be caught reading a Muggle magazine (though she'd been tempted enough to buy them, on the rare occasions she'd been in proximity to one of the stands in town.)

Colette tore her eyes away from the pictures on the wall to look at the bed—it was then she noticed something odd.

When she had first walked into the bedchamber, Colette had been struck by the unmistakeable smell that marked a long undisturbed room—dust and rot and a musty odor one couldn't quite place. But looking at the bed, she realized.

The bed's been turned—recently. And the covers are fresh.

The witch still had her wand gripped in her right hand—she lit it and, not knowing quite the reason why, held it down to the floor. Half an inch of dust covered the walnut lacquer. Colette saw the evidence of her own light footsteps, visible—and a second set that she at first had not noticed, leading straight to the pristinely made bed.

Someone else had been here—recently.

She lifted her wand up from the floor and to the wall opposite—and it was then she noticed that amidst the red and gold bunting, and banners (she noticed they all featured a magnificent lion) there was a single moving wizard photograph—she could tell it was four wizards, in black robes, but she couldn't quite make out the faces because one of the four-posters was in the way. She skirted around the end of the bed, a queer churning in her stomach, when—

"Colette—what are you doing up here?"

At the sound of Narcissa's voice at the so startled her that she dropped her wand on the floor.

She fell to the floor and scrambled to retrieve her wand, all the while gibbering nonsensically.

"I was just—well, when you said I could look around, je suis désolé…I—you know—I really didn't mean to…"

She found her rowan wand and snatched it up from the dusty corner it had rolled to, then turned around and gave her friend a sheepishly apologetic look—but saw at once that Narcissa was hardly paying attention to the string of apologies. Silhouetted in the doorway, Mrs. Malfoy's face remained hidden in the shadows—leaving her friend to guess what she was thinking at having discovered her companion nosing around in a private bedchamber.

"But—how did you—" Narcissa, normally composed, actually stammered. "—How did you even get into this room?"

"The door was open," Colette answered, in a small voice. "So I just…you know, pushed it…"

She bit her lip, anticipating the excoriation she surely deserved for having gone where she had no business going—but it never came. Instead Narcissa only shook her head and sighed. Her heels clicked against the dusty floor as she walked a few paces inside.

"Honestly—if you were going to choose a bedchamber to sneak into," Narcissa remarked, giving her a familiar sisterly look of fond exasperation. "I don't know why you picked this instead of Regulus's. At least there there's something worth seeing in there—for you, anyway."

Narcissa stepped out the shadows, and at the sight of her knowing smirk, Colette felt the color rise in her cheeks. Cissy's eyebrows arched with amusement—she was always happy to know she had landed a hit.

"You're lucky my aunt and uncle aren't here," she continued, more seriously. Colette nodded in agreement, and Narcissa turned back towards the door. "I doubt anyone's been in this room in years—as long as we shut it up again, neither of them are likely to ever know you were poking around where you shouldn't be."

Colette swallowed, glancing back at the freshly made bed. Narcissa had gone back to perusing the walls, clicking her heels delicately on the floor as she traced a graceful oval-shaped circuit of the room.

When her eyes traced the faded emblem of a lion stuck in a prominent position next to the bedside table, her lip curled up, and she turned back to Colette.

"You know who used to live in here, of course."

Colette said nothing, but the nervous and guilty expression on her face must've given her away., Narcissa sank down into the bed.

"Please, Colette—I'm not a fool, and nor are you. I'm sure you've heard all about him." Narcissa leaned back on her palms and stared up at the canopy of the four poster bed. For a moment her eyes remained fixed on a point above her head. "Everyone has. It was such a scandal at the time…even now, it's such an embarrassment—to even think of him."

"Think of who?"

Narcissa turned her head sharply towards her friend—her patience had worn thin.

"You saw the nameplate on the door," Mrs. Malfoy said, a tad colder than she had been up until now. "The blood-traitor—Regulus's elder brother, the one who ran off—this was his room." She waved one elegant hand towards the walls. "I haven't been in here for years—I cannot believe my uncle let him put that rubbish—" She sneered in the general direction of the wall of Muggle magazine pictures. "—On the walls. I'm sure he only did it to vex my aunt. It's so wretched, don't you think?"

The blonde laughed and looked to the younger witch, expecting the same pleasing, gentle agreement that had first charmed her so when they'd met—and instead found Colette looking far more quizzical than she'd ever seen her.

"What was he like?"

Narcissa stared at the younger girl impassively for a long moment—a mild suspicion at the girl's curiosity (and a clannish tendency to protect Black family secrets that four years of marriage to a Malfoy had not yet stamped out) butting up against her natural love of gossip and the desire to be an influence on the young and impressionable potential protégée she saw in Ms. Battancourt.

"What—you mean the Black sheep?" Colette nodded, quickly—before she lost her nerve. "Why do you want to know about Sirius?"

At the mention of the forbidden name, Narcissa's voice lowered to a hush. Colette shivered.

"Well—I mean, I've only heard a little—someone at the party mentioned why he'd been disowned, and I—"

"—Someone at the party was talking about my—about him?" Narcissa interrupted her, sharply. "Who?"

Colette froze—but only for a moment. A day into playing this game, and she was adapting to the rigors of white lies.

"I didn't—catch his name." Which was true—though it was hardly the whole truth, but she could pass it off well enough in the moment. Even Svensson's imposter would be impressed. She continued, quickly— "Not anyone in your family, I think he said he was a friend—but he mentioned that your—your cousin had some very strange ideas that might've lead to, well—you know."

Narcissa laughed, a sharp tinkle, like the sound of a glass bell breaking.

"'Strange ideas' is one of putting it," the older girl said, standing up again. "All it takes is one look around this room to get the measure of him."

Ms. Battancourt waited on baited breath—for she had come to notice that whenever Narcissa Malfoy left an idea floating out in the ether, it only took the slightest pause in conversation for her to pick up the thread again and finish it, quite on her own.

"He was a complete disaster, naturally!" Narcissa said, indignantly, when no echo from Colette appeared to be forthcoming. "And a great disappointment to my poor aunt and uncle."

Narcissa's voice, so brittle, had gone soft at the mention of Orion and Walburga Black—and their shame at the great scandal that had so rocked the world of their family only a few years earlier.

"All Aunt Eugenie told me was that he—" Colette gulped. "—Abrogated his responsibilities."

A shadow passed over Mrs. Malfoy's face.

"That's partly the case—but it wasn't the least of it." She sighed again. "Everybody had such high hopes. I mean—" Narcissa corrected herself. "Granted, he was always terribly spoiled—Papa says my aunt and uncle indulged him too much when he was a boy, but really, it was everyone in the family. He was 'the heir'—the first Black boy born in our generation, and of course, Uncle Orion's father is head of the family. The young wizards among our sort get treated very differently from the witches—you know how it is, they get special privileges, even in the nursery."

Colette faked a smile—she did, as it happened. She knew all too well. Narcissa was on a tear, now, though—and she continued, glorying in the rare freedom she had to speak candidly about a subject that must always be a guarded, hushed topic with everyone else in her family.

"He terrorized the governesses. What an unremitting scapegrace—always sneaking out of the house, and dropping frogs and doxies into our pillows when we came to visit—Regulus is the total opposite, so well behaved and charming, always has been, and his elder brother used to get the two of them into terrible scrapes, because he bullied poor Reggie into misbehaving. I remember once they got in trouble because Sirius convinced him to try to climb up the floo—he and Regulus were so covered in soot they looked like chimney sweeps when they got out. Our grandmother Irma nearly had a fit!"

Colette's mouth twitched up reflexively. Narcissa, when she wanted to, could paint quite the picture—but this image of a rambunctious and high-spirited little prince hardly matched with what the imposter had told her about the mysterious wayward Black son.

Which of them was right, she wondered?

"Still—" Narcissa trailed off, thoughtfully, and she rested her hand on the poster of the bed. "—He was, in his own odious way, clever and had some magical talent." She sniffed, contemptuously—this admission was clearly made only under the greatest duress. "I suppose that's why his parents and our grandparents put up with it—they thought once he was in school he'd grow less wild. He might've turned out alright in the end—if not for that."

The mother-to-be gestured to the red-and-gold lion tacked up next to the bed. Colette looked at the emblem, then back at Narcissa, more confused than ever. What did a school mascot have to do with her infamous cousin being cut off from the family?

"I don't understand."

"He was sorted into Gryffindor, dear."

Narcissa uttered the unfamiliar word with as much scorn as she could possibly infuse into what seemed like a nonsense spell to Colette. When her young companion continued to show no sign of gleaning the meaning of her words, Mrs. Malfoy's face twisted in an expression that could only be described as scandalized.

"But—didn't your auntie explain the houses to you?"

Colette shook her head—after a quick exclamation at how unprepared she was to go out (and how lucky it was that Narcissa had discovered this gross oversight before they went to one of the many social functions she hoped they'd attend together this season) she quickly laid out a truncated explanation of the four Hogwarts houses. It was brief—according to Narcissa, Slytherin was the house that everyone in her family—save her disgraced cousin—had been sorted into, and was not coincidentally also the only one worth being in.

"But of course, he had to be different—" She rolled her eyes. "It was such a to-do when he was sorted into Gryffindor, imagine—the heir, consorting with the filth they let in there! It turned him completely against the family. He fell in with the worst crowd imaginable, and they filled his head up with the basest notions. Broke his poor mother's heart."

Colette's ears perked up at this—here, at least, her newfound informant and Narcissa's stories matched perfectly.

"Do you—know any of his friends?" she asked, remembering how freely the stranger had spoken of her, and suddenly wondering if he might not be one of the common people Narcissa was alluding to. She had a doubt about it—for impertinent though he had been, there had been nothing 'common' about the young wizard she had rammed into in Diagon Alley—far from him. "I mean, are you acquainted with any of them very well?"

She looked revolted at the very thought.

"Me? Merlin, no! I wouldn't be caught dead with scum like that."

Colette's face colored again, and she felt her insides shrink—both from having offended Narcissa and at the thought of what she would say if she knew that Colette might very well be meeting one of the people 'like that' this very evening.

"Bella always says that if he'd have been sorted in Slytherin, he would have been just fine. She thinks it was a waste." Narcissa wrinkled her nose. "Personally, I say good riddance. Sirius would have been a dreadful head of the family—Regulus actually cares about family pride, and upholding our traditions. He'll do marvelously, I'm sure."

"Was his brother very upset, when he ran away from home?"

Narcissa hesitated, unsure how candid she should be—lest the truth affect her friend's good opinion of the cousin she hoped to match her with.

"Of—course not." Colette just kept her steady gaze, which Narcissa, for all her hauteur, found more unnerving than not, and after a long moment, she conceded, annoyed, "Well—I mean, perhaps Reggie was a little cut-up, but he and Sirius hadn't gotten along in years." Narcissa looked distant again. "He'd been expecting it, I'm sure. The only people truly shocked were his parents. They say they're always the last to know when someone's…strayed from our ways."

Narcissa rose from the bed, back straight. She had the look of finality that Colette recognized meant it would be unwise for her to ask any more questions on this score. Of course, Narcissa's story had only intrigued her more, but she bit her tongue.

"They could be back any time," Narcissa told her, cooly. She was fiddling with her collar, determinedly not looking at anything but Colette's face. "We should get out this room. We'd get in so much trouble if anyone knew we'd…"

As she was ushered out of the bedroom, Ms. Battancourt glanced back at the far side of the room, wistful—disappointed that she had not managed to get a closer look at the one wizarding photograph on the wall.

"Why did you come up here, anyway?" Narcissa asked, when they'd returned to the landing.

"I was just…looking for anything interesting."

"Well, there's nothing of interest up here—except Reggie's room, of course—but we'd better not go in there tonight." Narcissa smiled. "Well—I guess that's not entirely true—there is the secret door."

Colette's blood froze.

"The…the secret door?"

Narcissa rolled her eyes, good-naturedly—at least, by her standards.

"Regulus told me about it," she said, pulling out her wand and tapping the floor. The edges of a hinge creaked slightly—and Colette spotted it the dark paneling had entirely concealed it. "It's a trap door, here—in the floor, that leads to the kitchen. I think the Muggles who built this house had their servants use it."

"Muggles once lived in this house?"

It was Mrs. Malfoy's turn to look abashed.

"Well—a very long time ago," she admitted, stiffly. "We—a Black ancestor, I mean—cleared them out in short order."

Colette's eyes widened. She thought of the house-elf heads that were mounted on the wall, the odd liquids that Narcissa had been so cagey about explaining in the cabinets of the drawing room. She was starting to get a clearer picture of the Black family—and the more she learned, the more she wondered if there might not be something to the stranger's description of the famed house. Naive though she might be, Colette had a gift for observation, and even her most charitable read of her new friend's family could not blind her to that ruthless streak, that they all, to greater or lesser degree, seemed to possess.

"The…the other one found it, and they used to use it to sneak into the kitchen at night." Narcissa frowned, indicating in no uncertain terms that she had never been part of one of these escapades, and had only gotten this intelligence second-hand—and what's more, was embarrassed to admit even that.

There was an awkward moment of indecision, both girls waiting for the other to move.

"You won't—I mean, you will be discreet—" Narcissa hesitated, her eyes lingering on the copper plaque. "…About that, won't you? Aunt Walburga would be so angry if she knew—"

"—Of course I will," Colette solemnly crossed her heart with her left hand. At the gesture Narcissa smiled—all the curiosity the Battancourt miss had shown was a little unseemly, but the girl appeared to have recovered the slightly artless school-girl affect that had first charmed her. "I wouldn't—betray your confidences."

Narcissa's look of gratitude quickly turned to scolding.

"Of course, you shouldn't really have been asking about it, in the first place."

Colette, who'd been staring at the trap door, lost in thought, looked up from it, surprised at the sudden chilly reproach emanating from Narcissa.

"I am sorry!" she said, in a defensive tone. "It's just that—one grows very curious about these things."

"Curiosity is dangerous for a woman—you ought to guard yourself against it. Men don't find it pleasing, anyway." Mrs. Malfoy put her hand in the crook of Ms. Battancourt's arm. "I make it a habit to ask my husband as few questions as possible—it works marvelously for fostering marital bliss."

The light in the hallway was dim enough that the younger girl could easily hide the automatic frown this advice had solicited. However hard she tried, she could not see herself following it—she was categorically incapable of not asking questions. Narcissa didn't notice that her friend was troubled by her heartfelt and utterly sincere advice about the dangers of inquisitiveness in the marriage market.

"Come on. Let's go look at those gowns you bought today—pick one out for the concert tomorrow." Narcissa began to gently steer her down the stairs. "I'm sorry it's been such a dull evening, if I'd known they'd be out tonight, I'd have made plans for us."

Colette studiously avoided her gaze, and her eyes fell on the back of Narcissa's head. She had redone her hair in an elegantly braided knot, and used some tricky spell to weave a festive red ribbon into it. Cissy was an endless source of these domestic charms that Colette could not, for the life of her, get the knack of.

"That's very pretty—what you've done to your hair, Narcissa," she said, in the soft tones of one steeling themselves up to ask an embarrassing question. "Can you—can you show me how to do it like that?"

Narcissa rested one delicate hand on her stomach and beamed. This was her area of expertise—good of the girl to see she needed practice is this area.

"Would you like me to fix it like this for you?"

Colette smiled and nodded in ascent, glad to have pleased her friend with the suggestion—and made it a point not to think of that slightly mocking look on the imposter's face when he had been looking at her hair last night.

---

Happy Thanksgiving (belatedly) to all my American readers. Thank you for your thoughtful comments—I hope you enjoy this update (I swear we will finally FINALLY catch up with the prologue next chapter). Expect an update schedule of once every three weeks (give or take), or so, going forward. I am not so far ahead with writing anymore, sadly. Real life has slowed me down a bit, and editing this to keep it at the quality I'm satisfied with is very time consuming.