The first few weeks that Sirius lived in the Lestrange residence was oddly like going back to school, without the friends. Bella assigned him books to read and spells to practice in her absence, and when she returned, she quizzed him about what he had learned and had him demonstrate spells. The big difference of course was that he was now studying dark magic almost exclusively. Bella had also decided he needed to work on silent casting more and learn at the minimum to summon and apparate wandlessly, but otherwise it was curses and countercurses, malign rituals, poisons and antidotes. He had to admit, his cousin was an effective teacher. She always coached him on how the magic could go wrong before letting him attempt anything practical.

He waited until Bella and Rodolphus were both out each day before opening the fancy, traditional watch he had received for his seventeenth birthday and whispering to the tiny portrait of Alastor Moody that lurked there. Moody's idea, of course. He had one of the other Order members who had some talent as an artist produce a series of portraits of himself made for everyone in the Order of the Phoenix, apparently reasoning that he was not so immediately recognizable as Dumbledore would have been. The tiny painted figure in Sirius' watch was even less recognizable, hidden in a dark, forested landscape. Portrait Moody usually had his back turned when Sirius looked, fishing in a stream. The portrait had been shrunken, trimmed, fitted, and charmed to look like it had always been part of the decoration of the watch. At the moment, Sirius was not privy to any plans, so there was not that much to tell to Dumbledore, but there was some. He whispered the names of everyone he heard Bella or Rodolphus mention and his best guess as to whether the names belonged to Light or Dark from the context. He told Moody everything Bella taught him, so that the Order could be prepared with the countercurses and antidotes. He told Moody when there was a change in Bella's routine, or when he heard mention of a big meeting. If nothing else, he told Moody he was alive.

A month in, Sirius graduated from practicing curses on objects and animals, or on Bella, to practicing on prisoners. Bella brought back a muggle from one of the raids. He knew this was coming of course, but it was still sickening. This was not something he could refuse, he told himself. This was the price of entry to more and better information. This muggle had only been spared death in the field in order to die later at his hands. The best thing he could possibly do for the poor man was perform well, so that Bella allowed his death to happen sooner rather than later. When Bella came for him and told him it was time to practice, he sent a silent prayer to the muggle Christians' god, begging forgiveness for himself, and grace for his unknown, soon-to-be victim.

They started easy, with the Imperius curse. Bella thought it was important for him to feel the distinction between casting it on muggles in contrast to a powerful witch or wizard, so he would be able to gauge the strength of his control and how long the spell was likely to last. He thought it rather ironic that she emphasized the difficulty of controlling a powerful wizard, when he knew perfectly well from both his reading and his lessons as a child that magical power didn't matter against the Imperius, but rather willpower did. Muggles could throw off the curse, and powerful wizards could fall to it. That was the very reason it was considered so dangerous, so different from something like the Confundus charm. He figured this must be Voldemort's 'Magic is Might' philosophy speaking, since Bella would have had the same lessons as any other Black child.

As far as he could tell, casting the Imperius on this particular muggle was almost the same as casting it on a stray cat. The man offered no resistance whatsoever to any commands he gave. He made sure one of the first spoken commands was simply "tell me your name," so that he could inform Moody and the family could get some closure, eventually. His name was Ivan Butler. Among the silent instructions he laid on Ivan was to remember that although he was about to endure horrible pain, it would be over soon, that he should feel free to cry or to pray, and that afterwards his remaining family would be safe. It might not help, but it made Sirius feel better. Bella then had him cast a second Imperius on a cat, and a third on her. It was difficult to hold all three spells simultaneously but entirely separate, giving different instructions to each target. Bella broke his control as soon as she felt like it, naturally. She broke through just as easily when he was practicing solely on her; Moody of course knew she could resist the Imperius. He knew Sirius could as well, now.

The first torture curse he cast on Ivan was Ragnuk's Blindness. The countercurse was lost to history, so they did not practice that. Quick legilimency confirmed Ivan was now blind, and terrified. This was followed by a petrification curse. They tested the mandrake root draught Sirius had brewed to reverse it; this was mostly successful but still left Ivan's movements unnaturally slow and stiff. Then they used the Imperius to force Ivan to touch game pieces Sirius had cursed with Flagrante and other pain- or illness-inducing but non-deadly curses. Then the Cruciatus. This was the one Sirius had expected to struggle with the most, since Bella explained you had to actually want to cause pain and even enjoy it in order to cast it effectively. As soon as he cast it on Ivan, he knew she was wrong. He didn't have to enjoy it. He just had to want it badly enough, even if the reason was his hatred for and desire to fool Bella. Spite was a powerful enough negative emotion to fuel any of the Unforgivables, it seemed. They moved on to the Transmogrifian torture curse and the head-growing curse, and their countercurses. They finished with the other mostly irreversible curses, first the Sleepwalking curse, with the efficacy again confirmed by legilimency, then the Entrail-Expelling curse. With the Gormlaith curse, Ivan was doomed to sleep forever anyway, so it barely made a difference to Sirius' numb psyche to let him go with Avada Kedavra. At Bella's prompting, he finished with a Morsmordre, a ghostly green Dark Mark floating out of his wand to dance across the ceiling and up through the roof. Sign of death, indeed.

As soon as they were done, Bella whooped, grabbed his hands, and spun him around the room in pure joy. "I knew you had it in you, Siri! I'm so proud! My baby cousin's all grown up! We have to celebrate! What's your favorite dessert? I'll tell Posy to make it for you. And you're getting firewhiskey tonight! Do you mind getting rid of that before it starts to smell much more, by the way?"

Sirius looked back at Ivan. He didn't want to just vanish him, which was what Bella was asking. She was shockingly bad at advanced transfigurations and blamed Dumbledore, who had been her transfigurations professor. But vanishing the brutalized corpse felt sacrilegious somehow. He couldn't exactly bury it with respect, though. "I can't keep it?" he asked her, awkwardly.

She laughed. "Attached, because it's your first? That's nice. Fine, you can make it into a souvenir if you want to. Just keep it tasteful." She danced and hummed out of the room.

He drew the cherry wand. Flexible. Good for transfigurations. He wondered if the Slytherins' collective dislike of Dumbledore meant he, Sirius, was now one of the few Death Eaters who was actually proficient in the subject. He swept the wand in a wide arc. The matter of Ivan's body rolled up into a ball and turned to dark, smooth stone, with the wedding ring he had noticed lodged unchanged in the very center. Then he shrank it down until it fit in his hand. With another flick, a Celtic knot was engraved into the surface of the sphere. He took it back up to his room and set it carefully on a shelf. It wasn't a trophy. As soon as he was able, he would find a way to give it to someone in Ivan's family. He knew that was a false promise. He would probably be dead before he had that chance. Maybe he could move it to a muggle cemetery at some point. That would be better than nothing.

It wasn't a trophy. It wasn't a trophy.

Even though Bella was downstairs, he took out his watch and opened it. He whispered, barely audible even to himself, "I killed Ivan Butler today. He was a muggle taken in a raid, brought to me for execution. He died bravely. He wore a wedding ring. His wife should know. I'm so sorry."

He wanted to cry, but he couldn't. Bella wouldn't tolerate that if she found out. So he took out Most Potente Potions, the least offensive of his current study materials, and pretended to read while actually doing Occlumency exercises. Bella wouldn't notice if he failed to retain much from the book; he had already been failing his N.E.W.T. potions work and would never be able to make most of the brews in this.


"What was your favorite part?" Bella asked him at dinner. She sat across from him in the formal dining room, a forest of crystal dividing them. Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange, Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy, and his Uncle Cygnus Black were there as well, to celebrate his success, according to Bella. He could only be grateful she hadn't invited his own parents.

"Transmogrifian," he answered eventually. It was hard to figure out which answer would be most acceptable to Bella without signing himself up for the worst kinds of jobs that he simply couldn't stomach.

Bella cocked her head at him. "Why?"

"It's slow, and I can see it happening." It made it a highly impractical curse to actually perform in a duel or almost any setting besides a pre-planned execution where there would be no hope of him freeing the victim anyway. And unlike the Cruciatus, it didn't matter who cast it; the effect was always the same, all or nothing. The books all agreed bad as the Transmogrifian was, the Cruciatus in the hands of a master like Bella was the worse torture.

Bella smiled. "You naughty thing. I suppose that's to be expected though, especially after what you showed me before. You're so visual." She said it as if they were discussing his artistic qualities rather than his newfound skills with evil curses. He forced himself to smile and preen under her praise. "You should have seen him today, Father," she said to Cygnus. "Such a Black. Got every one on the first try."

Uncle Cygnus nodded approvingly. "Well done, Sirius. I'll be certain to tell Walburga. I'm sure you and she can make up."

"Yeah, thanks... It's not that impressive, though. We practiced on animals before," Sirius pointed out.

Rodolphus waved his spoon in the air. "No, no, it's very different when you're casting on a person for the first time."

"Even a muggle?" Sirius asked, despite himself. He had no doubt for him there would be no difference in his aversion to casting a Cruciatus on a defenseless muggle as opposed to a witch or wizard, but he was talking to a room full of racists who said muggles were basically animals. He was curious to know how deep that conviction went.

Cygnus and the Lestranges laughed uproariously, as if he had made a joke. It was his cousin Narcissa who finally answered, "Even a muggle." She didn't look particularly happy about it, though. Maybe there was some hope for Cissy after all.


Bella shook him awake one morning with the most delighted expression he had ever seen on her face. That couldn't be good. She tugged him out of bed and kissed both his cheeks excitedly. "Today's the day, Siri! You're going out on the town."

She didn't mean shopping, of course. His heartrate picked up, and his eyes widened. He hoped Moody was in his portrait right now. "Really? With you? Where? What are we doing?"

She laughed and tweaked his nose. "Not with me, no. You're still a little green for that. But I promise you'll have fun. You're going muggle-baiting with Lucius. Not sure where, actually. I think he must pick half his targets by pointing blindly at a map or something. Now remember, listen to Lucius. Blow up whatever he tells you to when he tells you to do it. Don't go off on your own. You're allowed to curse any muggles you fancy, but make sure someone's around to watch your back if you decide to indulge in your delectable Transmogrifian. And for Salazar's sake, apparate out of there straight away if either the Order or any aurors show up. You're not going along to get in a grown-up duel and get yourself arrested or killed. You're going along to get some experience and have fun." She squeezed his hands. "If you do well, I might even take you out to get a new tattoo."

Sirius raised his eyebrows and chuckled wryly. "I've already got too many, from 'rebelling' against Mum and Dad." Even James had said he overdid it when he came home with a dragon covering most of his back and the lyrics of the entire Beatles song "Black Bird" spiraling around his bicep. Little did James know those were covering up additional, runic ones meant to protect against blood-based magic. He'd been seriously paranoid that his family would try to kill him when he first ran away. The tattooist in Diagon Alley had been reluctant to hide the runic tattoo within a second one because of the risk of smudging and fading altering the effect over time, even with magic to create the images precisely (and quickly). The first attempt to hide the runes in a snarling Grim's (Padfoot's) head had in fact gone badly, necessitating three additional rings of runes to negate the botched ones, after which it was safe to obscure the lot... with a fucking huge dragon. The second attempt concealing the runes inside decorative muggle text was much better, and free of charge as the tattooist was thrilled to have a new technique to offer his other patrons. He'd gone back a few more times for smaller jobs.

"This one's special," Bella said knowingly. He wasn't entirely sure what she meant by that.

Lucius collected him personally after breakfast, brought him over to Malfoy Manor, and introduced him to the rest of the group: Amycus Carrow, Gaius Goyle, Titus Crabbe, and Percival Parkinson. They all jostled, joked, and elbowed at him, clearly in high spirits. Sirius had met all of them before when he still lived at Grimmauld, and here they were ready to "take him out on the town," as if they were going on a pub crawl with the boys rather than preparing to commit murder and mayhem.

Lucius gave a brief rundown of the plan over an early lunch that Sirius didn't eat. It wasn't complicated. From the sound of it, similar operations happened every week, terrorizing muggle towns with a handful of deaths and property damage of the sort that kept the Ministry busy covering it up but wouldn't be a problem for wizards moving into the area in the future. He repeated the instructions Bella had given Sirius almost verbatim. And Bella was correct; he had a huge map of the British Isles pinned to the wall and some honest-to-Merlin nonmagical darts to throw at it.

They apparated into the town of Newbury, in a purely residential district, making no effort to conceal their arrival. The few Muggles on the street froze and stared at them in shock. Lucius calmly cast knock-back jinxes at the nearest two, then pointed his wand at his own throat and muttered, "Sonorus." After that, his voice rang commandingly through the air, "Everyone out of your houses! Now! Staying inside invites disaster!" He started walking, repeating his message occasionally. The rest of them started lobbing jinxes at random muggles who obeyed the order to come outside, and casting summoning charms at those they spotted lingering near windows. They were sowing confusion and fear but not yet terror. Lucius had explained earlier that it was better to start out "having fun" with non-lethal means, in order to ensure they were seen by as many as possible. Most of the muggles would in fact be permitted to escape, in order to keep the Ministry Obliviators busy. The ones in the most danger, ironically, were the ones who did not obey Lucius' orders and stayed in their homes.

Their movements were leisurely still. The trickle of retreating muggles increased to a stream and then a tide. None were permitted the luxury of a vehicle. Sirius had to join in messing with them, of course. He decided to use the opportunity to practice his speed and aiming, shying away from tripping jinxes and levicorpus to things like the conjunctivitis curse (which only worked if you actually hit the eyes) and the sponge-knee jinx (which likewise only worked if it hit the knees). He threw in a couple flashier or nastier things once in awhile to make sure the others wouldn't question his restraint.

Eventually, people stopped coming out of the houses, either because they had already run or had decided to hide. The mob of muggles pulled a little away from them despite the constant harrying. Lucius cancelled his Sonorus. "Homenum revelio," he said. He calmly surveyed the muggles fleeing before them, as well as the handful of bodies littering the street (disabled, not dead), then gazed around the silent buildings. "Hmm... Sirius, that house over there offends me. Would you like to take care of it?"

Sirius looked at the unassuming structure. Presumably, Lucius had detected some muggles still hiding inside. He forced a snicker. "I'd love to."

"Excellent. I prefer fire and explosions, but you can take your time and your pleasure. We'll come back for you if needed. Rest of you gentlemen, with me." The five Death Eaters ambled away, alternately casting jinxes at the muggles. They were like cats playing with their food. They still weren't actually trying to kill people yet. No, Sirius was to have first honor today.

Sirius turned to the house and cast his own silent Homenum Revelio charm. There they were, a whole family hiding in the upstairs of the house. Lucius probably wanted him to burn the house down with them inside. But he wouldn't. He could bring himself to execute Ivan when Ivan was already doomed. That had been necessary and unavoidable. This, he decided, wasn't.

He walked into the house. He did not know what he was going to do until he crossed the threshold. Once he decided, he acted quickly. He leapt up the stairs, taking two or three at a time and burst into the room where the muggles were hiding. One of them threw something at him, which he easily deflected before immobilizing all of them. "Do you have a basement?" he asked. He released the charm holding the older woman. She screamed. He silenced her. "Do you have a basement?" he repeated. Frantically, she nodded. "Good. That's where I'm putting you. You should be safe there." With that, he stunned them all and levitated them down the stairs. He found the basement easily and deposited them all at the foot of the steps. Then he cast the Petrification curse on them; it froze thoughts as well as bodies and thus had the benefit of rendering their minds invisible to the Homenum revelio charm until its effects were reversed. If Lucius was paying attention, he would think them all dead now. He placed a powerful shield over top of the family. Hopefully, that would be enough. He left the basement and transfigured the dining room table and chairs into a small herd of pigs, smiling at the cherry wand as he did. It was indeed good for transfigurations. He needed the evidence of shredded flesh, even spell-flesh, in case the Death Eaters came back this way, so they wouldn't look too closely and discover his deception. At the last moment, he took out his watch and whispered the street name and address into it, not even looking to see if Moody was listening. The aurors would know where to go soon enough.

He sauntered back out of the house. When he reached the middle of the street, he spun on his heel and hit the house with the most powerful blasting curse he could.

The explosion was huge, deafening. It flung the whole house from its foundations, ripped the outer side walls off both its neighbors, and sprayed debris across half the block. He stared at the destruction in shock. He'd never put so much force into that spell before. He hadn't known he had that power in him. Frantically, he felt for his own shield spell and almost fainted in relief that it was still there; he had thought he must have killed that family after all. He dropped the spell, now, and turned his feet towards Lucius and the other Death Eaters.

He looked up to see they were all waiting for him with huge grins on their faces. No one was even bothering to stop the muggles who were gradually getting to their feet and sprinting in the opposite direction as previous jinxes wore off. Sirius walked slowly, to give the muggles just a bit more time, whichever ones could get away, including a few bolting out of more distant houses. There would be more deliberate killing starting now. Lucius strode forward to meet him and grasped his shoulder, pride in his face. "Now that was an explosion! Well done, Sirius. Well done." He gestured to the nearest house. "Take that one too. I'd like to see it up close this time."

Sirius swallowed, but a quick silent charm showed this house was empty. Lucius really did just want the explosion, apparently. That was fine. He blasted this one too, still somewhat in awe of his own ability.

Lucius laughed. "Boy, that is a talent you have. Amycus, can you believe he's just eighteen?" He pointed down the street slightly. "There. See if you can completely take out two at a time."

Fortunately, this was a task Sirius was fine with, as all the houses were abandoned now, as far as his spell could see. He obligingly took aim at the next two houses, utterly destroying one and heavily damaging the other. A few of the Death Eaters suggested minor modifications to his wandwork, and they flattened the rest of the row through experimentation. He finally succeeded in taking out three houses at once with the last spell, before the telltale crack announced the arrival of the opposition. Bella's and Lucius' warnings in mind, Sirius apparated away immediately, before the anti-apparition jinx went up and he became stuck in a fire fight against his secret allies.

He did not have to feign breathless exhilaration when he arrived back at the Lestrange manor. Bella wasn't home, but Rodolphus was, emerging from the library shortly after Sirius let himself in. "Well?" he asked.

Sirius grinned maniacally at him and spread his arms. "BOOM!" he shouted. It didn't matter that he looked and sounded like a child with the simple response. It was better he did, more in keeping with his character.

Rodolphus laughed. "Come on. I'll pour you a drink and tell you what to expect for tonight."

"Tonight?"

"You're meeting the Dark Lord."

"Oh... wow." He didn't know what else to say.


"I'm alive. I destroyed all those houses in Newbury, but I didn't kill anyone. I got out before the Order arrived. The family of Number 14 is petrified in their basement but can be revived with mandrake. Lucius. Amycus Carrow. Crabbe. Goyle. Percival Parkinson. I met the Dark Lord, and now I have a shit tattoo on my left arm: skull and snake. It's cursed, I think. And also, I'm really drunk, but he still didn't get in my head. Take that Dumbledore." He hiccoughed, then concluded his whispered message, "The others left again, some late-night mission. I'm going to a meeting tomorrow... Goodnight."

He crawled into his bed and set the watch on his pillow next to his ear, slightly cracked open. "You did a good job, kid." Moody's voice somehow still managed to sound gruff even in a quiet whisper. "We found the folks at Number 14. Keep this thing cracked during meetings. It's safer the less you have to remember and repeat. Don't risk what you don't have to. We want you to survive this. Remember, constant vigilance."

Sirius smiled as he drifted off to sleep.

Author's Note: the Dark Arts are seductive. Not sure when the next update will be, probably next weekend.