Team: Montrose Magpies

Prompt: Position: Chaser 1 (Reserve)

Season 11, Round 3

Prompt: Write a story about the patriarch of a family

Additional Prompts
(2) - [trope] Huddle For Warmth

(6) - [word] Worship
(9) - [setting] Starry Night


Thank you to Queen Niriqret, Ava, and Bea for beta'ing!


Trigger Warnings: Emotional/Psychological Abuse; Mentioned Bigotry & Prejudice; Mentioned Child Abuse; Implied Character Death; Implied Murder


The first thing Orion feels is tingles.

His fingers tingle, his toes tingle, and it feels like pin pricks underneath his skin—itching and uncomfortable, but not painful. It expands from his digits to his limbs and then it encapsulates his entire body.

Merlin, even his brain feels itchy.

Grey fog removes itself from his mind, from the clouding emotionless fog he'd wandered for who knows how long, and Orion is then slammed with emotions. He gasps, wincing and curling on the surface he's laying on, and tries to breathe.

There are memories, seen through apathetic eyes, and he wants to cry.

His children.

He just watched—did nothing—while Walburga abused them.

Sorrow gives way to a raging anger, to a burst of fury so encompassing that Orion can feel ice growing underneath his skin.

She put him under an Apathy Curse. She purposefully locked him in his own mind, kept him from being able to properly raise his children, and did as she wanted with them.

He had been stuck in a fog of cold, emotionless survival. Every memory that swarms his mind is coated in the fog, no emotion as he'd watched his sons be cursed, beaten down, torn up and spat out by Walburga.

There had been no one to protect them.

His eyes open to a galaxy, swirling and cold with the stars glittering in response to his emotion.

The Black Family Magic.

Orion cannot see past the magic, does not see the physical world, but knows he's on a Black property. The magic pulses in his vision, strings of silver and diamond, and there is an echoing call of a crow.

Words litter the caw and Orion smiles. It's an unfamiliar movement but the familiar jagged cutting anger is there.

He steps out of the room he's in, feeling for the first time in years, and calls out for his wife.

A crow swoops down into his vision and flies, crying the arrival of Death with a vicious glee.


Regulus had been too young to remember what his father was like before he succumbed to the Apathy Curse.

The earliest memories that he can recall all include dull grey eyes, an unmoving face, and uncaring words. There had been no life visible within the man he called Father, no matter that he ate, drank, and moved.

Except now, he comes back to Number 12 Grimmauld Place, Black Family Townhouse, and there is a tall, broad man standing. He is waiting for them.

Sirius freezes, swallowing thickly. He pales, though his eyes have a tentative hope in them. Regulus notes that they look even paler with the heavy black eye–shadow Sirius put all around his eyes.

Regulus thinks he looks good with it on.

Not that he'd ever voiced it before, for fear that Mother would find out.

"My children," their father rasps, his eyes avaricious as he takes in the sight of them. He moves forward, only to make an abortive movement as if his touch would not be welcome.

That is apparently all the reassurance Sirius needs, because he flings himself forward, crashing landing into the stranger wearing their father's face. It boasts an expression Regulus has never seen before; love, pride, sorrow.

Sirius clings to the stranger, trembling in his hold, and Regulus can't move.

"I missed you so much," Orion chokes out. "Both of you," he continues, eyes flicking toward Regulus.

A hand is held out, or at least it's going to be because Regulus flinches back in an automatic reflex. It's a flutter of his eyelids rather than a true flinch but sorrow creases their father's face anyway.

He doesn't remember his father; he remembers a father who was hard, cold, and unmoving. Not this person who looks to feel as strongly and as unrepentantly as Sirius.

Suddenly, Regulus thinks that Sirius must've gotten his frightful temper from Orion. Mother had a temper that was loud, high screeching and curses. If Sirius was angry, you didn't know until it was the dead of night and you were seeing things in shadows that don't exist.

He makes a move to step forward, hesitant and cautious because this is unknown. He lets his hand meet his father's, sucks in a sharp breath at the warmth of his skin, and is startled by the joy that sparks in his mercury eyes.

Regulus feels a tumble of emotions that he does not know what to do with. Just as he doesn't know what to do with the love in the stranger's eyes and what to do with the hope that brightens Sirius' eyes.


That night, they went up to the roof. It's after dinner and they all have their own mug of hot chocolate.

Regulus takes comfort in the familiarity of the cloudless sky, all the stars free and twinkling. It is the only thing that has stayed the same that day. His star winks down at him and Regulus smiles, taking a small sip of his hot chocolate.

Sirius is in feminine cut night robes that Orion looks at with a wistful expression on his face. During dinner, he'd happily told them of the scandalous robes he'd wear when he had been in Hogwarts—nothing too scandalous, mind otherwise he would be disowned, but just bordering on the edge of it.

What was even more scandalous though, is the fact that he did not mind Muggle-borns. Well, he did not mind them as mother had. He is more progressive than the Traditionalist families, but not quite as much as the Progressive families. It was touchy for a moment but Sirius seemed to be happy enough that he did not think that Muggle-borns were not the scum of the Earth and should all be exterminated… as mother had stated firmly and unwaveringly, multiple times.

Regulus wonders if this is why mother had put their father under the Apathy Curse—because he would've encouraged them to be and to grow. They would not have been forced under his tutelage, unlike with her.

They settle up at the top, Regulus on Orion's left side and Sirius on his right side. His father radiates warmth—he seems to be a human heater—and Regulus leans further into him.

He's always been perpetually cold, ever since he was a babe, and he adored being warm. An arm wraps around his shoulder and he hesitantly leans his head on his father's shoulder. The grip on him only tightens—not restrictively so, but lovingly, protectively.

It is a jarring realization.

Sirius takes a sip of his hot chocolate and Regulus just watches his father and his brother.

"Tell us the Story of the Fae, Père?" Sirius murmurs, looking hesitant for the first time since they've gotten back from Hogwarts.

Orion nods. "I will." He turns to Regulus then. "I used to tell this story to you both before… before Walburga committed her crime. We would sit for hours and I would tell it over and over until both of you fell asleep. It always took you significantly longer than your brother, Regulus," he says, eyes bright.

Sirius had once described his father's attention to Regulus; during Regulus' first train ride to Hogwarts, to distract him from being so nervous.

Not that there was anything to be nervous about but he had been nonetheless.

He said that their father's attention was like a black hole. All–consuming and containing multitudes. Immense expanses of the galaxy swallowed up by a ravenous gaze, hungry for the stars of their own eyes.

As if he could suck all the starlight from every universe and take it as his own.

Staring directly into their father's eyes, the description feels far more apt than it should be.

"I don't remember," Regulus murmurs. "But do tell, please."

Orion smiles, a bit sorrowfully and a bit happily, and nods. He turns his head up to look at the stars, the clear midnight sky that held all the secrets of the universe with each twinkling diamond they could only dream of touching.

Regulus' eyes search out his own star automatically and he stares at the brightest star in the Leo constellation. Sirius' own star is twinkling merrily in the Canis Major constellation. The Hunter constellation, Orion, is there too, right between the two, enacting their current position.

"The Fae are creatures of Magic," Orion begins softly.

His voice is slow, a mere whisper, and carries through the night with all the weight of the Black Magic.

"At night, for their worship to Magic, they would spin the shadows into ice and they would weave the night waters into a hearth. They have a knowledge that we can only dream of having; their magic is of Magic, a single drop of Her Blood."

Regulus understood then, why when he was a babe, he would stay awake for the story.

His father's voice is enrapturing.

"Our family, our Family Magic, comes from the Fae who wanted the universe—who took diamonds and soaked them in starlight, who took the threads that connect the constellations and clothed themselves in it, and took the darkest part of the moon and from it, fashioned a crow. A crow that flew amongst the universe and ate the stars, told of all they Saw, all the thoughts of the galaxy. The stars are eyes and our ancestor dedicated us to the stars with star–diamond scrying bowls and strings weaved from the places between the stars."

Regulus presses his face into his father's shoulder, mind rattling as words of power and beginnings enter his brain.

Mother had never told them of this.

He's glad she hadn't.

Her voice is not like Orion's—not a slow, soothing timber that is filled with passion and love. A dedication to their History and not to society's thoughts.

"Mother never took us for worship," Regulus says, the words coming from him before he could stop them. "Well— she took us to the temple but never let us bow. We never got to say our Thanks."

Anger is in Orion's eyes and Regulus ducks his head, waiting for a chastisement for interrupting.

It does not come.

"I will have to take you both," his father says instead. "I will show you how."

Regulus smiles a little bit when he's pulled closer, tucked into his father's side. None of the cold from the air outside feels so cold when he's next to a human heater.

Sirius looks as snuggled as Regulus, huddled underneath their father's arm, happy and smiling.

Regulus does not remember the last time he looked that happy while they were here; it is usually only at Hogwarts he looks as happy as he is now.

A question niggles at his brain, one that he's refrained from asking for the entire day, but now he must know.

If mother never allowed them to worship, why would she allow father to? She is forceful, always, always getting as she wished. There is no doubt in Regulus' mind that she will achieve this also.

He bites his lip but voices his thoughts. "How will you deal with mother?" he asks quietly. "Surely, she will be angry with this."

Orion smiles.

That action also looks like Sirius.

Bloodied glass and shattered bones is what comes to mind.

"She will be nothing, my son," his father reassures. "In fact there is a funeral to plan so we will be needing to get mourning robes for the both of you."

Sirius looks happier than would ever be socially acceptable.

Regulus… Regulus feels the same way.

"Yes, father," he says, a smile tilting on the edge of his lips. "But… Can you continue with the story of the Fae?"

Orion nods. "Of course, my son."