"'Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?'"
- J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Chapter 37
Colette pulled away from the 'darling man' upon whom she had been raining kisses a moment before with the same energy and zeal she might've used to repel an attacking wolverine. She looked from the younger Madame Battancourt (whose penetrating blue eyes flashed with anger), to Mssr. Battancourt her hapless father, to her estimable grandmother standing next to them. They all stared at her with mingled shock, disbelief, and—in the case of her grandmother—a bit of wry amusement, though in her exposed state the young witch was in no position to recognize it.
Then, for the second time in less than a day, she reared back her hand and slapped Sirius across the face. Sirius stumbled backwards, more from surprise than hurt.
"Damnit, Colette—what was that for?" Sirius grasped his cheek. "Are you going to do that every time?"
"Maman—Père—" Colette rushed over to them—they may as well have been visitors from the moon. "Grand-Mère—I was not—I did not know you were coming."
"I gathered as much, Lettie," said Eulalie, dryly. "From your general deportment and—appearance."
Colette's hands flew to her hair—soot-covered from hours of searching for floo powder in Walburga's kitchen and any other forgotten crevice of the house that had occurred to her in the moment.
"I trust you have an explanation for your disappearance from your great-aunt's house yesterday," Mrs. Battancourt continued, in a sterner tone of voice. "Eugenie is beside herself with worry."
Colette gibbered a mixture of French and English that cleared up the matter for no one. Sirius, still nursing his bruised cheek and more bruised ego, noticed James and Lily appear at the doorway where he and Colette had been standing a moment before. Having been reunited at Grimmauld Place, the Potters had evidently been in less of a hurry to reach him than his young lady. He didn't think he'd ever been less pleased to see the pair of them.
"You couldn't have waited five minutes, could you, Prongs?" Sirius hissed in their direction.
"You told me to get them right away—" James said, peering into the hospital waiting room with great curiosity. "What happened to your face, Padfoot?"
"Never mind—" Sirius turned to address Eulalie. "Colette was stuck in Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place—the house shut her in. I'm sure she would have sent you all a letter explaining if she'd known you were—dropping in for a visit from Normandy."
Eulalie Battancourt raised one eyebrow.
"That is hardly an explanation—it's barely an excuse."
"Well, it's the best you'll be getting, so—"
"—May I ask what all this commotion is about?"
They all turned to see Walburga, who was standing at the door to the antechamber, directly across from the newcomers.
How long had she been there? Sirius wondered. All traces of the fractured, broken woman who had wept in her son's arms an hour before were gone. Instead, her face bore a controlled nonchalance that was so calm it was out of character.
Sirius found it unnerving.
"For once, Walburga, I believe you can be of use," said Arcturus, tapping his cane against the floor. "There seems to be some question of your chaperonage of this girl from her grandmother and parents. They came all the way from France to ask."
He gestured to Colette, who was eyeing her mother with petrified fear. The younger Madame Battancourt's temper evidently ran on the colder side, for though she was undoubtedly furious, she was not about to show it in front of a bunch of foreign strangers.
Walburga looked politely puzzled—or how she imagined politely puzzled might look, more likely, since confusion had never shone on her face before that moment in concert anything but irritation.
"A—question, madam? I can't imagine what about."
"Can't you?" asked, Eulalie, dryly.
"She has disgraced our name. She is ruined—you have allowed her to ruin herself."
Madame Battancourt pointed a finger—her own J'accuse moment. Walburga didn't blink.
"I'm afraid I don't understand what your daughter-in-law means, madame. Your granddaughter has been a most well-behaved, genteel girl."
"Oh, has she?"
Eulalie Battancourt was a far cannier woman than her temperamental daughter-in-law—and had more common sense than the son who had picked Fabienne to be his wife. She gestured to Sirius.
"Tell me, Mrs. Black—is this young man your son?"
Walburga studied Sirius for a moment, as if she needed to be sure before she answered in the affirmative—which she eventually did, though she betrayed no sign that she knew why she was being asked this peculiar question.
"I suppose I should start at the beginning," said the elder Madame Battancourt, immune to the effect of Sirius gripping his temples in exaggerated pain. "Three days ago I received a most perplexing report from no less than three acquaintances of mine in France—in three different cities."
"Perplexing?" asked Walburga.
"Immensely perplexing," repeated Madame Battancourt, in a firm voice. "I was told that my granddaughter, who as far as I can recall has never so much as spoken to a young man her mother didn't shove in her direction, had been carrying on up and down the length of Great Britain with a wizard of dubious reputation, sans all decent chaperonage."
"If these stories were so unbelievable, it's a wonder you took any credit in them," Lucretia couldn't help but remark. Her sister-in-law shot her a nasty look which she ignored. "What convinced you there was something to it, Eulalie?"
"The specificity. The only thing more absurd than the idea that my granddaughter would drive about on an enchanted flying motorbike, is that someone would make something so absurd up out of whole cloth."
Walburga let out a polite and sympathetic scoff. Nobody else in the room said anything, though Sirius's breathing grew rather funny, and Arcturus kept his sharp eyes fixed on his daughter-in-law, though they did occasionally dart to Lucretia. Mrs. Prewett managed to keep a (mostly) straight face, though there were one or two moments her lip twitched.
"Indeed!" said Mrs. Black. "It does seem to me a fantastical story. Was a name for this unfortunate rake given?"
"No. I thought that the odd, too. I must confess, the whole thing seemed so far-fetched, that I naturally hastened here to confirm the tale's veracity myself. I had hoped to do so alone, but my son Claude was most upset by these rumors, and Fabienne his wife was eager to expose these accusations as calumny."
"I understand," said Mrs. Black, gravely. "A girl's reputation is a delicate thing. All it takes are a few baseless tales from wicked tongues to damage it beyond repair. It cannot be guarded too closely."
"That is where we come to the material point, Mrs. Black. I fear she has not been guarded closely enough. And I am left to wonder—" She chose her next words with care. "—Whether she has been guarded with the interests of someone besides herself in mind."
If she understood some hidden meaning in this, Walburga managed an expression of bafflement. The rest of the room watched the exchange with interest.
"Who would have anything but your granddaughter's interests at heart?"
"That's what I came here to glean. Imagine my shock, upon arriving in Britain, to discover that not only were these rumors not as baseless as I believed—but to hear the whole report of my granddaughter's scandalous behavior, including a failed attempt at an elopement, directly from the very rascal she had apparently been carrying on with, just as the rumor mongers said."
Sirius buried his face in his hands. His mother's jaw tensed, but she managed to keep her head from turning in his direction.
"An—elopement?" she repeated. "You heard this from the…the culprit…himself?"
"Oh, yes. I met him in a pub in Hogsmeade, of all places."
Walburga's calm facade fractured for just a moment, but as she was committed to feigning ignorance of the culprit, Colette was left to confront him in her stead.
"Everything!" The girl rounded on Sirius. "You told everything to my grand-mère?"
"I didn't do it on purpose!" Sirius threw up his hands. "I didn't know she was your gran, she didn't exactly introduce herself to me. I thought I was having a chat with a sympathetic old biddy—not a Judas in disguise!"
"Why would you speak of it to anyone?"
"I was a—bit upset at the time!"
"For good reason," said Eulalie, with a smile. "I must tell you, Lettie, for as much trouble as you've caused me, I almost wish you had run off with him to the Kasbah. I would have enjoyed having to fetch you back from Morocco."
Everyone in the family turned to stare at Sirius, who looked as though he wanted to transfigure his jacket into an enormous snail's shell to shrivel up inside of it.
For once his mother seemed at a complete loss for words.
"Morocco?" said Lucretia, delighted and incredulous. "Good heavens, Sob, were you trying to go there?"
"No—I mean—it was an idle thought, that's all."
"'An idle thought'?—" Madame Battancourt's lip quivered. "Yesterday it was a thwarted absconcion you seemed quite disappointed over. I thought you were planning on going it alone."
"Well, obviously I didn't!"
"I should think not," said Pollux. "Dreadful time of year to go to North Africa."
"Alone, at any rate," said Lucretia.
"It's not the kind of place you'd take a woman any time of year, Lucy," snapped Pollux. "Don't know what you'd do with one when you got her there."
"I doubt poor Sob does, either."
"Is that where you were yesterday morning, when I woke up?" asked Regulus. "I wondered where you'd gone. You were planning on bolting, weren't you?"
"Shut up, Reg. It's not—what it sounds like." He fumbled. "She's—the old bird's exaggerating. That is, I was exaggerating. A bit of poetic license."
"I very much doubt that," said Eulalie. "You were quite intoxicated when we spoke, and you know what they say—in vino veritas."
Walburga brought herself out of her forced stupor.
"I—I really—knew nothing of this, madame."
Eulalie Battancourt studied the younger woman's expression for a long moment.
"You know, Mrs. Black—I truly think I believe you."
Having recovered from the shock, Walburga managed to fix the controlled expression onto her face again.
"If what you say is true—this impugnment of your granddaughter's character and reputation—I simply cannot believe my son would do something so disgraceful. I'm shocked."
"Are you? That I wonder at."
Walburga turned to the the younger Madame Battancourt and made a sign that she was going to start speaking, but the lady's formidable mother-in-law cut her off before she could begin.
"My daughter-in-law Fabienne may not have the best English, Mrs. Black—but she's seen enough of the…situation—to guess what you might say to her, and Claude is certainly capable of issuing a demand for whatever satisfaction his wife thinks they are owed."
"I'm sure it won't come to that—" Walburga replied, quickly. "I regret my husband isn't here to greet you, as he's…indisposed—"
"Walburga!" Arcturus barked in warning.
"—But I am sure were he here," she continued, ignoring her father-in-law. "He would agree that no blood need be spilt over this."
"Why the hell would blood need to be spilt?" asked Ted, the only one in the room stupid or clever enough to voice this question aloud.
Fabienne let out a string of rapid French phrases that Eulalie translated for the group at large.
"Colette's reputation is in shambles. She's the talk of this country—not to mention her own."
"No, she's not!" said Sirius, who had got over the embarrassment tolerably well and was now able to look the situation squarely in the face. "Before about five minutes ago, no one knew or gave a damn about Colette and me."
Madame Battancourt gave him a withering look.
"That's not what my sources say," said Eulalie.
"And who exactly are your—"
"—I suppose," Mrs. Black cut him off, deftly. "That no financial renumeration would suffice as recompense for my son's deplorable behavior towards your granddaughter."
"As you yourself pointed out so eloquently, Mrs. Black—no price can be placed on a girl's reputation."
Walburga nodded, a solemn and sober look on her face. For the appropriate amount of time Mrs. Black considered the matter, giving it the sober reflection that the crime of taking a young girl out on week of clandestine but otherwise chaste outings merited.
"Then I suppose," she sighed. "There's no alternative. He shall have to marry her."
A long silence followed Walburga Black's extraordinary announcement.
"Sorry—" Sirius pretended to clean out one of his ears. "I—don't think I heard you right."
"I suspect you did," said Eulalie.
"It's the only way she can be righted in the eyes of the world," said Walburga, in a voice of calm circumspection. "I cannot see any other way out of it."
The involuntary smile that had crept onto Sirius's face at what he thought was the first and only practical joke his mother had ever attempted in her life dropped like the blade of a guillotine.
She wasn't joking. She was, in point of fact, in deadly earnest.
"Really. You, of all people, can see no other solution to—what for my money is a made-up problem—than me getting—" Sirius stopped himself, in one of those curious moments when the resemblance between him and a hound who had scented his prey was particularly pronounced. "…Married."
He looked at her—really looked at her—and saw her more clearly than he had since their reunion a fortnight before.
Perhaps more clearly than he ever had in his life.
"I'll admit it's hardly ideal—" his mother said, with the air of someone who has resigned herself to an unfortunate but necessary coarse of action. "But if Miss Battancourt's reputation has been materially damaged by your disgraceful behavior in sneaking about with her unchaperoned, then I'm sure you'll agree that—"
"—Tell me, Madame Battancourt—point of curiosity." Sirius went up to the old lady, who was watching his exchange with his mother with a canny shrewdness that could rival Arcturus. "These three 'sources' of yours—one of them wouldn't happen to be Ziva Courtès, would it?"
Eulalie's eyebrows rose in surprise.
"As a matter of fact—" Lucretia tried, without much success, to recede into the background. "It was. How did you guess?"
"Simple. She's the biggest gossip in Europe—and the most gullible. The exact person you would tell a tall tale you wanted bandied about, in fact."
"And you're suggesting someone has done this—deliberately?"
"Suggesting?" He pointed to Walburga. "I'm telling you that the culprit is standing right in front of your eyes, trying to play up this 'butter wouldn't melt in her mouth' embarrassed mother routine for all the world! It's a dead giveaway. She's a terrible actress, believe me—if this outcome wasn't exactly what she wanted, you would know. She wouldn't be able to help herself!"
As the speech went on, his voice rose higher and higher. He stalked towards the accused who, seeing the danger, tried to head him off.
"Sirius Orion—"
"I knew it!" He raised his arms in the air with the gravity of Moses parting the Red Sea. "I knew you were up to something all along, I just couldn't prove it. That morning, when you were so reasonable about letting it all go, and not making me pay for sneaking out with her—I knew it was too good to be true. You told me not to take her out again because you wanted me to! You knew that was the only way to guarantee I would. This—" He gestured to his prospective in-laws. "This was your plan all along!"
"Oh, come now, Sirius," said Lucretia, who was doing her damnedest not to smile and failing abysmally. "Are you listening to yourself? You sound—deranged."
Sirius rounded on her with the speed of a detective inspector in an interrogation room.
"Shut up, Lucretia—you think I don't know you're pen friends with that Courtès bat? I bet you wrote her that pack of lies about wagging tongues yourself, knowing she'd tell half the continent and it would get back to the parents. This one put you up to it!"
"You will recall," Lucretia replied, glancing slyly at the Walburga, who would have no doubt kicked her in the shins if there had been a table to conceal it. "That I told you if you didn't stay away from that girl, you would regret it."
"But you didn't tell me the reason!" Sirius howled. "You deliberately kept that from me because you were trying to egg me on."
"Oh, but consider—you'd have to be a complete simpleton to be goaded by such a paltry trick." Her eyes danced with mischief. "I would never think that of you."
"You snake—"
Seeing the danger of letting her sister-in-law reply in earnest, Mrs. Black stepped in.
"That is quite enough, Sirius Orion. You will cease haranguing your aunt this instant."
"I'm not haranguing her—it's an interrogation, totally with merit. She's the witness to your crimes, not to mention an accomplice."
He turned on his mother, who had maneuvered herself so that she was between her dramatically ranting son and the Battancourts, who seemed to think their daughter's paramour might be out of his mind. The only one of them who fully comprehended the meaning of Sirius's words was the old woman, and she kept a far better poker face than Mrs. Prewett.
"That day I took Colette out in London half a shop fell down on my head—and at Hogwarts a tree dumped a load of snow on me to keep me from—from—" Colette blushed. "—Doing anything! That was no coincidence. You had the damned house elf tailing me every step of the damn way!"
"—You are being hysterical."
"I knew I could sense someone watching us at Hogwarts. You were on the parapet, spying on Colette and me, weren't you? Have you no shame?"
She did have at least enough of it to look apologetic towards the Battancourts, who were staring at Sirius mid-tirade with a mixture of bewilderment, consternation and—in the case of the elder Madame Battancourt—keen interest.
"You will forgive my son—his father has been—" She swallowed a steadying breath. "—Taken ill, and the shock has somewhat gone to his head—"
"This has nothing to do with Dad, so don't blame him in absentia! I've never been more clear-headed in my life."
"It's an interesting theory," said Eulalie, suddenly. "But motivations aside, there's one point on which I find myself puzzled."
"Only one?" asked Arcturus.
"Yes. My Colette may be a flighty girl at times—many of her age are, I daresay she's no worse than most, apart from having a deplorable excess of imagination—but she is not a fool. She's used to strict chaperonage. This bandying about the country with no thought of the consequences is unlike her."
She turned and gave her granddaughter a piercing look. Colette, to her credit, held the formidable lady's gaze.
"Grand-mère…"
"What are you saying, Eulalie?" asked Arcturus—though from the way he was glancing between his daughter-in-law and the Battancourt girl, he was likely starting to get a suspicion of the truth himself.
"That I doubt she would have behaved in this way without…some encouragement."
"She does look a straight-lace," observed Arcturus, his voice thoughtful, as he considered his daughter-in-law with fresh eyes. Walburga gave him a look of challenge—and of warning.
His grandson didn't seem to have noticed.
"Of course she had encouragement," said Sirius, voice full of pride. "From me. Colette's a lot more independent-minded than you lot give her credit for, you know—"
"—That's not the sort of encouragement she's referring to, Sirius."
Sirius turned towards the doorway to the smaller chamber, where his grandmother and older cousin had come through to watch the show. They had evidently been drawn out of their seclusion by the sound of Sirius shouting. Irma kept her shrewd gaze on her daughter, whose nerve in the face of her mother wavered for only a moment.
"Andromeda," said Walburga, in a warning voice. "Hold your tongue."
Andromeda dismissed the threat with a toss of her head.
"I have, Aunt. So much so that you should consider yourself in my debt, as far as I'm concerned. But even I can only sit and watch him embarrass himself and the rest of us by extension for so long before putting him out of his misery."
"You always had courage, Andromeda," said Lucretia, with a laugh. "One could never fault you for that."
"What are you talking about?" asked Sirius.
Andromeda raised one eyebrow in a manner that reminded Sirius uncomfortably of a cross between their grandmother and his father.
"That day you met her in Hogsmeade, Sirius—she used a trick to get away from Sluggy and the rest. What did she take—an infusion of bladderwrack and eyebright to appear ill and have an excuse to stay behind?"
"Yes, but how did you—"
"Daddy—" She turned to her father, abruptly. "Does that sound familiar?"
Cygnus was surprised at being addressed by his wayward daughter in this way.
"Of course it does," he scoffed, after a moment of pondering the question. "Burgie and Lucretia used to take that to stuff to skive off Arithmancy."
"They did?" Irma and Arcturus said, in unison. Neither of their middle-aged daughters denied it.
"How the devil did you know about that?" asked Cygnus.
"Alphard told me, years ago."
"How did you even know about Colette using that trick, anyway?" Sirius asked his cousin. She rolled her eyes.
"You took her to have lunch with me in London the next day, Sirius. You left us alone together."
"So?"
"What do you think we discussed, the weather?"
Even he could not pretend he didn't get what she was driving at.
"No—that's not—that's…not possible. You're pulling my leg."
"Because that's the sort of thing I would do. I'm well known for my jocular manners."
"She couldn't have known, Andi."
"Why not?"
Sirius squinted at her, as if she were being deliberately dim.
"Because—because she would've told me."
"Unless it was against her interests," remarked Eulalie Fawley.
Sirius rounded on her.
"What kind of thing is that to say?" he snapped. "Do you think your granddaughter's some sort of—artful schemer?"
"Hardly," said Eulalie. "But I have known her, upon occasion—when she saw something she really wanted—to hold her tongue to get it."
"I don't think I—quite get what you mean."
"That's obvious to everyone in the room," said Andromeda, dryly.
Sirius forced himself to look at Colette, who had so far kept strangely quiet on this point. The girl had her eyes fixed to the floor. She was still, but the bright red flush that crept from her ears to her neck was unmistakable.
"Come on, tell them—" Sirius said, half-laughing. "Tell them you didn't know about this, Colette."
Miss Battancourt slowly lifted her head. The moment that Sirius met her gaze he recognized the expression—it was one that he not only was intimately familiar with from his own face, but had seen several times over the course of the week on hers, though he'd never been able to quite place it before now.
A look of untrammeled guilt.
Sirius staggered. The last bottom had fallen out from under him.
"You must understand—I did not—" She burst out. "I did not think I would be permitted to see you again if I did not—"
"—Do as she said?" Sirius spun around and turned on his mother, happy to redirect his anger at a target who could take it. "Did you threaten her?"
"Don't be absurd, Sirius Orion," said Walburga, in a flat voice that only made him angrier and—by all appearances more irrational.
"I don't think it is absurd! I think it's the sanest conclusion to which I ever come." He jerked a thumb at Eulalie and the Battancourt parents. "And I think these people have a right to know if their daughter's prospective mother-in-law coerced her into it with blackmail and threats."
Mrs. Black was forced to contend with the scrutiny of both her son and the Battancourts at once. She took it with an unlikely aplomb, barely allowing her son's unhinged accusations to ruffle her.
"You are overwrought. What possible reason would I have to threaten Miss Battancourt?"
"Do you need a reason? It's the kind of thing you do on instinct because you can, you harpy. You'll notice, of course—" Sirius remarked to Eulalie Battancourt. "She never actually denied it."
Walburga did not rise to his bait, though a flash from her eyes suggested that she would make him pay for the insolent remark later.
"I am merely pointing out to Madame and Mssr. Battancourt," she continued, with only a tinge of tightness in her voice. "That there would be no reason for me to coerce their daughter into contracting a very eligible marriage with a wizard of impeccable breeding and large fortune—not when that was her primary object in coming to this country in the first place."
Something tightened in Sirius's chest. If the shade of red on Colette's face had been a wallpaper, it would have been called 'mortification' and sold by an interior decorator who specialized in bordellos.
"And—were it true," continued Mrs. Black, in a slyer voice. "That she had…submitted to some—unconventional chaperonage to achieve that end, it would only be a credit to Mademoiselle Battancourt's judgement and—great respect for her family's wishes."
"I think you put rather more stock in your son's desirability as a husband than I do, Mrs. Black," said Eulalie, with a sense of irony to rival Arcturus's. "But your point is taken, none-the-less. I believe I understand the situation tolerably well. You may wish to explain it to your beaux, Colette, as he seems to be under some—er, misapprehensions about your intentions towards him."
Sirius, however, was not listening to her. He stared at Colette, who had gone back to looking at the floor and twisting a stray strand of her hair around her ring finger.
"You were in on this," Sirius said, blankly. "With her—the whole time."
A newfound look of incredulous, mortified understanding broke over his face with the force of a bottle of champagne being smashed on a ship's bow.
"You lied to me the whole time."
"That's not how it was," said Colette, breaking her silence. She looked up into his face and was startled by the look of betrayal—and hurt she found there.
His shock turned to anger.
"Then pray tell me how it was, Miss Battancourt," said Sirius, in a chillier voice than he had ever used with her before.
Colette wilted under that look. She mumbled some incomprehensible mixture of English and French under her breath. It blunted his anger, until he glanced up and locked eyes with his mother. Walburga had managed—against all odds—to keep her neutral and innocent expression, though her eyes danced with a fire that had never failed to stir him to challenge and defy her.
He turned back to the girl.
"Whose idea was this, Colette?"
Colette, still blushing furiously, tossed her head and paced over to the other side of the room. Her young lover followed her, seemingly immune to the gaping stares of both their respective families and his friends.
"Oh—oh—what does that matter?"
"'What does it—'" Sirius repeated, in an incredulous voice. "I would say it matters a great effing deal, Colette! Tell me whose idea this plan was."
She turned her head and hemmed.
"Did you come up with it together?"
"Of course not!"
"It was her idea, then. She laid out this entire elaborate scheme that night she caught us and you never thought once that—maybe that was information you ought to tell me? You just—what, went along with it? You let me think we were getting one over on her, when in fact—" He drew a line between Walburga and Colette in the air with his finger. "—You two were getting one over on me."
"Oh, you—you make everything sound so vulgar and—and duplicitous!"
"It is duplicitous. It's duplicity of the highest order." He ran his fingers through his hair. "Plotting—with my mother, of all people! After everything I told you—the deeply personal things about me and her—Colette, I told you things I've never even told James."
"What things?" said James.
"Shut up, Prongs! If I wanted you to know about them, I would've said, wouldn't I?"
He turned back from his disgruntled best friend to his young lady, who had got over her initial embarrassment and was gazing at him with sympathy—longing—
"I was glad you told me those things," she said, in a softer voice. "I thought I could—I wanted to…help you."
If his family hadn't been standing about them, Sirius might've been moved by her—it was tempting, when she looked at him like that. But in the circumstances he was too embarrassed to give up this show of manly force—even if it wasn't making anything better.
"That was your motive, then?" Sirius pressed. "Altruism?"
"Not…exactly," Colette admitted. "I was—made to feel—that if I wished to—that I really oughtn't say…no."
"To my mother?"
"Oui."
"Let me get this straight—the only reason you went out with me is because my mother convinced you to?"
Colette broke eye contact with him and got very pink in the face again. She couldn't bring herself to answer.
"I doubt it took much convincing, if her blushes are anything to go by," said Pollux.
From the real and mortified look on Colette's face, it became clear to him—and everyone else that were witnesses to their youthful and indiscrete lovers' quarrel—that at some point in the last week she had made a very different assessment of her marital prospects than he had. Sirius was torn between agitation and a natural desire to comfort her in her distress.
Instead he looked to the elder Madame Battancourt.
"Well. Let's cut to the chase, madam. No one knows or cares about Colette and me besides a few gossipy old biddies. We won't be forced into any arranged marriage over this stupid dust-up. As I think we've both made our position on the matter clear—"
"—Do you? I believe you and I may have a very different idea of 'clarity', young man." Eulalie glanced at her granddaughter. "And that you know even less about women than most men your age."
Sirius found her look of dry amusement somewhat disconcerting, but he tried not to let it—or the suspicion that Colette was on the verge of tears—distract him from his purpose.
"You lot shouldn't be trying to push her into marriage anyway. She's too young—she doesn't even know what she wants or what's good for her." He turned his eyes towards Claude. "Oi—Battancourt—can't you see that your daughter's not suited to the life of fashion you're forcing on her, or do you simply enjoy letting your wife walk all over you where the fate of your only child is concerned?"
Claude Battancourt had never been spoken to by anyone—let alone a complete stranger—with so much frankness, and he hardly knew what to say to the young man accusing him of spinelessness. His daughter, on the other hand, had some choice words.
"How dare you speak to my father in that way?"
Colette ran in front of him and made some very unladylike and impassioned—and gallic—gestures in his face. Sirius shrugged.
"I'm only conveying what you told me—more or less."
"I did not—"
"—I can read between the lines," Sirius said, flatly. "And if you still refuse to stand up for yourself, don't blame me for doing it for you."
In a mixture of French and English, she sputtered out that she had never said anything of the kind, between lines or not.
"And even if I—even if I had spoken of such things, it would have been in confidence. I have never given you leave to speak on my behalf. You are the most high-handed, arrogant, presumptuous—"
"—Fine! Deny it all you want, Mademoiselle Battancourt! Roll over and let your parents dictate your life—but I won't join you in that ditch."
He turned his attention back to his mother. She watched him with the cool detachment of an apex predator toying with its food.
"I see what your game is—but you've overplayed your hand. I don't give a damn for convention, and if you really thought some outdated rules of conduct were going to induce me to marriage on your terms, you have grossly misjudged me, madam."
He looked and sounded very much like Orion. Mrs. Black, for all that, seemed unimpressed with this show of force.
"You refuse to make Miss Battancourt an offer, then? To do the honorable thing?"
"What I refuse is to play into your hand," he said, ignoring the uncomfortable sensation that Colette was trying to catch his eye.
"Your mind is made up?" Mrs. Black asked, unnervingly calm in the face of his obstinate refusal.
"Astutely observed! Yes, it's made up."
"Very well—if you're certain."
She turned to the younger Madame Battancourt and addressed her directly, in perfect French.
"Mon fils aîné refuse de demander la main de votre fille en mariage. C'est regrettable, mais pas surprenant." She stepped deftly aside to reveal her other son. "Dans ces circonstances, il me faut vous demander si elle pouvait être persuadée d'accepter la main de mon fils cadet, Regulus, à sa place."
Sirius's younger brother gaped at the Battancourt family with all the dignity of a third understudy being thrust onto the stage for an opening night performance of Hamlet at the RSC.
The elder brother, face red with anger, turned on his mother.
"Excusez-moi—what did you just say?"
"You speak excellent French, Sirius Orion—" Walburga replied, lightly. "I know you understood me perfectly well."
Those in the room who didn't speak the language were able to get the gist of what she'd said from the two brothers' facial expressions. Fabienne Battancourt took a few steps towards Regulus. She was clearly not opposed to the notion and not afraid to show her interest.
"I think I might've misheard you, then. I thought I heard you swapping me out for Reg in your wedding plans."
"Someone must right Miss Battancourt in the eyes of the world, and if you refuse to do the honorable thing, the responsibility will fall to your brother." She turned back to the younger Madame Battancourt, who was watching her with the shrewdness of a woman who knows how to drive a hard bargain. "This is Regulus Arcturus. He won't come into as much gold as Sirius, but his manners are far better. I don't think your daughter would have any cause for regret if she married him—in fact, in time I believe she would come to the wisdom of it."
She shoved Regulus towards his prospective mother-in-law without ceremony.
The two mothers seemed immune to Sirius's growing rage, Regulus's embarrassment as he was being spoken of by the matrons like a steer at a cattle show—and Colette's exquisite mortification at having her marital prospects discussed openly by her mother, who had even less tact than Walburga in these matters.
"Will there be an estate?" asked Fabienne, looking Regulus up and down critically. Her blue eyes—identical to Colette's—had an air of feminine cunning her daughter entirely lacked, and they were in that moment animated in a most alarming fashion to Regulus. "And suitable allotment of gold?"
"Of course. He is my father's heir. Regulus has always spoken so highly of your daughter."
Fabienne sniffed and gave Sirius a critical look. She seemed to be sizing the two brothers up.
"But this one is the heir?" Walburga nodded. "What is his allowance—what does he stand to inherit?"
Mrs. Black told her—in French, and then she repeated it in English, just to hammer home the point for the English grandmother and the room at large. The staggering number made Ted whistle and Lily let out an unfeminine exclamation that made her husband laugh. Walburga's father-in-law clearly found this womanish haggling indecorous, though it certainly had the intended effect on Fabienne, who seemed to be imagining just how many jewels that much gold could buy her daughter per annum.
"There's also the various estates in London and Suffolk, to say nothing of the investments overseas which are tied through the entail to what he'll inherit—"
"—Don't tell her about the damned estates!" Sirius yelped. "Besides, I'm not coming into all that—I'm disowned, remember?"
"That's a change," said Cygnus. "Fifteen minutes ago you were the great reformer."
"Yes, Sob, weren't you going to get the womenfolk in the family under control?" asked Lucretia. "I was so looking forward to that."
"Sirius Orion's future is a bit grand—it may not even suit your daughter's taste," continued Walburga, conversationally. "And I'm sure Regulus has no objection to her as a bride."
"He might have an objection to me cursing his nose off his face," said Sirius. "Which is exactly what will happen to you, runt, if you try to steal my bird."
Regulus took a few steps back from the women.
"I'm not stealing anything," sputtered Regulus. "I didn't ask to get involved, in case you've forgotten."
"You're not exactly protesting!"
"If you don't see what she's doing," Regulus shot back. "You're even denser than I thought."
"You have no reason to threaten your brother, Sirius," said Walburga, as if these bodily threats between brothers were perfectly normal. "If you don't want to marry Miss Battancourt, you can hardly object to her making a perfectly eligible match elsewhere."
"'Eligible match'?" Sirius snorted. "She could do better than Reg."
"Thanks," said his brother, sarcastically.
Colette glided towards the older of her prospective intendeds with an expression of wounded dignity that she could almost carry off.
"What business is it of yours who I marry, Monsieur?"
"You make it my business when you snog me twice and then make a play for my brother. That sort of think might be de rigueur in the French provinces, but it's not the done thing in English society."
"Since when have you cared about the 'done thing'?" asked Andromeda, trying not to laugh.
Eulalie Battancourt seemed to think her daughter-in-law's haggling had gone on long enough, for she stepped forward and put a firm hand on her granddaughter's shoulder.
"Well, Colette?" asked Eulalie, with a wry smile. "Can you—stomach Mssr. Regulus for a husband, do you think?"
Colette looked between the brothers—holding onto Sirius's gaze a little longer.
"I—" She closed her eyes and tossed her head. "I shall have to think about it."
"Have to—what's there to think about?" Sirius demanded. "You've spent about fifteen minutes combined with him at a garden party last summer and in a dungeon last night."
"Perhaps I've come to see the wisdom in knowing as little about one's prospective husband as possible," she said, in sharp voice that stung his pride—and his feelings.
Her mother came up next to her and gave Sirius a rather formidable look.
"Tu ferais mieux de te marier avec l'autre. Celui-ci est trop beau." She eyed him with the deep suspicion of experienced female prejudice and shrugged. "Il serait probablement infidèle."
Any compliment meant in the remark was quite lost in the closing jibe. Sirius, deeply offended, immediately rounded on Colette's mother.
"Mais non! Je ne serais jamais infidèle à votre fille, et je n'apprécie pas que vous dîtes ça, madame."
"Bah!" Fabienne said, dismissively. "This is what the ones like this all say, ma fille."
"We do not!"
Fabienne tutted and waved a hand, clearly out of patience for the passionate young wizard, who had turned back to her daughter.
"I wouldn't, Colette—you know that's not the sort of—tell your mother she's wrong about me."
"How should I know whether she is or not?" Colette said, on the edge of tears. "Perhaps you are. Perhaps I don't know you at all."
He took her by the shoulders and gently turned her head to look at him.
"You don't believe that."
Colette's lip trembled—her shoulders shook. Sirius was filled with a sudden—and in the circumstances entirely irrational—desire to wrap her in his arms to stop all that foolish shaking and crying.
"But don't you—" She hesitated, glancing at her grandmother. "Don't you—do you really not want to?"
He felt the tips of his ears burn and he let go of her.
"Want to do what?" Sirius said, stupidly.
"Don't you—like me?"
He was suddenly, violently aware of the dozen or so sets of eyes on him. Sirius's face started to pink.
"That's—entirely—that's not the point."
"In the matter of marriage," she said, stiffly. "I think it matters a great deal whether you care for me."
"Of course I—" He stopped himself. "I'm not being drawn into—I am not having this conversation in front of both of our grandmothers, Colette."
"You are a fine one to speak about my motives. No one made you act as you did—and you refuse to take responsibility for it."
"The difference between us is that you weren't acting in good faith!" Sirius exclaimed, indignantly. "The whole time you were scheming with my mother to trap me."
"As if you are in any position to lecture on duplicity—"
"—No, no, no, no—don't you try to turn this back on me, mademoiselle." He gave her a warning look. "I have your number, and besides, we've worked all that out. You know when I lied I had your best interests at heart—"
"—Well, who says I didn't have yours?"
He drew back as the full import of her words hit him. Colette's anger and guilt dropped away, and for a moment he saw just how upset she really was.
"What about our—our agreement?" she asked, in a tremulous voice.
"What agreement?"
"Our—our bet! You promised if you could not convince me to give the idea of marriage up you would find me a husband yourself." She was both on the verge of tears and nearly hysterical. "That was our agreement—"
"—You know full well I didn't mean me!"
Colette's lip trembled. It was obvious to everyone in the room that since that light-hearted wager had been made, the two parties concerned's views on how seriously it was to be taken had diverged wildly.
"God, Colette—I thought you and I were alike." His voice cracked. "I thought I was talking you out of all this."
"That is because you always presume to know what is best for everyone."
"In your case, it's obvious I do know what's best!"
"Well, it is clear you did not convince me," she shot back. "What sort of girl did you think I was?"
"A—nice girl. One I could talk to and go about on dates and—be normal with. One I would like to take to the cinema—without my mother sending a servant to spy on us, thank you very much!"
"And that is all?" she said stiffly. "Nothing else? I was just a—trifle to you?"
"If this is about your precious honor, spare me your strictures. We both know I never took a single liberty with you—not that I didn't have the chance and you wouldn't have welcomed my attentions. If anything you compromised me—what with you flinging yourself at me every five minutes!"
She saw red. No one—not even her grandmother—had ever seen her so furious. Colette's resemblance to her mother at her entrance to the hospital ward was striking.
"If I 'flung myself', as you so vulgarly call it," she replied. "What would you call your insulting proposition yesterday morning that I run away with you?"
"I'd call it a generous offer you took great pleasure in turning down—and saying a lot of hard things to me when you did." A muscle in his jaw twitched. "You know, if you'd just come with me then, none of this would have happened and we'd probably be having a great time right now instead of this stupid argument in front of our families."
"Someone needed to tell you the truth."
"Oh, I've no shortage of people trying to tell me how to live my life. I thought when we met you'd be the exception, but I see now that was too much to hope for."
"I never asked for your attentions!"
Sirius started to laugh—which only got Colette's back up further.
"Never asked—never asked? You've been begging for my attentions since the moment you arrived on this island. And you have been nothing but trouble for me since the night you pilfered my Polyjuice potion and gave it to my father!"
"I should have thrown it in the fire instead," she said, in her primmest voice. "Than you would have got what you deserved."
Sirius looked at her with new eyes—he recalled the night they had met, and all the prejudices that he had felt towards her came flooding back all at once.
"You know, I thought you were different. But apparently you're just another pureblood witch on the make, here to snag a wealthy husband. You must be so pleased. You think you've won the grand prize with me."
It was amazing to see a girl as small and unassuming as she usually was swell with anger like a puffer fish.
"Only you could be so arrogant that you'd think anyone would consider you a prize."
"What would you call me, then?"
"A trial to be endured!"
"That's what I've been trying to tell you this whole time about marriage!"
She raised herself up to her full height—still half a foot shorter than him, but her coolly contemptuous expression seemed to diminish him somehow.
"You've certainly convinced me now. You, Monsieur Sirius Black, are nothing but a boy masquerading as a man. You run from me like you do everyone else who might hurt you—because you are afraid."
"I'm not afraid of anyone—least of all a vixenish meddler who noses into my private affairs and plots with my mother." The conversation they had had at the edge of the grounds of Malfoy Manor suddenly came rushing back to him. "Wait a minute—just yesterday morning you told me you had given the whole idea of marriage up and were going back to France. You weren't even going to say goodbye to me."
Now it was her turn to be on the back-foot.
"C'est - entièrement - je ne voudrais pas en discuter devant les autres, monsieur."
"Oh, don't you?" Sirius gave her a shrewd look. "You know, I don't think I'm the only one in this conversation who could be accused of running away from what they cannot face."
"Tais-toi! Tu ne sais rien de quoi tu parles!"
"Oh, look at that—her French is coming out. I think I hit a little close to the nerve."
Colette's whole body shook with anger.
"I never sought your hand in marriage, sir—and I certainly won't regret the loss of it. You have not the slightest notion what I've endured because your mother thinks you so hopeless no respectable female would take you by any other means. It is not my fault no one else would have you!"
Sirius flushed, the words causing an involuntary stab of pain.
"I apologize on behalf of my mother, Miss Battancourt." Sirius tried to hide his hurt under a cold manner. "If I'd known she was forcing you to endure my company, I wouldn't have bothered."
"I wish you hadn't!" she snapped back. "I wish I'd—I wish I'd never met you."
"Yeah, right," he scoffed. "I'm the most interesting thing that's ever happened to you. When you go back to France you'll probably fill your novels with my exploits and make a fortune!"
She sent a stinging hex at him which he barely managed to dodge.
"Damnit, Colette—stop that!"
"I shan't! You deserve much worse!"
His spellwork was far better than hers under the best of circumstances, and Colette was too incensed to be thinking much of successfully cursing him beyond showing him that she wanted to—Sirius cast a shield charm and bounced it back at her. It hit Colette's arm and she let out a sharp curse.
"Don't you have anything else in your arsenal? Or hasn't my mother been teaching you her particular brand of wifely affection?" He dodged another spell, which hit the flower pot on the welcome desk and shattered it against the wall. "Let me give you a little friendly advice, Miss Battancourt—if you want to marry any man, I suggest you either learn to keep your wand to yourself or improve your aim!"
She let out a scream of rage. The force of the outburst was so great that she accidentally set the edge of her father's cloak on fire. Mr. Battancourt was forced to douse himself before Colette burst into tears and stormed out of the door she'd come through.
Everyone stared at Sirius—who had the shell-shocked look of a man who doesn't know how he's found himself in such wreckage.
"Well, Fabienne," Eulalie remarked, dryly. "It would seem your daughter took my advice to heart about getting some spirit in her."
Madame Battancourt muttered several sharp French phrases at her husband, who could only bleat a feeble reply before the two of them followed their emotionally distraught daughter out the door and down the staircase.
For a long moment no one spoke or made a sound.
Then someone began to clap.
"Bravo, Sirius. Well done. Brilliant." Lily came up to him. "And I thought Potter was bad with women."
Her husband came up behind her, the slightest shade of a mischievous grin tugging at the edge of his mouth. The family was too shocked by the sordid display to comment—yet.
"Uncalled for comparison, Evans," said James. "You never hexed me, did you?"
"I wanted to on more than one occasion. Of course, you never called me a 'meddlesome vixen' in front of my mother." Lily rolled her eyes. "Where do you pick up this outdated lingo, Padfoot?"
"It's the sort of thing our father would say," said Regulus.
"You're right," Sirius groaned. "I've been spending too much time with him, lately. Though with who he's married to, who could blame him?"
Mrs. Black opened her mouth to speak, but at the expression on her son's face, she did something surprising and totally out of character—she held her tongue.
Sirius looked back at Lily, who had noticed the exchange and was clearly holding in a smile at mother and son each fighting the urge to start screaming at each other.
"That was quite the show you put on," she continued. "You really made a mess of things, you know?"
"You're not going to blame me for this, Lily. I mean—" He gestured at the door. "That was—she's the one who—this is not my fault!"
"Look, I'm not saying you're not justified in being angry, but you could have handled it with a little more—tact." Lily was ever the reasonable one. "You don't actually think your mother put her up to going out with you and that she doesn't really like you."
"She all but admitted that's what happened!"
She gave him a look of profound feminine pity.
"Sirius—what women say and what they mean are not the same thing."
Sirius looked to her husband for support.
"Prongs—you're on my side. She totally overreacted, right? I mean—what was all that flying into a rage about?—I'm the one who should be angry. What was with her?"
James tried to look solemn, but three years of being ribbed mercilessly by Sirius had made him savor those rare moments of his best friend putting a foot wrong where the fairer sex was concerned.
"'Well, reading between the lines'," he quoted, with a smirk. "'I'd say she thinks you're a bit conceited—'"
"—Oh, shut up, James!" Laughing, Sirius punched James on the arm. "You know, I taught her that spell she threw at me."
"That was your first mistake," remarked Eulalie Battancourt, walking towards them. "You, boy—you wouldn't be Monty Potter's son, by chance, would you?"
James turned, surprised at being addressed by the only member of the Battancourt entourage who remained in the room, and answered in the affirmative.
"I thought so. You have the look of him. I was very sorry to hear about your parents. I hadn't seen either in a long time, but I always liked them." She turned to Lily before he could thank her for her kind words. "And this pretty girl is your wife, I take it?"
She took Lily's hand and shook it.
"I gather you've made a friend of my granddaughter Colette while she's been visiting."
"Yes—yes, er, Sirius brought her to a party at our house on Christmas Eve."
"You did what?" said Walburga.
"I went with a girl to a party at my best friend's house on Christmas," Sirius shot back. "Or didn't my father mention it you?"
He hadn't, but Walburga was not about to reveal that in front of mixed company, so she merely pursed her lips and glowered.
"This is your best friend?" Eulalie raised an eyebrow. "Oh, that's right—you were in Gryffindor, weren't you? That must've been a shock to your parents."
"It wasn't the first," said Sirius.
"We—really enjoyed having Colette, Mrs.—Madam Battancourt," said Lily, feeling awkward at being singled out in such a moment—and in such company. "She's a delightful girl—all our friends who were at the party said so. I was so happy to meet her."
"I'm glad to hear it. You wouldn't happen to know anything about her absence for the past day, would you? Only I happened to notice you came in with your husband here just after she arrived."
Lily froze—exchanged an alarmed look with Sirius—then slowly began to speak.
"Oh—that. Well, yes, er—actually, she was with me. She got a sudden invitation to a party, and wanted company, so she came to get me at my cottage, and I guess—the portkey was timed, so we sort of—just took it, and didn't think of writing a note to let anyone know where we were. So impulsive and wrong of us, and I'm sorry if anyone worried, but we were really…fine."
"A party? Where was it?"
"Oh—it was at—some castle somewhere, wasn't it? I can't remember the name—but everyone was there with us, Sirius and my husband James and—Regulus, too." Lily suddenly turned to the younger Black brother to help her extricate herself from the story. "Regulus, you tell her where we were."
His eyes widened.
"Why do you need me to—?"
"—Because they were your friends," Lily cut him off, deftly. "And you will recall that going to this party was yours and James's idea. The least you can do for Colette's grandmother is explain why she disappeared for the better part of a day."
Regulus glared at Lily, who gave him an innocent look back.
"Erm, I think it was in…" Regulus groped around for a cover story. "…Lincolnshire."
"In Lincolnshire?" Eulalie repeated. "I don't know anyone who has a house there. Irma—you know everyone—who could have been hosting a party for them in Lincolnshire?"
Everybody looked at Irma—keeper of all social information in the country. Regulus gave his grandmother a frankly alarmed look that she ignored.
"The Carrows have a place in Lincolnshire," said Irma, blandly. "Outside Gainsborough. They've got a niece with social aspirations, she must've invited my grandsons. "
"Do they? Since when?"
"Since the late 50s. They bought it off a tradesman and tried to pass it off as 14th century. Built in the 1880s—at the earliest."
"Well, I never heard that!" Eulalie said, though her voice still had a tinge of well-placed skepticism in it. "I'm glad I have you to keep me up to date on these things. I might never have known where my granddaughter was last night."
The younger people all breathed a collective sigh of relief, though Sirius couldn't help but notice her smile didn't quite meet her eyes. He doubted the old woman believed they'd been anywhere near Lincolnshire, though for the present she seemed fine with accepting the cover story.
"Your granddaughter," observed Arcturus, breaking his chilling silence. "Has quite the gallic temper, Eulalie."
Madame Battancourt looked at the door through which her granddaughter had run off and frowned.
"Not usually. Most of the time she's as placid as an English pond."
"I can't imagine what has come over her to elicit this change," said Arcturus.
"I can tell you," said Mrs. Battancourt, looking him squarely in the face. "It's quite simple. It's the effect men in your family have on women in the general populace."
Lucretia started to laugh.
"You speak as someone with personal experience, Eulalie."
"Oh, I do! A great deal. I would have to—I went to school with your father for five years."
"That's utter nonsense," said Arcturus, over his daughter's chortling.
"It is not!" Eulalie's hazel eyes twinkled. "I once saw two girls come to blows over who got to sit next to you in Charms class."
"Truly, Eulalie?" Lucretia was obviously fascinated by the idea. "Who won?"
"It was a fruitless battle—what a pair of fools. He would never have glanced at either of them. And besides—" She smiled. "The view was far better on the other side of the room anyway."
"This is hardly the time for one of your distasteful jokes, Eulalie."
Her expression sobered when she saw the look in his eyes.
"I know. I must return to Cornwall. I should go put poor Eugenie out of her misery, and let her know Colette is safe and in one piece." She went up to him and offered her hand. "You and I will discuss the rest of this unfortunate affair—when cooler heads can prevail, I trust?"
In a moment of unexpected gallantry, he lifted her hand to his lips. Any romantic sentiment that could have been gleaned from the gesture was belied by the expression of extreme irritation and benign amusement on their respective faces.
"Undoubtedly."
"Then I'll leave you." She let go of his hand. "I sincerely hope your son makes a full recovery, Arcturus."
"Thank you."
They watched her leave out of the same door to the main hallway that her granddaughter, son and daughter-in-law had exited through a minute earlier.
As soon as the door was shut Walburga's calm and controlled facade melted away, and she marched over to her eldest, wand in hand, looking incensed.
"Sirius Orion Black—I cannot believe you!"
"You can't believe me?" He shouted back at her. "You can't believe me? That's rich!"
"Morocco? You thought you would run off with that girl to Morocco?"
"You have no damn right to act outraged about anything, when it's precisely what you intended them to think of me. If I had run off with her, you'd have got exactly what you wanted out of it."
"No son of mine—" She hissed like a snake. "Will disgrace his family with an elopement."
"Lucky for you that wasn't my intention."
"You listen to me. You will be married in a church with your family present like every other Black before you, and that's the end of it."
"I'll be hanged first!" he replied, petulantly.
"When did this happen—yesterday morning?" She rounded on poor Regulus. "Why didn't you tell us about this, Regulus?"
"He was gone when I woke up," muttered Regulus, with the barest hint of resentment at being dragged into yet another of their scuffles. "How was I to know that's what he'd gone to do?"
"You should have told us at once he was missing—or stopped him."
"If I had to stop Sirius every time he disgraced himself and the family," Regulus sniffed. "I'd never have time for anything else."
Sirius turned on his brother.
"Speaking of disgracing yourself, Reg, I notice you haven't mentioned your fun little escapade last night. Funny how that slipped your mind."
Regulus went pale. His brother gave him a vengeful little smile. Walburga narrowed her eyes.
"What are you speaking of, Sirius Orion?"
"All I'm saying is, that if you've got to screech at a son of yours, why not try this idiot for a change? He's the one who tried to fall on his sword for the family."
"What?" snapped Arcturus. The other grandparents also let out mutterings of suspicion—even Cygnus, who never had much time for Regulus, looked interest.
"Yeah!" Sirius continued. "Dad and I had to go after him last night to keep him from killing himself."
"Shut up, Sirius."
Walburga turned a deathly shade of pale.
"Tell me what you mean," she said, to Sirius. "This instant."
"Your son—he seems to have made a habit of botched self-immolation, that's all. Figuratively, at least—this time."
"Sirius was the one who fell into a trap!" Regulus snapped, in a very Sirius-esque defensive tone of voice. "He had to be rescued by me. I found him in a dungeon cell and freed him!"
"After which you stunned me when my back was turned, made a dramatic speech about how our entire family was better off with you dead, then ran off for ritual suicide via Bellatrix."
"That is not what—"
"What would you call it, then? You sought her out—you were trying to bait her into attacking you. And it succeeded—your reckless little bid at self-sacrifice might've come off, had Dad and I not shown up."
"Is this true, Regulus Arcturus?"
Walburga walked towards Regulus slowly and stopped in front of him. Her eyes burned with anger—and unshed tears. Regulus son opened his mouth to deny it—then, realizing it was futile, shut it again.
"…Yes, it is," he finally said. "You have to understand, Mother, I was only trying to protect—"
Walburga slapped him across the face.
"What the hell, Mum?" said Sirius, pushing between them.
Regulus held his cheek and stared at his mother—far more shocked than hurt.
Walburga staggered backwards. Even she seemed to realize she had gone too far. A strange mingled expression of embarrassment, guilt and anger—at herself, more than at the boy she had so lately taken out her tempestuous emotions on—flashed across her face.
"Walburga Ursula!" said Irma, scandalized. "What do you mean by this outrageous behavior? That is no way for a witch to behave."
She looked at her mother, mortified.
"It's the Crabbe temper in her—that's where Burgie gets it from," said Pollux.
"Don't you go blaming this on my blood!" said Irma. "Your daughter is a Black through and through!"
"You should leave, Walburga," said Arcturus, taking charge of the situation. "Take yourself somewhere you might—recover your composure."
For once, she didn't have any desire to argue with him. Arcturus glanced at her parents, who had been somewhat stunned by their only daughter's complete loss of control and had now fallen into their more comfortable habit of bickering about her.
"Unless one of you two would care to get your daughter under control."
Sirius let out a slightly unhinged laugh.
"Why would the two of them be any help?" He glanced over Regulus's face, where a red mark was starting to rise on his left cheek. "They're the ones who made her like this."
Walburga turned to look at him, with a strange expression of vulnerability on her face.
"Sirius Orion—"
"—I think it would better if neither of us speaks to the other for awhile," Sirius cut her off. "Lest we say anything else that can't be taken back."
His mother's nostrils flared, but she did not argue the point.
"Fine," Walburga sniffed. "I'm—going to the house to retrieve your father's things. I only hope you're in control of yourself by the time I return."
"Likewise."
She swept out of the room with her mother and father trailing after her, demanding she explain herself.
The door slammed shut behind them.
"Well, I must say, Sob," Lucretia broke the silence. "That was very big of you, in the circumstances."
"It was either that or a murder-suicide pact."
Sirius sighed. He was no longer angry—in fact, he was almost on the verge of laughing at the sheer absurdity of it.
"She's upset about Father," said Regulus, quietly.
"Gee, Reg, I hadn't noticed." He gave his younger brother a once-over. "How's your face?"
Regulus rubbed his cheek experimentally.
"I'll be fine."
He let out a whistle of admiration for the mark.
"She's never slapped me that hard. You know that that means—you're the new favorite child. That's how she shows her great esteem."
"That's not funny," Regulus muttered, giving him a rueful smile.
"If I had my way, she'd have hit you harder," said Arcturus, taking a few steps towards his two errant grandsons. "It's what you deserve, whelp. What the hell were you thinking?"
"I was thinking of the family," said Regulus, frowning. "About everyone's safety."
"Leave thinking to people with brains," Arcturus replied, acidly. "You're no good to the family dead. You and your brother here are the only hope for the male line—and we hardly need two self-sacrificial fools."
"Don't get too sentimental on us, Arcturus," said Sirius.
"Sentiment is the last thing this family needs more of, with you in it," said Arcturus. "And I've had enough of your lip today—and your temper. At least your mother has the excuse of being a woman when she flies into a pettish rage."
A laugh from behind his shoulder cut Sirius's smart reply off.
"You…really weren't kidding about her, Padfoot."
Sirius had almost forgotten that Lily and James had been standing there watching the whole time. He turned and looked towards Lily, who was walking towards him somewhat gingerly—like a person navigating a landmine field.
"Oh, so now you believe me."
Lily smiled and squeezed him on the shoulder.
"Aunt Burgie has to be seen in her element to be believed," remarked Andromeda, with a twisted smile. Sirius rounded on his cousin with a look of accusation.
"What exactly did Colette tell you after I left the table to amuse your daughter?"
"Everything, more or less. She wanted my advice—seemed to feel some conscience over it all. I'm sure you've cured her of that."
Sirius let out a cursed under his breath before glaring at his cousin again.
"I cannot believe you let her play me like that, Andromeda!"
"Sorry I value my own neck over keeping yours out of the noose." She shrugged. "Besides, what business was it of mine?"
"What busi—how about family loyalty, for a start? This is the kind of treachery I expect from Regulus and Lucretia—" He gave both the traitors dirty looks. "But not from you."
"I did warn you Mother would try to arrange a match for you if you kept provoking her." Regulus put on his 'all for the best' voice. "At least you actually like Miss Battancourt."
"Way to keep a sense of perspective about things, Reg—like that makes it all fine and dandy—"
Arcturus rapped his cane upon the hospital floor.
"I suppose you knew all about this, Lucretia."
His daughter didn't deny it.
"If you must know, Papa—I tried to talk Walburga out of the business. She simply could not be dissuaded."
"Of course she couldn't," said Cygnus. "It's Wallers. Once she gets a notion, no matter how damn fool it is, she can't be talked out of it for the world."
"Well, you can forget the whole thing," said Sirius, in a put-upon voice. "Because I won't marry her."
"Yes, you will," said his grandfather, bluntly. "The honor of the family name's at stake. You can't run about the country with a witch from one of most powerful magical families in Europe, stage a public melodrama with her in front of her family and not marry her."
"Why not? It's only a minor branch," muttered Sirius.
"How ungallant, Sob!" Lucretia laughed.
"Who's going to make me, then?"
"Even if we couldn't, do you honestly think that French harpy will let you go without a fight? She's got her teeth in now—she knows how much you're worth." He sneered. "They've an entailed farm encumbered by debt—you're the best her daughter can hope for, matrimonially. That'll be the reason your mother set her sights on shackling you to this particular girl."
"That's—"
"Mad," muttered James.
"I was thinking more diabolical, myself," said Ted.
"It's Burgie all over," laughed Cygnus. He almost sounded sorry for his nephew—almost.
"Walburga is a cunning woman," Arcturus continued. "This ridiculous scheme of marrying you off to get you under her thumb again would be hare-brained if her son was anyone but you."
Sirius gave him a petulant look.
"And that's to say nothing of the fact—" His grandfather added. "—That she happens to be the granddaughter of my late wife's oldest friend."
"I don't know why that would matter. She tried to warn Gran off marrying you, after all." Sirius grimaced. "Of course, she also apparently used to fancy you, so her judgement where our family's concerned may be less than stellar."
Both of Arcturus's eyebrows flew up.
"Did she tell you that, Sob?" asked Lucretia, interested. "And her knowing it was you when she said it—she must've been hoping it would get back to you, Papa."
"It's—utter nonsense."
Arcturus seemed slightly perturbed by the idea.
"It's not! Unless there's another extremely rich, extremely pompous git who ignored her and then married her best friend."
"How romantic that she would let that slip all these years later," said Lucretia. "It seems her granddaughter has inherited her particular taste in men."
"'Particular'?" echoed Arcturus and Sirius.
"This must be your famous aunt, Sirius—" Lily's eyes twinkled as she stepped forward. "The one you share with the twins."
"Am I famous?" asked Lucretia.
"Your misdeeds are," muttered Arcturus.
"And this," Lily turned to the irascible gentleman with the cane. "Must be your grandfather."
Arcturus did not stoop to answer her, but the haughty look was enough to confirm it.
"Yes, Lily—I'd introduce you to the rest of them, but it's my family. Half of these people won't speak to you on a good day, and I can't imagine you'd want to talk to the ones who would."
"Is he the vampire or the goblin?" asked James, squinting at Arcturus.
"I beg your pardon?" said Arcturus, eyeing his grandson's friend with suspicion that he was very much built in the same vain.
"Sirius always used to say one grandfather was a blood sucker who slept in a coffin, and the other would count his gold for entertainment." His wife kicked him. "Vampire and the goblin for short. Which one are you?"
Arcturus turned towards his grandson, who was giving him the most innocent of looks.
"I couldn't begin to imagine," he said, in a cold voice.
"Really?" said Sirius. "I would think it was obvious."
Arcturus was spared the indignity of having to answer this by the arrival of two newcomers, bursting through the door to the stairwell just in the nick of time.
"Frank—Gideon!"
Sirius, James and Lily rushed forward to greet their friends and fellow Order members. They were all glad to see each other in one piece, more or less. Gideon Prewett and Frank Longbottom both bore the signs of having recently been in duels, but they were in high spirits, in spite of a burn across the cheek and singed robes. Sirius's grip on Frank's hand was a smidge too tight for comfort.
"About damn time, Longbottom! I've been waiting to hear from you pricks for hours."
Frank squeezed back even harder, and gave Sirius a somewhat caustic smile. He had evidently had a long night.
"Sorry, Black—I was a bit indisposed cleaning up your mess."
Gideon went over to his aunt, his expression stern.
"You know, Fabian and I have been over to your house twice, looking for you. Have you bothered to tell Ignatius where you are?"
"No," she said, perplexed. "It didn't occur to me to tell him. Why—is he worried?"
"I should think so! He told us if we found you to tell you to owl him directly."
She looked delighted at the novel prospect of her husband being concerned about her safety. Frank gave Sirius a more sober look and pulled him to one side of the room.
"Is it true that—your father's here?" he said, in a low voice. "In the spell damage ward?"
"What business is that of yours, cub?"
Arcturus, much to Sirius's annoyance, had managed to maneuver to just the right distance away from them to eavesdrop on this exchange. Frank Longbottom took it in stride.
"Just the concern of an admirer and friend, Mr. Black," he said, in a respectful tone which did nothing to assuage the elderly wizard's view that it had been an impertinent question. "Your son got me out of a tricky situation a week and some ago. I'm hoping one day to return the favor."
"Have we been introduced?" asked Arcturus, snidely.
"Yes, in fact—at your birthday. We had a very engaging conversation on the balcony." Arcturus's eyes widened in a rare admission of surprise. "Though I wouldn't expect you to remember my face—the light was so dim out there."
"Oh, you aren't Mr. Klöcker!" interjected Lucretia. "How charming."
Frank gave her a winning smile and bowed—as if he were still a Norwegian dandy in disguise.
"It's good to see you again, Mrs. Prewett."
"And you!" She came forward, giving him a critical look. "Your real face is so much handsomer than that awful Swede's."
"Did you come here for some reason other than flirting with my aunt, Frank?"
"Yes—I came to find out more about what happened last night. Potter here only sketched a vague picture—"
"I was being held in a prison cell, sorry we didn't have time for a full debriefing. You go first." Frank looked surprised. "Have they cleared out the castle, yet? Was anyone injured or killed? What about arrests?"
"You know full well I couldn't disclose the names of any suspects, even if we had made arrests."
"You lot didn't get anyone? Not even my cousin?"
"You mean the tigress?" Gideon snorted. "Fat chance. She and Lestrange were the first out of there. Moody followed them down a secret passage out of the castle. They disapparated right over the border of the estate—all he could do was watch as the tunnel nearly caved in on him."
"I could have told him that would happen," said Cygnus. "You never let her get her head, she'll lead you on a merry dance to hell if you do."
"What's it to you?" asked Gideon.
"Nothing at all. I wash my hands of her, the hellion."
"Very brave, Daddy," said Andromeda.
Bellatrix on the loose…Bellatrix having to answer for herself to Voldemort. Sirius exchanged a glance with Regulus. They were undoubtedly thinking the same thing.
How much would she tell him? She might damn herself in the process. With Bella, it was hard to tell. She had crossed the rubicon the night before…but what lay on the other side of it was less certain.
Sirius pressed Longbottom on the subject of some persons of interest who had been detained in the house after the combatants had fled, which included a few students on holiday—one of which was apparently the son of a high government official likely to be embarrassed by the affair. He caved to Sirius's forcefulness when he realized he wasn't going to get the information he wanted without giving him something.
"—I'm not naming names, persay—but let's just say a certain brother may have been less than lucky when we were picking people up."
"Oh, poor Rab!" said Andromeda. "He never was lucky."
The real reason Frank had come was that he wanted to know who had injured Rabastan Lestrange and Evan Rosier, who apparently had been found when the latter blasted his way out of a secret chamber and nearly collapsed a buttress on them both. Sirius managed to put off Longbottom, but not his paternal grandfather, who could recognize his own son's handiwork in Frank's descriptions of Rosier's extensive injuries, even if the Auror himself could not.
"We'll have to cut him loose if we don't have anything on him." Frank narrowed his eyes. "He's injured—but that's only proof someone attacked him. I imagine whoever did it had a good reason."
"What—exactly would you need?" asked Sirius, glancing at Arcturus. The older man watched him with a perturbing level of interest.
"Proof that he committed a crime. Evidence."
"What if the only proof is someone's word? Like, say—" Sirius tried to lower his voice. "Hypothetically—that he performed an unforgivable on someone. Would that be enough to get him put away?"
"Then—hypothetically—we would need witness testimony."
"In writing—or on the stand, publicly?"
"There likely will be a hearing, private, but the details always leak out—God, Black, don't you want him charged?"
"My father is lying in the other room and he may never wake up—and if it's not a sure bet, I'd just as soon not provoke one of the people who tried to off us last night when he buys his way out of prison."
"If you want to go the Crouch route, and say 'eff off' to due process and throw them all away without a trial, get in line," said Frank, losing his temper. "Hell, maybe you are a candidate for the Auror office. God knows you wouldn't be the first."
Sirius felt himself chastened a little.
"That's not what I said."
Frank looked at him for a long moment—then turned his eyes towards Arcturus. Perhaps he was tracing a resemblance.
"Look, I'm sorry about your father, Black. But I need the facts."
"I need to see Dumbledore first."
"Get in line. Who knows when he'll show up, at any rate." Longbottom rubbed his head and yawned. "Once he does—"
"—I'll give you as much as you need."
Frank clearly didn't believe him, but he put up a good front of pretending to, if for no other reason than that he could see Sirius would not be clear-headed about any of it until he knew more about his father's condition.
"You're wise not to give them everything before you know the lay of the land," observed Arcturus, casually, as he watched Frank cross the room to confer with Gideon. "There's no point in exposing yourself and the family if you don't know the outcome."
"It's not about being pragmatic, it's about actually getting that lunatic locked up."
Even as he said, Sirius knew that he had been thinking just as Arcturus would. Damn the vampire.
"What did Rosier do?"
"It doesn't matter."
"Tell me," Arcturus said, with more force.
Sirius fidgeted under his scrutiny. It wasn't as bad as when Orion looked at him in that way, because he cared far more about his father's good opinion, but being looked at by his grandfather had never exactly been a comfortable prospect.
"Not that I think you actually care, but I'm—fine."
"I'll be the judge of that." Arcturus gave him a shrewd look. "You mentioned an unforgivable. You're still standing, so it can only be one of two."
Sirius opened his mouth to argue, but then he noticed the curious expression on Arcturus's face, and the smart reply died in his throat.
"Yes, well—what's a Crucio or two between old school chums, anyway?"
Arcturus took this news with his signature calm, though his grandson couldn't help but notice the gleam of menace in his eyes—and that for once, it didn't appear to be directed towards him.
"Your father saw them do that to you?" Sirius nodded. "I'm surprised Rosier's still alive."
"So am I, to be honest."
Arcturus and Sirius stared at each other for a long time—a new understanding between them. It was an odd sensation, Sirius thought, to feel camaraderie with a person for whom he had at his best moments only ever felt an awed sort of respect.
The elder Black jerked his head in the direction of the desk, behind which was a door to the ward itself.
"Come with me, whilst no one's looking."
"Why?"
"Because I said so. Besides—do you honestly want to stay in this room with all these people, when your harpy of a mother could return to plague you at any moment?"
He thought about it. He really, as it happened, did not want to stay for that exact reason.
And so, for perhaps the first time in Sirius Black's life, he did what his grandfather told him to do without question.
When Mrs. Malfoy entered the dining room of Malfoy Manor the morning after she had begged off Bellatrix's infernal party, she was a trifle paler than normal. It was nothing to give her father-in-law alarm, however—he being a man of the world and aware in theory (if not in specifics) of the various ailments and vagaries of mood attached to child-bearing.
She would never have confided in him that there was anything amiss, in any case. That was not the sort of relationship she had with Abraxas, who was a full generation older than her own father, and had even more antiquated ideas about expressing emotions than he did.
Lucius had not even knocked on her door. Perhaps he really had trudged through the woods to go to Rodolphus and Bella's castle. Perhaps he was still there. Perhaps he wouldn't come home until New Years.
Perhaps she'd be left alone here, with no friends, sisters or husbands.
She was silently absorbed in these gloomy thoughts for about ten minutes when the sound of a clamor in the front hall roused her from her untouched fruit and Abraxas from his paper. It sounded like the front door had been opened—but whoever had done so had no waited to be let in by a servant, if the echoey complaints of the portraits were to be believed.
The door to the dining room swung open without fanfare.
"I'm sorry for not waiting to be received by your elf. He doesn't seem to be about, and I don't have spare time for niceties."
For a moment Mrs. Malfoy didn't recognize the man who had so rudely barged into the dining room. The voice was familiar, and when she glanced up from her bowl of raspberries into the face she recognized the features as familiar. She had the sudden and violent feeling of having gone back in time. She thought she was looking at her uncle when she was a very small girl.
Then she met his eyes, and he gave her an insolently dismissive look. She veered back into the present with a painful lurch.
"You!"
"Hello, Ciss," said Sirius.
She hadn't seen her cousin in over three years. Sirius was not as she remembered him, a sullen teenager standing in the corner at her wedding looking as displeased as everyone was to see him. He was fully grown now—tall and rather powerfully build, he wore an expression so awful that it struck her momentarily dumb.
Beneath the thin veneer of politeness, she could tell he was very angry—but that was only because she recognized the signs that every member of her father's family were apt to betray on those dangerous occasions when they lost their tempers.
Abraxas slowly sat down his fork.
"I don't believe I've had the pleasure." His eyes gleamed. "You are—?"
He crossed the room in the direction of Abraxas.
"Sirius Black." He bowed, slightly. "I'm Narcissa's cousin."
"He's nothing of the kind! He's a blood traitor who will get out of this house, if he knows what's good for him."
Sirius let out a snort of derisive laughter.
"My mother is your father's sister, Cissy," he said, flatly. "Last I checked that was what we called it. And you needn't worry about me lingering, as I've been sent on an errand by my grandfather and will leave once I've executed it."
Abraxas leaned forward in his chair slightly.
"You're—Orion's son?" Abraxas studied the young man's face with interest. "The elder?"
Sirius nodded, stiffly.
"You look very like him at that age."
It was more a statement of fact than a compliment.
"So I've been told." He reached into his cloak and pulled out a heavy folded parchment. "This is for you. I believe he wants me to wait for an answer, sir."
He handed the parchment over.
"There's no possible way that letter is genuine," said Narcissa, peevishly, as she watched Abraxas take the letter.
"I think your father-in-law probably recognizes the handwriting of his oldest friend," Sirius remarked, leaning against a chair across from her. "Not to mention the seal."
The old gentleman examined the heavy wax seal with mild curiosity—then his flitted back up to Sirius.
"Undoubtedly the genuine article," he remarked.
"The letter or me?" asked Sirius, in a caustic tone of voice.
The ghost of a smile flitted across the old man's face.
"I never had any doubts about you."
Abraxas slit the parchment open. It was only one sheet of parchment. As his eyes moved down the page, his frown deepened. When he looked up, it was with an expression of immense solemnity that he considered his young visitor.
"This is grievous, if true."
"I wish it weren't."
"I take it word has been sent out."
"Everyone of use has been told. I trust my grandfather can rely on your discretion—"
Abraxas waved the letter in the air, as if the request beed not to be mentioned. He considered the young man standing in his dining room with newfound respect.
"I'm very sorry," Abraxas said, at last. "Orion is a good man."
Sirius nodded, swallowing back some feeling.
"The best I know."
"That you say and think as much is a credit to you both."
Abraxas looked over at Narcissa, whose anger and shock had turned to clear alarm.
"It's bad news. I'm afraid your uncle has been attacked, Narcissa." She dropped her spoon. "By Death Eaters. It happened last night. He is currently in St. Mungo's—his condition uncertain. The rest of your family—including your parents—are at the hospital. Arcturus apologizes that no one came to fetch you last night, but I gather that everything happened so fast there was no time to do so."
Narcissa instinctively looked to Sirius—but he was still addressing her father-in-law.
"The rest of the family were all at Cygnus's house and were brought directly—as far as I know most of them are still in their nightclothes."
The blow of these words caused her to sink back into these chairs. Narcissa barely comprehended half of what he'd said. She looked between Abraxas and her cousin.
"I—I don't understand."
"That isn't shocking," said Sirius, with only the barest trace of irony in his voice.
"Your cousin can tell you more—I gather from your grandfather that you and your brother were present to witness this act of villainy?"
Sirius could barely managed a tight-lipped nod. Abraxas shook his head.
"The culprits have not been caught?" Her cousin informed them that Death Eaters had fled the scene and were on the run. "Cowards. They've been overstepping the mark for some time—but this is proof they are bigger fools than they know. Please convey to Arcturus that he and your family have my full support."
He stood up and offered the boy his hand.
"Thank you, Mr. Malfoy." Sirius took his hand. "That will mean a great deal to him."
"Abraxas, my boy. I shall of course respond to his letter immediately," said Malfoy. "Will you eat?"
"I couldn't touch a bite. I have to return to my mother directly—I'll wait in the hallway." He cleared his throat. "Narcissa, can I have a word? Privately."
She stared at him, too bewildered to even glare.
"There is nothing you need say to me, in private or public."
"I wouldn't be so sure of that, Narcissa," said Abraxas, his eyes gleaming slightly. "There is some good news. I believe you are to be congratulated, my dear. Your great plans for your friend seem to have gone off better than you could have imagined. Quite the coup."
There was an awful silence. Narcissa went so pale her face could have blended in with the eggshell wallpaper behind her.
Sirius closed his eyes, as if in physical pain.
"He told you about that." Abraxas lifted his eyebrows. "Given the circumstances, I'm surprised my grandfather thought to mention it."
"It was only in the post-script. No doubt he wished to leaven his ill-tidings with something more…cheerful." He was smiling now. "I gather the match has his support—and your mother's, which is no small feat."
"Well, I believe we have Narcissa to thank for that. She's always been Miss Battancourt's greatest champion where my mother's good's opinion is concerned."
Narcissa's head turned the moment the name left his lips. Her eyes narrowed.
"What do you know about Colette Battancourt?"
She already had the dreadful, horrible feeling that the inking she had been ignoring for over a week could be ignored no longer.
"You should offer your cousin congratulations on his engagement."
"Engaged?" She rounded on him. "You're engaged?"
"If you're surprised, imagine how I feel about it."
"To Colette Battancourt?"
Narcissa stood up, and with a surprisingly unfeminine gracelessness thrust her chair out from the table so hard it toppled over.
"So I guess that answers the question of whether she told you," said Sirius.
"You're surprised, Narcissa," remarked Abraxas, mildly.
"I am. I'm shocked. I'd be less surprised to hear he was engaged to a manticore."
"That's hardly a flattering comparison," said Sirius. "Miss Battancourt's at least as pretty as a manticore."
"Then—she didn't mention this to you," said Abraxas, passing over their cousinly repartee with the good breeding that would have never acknowledged the lack of it in someone else.
"She didn't say a word," said Mrs. Malfoy, faintly.
"That makes two of us," muttered Sirius.
"Odd. You seemed thick as thieves." Abraxas folded his hands. "Still, even if it is a shock, you ought to at least offer your cousin some congratulations."
"I'm not offended, sir. Narcissa's only disappointed her plans didn't exactly come off the way she hoped they would."
"What do you know of my plans?" Narcissa sniffed.
"It's obvious you wanted her for Regulus."
"Who told you that?"
"She told me herself. This is your fault, you know, Ciss. You taught her all the feminine arts too well—and you pressed her suit with my mother to great effect. You can hardly blame her for aiming higher than a second son."
"A little brotherly competition never did either party harm, in my experience," said Abraxas, amused.
"It wasn't exactly like that, sir. I merely thought she could do better than Regulus." His lip turned up. "And apparently, so did she."
Mr. Malfoy laughed.
"You don't mince words, do you, Black?"
"Why dissimulate when you can tell the truth? It's so much more interesting."
"I couldn't agree more. I find your attitude refreshing—so few of your generation appreciate the value of directness."
"Surely your son must be one of the exceptions, sir."
The smile dropped from Abraxas Malfoy's face.
"Why would you say that?"
"I simply can't imagine him failing to live up to the Malfoy name." Sirius bowed. "Your family is so known for its—candor."
Abraxas's eyes glinted, and he pressed his thin mouth into a humorless smile.
"You'd better see to your cousin, Narcissa—" Her father-in-law had summoned the elf to get him a quill and parchment. "Take him in the library and get him something to drink to revive his spirits. This letter will take me some time to compose."
Narcissa looked as though she'd swallowed poison. She marched out of the dining room—her cousin slouched after her, looking even less enthused at the prospect.
Still—it had to be done. And the both of them were nothing if not creatures of duty.
"Are you alone out here?"
Regulus looked up from the tiled floor of the waiting room and into the kindly but tired face of Fawcett, a man he had known longer than he could remember.
He looked around the empty hall.
"I think so."
The distant chimes of a church bell told him it was almost breakfast. Regulus hadn't even realized he was alone.
"Everyone went off to get clothes and things—my mother's with her parents at Grimmauld Place. Andromeda's husband was going to take their daughter to his mother's house before coming back, and she went with Cygnus to tend to Aunt Druella. Potter went with the Auror, perhaps his wife did too—but I'm sure they'll be back eventually."
"What about Sirius and Arcturus?"
Regulus frowned.
"They sneaked off somewhere together."
Fawcett let out a small chuckle.
"That's a frightening alliance to think of. I shudder to think of what the two of them could accomplish if they put their minds to it."
"I'm sure it won't last," said Regulus—though his voice betrayed doubt.
"Perhaps they're too alike," observed Fawcett. "…So it's just you."
"I can go fetch them, if you—"
"It's fine. It's just as well it's only you." The healer sat down beside him. "It's you I wanted to speak to, Regulus."
"About Father?"
There had not been a change in Orion's condition—for better or worse. Fawcett wanted to know if Regulus had noticed any change in his father's habits or behavior over the past year. He tried to remember as best he could—when he had started to notice there was something off about his father, that he had slowed down, that he seemed even more abstracted and inward-facing than normal.
To talk about his father felt like looking in a mirror, sometimes.
"He spends a lot more time in his study than he used to," said Regulus.
"Does he still tinker with alchemy?"
"I—really don't know what he does in there."
Regulus felt a stab of pain remembering the many months of creeping up the stairs, knowing the light was on under the study door and walking past it without even saying goodnight. How many dinners had he missed since moving back home?
He was nearly as absent a figure as Sirius.
"What does that have to do with his illness?"
"Maybe nothing—maybe everything. There's a condition—it's rare, but it's something I've come across that fits the symptoms your brother described. It occasionally crops up in pureblood wizards—a recessive trait."
"What is it?"
"A sickness of the blood—magical people are more susceptible to the effects of certain alchemical properties. Exposure to these properties can weaken the heart over time—the symptoms are not unlike angina in Muggles. It's properly known as Topcliffe's Disease, after the wizard who discovered it, but more commonly known as—"
"—the Curse of the Broken-Hearted."
Fawcett blinked at him, surprised.
"You've heard of it?"
"Not—really. I mean, I was just doing some family research, and I stumbled upon a letter about the death of my great-great uncle. That's what the healers thought he had."
Fawcett frowned—but he didn't seemed surprised.
"That would suggest that it runs in the Black family. If that's true, then it's likely I'm right."
"…Why is it called a 'broken-heart' curse?"
"Because of what emotional shock does to people who suffer from it. They can live for years with it—quite naturally, for the decline in health is slow—and one bad shock will make the heart seize up and literally freeze. It's usually fatal."
"What—sort of shocks?"
"Everything you associate with heartbreak. The loss of a lover, a disappointment—the death of a loved one."
Regulus went pale and looked back down at the floor.
"In a strange way Orion's lucky he was only hit with a curse. If he'd seen you or your brother struck down, he'd probably be dead already."
"That's the sort of thing that would kill him?"
"Almost certainly."
Fawcett stood up. Regulus grasped his left hand with his right to keep it from shaking.
"Can he—will he…?"
"Survive? That's difficult to say. We're doing what we can for him. There's been break-throughs in recent years, ways of treating the underlying condition to make it manageable, but all of that will come to nothing if…"
"If what?"
"If he doesn't wake up." Fawcett sighed. "Sirius was right to criticize me for nothing seeing Orion's symptoms for what they were. Your father has never taken the care he ought to for his own health. I should have insisted he come to see me at regular intervals. If he's unconscious for too long his heart will slow to a dangerous pace—and then it will just be a matter of time before he slips away—"
"So wake him up!"
"I can't. This disease is as much a condition of the will as the blood. The only thing that can wake him up now is his own desire to live."
"What would be the proper motivation?"
Fawcett's smile turned sad.
"Regulus—he has the all the motive he needs. It's a matter of him realizing it."
The hand on his forehead was cool.
"You shouldn't be awake."
He opened his eyes. It took him a moment to recognize the room, and it was the chandelier that did it. The moment he saw that enameled gold against royal blue wallpaper he knew both the place and the year.
And it was the bedroom at the top of the stairs, the largest bedroom. He recognized the silk silver hangings of the four-poster that were drawn back, but just visible from the periphery of his somewhat blinkered vision. This wasn't his room. At least not anymore.
…Was it?
"Well, I couldn't sleep forever, could I?"
Her face came into view. Large brown eyes, delicate features, dominated by a rather obscene set of diamond earrings and matching tiara. A tight, wan smile.
Mama.
"How long was I out for?"
"Oh, Orion—what does it matter? You're awake now."
He had the strangest sensation of déjà vu. A girl…who could change her hair color at will popped into his mind.
"Where's Dora?" he asked, not quite knowing the reason why.
"Dora?" His mother repeated, puzzled. "You mean your father's cousin? She's not here, darling. She was married ages ago, remember? She lives in Exeter, now."
"That's not what I—"
"Don't try to get up now, dear." She sat down on the edge of the bed and pushed him, gently but firmly, back down. "You've been ill."
"I know that, Mama!" Orion snapped, though he didn't feel weakness at all in that moment—only a sense of profound comfort. "I…remember."
That he had been ill was the only thing he remembered. He had a sensation that there was something urgent we needed to do, some engagement he had to make. The details were slipping away, like a dream did in the first few seconds of conscious lucidity.
Not that Orion dreamed much.
The sense of urgency in the back of his mind remained, like a dull buzzing of some insect in his ear. What was it—?
"Oh, I'd do as she says, 'Rion." The silhouette of a man in the corner of the room turned the pages of a book. "Mother knows best, and all that."
Orion gave a withering look in the direction of the corner.
"Is that a philosophy that you have ever lived by?"
The silhouette laughed and closed the book with a snap.
"We're not talking about me, are we?"
He lumbered to his feet and stepped into the light of the candles by the bed. There was a chair beside the bed—he stood up and took it.
"I've never seen you looking so well, Orion," said Alphard Black, with a smile.
"I could say the same about you," Orion replied, his voice dry.
It was true. He'd seen Alphard younger, fatter, more jovial, slyer—but he had never seen Alphard more perfectly himself than at this moment. He couldn't explain it, he only knew that he would never feel as though he had ever really seen his cousin before that moment.
"Thank you." Orion sat up again—but Alphard didn't bother to advise him not to, though he watched with a bemused and detached air of amusement. "What are you in such a hurry for?"
Orion stopped struggling with the blankets.
"I don't know." It hit him. "I don't even know how I got here."
"Don't you?" Alphard picked up the book and started perusing it again. "I think you could jog your memory if you really wanted to."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Just that—you know, exerting yourself has never exactly been your line, has it, 'Rion?"
Alphard had never been a malicious man, but he had a gift for saying the truth in the most simple and cutting way imaginable.
"Is it the sort of thing that requires exertion, remembering?" Orion looked over at his mother, who was still smoothing out the creases of his bed linens. "Am I so far gone?"
"Not as far gone as you might yet be," said Alphard, with a mysterious smile.
Not liking mystery, as a general rule, and having always found Alphard's tricks and subtle wordplay irritating, he turned to his mother for comfort. Reliable, slightly absent-minded Melania.
"Where's Papa?"
Melania shook her head and smiled.
"Come now, 'Rion, my dear—you would know far better than I where your father is."
His mother shook her head and frowned, in that slightly vague and abstracted way she'd always had in life—
And then it hit him. In life.
"I can't be here."
Melania put her hand against his forehead again. There was a distant sound of voices below—a party, with some indeterminable number of guests.
"But you are, Orion."
"But if I'm here, and you're here—that means…"
Alphard raised an eyebrow.
"It would suggest a pattern, yes."
Alphard was so matter-of-fact, so unaffected—Orion felt a stab of annoyance, though it was a purely intellectual sensation, as it didn't seem that his body was capable of feeling anything like that wherever he was now.
Imagine speaking about such a thing with nonchalance! Alphard might've treated the circumstances with a bit of gravity.
"Well, this—isn't exactly what you're thinking." He looked around the room, curiously. "I mean, imagine if it was. A bit of an anti-climax, wouldn't you say?"
"You mean I'm not—?"
"No, not yet. This is more of a way-station than a final destination. For everyone it's different. For you, it's apparently—" Alphard looked around. "—Christmas, 1953. Why is that?"
"But I can't stay here," said Orion, dodging the question.
"Of course you can! All you need do is go back to sleep."
And he would never again have a sleepless night, that was what Alphard meant, though he didn't say it.
"What about my—my obligations?"
"Orion, old man." He gave his cousin a look of reproof—or was it pity? "I think the fact that you're here is rather proof that you have met your obligations."
There was a certain bald, on the nose logic to this that he couldn't argue against. He suddenly remembered the last thing he'd done—it wasn't an exertion, but it wasn't the sort of thing your mind would recall, unless it had to. A flash of light—Regulus—moving on instinct, before he could even think of what and why—
"Alphard is right. If there's anyone who's earned a good long rest, it's you," said Melania. She pushed back the hair on his forehead—her skin was cool and comforting. He supposed this was what his father had meant, about her spoiling them.
He looked between his cousin and his mother. Both of them were smiling at him, much as they had when he had known them.
They were the only two members of his family who never demanded anything of anyone, and yet their combined force—or his feeble will—made the prospect of lying down and never getting up again more enticing than anything he'd ever been tempted with in his life.
"But what about—the—my family?"
"What about them?" asked Alphard, flatly.
"I have a wife, you will recall."
"It would be hard to forget my only sister," said Alphard.
"You know Walburga," said Melania, in a nervous twitter. "She's always been so—so independent."
"And Burgie's used to getting on without you," Alphard pointed out. "You've been sleepwalking through the last decade of your marriage anyway, haven't you?"
He couldn't muster the irritation to argue the point. There was nothing to argue, it was perfectly true.
And had Walburga really ever needed him?
"Well, there's—there's the boy."
"I'm certain Reggie will be fine," Melania said, gently. "You made sure of it—I'm sure you did."
"How can you be sure of anything?"
"Because I know you," she said, more insistently. "You never leave anything undone. You're very thorough."
Thorough. What an epitaph.
"Of course, there's Papa."
Melania brow wrinkled, in that delicate and feminine way she had had about her.
"Well, yes, dear, I can't…I don't suppose he would be best pleased. But you know…it isn't really his decision, you know."
And I wouldn't be around to hear his strictures.
He lay back on the pillows. Perhaps they were right. And he was so tired.
"There's…the other one," he said. His eyes were so heavy. "The other boy."
"Him? What's he to you?" Alphard's voice turned sly. "I thought you'd cast him off."
Another stab of purely intellectual irritation.
"That's not what happened."
"No, I suppose not. He ran off, the scamp." Alphard tossed his book aside. "I always liked your eldest boy. Such an independent spirit—he reminds me of myself at that age."
"I don't know why. He's nothing like you were at that age," Orion frowned. "He has a sense of family responsibility. You were a conscienceless dilettante who cared for nothing but his own pleasures."
"And that I remained to the end. I like to think I was occasionally of service to my friends—"
"—Not to your family. Not to your own sister."
"It's not like you to hold a grudge."
"I don't. She does."
"Poverty wouldn't have driven him back into his mother's arms. He's always gone his own way. He's the one who needs you least of all, by his own profession."
Yes. Yes, he couldn't argue with that.
"You know what would've driven him back."
"Yes."
He'd discovered it too late. That was always the way of life. By the time you knew, it no longer mattered.
"So, that's it," said Alphard.
"…I suppose so."
They sat in silence for a long time. The distant noises of the party faded, like the volume on a wireless being slowly dimmed before being switched off. He was still tired, but his eyes remained open, staring at the ceiling of his bedroom. In the present there were still red and gold trimmings and magazine cut-outs of motorbikes stuck all over this room. It seemed odd to be here without the trappings of his wayward successor—so like him in looks and unlike him everything else.
"You never told me why," said Alphard, in a would-be casual voice.
"Why what?"
"Why—Christmas, 1953, of all days?"
"Oh. That." Orion blinked up at the ceiling. "This is—the most important day of my life."
"Is it? What happened today?"
"This is the day I asked your sister to marry me."
"You asked her to marry you more than once—"
"—It's the day she accepted."
"Ah. I didn't remember it was Christmas, somehow." He thought for a moment. "By why then? Not your wedding day?"
"No."
"Or when the children were born?"
"…No."
"Do you know why it's today right now, Orion?"
The answer came to him, not in a blinding flash of insight, but slowly, like the sun peaking over the horizon. He remembered his honeymoon in Scotland, and the mornings he had woken up early, unable to sleep because of his own effervescent happiness and not wanting to wake his new bride, so he left her to dream while he wandered the hills until dawn.
"I consider this the day my life really began."
He sat up in bed. His mother was standing at the door, looking at him with a sad sort of wistful smile. She seemed to be on the verge of leaving—but she was waiting for something.
For him.
"They could get on without me, Alphard. Very well. But the deuce of the thing is—"
"What?"
Alphard was staring at him with a keener look of interest than he'd ever granted Orion in life.
"If it's all the same to you," he said, with growing sarcasm. "I would just as soon they didn't."
His cousin stood up.
"Oh, it's nothing to me, old boy." Alphard smiled. "Nothing at all."
Orion woke up.
Still alive! Thank you for reading.
