Chapter 31: The children would remain
The candle by Sirius' bed flared up, emitting a low whine. The wizard blinked awake, groaned for a moment, and stuck his hand in his hair to try and see something in the dim light.
His flat's bedroom looked emptier than usual – which made sense, because he'd brought some of his things to the manor, right. Living with the grandparents with nearly twenty kids who might as well pass as his and Regulus' younger siblings at first glance, at least for most of them. Absolutely normal, get up from bed and deal with it.
After the incident at the Liones' and his run-in with Evan Rosier, Sirius hadn't been in the mood to go back to everyone else, especially as they might have still been awake. Living with people meant they noticed when you came back looking off – and before long, they wanted answers, explanations, heart-to-hearts.
Sirius rarely ever did that with James – it helped that James wasn't the most perceptive with such matters – he wasn't about to start with relative strangers. Even if they were supposed to be his children.
That aside: he'd elected to sleep back at his Picadilly flat, instead, only dropping a word through the floo so that no one ended up thinking he'd died or something. Now, that meant he was alone at five o'clock in the morning, having slept maybe six hours top, which wasn't too bad.
He had to wash up quickly, get clothed, eat something. Then he could use the little time he'd have left before needing to go to think back on the situation with Rosier. Here in the flat, unlike at the manor... Sirius could get some real time alone with no risk of being interrupted.
Uh – as he splashed some warm water on his face, Sirius stared at his reflection in the mirror. That was a thought: he could continue to use the flat as his personal study, away from the kids and his grandparents – and their opinions – and the risk of letting an order letter out to be read by whoever might wander up. The other members of the Order of the Phoenix would then be able to continue sending him mail here, should he manage to set up an alarm to warn him back at the manor when someone tried to contact him. And if he needed to take notes or store documentation he didn't want everyone to know about...
Yeah. A home office away from home, that could work.
Brushing his hair was fortunately not much of a problem this morning, and before long Sirius was looking for one of the two auror trainee uniforms he'd left behind and realizing he'd taken all his good pairs of shoes to the manor. The ones he'd been wearing yesterday evening weren't regulation-approved – though they did crush an asshole's hand like nobody's business – and he only had the old pair he'd worn back during phase 1... which had gone through a few things, including what could generously be called a swamp hike of four hours. Magic could repair a lot of things, and technically his shoes were a sight better than they'd been after that "hike", but they weren't quite...
Anyway. Lots of change in his life meant as many things to reorganize: of course Sirius hadn't thought of everything on the first day. He'd make do with those shoes for today.
Time for breakfast, and...
Wait. Was that light under the door? Sirius could only see it because he'd just lighted the bathroom and left the door open, keeping his bedroom in relative darkness; on the other side was the living room – one bedroom and bathroom, toilets, one living room, one kitchen and one small additional room he used to stock stuff and brew potions if needed. He hadn't left a light on last night, had he?
Sirius headed back to his night table, fishing for the wand he usually left there until it was time to leave for work – not everyone used magic to cook or fetch things across their place, and honestly what was the point when you were only going to eat cornflakes with milk and blueberries?
He could have left a light on yesterday night. Or not.
When he opened the door, Sirius could only frown at the teenaged girl sitting in his armchair by the hearth, blinking vaguely at a magazine under the yellow light of the nearest floor lamp.
"Shouldn't you be sleeping? It's five fifteen in the morning. Also, what are you doing here?"
Marianne's freckled head started slightly. She put down her magazine, seemed to gather her wits – she did look tired, and it was early in the morning – and gave Sirius a tenuous smile.
"I was with you and Elizabeth and, uh, Almaric, when we went to get Juliet the other day. We stopped by on the way back, you've let us into the floo wards, remember?"
Sirius squinted and snapped his fingers, lighting up the lamp above his dining table.
The sixteen-year-old looked away from the new source of light like someone who hadn't slept enough – or perhaps, hadn't slept at all.
She added:
"I saw the note you threw through the floo yesterday evening, and I wanted... I needed to talk to you. Before you left for work and the others got up."
Sirius put his wand on the table, unnecessary as it had become.
Marianne got up and wandered over, still avoiding the light.
"Also, I woke up at three and couldn't go back to sleep."
"Ah."
That sounded more like it. Something had been working the girl up, and she'd wanted away – from everything, from worrying about everyone else and never about herself, she'd said she was in Hufflepuff and Sirius was really not surprised here – and had, obviously, taken the only option available: Sirius' flat, complete with one of her problems, too.
Because he didn't doubt he was part of the problem. Dad, not dad, the reason they'd all been pulled here from their lives and families. Whether those lives had even been real, if they'd existed at all or if they'd only been flickers of possibilities in the strands of times, well – it didn't matter, to them.
Honestly, Sirius was surprised none of the kids had broken down by now. They'd lost absolutely everything, only to be thrown in the middle of a civil war they had only ever heard about.
Then again, they were his – which meant they were Blacks, and that did tend to stop most of the emotional problems, while causing other kinds of personality-related issues.
The door frame – sans door, because who needed that, really – to the kitchen was lighted up, too, but Marianne had a glass of water by the armchair she'd been in, so it made sense.
She could have turned the light off, though.
Still, Sirius didn't drift off to find breakfast quite yet. He had some time before he needed to leave, and the girl was here already, he might as well hear her out.
That said: for all that he'd barely sent a note to the manor, he also had told someone that he wasn't heading back for the night. If Marianne had just come here on her own...
"Did you tell anyone you were coming to my flat?"
The teen's mouth twitched and her eyes moved towards the kitchen.
"I... didn't come alone?"
Oh. Oh no.
Sirius finally bolted for the kitchen – and not to look for breakfast.
"What in Salazar's name is this contraption, young man?"
Of all the possible people, he found his grandfather eyeing his fridge disdainfully – two of the cupboards were also open, revealing the general emptiness in terms of food stocks. Enough for breakfast, two pasta packages, a small blueberry bag, soup-adjacent condiments but no vegetables except for one tomato and two carrots, he'd have to go and get some more...
Mostly Sirius ate out, either with his friends or down the street. Within ten minutes of walking, he could find one little restaurant held by a mixed family stuck between two big and expensive shops, two muggle take-out joints and the Hard Rock Café that he liked.
Arcturus, meanwhile, was giving him an unimpressed look: the fridge was definitely the reason for it. Sirius answered with a flat stare of his own.
"That's a fridge, if you must know. Muggle cold box. If you even know what a cold box is."
His grandfather huffed:
"Melania might be the one using the kitchen, child, but I do know what goes in those rooms. Why in our magic did you decide to get a muggle cold box for? It can't work any better than our wizarding ones."
"It's about the same, and I don't use magic in the kitchen so I just went with the easier option, no need to check on the enchanting runes. You might have noticed the electric lamps, too. Don't you throw a spell at any of those, they'll short out and stop working."
"Which is why we don't use muggle appliances, Salazar's sake! Half their newer inventions are weak to any magical interferences and you know it."
Sirius made a face, slightly exasperated – who knew old wizards like his grandfather were even up and awake at this hour – and opened the fridge to grab the little milk he had left.
Arcturus wasn't wrong, per se: a lot of muggle stuff, especially what ran on electricity, tended to dislike the proximity of magic. It was possible, of course, to find ways around that, but it was always a trial-and-error process that took a lot of time and knowledge, and half the time there was a magical equivalent available so people just didn't bother.
Still. His kitchen, his rules.
"Which is fine, because I don't use magic in the kitchen! Now, how in hell did you get in my flat?"
Marianne made sense – he'd changed the wards for her and the other two three days ago – but his grandfather? Sirius would remember it, if he'd ever invited the old man in, let alone if he'd granted him floo access.
Milk bottle, cornflakes, blueberries. A bowl and spoon. He could head back to the dining table – where Marianne was waiting – shut off the light and let Arcturus decide if he wanted to stand in the darkened kitchen to gawk at a fridge he would barely see anymore.
The older wizard did follow him out of the kitchen, looking much too prim for the early hour.
"Sirius, this is a Black property, and I am Lord Black, not just your grandfather."
Sirius took a moment to stare at the wizard – putting down his food on the table out of habit – and shook his head.
"I see what you're getting at, but I bought this flat with my personal money, Alphard's inheritance."
It wasn't the same as the four ancestral dwellings of the Black family. Grimmauld Place had been his childhood home, true, but like for the other three, it belonged to the House of Black itself – and therefore, its lord had all control over it. The same was true for Silent Castle, where his other grandparents had lived most of their married life, or for the Tour Noire where Uncle Cygnus' wife still lived her widowhood. Anyone from the family – not disowned – could demand of the family head a place to stay within those grounds, no matter what the current inhabitants thought on the matter.
Places like Sirius, however? Individual houses and flats and other properties were not on that list, and would not become part of the Black ancestral dwellings unless there wasn't a chain of succession after death. Alphard's flat in Oxford had been left to Andromeda – while Sirius had gotten the money – which was how she could now afford a house of her own.
Just another reason for her father to be pissed at his dead brother.
Arcturus' face got a bit pinched as he sat on the other side of the table.
"Fine. I had... someone... check out the place when you bought it. So I knew the address, I apparated down the street and Marianne let me in."
Sirius squinted at the old man before diving into his cereals.
"...That's what you meant by 'Black property, Black lord': your spying habits."
"It isn't spying when you have a duty to see to the well-being of an entire family."
Sirius didn't answer that – he disagreed with the definition of spying, sure, but not with the sentiment behind it – and took note that he might want to add more security on the door itself, if he was to use this place as an office for everything Order-related. Of course, he'd already put down wards so that people couldn't just enter from outside, but obviously he hadn't thought of someone already being inside and letting others in.
Well. It might be almost five thirty in the morning and he hadn't expected to deal with his grandfather right now, but. Better it happens now than for something he'd regret later – like a Death Eater getting in.
Now he knew.
Halfway through his cereal bowl, Sirius glanced back at Marianne – who had been patiently waiting, watching.
"So, what was it? You wanted to talk about something, didn't you?"
The girl might have liked it better without her great-grandfather hovering, but well. She'd bought him there to begin with, so.
Marianne didn't really hesitate, even though she took her time to formulate her sentence in what she probably thought the most appropriate way:
"Lamia and I had decided not to tell you about this yet, but I started wondering if perhaps..."
She lingered at the end of that sentence, looking for something in his face.
Sirius did his best not to look like he only cared about his cereals right now.
Mostly he raised his eyebrows really high.
"It's about mom. About... Adhara. I can guess the conclusions you drew, when you heard me and Adrienne and Procyon were her kids, not yours, and you aren't wrong, but that's not all there is to it. We..."
His grandfather was just as attentive and willing not to interrupt, not even to ask why exactly Marianne had mentioned Lamia, the oldest of all the children who also wasn't one of her siblings, as having a say in whatever was coming.
The teenager took a deep breath and looked down at the table.
"We grew up with Lamia and the others. Mom was there, of course, and Uncle Regulus too, but so were you. Lamia, Alastor, Elizabeth and Aldebaran... We always considered each other cousins. Mom got... The you I know, he was in an incident with an experimental machine, years from now, something that could peer at the threads of time. It... brought Mom into existence, even if she wasn't supposed to be alive in that... in our world."
Arcturus' brow furrowed, but Sirius didn't really notice – could only stare.
Marianne looked up from the table to finish:
"I don't have the details. None of us were born then, and it's not like Mom and Uncle Sirius kept talking about it all the time, so... Still. It does sound like what happened with us and I thought, maybe you'd like to know Mom never disappeared."
There was something uncertain in the girl's eyes, a waver in her tone, and Sirius could only try and make sense of all this.
What Marianne meant there was that, even though the unspeakables had been sure of nothing about the future of the children, there was a precedent – not here, not in this time, but a precedent still.
Sirius' own stillborn twin.
It wasn't confirmation yet, but it could mean the children would remain, too.
When he spoke next, there was a strangled quality to his voice:
"...Why didn't you want to tell me?"
Marianne's answering smile was a bit painful and quite tentative.
"We thought it might be... cruel. For you to know that there's a story in which you and mom got to know each other, even if it didn't start that way."
The simple idea of Adhara – not just the knowledge of her life lost to his, not the vague illusion of a girl who looked and sounded and felt so much like him – being present in any capacity – somewhere else than stuck as an echo inside his soul and dreams – was entirely alien.
Sirius didn't know what to make of it. What to say. What to do.
His bowl of cereals, almost finished but not quite, was left forgotten in front of him, and he didn't think he could stomach anything else even if he still had the mind to right then.
Marianne's eyes fell back on the wood of the table, once more – but she forced herself to look up.
"...And, maybe... I think no one wanted you to be disappointed. That you got us, me and Adrienne and Procyon and our cousins and all the others, but not Mom."
...Okay.
That he could answer. That was something he could deal with, something Marianne very obviously needed to hear, something that didn't only involve the twin-he-never-had.
"I'm not disappointed. I didn't... You have to understand, I didn't expect any of this. Not your arrival, and not Adhara's either. She was... I never..."
Sirius closed his eyes a moment. This was difficult, of course it was, and that was the reason the girl had roped Grandfather Arcturus into allowing her – and none of the others – to come to London before six in the morning.
Marianne might not believe the others would agree with her telling him – she might think they'd fear the consequences, too.
He could understand why.
"Adhara has never been supposed to be someone in my life. Of course I'd want to meet her, of course I'm curious as to what it'd be like, and of course I don't like the whole... cursed twins thing the Blacks have going on, and some people might say I have a guilt complex about Adhara if they knew. But you are here, you and your siblings and all the others who are also your brothers and sisters if not quite in the usual way, and you are the ones I'm getting to know now. There are eighteen of you, I don't have the time to bemoan a sister I never knew."
Well. Not over the children's presence, at least. Him feeling shitty about his twin sister wasn't anything new, but the kids had nothing to do with it.
No matter how it could look, this wasn't a clear-cut Adhara-or-the-children situation. Sirius hadn't had a choice, hadn't expected an outcome, hadn't decided he'd rather have one than the others.
Also, he had more interesting things to do than blame his own kids – however unusual the way their existence had come to be – for his lack of a sister. They hadn't killed her themselves, so.
"You know what, Marianne? I'm going to have to leave for work, but grandfather will take you back to the Manor and when they get up, you can tell everyone the truth. Tell them I don't mind, and more importantly, tell all those who don't know anything that they won't disappear into thin air. I'm sure they are worried, too."
The girl's tension seemed to waft out of her entire frame.
"...Sorry. We hadn't even thought of that."
Sirius stood up and passed a hesitant hand over her brown hair.
"It's alright. Everything changed suddenly, no one expects you to think about everything and handle everyone's problems. I only ask that you grant us, me, your great-grandparents, the same consideration."
"...Thanks."
He gave the teenager a last look and winced:
"And maybe go back to sleep when you get home, before doing all that. Everyone needs to sleep."
Sirius would know. He, in particular, got very, very unpleasant when he drifted from "didn't get enough sleep" to "hasn't slept well in a week" – and by that, he meant the Black version of unpleasant, which usually veered into inhumane territory.
No one wanted that.
Sirius took his bowl back into the kitchen, washed it quickly in the sink and came back to gather his stuff for the day.
"Alright. Hum, don't take it badly, but please don't come around the flat for no reason when I'm not there. I'll be back at the usual hour, maybe we'll try to do something with everyone again? Sorry, I don't have an idea yet, but I'll try to think of something."
His grandfather shook his head.
"No need to, Melania is taking the children to Diagon Alley for the project they decided on yesterday evening, they'll be busy all day, most likely."
"Right, the cloaks and t-shirts with stickers?"
Marianne nodded.
"We settled on embroidery, actually, Great-grandmother will show us the stitching spell and we'll do a common piece she'll replicate on each cloak for us! And, uh, do you want something too?"
Sirius blinked as he put his wand in his sleeve holster.
"...Maybe not a full cloak, but if you want... I don't know, a scarf with the same design? Something I could wear with my robes and my shirts alike, or else I probably won't be wearing it much..."
Marianne gave Sirius a hug right before she used the floo back to Black Manor, surprising him a bit – and Arcturus allowed himself a tight smile before he disappeared into green flames.
Sirius still didn't quite know what to make of Marianne's revelation, but... Things were progressing, somehow. His relationship with the children were taking shape, ever so slowly.
But, for now: time to grab his own handful of floo powder and head to the Auror Office.