fic: things are not what they seem (3/3) (sirius, narcissa, walburga, bellatrix, andromeda, g)
Title: Things Are Not What They Seem (3/3)
Author: V.M. Bell
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to JKR.
Summary: Deceit and manipulation are storied traditions of the Black family, employed with equal dexterity by all, even by those who seek the truth.
Rating: G
Characters: Sirius, Narcissa, Walburga, Bellatrix, Andromeda
Word Count 4,573 (13,547 total)
Author's Notes: Originally written for lareinenoire at springtime_gen. I owe an infinite amount of gratitude to the mods, who were so patient with me as I scrambled to finish my assignment. And, of course, many thanks for my beta alexajohnson, who endured my late-night flailing-filled e-mails, held my proverbial hand, and gave me the world's best encouragement when I needed it. All comments, concrit, and reviews weclome.
Part 2
--
"Sirius, you're awfully restless today, aren't you?"
"Sorry?"
"I said, you're awfully restless today."
Sirius buries his hands more deeply into his pockets and continues burrowing through the crowds in Diagon Alley. His eyes dart from one side of the street to another, as if, miraculously, he could find an eleven-year-old boy-sized hole through which to escape. Of course, he is rather restless today: for him, it is by far the most important day of perhaps the entire summer, and, still, he has no plan, no sleight of hand that might trick Cissy into believing that he is still at her side when he is not. The afternoon wears on and shadows lengthen; there must be a way.
Instead, he slows his pace down until he is walking alongside her. If he cannot slip away, then, at least, he can draw her attention away from himself. "Where did you get that from?" he asks innocuously.
"What?"
"That necklace. Isn't it from the cabinet that Mother has, with all of the Black heirlooms in it?"
"Is it? I'm not sure, but your mother did give it to me." Sirius makes a noncommittal noise. Cissy, wearing a concerned look, stops and pulls him aside. "Is something the matter?"
Truthfully, nothing is the matter. Sirius has never cared for Mother's precious treasures, polished to perfection by Kreacher on a daily basis, but dissembling is too easy. Silently, he allows his frown to deepen.
"Oh, Sirius," Cissy says breathlessly, laying a hand upon his shoulder, "I didn't mean to upset you. Oh, I'm so sorry -- maybe I should give it back to her, do you think? Would that make you feel better?"
Sirius turns toward Cissy, her expression quivering with concern, and he begins to suspect that something is amiss. Perhaps it is only natural that Cissy would have interpreted his words as an indication that he resented being overlooked in favor of his cousin, but he has not said a single thing of import. He had merely asked her where she obtained a particular piece of jewelry, a question that should not have provoked such a reaction.
As he studies her, though, he begins to suspect that something has been amiss all along. Why should Cissy have taken such care to be attentive toward him when they had long ceased to matter to one another? Perhaps she is trying to make up for Dromeda's absence -- but he shakes his head, recalling that, when he greeted her for the first time this summer, she had responded with apathy? How is it that she, aloofness epitomized, managed to completely alter her behavior toward him within only a few weeks?
"Sirius?" she prompts, giving him a small shake.
But he pushes her hand away and steps back. "Cissy, I don't know what you've been playing at this whole time, but I'll see you later, okay?"
Not bothering to wait for a response, he dashes into the stream of pedestrians, his head swiveling about as he searches for a sign that will direct him to Knockturn Alley. Behind him, he hears Cissy calling his name, her dulcet tones crackling with desperation, and, for the first time since he and James populated the Slytherin common room with singing chickens on the night before exams began, Sirius feels free and unshackled, submitting himself to the glare of sunlight and the still summer air tugging at his hair.
Slowing down, he veers toward a narrow offshoot of Diagon Alley. He pauses at the intersection, placing a hand against a nearby wall as he catches his breath. Still panting, he tilts his head upward, surveying the rooftops of the buildings that line the path before him. It is much quieter here. At this far end of Diagon Alley, there are few shops, and, as he peers down the crooked alleyway, he can detect no sound, no movement, no proof that human life has ever graced this part of the earth.
Steeling his shoulders, he begins his walk down Knockturn Alley, staying as close to the curb as possible. The buildings on either side of him seem to arch inward, creaking as their shadows converge into one. Their windows are shuttered, and the sweat on the back of his neck prickles uncomfortably, but he has already agreed to Dromeda's proposition. He must see her.
"Who are you?"
He almost yelps at the sound of the question and plunges his hand into his pocket, searching for his wand, only to remember a second later that underage wizards are not allowed to perform magic. He looks up: a woman dressed in black robes is standing by her front door, a striped tabby cat resting in her arms.
"I'm -- I'm Sirius Black," he says.
" 'Black'?" she repeats. Sirius nods earnestly, never so happy to have been born to his parents. "Then are you welcome here."
"Great. Um, I'm looking for a place -- the Three Vampires?"
"That way." She gestures toward an indeterminate point farther down the road. "In the square."
Staring at the ground, Sirius hurries away as quickly as he can, thankful to have survived that encounter. After a few minutes of walking, the road widens, merging, as the witch had told him, into a central square. It is livelier here, but the fountain in the middle of the square does not work. Other people pass him by, travelling in small groups, but nobody speaks very much, and he wonders why Knockturn Alley is infested with secrets. He should not be surprised. Sirius remembers that he used to accompany Mother when she came here with unexplained errands or to meet with undisclosed people, but that was many years ago, and there is a reason he has never returned to Knockturn Alley of his own volition.
He does not have to look far to find the Three Vampires. It is the only prominent café in the square, and the tables outside are almost entirely filled with customers, many of them sipping a drink that looks suspiciously like blood or some other comparable liquid. Wrinkling his nose somewhat, he edges toward the café, wondering how Dromeda might be found. You'll know how to spot me, she had written, but, as his eyes scan the Three Vampires' clientele, he realizes that he actually doesn't.
Then his eyes catch something. A witch is sitting alone at the table farthest from the café's entrance. She is holding a newspaper and turns the pages with measured slowness, but that is not what draws his attention. Her wand is tucked behind her ear, and, instantly, Sirius recalls the time when Dromeda walked into 12 Grimmauld Place many summers ago, wand balanced precariously against her earlobe, only to be welcomed by her aunt's scolding -- Andromeda, Mother had gasped, you cannot carry your wand around! That is a serious breach of Wizarding law! But Dromeda did not relent, insisting that she knew very well that she was not allowed to use and was not planning to use it. Rather, she simply liked keeping it with her, and, if her mother let her lounge around the house with it, then Aunt Walburga had little say in the matter.
Somehow, something as utterly inconsequential as this blossomed into what Sirius still believes was the most protracted argument Mother has ever had with a member of the Black family. Mother and Dromeda constantly sniped at each other for a few more days, but, among the children, the idea of tucking one's wand behind one's year invariably transformed into a joke that accompanied them through the remainder of the summer.
"Nice wand," Sirius says quietly, approaching Dromeda, and she lowers her paper, eyeing him. "Sorry it took me so long to get here. Cissy was being annoying."
She reaches for her wand and twirls it in her fingers before setting it down on the table. "Well, I suppose I can talk to you, then, since you passed my test."
"It was a test?"
"If you hadn't recognized me, then we would hardly be talking to one another right now, would we?"
Realizing that his cousin is jesting with him, he smiles, suddenly feeling the color rise to his cheeks. He has succeeded, he thinks, in finding her -- Dromeda nods at the empty chair across from her, and he sits down -- but what is he to do now?
Fortunately, she is first to speak. "So, let me guess -- you wanted to know about Ted."
"What I still don't know -- well, I don't know if it is important at all..."
"Just speak plainly. You can't offend me, Sirius." Crossing her arms, Dromeda reclines against the back of her chair. Her words are tipped with a bitter sarcasm. "You can't possibly offend me, really. I'm not part of the family any more. Call me a blood traitor or a Muggle lover all you'd like or tell me how all of my offspring will be brats of impure blood -- "
"I don't want to call you any of that," Sirius says, placing his fists on the table and learning forward. "I just -- I just want to know why you left."
Dromeda raises an eyebrow. "I wasn't clear enough in my note?"
"Your -- your note?"
"Yes, my note. I left it by the stove for Mother and my sisters to find in the morning. Surely they, er, told you about it?" Even as she is asking the question, however, her frown deepens, and Sirius does not even dare to dream about how incendiary the note must have been for his relations to not mention it at all. "Oh, those bastards. Don't tell me they never mentioned the note to you?"
Sirius shakes his head.
Dromeda swears loudly to herself, causing some customers to peer at their table with some concern. Sirius opens his mouth to say something, but she cuts him off. "Haven't you wondered why I ran away?"
"Of course I have," he replies, slightly hurt that she would believe that he would not spare a thought for her absence.
"What did they tell you about it, hmm?"
"Just that one day you disappeared without any explanation and, now, Aunt Druella cries all of the time."
"And you believed this?"
Sirius mulls over his response, an unpleasant gurgling sensation rising within his stomach. When Dromeda infuses the question with such contempt, he cannot help but think that he was stupid to have trusted that Mother had been honest with him, and, yet, Mother is still his mother.
"I did because -- because I never thought that you would run away," he finally stammers, "and, even if you did have a reason for running away, what would be the point of telling your family if you're never going to return?"
Dromeda shrugs. "I suppose I could have left without telling them why. Actually, Ted suggested that I do that. Best to leave a door open for future reconciliation, he said. Bollocks, I said. Sirius, I didn't simply wake up in the morning and think to myself, 'Oh, I've nothing to do, why don't I just leave my family forever?' Frankly, I had been considering it for years. It was only after I came of age and Ted and I had secured a place to live together that I could go through with it."
"Really?"
"Yes, really."
"And, er, who's Ted?"
Dromeda smiles, and Sirius cannot help but note that her face has turned a subtle shade of pink. "We're going to be married at the end of the year."
"So, you ran away to marry him?"
"That was one benefit of it, yes. Ted is a Muggleborn, and you know that our family would have never approved of the match. But there is something much larger at work, Sirius, and that something is why I ran away. Do you know what I'm talking about?"
"No."
"Oh, why I am even bothering to do this? Perhaps you already know some of what I am about to tell you, but, just remember, you were the one who wanted to talk to me." Dromeda pauses, sighing into the silence, and Sirius leans forward, waiting for her to begin. "I suppose you've always known that our family and other families like ours have been -- shall we say -- obsessed with maintaining the purity of our bloodlines. If you're up to scratch on your Wizarding demography, you would know that pureblood families have been having fewer and fewer children over the last century or so. This, in addition to their insistence that all marriages be kept within those who were pure of blood…Sirius, what my mother never told me and what yours will never tell you is that we're dying -- very slowly, yes, but dying all the same.
"Not all is so gloomy, though. More and more wizards are beginning to understand that we simply can't -- " Dromeda abruptly sits up and begins to gesture forcefully with her hands. Sirius glances at the people around him and wonders if these are the sorts of things that his cousin should be saying in front of them. "We simply can't be that insular. Just because some raggedy piece of tapestry says that we're 'noble' and 'ancient' doesn't mean that we've any right to think that we're somehow better than everyone else. The fact that there are children without a trace of Wizarding ancestry to them who are still born with magic, just like us -- shouldn't that demonstrate how utterly ordinary it really is?"
Sirius nods, remembering that Evans had been the first one in their year to correctly cast a Levitation Charm (though, largely, he remembers the look of outright amazement on James's face and his new friend insisting to him after class that he was going ask that girl out, or else his years at Hogwarts will have been a complete failure). This particular recollection causes him to grin, and he opens his mouth, prepared to share it with Dromeda, but the determination that had possessed her just moments before is gone. She is solemn again.
"You're so young, Sirius. I don't know how much I should be telling you -- you shouldn't have to grow up like this, knowing that your world is going to change."
"It's -- it's going to change?" he ventures.
"Ted told me about something once. The Muggles call it physics, and it's supposed to describe how the world works because they don't have magic to make it work for you. He tried explaining something to me -- it was a law of some sort, and the law said that every action has a reaction. It means that, if you push against something, that something will push right back."
"I don't understand. What does that have to do with the world changing?"
"We've been pushing, Sirius, us purebloods with our somewhat saner minds. The old ways of only associating with our own kind, of only having families with our own kind -- they can't be sustained. But some people don't believe that -- "
" -- and they're pushing back," Sirius says, finishing her thoughts.
"They are, and I am certain that our lovely family will be a part of it." Dromeda stops speaking for a while to contemplate her nails. "So, you said you had to escape Cissy to get here?"
"She's been acting strange all summer."
"Stranger than usual, you mean?"
"Well, she started spending time with me again. When I'm in my room at home, she'll knock on the door sometimes just to ask me what I'm doing, and, every time we come to Diagon Alley, she hardly ever leaves me, except to meet with Lucius Malfoy."
She scoffs impatiently at him. "Sirius, listen, I know Cissy better than anybody else. Bella always thought of herself as being too important to look after our younger sister, which left me in charge of that. Did you ever think for an instant that Cissy was acting that way entirely of her own free will?"
Sirius shakes his head slowly.
"Now, I am merely guessing, but my mere guess is this: they don't want you to stray from their path. They don't want you to end up like me."
"Why -- why wouldn't I want to end up like you?"
"Because, Sirius," Dromeda says, appraising him with a sympathetic look, "if you were to end up like me, you too would be a blood traitor of the worst kind."
And, in the wake of the pronouncement, Sirius finds that there is nothing he can say. Dromenda's words have saturated his thoughts, and it will be some time, he thinks, before he can untangle them and lay them out in careful and reasoned lines.
"Well, then," she says after a time, "have we talked enough?"
"You still haven't really said why you left."
As she begins to respond, however, Sirius hears his name ringing distantly through the air. For the briefest of seconds, he can see that Dromeda too is startled, but she collects herself quickly, and, bending over the table, begins whispering rapidly.
"They're looking for you, Sirius. I have to go."
"Can't you tell me why you left?"
"Oh, for Merlin's sake, you can guess, can't you?"
"I want -- I want you to say it."
Sirius watches his reflection in Dromeda's eyes.
"One day you'll understand: I just couldn't stand it anymore."
He has not even processed the statement when it seems as if a sudden gust of wind replaces where his cousin has been sitting. Instinctively, he shuts his eyes, and, when he next looks at her chair, he finds that all evidence of her presence has disappeared.
"Sirius! Oh, Sirius, there you are!" Hoping that there is nothing incriminating about his expression, he turns around and waves at Cissy, who is running across the square and followed by Bella, an unknown dark-haired man, and Lucius Malfoy. Why the men are here, Sirius does not know, nor does he have any desire to know. "Don't you ever run off like that again!" Cissy scolds as she marches up to his side, hands on her hips. "You gave all of us such a fright."
Suppressing the desire to reply with sarcasm, he forces himself to smile sheepishly. "Sorry, Cissy, it was just that I wanted to go to Knockturn Alley, but I didn't know if you would let me."
"Well, it is a very dangerous place -- " Cissy begins to say, but Bella interrupts.
"Nothing wrong with our Sirius wanting to visit Knockturn Alley," she proclaims, her mouth playing with a sly grin. "Don't you think so, Rodolphus?"
Returning the grin, the dark-haired man nods curtly at Bella. In the meanwhile, Lucius gives Sirius a gentle clap on the back. "My dear little Black cousin, you made dear Narcissa here quite worried, you know."
His heart still hammering, Sirius nods gravely. "I'm sorry, I really am."
"It's settled then," Lucius says. "Shall we go? I've always disliked this square -- there was always something terribly plebeian about it."
Rodolphus offers a witticism in response, eliciting appreciative laughter from the others, and Sirius is being ushered from his seat and down some unknown street. He lingers near the back, still pondering Dromeda's last words to him, when somebody taps him on the shoulder. He looks up: it is Bella, and there is no sign of levity about her features.
"You were talking to somebody back there, weren't you?"
"I wasn't," Sirius says, taking deep pains to keep his voice level.
Bella's eyes narrow. "I think you're lying."
"I'm not. Who would I have been talking to, anyway?"
To this, his cousin can muster no response.
--
"Narcissa, Narcissa, Narcissa..." Shaking her head, Aunt Walburga sits down on the edge of the sofa. Narcissa watches from a careful distance as the older woman cradles her head in her hands, her shoulders rising and falling with a sigh. She wonders, for an instant, if she should comfort her aunt, who appears quite distraught, but, before Narcissa can extend a hand, Aunt Walburga sits upright, a deep crease between her eyebrows. "Well, I suppose this is what happens when I entrust an adult's responsibility to a fifteen year-old girl."
"Aunt Walburga," Narcissa says, trying to control the tremor in her voice, "I told you -- I'm very, very sorry that this happened, but he just -- he just ran off, and I couldn't catch him."
"Now, where did you say you found him?"
"Bella and I found him a while later in Knockturn Alley."
"Knockturn Alley? And where in Knocturn Alley was he?"
"The Three Vampires."
"Was he with anybody?"
"Well, see..."
"See what, you foolish girl?" Aunt Walburga snaps, and Narcissa cringes.
"It was strange. He was sitting there alone, but, even though he was at a café, he had not ordered anything to eat or drink. It seemed as if he had been there for a long time, simply -- simply sitting there."
Aunt Walburga regards her with scowl. "So, he ran off to Knockturn Alley, my little Sirius. Out of the many places he could have gone, Knockturn Alley is hardly the worst."
"I agree, Aunt Walburga," Narcissa adds with a nod.
"Is there anything else that happened of which I should be aware?"
It should have been easy for Narcissa to smile and shake her head, thus bringing to an end this horribly mortifying affair, but, while she weighs the merits of obfuscation, she knows that she has lost her opportunity to do so. Aunt Walburga is watching her, and, even though Bella has ensured Narcissa that her suspicions are unfounded, she knows that she must atone for the day's failure somehow. She must relay the whole of her observations to Aunt Walburga. Maybe they are erroneous, but, if nothing else, perhaps there is a part of her pride that may yet be salvaged.
"There was something else, maybe, although I -- I can't be certain. It was only for a moment, but I thought I saw him talking to someone."
Narcissa tries to return to that moment: her frantic calls of Sirius! and the far table at the Three Vampires, the unspeakable relief upon spotting him and the immeasurable shock as she notices someone sitting across from him, the brief, hardly conscious recognition of a face that she would have known anywhere in this world before it disappeared into nothing.
"I think it was Andromeda," she whispers.
"Are you sure?"
Narcissa begins to nod her head, but she shakes it instead. "I can't be entirely sure. I could have imagined it, and Bella said that she didn't see anyone."
"But you thought it was Andromeda."
"I -- I think -- yes."
Upon this revelation, Narcissa expects from Aunt Walburga an outburst, perhaps, or at least a few broken family heirlooms. But she remains still. "My, what a problem we have here. Whatever am I going to do with this boy?"
"If I could -- if I could say something?"
"Yes, of course." Aunt Walburga waves a hand about absentmindedly.
"If that person was Andromeda, I'm not sure how they met or why they were meeting, but I think he has already been punished enough."
Aunt Walburga does not answer; instead, together, they listen to the muted thuds of objects being thrown against walls on the floor above them.
--
Everyone is gathered in Mother's study, exhibiting nothing more and nothing less than unhurried patience, but Sirius cannot sit still. The morning marked the first time he had eaten in three days, and his stomach is now protesting the volume of food that he has just forced into it. Belching loudly, he massages his belly. From across the room, Bella rolls her eyes at him, and Cissy is determinedly looking at anything else that is not him.
Soon, Mother walks in, a wand in her outstretched hand. She marches up to her desk, breathlessly, peering into the tapestry that hangs above it, before she turns around and faces them.
"What I am about to do should have been done a long time ago, but I suppose I was waiting for -- " Mother looks directly at Sirius, and he raises his eyebrows, mimicking cluelessness " -- the opportune moment. This tapestry is one of the Black family's most treasured possessions, preserved and passed down for centuries. It is a testament to our family's lineage and purity. Indeed, to tamper with the tapestry is considered a grave crime against the blood."
Mother allows the weight of her statements to exercise their intended dramatic effect upon the audience, but Sirius does not care for such theatrics. He only wants to return to the kitchen in search of more food, although, inwardly, he wonders why his body has not yet grown accustomed to Mother locking him up in his room for days on end every time he irritates her just a little too much.
"But, in the end, a tapestry is only a tapestry," Mother continues, "and there are greater crimes that one can commit in this world. Our formerly beloved Andromeda Black committed one such crime in abandoning her family, and, consequently, any trace of her presence in our midst is no longer welcome."
Her pronouncements concluded, Mother places the tip of her wand at the top of the tapestry, where golden threads begin their meticulous cascade through the centuries, and she follows them, down, down, down, until, at one point near the bottom, they split into three. Mother takes the middle road, bringing her wand to rest at its end. There is a small explosion, and, when Sirius next looks at the tapestry, there is a small hole where Dromeda's name once lay embedded in the annals of history.
"May that be a lesson," she says, "to blood traitors past, present, and future."
Storing her wand away, Mother leaves the room, her robes brushing past Sirius. His father, brother, and cousins file out after her, but Sirius himself does not stir. When he is certain that they have all dispersed to their respective locations, he stands up and approaches the tapestry. He knows all of the names on it, of course -- Mother had made sure of that when he was younger -- but the names he knows best are those that are no longer there. They are the others, the banished, the examples, the ones Mother mentions with a curl in her lip and the hint of a threat. Stray, my dear son, and this will be your fate; it is not that you will be forgotten but, rather, that you will have never existed at all.
Sirius reaches up to touch the singed edges of Mother's handiwork, and he thinks of Andromeda. He thinks of her blush as she told him of her engagement, the gentle trembling in her voice as she exposed for him the idiocy of pureblood ideology, how she drew close him to her as she realized that she must make her exit. He wonders where she lives now, what she will do with her life, if she and Ted will be happy together, and it is with an unexpected sadness that he knows -- knows with more certainty than he has ever felt -- that she will be the happiest.
Compared to that, not existing seems hardly a matter at all.
--
Signing off, V.M. Bell
Author: V.M. Bell
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to JKR.
Summary: Deceit and manipulation are storied traditions of the Black family, employed with equal dexterity by all, even by those who seek the truth.
Rating: G
Characters: Sirius, Narcissa, Walburga, Bellatrix, Andromeda
Word Count 4,573 (13,547 total)
Author's Notes: Originally written for lareinenoire at springtime_gen. I owe an infinite amount of gratitude to the mods, who were so patient with me as I scrambled to finish my assignment. And, of course, many thanks for my beta alexajohnson, who endured my late-night flailing-filled e-mails, held my proverbial hand, and gave me the world's best encouragement when I needed it. All comments, concrit, and reviews weclome.
Part 2
--
"Sirius, you're awfully restless today, aren't you?"
"Sorry?"
"I said, you're awfully restless today."
Sirius buries his hands more deeply into his pockets and continues burrowing through the crowds in Diagon Alley. His eyes dart from one side of the street to another, as if, miraculously, he could find an eleven-year-old boy-sized hole through which to escape. Of course, he is rather restless today: for him, it is by far the most important day of perhaps the entire summer, and, still, he has no plan, no sleight of hand that might trick Cissy into believing that he is still at her side when he is not. The afternoon wears on and shadows lengthen; there must be a way.
Instead, he slows his pace down until he is walking alongside her. If he cannot slip away, then, at least, he can draw her attention away from himself. "Where did you get that from?" he asks innocuously.
"What?"
"That necklace. Isn't it from the cabinet that Mother has, with all of the Black heirlooms in it?"
"Is it? I'm not sure, but your mother did give it to me." Sirius makes a noncommittal noise. Cissy, wearing a concerned look, stops and pulls him aside. "Is something the matter?"
Truthfully, nothing is the matter. Sirius has never cared for Mother's precious treasures, polished to perfection by Kreacher on a daily basis, but dissembling is too easy. Silently, he allows his frown to deepen.
"Oh, Sirius," Cissy says breathlessly, laying a hand upon his shoulder, "I didn't mean to upset you. Oh, I'm so sorry -- maybe I should give it back to her, do you think? Would that make you feel better?"
Sirius turns toward Cissy, her expression quivering with concern, and he begins to suspect that something is amiss. Perhaps it is only natural that Cissy would have interpreted his words as an indication that he resented being overlooked in favor of his cousin, but he has not said a single thing of import. He had merely asked her where she obtained a particular piece of jewelry, a question that should not have provoked such a reaction.
As he studies her, though, he begins to suspect that something has been amiss all along. Why should Cissy have taken such care to be attentive toward him when they had long ceased to matter to one another? Perhaps she is trying to make up for Dromeda's absence -- but he shakes his head, recalling that, when he greeted her for the first time this summer, she had responded with apathy? How is it that she, aloofness epitomized, managed to completely alter her behavior toward him within only a few weeks?
"Sirius?" she prompts, giving him a small shake.
But he pushes her hand away and steps back. "Cissy, I don't know what you've been playing at this whole time, but I'll see you later, okay?"
Not bothering to wait for a response, he dashes into the stream of pedestrians, his head swiveling about as he searches for a sign that will direct him to Knockturn Alley. Behind him, he hears Cissy calling his name, her dulcet tones crackling with desperation, and, for the first time since he and James populated the Slytherin common room with singing chickens on the night before exams began, Sirius feels free and unshackled, submitting himself to the glare of sunlight and the still summer air tugging at his hair.
Slowing down, he veers toward a narrow offshoot of Diagon Alley. He pauses at the intersection, placing a hand against a nearby wall as he catches his breath. Still panting, he tilts his head upward, surveying the rooftops of the buildings that line the path before him. It is much quieter here. At this far end of Diagon Alley, there are few shops, and, as he peers down the crooked alleyway, he can detect no sound, no movement, no proof that human life has ever graced this part of the earth.
Steeling his shoulders, he begins his walk down Knockturn Alley, staying as close to the curb as possible. The buildings on either side of him seem to arch inward, creaking as their shadows converge into one. Their windows are shuttered, and the sweat on the back of his neck prickles uncomfortably, but he has already agreed to Dromeda's proposition. He must see her.
"Who are you?"
He almost yelps at the sound of the question and plunges his hand into his pocket, searching for his wand, only to remember a second later that underage wizards are not allowed to perform magic. He looks up: a woman dressed in black robes is standing by her front door, a striped tabby cat resting in her arms.
"I'm -- I'm Sirius Black," he says.
" 'Black'?" she repeats. Sirius nods earnestly, never so happy to have been born to his parents. "Then are you welcome here."
"Great. Um, I'm looking for a place -- the Three Vampires?"
"That way." She gestures toward an indeterminate point farther down the road. "In the square."
Staring at the ground, Sirius hurries away as quickly as he can, thankful to have survived that encounter. After a few minutes of walking, the road widens, merging, as the witch had told him, into a central square. It is livelier here, but the fountain in the middle of the square does not work. Other people pass him by, travelling in small groups, but nobody speaks very much, and he wonders why Knockturn Alley is infested with secrets. He should not be surprised. Sirius remembers that he used to accompany Mother when she came here with unexplained errands or to meet with undisclosed people, but that was many years ago, and there is a reason he has never returned to Knockturn Alley of his own volition.
He does not have to look far to find the Three Vampires. It is the only prominent café in the square, and the tables outside are almost entirely filled with customers, many of them sipping a drink that looks suspiciously like blood or some other comparable liquid. Wrinkling his nose somewhat, he edges toward the café, wondering how Dromeda might be found. You'll know how to spot me, she had written, but, as his eyes scan the Three Vampires' clientele, he realizes that he actually doesn't.
Then his eyes catch something. A witch is sitting alone at the table farthest from the café's entrance. She is holding a newspaper and turns the pages with measured slowness, but that is not what draws his attention. Her wand is tucked behind her ear, and, instantly, Sirius recalls the time when Dromeda walked into 12 Grimmauld Place many summers ago, wand balanced precariously against her earlobe, only to be welcomed by her aunt's scolding -- Andromeda, Mother had gasped, you cannot carry your wand around! That is a serious breach of Wizarding law! But Dromeda did not relent, insisting that she knew very well that she was not allowed to use and was not planning to use it. Rather, she simply liked keeping it with her, and, if her mother let her lounge around the house with it, then Aunt Walburga had little say in the matter.
Somehow, something as utterly inconsequential as this blossomed into what Sirius still believes was the most protracted argument Mother has ever had with a member of the Black family. Mother and Dromeda constantly sniped at each other for a few more days, but, among the children, the idea of tucking one's wand behind one's year invariably transformed into a joke that accompanied them through the remainder of the summer.
"Nice wand," Sirius says quietly, approaching Dromeda, and she lowers her paper, eyeing him. "Sorry it took me so long to get here. Cissy was being annoying."
She reaches for her wand and twirls it in her fingers before setting it down on the table. "Well, I suppose I can talk to you, then, since you passed my test."
"It was a test?"
"If you hadn't recognized me, then we would hardly be talking to one another right now, would we?"
Realizing that his cousin is jesting with him, he smiles, suddenly feeling the color rise to his cheeks. He has succeeded, he thinks, in finding her -- Dromeda nods at the empty chair across from her, and he sits down -- but what is he to do now?
Fortunately, she is first to speak. "So, let me guess -- you wanted to know about Ted."
"What I still don't know -- well, I don't know if it is important at all..."
"Just speak plainly. You can't offend me, Sirius." Crossing her arms, Dromeda reclines against the back of her chair. Her words are tipped with a bitter sarcasm. "You can't possibly offend me, really. I'm not part of the family any more. Call me a blood traitor or a Muggle lover all you'd like or tell me how all of my offspring will be brats of impure blood -- "
"I don't want to call you any of that," Sirius says, placing his fists on the table and learning forward. "I just -- I just want to know why you left."
Dromeda raises an eyebrow. "I wasn't clear enough in my note?"
"Your -- your note?"
"Yes, my note. I left it by the stove for Mother and my sisters to find in the morning. Surely they, er, told you about it?" Even as she is asking the question, however, her frown deepens, and Sirius does not even dare to dream about how incendiary the note must have been for his relations to not mention it at all. "Oh, those bastards. Don't tell me they never mentioned the note to you?"
Sirius shakes his head.
Dromeda swears loudly to herself, causing some customers to peer at their table with some concern. Sirius opens his mouth to say something, but she cuts him off. "Haven't you wondered why I ran away?"
"Of course I have," he replies, slightly hurt that she would believe that he would not spare a thought for her absence.
"What did they tell you about it, hmm?"
"Just that one day you disappeared without any explanation and, now, Aunt Druella cries all of the time."
"And you believed this?"
Sirius mulls over his response, an unpleasant gurgling sensation rising within his stomach. When Dromeda infuses the question with such contempt, he cannot help but think that he was stupid to have trusted that Mother had been honest with him, and, yet, Mother is still his mother.
"I did because -- because I never thought that you would run away," he finally stammers, "and, even if you did have a reason for running away, what would be the point of telling your family if you're never going to return?"
Dromeda shrugs. "I suppose I could have left without telling them why. Actually, Ted suggested that I do that. Best to leave a door open for future reconciliation, he said. Bollocks, I said. Sirius, I didn't simply wake up in the morning and think to myself, 'Oh, I've nothing to do, why don't I just leave my family forever?' Frankly, I had been considering it for years. It was only after I came of age and Ted and I had secured a place to live together that I could go through with it."
"Really?"
"Yes, really."
"And, er, who's Ted?"
Dromeda smiles, and Sirius cannot help but note that her face has turned a subtle shade of pink. "We're going to be married at the end of the year."
"So, you ran away to marry him?"
"That was one benefit of it, yes. Ted is a Muggleborn, and you know that our family would have never approved of the match. But there is something much larger at work, Sirius, and that something is why I ran away. Do you know what I'm talking about?"
"No."
"Oh, why I am even bothering to do this? Perhaps you already know some of what I am about to tell you, but, just remember, you were the one who wanted to talk to me." Dromeda pauses, sighing into the silence, and Sirius leans forward, waiting for her to begin. "I suppose you've always known that our family and other families like ours have been -- shall we say -- obsessed with maintaining the purity of our bloodlines. If you're up to scratch on your Wizarding demography, you would know that pureblood families have been having fewer and fewer children over the last century or so. This, in addition to their insistence that all marriages be kept within those who were pure of blood…Sirius, what my mother never told me and what yours will never tell you is that we're dying -- very slowly, yes, but dying all the same.
"Not all is so gloomy, though. More and more wizards are beginning to understand that we simply can't -- " Dromeda abruptly sits up and begins to gesture forcefully with her hands. Sirius glances at the people around him and wonders if these are the sorts of things that his cousin should be saying in front of them. "We simply can't be that insular. Just because some raggedy piece of tapestry says that we're 'noble' and 'ancient' doesn't mean that we've any right to think that we're somehow better than everyone else. The fact that there are children without a trace of Wizarding ancestry to them who are still born with magic, just like us -- shouldn't that demonstrate how utterly ordinary it really is?"
Sirius nods, remembering that Evans had been the first one in their year to correctly cast a Levitation Charm (though, largely, he remembers the look of outright amazement on James's face and his new friend insisting to him after class that he was going ask that girl out, or else his years at Hogwarts will have been a complete failure). This particular recollection causes him to grin, and he opens his mouth, prepared to share it with Dromeda, but the determination that had possessed her just moments before is gone. She is solemn again.
"You're so young, Sirius. I don't know how much I should be telling you -- you shouldn't have to grow up like this, knowing that your world is going to change."
"It's -- it's going to change?" he ventures.
"Ted told me about something once. The Muggles call it physics, and it's supposed to describe how the world works because they don't have magic to make it work for you. He tried explaining something to me -- it was a law of some sort, and the law said that every action has a reaction. It means that, if you push against something, that something will push right back."
"I don't understand. What does that have to do with the world changing?"
"We've been pushing, Sirius, us purebloods with our somewhat saner minds. The old ways of only associating with our own kind, of only having families with our own kind -- they can't be sustained. But some people don't believe that -- "
" -- and they're pushing back," Sirius says, finishing her thoughts.
"They are, and I am certain that our lovely family will be a part of it." Dromeda stops speaking for a while to contemplate her nails. "So, you said you had to escape Cissy to get here?"
"She's been acting strange all summer."
"Stranger than usual, you mean?"
"Well, she started spending time with me again. When I'm in my room at home, she'll knock on the door sometimes just to ask me what I'm doing, and, every time we come to Diagon Alley, she hardly ever leaves me, except to meet with Lucius Malfoy."
She scoffs impatiently at him. "Sirius, listen, I know Cissy better than anybody else. Bella always thought of herself as being too important to look after our younger sister, which left me in charge of that. Did you ever think for an instant that Cissy was acting that way entirely of her own free will?"
Sirius shakes his head slowly.
"Now, I am merely guessing, but my mere guess is this: they don't want you to stray from their path. They don't want you to end up like me."
"Why -- why wouldn't I want to end up like you?"
"Because, Sirius," Dromeda says, appraising him with a sympathetic look, "if you were to end up like me, you too would be a blood traitor of the worst kind."
And, in the wake of the pronouncement, Sirius finds that there is nothing he can say. Dromenda's words have saturated his thoughts, and it will be some time, he thinks, before he can untangle them and lay them out in careful and reasoned lines.
"Well, then," she says after a time, "have we talked enough?"
"You still haven't really said why you left."
As she begins to respond, however, Sirius hears his name ringing distantly through the air. For the briefest of seconds, he can see that Dromeda too is startled, but she collects herself quickly, and, bending over the table, begins whispering rapidly.
"They're looking for you, Sirius. I have to go."
"Can't you tell me why you left?"
"Oh, for Merlin's sake, you can guess, can't you?"
"I want -- I want you to say it."
Sirius watches his reflection in Dromeda's eyes.
"One day you'll understand: I just couldn't stand it anymore."
He has not even processed the statement when it seems as if a sudden gust of wind replaces where his cousin has been sitting. Instinctively, he shuts his eyes, and, when he next looks at her chair, he finds that all evidence of her presence has disappeared.
"Sirius! Oh, Sirius, there you are!" Hoping that there is nothing incriminating about his expression, he turns around and waves at Cissy, who is running across the square and followed by Bella, an unknown dark-haired man, and Lucius Malfoy. Why the men are here, Sirius does not know, nor does he have any desire to know. "Don't you ever run off like that again!" Cissy scolds as she marches up to his side, hands on her hips. "You gave all of us such a fright."
Suppressing the desire to reply with sarcasm, he forces himself to smile sheepishly. "Sorry, Cissy, it was just that I wanted to go to Knockturn Alley, but I didn't know if you would let me."
"Well, it is a very dangerous place -- " Cissy begins to say, but Bella interrupts.
"Nothing wrong with our Sirius wanting to visit Knockturn Alley," she proclaims, her mouth playing with a sly grin. "Don't you think so, Rodolphus?"
Returning the grin, the dark-haired man nods curtly at Bella. In the meanwhile, Lucius gives Sirius a gentle clap on the back. "My dear little Black cousin, you made dear Narcissa here quite worried, you know."
His heart still hammering, Sirius nods gravely. "I'm sorry, I really am."
"It's settled then," Lucius says. "Shall we go? I've always disliked this square -- there was always something terribly plebeian about it."
Rodolphus offers a witticism in response, eliciting appreciative laughter from the others, and Sirius is being ushered from his seat and down some unknown street. He lingers near the back, still pondering Dromeda's last words to him, when somebody taps him on the shoulder. He looks up: it is Bella, and there is no sign of levity about her features.
"You were talking to somebody back there, weren't you?"
"I wasn't," Sirius says, taking deep pains to keep his voice level.
Bella's eyes narrow. "I think you're lying."
"I'm not. Who would I have been talking to, anyway?"
To this, his cousin can muster no response.
--
"Narcissa, Narcissa, Narcissa..." Shaking her head, Aunt Walburga sits down on the edge of the sofa. Narcissa watches from a careful distance as the older woman cradles her head in her hands, her shoulders rising and falling with a sigh. She wonders, for an instant, if she should comfort her aunt, who appears quite distraught, but, before Narcissa can extend a hand, Aunt Walburga sits upright, a deep crease between her eyebrows. "Well, I suppose this is what happens when I entrust an adult's responsibility to a fifteen year-old girl."
"Aunt Walburga," Narcissa says, trying to control the tremor in her voice, "I told you -- I'm very, very sorry that this happened, but he just -- he just ran off, and I couldn't catch him."
"Now, where did you say you found him?"
"Bella and I found him a while later in Knockturn Alley."
"Knockturn Alley? And where in Knocturn Alley was he?"
"The Three Vampires."
"Was he with anybody?"
"Well, see..."
"See what, you foolish girl?" Aunt Walburga snaps, and Narcissa cringes.
"It was strange. He was sitting there alone, but, even though he was at a café, he had not ordered anything to eat or drink. It seemed as if he had been there for a long time, simply -- simply sitting there."
Aunt Walburga regards her with scowl. "So, he ran off to Knockturn Alley, my little Sirius. Out of the many places he could have gone, Knockturn Alley is hardly the worst."
"I agree, Aunt Walburga," Narcissa adds with a nod.
"Is there anything else that happened of which I should be aware?"
It should have been easy for Narcissa to smile and shake her head, thus bringing to an end this horribly mortifying affair, but, while she weighs the merits of obfuscation, she knows that she has lost her opportunity to do so. Aunt Walburga is watching her, and, even though Bella has ensured Narcissa that her suspicions are unfounded, she knows that she must atone for the day's failure somehow. She must relay the whole of her observations to Aunt Walburga. Maybe they are erroneous, but, if nothing else, perhaps there is a part of her pride that may yet be salvaged.
"There was something else, maybe, although I -- I can't be certain. It was only for a moment, but I thought I saw him talking to someone."
Narcissa tries to return to that moment: her frantic calls of Sirius! and the far table at the Three Vampires, the unspeakable relief upon spotting him and the immeasurable shock as she notices someone sitting across from him, the brief, hardly conscious recognition of a face that she would have known anywhere in this world before it disappeared into nothing.
"I think it was Andromeda," she whispers.
"Are you sure?"
Narcissa begins to nod her head, but she shakes it instead. "I can't be entirely sure. I could have imagined it, and Bella said that she didn't see anyone."
"But you thought it was Andromeda."
"I -- I think -- yes."
Upon this revelation, Narcissa expects from Aunt Walburga an outburst, perhaps, or at least a few broken family heirlooms. But she remains still. "My, what a problem we have here. Whatever am I going to do with this boy?"
"If I could -- if I could say something?"
"Yes, of course." Aunt Walburga waves a hand about absentmindedly.
"If that person was Andromeda, I'm not sure how they met or why they were meeting, but I think he has already been punished enough."
Aunt Walburga does not answer; instead, together, they listen to the muted thuds of objects being thrown against walls on the floor above them.
--
Everyone is gathered in Mother's study, exhibiting nothing more and nothing less than unhurried patience, but Sirius cannot sit still. The morning marked the first time he had eaten in three days, and his stomach is now protesting the volume of food that he has just forced into it. Belching loudly, he massages his belly. From across the room, Bella rolls her eyes at him, and Cissy is determinedly looking at anything else that is not him.
Soon, Mother walks in, a wand in her outstretched hand. She marches up to her desk, breathlessly, peering into the tapestry that hangs above it, before she turns around and faces them.
"What I am about to do should have been done a long time ago, but I suppose I was waiting for -- " Mother looks directly at Sirius, and he raises his eyebrows, mimicking cluelessness " -- the opportune moment. This tapestry is one of the Black family's most treasured possessions, preserved and passed down for centuries. It is a testament to our family's lineage and purity. Indeed, to tamper with the tapestry is considered a grave crime against the blood."
Mother allows the weight of her statements to exercise their intended dramatic effect upon the audience, but Sirius does not care for such theatrics. He only wants to return to the kitchen in search of more food, although, inwardly, he wonders why his body has not yet grown accustomed to Mother locking him up in his room for days on end every time he irritates her just a little too much.
"But, in the end, a tapestry is only a tapestry," Mother continues, "and there are greater crimes that one can commit in this world. Our formerly beloved Andromeda Black committed one such crime in abandoning her family, and, consequently, any trace of her presence in our midst is no longer welcome."
Her pronouncements concluded, Mother places the tip of her wand at the top of the tapestry, where golden threads begin their meticulous cascade through the centuries, and she follows them, down, down, down, until, at one point near the bottom, they split into three. Mother takes the middle road, bringing her wand to rest at its end. There is a small explosion, and, when Sirius next looks at the tapestry, there is a small hole where Dromeda's name once lay embedded in the annals of history.
"May that be a lesson," she says, "to blood traitors past, present, and future."
Storing her wand away, Mother leaves the room, her robes brushing past Sirius. His father, brother, and cousins file out after her, but Sirius himself does not stir. When he is certain that they have all dispersed to their respective locations, he stands up and approaches the tapestry. He knows all of the names on it, of course -- Mother had made sure of that when he was younger -- but the names he knows best are those that are no longer there. They are the others, the banished, the examples, the ones Mother mentions with a curl in her lip and the hint of a threat. Stray, my dear son, and this will be your fate; it is not that you will be forgotten but, rather, that you will have never existed at all.
Sirius reaches up to touch the singed edges of Mother's handiwork, and he thinks of Andromeda. He thinks of her blush as she told him of her engagement, the gentle trembling in her voice as she exposed for him the idiocy of pureblood ideology, how she drew close him to her as she realized that she must make her exit. He wonders where she lives now, what she will do with her life, if she and Ted will be happy together, and it is with an unexpected sadness that he knows -- knows with more certainty than he has ever felt -- that she will be the happiest.
Compared to that, not existing seems hardly a matter at all.
--
Signing off, V.M. Bell