Upside Down Mirror: A Grim Tale (Harry Potter Fanfic)

Wanting

"I just wanted to get my son back."

"That filthy traitor isn't our son."

Orion's eyes blinked, realizing exactly how he'd answered Walburga's question regarding why he'd gone to see Sirius. He swallowed, his teeth gritting. "I believe there's been a misunderstanding."

"Misunderstanding?" Walburga's fury lashed out while his father simply sat in the chair that Orion vacated, looking at the newspaper Orion abandoned, a rather amused smirk on his face. "What else could you have possibly meant when you said you wanted to get your son back, Orion? We agreed that unless Sirius changed his ways, we absolutely wouldn't ever take that spoiled brat back."

"He was speaking of getting Regulus back, not Sirius," Arcturus spoke up, folding the paper, giving Walburga one of those looks that said he found amusement in the situation at her expense, yet this went over her head just as it almost always did. "You really don't know where that boy is, do you?"

"I told you," Walburga let out a deep sigh. "Regulus is in his room. If he's not crashed from study and that being the reason he's late to breakfast, it's because he is studying, but I'll simply send a tray of food up to him."

"He's not in his room," Arcturus said.

"You sound so sure of it. Where is he if..."

With a quick flick of his wrist, Arcturus tossed the newspaper towards Walburga, so she'd take notice. "Where indeed."

She picked up the paper, looking at the headline which made Orion rush off to Sirius for help. "This isn't possible."

"Well, it is."

"He's a child."

"Woman, that boy is seventeen and in the eyes of the law an adult."

"But he hasn't graduated from Hogwarts, hasn't taken his Newts! There hasn't even been a trial!" Walburga sat down, the newspaper folded as she fanned herself. "He can't be. He..." She turned and looked at Orion. "Do something!"

"What do you think I was just doing!" Orion's voice strained.

"Turning to that traitor?"

"I figured..." Orion glanced at his father, who simply crossed his arms and didn't look either in the eye, before turning back to look at his wife. "I know he hates us, but I figured with Regulus it would be different. That he'd be willing, no, want to help his brother out."

"No surprise that he refused."

"He didn't quite refuse."

"What do you mean?"

"He..." Orion fell silent, shaking his head.

Walburga let out a huff, turning to her father-in-law. "Well, surely you can do something given the fact there's been no trial."

"You know as well as I what Crouch has done, though."

"But he hasn't done anything. I mean, Bella would have bragged about him doing something already if he had, and you right well know that! They've got to give him a trial. They..."

"Not if he turned himself in!" Orion finally croaked out, lowering his head into the palm of his hands.

"That's not in the paper, so how do you know that?" Arcturus asked.

"Sirius told me," Orion's voice strained, but he knew, as much as he hated it, that he was about to break down and cry despite knowing full well men in the Black family didn't break down and cry. Even the womenfolk in the family didn't do so, yet in the back of his mind, he remembered the times he'd come across a rather tearful Regulus during the boy's childhood only for Regulus to try and pretend when caught that nothing of the sort was going on. "Sirius told me when I went to see him."