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Two. First Night
𓃵
𝔇ear Sirius,
I feel sorry for you. For everything you've been through, and for everything I'm putting you through, but I can't help it, I'm so angry.
I've been angry my whole life. From when my grandmother named me heir─a five year-old girl, who couldn't even comprehend what was happening to her─to when you reappeared with a story I could barely believe. My father, who I'd thought to be a murderer, was innocent and had loved me like the sun loves the sky. I struggled to trust you but I really did try. I really tried to let you in and make that effort, only for you to shun me because you thought I was one of them. Them. The family. You resented me for adoring my uncle, you resented me for accepting the future that was thrust upon me, you resented me for clinging to my mother after she was the only parent I'd ever known. But how was I supposed to do anything else? They hated you and took me in. Is that my fault? Can you expect a child to reject open arms?
Harry is who you wish I was, I understand that. I understand that the family want me to be Enyo, and you, Harry. Camille Black is no hero or a messiah, nor is she a leader. Camille Black is a purposeless wretch. I will leave school, take my place at the head of the house, and I will do nothing different than those before me. I'm sentimental, not cruel. That's my crime, I suppose. Enyo's was being born a girl. Yours was having a heart. Regulus' is having a conscience, whether he likes it or not.
I'm angry because I don't understand why things have to be this way. Why did you choose to save your friends over your wife and child? Why did Regulus, your brother, turn a corner only to be met with horror? What is this terrible secret about Leda that makes my mother all glassy-eyed and shaken? Why was Enyo destined to be special, when I am so plain? Why did my grandmother twist the knife and choose me, when she must have known that I wouldn't want it?
You are my father. I love you, and I hate you.
Circe.
Rattling and swaying, the carriages moved in convoy up the road. In the darkness, Hogwarts Castle loomed ever closer: a towering mass of turrets, jet black against the dark sky, here and there a window blazing fiery bright above. They jingled to a halt near the stone steps leading up to the oak front doors and Circe got out of the carriage first. She turned to look for her cousin, but Enyo had already happened upon the strange, skeletal creatures standing quietly in the chill night air, their blank white eyes gleaming, with wings sprouting from each wither. Enyo, by now, was familiar with the experience of seeing something that Circe could not; it had been on her first visit to Hogwarts that she saw the thestrals, unaware that her pain-that gnawing grief-and motherlessness had granted her a privilege.
