Astrophile [J.P]

Chapter 74

~ Life was beautiful then, I remember the time, 

I knew what happiness was. Let the memory live again. ~

***

Harry's arrival had lifted up Sirius's spirits though he had been quite doleful about staying in the very house he had vowed never to return to. Right then as Harry had figured out about the Order of the Phoenix and all else that had been going on in the wizarding world through his friends and the Weasley twins, he had come up to a room containing the Black family tapestry.

It was the first time Harry was seeing a pureblood family tapestry and his eyes flickered towards the burnt black marks on some of the faces.

Sirius found him inside and stepped in, noticing that Harry had straightened immediately as if he was caught doing something he shouldn't have.

 "That's the Black family tree," Sirius spoke up, "it contains all the family members up till now. No wonder it's thinning out since my family has a grand reputation of driving people away."

Harry looked back at the burnt faces, "why are some of these faces burnt?"

"Oh, that's because they got disowned," he pointed to a face that was burnt, "this used to be my face on the tree before my charming mother seared it off."

Harry noticed that the tree's vines were interconnected but after looking at it closely, he got the hang of it. From the burnt area which used to Sirius's place in the tree, two lines were connecting to Orion and Walburga Black, indicating the parents. And there was another face that had the same connecting lines towards Orion and Walburga.

"This is my brother Regulus," Sirius's voice was low as if talking about Regulus hurt, "he and I were very different, to say the least. He was the perfect son while I was a disgrace. Needless to say, he died chasing after ideals he should have stayed away from."

Harry noticed that Sirius didn't want to talk about his brother anymore so he spoke up, "and who are the other disowned members?"

Sirius looked up at the tree and as there were two more burnt areas, he explained them to Harry one by one.

"This one right here is Andromeda, my cousin and sister to Narcissa Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange. Andy was very lovely as compared to the rest of her sisters. Narcissa, or sometimes we called her Cissy to annoy her, was very prim and proper and shared the same ideas as the rest of the family. Must be evident to see that she chose to marry Lucius Malfoy. Bellatrix on the other hand is a different story."

Harry knew Narcissa Malfoy as she was Draco's mother and he had seen her before in Diagon Alley as well as in the Quidditch World Cup. As for Bellatrix Lestrange, all he had heard of was that she was a Death Eater and very loyal to Voldemort. To think that they were from the same family as Sirius's was quite absurd.

Sirius, however, was resuming with telling him about why Andromeda was disowned, "anyhow, Andy was disowned because she ran away with a Muggleborn, Ted Tonks. Ah, you've met Tonks, haven't you? I meant Nymphadora. She's their daughter."

Harry nodded, "yes I have met her. She was with the Auror Squad that brought me here."

"Brilliant, our Tonks, youngest Hufflepuff Auror and very capable too," Sirius remarked appreciatively, "well, do you know, I went to Andy's after I got disowned and told her she was the first person I was asking to join the Disowned Black family members club. She shut me out as she found the idea appalling. But I had kept meeting her occasionally and we're on better terms again."

A soft chuckle escaped Sirius as he told Harry about Andromeda. The nostalgia was evident in his eyes as he resumed.

"Unfortunately, my family hadn't been as open-minded as me or Andy. And Uncle Alphard..." His finger towards the last burnt dot on the tapestry, "he was disowned for the same reason. He married a Muggle and was threatened to leave his wife and child. Do you know who his daughter is, Harry?"

Harry shook his head, seeing that there were no connecting lines from Alphard.

"Felicity," he replied, "Uncle Alphard met Fel's Mum on a trip to Italy. They fell in love and got married, Felicity was born but Uncle had to leave them for fear that his family would target them. He had never been the same ever since and he eventually got disowned."

A slight tap on the door startled them and they turned to see Felicity standing by the doorframe, her blue eyes flickering with an unfathomable sadness.

"Siri, you're not supposed to tell other people's life stories behind their back," she rebuked but her tone was soft as she came in, standing beside them to look at the family tree.

"I'm sorry, you can take up from here if you want to," Sirius offered, watching her look as if she was collecting her thoughts on whether to tell Harry about her father or not.

"I didn't get to spend much time with him," she began after a soft sigh, eyes lingering at the burnt mark where Alphard's face had been on the tapestry, "he left when I was very young and then my mother remarried. So I hadn't known anything about him until the summer break before my sixth year when Mum got a letter from him that he was very sick and wanted to meet us one last time. That was when Mum took me to Magnolia Crescent to his place... The same house I live in now."

Harry was listening very closely to her, feeling that Sirius and Fel were quite fond of Alphard as they were both quite sad as the conversation resumed.

"That was also the first time I had realized that me and Sirius were first cousins," Felicity remarked, recalling the time she had gone to meet Alphard for the first time along with her mother, "I had been quite shocked at first but eventually got used to it."

"It was also the time you stayed for a week and made my life an utter hell," Siri's eyes sparked playfully, "especially from the way you gave me poisonous food just in order to pay me back for all the pranks I had pulled on you at school."

"It wasn't poison..."

"It was no better, I would have accepted poison," Sirius replied defensively but then saw that Harry was looking at them in confusion.

"So you lived with your uncle back then?" He asked, facing Sirius.

"Oh, yes we forgot to tell you that, didn't we?" Sirius nodded, a smile breaking out on his face, "after I got disowned I lived with James and your grandparents for some time until Uncle Alphard reached out to me and said I could live with him. So yeah when Fel came to meet us, I had been living with Uncle Alphard."

Collectively, they told Harry about Alphard and the short but happy time they had spent with him. Sirius went into full detail about the antics that had been caused with Fel and him hiding that they were cousins from the rest of their friends except Remus who had accidentally found out.

However, when they got to the part where Alphard had died, both of them turned silent. It was truly hard for them to recall that dark period of their lives that had felt nothing short of hell until the first wizarding war started that unleashed even more perilous incidents upon them.

Felicity spoke up at last after a long pause, "I almost forgot, Molly had sent me to call you two down for lunch. It's been long since and I hope there's food left for you."

"If you have cooked lunch, I would be extra cautious again," Sirius remarked.

"Ah no, Molly doesn't let anyone else cook when she's around so you're safe from eating my so-called poisonous food. Enjoy while it lasts," Felicity shrugged, leaving the room to go downstairs.

And though the tense atmosphere dissolved, Harry had come to know a lot about them and he appreciated the fact that they trusted him so much to share their lives with him. He hadn't known Felicity for long but he could already see that she was very kind at heart and had definitely been a very good friend to his parents.

"Come on, Harry, we don't want to miss out on Molly's fabulous cooking," Sirius spoke up, shaking him out of his thoughts, "and after lunch, I will take you to meet Buckbeak."

***