An Account of Falling Stars

chapter 1: Sirius

I was angry. No, I was furious. I stared hard out of the car window, watching the raindrops race to the bottom. Determinedly tuning out my mother's incessant fussing as I watched the familiar bustling of London fade into dreary, silent hills, and fields and woods. There was a loud thrumming in my temple as I took in the bare fields and wooded land, my stomach plummeting by the hour.

"Sirius. Sirius. Look at me boy!". Mother's command was sharp, high-pitched and filled with warning. I tried not to flinch as I slowly turned my gaze from one gruesome sight to another.

Walburga Black was a tall thin woman. Perhaps she was once beautiful but now, as my eyes swept over her face, she looked venomous. Her carefully painted lips were crafted into a thin scowl, her cold grey eyes leering straight into my defiant blue ones. There was a permanent wrinkle between her brows from that look of disapproval that she loved so dearly, and under the luminous light of the car, other signs of her age were more pronounced than usual. "How can I help you mummy dearest?" I asked in what I wanted to be a polite and casual tone, but it came out strained, like glass was grating the inside of my throat. Abandoning the attempt at civility in my tone of voice, I tried to make for it by engulfing my face in the most pleasant look I could muster, which only amounted to mild disinterest.

I wasn't interested in hearing what she had to say, what she'd been saying for the past month since my darling father "The Great Orion Black" had tragically passed.

Hearing of how wonderfully well-bread my future school was, or how the connections i made would be great for the family trade, or how perfectly I was expected to behave for the coming year and the rest of my life, or how the future of the Noble House of Black rested on my slender, invaluable shoulders.

Walburga's sharp eyes narrowed and I shuddered ever so slightly, still easily affected by her murderous gaze despite how much I had been convincing myself I wasn't for the past two years. "I will not have you disgracing the name of The Noble House of Black because you believe that you are somehow above it all. As there is anything to be above! You will not embarress me in front of my brother and his wife." She hissed.

She was so ridiculously predictable that I couldn't help the snort that erupted from my nose.

I knew what was coming before she even moved. I could tell from the way her fingers twitched since we'd got into this wretched, glamorous, car, from the way she breathed out when I unwittingly caught her or or the way her lips curled over her teeth like fangs when she had to look directly at me. I'd been waiting for her move for the last three hours. In retrospect, she'd held out longer than I'd thought possible. 'Perhaps it was the grief', i reasoned with myself.

In one swift movement, my mother's hand whipped across my face leaving a painful sting and an aggressive red mark on his perfectly pale skin that flashed almost neon when my head swung right from the impact of her hand. My reflection was a perfect mirror of me on the tinted windows. I urged myself not to show the pain and anguish I felt growling in my chest, practically ripping me apart with its effort to come out. Instead, I turned my head slowly back to that woman, slow enough that I could blink away any exposing tears before our eyes met again. But when I was ready to meet her gaze head on with defiance, I found she wasn't looking at me. Mother had already settled back into her seat, sitting delicately, the picture of perfection. Her gaze had shifted a little to the left, the sharpness of her cold eyes was replaced (perhaps not fully replaced but shifted) to something softer, kinder, something that almost resembles approval, a luxury that I hadn't experienced since I'd hit puberty and learned to think for myself.

I followed her gaze already knowing what she was so adoringly ogling at, and then my cool eyes met my brother's identical ones.

He sat there, posture perfect and graceful as a statue. Regulus Black, my darling brother.