July 31, 1976
Sirius
Loud music pounded the house. It squashed the beautiful mosaic windows and hit the roof. It seemed not to be music at all. It seemed as if the house was screaming in pain. Sirius waved his wand like a whip, and the rack of house-elf heads shattered. Another wave and the painting of the famous ancestor exploded, leaving a charred stain on the wall.
'Wow! Another stain on the reputation, Mother!' Sirius shouted at the top of his lungs, throwing a bottle of expensive whiskey high into the air. Most of it went into his mouth, while the rest spilled onto his shirt and got under his collar. It was disgusting. Before he finished, he threw the bottle violently at the door of his mother's bedroom, and thick glass shattered all over the hallway.
'Cheers!' he barked over the din of the music, took a long drag, and extinguished the cigarette on the nearest portrait. 'Fuck you!' Black shouted after him, 'Fuck this shit...' he added in a whisper.
Just this morning, while rummaging through his mother's desk for money, he found a letter that read: "To Sirius Orion Black." The printed envelope lay among a pile of old family junk. The paper was stained with stains, some insignificant mementos sealed with a brown coffee cup rim. Without hesitation, Sirius opened the envelope. It told him that his beloved Uncle Alphard had died in the spring from a poisonous tentacle bite. Before Sirius could properly digest the news, or at least realize it, it turned out that his uncle had left him a considerable inheritance in the form of the Black family manor, a substantial bank account, and a small vineyard. In his letter, Alphard (the familiar handwriting made Sirius feel a burning sensation somewhere in his solar plexus) expressed the hope that since Walburga Black had decided to leave her property to her youngest son after her death, she would not deny her childless, lonely brother his last wish and allow him to provide for his favorite nephew...
Even after reading the letter to the end, Sirius still couldn't fully comprehend what he had written. Uncle Alphard? His Uncle Alphard?
No. That's rubbish. It's not true. It's just not true, that's all. It can't be true. And the fact that there is a seal in the will and that it is notarized by a goblin notary... that is not true either. It's all a lie.
For some time, he just walked around the empty house with the letter in his hand, bumping into walls, stopping, rubbing his chest. He felt as if someone had hit him on the head with a dusty sack, and that's why he was moving in a fog. His throat and chest were so tight that he could not breathe. Surprised at his own calmness, Sirius only came to when he realized that his face was wet with tears (had he been crying?) and his lips were bitten almost to the point of bleeding.That's when the stupid shock and numbness gave way to angry rage.
The letter sat in the box for months. Neither his mother nor his father had bothered to tell him that his only real father was dead.
Sirius didn't care what motivated them anymore. They hadn't been a family in the traditional sense that normal people used the word for a long time.
He began to pack his things, trying his best to keep it together. But then came the damned last straw that broke the dam of sixteen years of patience. Gathering his things, Sirius passed the tapestry in the living room and accidentally discovered an ugly charred spot where uncle Alphard had been. And next to it, he found another one just like it, and even thought he was seeing double with shock: the name of Andromeda, his beloved, kind cousin Andromeda, who had married the Muggle Ted Tonks five years earlier, had also disappeared from the family tapestry.
His first instinct was to rip the cursed relic from the wall and tear it to shreds. But he couldn't, so Sirius took out his frustration on the tapestry by throwing a bloody expensive vase at it.It brought a strange relief.
And then he was carried away...
Singing at the top of his lungs, Sirius danced down the stairs, drunkenly slamming his shoulder into the wall. He jumped over the fence of the landing between the first and second floors, landed on the floor with a thud, bent down and played a passionate solo on an invisible guitar, then turned and threw his wand. The spell flew across the hall and into the living room and, with a crunch, ripped the beautifully carved door off the lacquered bar by the fireplace.
The smooth sides of the bottles hidden inside shimmered faintly. Sirius pumped his fist in the air in victory, jumped up, slammed into the wall and danced into the living room. The crystal candelabra followed him cautiously with all its beads and clanked timidly as the bass of the choir thumped against the floor of the upstairs room.
Sirius opened his arms wide to greet the new song. The drunken spell that unknowingly fell from his wand was so powerful that the windows in the living room burst open with a clatter, releasing the younger Black's demons that had ruled the house.
Grabbing the first bottle he could find from the bar, Sirius slammed its neck against the edge of the bureau, raised the padded glass to his lips and, gulping down the wine, approached the tapestry. The black stains on the fabric burned Sirius as if Walburga had burned them not on the fabric but directly on his skin.
He took one last strong gulp, which drowned the pain and despair a little, rested his forehead against the prickly, stinking fabric, and closed his eyes tightly.
"He's three. This tapestry is his first memory. His mother holds him in her arms. She is so sweet, she smells delicious, and she is warm. She raises her hand and points to the picture of a dark-haired boy... "That's you, Sirius," she says, and he puts his little hand trustingly on the tapestry..."
Sirius touched the tapestry at that point, but immediately jerked his hand away as if burned, took a step back and crashed into the bar. The bottles clattered hideously.
Sirius turned to the sound, pulled a heavy, dusty bottle out of the scattered wood and, looking at the tapestry, recited it aloud:
'Collector's Sybil Wayne, 1891!' Suddenly, he leapt forward, swinging, and threw the bottle against the wall with all his might. The bottle shattered, dark, almost black wine stained the blue silk of the sofa, which Kreacher was afraid to touch with a broom, and glass splattered in all directions.
'Griselda, 1910!' Sirius threw the next bottle into the air and blew it up with a spell, creating a firework of glass and wine.
Then he grinned, staggered drunkenly from foot to foot, and grabbed the top of the bar to keep from falling.
Soon the furniture was covered in streaks of rare wine that had survived more than one magical war. The sunset poured through the windows, and the shards sparkled in the thick, honeyed rays. Whenever he broke another bottle or accidentally knocked over a rickety table with a lamp or flowers, Sirius felt as if long, poisonous thorns were being pulled out of him.
'Antipatra, bloody hell, 1470! My father brought it back from Athens... for your birthday, Alphard!' He cut off the cork along with the neck, lifted the bottle from which the rare wine poured, put his mouth under the stream, then slammed the bottle violently to the ground.Kreacher's nose appeared in the doorway and immediately disappeared.
After wiping his lips and growling something unintelligible, Sirius began singing along to his favorite band at the top of his lungs, jumping, dancing, and smashing everything in sight.He ripped the heavy, dusty curtains from the window with his hands, along with the curtain rod. He ripped them to shreds with his bare hands and poured a generous amount of collectible whiskey on them. He blew up the comfortable, plump sofas and armchairs one by one, ripping out the old, smelly upholstery. The walls were covered with gray wood paneling and silver-blue silk - fuck it, too, and to pieces.
The music was pounding, the house was screaming, he was screaming too, he was hurting, he was light, his blood, inflamed by pain and alcohol, was burning, demanding blood, blood, blood!
Throwing a wardrobe full of the family's old junk to the floor, Sirius stormed in and turned to the only thing that had miraculously survived the chaos so far, the old tapestry. He was about to raise his wand when suddenly...
'Finite'
The music stopped.
Sirius slowly lowered his hand, smiled, and finally turned his head, slightly tired with vengeful pleasure.
Dressed in a tightly buttoned silk purple robe and a small netted hat, his mother stood in the doorway, her leather gloved hands folded neatly on her stomach. Cold gray eyes looked intently at Sirius. Her long lips, thickly painted with poisonous red lipstick, were pressed into a thin line.Sirius jumped off the wardrobe and staggered drunkenly, stepping on shards of wine bottles with a crunch. The floor beneath him swayed like the deck of a ship. It seemed he had drunk a little too much.
'Good day...' he smiled impudently and looked his mother straight in the eye, picking up a medieval tapestry of the Salem witch burnings from the floor, ripping it in two with his hands without the aid of magic and throwing it at her feet, '...mother,' he hiccuped.
Regulus ran into the room, panting.
'Mum, Kreacher was not lying, the whole library...' the boy froze, staring at his drunken brother and the destruction he had caused, 'is... destroyed. What is there...'
Sirius gave him a two-fingered salute and a crooked, drunken smile.
Walburga didn't react to the news and stood as stiff as an ice statue, looking somewhere through Sirius as if something much more interesting than him was written on the wall behind him.
'Sirius... what are you... what the hell are you doing?' Regulus came to, his face contorted with rage, but Sirius twisted the boy's thin arm behind his back and pushed him forward, causing Regulus to stumble a few steps and crash into a broken cupboard.
Walburga looked up. Sirius could see the anger spreading and growing in her black soul. And he enjoyed it.
'Come here,' she suddenly ordered with authority.
Sirius spread his legs wider and tried to stand upright on his deck.Glancing at him and rubbing his shoulder, Regulus approached his mother and stepped behind her, as if accidentally.
Turning away defiantly (the deck swayed merrily to the right), Sirius pulled the last trophy from the bar, opened and turned the bottle, and poured the precious scotch generously over the torn upholstery of the sofa.
'Did you say something?' he asked, feeling himself sobering up for some reason. 'What is it, Mom? Don't you want to tell me how the wedding went?'
'Come here. Now,' Walburga said quietly and separately. She took off her gloves and slapped them sharply on Regulus' chest, and he picked them up obediently.
Sirius tossed the bottle aside and it shattered — for some reason, much louder than the rest of it.
'No, seems you don't. Then let's talk about something else. Like... when did Uncle Alphard's funeral take place?' Sirius put his hands in his pockets and began to walk around the room. His eyes wandered lazily over the walls. They looked like they had been clawed at by a giant cat. Cool. 'You didn't tell me pitying because you knew how much I loved him?' he stopped and rubbed his fingers over the bridge of his nose, his eyebrows knitted together so that the old childhood scar left by Cousin Bella curved one of them oddly, 'or why, Mom?'
'And because of that you decided to destroy our house?' Regulus said in a high voice.
'Shut the fuck up, Reg!' Sirius barked, jerking around to face him and feeling a drop of saliva fly out of his mouth.
'Pitying,' Walburga finally replied.
'Did you burn Andromeda out of bloody pity too?!' Sirius shouted, jerking his arm towards the tapestry so hard he nearly dislocated his shoulder, 'or because she got married because at least someone loved her, unlike you?'
Walburga blinked as if he had thrown sand in her eyes.
'What do you think you're doing, you son of a...?' she whispered, her lips curling.
'Whom?'... Sirius smiled wryly and tilted his head back, eloquently examining the strange, unpleasant woman standing in the doorway.
And he bowed mockingly to her.
Walburga pulled her wand from her purse, but Sirius was quicker and dropped his first.
Pause.
Walburga laughed unsettling. The laugh was born somewhere deep in her cloth-covered chest and burst out in nervous, angry bits.
'What? What are you going to do, boy?' she asked, lowering her wand. She smiled, slowly baring her teeth as if to sink them into her son's raised hand.
Sirius slowly lowered his wand, feeling tears of helpless rage well up in his eyes. Sixteen years of pain, hatred, and despair had been bottled up inside of him and had come to a head.
"It's my dog, it's mine! I don't want dirt in the house!" "Mom, please, please, I'll do anything you want, just don't!"
"I'm not leaving Hogwarts! I like Gryffindor! I have friends there!
The slap. The pain.
"You're disgracing us by wearing those colors! Take them off now! I said take it off! You will not wear that bloody rag! Not in my house!"
"Then I'll run away!"
"Oh, yeah? You want to threaten me? Threaten me?! ME?!"
"Yes! I hate you! I hate all of you!"
"You hate me? CRUCIO!"
'It's only fair, mom," Sirius said quietly, "you ruined my life, I ruined yours. We're even,' and he turned to leave.
'Stop, you bastard!' Walburga shouted suddenly, and Sirius stopped in his tracks, scraping at those words like a blade.
'Who? Bastard?'
He turned around, hoping it wasn't directed at him.
'Me, Mum?'
'I said, come here!' Walburga said in a shaky voice, pointing her wand at the ground at her feet.Sirius felt everything in him rise to take a step, but he only gripped his wand tighter and sank to the ground. A lump rose to his throat.
'Come to me!'
He didn't move.
Regulus stared at him, frightened, clutching the doorjamb with his small, neat hands. There was a movement in the corridor — Kreacher appeared in the archway.
The woman's transparent, cold eyes were filled with large tears — but Sirius could hardly have expected them to be for him.
'I'm your mother, you ungrateful bastard! I am your mother! You will apologize at once!I am your mother! Apologize right now!'
'A real that's for sure' Sirius snorted, barely audible. Her expression changed instantly, and Regulus backed away, panting. 'An alley cat would have made a better mother'
Walburga suddenly made a sharp movement. Sirius reacted instantly to the whistle of air being cut (usually followed by pain) and blocked the spell.
There was silence.
Sirius could feel the thin thread that connected him to this place and this woman tearing at his soul.
Looking her in the eye with anger and disgust, Sirius lowered his wand, took a step back, then another, then simply turned and walked away.
Walburga grabbed a miraculously surviving vase from a table and threw it at him, but she missed and the vase shattered against the wall.
Sirius ran down the porch and into the garden, screaming at the back of his head:
'YOU'RE NOT MY SON ANYMORE!'
He slammed the gate so hard that it slammed shut, almost falling off its hinges, and then opened again. Sirius was so angry that he was completely unaware of his actions. He had no belongings or money with him, he only managed to rip his jacket off the kitchen chair. He didn't know what he was going to do next, but he knew for sure that he had no intention of staying in this house any longer.
He crossed the yard with wide strides, walked up to the driveway, wiped his nose sharply, and pulled James' invisibility cloak off his motorcycle. It was not magical at all, the regular weave of chrome parts shining brightly in the sunset.
Crumpling his cloak, Sirius looked defiantly at the windows.
A small figure loomed in the second floor window.
'I hope I hit my head on the way down, Mother!' he yelled, shaking his iron horse and taking it off the footrest. 'At least once in my life I'll fulfill your dream!' Black mounted the motorcycle and jerked the handle. The engine roared to life, shattering the melting silence of the beautiful summer day. The figure on the second floor moved and disappeared.
Tears clenched in his throat, but Sirius would rather have his arm or leg torn off than allow himself to cry, so without another second of hesitation, he pushed off and rode out onto the smooth, level road, striving with all his being to reach the only family he still had left.
James Potter.
