Drarry One Shots

Jersey Cream, Pt. 2.

When Harry had first moved to Menhir Noir on the island of Jersey, he found he was in a rather similar situation as when he first moved into Grimmauld Place, that is, he once more faced a property that required extensive renovation and contained peevish portraits—well, one peevish portrait to be exact. And, of course, he had to tackle the Black penchant for casting unusual curses in dark corners and building strange Wards and permanently placing their whinging portraits on the wall.

"Eccentric", "bohemian", and "an architectural folly" were all words that could describe Menhir Noir, though some of the eccentricities could be attributed to Harry James Potter rather than Sirius Phineas Black who had built the house in 1899. Sirius Black II was the eldest son of Phineas Nigellus Black. He had become inordinately rich when he inherited the majority of his father's fortune. He was also, Harry had found out later, a successful young architect in his own right, earning both fame and his own considerable wealth in designing and rebuilding the Ministry for Magic after a fire destroyed the original building in 1894.

With his galleons burning a hole in his robe pockets, Sirius II had bought a substantial piece of land on the east coast of Jersey and then designed his house himself in the style of late-Victorian neo-gothic. He had, without a doubt, thrown at the house every quirk and attribute that embodied the gothic style. Menhir Noir had become a personal architectural rhapsody created through a mix of slicing light, creeping shadows, secret corridors and hidden rooms, and surprising flowing open spaces over five storeys, all set around a central grand staircase in the middle of the house. It was as every bit peculiar as the familial Black residence in London and then some, but in a much more quirky and appealing way. It was the sort of house where one expected to be greeted by a creaking front door and Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor played on a distant organ somewhere.

About the same time as the house was finished, Sirius II had married Hesper Gamp as arranged by his father and his father-in-law and after the couple moved to Jersey, they had three children together called Arcturus III, Lycoris, and Regulus. Sirius II didn't like his wife, nor his children, and after Phineas died and left him 12, Grimmauld Place, he moved his family to London. And promptly moved back to Jersey alone and became something of a miserly recluse and only allowing Hesper and his three children to live off a minimal allowance.

Just because Sirius II was "good" Black, it didn't mean he was nice. It just meant he didn't think Muggle torture, the dark arts, and Pureblood superiority were a life philosophy.

The problem was that Sirius II tended to tell Harry, every time he passed his portrait, how much he didn't like his wife or children and why, mostly because he considered them frivolous gold-diggers. Harry began to see a great number of similarities between Sirius II and Walburga Black who was both his grandniece and his granddaughter-in-law (and yes, the Blacks had liked to occasionally indulge in consanguineous marriages every other generation or so). And Harry was repeatedly reminded of his Sirius saying his mother had kept herself alive out of pure spite; she was definitely of the same mould as her great-uncle/grandfather-in-law who seemed to have left everything in his Last Will and Testament to his great-grandson just to spite his more immediate progeny who clutched at every last sickle greedily, probably because he'd been so miserly in the first place.

Thus, Harry began to understand why the remaining Blacks had wanted to challenge his being named as Sirius Orion Black's heir. Still, Harry had been named and Harry wanted to honour that and he had fallen in love with Menhir Noir, so yes, he restored the house that had been uninhabited since 1959 and had not been re-decorated since it was built in 1899. And yet again, Harry found his skills in curse breaking and Ward construction improved to another level. However, whereas Harry had endeavoured to make Grimmauld Place light and airy, he found he rather liked the gothic style of Menhir Noir. He found a dark humour in glamourising that aspect of the house and playing to its strengths. Mind you, the exterior of the house was so gothic with its pointed arches and flying buttresses, niches and ribbed vaults, stained glass and intricate carvings and ornamentation, that he wouldn't have honoured the house in any other way but to play to the design.