Till Forever Falls Apart

Third Year: 12 Grimmauld Place

December 26, 1993

    Val stood with her father outside the row of monotonous brick houses, searching for the Black residency among the homes that merged together. They hardly had any distinguishable features–each held the same upscale pretentiousness Val expected no less from her distant and unfamiliar relatives.

    Surely they would have had a grand house, Val thought skeptically. She had imagined it before in all of its polished, obsidian grandeur. What would they be doing on a muggle street?

The harsh wind caused Val to slide her hands in her coat pockets, rolling all of her weight onto the front of her feet and back to her heels, repeating the motion to stay warm. Perched next to her father who had barely said a word all morning, Val tugged her hat down to cover her ears.

She offered to come and keep him company, and much to her surprise, he had agreed to her coming along and no one else. Val thought it was peculiar how Sirius hadn't let Remus come along, but she had a good guess as to why. Something inside Val knew what Sirius did not need at the moment was comfort. He needed someone to be with that was unscathed, without a remnant of any memory concerning the fallen Black family. With the full moon just around the corner, they both knew her father needed all the time away from stressful family ordeals, such as the household that had been thrown into their laps.

    The night before, Sirius had handed Val the letter, letting her read to the others what had been written. In it was the confirmation that Sirius' mother and father, Orion and Walburga Black, had been dead for some time already, and their bodies had been taken away for burial alongside the rest of the deceased Black family members. Both died naturally, and no harm was done to aid their deaths. (She swore she had almost heard her father mutter something-as if he was disappointed- under his breath, but Val chose to ignore this). All of the heirlooms, estates, and sums belonging to Orion and Walburga were to be presented to Regulus Arcturus Black. Seeing that he been dead for some time, Sirius Orion Black was now the only living member of the Black family left, the inheritor of everything he had despised greatly.

    "Why now?" James seethed, empathizing with his friend's own anguish the previous night. "After nearly a decade has passed?"

    "Who knows?" Sirius had replied, hanging his head miserably. "Someone must've gotten tired of her ghost haunting them. I always thought she would make a fantastic torturer... oh wait. She was."

    To add to the mood that hung over her father like a dark cloud, ready to rain like hellfire, the letter stated that he could not decline the clauses of the will. In other words, this meant he was very much stuck with the property he hated, and could not give it to anyone unless a great deal of trouble was to be made with lawyers and contacting the relatives which remained unspoken. Sirius had firmly decided, only having read the letter once, that he would not be bothered to ever contact Narcissa Malfoy, nor would he dare to even think of Bellatrix Lestrange.

This only left him with Andromeda Tonks to consider. After having a flurry of letters sent back and forth in the dead of night between him and the only cousin he recognized as family, Andromeda clearly wanted nothing to do with the house and anything that came with it. Sirius was left with no other choice but to enter the home and relive the past he wanted no greater than to forget.

"Of course she couldn't wait until after the holiday," Sirius growled, his frown deepening. "Very typical of her to ruin any cheer, especially during Christmas."

    Val wasn't quite sure what to say to this, but she let her father complain as much as his heart desired. Remembering a time when she was nine, she had made the mistake of asking what his family had been like. She had never forgotten his reaction, similar to the dementors–like all of the warmth in the room had been instantly sucked from its place. She made a vow to herself as young as she was to never bring up the subject again. However, as she came face to face with the house her father had grown up in, it seemed almost impossible to not bring up such matters.