HEATHER BLACK AGREED TO DO THE THING THAT NOBODY ELSE COULD TO DO.
Use her animagus form, and protect Harry Potter for fifteen years.
As an owl.
As Hedwig.
***
Travis McKinnon wanted nothing more than to do something useful.
So he used his animagus...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
WHEN HEATHER SAW SIRIUS BLACK, she almost didn't recognise him. She'd known him well, and his face was so battered and lacking that easy-going smirk that she was used to seeing him with—it was shocking to her.
Sirius was her cousin, and though they had never been particularly close, she'd cared for him, and he'd cared for her, too. Heather had never been as close to Sirius as Andromeda had been, and she blamed it on the five-year age gap between them.
Of course, now, he believed her to be dead—obviously. Everybody did, except for the few people Dumbledore had told.
Hedwig was right on Harry's shoulder—having just delivered a letter—as Sirius explained to Harry the complex family tree of the Black family.
"Oh, and there's a cousin of my mother's," Sirius pointed to a woman's name, Araminta Meliflua, on the family tapestry, "tried to make Muggle-Hunting legal."
He continued to ramble on about a couple more people until the topic came onto Nymphadora Tonks—which was when Heather tuned in. Nymphadora, or Tonks, as the young woman preferred to be called, was Heather's niece, even though by now she was older than Heather, since Heather had remained at 15 years old since she was fifteen.
She knew all of the people Sirius spoke about. She, like him, had been educated about the importance of blood purity and all of the branches of the Black family tree.
"Andromeda Black was my favourite cousin," Sirius said, scanning the bottom of the tree, "And she's been blasted off, too."
Harry's eyes followed to where Sirius was pointing—where beside the burn mark was the names Bellatrix Black and Narcissa Black, and then another burn mark beside Narcissa.
"Why has another person been blasted off, here?" Harry pointed to the burn mark next to Narcissa Black's name, and Sirius shook his head sadly.
"Heather Black," Sirius explained, crouching down as though he were taking a better look at the place where two of the Black sisters had been blasted off, "Five years younger than me—but so much wiser and so much braver than me." He sighed, "She was murdered. By Death Eaters. She joined the Order, you see, when she was just fifteen—because she was extraordinarily talented with magic, and Dumbledore knew she'd be loyal and helpful."
"Then why can't I—,"
"We didn't have enough members then," Sirius cut him off, and Harry fell silent, "And she volunteered, too. She and Travis McKinnon—Marlene's little brother—joined when they were fifteen, and they were murdered on the same day at the same place not even a year later."
