Sirius shifted uncomfortably under their gaze. He looked himself over, straightened his collar, brushed at his shoulders, and tugged on the hem of his robe, but nothing seed to help.
He looked up again and bared his teeth at Regulus.
Regulus stopped looking at him. Confird... he was serious.
He raised his right hand, index finger aid lazily at Sirius, and cast a Transfiguration charm.
The robe began to change.
The collar loosened by two inches, seams shifting. The fabric across the shoulders relaxed and spread. The ridge under the armpits smoothed flat. The sleeves lengthened, dropping to cover his wrists.
The entire garnt seed to co alive, reshaping itself around Sirius's body in under two seconds.
Sirius stood frozen.
He looked down. The collar wasn't choking him. The shoulders weren't binding. He raised an arm. No pulling underneath.
He rolled one shoulder, then the other. The fabric moved with him, fitting everywhere it should.
He looked up at Regulus.
Regulus had already turned and was walking down the corridor.
Sirius's mouth hung open. He wanted to say sothing but nothing ca out, his expression shifting from blank to dawning realization, from realization to a particular brand of embarrassnt that had no na.
What he'd probably ant to say was: Oh. Right. Transfiguration. That's an option.
He drew a deep breath, shook his shoulders to fling the embarrassnt loose, and followed in long strides.
The two of them walked to the study, one ahead, one behind.
The study door was open.
Orion sat behind a mahogany desk, several sheets of parchnt spread before him. They looked like Wizengamot voting records.
He held a quill, annotating the margins of a case file, the nib's passage across parchnt barely audible.
At the sound of the door he looked up, set down the quill, and leaned back.
"Sit." He lifted his chin toward the two chairs opposite.
Regulus crossed the room and sat.
Sirius pulled out the chair beside him. The way he dropped into it was looser than it had been at dinner.
He settled against the backrest, hands on the armrests, legs stretched out. Casual.
At the table he'd still been wound tight, talking to Orion like he was pushing against sothing.
That tension had passed now, digested, and his body had caught up.
Orion closed the file in front of him and pushed it aside.
"The Christmas banquet." No particular inflection. "Day after tomorrow, evening. Lestrange Manor."
His gaze shifted to Sirius, the pace of his words unhurried. "Since you're back, you're required to attend this year."
"The Black heir absent from the Christmas banquet two years running. People will talk.
The eldest son standing beside the Head of House. That's what makes the family look whole, unified in direction. They see you standing there, and they stop asking questions."
He waited for Sirius's reaction.
In the past, this kind of talk would have detonated him on the spot or sealed him shut, face turned away, the whole person locked down.
Orion had seen both versions more tis than he could count. He wanted to see which one showed up tonight.
Sirius leaned back in his chair. He heard it all. No explosion. No lockdown.
"I know," he said, tone easy, then muttered sothing half to himself: "Was going anyway."
What he wanted to see wasn't just the Black family. He wanted to see what the pure-blood families standing with Voldemort actually looked like up close.
Malfoy. Nott. Carrow. Lestrange.
He'd heard those nas a hundred tis at the Grimmauld Place tea gatherings. Walburga's voice always climbed half a register whenever she ntioned them.
He wanted to see for himself what these people were really about.
One of Orion's eyebrows shifted, the movent barely there before he suppressed it.
He didn't press. He continued.
"Keep quiet at the banquet. Stay beside . I'll introduce you to the people you need to et. Shake hands, nod, say the right things."
A pause, then: "Bella will take your arm. She's the lady of the Lestrange household. You're the Black heir. It's protocol."
Sirius's face changed.
The corners of his mouth sank. Then his brows creased, his nose scrunched, the whole face collapsing inward like he'd caught a whiff of sothing left in the sun too long.
Bella, taking his arm.
The image alone made the arm in question feel like it belonged to soone else.
Bellatrix Lestrange. His cousin. The mad dog trailing Voldemort's heels with her tongue out. The fanatic who couldn't open her mouth without invoking the Dark Lord, eyes burning with a fervor that made skin crawl.
He despised her madness and her fawning. Despised the whole package: the pure-blood zealotry, the worship of violence, the treatnt of Dark magic as glory.
Most of all, she had her eyes on Regulus. The way she looked at him, like a block of wood she could carve into whatever shape her master preferred.
He already knew about the bone box. Sent by Bella on Voldemort's behalf. That kind of thing...
He stopped the thought there.
Walking a circuit on the arm of that woman. Just imagining the contact made him want to detach the limb and toss it to a dog.
Orion was still talking. "After the toasts, hold your position. No unnecessary remarks. No conflict with anyone..."
"I won't." Sirius finally spoke, voice flat.
"I'm speaking about contingencies." Orion glanced at him.
Sirius went quiet.
He listened as Orion laid it out, point by point. Greetings, toasts, positioning, routes through the room, who warranted conversation and who got a nod and nothing more.
Each item stacked another layer of weight in his chest.
He'd thought he was ready. Thought coming back to look would be simple. Thought he could handle all of it.
But hearing the details, his body reacted before his mind caught up.
First his arm went numb, a tingling that crept from the elbow upward, sothing crawling beneath the skin.
Then his chest. His stomach turned once, not hard, but the sensation pushed up to his throat, lodging there, making him want to cough without being able to.
Without realizing it, he leaned further back, trying to put distance between himself and the words.
Look. That's all. Just look.
He told himself.
He'd co back to see. To see what all of this really was. To see whether he could look at it through different eyes.
See what Bella was like in that setting. See how those pure-blood families spoke to each other. See how the people on Voldemort's side actually operated.
He didn't have to like them. Didn't have to agree. He was just looking.
Like an audience mber who'd slipped backstage to see the props and the rigging. No matter how grand the show out front, he'd know none of it was real.
These were the things he'd spent years running from with everything he had.
Now he was choosing to walk in. No running. No making a scene. Just looking.
Maybe once he'd seen it all, he'd finally understand what exactly he'd been hating, and what he'd been fighting against.
Sirius drew a long breath. The exhale through his nose carried a faint sound, almost a sigh but not quite.
The distaste still clung to his face, not fully wiped away, but he gave a single nod.
Orion studied him a beat longer, then nodded back.
His gaze left Sirius and settled on Regulus. He didn't speak. The question was in his eyes alone.
Why is he here?
User Comments
0 comments from readers