"No... let's not just shake the air for nothing," Sirius Black refused , surprisingly seriously and quite suddenly. "I've already figured out that you seem to like this Daphne Greengrass, and you've already promised her this betrothal..."
"Yeah, I promised... But I don't really want to make myself out to be an appendage to soone else's family, either. Not after what you said," I shook my head, interrupting my godfather and... finally finding a certain asure of ambition within myself.
*I don't want to occupy an inherently lower social position,* I honestly admitted to myself by the end of this entire conversation... I didn't know why such pride had suddenly awakened in , but...
If I were to be a little optimistic and temporarily cast aside the threat from the Dark Lord, then... I really didn't want to allow Daphne to be the one in charge. Even her nominal leadership didn't appeal to , even if I hadn't thought about our betrothal from that angle before.
I hadn't thought about it at all before; due to our current relationship, I simply hadn't allowed the very thought that this girl could ever put under her taphorical thumb in the future. Daphne didn't have—at least for the mont—such desires or inclinations. And in general, she yielded the leading role in our interactions to too easily—which was actually true for our entire group of friends, but...
I suppose I was still too fixated specifically on survival and the possible war with Voldemort. That bastard, after all, was hardly going to leave alone, which is why I hadn't particularly tried to seriously ponder how my union with Daphne would look in the eyes of the public. I understood that for purebloods, my marrying into the Greengrass family would look sowhat ambiguous, but...
*Do I even care about these purebloods at all, if they are gradually becoming a relic of the past even without outside help?... Not to ntion that a good half of these sa purebloods—including the families of most of my Slytherin friends—could ultimately beco my enemies,* I asked myself completely obvious questions, once again thinking about possible opposition to my current friends...
"And you're right not to want to... I think we can avoid that," my godfather assured , with so hesitation but still quite confidently, pulling from my dark reflections and returning to the main issue—the discussion of my betrothal to Daphne. "I'll see what can be done in this situation, I'll consult with knowledgeable people... And then we can et with your beloved's parents, to review, so to speak, the terms of your possible betrothal."
"Sirius... do you really want to deal with all this?" I asked cautiously, still not finding in Black any particular desire to get involved with anything resembling bureaucracy. The reluctance with which he had dragged himself to the Ministry of Magic to formalize his guardianship over was more than telling.
"Don't sweat it! Believe , it won't be that hard for to organize a betrothal for you on the most favorable terms!" Sirius Black assured of his own abilities to conduct business, sounding combative and clearly overdoing the bravado in his voice... Sotis I begin to think that this overgrown tramp simply wants to build up an image of a "super-uncle" for , soone who can always be relied upon. And so far, despite many flaws and nuances, he's even starting to pull it off...
"Really? And what kind of terms might those be?" I asked sowhat mockingly, already quite tired of this conversation and simply hoping to quickly think everything over properly in private, but... still wanting to clarify what exactly my godfather ant in this case before we finished.
"There can actually be quite a lot of options," the last of the Black line looked at confidently anwhile. "Everything will depend on Agatha Greengrass's willingness to make concessions and the strength of her desire to give her daughter specifically to you... But if it cos to it, the surna of your future children can be contested. For example, to stipulate everything so that the eldest child is a Potter, and the youngest is a Greengrass... or vice versa. There really is a lot to discuss here, especially considering that you're not exactly a barefoot beggar yourself, and if it cos to it, you'll definitely be able to leave quite a bit of inheritance specifically to 'your' child. And if I make my inheritance public on top of that..."
"Sirius!" I clucked at the man sowhat irritably, having known almost from the first day about his fixation in this direction. "You're only thirty-three, not ninety-three... So don't rush to bury yourself and your possible descendants ahead of ti."
"Yeah, yeah, I rember..." the mage, emaciated after Azkaban, snorted sowhat sadly, seemingly not intending to take my words seriously. "But don't you sweat it either way! If necessary, we'll mold you into such a desirable groom that the Greengrasses will even give up their own surna if needed. Just don't get down about it!"
"Whatever you say... just let's go have lunch already," I shook my head at another flash of his bravado... and thereby ending this restless conversation. Which, however, I still couldn't call completely useless to ...
Sirius's effervescent support and care had truly touched much more deeply than I had thought. It hadn't even been a week since we t in person, and I already... felt sohow more confident—I could look to the future with more hope and optimism.
And it wasn't even about Black's monuntal readiness to indulge almost all my desires. No, that was, of course, very important, pleasant, and practically invaluable to , but... In reality, I was most inspired by life itself in the house at Number 12, Grimmauld Place.
Spending the sumr not sowhere out there in the Muggle world, hiding from every cat in attempts to secretly perform magic and hone my skills, but in a bona fide ancestral estate of one of the darkest and most influential magical families from the recent past... It was inspiring and calming—it even made feel like soone more than just a typical orphan of the magical world, with no real support to my na.
Just the access alone—even if not too free for now due to the abundance of artifacts dangerous to —to the library of an ancient family instantly turned my perception of the world and my attitude towards the future upside down. Where before I could only hone practical skills, simultaneously training ntal magic with attempts to rember everything I had read before at Hogwarts...
Now I could do this with maximum comfort, not only honing what I had already studied in theory, but also calmly comprehending sothing absolutely new, often unavailable to during ordinary school days... And Sirius, boiling with the desire to spend as much ti with as possible, didn't hesitate at all to help with mastering new spells and charms.
To my huge shock, he even turned out to be quite a good teacher!... Not on the level of Flitwick with his enthusiasm and truly vast teaching experience, but his ease of communication and the presence of a not-so-bad education still allowed Sirius to quite easily simplify even very complex topics down to intuitive thods of spellcasting.
I don't even want to talk about his readiness, and importantly—his ability to drill in genuine combat magic. It was simply impossible to overestimate classes with Black in this regard, if only because he, again, really knew his stuff and devoted almost seven years of his conscious life—aning his whole youth and later years at Hogwarts—precisely to the combat aspects of magic.
And even if after Azkaban the wizard had lost a great deal of his skills, simultaneously forgetting much of his previously favorite combat combinations and techniques, but... it didn't hinder my learning much, partly making it only more interesting. In the end, Sirius could give a solid foundation even in his current state—so things even years of living next to dentors hadn't drawn out of him.
Well, and the attempts of Sirius himself to restore his forr skills served as an excellent demonstration for of what to strive for and in what direction to develop... well, at least in the first stages of my training.
Which, by the way, despite its intensity, wasn't all that continuous. Still, my godfather's condition after Azkaban still left much to be desired. Sotis the man would break down, starting almost out of nowhere to revel in his own grief, longing for the old days and old comrades... Naturally, accompanying this whole affair with hard liquor and not particularly decent behavior. He even brought so whores from among ordinary people to the house a few tis.
Which, naturally, I didn't like very much, but I was still in no hurry to stop my godfather. I understood that my reproaches definitely wouldn't make things better, and I wouldn't be able to completely stop him from such breakdowns anyway... If I were in his place, I would almost certainly behave a couple of orders of magnitude worse. In this regard, Sirius already almost exceeded my wildest expectations.
To count on the fact that this man, having spent almost his entire youth side by side with dentors, would be able to remain in an even sowhat adequate state and even manage to play the part of a good godfather quite well... Well, even if I'm repeating myself, it really was quite impressive.
I had expected worse, and therefore I was ready to calmly put up with the drinking bouts and binges of my newly minted guardian... Especially since he still wasn't in a hurry to get carried away headlong with alcohol and self-flagellation—he almost never drank for more than two days in a row, and in general tried to make sure that I felt comfortable in any case.
Often these attempts to "look after" were limited to allocating frankly crazy sums for pocket money and permission to move freely in both the Muggle and magical worlds.
Sirius even taught a couple of quasi-ntal spells so that, if necessary, I could move completely freely around normal London, easily fending off both local bobbies and simply caring adults who sotis wondered if I was too young to be walking around the city alone, going to the movies, or having lunch in cafes...
In short, the first half of my sumr was going very well indeed. Compared to past holidays—the current ones were perceived by as manna from heaven! Unrestricted magic, unblocked correspondence with friends, a bunch of new knowledge and impressions, the banal opportunity to look to tomorrow with so confidence, freedom of action and movent, the full moral right to indulge myself with not the cheapest entertainnts and purchases...
Words cannot convey how much I had missed all this, enjoying literally every single day of these sumr holidays... And a couple of artifacts from the house at Number 12, Grimmauld Place, which allowed to fly on a broom over London without drawing unnecessary attention from ordinary people, were just the final touches in the recipe for my perfect—and generally first real—vacation in this life.
And for the fact that Sirius provided all this to simply by his presence and his willingness to treat almost like an adult mage, I truly was ready to forgive him almost any flaws... And when he did keep his promise to more or less sort out my betrothal, I completely lost any moral right to treat him as a stranger to .
In just one month of personal interaction, Sirius Black had by so miracle managed to beco almost the closest person to in this life... And what is telling—these feelings were more than mutual.
Read Advanced Chapters on: p@treon/Amiii_
~Every 150 PS = Bonus Chapter!
~Push the Story forward with your [Power Stones]
User Comments
0 comments from readers