Chapter Text
PART II:
We talked for almost an hour, time slipping by faster than I'd anticipated as Regulus jumped from one topic to another without pausing for breath.
Until we heard footsteps in the hallway.
Determined heels on the hardwood floor. Heading straight for my room with a clear purpose.
Regulus straightened immediately, his posture becoming formal and rigid in an instant. The door opened without a knock because, again, privacy wasn't a concept in this house.
Aunt Druella stood there in all her dramatic glory.
She looked elegant as ever, though slightly exasperated in that particular way she did when she was in the middle of organizing some family event and things weren't progressing exactly at her preferred pace. Her golden hair was perfectly styled, every strand in place.
And she was wearing an emerald green ensemble that was ridiculously expensive—I could tell by the quality of the fabric and the fact that it had real peacock feathers incorporated into the design.
A casual outfit for decorating the house by my aunt's standards, because of course Aunt Druella would use peacock feathers to decorate the house.
"Sirius, Regulus," she said with that authority that brooked no argument, her grey eyes scanning us both quickly to ensure we were properly introduced. "I need your help. Now. We're decorating for Christmas dinner, and I need every available hand."
It wasn't a request.
It was an order.
And one never, under any circumstances, argued when Aunt Druella gave orders in her "I'm organizing an event, and everyone will obey without exception" tone.
Which was extremely common, unfortunately for me.
Aunt Druella loved organizing events. She lived for it. It was her existential purpose, apparently. Weddings, formal dinners, Christmas celebrations—any excuse to transform spaces into elaborate productions that would require preparation and the forced participation of every available family member.
Just remembering how hard I'd worked for Bellatrix's wedding last summer—carrying chairs, arranging flowers, being ushered around for hours on end in the blazing sun—made my head ache. I'd spent three whole days helping with the preparations while Aunt Druella ran the show like a general organizing troops for battle.
And now, apparently, it was time for the annual Christmas decorating spectacle.
Great.
Absolutely great.
Regulus and I exchanged glances of shared resignation. His eyes met mine with that expression that clearly communicated, "We have no choice, and we both know it, so we might as well get this over with quickly."
We got up obediently, following Aunt Druella out of my room and toward the stairs.
We descended to the great hall with measured steps, the sound of our feet against the wooden steps mingling with the distant murmur of voices from downstairs.
And then we reached the hall.
It had been transformed into what could only be described as a Christmas explosion of absolutely epic proportions.
Like every year.
There was a tree in the corner. An absolutely monstrous tree that took up almost the entire corner of the living room and grazed the high ceiling, which had to be at least four meters high. The top branches practically touched the decorative plasterwork of the ceiling.
And it was black.
Completely black.
Gold garlands literally covered every available horizontal surface. The mantelpiece was wrapped in thick gold garlands with small silver bells attached. The side tables. The bookshelves. The window frames. The stair railing.
Everything glittered with that metallic gold hue that could probably be seen from the street through the windows.
Magical lights flickered everywhere in patterns that were starting to make me dizzy. Some were gold, some silver to complement them, some changed color every few seconds, going through the entire spectrum. The overall effect was blinding and mildly nauseating if you looked directly at them for too long.
Of course. Of course Aunt Druella had to outdo herself every single year.
She couldn't just repeat a successful scheme from the previous year.
No.
She had to innovate. She had to do something more elaborate, more extravagant, more impossible to ignore.
Last year it had been a tree made entirely of ice that didn't melt. It had been beautiful in theory, but the hall had been frozen solid the entire celebration.
The year before that, it had been a completely white tree with blood-red ornaments and decorations that were more Halloween-esque than Christmas-like. It had been disturbing, honestly, though it's been one of my favorites so far.
Another year it had been a silver tree that floated about a foot off the ground without touching anything, slowly rotating.
And now we had a giant black tree with gold details.
"Where did you get a black tree?" I asked, genuinely curious despite my resignation to spending the next few hours decorating. Because honestly, it was breathtaking in its sheer excess.
"Permanent dye spell," Aunt Druella replied, her gray eyes visibly shining with pride, as if she'd just announced she'd cured some rare magical ailment. "It took three separate attempts to perfect the exact shade. I wanted deep black, true black, not dark gray or faded charcoal. There's a significant difference."
Andromeda appeared from behind Aunt Druella, and when our eyes met, she sighed audibly, discreetly gesturing down at her own hair.
She'd clearly been Aunt Druella's test subject for perfecting the spell. She'd probably spent hours with strands of her hair temporarily dyed various shades of black while Aunt Druella tweaked the incantation again and again until she got the "right" shade.
Poor Andromeda.
"You really outdid yourself this year, darling," Uncle Cygnus said wearily from where he was wrestling with what looked like 50 meters of magical lights that had knotted themselves up during storage.
As always.
Every year it was exactly the same problem. The fairy lights developed some kind of malevolent consciousness during their time stored in boxes and decided to tangle themselves into impossible knots that took hours to untangle.
Luckily for me, though, this year I didn't have to wrestle with them.
That torture belonged entirely to Uncle Cygnus, who looked as if he were seriously considering simply burning all the lights and buying new ones.
The fairy lights had a life of their own. And unpleasant personalities. And they could give you painful electric shocks if you pulled them too hard or insulted them. I knew this from firsthand experience the previous year when I'd ended up with my hair literally standing on end from the shock.
"Thank you, dear," Aunt Druella replied to Uncle Cygnus cheerfully, completely missing—or more likely, intentionally ignoring—the obvious sarcasm in his voice.
She turned to Regulus and me with an expression of renewed purpose.
"I need you to put up the fairies," she said, gesturing toward several boxes stacked near the tree.
She handed us boxes filled with tiny, glittering creatures that twinkled with bright golden light gold to match the year's theme, obviously. The fairies shifted restlessly within their temporary containers, clearly dissatisfied with their current situation.
Great.
Absolutely great.
It was our turn to put up the fairies.
Again.
Like every damn year.
Aunt Druella loved using real fairies for decorating. It was like her signature. Some wizard decorators used enchanted ornaments or shape-shifting lights. Aunt Druella insisted on living creatures that glowed and moved and occasionally bit those who handled them incorrectly.
"Remember," Aunt Druella warned in a stern voice, as if she were giving instructions on how to disarm a magic bomb rather than how to put up decorations, "by the wings. Always by the wings. Not by the body. If you hold them wrong, they faint from shock and then they don't glow properly, and the whole visual aesthetic is ruined."
"We know, Aunt Druella," I said with practiced patience, because we'd done it enough times to know exactly how to handle temperamental fairies without them fainting or attacking us.
Although Andromeda had accidentally squashed one three Christmases ago, and Aunt Druella had had something close to a complete nervous breakdown over "completely ruining the carefully planned aesthetic" and "destroying the visual symmetry of the tree."
Regulus and I obediently took our places on separate wooden ladders on either side of the monstrous black tree.
"Do you think next year it'll be purple?" I murmured to Regulus as I took my first fairy from the box, holding it carefully by its translucent wings. The little creature looked at me with what could only be described as offended indignation.
"I bet it'll be red and green," Regulus replied just as quietly, quiet enough that Aunt Druella couldn't hear us from where she was directing Narcissa on the proper placement of garlands. "You know, traditional Christmas colors, finally. But somehow excessive nonetheless."
"Aunt Druella doesn't do anything traditional," I pointed out, placing the fairy on a branch near the top of the tree. The creature settled down with a small, dramatic sigh that clearly communicated its displeasure with the whole situation.
"Good point," Regulus agreed thoughtfully. "Perhaps a rainbow then. Seven different colors. Or maybe twelve to represent the days of Christmas."
"Or a real fire tree that doesn't burn but looks dangerous," I added. "Who knows with her?"
"Or one that automatically sings carols every hour."
"Don't give her any ideas, Reg."
We had to bite our lips to keep from laughing out loud when Aunt Druella turned her head toward us with a suspicious expression, her eyes narrowed as if she knew we were commenting on her decorations but couldn't quite hear what we were saying.
We remained appropriately silent for several seconds until her attention shifted to another decorating crisis.
I began placing fairies on the black tree with movements practiced from years of experience. The creatures were temperamental as ever, each with its own unpleasant personality.
One hurled what was clearly an elaborate insult at me in its high-pitched, squeaky language that sounded like shattering glass. I couldn't make out the specific words, but the tone was unmistakable.
Another actively tried to bite my finger when I held it too close to its tiny mouth full of surprisingly sharp teeth.
"Yes, yes," I murmured to a particularly vocal fairy who wouldn't stop grumbling as I placed her on her assigned branch. "I don't want to be spending my afternoon here decorating a ridiculous tree either, but none of us have a choice in this matter, do we?"
The fairy made a sound that could have been a reluctant agreement or perhaps another insult.
Hard to tell with fairies.
"What did you say, Sirius?" Aunt Druella asked sharply from her position overseeing everything, her ears seemingly capable of picking up even the faintest murmur through the chaos of the drawing room.
"Nothing, Aunt Druella," I replied immediately with my best fake smile, which I had perfected around the age of seven after years of practicing lying to adults. "Just admiring your unique artistic vision and your knack for creating memorable festive atmospheres."
She looked at me with clear suspicion, her eyes narrowed as she assessed whether I was being sincere or sarcastic.
But she chose not to press the issue, probably because she had too many other things to oversee and couldn't spare the time to interrogate everyone about every comment.
I continued placing fairies while discreetly observing the rest of the room.
From their usual positions near the large stone fireplace, my father and grandfather Arcturus were completely oblivious to all the decorative chaos happening around them.
As if they existed in a completely separate dimension where Christmas decorations and grumbling fairies simply didn't register as worthy of attention.
I envied them a little.
Father had a thick book on ancient magical history open on his lap, and a glass of expensive whiskey rested on the small table next to his chair.
His expression was one of complete disinterest in everything except the pages in front of him. His eyes moved from left to right as he read, occasionally turning a page with precise movements, but never, not once, did he look up to observe what was happening in the rest of the room.
As always.
My father had this incredible ability to simply... tune out the world when he was reading. As if he could create an invisible bubble around himself that blocked out all noise, all distractions, all external reality except for the words on the page in front of him.
It was both impressive and frustrating, depending on whether you were trying to get his attention or not.
My grandfather Arcturus sat in another leather chair near my father, smoking his long, carved wooden pipe that always smelled of tobacco mixed with some herbal element I never quite identified. He had the Daily Prophet open in front of him, his dark eyes scanning the pages with the listlessness of someone reading information he already knew or didn't particularly care about.
He was probably reading something related to the Wizengamot, where he worked and regularly attended sessions. He was a workaholic, incapable of simply relaxing and existing without consuming information related to politics, economics, or magical law.
Just like my father.
The two were nearly identical in that compulsion to keep themselves constantly intellectually occupied.
And be as far away from home as possible.
My Uncle Ignatius stood uncomfortably close to both of them, swaying slightly on his feet, clearly trying to decide whether to attempt a conversation or simply give up and accept that he would be ignored as usual.
Apparently, he decided to try.
Again.
Because Uncle Ignatius never gave up trying. It was admirable in a pathetic way. This optimistic persistence in the face of constant rejection.
"Orion," he said in a kind, optimistic voice that suggested he genuinely believed this time would be different, "did you read the recent article in the Daily Prophet about the Ministry's new regulations regarding the importation of potion ingredients from continental Europe?"
Father turned a page in his book without even looking up.
Absolute silence.
Not even an acknowledgement that he had heard the question.
Uncle Ignatius waited a few hopeful seconds, perhaps thinking that Father was simply finishing an important thought before responding.
But no. Nothing.
Then he tried again, changing his target because Father was clearly completely lost in his book.
"Arcturus," he said, turning to my grandfather with renewed determination, "I thought you might find the editorial's analysis of investments in emerging magical industries interesting, especially the intercontinental shipping sector that—"
My grandfather Arcturus exhaled smoke slowly from his pipe, the gray smoke forming a small ring that floated toward the ceiling before dissipating.
His dark eyes remained fixed on his newspaper, completely ignoring him.
There wasn't even the slightest acknowledgment that Uncle Ignatius had spoken. It was as if he were literally invisible and inaudible.
"Or... perhaps..." Uncle Ignatius paused, desperately searching for some neutral topic that might elicit at least a monosyllabic response. "The weather has been particularly cold this December, hasn't it?"
Nothing from either of them.
Father turned another page.
Grandfather Arcturus took a sip of his own drink without taking his eyes off the newspaper.
Uncle Ignatius sighed audibly, a long, drawn-out sound heavy with the accumulated resignation of years of failed attempts. He took a long sip of his own drink and visibly surrendered, slumping into a nearby armchair in a defeated posture.
My Aunt Lucretia then appeared from somewhere in the house and approached Uncle Ignatius with a small tray of chilled drinks. She gave him a small, affectionate kiss on the crown of his head as she offered him a fresh glass.
It was a tender gesture. The kind of thing you rarely saw in this family where public displays of affection were considered inappropriate and weak.
But Aunt Lucretia was the exception.
The only one who hugged people for no apparent reason. The only one who kissed cheeks and squeezed shoulders and touched arms during conversations as if physical contact were perfectly normal and not a social transgression.
She simply didn't understand, or didn't care, that we Blacks didn't do such things.
Although I personally preferred her to stay well away from me.
She and her ridiculously long, red-painted nails that always, without fail, ended up digging into my cheeks whenever she decided she needed to pinch them while saying something about how "adorable" I was becoming or how "big" I was growing.
It hurt.
It really hurt. Those nails were like claws, and Aunt Lucretia didn't seem to have any concept of how much force she was using when she squeezed.
I continued placing fairies on the tree, lost in my thoughts about arranged marriages and dysfunctional family dynamics while Regulus worked silently on the other side.
"Sirius!" Aunt Druella's voice cut through my thoughts. "That fairy is crooked. Can't you see her wings are misaligned? She's going to ruin the whole symmetry of the tree."
I looked at the fairy I had just placed.
It looked perfectly straight to me.
"It looks good, Druella," Aunt Cassiopeia said from where she had suddenly appeared, examining the decorations with a critical eye. "Or as good as it can look considering that this whole production is ridiculously extravagant."
Oh no.
Here we go.
"Pardon?" Aunt Druella's voice rose dangerously.
"I said," Aunt Cassiopeia repeated in that tone of absolute superiority she always used, "that this is ridiculously extravagant. Everything is too shiny, too big, too... too much. There's no subtlety. No elegance. Just vulgar opulence."
Aunt Druella stopped moving completely. Her hands clenched into fists at her sides. Her face began to turn a reddish hue that suggested imminent danger.
"Vulgar?" she repeated in a dangerously low voice. "Did you just call my decorations vulgar?"
"If the term applies," Aunt Cassiopeia said, examining her perfectly manicured nails as if the conversation bored her. "This is all far too ostentatious. In my day, Christmas decorations had restraint. Elegance. Not this... tasteless explosion."
"In your day," Aunt Druella said, her voice now trembling with fury, "Christmas decorations were probably dull and depressing because you criticized everything until people gave up."
Regulus and I exchanged glances from our stairs.
"I simply have standards," Aunt Cassiopeia replied coldly. "Something you clearly lack if you think this display is appropriate."
"Appropriate! This is perfectly appropriate for a family of our standing!"
"It's appropriate for nouveau riche trying to impress," Aunt Cassiopeia corrected. "Not for us with centuries of tradition behind us."
"NOUVEAU RICHE?" Aunt Druella practically shouted that.
"Druella, Cassiopeia," Uncle Cygnus intervened swiftly, leaving the lights tangled and physically placing himself between the two women before they could cast spells on each other. Which wouldn't be the first time. Last year, Aunt Druella had ended up with temporarily green hair after a particularly heated argument. "Please. We can discuss decorating styles civilly without—"
"There's nothing to discuss, Cygnus" Aunt Cassiopeia interrupted. "Her decorations are vulgar. Period."
"Go away then!" Aunt Druella exploded, her voice rising to a volume that could probably be heard throughout the house. "If my decorations are so offensive to your superior sensibilities, go back to your own house with your boring decorations!"
"This is my house," Aunt Cassiopeia said with absolute coldness. "Long before it was your house. The intruder here is you, not me."
The drawing room fell silent for approximately three seconds.
Even the fairies stopped complaining.
That had been a low blow.
"How dare you?" Aunt Druella's voice was now dangerously low, trembling with barely contained fury.
"Enough."
Mother's voice cut through the air like ice.
We all turned.
Mother stood in the doorway of the hall, her posture perfectly straight as always, her hands resting elegantly in front of her. Her expression was neutral, but her greenish-gray eyes gleamed with something dangerous.
"Aunt Cassiopeia. Druella," she said in that calm voice that made everyone automatically straighten up. "This ends now."
She approached with measured steps, each movement deliberate and elegant.
"Auntie" Mother said, and the use of the respectful title was deliberate, "you're right, of course. As always."
Aunt Cassiopeia straightened slightly, clearly satisfied.
"Druella's decorations are ridiculous," Mother continued in a completely practical tone, as if she were commenting on the weather. "Every year they're more excessive. More extravagant. More unnecessarily ostentatious. A black tree with gold decorations. It's absurd, frankly."
Aunt Druella made a strangled sound, her face going from red to pale in seconds.
"We all know it," Mother added with that same implacable calm. "Everyone in this family is perfectly aware that Druella's taste is... questionable at the best of times. There are too many fairies. The garlands are excessive. The colors are garish. It's as if a child had been left unsupervised in a magic decoration shop."
I looked at Aunt Druella. She looked absolutely devastated, her eyes filling with tears that she was clearly struggling to hold back, or perhaps she was holding back from cursing my mother.
Who knows? With Aunt Druella, it was hard to predict.
"However," Mother said, turning now to Aunt Cassiopeia with that same cold expression, "we let her be."
She paused, letting that sink in.
"We let her decorate this house in ridiculous ways every year because she's part of this family. Because these eccentricities, painful as they are to those of us with real taste, are her contribution. And because the Blacks tolerate the quirks of their members, even when those quirks are... embarrassing."
Aunt Cassiopeia opened her mouth, but Mother continued.
"So yes, Aunt Cassiopeia, her decorations are vulgar. You're absolutely right. But they're Druella vulgar, and as a family, we tolerate them. Just as we tolerate other things in this family that might be considered less than ideal."
Mother's tone didn't change. It remained perfectly calm, perfectly controlled. But there was something in the way she pronounced each word that made it clear this matter was closed.
For a moment I felt like she was talking about my quirks and failures.
"Have I been clear?"
Aunt Cassiopeia looked at her for a long moment. There was recognition in her eyes. Mother had given her what she wanted—validation that the decorations were hideous—while simultaneously establishing that further criticism would not be tolerated.
"As always, my sweet niece," Aunt Cassiopeia said finally.
Mother nodded briefly, then turned to Aunt Druella, who still looked on the verge of tears.
"Druella, get on with the decorations. You've already committed too much time to this to stop now."
It wasn't exactly a compliment. But coming from Mother after that devastating lecture, it was probably the closest Aunt Druella was going to get.
"Yes, Walburga," Aunt Druella mumbled.
Mother glanced at all of us briefly, then turned and left the room.
Uncle Cygnus was the first to recover from the silence my mother had left behind.
He cleared his throat awkwardly, adjusting his robes as if that could somehow restore normalcy.
"Well," he said in a forcedly cheerful voice that fooled no one. "Let's continue then, shall we? We still have a lot of work to do before dinner."
As if his wife hadn't just been publicly humiliated by her sister.
Typical Uncle Cygnus, honestly.
The man had an almost supernatural ability to pretend awkward situations simply didn't exist if he ignored them with enough determination.
Aunt Cassiopeia walked to an upholstered chair in the corner of the parlor with measured, satisfied steps, sitting down next to my grandfather Pollux, who—now that I noticed—wasn't sure exactly when he'd arrived in the parlor.
Aunt Druella, on the other hand, turned to her decorations with stiff, controlled movements that suggested she was holding back strong emotions. Her hands trembled slightly against her wand as she adjusted a garland that needed no adjustment.
She looked humiliated, her cheeks still slightly pink with barely contained shame.
But also resigned. As if this were something she had experienced enough times to know the pattern. Be criticized, defend herself, be publicly humiliated, carry on anyway.
"This is completely unfair," Aunt Druella muttered in a trembling voice, directed mainly at her husband, though probably everyone in the room could hear her anyway. "Completely and utterly unfair."
"Terribly unfair," Uncle Cygnus agreed without real conviction, his words automatic and practiced from years of mediating these exact situations.
He could probably recite these phrases in his sleep by now.
"Cygnus, your aunt is an absolutely insufferable witch," Aunt Druella continued, her voice rising slightly as the accumulated resentment began to seep through her carefully maintained composure. "Unbearable. Cruel. Bitter. And don't even get me started on your sister Walburga."
I glanced over at Aunt Cassiopeia. If she had heard herself called unbearable, cruel, and bitter—and she definitely had, considering Aunt Druella wasn't exactly whispering—she gave no indication of it.
She simply sat there with perfect posture, looking supremely pleased with herself.
"Technically, Cassiopeia is your aunt, too," Uncle Cygnus pointed out in a pragmatic, weary tone, as if this were a conversation they'd had roughly a thousand times before. "By marriage. And Walburga is your sister-in-law."
"Don't make me feel worse!" Aunt Druella exclaimed, turning to him with a horrified expression, as if she'd just remembered that she was permanently bound to these people by legal and familial ties she couldn't break.
Regulus and I exchanged glances from our respective staircases, both of us trying very hard not to laugh out loud.
This was perfectly normal at our family gatherings. Aunt Cassiopeia criticized absolutely everything because it was literally her favorite hobby. Her reason for being seemed to be finding fault with everything and everyone around her and pointing it out with superiority.
And Aunt Druella was her absolute favorite target because she was so easily offended, taking her decorations and organized events so extremely seriously that it was almost too easy.
Although Andromeda had once told me that the conflict between Druella and Aunt Cassiopeia went far beyond simple criticism of decorations.
"Aunt Cassiopeia despises the Rosiers," Andromeda had told me in a low, confidential voice, her gray eyes checking that no one else was listening. "She always has. Mother is a Rosier by birth, and that's enough for Aunt Cassiopeia to never truly accept her as part of the family, no matter how many years she's been married to Father."
When I had asked why—what Aunt Cassiopeia specifically had against the Rosiers—Andromeda had shrugged.
"Mother doesn't explain much," she had said. "Something happened decades ago. Something between the families. But no one mentions it directly. There's just... this constant tension."
Which explained a lot, honestly.
Uncle Cygnus patiently mediated between the two women with the patience of a saint because he was apparently the only one of his siblings who had inherited that specific trait from my grandmother Irma: infinite patience for dealing with difficult personalities without completely losing his composure.
And when things got out of hand, like what had just happened, it was either my mother or my grandfather Pollux who intervened with enough authority to forcefully end the conflict.
And the rest of us pretended not to notice the drama as we went about our tasks, though we were all secretly entertained.
Or terrified.
"Mother is right about something," Narcissa murmured from where she was arranging delicate crystal ornaments on a side table with her wand, separating them by size and color with meticulous precision. "Aunt Cassiopeia is excessive with her criticism."
Her voice was low, barely audible over the general murmur of the drawing room, but clearly directed at Andromeda, who was working nearby.
"Aunt Cassiopeia hates everything," Andromeda replied "Literally everything. No matter what it is. She'll find something to criticize."
She paused, remembering something.
"Last year she criticized my shoes for a full twenty minutes," she continued, sounding somewhere between amused and irritated. "Twenty damn minutes."
"Your shoes had mud on them, Andy," Narcissa pointed out matter-of-factly, looking up from her ornaments.
Andromeda glared at her, her eyes narrowed.
"That's not the point."