November 3, 1959 - November 3, 1981
It was a cold, stormy night when he came wailing into the world, grasping for air, as desperately as the rough wind outside bashed against the windows.
Walburga Black smiled, in sheer triumph, upon hearing the healer announce it was a boy. A boy. She had done it. The heir nor Cygnus nor Alphard could provide, she had gave him life. After having heard so many pleas from her father-in-law, her own father’s worries and her husband’s incessant expectations, there he was.
He was placed in her arms, small, but strong. His skin had become red from all the weeping, and she shushed him while gently stroking his forehead and in between his eyes. Those he finally opened, while his frown became a look of attention, revealing a clear, grey iris. As his crying ceased, she realized what a beautiful creature he was. What a worthy, sturdy, and handsome heir she had brought into her family.
She named him after the brightest star in the night sky, like many Blacks were named before him. However, none of them had been as worthy of such name, she was sure. She watched the name Sirius Orion Black and the face of her most beautiful son being added to the family tree tapestry, with a smile of satisfaction on her lips.
Orion was proud, but not as proud as she was. After all, most of it was her doing. She had been responsible for carrying him for nine whole months, for being a model of health during that entire time, and of course, for giving birth to him. Thirteen hard, excruciating hours of labor. This victory, she was more than pleased to wear like a badge of honor.
Walburga was set to raise him in the highest of pureblood customs. And as her little heir slept peacefully in his crib, she caressed his dark hair while dreaming of what she had in store for his future. French lessons as soon as he was able to speak. The best private tutors until he was at age to attend Hogwarts. Duel instructors as soon as he could properly hold a wand. Her Sirius would have everything that would be fit for a prince to possess, and more.
His very first accidental magic happened the day Walburga gave birth again, to another boy, Regulus Black. Once more, she was filled with happiness to bring yet another heir to the House of Black. At that point, with almost two years old, Sirius had already proved to be talented, but somewhat of a challenging child. He craved for attention, and had a flair for trouble. Upon realizing Walburga was laying her attention on another, an attention that up to that point, had been exclusively his, he cried for her, making the window of his brother’s nursey explode. Walburga was beyond proud.
As the years passed, her firstborn went from challenging to difficult. At three years old, he somehow learned how to say very unflattering words in French, which his tutor had sworn had not come from his lessons. At five, he would refuse to talk to his eldest cousin, Bella. At seven, he got a well-deserved slap from his father after being disrespectful with his grandfather Arcturus.
He began to slowly drive Walburga mad. He wouldn’t properly wear the elegant robes she would so carefully choose for him, he showed no interest whatsoever in the dark arts the tutor Orion had hired so diligently tried to taught him, he would question every single one of his mother lectures, and he would avoid all people except for his cousin Andromeda and his uncle Alphard at family gatherings. Her handsome, worthy prince was showing to be more of an arrogant little scoundrel.
At ten years old, right before his eleventh birthday and one year before he went to Hogwarts, he made his most grievous, most horrendous mistake, up to then.
Living right in the middle of muggle London, Walburga had always instructed her sons not to mingle with filthy, disgusting muggles. She had warned them of the dangers, of the disgrace such conduct could result in. Wizards – especially pureblood wizards such as themselves – were far beyond superior to the lots of muggles. No, they were not to associate with such worthless vermin.
And yet, after being raised between the greatest of their kind… after receiving a treatment fit for royalty, after being taught by the most brilliant in the most advanced lines of the dark arts, after being educated in the most traditional, most high-valued of wizard kind customs, there he was… Running, kicking some kind of ball, laughing and playing with a muggle boy.
Walburga witnessed this scene with her own eyes, upon opening her front door after failing to find her son inside the house for his etiquette lessons. Without saying any word, to him or to the disgraced little pest he was socializing with, she grabbed Sirius by the arm and led him inside Grimmauld Place.
He was punished, and although he cried in pain, she made it very clear for him that she had been merciful, for she was his mother. When Orion came home, Walburga ran to her husband in furious rage and told him what she had witnessed. He was as lived as she had been and the boy was punished once more. The next day, the boy tried to put on a brave face, but upon hearing his father demanding he apologized, and seeing his mother draw her wand from her robes, Sirius started sobbing, and asked for their forgiveness.
Her precious heir had gone to proudest achievement of her life, to challenging child, then difficult boy. However, she still had hope. After all, Sirius was now old enough to go to Hogwarts. Now, he would finally have some interest in the dark arts, being amongst friends who came from the same background as him. He would finally understand what his parents had meant when they said some wizarding families were superior to others. Walburga believed, Hogwarts would be the place where Sirius, finally living midst pureblood wizards of his own age, would discover the true meaning of what it was to be a Black. He would finally understand his calling, his purpose.
He was sorted into Gryffindor.
Ungrateful, disrespectful, devil of a child! Walburga made sure to send him a very nasty howler, which he did not respond to. In fact, he barely communicated with his family through the whole school year. Hogwarts had been Walburga’s highest hope, but it had become her worst nightmare.
From that moment on, his relationship with the family only began to deteriorate. His friends weren’t purebloods. In fact, it seemed Sirius tried to avoid purebloods. He had a talent for charms, and still no interest in the dark arts. He spent half the summer – every single summer – with his friend James Potter, at his parent’s household. He also ran to his uncle Alphard’s house every chance he got, and he attended Andromeda’s wedding to the filthy little mudblood – fact that was only learned by Walburga after he went, and to which he was duly punished for.
He referred to mudbloods as muggle-borns, and Walburga feared he was interacting with those lots. He decorated his whole room with red and gold and scattered the walls with pictures of him and his friends and posters of bands Walburga had never heard of. When he was fifteen, he hanged a picture – a muggle picture – of a muggle girl on his wall. Walburga tried to blast it off, and so did her husband. They failed to do so, and Sirius was punished again. He did not seem to care. He had grown used to it.
At sixteen, he was a handsome, talented, bright young wizard. He looked like everything Walburga wished and imagined he would look like some day. He was tall like her brothers and her husband; he had her long, black and beautiful hair, and the Blacks sharp grey eyes and cheekbones. Everything about his looks screamed pureblood. Everything about his conducts screamed otherwise. When he came home from his fifth year Christmas break, a time where the Dark Lord and his followers were making some progress in their campaign, he got into a big argument with his parents. Truth was Sirius was far from being the man Walburga and Orion expected him to be – the man they raised him to be. Once again, Sirius was insolent, arrogant and disrespectful, and once again, he was punished.
It wasn’t the first time Sirius had taken the cruciatus curse. But she had noticed: there was something off about it this time. Even though she had been merciless, even though she had no more pity for him, it seemed as if he was suffering less, afterwards it happened. That same night, on Christmas, Sirius ran away.
She blasted him off the family tree as soon as she realized what he had done. She disinherited him, erased him forever of the House of Black. She screamed, as Orion sulked, and Regulus hid. She had not two sons, but only one. That disgrace was not to be seen or recognized by her anymore. She learned that he had ran away to the Potter’s household, and she made sure not to hear from him again after that.
Walburga did not know what had become of him after he graduated, nor did she want to. Alphard died, and left him his money, which caused his demise from the family tree as well. Sirius did not come to his funeral, despite his uncle´s charitable gesture towards him. Neither did he came to his brother’s funeral. Or his father’s.
It was his twenty-second birthday when she got the news. It cannot be – she thought to herself, for it was simply impossible. In Azkaban, for the death of twelve muggles. A follower of the Dark Lord all along – she was told. She laughed. Hysterically. She did not believe it. Not the crime – that, Walburga knew Sirius was capable of – she did not believe the motive.
But there it was, then. She was alone. Her husband, dead and buried, her brothers, long gone, her prodigy son, sacrificed, and her firstborn, imprisoned for life. She sat at her high chair, tears in her eyes, a deranged smiled on her lips. Her last offspring, her biggest pride and then her biggest shame. She glanced at the tapestry in the wall, and at the hole where once Sirius’s face had stood. What a worthy, sturdy, and handsome heir I brought into my family. – she thought to herself – What a disgraceful shame – she thought at last, while another hysterical laughter burst from her lips, and the tears streamed from her eyes.
