a c c e p t i n g ✓ ✓ ✓ send a word, get a drabble
@tricksworn ╳ THE GHOST OF EX-COUSINS PAST
Druxy - ( adjective \ ˈdrəksē \ ) Something which looks good on the outside, but is actually rotten inside.
♦ ♢ ♦ They lived in a museum. Everything surrounding them was timeless and beautiful, a carefully curated collection of family heirlooms and memorabilia that extolled the virtues of a purebred lifestyle and glorified the immortal name of the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black. As children, when their blood was still wild and not quite so poisoned, there had been more concern for a shattered vase or a toppled figurine than any cuts or scrapes, any injury to their own persons. ( And why not? All the cursed objects were tucked away in their own display, away from prying eyes. ) Their parents cared more for their relics of antiquity than they did their own children. The future, they would always say, rested firmly in the past. Remember who you are, Walburga hissed. Know where you come from, Druella offered in kind.
They lived in a museum, and they were part of the exhibit.
She watches him sometimes, now that they’re older, at school and further away from the manor. Perhaps the audience is different, but people still line up in queue to examine the spectacle that is Sirius Black. Girls ( and some boys, she’s discreetly noted ) swoon at the sight of him, like some dark-haired god on high. He is an anomaly, an oddity! He’s all warm colors - red and gold. He’s all smiles and reckless bravado, carrying the swagger of rebellion and that oh so charming veneer of careless abandon. To them, underneath their spotlight, he’s on the path to greatness. He’s the Black that broke free, the one that’s different.
There’s a wickedness in Sirius that is no different from the rest of them, a cruelty in his soul that is too often mistaken for a sparkle of mischief in his dark eyes. And, oh how it lights up when he fights with his mother! How it gleams when he sneers at his family, pointing out his own moral superiority for choosing not to follow in line, for being his own bloody man with his own damned, bloody thoughts! It’s there in the pure, unadulterated glee that he takes from torturing Severus and that half-madness he succumbs to in the name of a little anarchy. Sure, he’s rearranged the stage, but the play is still the same.
And maybe that’s the tragedy of it. They - neither of them - are any different than the house that made them. His apple - fallen from the family tree - may be shinier, redder than the rest but the bruising is on the inside. The rot is in the core.