บท 47: Serious Business.
(Double Release Biatch! Wanna thank me? Then lift your Cheesy butt of out of the shivering isles and make a review, drop some stones and read ahead if you can.)
Magnus was confused.
What should have been a night of celebration and joy and secret relief for he knew Voldemort's plans were ruined turned into one of the most wretched things he could imagine.
All was laughter and joy, he teased and discussed matters great and small with the small number of friends he held so closely...and then nothing.
There was nothing he felt when McGonagall told him to follow her outside the hall. There was nothing he felt when his classmates shot him pitying looks.
And he felt nothing more when he read the red letter, nothing but the loss of hope.
He wasn't a fool, he knew what a grey owl carrying a red letter meant, he'd spent enough time in the wizarding world to know at least some of their traditions and conventions.
A gray owl with a red letter meant it was sent from Saint Mungo, it meant someone was hurt...or worse.
Coldly he wondered which one he would lose this time.
Would it be his dear aunt Andromeda? His sweet cousin Nymphadora falling in line of duty? His uncle Ted, perhaps, attacked by blood purists?
Or his father, the one he freed a mere year ago.
Getting close to them was a mistake, and he fell into it so willingly. He should have known better than to trust them, to assume they would be fine on their own.
All the bonds he formed, fully aware that they would be nothing but liabilities in the long term.
"Are you alright?"
It made him sick.
"Magnus, we need to go…" He felt a hand on his shoulder.
He forgot himself, got too comfortable. It won't happen again...never again
"Magnus, Sirius needs you." She said,
The words struck him harder than anything Mike Tyson could pull off. Sirius needed him, his father needed him…
"Let's go." He said, ashamed at how choked up his voice sounded.
She squeezed his shoulder in support, and he took all the comfort he could from the gesture while she guided him to her study in the Gryfindor tower.
It should have been his head of house taking him to St Mungo, but Flitwick had enough sense to know that Magnus needed her by his side.
The corridors never felt this long, the stones never felt so cold and the hundreds of candles floating idly didn't seem to brighten anything.
For the first time in ages, Magnus wanted out of Hogwarts.
In ten infinitely long minutes, they reached her study. He took a bit of floo powder from the recipient by the chimney, and threw it on the fire.
"Saint Mungo." He said loud and clear, and his world shifted once more.
Floo travel wasn't nearly as disturbing as apparition, but Magnus didn't have it in him to care. Minerva followed him soon after, and together they sought out his father.
As he walked through the sanitized corridors, rushing healers and moaning patients everywhere, Magnus could hear his heart pounding in his ears.
His emotions confused him, so much that the occlumency he loved so much could do nothing to appease him.
Worry? Fear? Anguish? Guilt? He didn't know, nor did he care.
All he wanted was to see Sirius, see that he's alright.
'He can't be that hurt...he can't...' He denied, but he knew even his fool of a father wouldn't joke like this.
Before he knew it, he was embraced by a worried Andromeda. He couldn't make sense of her reassurances, or Ted's attempts at humor.
He just kept walking forward, until he reached the room of one Sirius Orion Black.
"Hello there." The long haired man said, a roguish smile on his face "Why the long face?"
It was like a boulder was lifted from his shoulders, Sirius was alright…
His eyes were yellow and his vigor absent, but it was better than his state after leaving Azkaban, and much better than what Magnus imagined.
Knowing he was safe and sound, Magnus recovered enough sense to digest all the information. The mind arts allowed him to recover all that he missed in his haste, and he did not like it one bit.
Worry became anger, and all the sympathy he felt for his recovering father faded away when confronted by the reason for all these problems.
"Alcohol poisoning." Magnus growled, enjoying the way Sirius flinched.
His father didn't drink himself dead, but he gave it his best shot.
"Listen...I can explain…" He said, motioning him to calm down and hear him out.
Af if anything could justify such weakness.
"Explain what?" He said "That you drank so much poison your magic could no longer keep you safe? That you are so weak you couldn't resist a freakingbottle?"
His words hurt him, Magnus could see it in his drunkard of a father's eyes. It was good, but not enough to satisfy him.
What did make him pause was the shame he saw in his eyes.
Magnus didn't expect that, Sirius was never the pudic type. He was more likely to own his reckless drinking habits, or just fall back into the classic Black reaction; explosive anger without much direction.
But shame, now that was new.
New and unexpected enough to stop a very much enraged Black before he could dish out a proper verbal lashing.
"I know that…" Sirius said, muttering something under his breath.
He looked more unsure than the day he left Azkaban, and learned his yet to be known bastard son arranged his release. Or when he first cleaned himself up to take part in a Wizengamot meeting, filling his ancestral seat and trying to make something good of it for the first time in decades.
"I...after Azkaban…" He said, struggling to form a sentence. "I'm messed up, Magnus."
If the boy's anger had been stopped, now it was fully quenched.
He watched Sirius rubbing his neck, where his Azkaban tattoo had once been. Magnus himself had insisted that he have it removed, finding it too degrading, Andromeda was of the same opinion.
"Even before that, I wasn't the head of the team. I just went along with James, and then Lily's ideas…" Sirius said, his voice quivering when chuckled. "I wasn't mature, never have been, and the Dementors didn't help."
"You shouldn't sell yourself so short, you do have your moments." Magnus said, wincing at his bad attempt at cheering him up.
Sirius laughed anyway, he was always easy to please. More like desperate to have fun, and replenish all the joy the wraiths of Azkaban took away.
Soon, his laugh faded as he shook his head. Looking at Magnus as he often did, trying to find every bit of resemblance between them.
They had the same hair, for one, soft and black as coal. The same cheekbones, same nose and while their eye colors couldn't be more different, the shape was eerily similar.
It was like looking at a warping mirror, enchanted to show what he once was.
That was where the resemblance ended, for their personalities couldn't be more different.
Where Sirius was loud and spontaneous, Magnus was calm and taciturn. Sirius was wilder, impulsive and quick to anger, Magnus would plan everything to the most minor detail and would swallow minute anger for the sake of his goals.
At least, they both loved joking around.
"You don't need to cheer me up son, I'm a piss poor father and we both know it."
Magnus's mouth opened in an 'o' shape, but no words came out. He didn't know what to make of this, and he hated it.
Sirius took a look at him before barking a laugh, leaning back into his bed, when he was like this he looked fourteen years younger.
"Quit looking so troubled, a worried expression doesn't suit you at all.." He chuckled, reaching out to ruffle his hair. "You must always remain calm, that's who Magnus Black is."
"Fuck off." He growled, but let him have his way.
"That's more like it." Sirius smiled.
They fell in a comfortable silence for a moment, but the old dog ended up breaking it, he wasn't done putting his son through the emotional grinder apparently.
"I'm sorry, you know."
"What for?" Magnus asked, tilting his head.
"Your mother…" Sirius started, but his son interrupted him.
"It doesn't matter." He said, meaning it. "Thanks to you, I have more than I ever expected."
Andromeda, Ted, Nymphadora...all of them were only his because of Sirius, he's the one thing bringing them all together. Before him, McGonagall was all the family Magnus had.
"Still, I'm a failure as a father." Sirius said, raising a hand when he was about to interrupt. "No buts, I know I am, you don't have to sugar coat it."
He laughed.
"Prongslet barely spent a day with me before getting fed up, and that was all thanks to my stories with James and Lily...watch over him, alright?" Sirius said, and he nodded; keeping Potter out of troubles was a direct result of his own precautions against the dark lord.
"But it doesn't have to stay this way." He scratched his cheeks.
Magnus only looked at him, urging him to explain.
"I want to make this right, make us right. I want us to be a proper family, not whatever this is we have going on." Sirius ended up smirking. "I should be the one hearing you vent, giving away advice and fixing your messes, not the opposite."
"I don't make messes." He said.
"Sure you don't." His father rolled his eyes. "I've been a teenager too, you know."
"Yeah, but I have too much to do to be that kind of teenager." Magnus said. " I'd rather focus on myself, and try to maintain at least some peace in my life."
"Is it what you call it these days?"
"Dad, I'm being serious here." It was his turn to roll his eyes, before realizing his mistake.
"I have way more experience in the matter, so trust me when I say you are most definitely not being Sirius." He nodded sagely.
"Ok, I'm done."
"Hi done, I'm dad."
"..."
Magnus would never admit it, but he could get used to this.
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