He didn't blame them anyway. It was their parents’ fault, to be honest. They were the ones that put the horrible thoughts into their heads, and Sirius and Andromeda were the only lucky ones that got out of it before it sunk in. Sirius felt terrible for leaving his brother at Number Twelve Grimmauld Place with his parents, but at the time, leaving just seemed like the best thing for him to do. He couldn't stand living in a house where he couldn't be who he truly was. Sirius was the odd one out, and not once did he ever believe what his parents would tell him and his brother when they were growing up. He remembered that fact quite clearly, even if it had happened years ago.
Sirius placed the photograph in its spot on Regulus's dresser and slowly walked towards the door. He turned and took one last look at his brother's room before stepping through the doorway and into the hall, closing the door behind him. He smiled one more time at the paper on the door, and then he began walking towards the stairs that led to the third floor. There were only two rooms that were up there; the guest bedroom and his parents’ room. Sirius could not recall ever being in his parents’ room while he was growing up. It was one of the rooms that the children seemed forbidden to be near, much less within.
Sirius stepped closer to the door and placed his hand on the handle. Gently, he tried to push the door open, but it wouldn't budge. Pulling out his wand, Sirius whispered a spell, and with a click, the door finally opened. Sirius slowly began to open the bedroom door, his face appearing in the small opening.
It was almost as if he was entering unknown and forbidden territory. The room beyond was an unexplored land, and who knew what dwelled within? Slowly, the opening grew, the hinges creaking as the old wood swung inward, and Sirius stepped through the doorway.
Unfortunately, the room looked the same as the others, Sirius realised, sighing. It was covered in dirt and dust, and the long black curtains over the window were beginning to fade, just like the ones in Regulus's room had been. There wasn't much to look at in the medium-sized room.
There was a queen-sized bed placed against the far left wall, the blankets a combination of dark green and black; a dresser with an ornate oval mirror on top of it stood against the opposite wall, the glass coated in thick layers of dust; another door, which Sirius assumed led into a private bathroom stood next to the dresser. He slowly made his way through the room, stopping a few times to look at the items that were placed on the dresser, and the small amount of pictures that hung on the pale green walls. He smiled when he noticed a photograph of himself and Regulus hanging on the wall closest to the door.
The two boys were smiling at the camera, but every now and then, one of them would turn and whisper something into the other's ear, which would result in the two erupting into laughter. Sirius was four in the picture - which made Regulus three - and at that time, the two Black brothers were as close as they could have been. They did everything together; one rarely seemed to see Sirius without Regulus and vice versa. Both Regulus and his older brother acted just as brothers should have acted; they were together, they were united, and not one thought of pureblood supremacy “ issues that would eventually tear the boys apart - was in their heads.
They were simply two normal children who just happened to be a part of the wizarding world.
Sirius remembered as he stared at the picture the day it had been taken. Mr. and Mrs. Black had been arguing about where they were going to go for a vacation. Their family was not one that took vacations often, so this particular day was important to Walburga.
~*~
The bright sun shone through the windows of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, on this particular summer day, and the Black family was getting ready to go on one of their rare trips. The two young boys were in the yard riding around on their toy broomsticks while their parents, Walburga and Orion, were in the house discussing where they would go. Being a pureblood family, they didn't want to go anywhere where they would run into Muggles everywhere they turned, but neither did they want to go somewhere they’d already visited many times in the past.
Unfortunately, there wasn't much to choose from with such restrictions, and Walburga was making the decision extremely hard on Orion.
"Well, I don't want to deal with those filthy Muggles anymore than you do!" Orion shouted as he paced back and forth in front of the dining room table. Walburga, who was sitting in a chair close to the window so that she could keep an eye on her two sons, looked up at her husband.
"That just means that there aren't many places we could go," Walburga stated as she glanced out the window.
Orion sighed and sat down in the chair across from his wife. They had been married for some time now, and Walburga was still the one who always got her way in the discussions that they had. It was hard to win an argument with her, regardless of the fact that he was never one to give up too easily. She just had more of the inherent Black stubbornness than he did, it seemed. He unconsciously looked out of the window and watched as Sirius flew into the side of Regulus's broom, knocking him off of it. Regulus landed on his back and began to laugh as he slowly pulled himself up.
"Then what are we going to do? We could always just go to the zoo, Walburga, and simply try to ignore the Muggles," Orion suggested. "It would be fun for the kids, and it’s not as if we need to spend the entire day there; an hour or so would suffice."
Walburga snorted. "There is no way we could ‘ignore’ those filthy Muggles!"
"You know, you could at least try for the kids. They would love to see the animals," Orion said, taking a sip of his tea.
Walburga shook her head and sighed. "Fine,” she muttered. “We'll go to the zoo, but as soon as I say I want to leave, we're leaving."
Orion nodded and rose from his seat to tell the two boys where they were going for a few hours.
He opened the door, stepped out into the hot sun, and walked over to where his sons were wrestling in the grass. Smiling, he pulled them apart.
"All right, boys. Go get cleaned up because your mother and I are going to take you to the zoo," Orion said, trying to sound excited. Both Regulus and Sirius smiled, ran past their father, and went through the back door to the kitchen. They hurried to wash their hands and faces, neither paying any attention to the mess of soap and water that soon covered the countertops (the house-elves would clean it up, after all), before racing to the front door where they stood waiting for their parents to get ready to leave.
Walburga made sure she took as long as she possibly could. She was dreading the trip, and she knew that it wasn't going to end happily. If only they would have agreed on a better place to take their children, but they honestly couldn't think of anywhere else. They could have gone to Diagon Alley for shopping, but the two boys would have been a handful.
Upon reaching the door, Walburga sighed and grabbed the camera off of the table that stood adjacent to the doorway.
"Are you two boys ready?" she asked, turning to look at her sons. Sirius and Regulus were practically jumping out of their skin with excitement.
"Yes, ma'am!" the boys said in unison.
"Did you wash your hands and your faces?" she asked sternly as she eyed the two kids’ faces and hands. She noticed a few specks of dirt that had been missed still, but decided not to prolong the trip any longer by making them wash up again.
Sirius and Regulus nodded, and Walburga turned to Orion nodding herself to let him know she was ready to leave. Orion grabbed Sirius and lifted him into his arm; Walburga doing the same with Regulus. The two adults turned where they were standing and Apparated a few blocks away from the zoo’s entrance. They let the boys down, and at once, both young Blacks dashed for the gate.
"Whoa! Wait a minute. I want to take a picture!" Walburga called after them.
Regulus and Sirius abruptly stopped and turned to face their mother. Regulus threw his arm around Sirius's neck and smiled, while Sirius did the same. Before the picture was taken, Regulus had started whispering something in Sirius's ear that made the two boys erupt into a fit of laughter, an action that caused their mother to sternly tell them to calm down and smile for the photo.
Their laughter under (temporary) control, the boys smiled. And once the picture was taken, Sirius and Regulus resumed their race towards the entrance of the zoo. Orion and Walburga following at a more leisurely pace behind them.
~*~
Sirius sighed as he turned from the picture and continued to walk around his parents' bedroom. He reached the door to their private bathroom and opening it, discovered that it was a mirror image of the bathroom that was on the second floor.
The walls were painted green, while the trim was light silver. There was a stand-up shower with sliding doors, the glass pixilated so that one wouldn’t be able to see inside it. However, the amount of dust in the bathroom was almost non-existent, and as he glanced back inside the bedroom, Sirius realised a large part of the bedroom wasn’t as dirty as the rest of the house was.
Kreacher must have been keeping this room clean more than any of the others, Sirius thought, shaking his head as he closed the door behind him.
Sighing once more, Sirius turned to walk towards the room’s exit when something from underneath the bed caught his eye. He stepped towards it and, bending down, wrapped his fingers around what felt like the binding of a book. As he slid it out from its place under the bed, Sirius realised that it was an extremely old photo album, one that he knew his mother must have put together when he was still only a child.
The book was fairly heavy, its binding starting to come undone as if it had been perused many times throughout the years. It was a dark brown in colour, black singe marks marring two of the corners.
Curiosity filled him. And so, settling himself by the foot of the bed, Sirius flipped the top of the book open and began to look back on the small amount of memories from his childhood.
The Noble and Most Ancient House of ... Nevermind. by TCole
Chapter Notes: Once again, I'd like to thank my amazing betas, Megan_Lupin and fg_weasley, for taking the time to do this for me. If it wasn't for them, this story wouldn't be as great as it is now! *Squishes*
Chapter Endnotes: So, what do you think? Horrible? Wonderful? Thanks for reading! =)