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Orion Black had never enjoyed visits to the Ministry of Magic. From the stifling atmosphere of the crowds of witches and wizards who's gazes naturally drifted towards him - clearly the odd-one-out amongst them in his fine, tailored robes and natural air of grand authority - to the tedious nature of the meetings he was so often there to endure on behalf of his father, there was very little about this pulsing heart of the British wizarding government that gave Orion cause to look forward to his visits to the grand building hidden beneath the heart of London.
But today's visit, triggered by a visit from a handsome Ministry tawny owl scratching impatiently at the glass of his study window no more than an hour ago, was quite unlike any which Orion had undertaken before - or which he hoped to ever have to repeat.
He stepped out of the cramped lift and into the Department of Magical Law Enforcement on Level Two. The reception area in which Orion found himself was an austere, sparsely-decorated room with tall, windowless navy-blue walls and a floor of polished, black tiles - a far-cry from the more grand-looking offices of the Wizengamont members which Orion more often found himself visiting during trips to the Ministry, with their rich colours and gaudy, ornamental features.
But the Department of Magical Law Enforcement had no need for showy displays - their visitors were not ones who were there to be entertained by such frivolities.
Orion’s footsteps echoed through the silence as he approached the witch sitting behind the desk at the far end of the reception hall. She sat, practically bent over the parchment on which she was frantically scribbling away at, the scratching of her quill being the only noise which punctured the surrounding silence. She did not acknowledge Orion’s presence, such was the extent to which she was absorbed in her work.
Orion cleared his throat loudly.
The witch’s head snapped up to look at the wizard who's shadow enveloped her, a look of mild irritation at being disturbed from her writing plastered across her thin, pointed face.
"I am expected by Bartemius Crouch" Orion announced as he held out the unfortunate parchment scroll he had received bearing his summons.
The witch's face immediately switched from a look of irritation to one of keen alertness.
"Oh yes, yes, of course" she said hurriedly, all but snatching the parchment from Mr. Black’s hand in a most impertinent manner. "Just, erm, wait over there for a moment, I'll fetch him"
She sprung to her feet and waved vaguely in the direction of the conker-brown leather sofa pressed against the wall to one side before a mahogany coffee table bearing a selection of dull-looking magazines.
When the austere-looking wizard before her made no effort to either take up her offer or politely decline the invitation to sit, the witch turned away from him without another word and hurried away through a side door, presumably to fetch the man Orion was due to see.
Alone in the silent reception hall, Orion waited, pondering the unfortunate and unexpected circumstances which surrounded his trip. He had to admit, when he’d first read the letter delivered to him by the Ministry owl, he had pondered, briefly, the thought of ignoring it all together. Of declaring it no matter of his and vanishing it from hand and mind.
Just for a moment.
But, in the end, he knew that deep down, he neither had the choice nor the desire to do so.
“Well now, Orion Black. There’s a face I never expected to see in my Department any time soon”
Orion looked up towards the voice and found himself face to face with Bartemius Crouch Sr, wearing the ornamental navy-blue robes befitting his position as Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement - and a pseudo-friendly grin giving a poor attempt at hiding the true, smug nature beneath.
“Crouch” Orion greeted his old classmate and reluctant acquaintance with a stiff handshake.
“How are you, old chap?” Crouch asked, his infuriating grin refusing to budge. “It’s not often our paths cross, these days”
“Indeed” Orion replied, his tone leaving no room for suggestion that he considered this an unfortunate state of affairs. “You’ll excuse me for being none too pleased that our paths are crossing on this particular occasion either, I’m sure. What with the… nature, of my visit”
Crouch’s eyes glinted with all the inner smugness his grin just about managed to conceal.
Orion was all too aware of just how delicious this entire debacle was to his former classmate. Crouch’s power-hungry nature had always been obvious, right from their long-ago Hogwarts days. He was a man well-known for his desire to claw his way up the next rung of the political ladder and only too happy to knock down those on the rung above him in the process. Finding himself at the epicentre of a bout of shame fallen upon one of the most powerful families within the Sacred Twenty-Eight was surely met with as much joy as if Christmas had come early.
“Oh yes, of course” said Crouch with a deliberate air of sympathy that made Orion churn with irritation. “A most unfortunate business, all this” Crouch shook his head sadly. “A dreadful shame to have to drag you all the way here to deal with it. But then-”
Crouch’s eyes glinted once again.
“-a part of me did wonder if you would come at all. From what I understand, what that boy does is no longer strictly… within your domain?”
Orion’s stare instantly hardened icily.
“So long as I am Heir Apparent of my family, the activities of anyone bearing the name Black are very much strictly within my domain, Mr. Crouch”
Crouch’s smile glazed over, stuck in position, all trace of it’s lukewarm friendliness disappeared.
“Now, I would appreciate it if we could get on with dealing with the matter at hand” Orion continued. “I want this resolved as quickly and as quietly as possible”
“Of course” Crouch nodded. “Naturally, this sort of offence is not one the Ministry takes lightly. Had it been anyone else, I would not have hesitated to proceed with the usual course of action immediately”
Orion’s jaw clenched impatiently. Crouch never was one to get straight to the point.
“But, considering the circumstances, I’m sure you’ll agree that there is room for... negotiation”
Crouch waved an arm in the direction of the door from which he had emerged - his private office.
At last, the conclusion to which they both knew they were headed was reached.
Orion silently followed the smug-faced wizard into his office, in no doubt that by the time he left, there would be a sizeable chunk of gold missing from the family vault which would surely not go unnoticed by his eagle-eyed father.
The sharp-faced witch continued to scribble away at her parchment, none too interested in the dealings of the two wizards who had so rudely interrupted her work.
“Now then” said Crouch as he and Orion exited his office half an hour later. “I expect you would like to see the boy?”
Like is an overstatement, Orion thought to himself.
“If you’ll follow me-”
Crouch took out his wand from his inner robe pocket and gave it a flick in the direction of the blank wall opposite. The image of a door suddenly appeared, swinging open to permit them entrance.
Orion followed silently through the door and along the narrow corridor leading to the Department’s holding cells. Unlike the sparse but still elegant reception area, the long corridor leading to the holding cells was bare, sporting a plain, grey stone floor and walls. The air felt significantly colder here and, somewhere in the distance, the sound of the constant drip of a water leak punctured the sound of the echoing footsteps of the two wizards as they reached the end of the corridor, arriving before a row of cells, the view inside obscured but for a barred door each.
Crouch halted in front of the first cell and cleared his throat, announcing his arrival to it’s unseen occupant.
“Black. You have a visitor”
“Well it’s about bloody time, too”
Orion’s heart jolted at the sound of the voice he had not heard in over a year - time and circumstance had clearly done nothing to quell its owner’s natural impertinence.
Hurried footsteps echoed from inside the cell as the person within crossed its length to the door.
A tall young man with a head of shaggy black hair appeared behind the bars, grinning in a manner far too cheeky for someone in his current situation.
“You took your time getting here, Prongs”
His voice trailed off at the end of his sentence, his face falling at the sight of the two wizards facing him on the other size of the cell door.
The young man’s face - elegant features perfected by generations of careful breeding, the face which had once been Orion’s a quarter century ago - immediately shed its cocky grin as the true identity of his “visitor” was revealed to him.
“You” said Sirius, his face paling with dread at the sight of his father.
“Evidently I am not your preferred choice of visitor” Orion remarked drily. “Not that you are currently in any position to be afforded such a choice”
Sirius swallowed thickly and took a step backwards away from the bars, his entire demeanour shifting under Orion’s heavy gaze. Gone was his cocksure posture, the cheeky grin replaced by a wide-eyed look of dread which reminded Orion vividly of an occasion, many years ago, in which the elder of his two sons had been caught red-handed in the middle of the night with his hand buried deep inside a forbidden biscuit tin.
“Crouch”
The smug-faced Head of Department looked up at Orion.
“Would you be so kind as to leave us? I require some time alone with my son”
Though masked as a request, the weight of Orion’s voice suggested that this was an order best obeyed.
Though the flash of disappointment that crossed his face was subtle, it lingered just long enough for Orion to see.
“Of course” said Crouch in a voice that feigned happiness to oblige , shooting the elder Black a knowing look before turning away and marching back along the corridor, his navy-blue robes rippling with the force of his steps.
Free at last from his unwanted companion, Orion’s gaze fell once again upon the boy behind the bars of the cell. A pair of grey eyes, identical to his own, were fixed firmly upon him, as though he dared not look away for fear of what might happen if he did. Orion’s own steely gaze remained firmly trained upon the boy as he reached inside the pocket of his travelling cloak for his wand.
Sirius’s eyes flitted down at his father’s wand with a flash of alarm.
“Alohomora”
A loud, metallic clicking noise rang throughout the silent halls as the lock gave way. The metal door swung open with an ear-screeching creak and Orion entered the cell.
For each step Orion took towards him, Sirius took one backwards away from him. For several tense, silent moments, the father and son stared at one another, until Sirius finally spoke.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
Orion stared hard at the boy.
“I would say that it ought to be I asking you such a question presently”
Sirius glared in response to his father’s dry, icy words.
Of course, Orion knew perfectly well what his estranged firstborn son, whom he hadn’t laid eyes on since the explosive row that had preceded the boy’s dramatic departure from the family home a little over a year ago, was doing in a Ministry holding cell. Crouch had taken great pleasure in ensuring he was filled in the whole matter in excruciating detail.
Looking his son up and down critically, Orion sniffed in distaste at the state of him. Sirius was dressed atrociously, in full Muggle clothing; trousers in a blue material which Orion had once heard referred to as “denim”, a plain, red T-shirt and scuffed running shoes. The unruly, jet-black hair that the boy’s mother had fought so hard over the years to keep tidily trimmed, now hung in shaggy, damp tendrils around his shoulders.
Sirius had grown a fair deal since his father had last seen him. But then he would have, Orion reasoned. The boy was only seventeen - barely of age and not yet out of school.
Orion briefly wondered how his eldest son had spent this most significant of birthdays. A bitter, fiery spark ignited within him as he glanced down at the boy’s wrist and caught sight of the silver watch fastened around it, glinting in the light, starkly out of place amongst the rest of Sirius’s attire. He forced himself to look away.
“What’s it to you, why I’m here?” Sirius asked, his voice cold and blunt. His brow furrowed with resentment. “What are you even doing here? I told them to send for James”
Orion’s blood ran cold at the mention of the Potter boy - the offspring of the most disgraced pureblooded wizard name in Britain, the family who had stolen his firstborn son away from them - from him.
“Your legal situation is no business of his,” Orion said in an icy voice, taking another slow step towards his son. Sirius responded accordingly, backing up one step away from his father. He was running out of room to run.
“Meaning that it’s any business of yours?”
Sirius’s grey eyes glittered challengingly. He was clearly trying to rile his father, to provoke him into a full-blown argument. His year away from home seemed to have dulled his knowledge of just how doomed this attempt would be from the start. Orion Black was not one for pointless outburst of anger or shouting, particularly not in a public place.
If it was a row in which to blow off some steam Sirius desired, he would have far better luck obtaining one from his mother.
Orion prowled silently around his son, his soft steps barely audible against the stone floor as he looked him up and down once more. He could see Sirius stiffen under his gaze.
“It’s not, you know” Sirius continued in lack of an answer from his father, determined to keep a hold of this chance to cause a scene, to create a loud diversion from the true matter. A dog refusing to let go of a bone. “My ‘legal situation’ isn’t anything to do with you anymore”
“Oh?” Orion fixed his son with a curious look. “You expect me to believe that your current predicament is one which you are capable of wriggling yourself out of?”
Sirius swallowed and looked away, unable to hold his father’s stare.
“I- I can sort it, alright?” he snapped. “It’s a spot of bother, nothing more. And if Crouch had sent for James like I told him to-”
“Then you would be looking at a sentence of five to ten years in Azkaban at the very least for the illegal possession and sale of Class A Non-Tradeable goods and resisting arrest”
Sirius’s face paled as his father recited his crimes, revealing for the first time that he knew precisely what his son had been arrested for.
Orion’s face hardened threateningly as he took another step towards Sirius, who automatically backed up again, only to find himself pressed against the walls at the corner of the cell - trapped there like prey, his father’s quietly furious gaze bearing down upon him.
There they stood for several moments, the father staring down at the son who could not quite bring himself to meet his gaze. Only once sure that Sirius was cowed enough not to risk some cocky retort did Orion next speak.
“What in Salazar’s name were you thinking, boy?” the elder Black seethed. “Attempting to sell dragon eggs at all is foolish enough, but I hadn’t thought that even you would be foolish enough to attempt such a thing in Diagon Alley, of all places - and in broad daylight!”
Sirius’s jaw clenched at his father’s scathing words.
“Answer me” Orion demanded, feeling a sliver of satisfaction at the way his son flinched at the fierceness of his tone.
“Just… needed a bit of spare cash, is all” Sirius muttered, barely audible, his gaze dipping downward to stare at his scuffed trainers.
Orion reached out a hand and grasped his son by the chin, firmly jerking his head up to look at him.
“‘Spare cash?’” he repeated. The wizard’s voice was laced with venom. “And what, pray tell, would you be requiring ‘spare cash’ for, when there is a perfectly accessible vault of gold in Gringotts at your disposal? A vault, might I add, which has been left curiously dormant over the last year”
Sirius’s eyes flashed with anger.
“What are you doing, spying on my vault?”
Orion’s grip on his son’s jaw tightened. Sirius grimaced in discomfort.
“That vault is the property of the Black family. As the Heir Apparent of that family, and as your father, I have the right to know the exact ingoings and outgoings of what is inside it - no matter how big or small they may be”
“Exactly”
Sirius shook his head free from his father’s grasp.
“The money in that vault is Black money and I don’t want a single knut of it”
Orion scoffed darkly.
“So you would rather reduce yourself to a life of crime to procure pocket change?”
“If it means the Potters don’t have to buy my next year’s school robes and books for me, then yes”
Sirius’s words struck Orion deep in the chest, like an arrow fired from a bow. A deep rage burned inside him at the thought of Sirius - his firstborn son and heir - living on the charity of a family such as the Potters.
Shameful images raced through his mind of the blood traitor Potters shaking their heads pityingly over his son, as though Sirius were a penniless street urchin in need of their help.
It didn’t bear thinking about.
Orion sucked in a sharp breath and turned away from Sirius, his heavy cloak swooshing in the air as he paced across the cell.
“You would sooner live off of the charity of blood traitors” said Orion in a deadly quiet voice with his back still facing his son. “Than your own family’s funds”
“Don’t call them that,” Sirius snapped. Orion didn’t have to turn round to see the scowl on his son’s face. “They’re more worthy of the name of wizard than your family will ever be”
Orion turned to face Sirius, his eyes alight with quiet fury.
“My family-” He walked back towards Sirius, who remained pressed into the corner of the cell. “-and its gold, have supported you - as a member of it - your entire life. Fed you, clothed you, indulged you, until the day you saw fit to throw it all back in our faces like some ungrateful wretch. For what - a life of crime? Eking out a living as the dogsbody of some crook?”
“I’m no one’s dogsbody” Sirius snapped back, balling his fists tightly.
Orion scoffed.
“Of course you are. I’ve no doubt you’re not the mastermind behind the hair-brained scheme that led you here” He gestured at the room around them, wrinkling his nose in distaste at the damp cell. “You haven’t the skills or the experience to know the first thing about the smuggling or selling of such strictly-controlled items. There is someone else involved in this, that much is certain”
What little colour had returned to Sirius’s face following Orion’s first revelation of knowledge into Sirius’s crimes now disappeared once again. It cast Orion’s mind back many years to a time when, as a small child, Sirius would turn pale and wide-eyed in fright when accused of a crime before promptly launching into a loud and often dramatic tale of why he was innocent.
This time, however, no tale was offered. Not even a word of denial of his guilt. Sirius simply glared daggers across the cell at his father. He hunched over slightly and crossed his arms tight across his chest. For a moment, Orion assumed his son was launching into a fit of laughably childish sulking - until he noticed how the boy’s shoulders trembled slightly. Looking closer at the detestable Muggle rags his son was wearing, Orion now noticed that they were damp.
In spite of the summer season, London had, in recent days, found itself the victim of an onslaught of rain which continued to fall in a constant, irritating drizzle, even at this very moment.
Sirius had never been one for seeing fit to wear a cloak when he ought to.
“You’re wet,” said Orion calmly as he took another step forward to better examine his son’s damp hair. “And cold”
“Well spotted” Sirius shot back sarcastically, glowering. “What’s it to you?”
“You ought to have worn a cloak”
Sirius snorted with laughter.
“I know your sense of fashion is about a century out of date, but even you should be able to tell that a cloak would hardly work with these jeans”
Orion’s mouth pressed into a thin line.
“Your insolent cheek may provide you with a moment’s amusement, but it won’t go very far in preventing you from catching a chill in those soaking wet rags”
Sirius’s smirk faded once more as he caught sight of the look of deep disapproval his father was bearing down upon him. He sniffed and looked away, hugging his arms tighter to his chest.
Orion cleared his throat.
“So. Now that we have established that you are very much not the ringleader of this absurd operation, I think it’s high time you revealed who is”
“Not a chance,” said Sirius firmly, refusing to look his father in the eye.
Orion huffed in amusement.
“I thought you might say something along those lines”
“Then why did you bother asking?”
“Because you and I both know perfectly well that you will tell me what I want to know, sooner or later”
Sirius shivered. Whether it was from the chill of the cell of his damp clothes or the domineering presence of his father, Orion could not be certain, although he hoped for the latter.
“Now tell me, Sirius” Orion’s voice was dangerously silky smooth. “Who provided you with those dragon eggs?”
Defiance practically radiated off of the teenager as he scowled up at his father, who loomed above him, still several inches taller in spite of Sirius’s own recent growth spurt.
“I would advise you to think very carefully before you answer, boy,” said Orion, slowly reaching a hand into the pocket of his cloak. The pocket in which Sirius knew he stored his wand. “Now, tell me who you were selling them for”
The already-faint spark of rebellion burning in the boy’s steel-grey eyes flickered and dimmed. He looked away, staring hard at the cell wall.
The name he murmured was far too quiet for anyone to make sense of.
“Speak up, boy” Orion commanded.
“Mundungus Fletcher” Sirius repeated louder, his cheeks burning red with anger as he glared up at his father.
The name sparked no recognition with Orion. The family name was a common one - interchangeable with Muggles. The crook was sure to be a half-blood, at the very best.
“Are you happy now you’ve got what you wanted?” Sirius snapped at his father.
“Almost” said Orion, disregarding the scowl of resentment Sirius offered him. “A name alone is not enough. Where is this Fletcher now?”
“I don’t know” Sirius muttered, looking away again.
“You don’t know?” Orion raised his eyebrows doubtfully at his son. “And how, pray tell, could you not know the whereabouts of your accomplice in this scheme?”
Sirius did not reply. His jaw clenched and his arms tightened protectively around his chest once more. He looked as though he wanted the corner he was backed into to swallow him up and relieve him from this interrogation.
“Answer me” Orion’s voice was sharp with warning.
“I don’t know where he is, alright?” Sirius spat. “We should have met up on the corner of Knockturn Alley. That was the plan if things went sour. We’d meet up there and Apparate back to his flat in East Ham"
"Where, precisely, in East Ham?"
"Opposite the Tube"
“And would you care to enlighten me as to why you require an accomplice in order to Apparate?”
The look on his seventeen-year-old’s face assured Orion that he very much did not care to reveal this information, but that he conceded it was pointless to conceal nonetheless.
“I failed the Apparition test” Sirius finally muttered, his head bowed low.
Orion’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“You failed your Apparition test?”
“Yes” Sirius’s tone was bitter as he scowled at the wall.
“I see”
This new information struck Orion harder than it should have. It wasn’t simply the disappointment of the thought that his eldest son - who had been called many things over the years, but dim was not one of them - having failed his Apparition test, but the fact that his eldest son was now old enough to be able take the test.
Orion’s gaze flickered downwards for a fleeting moment to rest once more on the silver watch around his son’s wrist.
“Well. That is… surprising”
“I nearly managed it!” Sirius’s hackles were raised in full defensive mode. He seemed surprisingly keen to defend his honour to the man whom he had so recently claimed had nothing to do with him anymore. “I just- lost focus for a second. I’ll get it next time. But yeah, we should have met up on the corner and Apparated away. But Dung wasn’t there”
“Obviously” Orion scoffed.
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Really, Sirius, did you honestly expect a crook selling illegal goods to be trustworthy? That he would uphold a bargain to save you rather than escape to ensure his own safety from the law?”
A flicker of uncertainty crossed the younger Black’s face. Just long enough for his father to fully understand that his son had indeed trusted this common criminal to uphold his end of their arrangement.
Orion let out a short laugh and shook his head.
“Such chivalry. Such blind-sighted Gryffindor trust - assuming that everyone around you would act so damned honourably”
“Hard as it is for you to understand, given the company you keep, it might interest you to know that most people are decent human beings”
“And if you had just an ounce of Slytherin in you, you would know better than to assume that everyone is”
Sirius’s scowl softened. His tense shoulders slumped, he sighed deeply. It was as though something inside him seemed to give way.
“Alright, I get it” the boy shot at his father in a voice far less angry, and more defeated, than he perhaps intended. “You don’t need to go into the same old rant. I’m a miserable disappointment, a disgrace to the family name and all the rest of it. Save your breath, I don’t need to hear it all again”
Sirius sighed and slid down against the wall to sit on the floor, his knees hugged to his chest.
“Just- clear off, will you?” he said, brokenly. “Just walk away and leave me here. I’m sorry you got dragged over here in the first place - I didn’t even tell them to owl you”
Sirius rested his head atop his knees.
“I’ll be a lot easier to forget once I’m in Azkaban”
Orion observed his estranged son - crouched in the corner of a Ministry holding cell, hunched over and pathetic. He observed, properly for the first time, the two dark-red patches on the knees of his trousers. Blood stains, no doubt from cuts to the skin under the fabric. Orion could put two and two together. It was a long run from the Leaky Cauldron to Knockturn Alley and the uneven cobbles would have been slippery in the rain. Those two red stains filled in the obvious specifics of precisely how Sirius had been caught.
Backed into a corner like prey, shaking with cold and wounded in more ways than one, this was not the Sirius that Orion had expected to find when he answered the summons to the Ministry - the one he remembered from a year ago. The Sirius of Orion’s memory was a bright and confident boy, not without his vices, but intelligent and flourishing nonetheless.
The Sirius who sat crouched on the floor of the cell now was not that same Sirius. This Sirius was wild - an out of control scoundrel who’s rebellion had gone far beyond schoolboy naughtiness and had now graduated to full-blown criminal dealings. The spark was gone from his eyes, and he looked so tired, so worn out.
Here was a lost and wounded boy in dire need of proper guidance. Guidance which Orion had now firmly decided he was going to provide.
“Get up”
Sirius’s eyes darted up at his father questioningly for a moment before drooping again. He made no effort to obey.
“I said, get up”
Orion stepped forward, reached down and grasped his son by the back of his shirt, pulling him up like an errant cub by the scruff.
To his mild surprise, Sirius did not resist.
“What are you doing?”
“What I should have done a long time ago”
Sirius had barely a moment to question his father’s meaning before the elder Black loudly called for Crouch to return.
The echoing footsteps of the Head of Department preceded his arrival, the same smug grin plastered firmly on his face as he faced the two wizards on the other side of the barred door.
“Are we ready to proceed?” asked Crouch. He fixed Orion with a knowing look. “I trust your talk was… productive?”
“There is a flat, opposite the, ah, Tube, in East Ham” said Orion, firmly cutting off his son’s attempt to speak first. “ There you should find a wizard by the name of Mundungus Fletcher. He is the ringleader behind this operation, not my son”
“Wonderful” Crouch replied with an approving nod. “I’ll have a squad sent over immediately. Many thanks, Orion, I knew you’d fulfil your end of the deal”
“You snake!”
Sirius’s shout echoed through the walls of the cell.
“Be quiet, Sirius” Orion ordered, cringing internally at his son’s vulgar shouting.
“You tricked me!” Sirius’s face flushed with anger, his eyes glaring up at his father, who kept a firm hold of the boy by the back of his shirt. “You let him make you get me to snitch?!”
Orion, insulted by his son’s suggested that he was capable of being made to do anything, gave Sirius a sharp jerk by the back of his shirt.
“I fulfilled my half of a bargain, boy” he seethed. “One which has just saved you from an unfortunate fate”
“What?” Sirius’s mouth slackened.
“Your father here had very kindly agreed to assist me in getting to the bottom of this case” said Crouch.
Sirius cocked an eyebrow questioningly at the smug-faced Head of Department.
“Why?” he asked, momentarily distracted from his fury.
“To secure your freedom, of course” Crouch replied.
“So that’s what I’m worth, is it?” Sirius looked up at his father with raised eyebrows. “A name and an address, acquired through intimidation and threat?”
“Well, and five hundred galleons, of course” Crouch added.
“How much?!”
Sirius jerked his head up to gape at his father, who remained infuriatingly blank.
“Oh come now, Sirius, you didn’t really think that we simply let people out on bail free of charge, did you?”
Sirius shot a dark look at the elder wizard. Suddenly, a thought struck him.
“Bail, you say?” he asked.
“Yes” said Crouch with a nod.
“Sirius…” Orion’s voice was deep with warning.
“Meaning that I’m not getting off scot-free then?”
Crouch let out a short, amused chuckle.
“No, you’re not,” he said. “You’ll return to the Ministry in a few weeks for a disciplinary hearing”
Sirius’s eyes flickered with worry, a gesture which did not go unnoticed by Crouch.
“Oh not to worry, my boy, nothing to be too concerned about. You’ll return to Hogwarts as normal, I assure you. I’m quite confident you’ll escape with a warning and a fine, this time”
Sirius flinched as his father’s grip on his shirt tightened once more as Crouch uttered the words 'my boy'.
“So… I’m free to go until then?” he asked.
Orion could practically see the cogs of Sirius’s mind at work, plotting his route of escape the second he was released from his scruff-hold.
“Well, not quite” The corner of Crouch’s upturned mouth twitched as his gaze fell upon Orion.
“You are being released into my custody” said the elder Black. He couldn’t help but feel slight amusement at the way Sirius’s face fell at his announcement. “You will be under house arrest until the hearing, with your wand confiscated”
“What?! But- but you can’t!” Sirius spluttered, pulling sharply away from his father. “I’m of age, you can’t just take away my wand!”
“You may care to remember that we already have your wand in our possession, Sirius” Crouch’s gaze narrowed at the teenager. “Of age or not, your wand will remain the property of my Department until your hearing. Standard policy for those awaiting trial”
“Oh? And is it ‘standard policy’ to imprison those awaiting trial in soulless prisons lacking in all happiness and human decency?”
Crouch’s eyes narrowed in confusion.
“I thought I’d made it perfectly clear that you won’t be going to Azkaban”
“I wasn’t talking about Azkaban,” Sirius snapped, fixing his father with a look of resentment.
Anger bubbling inside him, Orion reached out and grabbed his son by the upper arm, jerking him back towards his side. He fixed his firstborn with an icy glare.
“Make no mistake, my boy, Azkaban is precisely where you are destined for if I withdraw my investment and leave this God-forsaken cell without you” he hissed.
Sirius stifled the shiver of fear he felt under his father’s gaze and tilted his chin up, the picture of defiance.
“I choose Azkaban” he said in a voice that could almost be called proud.
“Thankfully for you, that decision is not yours to make” Orion replied drily.
“And since when did you make my decisions for me?”
Orion took a moment to examine his son, the picture of defiance once again. He scarcely resembled the same boy who, not ten minutes ago, had sat hunched in the corner like a wounded animal licking its wounds. His hackles were raised, his scowl firmly back in place, poised for a fight.
But beneath the facade, the dark-red stains at his knees remained just as bold and his shoulders still trembled in his rain-soaked T-shirt.
There was much work to be done.
"Since the moment I spent five hundred galleons securing your release from prison after you were arrested for selling Class A Non-Tradeable goods on the orders of a good-for-nothing half-blood” Orion said finally. “Now, come. We are leaving"
Dumbstruck by his father’s outburst, Sirius did not offer any retort as he was steered firmly out of the cell, still firmly imprisoned within Orion’s iron grip.
“Crouch, I will be in touch” said Orion by means of farewell. “Expect my owl in the morning. In the meantime-” The father shot a displeased look down at his son, who seemed to wither under his gaze - cowed at last. “- is there a more private Floo fireplace we might use? I would rather spare myself the tedium of escorting my son all the way back down to the Atrium”
He ignored the sulky huff Sirius let out at his words.
“Of course” said Crouch. “Please feel free to use the one in my office. Wilma in reception will allow you access”
“Thank you” said Orion, stiffly. “Good day, Mr Crouch. Sirius, come. Your mother is expecting us”
The effect of Orion’s words on the boy was instant. At the mention of his mother, his eyes widened and he swallowed thickly with dread. He offered no fight as he was pulled alongside his father.
Barty craned his neck to watch the two wizards leave, Orion practically dragging his son by the arm along the corridor, back to the reception hall. Looking at Sirius, Barty was reminded uncannily of a captured stray mutt on the end of a lead; ears flat, tail tucked tight between his legs.
He shook his head pityingly.
“Not for all the gold in Gringotts…”