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The house was dim.
Curtains hung like grief, unmoved for weeks, filtering sunlight into sickly ribbons. Dust floated in the still air like suspended time, catching in the throat, settling on forgotten frames, drifting without purpose, just like him.
Alphard Black lay in the final room he would ever inhabit, propped up against too many pillows that no longer provided comfort, wrapped in a quilt that had once been a birthday gift from his mother, Irma.
It had been embroidered by hand. She had rarely done anything by hand.
Once, his body had been tall and agile, quick to move, quicker to laugh, always in motion as though afraid of what would happen if he ever stood still.
Now he was translucent. Hollowed out. Bones jutted like broken scaffolding beneath paper-thin skin.
His hands trembled even when he was asleep, like they remembered holding power he could no longer summon. He had not held a wand in months.
The Healers had stopped trying. There was nothing to be done. Magical wasting, they’d said in clipped voices and careful glances, not daring to speak plainly.
"Degenerative. Magical-wasting. Untreatable. Likely behavioural in origin."
As if the decay of his magic was his fault. As if who he had been, who he had loved, who he had defied, had rotted him from the inside out.
He had stopped asking for specifics after that.
What he had left were memories, and even those came in fragments now, loose and drifting, bleeding into each other like ink in water. Some days he couldn’t tell if he was remembering or dreaming.
..........
July 1938, Grimmauld Place, Back Garden
Walburga was seventeen, already ruling the house as if she had inherited it early. Alphard was fifteen and already chafing under her expectations. Cygnus, twelve, tried to stand between them most days, but that summer morning the two brothers had been left alone.
They duelled on the wet grass at dawn, wands spitting light that shimmered in the dew.
Alphard moved faster, but Cygnus was precise, his Impedimenta so clean that Alphard nearly dropped his wand.
When Alphard finally disarmed him, Cygnus scowled but didn’t sulk. He extended his hand for a shake.
From the veranda, Walburga’s voice cut across the garden,
“You’ll never beat him if you hesitate, Cygnus!”
Alphard turned, wand still raised, and shouted back, “And you’ll never beat anyone if you never pick up a wand yourself!”
Walburga’s answering smile was thin, dangerous, but, just for a moment, there was something like pride in her eyes.
.........
September 1947, Hogwarts Library, Restricted Section
It was his fourth year. The library was mostly empty when Alphard caught sight of Tom Riddle slipping behind the chain into the Restricted Section.
“You’re not supposed to be back there,” Alphard said before he could stop himself.
Tom didn’t look up from the book in his hands. “Things they don’t want you to know,” he said, voice quiet but cutting. His eyes met Alphard’s. “The question is, do you want to know them?”
They met like that a few more times, quiet corners, shadowed staircases, no promises, no touches.
It was not love. Not really.
But it had felt like a revelation.
It had taken Alphard years to admit that what he felt had been hunger, not affection. A hunger to be seen. To be chosen.
And when the rumours began, about the Knights of Walpurgis, about missing students, about the change in Rosier’s eyes and the way Mulciber started to smile when he hurt people, Alphard had felt relief. Sick and hollow, but real.
He had not been invited deeper into the circle.
He would have said yes.
He had wanted to say yes.
...........
August 1950, Travels
He left England the week after his twenty-first birthday. There was no farewell. No letter. Just a silence that stretched across the sea.
He drifted across Europe like smoke.
Northern France. The Black Forest. Bits of Italy. A stretch in Romania where he nearly married a Dragon Keeper with kind eyes and a bad stutter. A few months in Athens vanished into a haze of wine, potion highs, and rooftop confessions whispered too softly to remember.
There were men. Dozens. Some fleeting. Some unforgettable.
He never stayed. Neither did they.
But he was free.
He read forgotten magical texts by candlelight. Slept under stars, cast spells in languages no one spoke anymore. Drank wine that stung the throat and healed the soul.
He was alone, but he was his.
Until one day he wasn’t.
Loneliness, he had learned, has a long memory. It waits.
.........
18 December 1959, Grimmauld Place, Drawing Room
Walburga’s unsigned letter had simply read: Orion insists, for the bloodline, and I'd rather it be you.
When Alphard arrived, Walburga was already seated near the fire, the baby in her arms. Sirius was six days old, tiny and furious, his eyes already blazing.
“Would you like to hold your godson?” Walburga asked. Her voice was even, but Alphard could see the tension in her shoulders.
He took the child awkwardly, felt the weight of him settle into his arms. The baby glared up at him, wild, unyielding. Alphard laughed aloud, startled by the sound. Walburga looked away, but her mouth softened.
He left within the hour, but something in him had shifted. Sirius Pollux Black was a fire in a house full of snakes.
.........
Final Weeks, January 1979, Kensington Townhouse
By the start of 1979, Alphard’s strength was nearly gone. Cygnus had moved him into the quietest room in the house, a place with a view of the bare winter trees.
Cygnus came at nine each morning, without fail. He checked the teapot with the precision of a Healer, even though he was not one. He folded Alphard’s blankets into perfect corners, adjusted the curtains so the winter light fell evenly, and sat for a while in the chair by the bed.
Sometimes they talked, about small things, the weather, the contents of the Daily Prophet. Sometimes they didn’t speak at all. The silence between them had weight, but not hostility. It was the silence of two men who had both chosen distance, each for different reasons.
.......
14 January 1979
The sickness had taken nearly everything. Some days, Alphard wasn’t sure where he ended and the pain began. His magic was gone. His strength, gone. But when Cygnus arrived by his bedside, grey, stiff, cold as ever, Alphard knew. The end had come.
“You have a visitor,” Cygnus said. His voice was unreadable.
He stepped aside.
And Sirius stood there.
Taller now. Sharper. Older in ways that had nothing to do with time. His hair was shorter, his face more worn, but his eyes, his eyes still burned. The fire hadn’t gone out. It had just got quieter.
For a long time, neither spoke.
Then Alphard smiled, weakly.
“You’re real.”
Sirius stepped forward, his expression uncertain. “I wasn’t sure you’d want to see me.”
“I asked for you,” Alphard whispered. “You’re the only one I did.”
Sirius hesitated at the bed’s edge, then sat. Alphard reached out a trembling hand. Sirius took it without hesitation.
“No one else came,” Alphard said softly.
“They don’t deserve you,” Sirius replied. “They never did.”
Silence. Thick, but not uncomfortable.
Then, Alphard’s voice, barely there: “Are you happy?”
Sirius blinked. “Most days.”
“Someone?”
“…Yes.”
Alphard’s smile returned, faint but sure. “He’s kind?”
“He keeps me alive.”
A breath. Shaky. Almost a laugh. “That’s what love should do.”
Sirius swallowed. “You knew, didn’t you?”
Alphard’s eyes opened again. They were cloudy now, but steady. “I knew when I looked at you. Same as me. Same as what they hated.”
Sirius said nothing. He only squeezed Alphard’s hand tighter.
“I’m not afraid of you,” he said at last.
Alphard’s lips curved. “I know,” he said.
“That’s why you’re the only one who came.”
He fell asleep with his hand still in Sirius’s.
........
16 January 1979, Before Dawn
Alphard’s breathing grew shallow in the small hours. He woke long enough to whisper to Sirius, “Don’t let them forget I lived.” Sirius promised.
By 3:26 a.m., Alphard was gone.
Cygnus, awake in the chair by the window, rose and crossed to the bed. He closed his brother’s eyes, pulled the quilt up to his shoulders, and sat there until the pale winter light began to touch the curtains. He did not call the Healers until morning.
He had tended to Alphard out of duty, not affection, and beneath his composure lay a quiet disgust for the man who had turned his back on the family’s values.
There was no funeral.
No obituary.
The family never spoke his name again. His face burned off the tapestry when they found out where his money went.
But Sirius spoke of him. Quietly. Reverently.
To Remus.
To Harry.
To himself.
And in the end, Alphard Black was not forgotten.
Just freed.