Chapter Text
Arcturus and Melania Black stepped out of the flames with the practised ease of people who considered the Floo a minor inconvenience at worst and an unfortunate necessity at best. In their bespoke robes - his forest green and golden brown, hers the colour of a starry night sky - they looked like any other pair of high-born, rich retirees heading into the Alley for an afternoon of expensive shopping. Melania had arranged herself artfully on her husband’s arm, holding onto him like the catch he was even now, after seventy years of marriage and love.
Or perhaps it was she who was the catch that was being held, with how the pearls in her hair shone as if the very stars themselves had been plucked from the sky.
Whatever it was, the pair moved through the crowd with ease, dismissed by the younger crowd of Ministry interns and workers. To the untrained eye, they were just another couple of “old vultures,” as the younger generation called the silent, wealthy elite.
Arcturus’s walnut cane gave a sharp, deliberate tack against the wood as he reached the bar. He waited while Tom served a customer, not with the impatience of a man in a hurry, but with the absolute certainty of a man who expected the world to eventually notice him. If it didn’t, well, he’d been sorted into Gryffindor once upon a time for a reason. He would make the world notice him with reckless abandon should it be required.
Tom finished pouring the pints, slid them to the waiting wizard, and turned to the new arrivals. He opened his mouth to offer the standard “What can I get you, folks?” and paused.
He looked Arcturus Black in the eye, slowly blinked as if to check what he was seeing was true, and the air seemed to leave his lungs in a slow, controlled hiss. He knew that face. He’d seen it in sketch-drawings of the Wizengamot trials after the first war. They’d all seen it on the front page of the Prophet in August of 1991 under a headline about the passing of the last Lord Black, a great man with an Order of Merlin to his name.
Tom, like many, still remembered the duel of March in early ‘79, when Arcturus’d fought Abraxas Malfoy to a standstill in the rain over some now, long-forgotten slight. The duel had lasted almost an hour, and nearly levelled the duelling arena in the Alley. Both men had been escorted to St Mungos by their wives; Melania smug, while Amaryllis had been stone-faced and sour.
Tom didn’t feel fear. Fear was for people who didn’t understand how the world worked and who hadn’t run a bar for most of their lives. What he felt was a profound sense of calculation. The man in front of him was supposed to be in a family crypt, next to his wife. If he were here, and he was, the political geography of Wizarding Britain had shifted yet again.
First, Ashenwold had resurfaced; now this. Next, someone would tell him they’d finally found Ominus Gaunt and those two friends of his after all these years.
Stranger things had happened.
“Lord Black,” Tom said, voice level yet holding a gravitas usually reserved for the arrival of the Minister. He set the rag down and straightened his apron. “It’s been some time.”
“Several years now, yes.”
“I’d heard... well, I’d heard the house was... quiet.”
“The house was resting, Tom,” Arcturus said, his voice a dry, resonant rasp that held something of a smug smile. “It found the quiet boring.”
“I can imagine, sir.” Tom glanced at the woman with him, Melania, without a doubt, though time had taken her once fiery hair and streaked it with silver, and gave a respectful, practised incline of his head. “Lady Black. You’re looking as timeless as ever.”
“Flattery, Tom? You’ve been behind that bar too long,” Melania replied with a ghost of a smile. “We’d like the corner table. The one that allows us to see who’s coming through the bricks without being part of the parade.”
“Of course. And shall I send for your usual?”
“The vintage sherry,” Arcturus confirmed with a nod. “Tell the kitchen I want the beef seared rare.”
“Of course.” The elves would have a pink fit, but oh well.
“If it’s grey, I’m sending it back with a curse the chef won’t appreciate.”
“I’ll supervise it myself, my Lord.” More like Rickety would, if he knew the head elf, which he did.
As the Elder Blacks walked to the table, the pub’s atmosphere thickened as a slow, creeping realisation trickled through the room like spilled ink. Recognition. Thomas Yaxley, senior clerk from Magical Maintenance out on his break, near choked on his beer, while Jackson, a clerk from the Department of Magical Sewerage ten years his senior, nearly choked on his bread.
“Is tha’ -?” Jackson whispered. “Did I see tha’ right?”
“Yes,” Thomas said before burying his face in his hands with a groan. He hated going into the DMLE’s area to tell his Brother-in-Law anything. “I saw it too.”
Jane Runcorn and Zane Hexsmith, two young Aurors full of bluster and fresh out of training, watched the elderly couple pass. They didn’t recognise the faces, but they recognised a predator’s gait.
“Who’s the old codger?” Zane whispered, unimpressed but unsettled by the sudden change in the room. “Walks like he owns the place.”
Jane went pale and gripped his arm, nails digging in hard enough to leave deep bruises. “That’s Lord Black. We studied his duel against three Death Eaters in ‘78. He didn’t just win; he sent them to St Mungo’s in a matchbox, and near took Bellatrix Lestrange’s leg off before she escaped, then acted like it was an inconvenience on his time when Hit Wizards showed up.”
“Oh. Him.” Zane said with a slow blink. “Think he’d catch Black?”
“More like put him in the ground,” Jane hissed. “Could you imagine it? Two mad Blacks in under a half-century?”
Arcturus ignored it all; gossip, rumours, none of it mattered much as he sat with a regal, effortless grace, his hands resting on the head of the ruby-inlaid walking stick, looking perfectly at home in the dim, draughty pub. Like he belonged.
Like he was brazen enough to spend the Black Fortune on said pub if he so desired.
“Look at them,” Melania murmured, watching a middle-aged wizard at the bar practically fall over himself trying to reach a fireplace. One of the Malfoy fixers; he had the look, or perhaps he was a Burke or Borgin. “The gossip mills are already grinding. That one there.”
“Hmm?”
“I give it twenty minutes before Amaryllis hears. She’ll be insufferable. She always did hate being the second-most interesting person in the papers.”
“Amaryllis is a French rose with too many thorns and not enough root,” Arcturus said with a dismissive snort. “It’s Sítheach Pennywise I’m looking forward to. See that lad there, in the off-plum? One of theirs.”
“A cadet, likely. But, at least you won’t have to wait long for her. Rumour says she’s still on the Wizengamot, sitting for her husband.” Or so the papers said. “She’s going to have a stroke when she realises we’re not as dead as she’d like.”
“No picking fights with her. I don’t want another blood feud, short as it would be.”
“I will not if she will not. But Sítheach never did know how to let go of a grudge,” Melania hummed, picking up the glass of sherry an elf had popped onto the table. “She’ll be demanding a blood verification within the hour.”
“A power play, then.”
“Hmm. She always did have a crush on you in the fifth year, you know. She never forgave me for taking the ‘Black Prize’ off the board.”
Arcturus snorted, hard. “Sítheach didn’t have a crush, only a goal she failed to gain, even if Father and I never would have agreed to the match.”
“True.” Melania hummed.
“But, let them come,” Arcturus drawled, raising his glass. “I haven’t had a decent fight with that old viper in what feels like forever.”
“Archie, do not challenge her to a duel,” Melania said with a pointed look, to which her husband merely smiled and raised his glass. She sighed and clinked her glass against his. She’d have to watch him, then. “To our return, Archie. May we be twice as troublesome as before.”