Chapter Text
"James, come here," Sirius calls, waving a hand down the cavernous, shadow-draped hallway. "That's the Wicked Witch of the West," he gestured to a stern-looking woman sitting at the head of a massive, polished mahogany table beneath the cold glare of a grand chandelier.
She didn't even bat an eyelash.
"Good evening, Mr. Potter. I am Walburga," she called, her voice carrying an authoritarian tone that echoed off the high, velvet-flanked walls. "I'm—" she began, her gaze tilting sharply to her son, "that boy's mother," she hissed, the final words falling from her lips like a noise in the closet we shouldn't talk about. Her gaze fell back to a book open on her lap, the heavy pages casting dark shadows across her face.
"The old man stays in there," Sirius calls, gesturing to a grand arched doorway fitted with towering, iron-ribbed oak doors. Sirius leans in, cupping his mouth with the back of his hand as he explains, "We're not supposed to go in there. He likes to throw things when you do."
James turns to look at Sirius, who stands surrounded by the suffocating grandeur of Grimmauld Place, nodding with a coy smile as though he had disclosed a pleasant detail about his family.
James begins nodding uncertainly, unable to catch his breath before Sirius grabs his collar and drags him further down the candlelit hallway, past towering silver sconces dripping with wax.
"James, look. Do you see that?" Sirius questions, aiming a finger past a grand archway toward a cavernous, dark-paneled library and in the broad direction of a young girl.
James looked—looked at the scene and the small figure of a girl, her coiled hair flicked over either side of her shoulders, thin strands tied at the back with a silver crow hairpin, the sharp edge glinting in the dark. James looked at the ominous shelves towering over her, lined with heavyset books and petrifying tomes that disappeared into the vaulted, shadow-drenched ceiling; surely someone that small wasn't reading that much, much less managing to pick up books that heavy.
James turned, his eyebrows furrowed, his gaze still fixed on the figure sat on an emerald velvet armchair that swallowed her whole, hands splayed loosely against the cushioning as she leaned over to look down at a heavyset book resting on the floorboards—the closed tome would have been bigger than her head.
"Is it an apparition?" James questioned, his breath vibrating against Sirius's ear in the damp stillness of the room.
Sirius turned to glower at him, shoving his shoulder harshly. "No, James. No," Sirius reprimanded, his face falling into a stern posture of indignation. Sirius chimed, pointing a finger at the figure against the backdrop of towering, dusty bookcases, "That, James, is our little sister."
James thought it mildly presumptuous to call someone he had never met family—perhaps only in the eyes of outsiders.
"Hey, little sis," James called, his face breaking into a beaming smile as he strolled over, his heels clacking softly across the dark, polished floorboards. As he stepped past the open threshold of folding doors, he couldn't help but notice that, unlike the clear glass in the rest of the house, these ones were stained with deep, blood-red roses that cast crimson patterns across the stone sill.
Despite his boisterous introduction and the long-suffering banter that James had shared with Sirius, the girl sat completely still in the gloom, solitary candlelight flickering over her pale skin as her eyes continued to shift across the yellowed page. The surrounding room felt heavy and hushed, suffocated by dusty velvet drapes and the scent of aging parchment.
James turned, his eyes darting warily to Sirius against the backdrop of shifting shadows, the question once more flickering across his tongue: could she be an apparition?
"Isn't she great?" Sirius called, his voice echoing off the high-ceilinged library as his face broke into a beaming smile, bouncing over to stand beside her and looking down proudly at the girl where she sat fixated on her reading.
She doesn't seem that impressive, James thought, looking between the two in the dim, amber glow of the room. He was struck by the cold realization that if he were to graze Sirius's pride for the girl once more, he might not live to see sunrise in this gloomy estate. James smiled ambiguously, nodding curtly.
Sirius nodded as expected, his eyes creasing at the corners and smiling more emphatically than his lips against the dark backdrop of the library.
James turned to see a burnt cayenne and black spider crawling steadily over the girl's shoulder toward her clavicle, its tiny legs casting spindly shadows against her collarbone. Oh, James thought, his body sagging with relief amidst the tense silence, she must be terrified out of her wits.
James shifted, stepping forward into the pool of candlelight, his lips curled into a subtle smile as he raised his hand to swat the bug away.
At that, the girl finally looked up—her gaze not the piercing omen of death they had assumed when downcast, but almost the same cayenne as the patchy fur of the spider on her chest, catching the low light of the hearth.
"What?" she questioned, her voice cutting sharply through the still, heavy air and his attempt at pleasantries.
"Your eyes aren't as scary up close," James pointed out—a rather unusual shade against the shadow-steeped backdrop of her chair, he thought.
"Hi, Franklin," Sirius calls, his voice lilting playfully into the drafty room as he reaches a finger to the spider, the creature turning sharply up the girl's chin and over her jaw to avoid his fingers.
James hesitates, leaning against the cold stone of the doorway, watching the girl's unperturbed face as the insect crawls over the side of her pale cheek, carefully dodging her line of sight while she continues to stare at him from the depths of her oversized green armchair.
"Tut-tut-tut," Sirius calls, his lips puckered as he tries to summon the spider toward him, his silhouette casting a long shadow against the towering bookshelves.
The evasive creature continues its path over the young girl's head, skittering through the fine strands of her dark hair to her other side to evade him.
James swallows slowly, his eyes trailing from the spider back to her face—unblinking, cayenne eyes still fixed on him, as though he had been anomalous amidst the wallowing shadows dancing under the low, flickering lights of the grand estate.
Sirius slumps, his posture vivid with indignation against the backdrop of dark wood and towering shelves, but his eyes are still cast in the direction the spider had trailed to evade him. "You've been telling him bad things about me again, haven't you?" Sirius complains.
"I won't lie to you," the girl calls, blinking slowly at James from the depths of her armchair. "I have said a few nasty things; however, I'm quite sure that's just keen intuition on his part."
"The next time I go out, I'm going to get a large snake," Sirius grumbles, veering around her chair to observe the spider on the velvet upholstery. "I'd love to see his intuition evade that," he grumbles, glaring at the still-wandering creature as candleflames flicker nearby.
"Nice spider," James calls, ducking forward before bouncing away to step around the colossal tome resting on the floorboards, reaching out a flat palm for Franklin.
"He doesn't like—" she begins, her voice falling flat as the dim room falls quiet, save for the sight of James pulling his hand away with his crumpled cuff, tracking a path up the length of his arm. "People bother him."
"I think he likes me," James interjects, glancing sideways at the girl's slack jaw with a brazen smile in the warm, ambient light.
Sirius gasps, a dying, guttural thing from the back of his throat that echoes off the vaulted ceiling. "You filthy traitor. Forget the snake, I'll eat him myself," he huffs, stepping forward across the polished floor, his hands stretched toward James.
"Don't you dare," the girl hisses, her eyes fixing on her brother sharply in the shadow-draped room.
"You can't stop me," Sirius tells her, his voice certain as he turns to lunge at James.
The girl shifts from her seat, her movement fluid like water rippling over the edge of a pond as she moves to tangle her fingers in Sirius's hair. "If you lay a hand on him, these halls will whisper of your memory. I will drink soup from your polished skull—do you hear me?" she scolds, the grim portraits lining the walls seeming to watch in silence.
"Yeah, well, you won't taste anything until you shave the forest-line stubble growing on your chin," Sirius calls, flicking a hand at the front of her face as moonlight catches the windowpane behind them. "I've seen lost hippogriffs fall out of there into your soup!"
Franklin twitches in the dim glow, his mouth muttering in imperceptible screeches as he leaps sharply forward through the shadow-filled air, his body rocking with unholy tremors before sinking his teeth deep into James's arm.
James's mouth opens in silent shock, his face paling rapidly against the gloom of the library as he begins to topple forward mechanically, knocking his whole body into Sirius and rattling the nearby wooden shelving.
"Hey!" Sirius yells, his voice echoing off the cavernous ceiling as he smacks James across the back of the head. "Brothers first!"
Franklin, lifting his glistening fangs, pivots—strutting quietly across the cold floorboards back to his owner, hopping up the matte black sheen of her polished flats where she sits framed by the emerald velvet of her chair.
...
James, shifting quietly over the velvet upholstery of his soft lounge chair, picked up the heavy fur blanket lining the white cushion. As he braced with a loud grunt, shifting to his feet, a loud pop echoed from his knee.
James winced, turning slowly to look over at the bed where a dozing blonde had caught herself looking around confused. Her lips folded into a pout before meeting his gaze with stern resignation, shuffling further into the underside of her mother's arm.
"You're too old to be sleeping with us. You have to go to your own room," James insists.
Ursa watches him, stormy gray eyes twinkling like stars under the speckled moonlight fluttering through the wide windows. She turned, burying her blonde head into the crook of her mother's shoulder.
"Just leave her alone, James, she's not doing anything," Regina grumbles, not opening her eyes.
"Not now," James agrees, his voice carrying a shrill undertone as he gestures to the eleven-year-old, "but what happens on the other nights when she won't leave and we want to—"
"What?" Ursa questions, pushing into a seated position on the bed. "What are you guys doing?" she insists, her eyes squinted into a suspicious glare as she looks between both of them.
"I don't know," Regina grumbles, rolling onto her side. "Ask your father. He's clearly been keeping things from the both of us."
James looked at his daughter, thinking of all the random things he could say, none of them underwhelming enough that she would ever be willing to leave. Slapping his hands over his trousers, he shrugged. "Painting candlesticks," he suggested.
Ursa turned, flicking the covers through the air, her feet carrying her silently across the carpet in record time to meet James, silver hair fluttering down her back as she blinks up at him. "I want a pink one."
James bites his cheek, looking over at the wide canopy bed where Regina was trying to hide a smile under her arm.
James opens his mouth. "I—" he questions, his eyes shifting from his expectant daughter to the prone form of his wife peeking under her arm to smile at him.
"What's the matter, honey?" she calls, her voice like flowing honey—a sticky drizzle—as she continues, "You weren't lying, were you?"
James's face shifts, falling into a glare as he watches her.
"Hhhhuhhh?" Ursa echoes, the eerie imitation of a bad soundtrack.
James gasps suddenly, coughing as he comes to in the chilly draft sweeping through the hall. James looks up, aiming stiff fingers through the flickering candlelight in the direction of the girl and her spider. A comment on the ugly set of her black gown lingers dangerously on the tip of his tongue—until the spider turns in the low light, sharp fangs open in a wide, threatening screech that keeps the words from falling.