Traitors had stolen her firstborn; supremacists were stealing her second. It was a fact Walburga Black was painfully aware of – one she was so painfully aware of precisely because she had a heart, and her heart could be broken the same as anyone else’s. In fact, her heart was fragile and could not withstand extremes. If it broke, it shattered; if it healed, it hardened. It could not bend. It was not flexible.
She was not flexible.
She suffered, she hardened, she broke again. She hurt. She struggled for air. She knew how it felt to have it squeezed from her lungs, to hear the silence of her home and have it beat into her, to have it screaming at the insides of her skull, to feel the emptiness and the sorrow. She knew how it felt to claw helplessly at the walls of the cage she constructed around her, not to breathe – she knew all that and more, for she lived a life of extremes.
She clawed at the walls of the cage she had so carefully constructed for herself now, too, having fallen flat on her knees in the drawing room of the house she made her home, the house of her fathers before her, the house that was to be of her sons after her – she clawed away at her own flesh, she clawed away at her own mind, she clawed away at the tapestry she took such pride in, the tapestry she braced her hand against now, the tapestry her fingertips grazed … the mark she had just left on the fabric, the burnt stitches below … they were barely visible, but she could feel them. Hot. Raw.
Her eyes were closed and her head was bowed, so that she might take back what she had done, though such a thing was not possible. She knew this. She ignored it still, for that fact did more to stifle her breath than any other thought that occupied her mind. She dragged her hand across the tapestry. It was rough; she did not care if the threads got caught behind her nails. She could not ruin this tapestry any more than she already had.
The door behind her creaked open. She stiffened. Her mind took her to Sirius at once. She’d wrap her arms around him so tightly it’d hurt, she’d never let go of him again, he’d be safe here in her arms, in her home, under her protection. She’d … she’d –
It was not Sirius. It was not even Regulus. She could tell by the footsteps that approached her, footsteps that were too precise, too controlled, too careful to belong to a teenager. They were the footsteps of a man who had seen as much suffering as she had, who shared her pain, whose heart had been broken and mended and broken again. A man whose presence was comforting yet cold, whose hand she could feel before he lay it down to caress her shoulder. A man whose hand had been hovering above her back for minutes in which she could barely contain herself. When he touched her, she leant into it. It was instinct.
It broke her last slimmer of self-control. She wailed.
She wailed, and he held her. Properly held her. He rubbed her back as she dried her tears, he brushed aside her hair as she blew her nose, he pressed a kiss upon her cheek as she steadied her breathing.
He said, ‘He might come to his senses, still,’ and his voice was far too calm and collected, it was far too controlled for the situation at hand. It was almost cold; it made her shiver. He continued, ‘I shall write to the Potters –’
She sprang up, pushing his arm aside. ‘NO!’
‘Walburga, dear –’
‘NO!’ she screamed again, ‘NO! NO! NO!’ she wished to say more, but she could not find words beyond ‘no’. She could not find a way to put her feelings into words, not in a way Orion would understand. She could not voice the pain she felt, the pain that her SON was GONE, that he’d LEFT THEM – he’d BETRAYED them all – chosen another family … those – those Potters – those awful mudwallowers – he was her SON and they – they –
‘THEY TOOK HIM FROM ME! THEY TOOK HIM AND THEY – THEY – LET GO OF ME!’
Orion had tightened his grip on her and she struggled to free herself, her hand reaching inside her robes for her wand; it was gone, it was not there, it had left her as Sirius had, it was –
There, in Orion’s hand, the hand he held furthest away from her, the hand he did not need to pin her again the tapestry – her tapestry – she lunged forwards; he held her back, effortlessly. He spoke. He spoke again. She did not listen. He continued, repeating himself until the words drilled themselves into her brain.
‘You must calm down. He isn’t lost yet. Walburga, please. You need –’
‘I NEED MY SON!’
‘We can try –’
‘NO!’ she shrieked, more to herself than to him as the realisation dawned upon her; she could not wish for her son. She could not long for him. She could not save him. She could not do any of that, for he was no longer hers.
And at once, she was calm. Chillingly calm. She gestured at the tapestry behind her and repeated herself. ‘No. It is done. He has made his decision.’
‘He is a teenager,’ Orion argued, releasing her slightly. ‘And this is how teenagers act. Walburga, please. I don’t think –’
‘No. You don’t think. That is the problem at hand here. If you used that brain of yours, you’d see this is the same as Andromeda did. It’s one and the same. She leaves for a Mudblood, he leaves for those who love the scum. I don’t know why we are surprised … the boy always did look up to her, visited her despite –’ she choked on her words – her calmness did not last long, it never did – and threw herself to the floor once more. She did not care about how it all looked, though she knew it was pathetic. Shameful, even. And yet she felt no shame (for if anyone were to tell anyone that Walburga Black had once lain on the floor, screaming and crying for her firstborn, they would not believe it, anyway).