I, Sirius

TITLE: I, Sirius


AUTHOR: Lady Sirius

PAIRING: RL/SB

RATING: NC17

FEEDBACK: shelley_runyon@yahoo.com


DISCLAIMER: Of course all rights to Harry Potter belong to JK Rowling

- I only wish that Sirius and Remus were mine, other than in my heart!


DEDICATION: To my glorious, talented, wondrous and everlastingly sexy
inspiration - Gary Oldman - and to all those fans whose enthusiasm and kind words keep me going!




I, Sirius
Reflections of the Brightest Star

Chapter II - Star Relativity

I think that those people who are able to tell you every last bloody detail of their first few years of life, down to getting their nappy changed, and taking breakfast at their mother's breast, are simply full of shite, cause it doesn't work that way. Siriusly. Especially the first couple of years fresh from the womb when you don't even have words to understand what is going on about you, much less impress it upon your memory, when the best you can hope for is that visual images are retained there, and even those don't last, overwritten by newer memories as time goes on. Not that I was receiving sustenance at my mother's breast, mind you, that was just an example, a metaphor of what could have, should have, might have been. I admit it - I do not remember those first few years of life, what little I know of what was happening at that time comes from other sources - the family tree, family portraits, family photographs, family history and the like, even old newspaper clippings - and the most important source of all, my nanny.

Is it so surprising to discover that I had a nanny? What, you thought Walburga might tend to her own? Ha! You got another think coming then. Cause that never happened. I was left from day one in the care of my wet nurse who over time became my nanny, and although I knew that she was not my mother, biologically anyway, she was the one I turned to for all of my daily needs, both physical and emotional, for going to Walburga was as useless as putting tits on a chicken. Surprisingly, my nanny was a house elf. Surprising considering how the Blacks treated their house elves and why would they entrust their firstborn son to one of them, unsurprisingly as they had total control over all of them and could count on them to do just as they wished. Or so they thought. More on that later. I mispronounced my nanny's name from the time that I first began to lisp it, but the error stuck, as mistakes often do - Numa she became to me, and Numa she stayed for all the days of her life - well, all that concerned me, anyway. All I know was that she was there when I needed her, something my parents never were.

I was the first male born into my generation, something which doubtless brought Walburga great joy, as well as something she could lord over her younger brother Cygnus for years to come - he who had married Druella Rosier and only managed to derive three children, all of the female persuasion, from the union - my cousins Bellatrix, Narcissa and Andromeda. At the time of my birth, Bellatrix was about eight, Andromeda six and Narcissa maybe four. More about them later, as of course my memories of them do not begin then. But knowing my mother, she probably rubbed her fait accompli into my uncle's face every opportunity she received. Which was often, apparently, according to Numa - the Blacks being frequent visitors at one another's homes in those years. And imagine Walburga's great delight when on April 6, 1961, she was delivered of a second son, my brother Regulus Arcturus Black. Take them apples, Cygnus! Whaddya have to say about that, eh? And then, satisfied with what she had wrought, she decided to rest upon her laurels, and never entertained the idea of pregnancy ever again. Did Orion place no objections, give out with a quick hold on there, don't I have a sayso in this sort of thing? To ask that is to admit you know nothing of my father, for from the day she stepped over the threshold of #12 Grimmauld (rumour has it she carried him, but I can neither confirm nor deny that), my mother ruled the roost with the proverbial iron fist, sans velvet glove. My father, Casper Q. Milquetoast the pacifist, was content to stay in the background, following his own pursuits, and acquiescing to Walburga's demands in order to achieve peace within the home (relatively speaking, that is, for when my mother got up a full head of steam, she could peel the wallpaper with her voice alone). Have you ever seen one of those devices that muggles have for their automobiles - they put them up front, perhaps to worship as they drive - little statues of dogs in particular, with heads that bob up and down, up and down, agreeably? Picture that (other than the canine factor) and you have a good idea of Orion Black - bobblehead extraordinaire. Perhaps someday they'll invent a spinal transplant - but, of course, it is many years too late for him to benefit from any such scientific advance.

Well, what sort of baby was I, you ask? I dunno. According to Numa I was perfect, never fussed nor complained, nor made unnecessary messes - emphasis on the unnecessary as even the best bairn will have sloppy tendencies, of course. But if you ask my mother (assuming you could ask her, in order to do that, you would have to query her portrait, but let's not go there at the moment) she would tell you I was a spoiled, loud, demanding brat. The truth, as it invariably does, probably lies somewhere in between. In other words, I was probably a normal infant.

The pictures from that time show me to be as having rather large eyes of the darkest blue, which I still possess, pale skin, blissfully unblemished by future foul tattoos, and a full head of dark hair. Aristocratically small feet and slightly bowed legs. I suppose I should be grateful that I was neither born Chinese nor female - have you ever seen photos of those poor women who had their feet bound, who were forced to endure such unbearable torture both for aesthetic reasons and for the purpose of hobbling them - both physically and spiritually? It's really rather gruesome, the things that people inflict upon one another.

There is one early photograph in particular that gives me pause - in it, I am being held by Bellatrix and she apparently has found it amusing to suspend me by my feet, allowing my poor body to dangle helplessly in midair, which of course produced frantic cries on my part, until Numa was able to rescue me from her grasp. Talk about your Kodak moments.

When I was maybe a year and half old or so, apparently there was some sort of family get-together at Grimmauld and while the adults talked/gossiped/pontificated or whatever they did amongst themselves, the children were left to their own devices. Bellatrix and her then little buddy, later husband, Rodolphus Lestrange (yes, even at this early age, they were monsters) apparently dragged me and Andromeda out to the back yard under the guise of "playing with us", tied us to trees, and proceeded to conduct sundry experiments upon us. They smeared our poor bodies with various foodstuffs to see what sort of insects and/or animal life would be attracted to us, presumably wishing to see us both eaten. Such a charming couple. Apparently, in the course of this "game", Bellatrix had the misfortune to put her finger inside my mouth, the natural result being that I inadvertently bit her. In later years she claimed that it was a vicious act upon my part, but I hardly think that possible at such a tender age, and Narcissa herself let slip the story of the attempted torture by her sister and her future husband as well as the biting of the injured digit, claiming that I actually made a horrible face once I had released it, apparently not finding it to my taste. ( Cissa was actually often nice to me, when no one else was around to observe it, and she and Andromeda were close for a very long time before life intervened.)

In case you are wondering what the results of that experiment may have been, and whether the hapless Andromeda and I were attacked by nasty beasties or not, I am happy to report that we were set free by Numa before anything untoward occurred. End of that particular story.

Just a few months after that incident, though, my life was greatly rocked by a new arrival at #12 Grimmauld Place.

Cue Regulus.