Chapter Text
The Fates
Wizards don't clasp their hands to beg to gods, nor do they visit temples to pray to saints. They do not confess their sins to clergymen, nor do they study the holy scripts of prophets. Every witch and wizard knows that if they wish for something beyond the reach of their own magic, the only higher power capable of granting it rests with the Fates.
For a price.
At Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, every member of the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black had their respective moments where they turned back to these old ways of magic.
Orion found the practice humiliating. One did not turn away from a power so absolute altogether, but looking up at the stars to beg for a way out made him feel fundamentally inadequate. Whenever he did so, it was only because he had exhausted every other option available to him. He spoke to the Fates only a handful of times in his life, and each instance left him broken. He never forgot the times they abandoned him to his own devices, or the times they demanded their debt be paid, bringing him to his knees once again.
Orion never could decide which of the two was worse.
Sirius used to believe the Fates were like the benevolent gods in the stories. He used to think that if he fought for the right things with all his vigor, surely some deity would bless his cause and grant him victory, just like in the adventure books he used to read aloud to Regulus. He waited for them to notice how hard he tried, how much he endured, and how fiercely eager he was to fight back against the suffocating walls of his home.
But Sirius eventually learned that the Fates were not gods.
The Fates did not pity, nor did they marvel; they did not respect, nor did they rage. If they felt pity, they would have looked upon little Regulus swaying on his feet from sheer exhaustion or pain, and they would have intervened. They would have been amazed by the way the boy refused to leave the corridor outside Sirius’s bedroom door, sitting there for hours and days on end just so Sirius wouldn’t feel entirely lonely during his confinement. They would have respected the way Sirius tasted his own blood after a punishment but kept his grin wide, ensuring his parents knew they hadn’t truly broken him. If the Fates were ever angry, Sirius wouldn't know. It seemed the whole world burned him with fury anyway.
Regulus simply feared them.
Whenever Sirius and he had to be treated by family healers because they had lost too much blood, or because the physical damage was too obvious to hide from society, Mr. Burke would arrive to patch them up. In one of Regulus’s earliest memories—dating back to the first time Sirius had been hit with a vicious Diffindo—Sirius had looked a four-year-old Regulus dead in the eye and whispered, "Sirius will be back to himself in a week. You should be grateful to the Fates."
As the years passed, Regulus kept wondering why the Fates allowed such things to happen in the first place. If they were expected to be grateful simply because they were left barely breathing, what, then, would the Fates consider a punishment?
So, Regulus politely thanked them every night for his survival. A couple of times he found himself too angry to offer his gratitude, but he invariably woke from horrific nightmares where either he or his brother died, forcing him to sob out his thanks through tears in the dark of the midnight hour.
The only night Regulus Black did not thank the Fates, no matter how many desperate scenarios ran through his head, was the night he no longer had a brother to be thankful for.
Walburga Black knew the Fates and their cruel mathematics all too well. She had only one prayer to offer them, one recurring sentiment. Whenever she turned her face to the night sky, she simply demanded, "You owe me. You took everything."
She did not pray often, but when she did, the Fates always answered.
Walburga might have been the only wizard the Fates answered every single time, without fail. Whether the Fates were practicing some twisted form of fairness, or if each of her bitter requests was already bound to happen by destiny, she didn't care. Walburga had spent half her life being ignored by the cosmos; she refused to spend another second that way.
- - -
An heir and a spare was the traditional way of many respectable houses. Because second sons always maintained a baseline chance of inheriting a lordship, their education strictly mirrored that of the heirs. If all went according to plan, however, their ultimate options varied wildly.
Some houses expected the spare to act as his elder brother's right hand. While this path garnered a reasonable amount of respect within the family, it ultimately meant spending a lifetime rewriting oneself into the shadows.
Other houses used their second sons to forge strategic alliances through marriage. A calculated match to a house lacking a male heir meant absorbing Wizengamot seats, vault keys, sprawling properties, and—above all else—ancient family magic. This option was a dangerous gamble; a hand where a house either held a fistful of aces or walked away ruined. It was the exact method by which the Sacred Twenty-Eight had secured their supremacy. Big fish ate the small fish, after all.
The final option was simpler: pretending the spare did not exist. They might make sporadic appearances in elite social circles, or perhaps become the talk of the town as a scandalous new-age rake, but they were never true players in the game. Forging their own path with a respectable inheritance, they became whoever they wished to be. Some lived comfortably for decades, only for their own children to unexpectedly rise to the lordship if the elder brother failed to sire a male heir. It was a life where one could have their cake and eat it too.
Growing up, Regulus constantly wondered which of these fates would belong to him. Orion often murmured that he was perfectly suited to be a second-in-command, noting that Regulus was far more level-headed and could rein Sirius in when his brother became entirely too... Sirius. But Regulus also knew that the Greengrasses had only two daughters, and Damian was far too old to sire any more children.
Walburga gave him nothing but ominous, heavy stares whenever he dared to ask about his future. She merely told him that he would do his duty to the family in every conceivable aspect, and whatever was ultimately decided, he would oblige without question.
On certain nights, Regulus would sneak up the creaking stairs to Sirius’s bedroom to whisper about what he would do if he were free. Sirius would quietly watch him list all the foreign lands he would visit, the architecture of the houses he would own, or the eccentric interests he wished to pursue. A dragon tamer in Hungary with a secluded countryside cottage; a Ministry ambassador in Florence occupying a sprawling castle; a classical cellist living right here in London—perhaps in a beautiful penthouse where Sirius could stay whenever the atmosphere at Grimmauld Place became too suffocating and he needed to escape.
Sirius listened to the endless lists without interrupting a single time. Sirius was not the sort of child to let anyone else get two consecutive sentences out without loud commentary, but he always listened to Reg. It was his Reggie, after all.
As he listened, Sirius would project himself into those daydreams. He imagined himself older, weary from the residual taint of dark magic, his hands convulsing with the aftershocks of family curses, reaching out to knock on the front door of Reggie’s dream home—far away from the corruption of their bloodline. Reggie would smile warmly as he pulled the door open, handing him a perfect cup of tea brewed exactly to Kreacher’s meticulous recipe. For some bizarre reason, Reg loved to bother the grumpy old house-elf down in the kitchens just to learn those useless domestic skills.
They would sit together by a quiet fireplace entirely disconnected from the Floo network so no one could ever disturb them. Reg would talk about his day, ask gently about Sirius’s, and sit there wearing vibrant, bright colors because he would no longer have to endure their mother's scathing lectures on what a respectable Black ought to look like. His dark curls would be grown out longer, just as he always secretly wanted them. Reggie would finally be happy.
And yet, Sirius hated himself every time a bitter wave of jealousy rose in his chest like a physical sickness. He desperately wished he could kill that feeling before it poisoned him. He hated the dark urge that made him want to go to Orion and demand that Regulus be chained to his side forever. He felt utterly disgusted by the mental image of himself smiling shamelessly at Regulus’s future wedding to Daphne Greengrass, comforted by the knowledge that he wouldn’t be left entirely alone in their wretched world.
It wouldn't be a terrible fate for his brother anyway; Reg genuinely liked the Greengrass girl. They had been forced to spend their childhood winters together since they were five years old, and Regulus had frequently admitted she was pleasant company. Surely, Sirius wasn't a horrible person for wishing Regulus didn't get away from it all.
Right?
As the years bled together and Sirius finally left Grimmauld Place for his first year at Hogwarts—despite Walburga's furious attempts to have them homeschooled in the dark arts—Sirius made a silent vow to himself. He would do exactly what he wanted, for as long as he possibly could, before the family inevitably dragged him back to tie him to his expected shackles.
He stepped onto the train, caught the echo of a compartment’s laughter ringing out far louder than any of the others, followed the sound, and slid the door open.
Two boys looked up at him: a round-faced, dirty-blond boy with wide blue eyes, and a tall, gangly boy with messy black hair that looked as though it had just survived a localized storm. Sirius braced his shoulders against the weight of his surname and asked if he could join them. The two boys exchanged a brief, easy glance before nodding in unison, immediately sliding over a literal mountain of magical sweets.
Sirius never confessed to them that he had never been permitted to eat sweets before. He happily devoured at least one of everything, his fingers sticky with sugar, as he listened to their effortless, cheerful bickering.
When the train finally ground to a halt at Hogwarts, Peter whispered that he desperately hoped he would make it into Gryffindor, while James added proudly that every single member of the Potter line had sat at the lions' table.
Sirius took a long, quiet breath then. He wondered if he truly possessed the strength to defy his ancestors to such an extreme degree. As his boots clicked against the stone floor and he walked up to the stool beneath the Sorting Hat, he decided to test his luck with the Fates for the first time in years.
He closed his eyes, looked inward, and begged for a miracle.
By the time he ran down the steps toward the Gryffindor table to take a seat between a jumping Peter and a wildly giddy James, Sirius Orion Black was entirely convinced of one thing: whatever terrible price the Fates eventually demanded for this freedom, he would pay it gladly.