Always to the Book

Sirius grits his teeth, resulting in what he knows probably looks like a pained grimace, but he does not care.

"Shame, really, wouldn't you say, how Hogwarts is so lenient with the requirements now. Why, just yesterday I heard that there are more of the scum than purebloods..."

Sirius fights the urge to roll his eyes, settling for looking wearily around the room. "Shut up," he wants to say. Shut up about things you obviously don't understand. But he catches his mother's eye. She is frowning at him from across the room, a warning light in her pale blue eyes, and he looks away, forcing a polite smile on his face.

The other wizard sees nothing of this, continuing merrily on the same train of speech, and Sirius tunes him out. It is easy to do this. It isn't anything he has never heard before.

Slightly further away, Regulus is talking to Lucius Malfoy, as Narcissa looks on in interest. Regulus mimes a slashing move downward and Lucius laughs appreciatively, clasping Regulus' forearm fondly. Narcissa smiles. She is Sirius' cousin, betrothed to Lucius, and she blushes at Lucius gazes intensely at her.

"Perhaps later?" and Sirius jerks slightly in surprise, before regaining his composure once more. He has forgotten that Rabastan Lestrange had still been rattling on in front of him.

"Of course," Sirius then says, smiling charmingly, shaking the man's hand.

Still across the room, Sirius' mother frowns. He can see this even though he is pretending to be absorbed in his drink. She knows that he has not been paying attention. She always knows. And she will remember, and later, when they return to Grimmauld place, they will argue, and Sirius will eventually be punished. He knows this. But he decides he does not care.

Setting the heavily wrought goblet down on the table, Sirius notices Rabastan's older brother Rudolphus staring at him. Bellatrix is watching him too, her dark eyes hooded and strange. She sees him scowling belligerently back at her, and she smiles, though her eyes remain the same. Narcissa's older sister has never liked to back down from a challenge.

I know something you don't, her eyes seem to say, and there is an almost feral, calculating light in them. Sirius pulls his eyes away. There is something unnerving about that gaze. He has never celebrated Rudolphus and Bellatrix's wedding, but he decides that he whole-heartedly endorses it. He cannot think of two more horrible people who deserve each other more. He hopes they both rot in hell.

Sirius sighs. He wishes James were here, but if ever there were a lot of blood traitors, it would be the Potters. "Them with their mixing with the halfbreeds and Mudbloods and disgracing all purebloods!" Sirius' mother had once declared with venom, sometime during Christmas of Sirius' first year. "I don't see why you bother with such riff-raff!" she exclaimed, while Regulus looked on with wide eyes.

Sirius had not bothered to explain. But he had never mentioned the Potters in front of her again, and he took special care not to say anything about Remus, who was a Halfblood, or Peter who had a Squib for a mother.

But his mother had known about his friends, as she always seemed to know about everything, and she had never missed out on any opportunity to complain loudly about them or to curse at Sirius about his choice of companions, his robes, his hair, or anything else. Regulus often watched in consternation, but recently, he was becoming less and less bothered.

There was a general shuffle throughout the room, and Sirius realised to his relief that everyone was leaving, murmuring the usual platitudes as they said their farewells to the host.

This was another in a long procession of teas and dinners and balls that were nothing more than an occasion for the purebloods to show up in all their finery and make sure that everyone else who mattered in the wizarding world were well aware of their views, and their stern keeping of various customs and traditions, all which hearkened back to the fifteenth century.

Everyone always goes to these social events. To not go would be a disgrace. Everyone is always there. Everyone, except blood traitors like the Potters or Weasleys (who were not rich enough to warrant any attention anyway) or the Muggle-lovers like Dumbledore, or the Prewetts (whose eldest daughter was married to a Weasley and made the family doubly traitorous).

"Come on," Regulus says, appearing next to Sirius quietly, with a grin. "A Mudblood in Slughorn's class would look more alert than you."

Sirius considers pointing out that a certain Lily Evans in his year most certainly did not look dazed. Neither did a fair number of others. But he decides to let it pass. Regulus would not care to listen anyway.

"Let's go," his father says when the two boys approach their parents. He shakes Abraxas Malfoy's hand, promising to "see him again very soon", while Sirius' mother compliments Mrs Malfoy on the "most excellent wine" (though Sirius knows that as soon as they are out of earshot his mother will talk on about how it was a terrible vintage).

Then Abraxas Malfoy compliments Regulus on his exquisite manners (to which Regulus thanks the man politely) and praises Sirius on his impeccable bearing, "a true Black this one", and congratulated Sirius' parents for raising two wonderful sons. Sirius' mother smiles thinly, and her eyes flicker towards Sirius for the briefest moment. "Perhaps," she says, noncommittally, then they are out of the mansion and stepping into the coach.

It is drawn by Granian horses, which swiftly wind their way through the crowd of carriages and coaches crowding the driveway, and enters the countryside road, heading back towards London.

Sirius had strongly protested this mode of transportation. "What's the point?" he had snapped, "When you have to cast charms just so the Muggles will not spot us, and when the floo network or even a car would be so much faster."

But Sirius' mother had been furious, and she had replied icily that this was the only proper way to travel, and if Sirius did not think the same it was of the consequence whatsoever, for they were going by coach regardless. And so Sirius finds himself sprawled upon the upholstered velvet, staring unseeingly out at the rolling plains.

He wonders why he had argued with his mother over the coach. It was not really that slow a form of travel, he concedes. Perhaps he wanted to be contrary. Perhaps he wanted to shock Regulus. Perhaps he just wanted to see his mother's face white with anger, her nostrils flared and her eyes hard and cold.

It scarcely matters anyway. Sirius and his mother are always fighting.

Sirius wishes his family was more like James', whose elderly parents let him do whatever he wishes, and ruefully shake their heads when their son wrecks a precious vase, then smile with fond exasperation when he repairs it and places bright flowers in it to try and make it up to them.

Or perhaps like Remus' whose father is always there to listen, who is more a friend and confidant and less an authoritarian figure, who takes them all out in the moors whenever the Marauders visit, and who stays up late playing Exploding Snap with them and bearing his singed eyebrows with good grace.

Even Peter's parents who were seldom around and almost always away on a business trip would be better. At least when they were back with their son their home was a place of laughter and warmth. And they never got furious just because their son did not wear the right robes down to dinner.

Anything but his own family would be preferable. His family, cold and arrogant, with "dignity as befitting a pure blooded heritage" as his father had once put it. His family, where parents never touched their sons, unless it was to punish them for some minor misdemeanor or other. His family, where everything was to the book and no exceptions were made, and no sympathy or excuses accepted. His family, with his mother and her unfeeling pale blue eyes, and his father with his impassiveness, and Regulus who might have been a halfway decent brother if he had not been bought over by all that bull from their parents.

Sirius' mother sniffs disdainfully. "Don't slouch!" she snaps, the first thing any of them have said since they entered the coach, and Sirius does not have to turn to know that she is addressing him.

Regulus always sits perfectly.