Stars in Her Eyes {Wolfstar's Daughter}

Chapter 62: Black Wallpaper

Number Twelve Grimmauld Place.

It was the type of place that sent an involuntary tension to your shoulders, made each breath you took sound louder somehow as clouds of dust blew off surfaces at your exhale. The thick coating of grey on the black patterned walls was a clear sign that the place hadn't been inhabited in years. Evidently after his parents' deaths, Sirius had had no desire to return here, despite it being left under his name as the only viable descendant, and Nell couldn't blame him.

As they stepped into the hallway, she struggled to envision any child growing up here, let alone a happy one, but from what she knew her father hadn't had a happy childhood at all. The little that she did know was that he had fled from this place by the time he was sixteen, and of course she knew of the reputation of the Black family, her relatives, most of whom were convicted death eaters.

Up until now she had never been so confronted with any of her father's heritage, Sirius had made sure of that. Well she had met Andromeda, and Draco of course, but other than that Sirius ensured there were no ties between his daughter and the infamous Blacks. He didn't want that life for her. But now she was quite literally stepping into that life through the front door.

But Sirius tried to tell himself it was just a house, just a collection of bricks and cement piled together, filled with ridiculous but meaningless furniture. He tried not to glance over the dents in the wall and think about how his body had put them there, being thrown backwards by his mother's wand. He tried not to notice the missing vase on the mahogany pedestal, or to think of the day his brother had accidentally broken it and how he took the blame instead, how furious his mother had been.

Regulus. He tried to ignore how he saw him everywhere, stood in every doorframe, clambering up the stairs, sitting in the dining room chair he once occupied. It was as if his ghost had been plastered into the house just as surely as the wallpaper on the walls. The brother he had failed and in turn had failed him too in following Voldemort.

The life he had tried so hard to forget was quite literally reappearing before his eyes, the only thing keeping him anchored to the present being Remus' hand which had at some point slipped into his own.

"BLOOD TRAITORS, MUDBLOODS AND HALFBREEDS IN MY OWN HOME!!"

A screeching voice echoed from the end of the hallways having all seven of them bringing their hands to ears in an instant. Well all except Sirius who just sighed in frustration before storming towards the noise.

"My dearest mother" he grimaced, stopping his movements at what appeared to be a moving, and screaming, portrait of a very pointed looking woman.

Her oil painted raven hair was pulled back into a tight bun, not a stray hair in sight even as she screamed from the canvas. The familiarity in her features made Nell uneasy, for the ones reflected in her own face, despite being diluted by the generations, were there all the same.

"DEGRADING OUR LINEAGE WITH FILTHY HALFBREED BLOOD! DISGRACE!"

She continued to scream even as Sirius aggressively pulled the curtains over her portrait snapping shut, muffling her voice considerably but not much that her words couldn't still be made out.

"Nice to meet you too Grandma" Nell breathed as she passed the portrait, not missing the woman's insult aimed at her but also not really caring.

"Rooms are upstairs" Sirius muttered, nodding upstairs as they reached the bottom of the dark staircase, which almost seemed to disappear into the shadows of the house.