A/N: Why, hello there! How are you all doing? Sorry for not updating much, but I've been busy with life. Don't worry, though—I will finish this fic in my own time, but I will finish it. The only reason I'm still uploading is people seems to like this fic.
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Now, back downstairs — let's see what was really said in the sitting room of the Black house.
"Draco, why don't you go upstairs and play with Harry?" Sirius had said, with a half-smile, glancing sideways at a rather put-out Narcissa. "Your mother seems to have something to discuss with me."
"Go on up." Narcissa Malfoy forced a smile at her son. "I do have some business to discuss with him."
She put a particular weight on the word "business," her tone drawing tight.
The moment the two boys had left the room, Narcissa flicked her wand, and the sitting-room door slammed shut behind them with a bang.
Not a speck of dust stirred.
Narcissa had already noticed that the Black house was nothing like the filthy, cluttered place she remembered from her visit two years before. It was spotless now, simple and elegant, much as it had been years ago while Aunt Walburga was still alive.
"Well, well." She glanced around with faint hauteur and settled onto the sofa.
"Looks like you've finally learned to keep house. How charming." She spoke to Sirius with her chin lifted, her expression betraying no real surprise.
"That tone of yours — sounds like you haven't been having much fun lately, Narcissa." Sirius sat down across from her, smiling with open malice.
He'd wager Narcissa had no idea what delight her son was enjoying just upstairs.
"That's probably thanks to you." Narcissa gave him a haughty glance, faintly unsettled by the malice hidden behind his smile.
"Tell me," she said coldly, "what exactly was that golden cup you had me fetch for you last time?"
Sirius was caught briefly off guard.
Why was Narcissa suddenly asking about that? Had someone let something slip?
It wouldn't have been Draco.
He'd been desperate to keep the whole affair from her, terrified that his oblivious, foolish, self-absorbed mother might come to some harm because of it.
Though his pulse was racing, Sirius kept his expression perfectly calm.
"Just some worthless little trinket. It's been ages — why do you ask?"
"It's not as simple as that." A sharp glint flashed in Narcissa's cool blue eyes. "That's not what Bella told me."
I see, Sirius thought.
So it was Bellatrix who'd let it slip. She must trust her sister more than he'd realised.
"Been to Azkaban to see your dear sister again, have you?" Sirius said dismissively.
He probed carefully. "Did you actually ask her about her odd little collection?"
"I didn't ask her — she brought it up herself! She wanted to know if the golden cup was still with me." Narcissa fought to keep her voice level. "I assumed she'd taken something of yours — that it was Black family property! What is it even for?"
"No comment," Sirius said. "Though I can promise you, it was never your sister's to begin with."
"How can I possibly stay calm? She values that thing enormously! I regret ever taking it." Narcissa's anger simmered beneath her composure. "Give it back to me, and I'll return the gold mine to you. The deal is off."
Bella had entrusted her with a key to the Lestrange family vault, letting her oversee certain investments and draw on some of its resources — a small privilege that came with being its custodian.
But that hardly meant she could handle everything the vault contained.
She had clearly underestimated that unassuming little golden cup.
In truth, it was heavily protected — layered with the Flagrante Curse and the Gemino Curse.
She'd assumed it was simply standard protection for a Dark artefact; Malfoy Manor was full of similar pieces, each wrapped in its own defences. What was the difference?
But if Bella prized it so highly — and she'd handed it over so carelessly, even bartered it away to someone else —
Merlin help her, the best plan now was to get it back as quickly as possible.
Her sister, when crossed, was capable of anything.
Narcissa had no wish to provoke her.
After a moment's silence, Sirius said, "Impossible. It's no longer in my possession."
"Then where is it?" Narcissa's brow furrowed, though she had no intention of giving up so easily.
Even if Sirius no longer had it, she reasoned, she could always buy it back from whoever did.
That part didn't worry her — she had money enough.
All that mattered was getting it back and returning it to the vault before Bella asked after it again, before suspicion took hold—
"I don't know," Sirius said coolly.
He had no intention of telling Narcissa the truth.
Not before he'd spoken with Draco, and not before he understood where Narcissa herself stood — he wasn't about to blurt out that the golden cup was destroyed.
What if, in her panic, she ran straight to Bellatrix with it? That would ruin everything.
"It's lost. I don't know where it ended up." Sirius shrugged, apparently unbothered. "Besides, our deal was completed long ago — it's a bit rich of you to try and back out of it unilaterally now."
"Lost? Lost?! Sirius Black, you absolute bastard!" Narcissa shot to her feet, glaring daggers at him, and levelled her wand at his chest; Sirius, unfazed, rose lazily and pointed his own wand right back.
The air in the room turned taut.
"Narcissa, dear cousin — how old are you? Still playing these games? What next, a Bone-Break Hex? A cracked rib for old times' sake?" Sirius said, exasperated. "You only ever picked up that sort of low trick from your sister. You can't cast a proper piece of Dark magic to save your life, and you know I know it. Who exactly are you hoping to fool?"
Narcissa Black — whose wand core was made of unicorn tail hair — had never been able to cast Dark magic.
Everyone in the Black family knew it.
Sirius had once thought that, because of it, she might turn out decent, like Andromeda.
Instead, Narcissa — arguably the most promising of the Blacks — had been raised so crookedly by her father, Cygnus Black, that pure-blood ideology had seeped into her to the bone, and she'd gone on to marry Lucius Malfoy, a man who delighted in Dark magic.
A pity. A waste, really.
Narcissa's grip tightened on her wand, her hand trembling faintly with anger.
Years had passed since that particular humiliation; hardly anyone remembered it now.
But Sirius Black had dredged it up again, and she couldn't help bristling.
She narrowed her eyes, mimicking Lucius's own look of menace.
"I have a thousand ways to deal with you that have nothing to do with Dark magic! Do you think the Malfoy family library is just for show? You have no idea what I'm capable of!"
"Oh, is that so? Wasn't it only the year before last that you wrote begging me to teach you the trick of becoming an Animagus? Why didn't you just consult that famous library of yours back then?"
Sirius, entirely unafraid, pressed on. "You want that cup back? Fine — then how do you plan to give me back the secret of the Animagus transformation? Shall I hit you with a Memory Charm?"
That silenced Narcissa completely.
She knew he had a point. She could return the gold mine, easily enough — but how could she possibly return a secret?
Lucius, for that matter, had trained under duress at her insistence to become an Animagus himself.
Narcissa took a breath and decided there was no sense arguing further with this insufferable Black family rebel.
It would get her nowhere.
All she wanted was to solve the problem of the cup.
Watching him warily, she lowered her wand first, and though her tone softened, a trace of her old hauteur remained.
"Sirius Black — don't forget, I was the one who looked after your mother at the end. You owe me some gratitude for that, whatever else stood between you. However badly you two got on, she was still your mother. I nursed her, sat with her at the end, and saw her properly buried, rather than leaving her bones to rot in some room of this house. In return, you're going to help me fix this."
"I never asked you to nurse her. I'd wager you got a fair bit out of the arrangement yourself, didn't you?" A flicker of distaste crossed Sirius's face as he lowered his own wand, somewhat reluctantly.
Narcissa let the remark pass.
She sat back down, lowered her eyes, and spoke in a much quieter voice, as though allowing herself, just for a moment, to appear weak in front of him.
"Bella won't let this go. She'll be furious if she learns the cup is lost. You know exactly what she's capable of."
Sirius fixed her with a cool, grey-eyed stare, apparently unmoved by her performance.
He sat back down, turning his wand over idly in his fingers.
Whether Bellatrix ever found out seemed, on the surface, to be no concern of his at all — as though he felt no sympathy whatsoever for how this might play out.
What Narcissa didn't know was that Sirius's mind was racing, and had already landed on a clear conclusion:
Bellatrix must never find out.
He needed a way to deceive them all and come out clean.
He needed to find a way to silence Narcissa — to use her current anxiety, seize on her weak spot, and bind her to his side.
He needed to make the secret of the golden cup something she had every reason to keep buried herself — turning her, without her quite realising it, into the first line of defence against Bellatrix's questions.
Draco, this isn't me trying to manipulate your mother out of spite — she came to me on her own, Sirius thought calmly. If we don't manage her carefully now, our whole plan could unravel.
His mind made up, Sirius clicked his tongue, his expression unreadable, and said slowly, "If you'd simply been civil and spoken to me properly from the start, none of this would have been necessary, would it? I can't get the original back to you right away — but I do have another idea."
Narcissa looked up at him, suspicious.
"Have a copy made and put it back in the meantime," Sirius said mildly. "I happen to know a craftsman who's rather good at that sort of work."
Narcissa glared at him. "Your plan is completely unreliable!"
"Either way, she's not getting out of that place in this lifetime, so how would she ever check the details closely? We can worry about that for now." Sirius kept his tone light, hiding his own tension. "As for the original, I'll try to track it down — I can't promise anything, mind. It's not that simple a thing to find."
She knew that cup was no ordinary object — she really had walked straight into that bastard Sirius Black's trap. Narcissa's lips parted, as if she meant to say something cutting, or let her fury finally spill out — but Sirius raised a hand to stop her.
"Here's a bit of advice, early as it may be: don't go looking for that thing too openly. Put it this way — if I can't find it, no one can," Sirius said, casual. "And if word gets out and your fearsome sister catches wind of it, there'll be no saving you."
His expression turned faintly gloating. "I've never got on with her myself, and I'm not afraid of her. But you're the one who took that cup out of the vault with your own hands."
"I should have known — doing business with you was always going to end with me being cheated!" Narcissa snapped, briefly cornered by the truth of what he'd said, yet also tempted, despite herself, by his suggestion.
She badly needed a solution — something she could accept and, if pressed, could explain away.
An imperfect substitute, with its own risks, was still enough to solve the immediate problem.
Handle him first, sort out the rest later. Handle him first, keep searching for the real thing quietly.
After a long pause, Narcissa asked cautiously, "The copy can't be shoddy — it has to be indistinguishable from the original. Do you even remember what the cup looked like?"
"As it happens, I remember it perfectly," Sirius said briefly, privately relieved.
Of course he remembered. He remembered every line of it — it was Hufflepuff's cup.
He'd fought a vicious battle over that thing and very nearly lost his life to it.
Narcissa felt a measure of relief.
If he truly remembered the design well enough to have an almost-perfect copy made, that would solve things nicely.
She had no real interest in Dark artefacts herself, and her memory of the cup's exact appearance had already begun to blur.
More than that, she reasoned — knowing its design might tell her what made the thing so special, what it was actually for, and why Bella prized it so much. Narcissa was already quietly turning the possibilities over, all while keeping her expression cool and detached.
"I'm simply unlucky enough to have walked into your trap. When do we find this craftsman of yours? This needs sorting immediately — the sooner, the better." She spoke with resignation, casting Sirius an irritated look.
Sirius's mouth curved into a knowing smile.
"Right, then — today. Now, in fact."
"My son—" Narcissa glanced up at the ceiling, hesitating.
"We're not about to lose him. How old is he? Harry will look after him perfectly well!" Sirius rolled his eyes, snapped his fingers, and summoned Kreacher. "Tell Harry that Narcissa and I are stepping out to run some errands. Until we're back, you're to follow Harry's instructions."
The old house-elf appeared at once at the summons — his eyes red-rimmed, his clothes filthy, his whole bearing weary.
He listened to Sirius's instructions with a somewhat blank expression, bowed to them both, and vanished with a loud crack.
"Dreadful — filthy creature! I thought you'd finally learned to run this house properly, but it seems it's all just a pretty face over the same old mess." Narcissa said, disdainful. "How has that elf gotten more slovenly by the day? Have you really let your house-elves run so wild you can't even discipline them?"
"What's it to you?" Sirius arched an eyebrow, glancing furtively at the ceiling above.
Draco must be quite happy up there just now. With an uncle this generous and understanding, the poor besotted boy really was fortunate.
He glanced sideways at Narcissa, pulled the sitting-room door open, and wore a faintly mocking smile.
"Come on, then. Let's get this over with quickly, dear cousin."
Narcissa wrinkled her nose, shot her troublesome cousin one last look of disgust — wishing, for a moment, that she could sever ties with him entirely — and swept down the stairs after him.