Chapter 43
"No... let's not just shake the air for nothing," Sirius Black refused me, surprisingly seriously and quite suddenly. "I've already figured out that you seem to like this Daphne Greengrass, and you've already promised her this betrothal..."
"Yeah, I promised... But I don't really want to make myself out to be an appendage to someone else's family, either. Not after what you said," I shook my head, interrupting my godfather and... finally finding a certain measure of ambition within myself.
*I don't want to occupy an inherently lower social position,* I honestly admitted to myself by the end of this entire conversation... I didn't know why such pride had suddenly awakened in me, but...
If I were to be a little optimistic and temporarily cast aside the threat from the Dark Lord, then... I really didn't want to allow Daphne to be the one in charge. Even her nominal leadership didn't appeal to me, even if I hadn't thought about our betrothal from that angle before.
I hadn't thought about it at all before; due to our current relationship, I simply hadn't allowed the very thought that this girl could ever put me under her metaphorical thumb in the future. Daphne didn't have—at least for the moment—such desires or inclinations. And in general, she yielded the leading role in our interactions to me too easily—which was actually true for our entire group of friends, but...
I suppose I was still too fixated specifically on survival and the possible war with Voldemort. That bastard, after all, was hardly going to leave me alone, which is why I hadn't particularly tried to seriously ponder how my union with Daphne would look in the eyes of the public. I understood that for purebloods, my marrying into the Greengrass family would look somewhat ambiguous, but...
*Do I even care about these purebloods at all, if they are gradually becoming a relic of the past even without outside help?... Not to mention that a good half of these same purebloods—including the families of most of my Slytherin friends—could ultimately become my enemies,* I asked myself completely obvious questions, once again thinking about possible opposition to my current friends...
"And you're right not to want to... I think we can avoid that," my godfather assured me, with some hesitation but still quite confidently, pulling me from my dark reflections and returning to the main issue—the discussion of my betrothal to Daphne. "I'll see what can be done in this situation, I'll consult with knowledgeable people... And then we can meet with your beloved's parents, to review, so to speak, the terms of your possible betrothal."
"Sirius... do you really want to deal with all this?" I asked cautiously, still not finding in Black any particular desire to get involved with anything resembling bureaucracy. The reluctance with which he had dragged himself to the Ministry of Magic to formalize his guardianship over me was more than telling.
"Don't sweat it! Believe me, it won't be that hard for me to organize a betrothal for you on the most favorable terms!" Sirius Black assured me of his own abilities to conduct business, sounding combative and clearly overdoing the bravado in his voice... Sometimes I begin to think that this overgrown tramp simply wants to build up an image of a "super-uncle" for me, someone who can always be relied upon. And so far, despite many flaws and nuances, he's even starting to pull it off...
"Really? And what kind of terms might those be?" I asked somewhat mockingly, already quite tired of this conversation and simply hoping to quickly think everything over properly in private, but... still wanting to clarify what exactly my godfather meant in this case before we finished.
"There can actually be quite a lot of options," the last of the Black line looked at me confidently meanwhile. "Everything will depend on Agatha Greengrass's willingness to make concessions and the strength of her desire to give her daughter specifically to you... But if it comes to it, the surname of your future children can be contested. For example, to stipulate everything so that the eldest child is a Potter, and the youngest is a Greengrass... or vice versa. There really is a lot to discuss here, especially considering that you're not exactly a barefoot beggar yourself, and if it comes to it, you'll definitely be able to leave quite a bit of inheritance specifically to 'your' child. And if I make my inheritance public on top of that..."
"Sirius!" I clucked at the man somewhat irritably, having known almost from the first day about his fixation in this direction. "You're only thirty-three, not ninety-three... So don't rush to bury yourself and your possible descendants ahead of time."
"Yeah, yeah, I remember..." the mage, emaciated after Azkaban, snorted somewhat sadly, seemingly not intending to take my words seriously. "But don't you sweat it either way! If necessary, we'll mold you into such a desirable groom that the Greengrasses will even give up their own surname if needed. Just don't get down about it!"
"Whatever you say... just let's go have lunch already," I shook my head at another flash of his bravado... and thereby ending this restless conversation. Which, however, I still couldn't call completely useless to me...
Sirius's effervescent support and care had truly touched me much more deeply than I had thought. It hadn't even been a week since we met in person, and I already... felt somehow more confident—I could look to the future with more hope and optimism.
And it wasn't even about Black's monumental readiness to indulge almost all my desires. No, that was, of course, very important, pleasant, and practically invaluable to me, but... In reality, I was most inspired by life itself in the house at Number 12, Grimmauld Place.
Spending the summer not somewhere out there in the Muggle world, hiding from every cat in attempts to secretly perform magic and hone my skills, but in a bona fide ancestral estate of one of the darkest and most influential magical families from the recent past... It was inspiring and calming—it even made me feel like someone more than just a typical orphan of the magical world, with no real support to my name.
Just the access alone—even if not too free for now due to the abundance of artifacts dangerous to me—to the library of an ancient family instantly turned my perception of the world and my attitude towards the future upside down. Where before I could only hone practical skills, simultaneously training mental magic with attempts to remember everything I had read before at Hogwarts...
Now I could do this with maximum comfort, not only honing what I had already studied in theory, but also calmly comprehending something absolutely new, often unavailable to me during ordinary school days... And Sirius, boiling with the desire to spend as much time with me as possible, didn't hesitate at all to help me with mastering new spells and charms.
To my huge shock, he even turned out to be quite a good teacher!... Not on the level of Flitwick with his enthusiasm and truly vast teaching experience, but his ease of communication and the presence of a not-so-bad education still allowed Sirius to quite easily simplify even very complex topics down to intuitive methods of spellcasting.
I don't even want to talk about his readiness, and importantly—his ability to drill me in genuine combat magic. It was simply impossible to overestimate classes with Black in this regard, if only because he, again, really knew his stuff and devoted almost seven years of his conscious life—meaning his whole youth and later years at Hogwarts—precisely to the combat aspects of magic.
And even if after Azkaban the wizard had lost a great deal of his skills, simultaneously forgetting much of his previously favorite combat combinations and techniques, but... it didn't hinder my learning much, partly making it only more interesting. In the end, Sirius could give me a solid foundation even in his current state—some things even years of living next to dementors hadn't drawn out of him.
Well, and the attempts of Sirius himself to restore his former skills served as an excellent demonstration for me of what to strive for and in what direction to develop... well, at least in the first stages of my training.
Which, by the way, despite its intensity, wasn't all that continuous. Still, my godfather's condition after Azkaban still left much to be desired. Sometimes the man would break down, starting almost out of nowhere to revel in his own grief, longing for the old days and old comrades... Naturally, accompanying this whole affair with hard liquor and not particularly decent behavior. He even brought some whores from among ordinary people to the house a few times.
Which, naturally, I didn't like very much, but I was still in no hurry to stop my godfather. I understood that my reproaches definitely wouldn't make things better, and I wouldn't be able to completely stop him from such breakdowns anyway... If I were in his place, I would almost certainly behave a couple of orders of magnitude worse. In this regard, Sirius already almost exceeded my wildest expectations.
To count on the fact that this man, having spent almost his entire youth side by side with dementors, would be able to remain in an even somewhat adequate state and even manage to play the part of a good godfather quite well... Well, even if I'm repeating myself, it really was quite impressive.
I had expected worse, and therefore I was ready to calmly put up with the drinking bouts and binges of my newly minted guardian... Especially since he still wasn't in a hurry to get carried away headlong with alcohol and self-flagellation—he almost never drank for more than two days in a row, and in general tried to make sure that I felt comfortable in any case.
Often these attempts to "look after" me were limited to allocating frankly crazy sums for pocket money and permission to move freely in both the Muggle and magical worlds.
Sirius even taught me a couple of quasi-mental spells so that, if necessary, I could move completely freely around normal London, easily fending off both local bobbies and simply caring adults who sometimes wondered if I was too young to be walking around the city alone, going to the movies, or having lunch in cafes...
In short, the first half of my summer was going very well indeed. Compared to past holidays—the current ones were perceived by me as manna from heaven! Unrestricted magic, unblocked correspondence with friends, a bunch of new knowledge and impressions, the banal opportunity to look to tomorrow with some confidence, freedom of action and movement, the full moral right to indulge myself with not the cheapest entertainments and purchases...
Words cannot convey how much I had missed all this, enjoying literally every single day of these summer holidays... And a couple of artifacts from the house at Number 12, Grimmauld Place, which allowed me to fly on a broom over London without drawing unnecessary attention from ordinary people, were just the final touches in the recipe for my perfect—and generally first real—vacation in this life.
And for the fact that Sirius provided all this to me simply by his presence and his willingness to treat me almost like an adult mage, I truly was ready to forgive him almost any flaws... And when he did keep his promise to more or less sort out my betrothal, I completely lost any moral right to treat him as a stranger to me.
In just one month of personal interaction, Sirius Black had by some miracle managed to become almost the closest person to me in this life... And what is telling—these feelings were more than mutual.
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