Changing Destiny

Thirty-Seven: Seeking Comfort

Sirius

After listening to what problems Snape Junior, and Rose Mayfair had to go through in their timeline, Sirius was shocked to his core. Voldemort lived on through his godson, and does much more damage to the wizarding world at large than he could ever hope to accomplish now. Remus also helped him to see how just the Snape's cause really was, but the knowledge that he was actually going to be helping Slytherins stuck in his craw.

After dinner, everyone went their separate ways. Hermione went to attend to her baby, Snape to his lab with Rose to look through pensieve memories, and Remus went to the library, his usual haunt whenever he came to Grimmauld Place. James often teased that Remus should build a cave of books in the library, that way he would never have to leave. Sirius wandered the now immaculately clean house that still retained its Slytherin design touches, and yet was renovated very tastefully. The one room that escaped this was the Tapestry Room that had a record of every Sacred 28 family tree in Europe, because so many of the families wed other members, so it was helpful to keep track of how you were related to which family however many generations deep.

The Prince family tree intertwined heavily with the Malfoy's, Blacks, and Potter's, hence the dark hair and eyes. Sirius found Severus Snape's name easily enough with a gold thread connecting his portrait to Hermione Rosier's, then Sebastian's. There were no other lines connecting children to the family tree...yet. He had a feeling that it wouldn't be long before they had another little one on the way, judging by how loud they were in the house. A gold line. Hm, he wouldn't have expected Snape to have a true love match, but it didn't entirely surprise Sirius seeing them interact: they were deeply in love.

He thought he had that twice in his life with Marlene McKinnon, and then James and Lily. Marlene didn't take his coming out to her as bisexual very well at all, and treated him like a leper after the revelation. But he truly loved James and Lily, and there had been a fifty-fifty chance that Harry was his, but the blood legacy potion proved that not to be the case. What he did know was that a week before Lily and James was killed, Lily had told him that the child she carried was his this time, and James couldn't have been happier to share his family with him by his side.

His feet took him to Regulus's door, and which was now occupied by Harry. He went inside, and it was still a Slytherin boy's bedroom, but there were touches that Harry was different from Regulus, because Regulus had been a messy artist. He loved to paint and sculpt, and was good enough to sell his work, only their mother discouraged Reg from making a name for himself, because making art was 'for lowly muggles,' not for the likes of pureblood royalty like them. Regulus must not stain his pampered hands with paints, charcoal, and clay, because that's just not done. Sirius looked at the collage of pictures of Harry with his friends. He was quite popular in his school House, particularly with Draco Malfoy acting as a surrogate brother to him.

Sometimes, younger Hermione was with him in the pictures, and other times Harry was posing with a pretty blonde Slytherin girl, and her twin, but Harry had eyes only for one of them. He was about to leave when he heard a brief knock on the open door. Rose leaned in the doorway, arms crossed as she looked about the room.

"He's big into Quidditch, huh?"

Sirius nodded. "His dad was too, but he wouldn't like that he was sorted as a Slytherin."

Rose shrugged. "My mom was a Thunderbird, and didn't like that I was sorted as a Horned Serpent. She seemed to find that weird, but now she thinks of me as a mixture of the two."

He grinned. "The sorting hat almost by default placed me in the snake house because of my family name. Does Ilivermorny sort by hat?"

Rose laughed, "Nope. Nor do we do it on the first night. They wait a year for a student to live in each dormitory to give them a chance to see what living in each school House is like. After the first year, you're sent to this room where each school House is represented by its statue. They somehow use legilimency to determine the best House for you, and multiple Houses can favor you. If that happens, the student is given the choice, but once chosen, there is no resorting."