Black Sheep

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Black Sheep



Professor Urquart had realized his err as soon as he'd said it. Of course the girl he had meant couldn't be Sirius Black's mum - she had been Mia Black in 1947, when she'd first come to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Sirius's mum would've been some other name then, when he knew her, which meant he had to be a nephew or a cousin or something of that sort. He caught Sirius's arm two corridors away from the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom and halted him from running off any further, turning him briskly about so that they were face to face.

Sirius struggled to tug away, angry with the nutter of a man - and angry, too, that he couldn't stop the tears from coming to his eyes. The last bleeding thing in the entire world that he ever wanted to be was like them, like his parents.

"Sirius, listen to me, I've made a mistake," Elphinstone Urquart said, his grasp on Sirius's arm tightening. "Listen to me just a moment and I swear we'll get this straightened right up. Listen." He put his hands on Sirius's shoulders and held him more forcefully. "I meant you reminded me of a girl I knew in school - Mia Black."

"My mother's name is Walburga," Sirius said.

"It's a misunderstanding, see?" Elphinstone Urquart said.

Sirius's lips were puckered with displeasure.

"I shudder to think how horrid a woman your mother must be if you react so violently against being like her." He paused. "Your father was Orion Black."

Sirius scowled.

"Well. I can't blame you for being angry with me."

Sirius crossed his arms over his chest.

"It was an honest mistake," Urquart offered. "And you are an awful lot like Mia was."

"I don't want to be like any of them," Sirius hissed. "The Blacks are a horrid lot of purist arseholes without souls."

"Not Mia," Urquart answered. "Oh-no-no-no, never Mia. Mia Black was a firecracker. She had a dark family, yes, but she was a light among them, always." He smiled. Sirius stared at him as his eyes went all goofy and thoughtful. "Wonder where she ended up, Mia Black..."

"If she was a good person and the Blacks had anything to do with it, probably stamped her out. Promise she's been blasted off our family tree by my dear mumsie if nothing else."

Professor Urquart raised his eyebrow in question and Sirius hesitated a moment, then sighed and reached into his robes, into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out the bit of the tapestry his mum had sent him by owl post the previous year. He stared at it a moment, then held it up for Professor Urquart to see. "Blasted right off the tree of the Noble House of Black. 'Tis the fate of the disappointments, you see. The blighters, the bloodtraitors, the bastards." He stared at Urquart with a defiant sort of expression on his face, daring the crazy-haired old man to make of it what he would.

Urquart stared at the bit of tapestry for a good deal of time, then his eyes travelled up to meet Sirius's and he said, "It would seem that you must be in good company to be considered a traitor of the so-called Noble House of Black." He paused, searching Sirius's eyes with his own. "And yes, Mia would most definitely have been blasted from your Mother's tree if that is the case as Mia Black was easily one of the biggest bloodtraitors that ever walked the halls of Hogwarts. She was a prominent member of a secret society that we ran back in the day - The Solidarity of Social Equality Among Wizards, we called ourselves."

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