The Black Rose | Sirius Blacks Daughter

Dancing Queen

10 Years Later- Philosophers Stone

Aurora Marlene Black.

Her name was thrown towards the wind the day her father left. His crimes were exposed and people turned vile and cruel, associating the name "Black" with something entirely evil and out of the small family's control.

So, while people flooded the streets, celebrating such a great defeat that it would haunt and prosper the world of wizardry for centuries to come: Aurora's family closed the shutters and mourned in silence.

Adrianna was taken to the ministry nearly crazed, demanding to see her husband, throwing accusations and begging them to believe her: that he didn't murder James and Lily. The men there would turn upon her, "can you prove he didn't murder those muggles or young Peter Pettigrew?" They said and Adrianna fell silent. She fell silent because Sirius was clouded with grief and revenge and, although she was positive he would never kill innocent people, she didn't know what happened and couldn't prove anything to them.

"He's good." She replied, mind flittering between mountains of memories. The men seemed to take pity on her then, holding her like a mentally disturbed child and ushering her home where she would cry into Remus's arms.

It was just them now. The four of them. A broken family but still a family nonetheless. Two children of war grasping the hope of two innocent infants between the cracks and bruises in their fingers.

Life after that was peaceful. They spent it dancing between the lines of time, trying to forget the past and being frightened of the future.

The mother and her two children lived in a cottage in Otterly St Catchpole: a hop, skip and a jump away from where the Weasleys resided, wrapped tightly in the warm cocoon of their burrow.

Friends were something that Aurora and her brother never took for granted. From the moment the twins knocked her over in a field of flowers life was a lot less lonely. The Weasleys provided a sanctuary that the two siblings wouldn't of been able to survive without.

It was from their mother's blooming naïvety that arguments with their Uncle Remus were fuelled; Adrianna believed that Sirius was innocent and Remus did not. It was simple as that. They tried to ignore it most of the time, keeping each other close because they had lost everyone else. But, after a time, Aurora sided with her Uncle Remus and Leo was left in the middle trying to avoid any potential conflict.

They learnt to live with the life they'd been given and, soon, they learnt to forget the horrors too. Harry Potter was a stranger to the world they felt too exposed to. But that was just how life worked.

Aurora started to feel some what normal over the years. She had some friends: the Weasleys and Neville Longbottom. That was enough. A crowd of people could be overwhelming anyway.

She liked to listen to old music. She liked to paint in the summer. She liked to look at old photographs, relishing in memories that were forgotten with age and she liked to stare at the ceiling of her bedroom. She liked to stare at the starry sky which was painted up there and imagine her Uncle James and her young yet happy father running paintbrushes across it, chatting excitedly about her upcoming arrival.

Life was even more peaceful in her mind then it was out in the open. And if she imagined hard enough she could feel the ghost of a hand brushing the hair back from her face and the soothing voice of a man telling her that he still loves her.

The voice became cracked after a while and her fathers face was hard to make out after years of only looking at frayed photographs.

'They say if you dream a thing more than once, it's sure to come true.' Princess Aurora speaks such words whenever the cracked VHS tape is entered into the even older television. It's one of the only moments of the film that can still be scavenged from the old roll of tape and Aurora thinks it's stupid. Dreams show the impossible, things lost long ago and it's impossible to reverse time. Turn around death and create new life. Not all dreams can come true. Hope is just a shortened version of hopeless.

But life still goes on.

-

Aurora tied a brown ribbon into her hair, admiring her painting as it graced the wall before her. She'd used white and silver to materialise the moon cycle. It was a beautiful thing the moon, she hated that it was so selfish to her Uncle. He was cursed to never be able to look at its complete brilliance without being morphed and wiped of humanity.

The young girl grew to be rather beautiful like her mother. A rose. A curtain of chestnut hair, soft features. She wouldn't be recognisable as a Black if it wasn't for her porcelain skin and stone like eyes, hard and bright like her fathers. Blacks looked to be crafted from stone and perhaps the 11-year-old would appear more so with time and age.

Leo Regulus Black. Her brother. He was a Black through and through. The dark hair, high cheek bones, same grey eyes as his sister. His personality was the only thing saving him. That and being the younger sibling. He wasn't an heir so, to some, he wasn't as relevant.

Yawning, Aurora made her way downstairs, dressed for summer in a bright yellow dress. She was the happiest that she had been in a while, the serotonin from receiving her Hogwarts letter blossoming along with the warm weather. And today was the day she had been waiting for since she felt the ageing parchment beneath her fingertips: she would finally be able to earn her first wand.

Skipping down the stairs, Aurora sweeped past her mother in the kitchen. The old record player in the corner of the room was playing a vintage ABBA record and Aurora couldn't help but let the music bubble up her excitement.

"Tell me the story of this song, Mama." She said, jumping and swaying around to the song. It was a game that started when Aurora was younger. Adrianna always seemed to have a story behind each song on all of her records and Aurora felt blissful listening to them. She liked to imagine that she had been in the picture, making memories with the younger versions of her family.

Adrianna smirked, clutching a steaming tea in her shaking hands. She wore a pair of fingerless gloves, like she seemed to do a lot. Her hands were always cold. Ever since Sirius left anyway and nobody really knows why.

"Ah, Dancing Queen." She remembered and Aurora let the song title roll from her lips, testing it out as the words sung in and out of her mind. "The song came out the year your father turned seventeen and it quickly became tradition to sing it on each of our birthdays. We were dubbed the dancing queen for the day, even the boys!" Her eyes glazed over as she recalled happier times.

"Will you sing it on my seventeenth birthday?" Aurora begged. Adrianna placed a hand on her daughters cheek, warm from the tea yet beginning to shake from the loss of the warmth.

"Of course my darling, we'll sing it all day."

Aurora smiled,  content with this arrangement before letting her mother take her hand and spin her around. Seventeen seemed like a whole lifetime away but the song made her excited.

"Ugh, ABBA? Again?" Remus spoke from where he was hanging his coat up by the door.

"You're just bitter you aren't seventeen anymore." Adrianna teased, welcoming him with a hug.

"Ah yes, I really long for those days of studying and detentions." He replied sarcastically causing his goddaughter to laugh.

A groan sounded from the stairway and Leo soon emerged in his checkered pyjamas, hair still ruffled from sleep. "You laugh like a dog!" He moaned from the bottom of the stairs, wiping sleep from his eyes.

"Maybe we should of named you after Sleeping Beauty, sweetheart." Adrianna said to him, beginning to fry some bacon on the stove.

"Dogs laugh? Didn't know that." Aurora murmured under her breath.

"They may not laugh but that do bark." Remus whispered to her, grinning when she crossed her arms in mock offence.

The sun was bright, the family was laughing and Aurora was hopeful that things would only get better from now on as the bad memories drifted further and further into the abyss of time.

She didn't know how wrong she was.