The Source

DISCLAIMER: That part of this world and those characters you’ve seen before belong to their Creator: JKR. The rest is mine - although I cannot quit my day job as I make no $$$

A/N: Okay, I’ll give you two. But I might be more than seven to ten days away from a third. With two, I’m only nine completed chapters ahead of the rest of you…

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR: “THE SOURCE”

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 10 th 1993

A bell sounded through the Manor indicating that Time Compression had been activated. Of course, it also meant that all of the expected guests had arrived and were somewhere on the estate. They were going to have a week under Time Compression mainly to allow for Sirius to spend time with his lost family. As such, the Estate had more than a handful of guests in residence and the Time Compression activated once Harry learned the last had arrived who, as it turned out, were Sirius’s family. They had arrived via one of the older access trunks, specifically one that connected to the Cottage in the Valley. Harry was not there. He was at the Manor and although he was to meet his previously unknown cousin later, for now he was at home with his wives. The Time Compression had been coordinated with one at House Longbottom just as it had been during the Manor Court although now it was solely for the purpose of allowing the Greengrass family to visit both estates. Not that Harry and the others would not visit House Longbottom or vice versa for they probably would.

Anna Fitzhugh stepped out of the small room at the bottom of the ladder into a trunk and into a large lounge of some kind. It had furnishings and seemed to be set up to accommodate several groups of people. The ceilings were low and had wooden beams. Although it was a large space, it seemed ‘homey’ in a way. Before her and her mother stood an elf. Until her train ride to Hogwarts in that magically expanded rail compartment she had never seen an elf before and, even though she knew Hogwarts had loads of them, aside from that rail carriage and her trip to see the Manor Court about a month ago she had never seen one at school.

“Good morning Lady Black, Miss Anna,” the Elf said. “Welcome to the Mountain Chalet.”

“Lady Black?” Anna and her mother asked.

“Indeed,” the elf said.

“I’ve never been called that,” her mother began.

“You are the wife of Sirius Black, are you not?”

She nodded.

“Naturally, until he claimed his lordship this past summer, you could not have been called that properly. But once he did, you became Lady Black although I can’t say which of his other ‘estates’ apply. You do know he is Earl of Hangleton and Falthsome. That’s two Earldoms, not one with an ‘and’ in the title and he’s Baron Savoy. It means you’re either a baroness, a countess or both.”

“Oh my!”

“You didn’t know?” the Elf and Anna asked.

“We never talked much about his family,” Connie said. “I knew his Grandfather was Head of the Ancient and Noble House of Black which is nobility in the Wizarding World and basically what that meant to him and ultimately for Anna. But this is news. When we were together before I lost him he was sure he had been cut out of all that. When he came back it never really came up.”

“One of the many things I’ve always loved about you,” a male voice said. Anna looked and saw its owner. It was a tall man with dark hair. She had seen him before at the trial. But at that time he was just the man at the trial, not her father and for some reason now it seemed as if she was seeing him for the first time. She had no idea what to say to him. It seemed to her the feeling was somewhat mutual as he now seemed tongue tied as he looked at her. She could swear there were tears in his eyes.

“Siri?” her mother said after a pause. “This is our Anna.”

He smiled. Anna thought he had a pleasant smile. If he had smiled during the trial, it had not been like this.

“You’re my father?” she asked and then mentally kicked herself. All her life she wondered what it would be like to have one and what hers was really like and those were her first words to him?

“So it seems,” he said nervously.

“Oh?”

“Not a very good introduction,” he said and she nodded. “Then again, I don’t think there’s a bit in any book on etiquette about meeting your eleven-year-old daughter whom you wanted but never knew about for the first time. Somehow ‘Hello, I’m your Dad’ doesn’t cut it.”

She didn’t know why that seemed funny, but it did and she laughed.

“I was at your trial, you know,” Anna said after what seemed to her like an awkward pause.

“Oh?”

“You probably didn’t see me ‘cause I was in the back.”

Sirius nodded. “There were a lot of people there. Many I’d never met before. I saw a lot of Hogwarts students there but…”

“You didn’t even know I existed,” she finished.

“Sorry. But no, I didn’t.”

“Guess that makes us even in a way.”

“Oh?”

“Mum always said she lost you before I was born. When I was older I thought that meant you died. So you didn’t know I existed and while I knew I had a Daddy, I thought he was dead. I… I thought you were dead.”

“In a way, I guess I was,” Sirius said. “Wasn’t much good to you or your mother when I was there, was I? It was as if I was dead in a way.”

Anna could only nod in agreement.

“Shall we sit down?” he suggested. There were plenty of places to sit. He led them to one by a large window that looked out across a small meadow to the woods and mountains beyond. The leaves on the trees were a kaleidoscope of yellows, reds and browns although in the distance on the mountain sides they were still green and probably would remain that way. There was snow visible in the higher places.

“This is very pretty,” Anna said. “Where are we?”

Sirius laughed at the question. After a moment he stopped. “Sorry,” he said. “I guess that question is sort of an inside joke here, although it lacks a punch line. We’re at the Potter Estate.”

“But they’re mountains,” Anna protested. “There weren’t any mountains at the village where the trial was and where I was staying. There were some away in the distance but…”

“And that’s where we are, in those distant mountains.”

“All of this is the Potter estate?”

Sirius nodded.

“I thought it was huge before.”

“It is rather… excessive. I’m told it’s right ‘round five hundred square miles.”

“What?” Anna and her mother asked.

“A bit much, if you ask me,” Sirius said.

“How can they have all that land and keep it hidden from Muggles?” Connie asked.

“They don’t have to hide it,” Sirius said. “Muggles can never find it.”

“Don’t be daft, Siri. There’s not a square meter of this planet they haven’t found and mapped if not from the ground then from the air or space.”

“Which assumes this is part of that Earth,” Sirius said with a mischievous grin. When they looked confused he went on. “No one really knows where this place is. I know that seems off, but it’s true. They can tell you where it’s not. It’s not part of the Outside World as far as they know. You could search the Earth with the best stuff the Muggles have and the best magic we have to find hidden or unknown places and never find this place. It's…”

“An alternate reality?” Anna offered.

“Something like that. It exists because of some kind of magic and don’t ask what kind. The wizard who invented it won’t say. Not that I’ve asked. Got one of these places a couple of days ago, though it won’t be ready for about a month. I didn’t get it from the wizard who made it but from someone who sells it for him and the seller has no idea how this works. He can help you set it up, but he has no idea about how it works at all.”

“Set it up?” Anna asked.

“We opened the door from my trunk and walked into a flat world of grey. Everything was grey: the ground, the sky, everything. It was featureless as far as the eye could see. Oh, you could tell the ground from the sky, but there was nothing to see really. No plants, no hills, not even a slight rise in the ground. It was, as the Seller said, a blank matrix. It was a world you could make into almost anything or any place you wanted within reason. I was keyed into it somehow and asked to imagine the world I wanted and after I blinked it seemed as if I was standing in it. Don’t know how long I saw it or whether it was more than just my imagination or whatever. It changed here and there as I seemed to think of something else or when I seemed not to be pleased with this or that. It was like that for a while, seeming to change with every breath until the changes became fewer and further in between and then stopped altogether. Apparently, it ended with something as near to what I could want as possible and when it did, it was all grey, flat and featureless again.”

“And this place was like that?”

“I can only imagine that it was,” Sirius said.

“And what’s your place like?”

“That’s the odd bit,” Sirius smiled. “I can’t remember. Maybe that’s kind of how it works or something. Maybe it takes the ideas from your head and when it does that they’re gone until you see your ideas become a new reality. Sorry. All I can say is I thought it was nice and peaceful and I hope you and your mother like it.”

“So this is real and yet it’s not?” Anna asked.

Sirius smiled. “Something like that. Our best guess is that it is either in the trunk you came through or, more likely, the trunk is merely a connection between the Outside reality and this one. Whether this one existed before the trunk was made is another question we can’t answer.”

“That’s so cool!”

“And how much did it set you back?” Connie asked.

“You wound me, Dear,” Sirius said in mock pain. “Do you see me as a spendthrift?”

“You weren’t one before,” she replied softly. “But who knows what that place did to you.”

“If you must know, it put a small dent in what I expect to receive from the Ministry for my unfortunate stay at that place. But it would’ve barely scratched the Black fortune. Would’ve cost a fortune and more to buy in the real world. Don’t know how much land is - developed or otherwise. Never shopped for it, you know. But I doubt it’s less than a Galleon an acre…”

“A Galleon?” Anna asked. “That’s it?”

“Less than a Galleon,” Sirius said. “Well, the unimproved matrix is less than one at least. If you want plants and stuff, it’s a little more than that, but not much for some reason. I think my total bill will come to one, one and three per acre.”

“One Galleon, one Sickle and Three Knuts,” Anna said somewhat proudly. “Mum taught be ‘bout Wizarding money this summer before my first trip to Diagon Alley that’s about seven Pounds, right?”

“I suppose,” Sirius said. “To be honest, I haven’t checked the current exchange rate.”

“It’s hard to believe land - even alternate reality land or whatever - could be so inexpensive,” Connie commented. “There’s got to be a catch.”

“A small one,” Sirius replied.

“Okay,” she said cautiously, “so what’s the catch then?”

“Well, regardless of how much land you think you need, you have to buy the lot.”

“I don’t understand,” Anna said.

“If I thought I only needed let’s say twenty acres of land, I’d still have to buy all the land available in the matrix. For all the land it’s one, one and six with plants and stuff. For twenty acres? It would be one thousand, seven hundred and fifty Galleons per acre.”

“That’s a huge difference,” Anna commented.

“It is. As such, it’s silly not to use it all. An acre of farmland can make more than a Galleon a year. And it’s more certain here than the real world since the climate is controlled. As long as there is water - and don’t ask me how it gets water but it does - there can be no drought and as long as you don’t bring it in no blight or insects to ruin the crops. Naturally, the more land you plant in crops, the more crops you can sell and the sooner the place will pay for itself.”

“Do all witches and wizards own such places?” Anna asked.

“Not hardly,” Sirius said. “Between myself and my Cousins Harry and Neville Longbottom, we own most if not all of these places ever made; certainly all the ones that were ever sold in Britain. For all I know, the maker may have sold some on the Continent, but I didn’t ask. What matters is that I own one now. Harry owns eight and I’m told Neville owns six. I was told there are six others out there and no one’s bought them yet.”

“Why not?”

“First off, while they seem cheap, they are expensive. The basic matrix costs 35,000. Figure another five to eight thousand to outfit it and furnish a residence. Secondly, you need a fair few House Elves to really make a go of it.”

“How many?”

“It depends on how you use the land. A full on farm requires the most. My plan requires about two hundred or so for it to work, not including the House Staff which also depends on the size of the House.”

“And how do you get elves?”

“If you don’t already have them, and unless you’re Harry Potter, you pay for them or rather you pay their family to release them to your employ. House Elves are not cheap. Last I checked - and it was before your mother lost me - it was between a four hundred and fifty and six hundred a head depending upon their training.

“So, you buy Elves?” Anna asked somewhat shocked.

“I suppose that’s one way to see it,” Sirius said. “Elves are not people. They do not work for money. For them, food, houseroom and magic are all they require or truly want. I suppose you could pay them, but they would only accept such payment in addition to living with their family. Few families, however, have enough work for a lot of Elves and Elves do have children given a chance. Their Wizarding Family is expected to either provide for such young Elves or find them another family in need of their service. Still, since the Wizarding Family did support the young Elves and may have supported their training, they can by custom expect to be compensated for doing so and for losing the future services. Humans understand such transactions. You can see the problem, though. Under such circumstances, a human might view an Elf as property and treat it as such. Humans are more likely to mistreat mere property.”

“So, you’re going to buy the Elves?” Connie asked.

“House Black has a large number of young, surplus Elves. It seems it was one of my family’s businesses although we seem to have far more than we could either use or sell. Most of the Elves will come from House Black. Still, I may have to acquire a few experienced hands, but House Black has a large surplus of basically trained Elves.”

“Basically trained?”

Sirius nodded. “All young Elves receive a basic education of sort from their Elf families. With it they have the basic skills to perform the tasks that could be expected of them in a house or on an estate: cooking, cleaning, gardening and such. There are more specialized skills that require longer apprenticeships. Turns out, House Black has those Elves available as well. What takes years and years is training an elf to act as a supervisor of sorts. Those are the ones I’ll need to bring on from outside but fortunately I’ll only be seeking a handful of those.”

“What if they can’t find someone for their young Elves?” Anna asked.

“Most then wind up at Hogwarts or some other similar places that can provide them work and magic. Well, aside from the ones raised in my ancestors' care.”

“Oh?”

“House Black… well, for the last several generations before me it was not a nice lot. I’m what you might call the ‘white sheep’ of the family.”

“Don’t you mean ‘black sheep’?”

“Well, a Black Black isn’t much of an outlier. Moreover, my ancestors were Dark as well, or at least leaned that way whereas I turned out to lean towards the Light, as it were.”

“What did the Dark Blacks do with their young elves? They didn’t kill then, did they?”

“No. Dark or not, House Black was a business and you don’t destroy valuable inventory. But, it doesn’t pay to flood the market either since that drives prices down. So, ‘surplus’ was placed in stasis until it could be sold, even if that was years and years. I have no intention of playing that game, mind you. For me, I’ll just get another trunk for them to work in. That’s the way Harry’s family’s done it recently.”

“And how did Harry Potter get his? I mean he has a lot and I’ve heard he only got this estate this past summer,” Anna added.

“He put the word out he was in need of some elves and a small hoard of them showed up. Well, his Head Elf put out the word. And he kind of stole his Head Elf from its former employer. Actually, he kind of stole a lot of elves.”

“Kind of stole?”

“How much do you know about House Elves?” Sirius asked.

“We never had one,” Anna said. “Didn’t even know ‘bout them 'til the train ride. There was an elf of Harry’s named Dobby tending the snack counter in our compartment. He was nice, but he spoke funny. I met some elves here during my stay for the trial. It seemed they ran and took care of the hotel place my friends and I were at and, of course, there’s that whole village of them too. But that’s 'bout it.”

Sirius gave her a basic lesson about what House Elves were. He first explained their life cycle. As children elves, they got their magic through their parents and their parents' magical bond. At as adolescent elves, they are old enough to begin to work but they do not yet need a permanent bond. Sometime after they are about twenty or so, they needed to be magically bonded either to a wizarding family or a very magical place or they would waste away and die. They also needed to work for similar reasons.

Sirius explained that there were different “forms” of Elf bonds. One, such as the one most if not all of the Potter Elves had was to the wizarding family. But the Potter situation was not common for it few families had anywhere near the number of elves that Harry had. Growing up, Sirius’s immediate family had only one Elf and they were considered “comfortable.” House Potter had over two thousand elves. Outside of a situation like House Potter, the Elf was bond not to the family as a whole but to an individual within the family. In the case of Sirius’s parents, Sirius believed the Elf, while a Black Elf, was specifically bonded to his mother based upon the way he remembered it behaved, although there was only one way to know that for sure. He had learned that his mother had died and were the Elf bonded to her rather than to House Black, it would have passed on as well without that bond. But as Sirius had not been to his parents' house since well before his incarceration, there was no way to test his theory.

“So, Harry didn’t really steal Dobby, did he?” Anna said after Sirius finished telling her about Elves and their bonds.

“Oh?” Sirius replied prompting her.

“Dobby wanted out of that family,” Anna said. “Wizards, especially cruel ones, don’t cast bonded elves out at a whim, right? So, Dobby tried to make himself hated to a point where he might be cast out then he gave Harry clues on how to help him get cast out so when the opportunity came along, it was an easy thing to do, right?”

“I suppose it was something like that,” Sirius said.

“I mean,” Anna continued, “Dobby wanted out even if it meant he might die from not having the bond. A mistake like what that man did would break such a bond, right? I still can’t think he would want to die, though.”

“A bond of sorts would have formed regardless,” Sirius said. “In Dobby’s mind, Harry rescued him and for an un-bonded Elf that creates a bond that can sustain it. It’s not as powerful as the one between an elf and its wizarding family - the one he now has with House Potter - but it’s more than enough. I’m sure Dobby knew that as well. He’s quite cunning. Then again, most Elves are given a chance and the need to be so.”

Anna thought about that for a moment before changing the topic. “You’re an Earl?” she asked.

Sirius nodded. “Don’t expect an invite to visit the Muggle Queen,” he chuckled. “The Black family titles are very old and are not recognized as valid in this age. The most recent Black titles were attainted centuries ago.”

“Attainted?”

“The then Earl Black did something to offend the then Muggle King, specifically he backed a rival contender for the throne and when the rival failed, the King took away his titles and any lands he had that were not protected by a much older treaty between the Muggles and our world. Our world sees such titles as permanent in a way and that attainder is not recognized - although our world’s view on such things could not do anything about the lands my ancestor lost. So in our world I am an Earl. All that really means is that I hold an Earl’s votes in the Wizengamot which is nothing to sneeze at to be sure, but it probably less than being an Earl in the Muggle World.”

“You won’t see yourself mentioned in the Muggle Society pages,” her mother added. “Well, not for being the daughter of your father at least.”

“But when that comes to light in our world it could happen,” Sirius said. “Were it up to me, that won’t happen for some years. I had to put up with such rubbish when I was in school and I don’t think anyone should have to.”

“At school the only place where your ancestry really matters is in Slytherin House,” Anna said.

“For the most part,” Sirius nodded. “But for the Daily Prophet and its legions of prurient readers of the Society columns, who’s dating who and such is important and people from ‘notable’ families are of interest even if it is silly.”

“Is that why Mum never told me much about your family?” Anna asked. “I mean, she told me about you… I guess… but not about your family.”

Sirius looked at his wife, although not with any sort of disappointment. “To be honest,” he said to Anna, “I never really told her much about them other than that I did not like my parents at all and, in the end, left them without a second thought.”

“I did tell you some things, although not directly and Mr. Smith… you remember Mr. Smith, right?” Connie asked her daughter.

Anna nodded. “He taught me about magical society and stuff when I was younger although I didn’t know that was what he was on about at the time as he never said it was magic stuff,” she explained to Sirius. “Can’t say I was a good student. I mean, Mum and I did live in a Muggle neighborhood and I had Muggle friends so none of that seemed important to me at the time.”

“His real name,” Connie said, “was Lord Arcturus Black, your great-grandfather and your father’s grandfather.”

“The old man came around to see her?” Sirius asked.

“Not often or regular like,” Connie nodded, “but he did. It seems he wanted to be sure of her.”

“Okay, what does that mean?”

“Your Grandfather was not pleased with the way his family had turned out, it seems. The fact that they fought on both sides in the War was particularly disturbing. While as you know he does not hold Muggle Borns in high esteem, he did not support the other side’s views on them either.”

“The radicals were too crazy,” Sirius said nodding, “the Moderates too accommodating, the Liberals too worshipful of their leader and the Traditionalists too divided and too obsessed with their family trees to be of any use to anyone. He said there was a time that it was not so. He blamed his grandfather for polarizing everything.”

“Mr. Smith said a lot of that Pure-blood stuff is rubbish,” Anna said after a pause. “He didn’t think it wise to… to only have families that way. I was younger then so he didn’t explain what that meant but I now know he was talking about… about marrying relatives and such. We should be mindful of our history and traditions, but not to the point of self-destruction, he said. He said his own family had all but destroyed itself ‘cause it was too fixed on a past that never had been. He said there’re families even today who set things up so that their children marry whatever the 'right sort’ it. He said their idea of the ‘right sort’ is based on the history of that family, not whether the bride or groom is worth a knut as a person or a witch or wizard. But he admitted that when he was young he thought he believed differently. His father arranged the marriage of his son to a cousin and he did nothing to stop it - and he could have - and he said that was easily the biggest mistake he made in his life and it was a wonder that any of their children grew up to be even slightly admirable.”

“He was talking about you, Sirius. He was proud of you when you turned your back on the rest of House Black, although disappointed that he was part of what you saw as the problem.”

“He never gave me reason to really think otherwise,” Sirius said.

“He knew that. He was planning to let you see the real Lord Black when you were older and no longer living with that mother of yours but by then it was too late. Not long before he died, he told me he hoped that his efforts for me and our daughter made up for that. My only regret was that I could not tell Anna that he was her great-grandfather while he was still with us.”

“Why was the secrecy necessary?” Anna asked. “I mean no one seems to have known about your marriage except you two and I guess… my great-grandfather and it’s still that way. And no one knows who my father is except us, right?”

“There are a few others now,” Sirius said, “those who call this land or whatever their home know the truth, but you need remember that until I regained my freedom and your mother, even I was unaware of you, Anna. I was taken away before your mother knew for certain and certainly before she could tell me I was to become a father. I can’t say why it was secret for all of those years before. As for your mother and I and our marriage? At the time I went away it was a secret. Neither of us was ashamed, you must know. But the war was such that the marriage - were it to be known - would have placed your mother’s life in danger and I was not about to do that to her if it could be helped. I didn’t tell my friends ‘cause I was certain one of them was a traitor. I didn’t know which one. I wasn’t about to take that chance. Aside from the war, it did not matter much or so I thought. I went away thinking I had been disowned and the fact that I married your mother would not change that. Then again, the last thing I wanted to be was what I was born to be. I was born to one day be Lord Black and for as long as I can remember I never wanted that.”

“Why? What was wrong with your family?”

“They were supporters of the Pure-blood Supremacy - at least those whom my parents allowed me to associate with were. I thought it was rubbish when I was little and still do. As I grew older, I saw just how vile those people really were and wanted nothing to do with them. They were also the worst sort of hypocrites. Their beliefs so often contradicted themselves that only a true believer could not see the flaws - or a true idiot and many of them were hardly shining examples of intellect or ability. Most of the supporters were, if anything, living proof that their ideas were dead wrong. My family - House Black - fell into three groups I suppose: there were those who openly supported and championed the Pure-blood movement and supported if not joined the Death Eaters in the war such as my parents and those they considered respectable; there were those who openly opposed that faction who were disowned or, if not, were certainly not on any mailing lists; and I suppose there were those whom no one knew where they stood. That being said, my parents would clamor for disowning any member of the family who was not clearly in the Pure-blood camp - those who married beneath their status regardless of any other considerations included - unless they happened to be rich or hold a fair few votes in the Wizengamot, in which case they remained acceptable. It made no sense to me that one Black could marry a Muggleborn or Half-Blood of ‘low birth’ and be anathema while another could do the same and remain acceptable simply because they married into wealth or power or both. Seems to me, you can’t condemn one without condemning both. Their ideas of acceptable was so riddled with exceptions that it was a sick joke. And yet, the one thing which in my opinion should have been an exception was not.”

“What’s that?” Anna asked.

“Your mother,” Sirius said, “my wife.” He turned to Connie. “Have you told her about our bond?”

“Not really. No,” Connie replied.

“Until just this morning, I still thought my Daddy was lost,” Anna added. “I thought that meant you were… ,” she could not finish her statement.

“What do you know about magical bonds - and I don’t mean House Elves?” Sirius asked.

“You mean like what we’ve been told happened with the Potters and Longbottoms?” Anna asked. She saw a surprised look on her father’s face. “Well,” she blushed, “we weren’t exactly told outright. Our first day of classes it was announced that Harry Potter was married to four girls and Neville was married to five and if we wanted any details, we could consult references in the Library. I don’t know how many did, but a fair few of us girls did. Had to wait for my turn - my friends and I, I should say - ‘cause there was a queue of sorts. We figured the only way Harry or that Neville boy could’ve married - and in such a way that their wives are still in school - was there was compatible magic involved. The law allows that, but what I read didn’t say much about it. Couldn’t find and haven’t heard of a book that talks about that much - at least not one here at school. Some think there might be one in Ravenclaw as they’re said to have some rare books, but the Claws deny it and seemed put out enough by not knowing that I believe them.”

Sirius and Connie then told her the details about their bonding: the compatible magic, when and how a bond formed, how sharing such compatible magic did not mean the couple would ever bond.

“You can’t form a bond with someone you don’t like or can’t see as a romantic partner,” her mother had said. “Some writers suggest the compatible magic might make it easier for a couple to be attracted to each other and compatible for each other, but others suggest otherwise and just as no two people are alike, no two bonds are alike. The bonds you’ve met - the Potters and Longbottoms - formed very early, as soon as they were all old enough and well before they reached magical, physical and emotional maturity so one can say they will move through puberty bonded and together. Your father and I bonded the summer after I finished school and three years after he did. We were both magically and physically mature. We did not grow into adults together so our bond is different in that way.”

“I suppose I can see that sort of,” Anna said. “But what has this to do with Pure-bloods?”

“The Pure-blood Supremacists would want to believe that such a bond, given how powerful it is, should be restricted to Pure-bloods,” Sirius said. “The truth is the bond is not. It is random. Of the bonded couples we know of, there are no bonds strictly between Pure-bloods. One bondmate may be, but the other one is not.”

“The bond, by its nature, is akin to marriage and is treated that way from the moment it begins to form,” Connie added. “Bonded couples will mate and have children as in more than one. Thus, in every case we are aware of, all of those children would be Half-bloods.”

“Naturally, such a thing would be unthinkable to a Pure-blood Supremacist,” Sirius added. “That they could be ‘forced’ to marry a social inferior or their child could be is anathema to them. I know, for example, that my parents knew I shared compatible magic with your mother. They were advised of that fact within days of your mother’s birth. They never told me of that and did all they could to see to it that the bond could never happen. They tried to condition me to be a good, little Pure-blood Supremacist such that the mere thought of a relationship with a Muggle Born such as your mother would be unthinkable to me. In that, they failed miserably. The more they tried, the more I rebelled against the idea until I literally ran out on them forever. Naturally, it did not help their cause one whit given their choice of my ideal bride…”

“Their choice?” Anna asked.

Sirius nodded. “My parents were ‘proper’ Pure-bloods. As such, far be it for them not to have chosen my bride when I was very young. In their circle arranged marriages were the rule and not the exception. I knew who she was. All the more reason for me to turn my back on my parents and their expectations. The girl - if you could call it that as she was four years older than me - put the ugh in ‘ugly’ and had a vile personality to match. At least my mother was objectively good looking but her personality… No woman ever known has the looks to overcome that vicious personality. But I really shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, even if that is being kind to them.”

“Who?” Anna asked. “The girl or your mother?”

“Mother died while I was away on my extended stay at that island resort. My betrothed joined the Death Eaters when I was still in school and was killed as such before they could get me hitched and I scampered on them and they did me the great favor of disowning me before they could get around to arranging a replacement bride. All of this was years before your mother and I finally got together and bonded. Did much better on my own, if I do say so myself.”

Anna nodded, thinking for a moment. “But if you and Mum had compatible magic, why did you wait so long to… you know?” she finished with a blush. “Your parents knew…”

“No reason to think they didn’t,” Sirius agreed. “But they were not about to encourage any relationship with someone they felt was beneath contempt; or I should say my Mother was not about to. To be honest, I don’t really know what my father thought about such things. My mother was as much a Pure-blood Supremacist as one could be without actually becoming a Death Eater. My father never disagreed with a word she said - not in my presence at any rate. If he had an opinion of his own, I am unaware of it. So, seeing as she believed that no proper Pure-blood would ever consider associating with a Muggle Born, she was not about to even suggest the possibility. Pity I couldn’t make our marriage known given the times. It would’ve probably killed her. Sorry. My mother and misery are synonyms. For as long as I can remember, I always did or at least wanted to do the opposite of what she wanted me to do and always desired to be the opposite of what she wanted. She wanted me to be a Death Eater, so I became a Hit Wizard tasked with killing her champions. My younger brother Regulus made her proud and became one and was dead within a year and as our side didn’t kill him… Let’s just say that with Death Eaters as friends and associates, one did not need a mortal enemy.”

“You really didn’t like your family, did you?” Anna observed.

“Hated my mother,” Sirius nodded. “Then again, I can’t think of a single person who liked her including her own family. I had no respect for my father. I did like my brother ‘til he chose his fate. I was kept in the dark about your mother 'cause she was not acceptable to them. It is the hypocrisy I mentioned earlier. The Pure-blood Supremacists believe that they are powerful magically and their Pure-blood children will be as well. Nothing I’ve seen supports that idea. They either are or, more likely, are not. The truth is something very different.”

“Oh?”

“The opposite is more accurate,” Sirius continued. “Since my trial and exoneration, I’ve been able to access the family estate and read through the journals of my ancestors - more accurately those that predated my Great-great grandfather. His Grandfather and Great-grandfather conducted a series of observations that, had they been accepted and published, would’ve put paid to much of the Pure-blood Supremacy nonsense. One of the movement’s attractive ideas was the notion that Pure-blood and magical power were related as in a Pure-blood child was born magically more gifted than any other magical child. My ancestors found at best no evidence in support of that notion and at worst evidence that suggested the opposite was in fact the case.”

Sirius then described his ancestors' theory which was developed by his eight times Great-grandfather through his four times Great-grandfathers and later suppressed by his two time Great-grandfather. The researchers had discovered a means to estimate something called magical potential. This was not how magically powerful a person was; rather it was a quantification as to their maximum potential for magical power and ability. Few would ever attain their full magical potential just as few every reached their full potential physically or intellectually or, if they had, sustained it. But no one could ever exceed their magical potential at least not naturally.

“Now here’s the thing they uncovered in their decades and decades of observation,” Sirius continued. “In almost all cases, no child has a higher magical potential than their more powerful parent. My ancestors believed it was always less, even if the difference was too small to measure with their methods. So… ,” he paused for a long moment.

“But if that’s the case,” Anna said, “magic would fade away! If each generation is less magical than the one before, in time it wouldn’t be magical at all!”

“Exactly!” Sirius exclaimed.

“Idiopathic Squib Syndrome,” Connie nodded. She then explained that while there were curses and diseases that might cause a witch to have a Squib child - one born without expressible magic - those causes were known and rare enough (and in the case of curses, very illegal). But there were far more Squibs born than curses or illness could explain. Oddly, all such cases were born to Pure-blood lines. To her knowledge, there was no cases of a Half-Blood Squib that could not be explained by an illegal curse or an illness. “So,” she concluded, “it seems it will fade away over generations.”

“My observant ancestors used a term called the Source or Awakening. Source is better although the other term is the more common situation. They learned that those ‘of the Source’ were generally more magically powerful than those removed from it. The Source is when magic awakens in a person such that it can be passed on to their children.”

“Muggleborns!” Anna said.

“The obvious Source,” Sirius nodded. “Something must have happened to preserve magic given that it will diminish otherwise. That something is the constant influx of new magic through Muggleborns. Roughly one third of all witches and wizards are ‘of the Awakening,’ as my ancestors put it. Source magic is powerful in more than the obvious way. Muggleborn do have a markedly higher magical potential than those born more distant from their Source and, for the first two or three generations thereafter, the magic does not diminish measurably and can, in fact, strengthen if the children take mates more powerful than themselves. But, even before they are removed enough from the Source to be considered a Pure-blood in our custom, they cross the line as it were and their magic will diminish with each subsequent generation thereafter removed from a Source ancestor.”

“But if that’s the case, then all that rubbish about Pure-bloods is just that: rubbish! Why isn’t this known?”

“You mean aside from the fact that it would ruin everything Pure-blood Supremacists want to believe?” Sirius replied. “Worse than telling them there’s no such thing as Father Christmas, I suppose.”

“According to Lord Arcturus,” Connie interjected, “the Elder Blacks' research was never published. They were not yet ready to publish as they felt it needed to be rationally and ‘scientifically’ unassailable and they were not there yet. They knew that many would never accept their findings, but enough would if it could withstand learned, intellectual scrutiny and they needed more evidence. What was interesting to Lord Arcturus and to me when he told me and allowed me to read copies of the Elders' notes, was that the Elder Blacks were trying to prove the magical supremacy of Pure-bloods over the rest of us, not prove the fallacy of that belief. All of their empirical evidence contradicted their theory and they became convinced in their new theory of Source magic. They then spent decades trying to disprove their new theory as well as any and all published basis for the pro-Pure-blood theories. They died before they could publish and the later generations did not continue the research.”

“My four times Great-grandfather was the last to pursue that research - at least within House Black,” Sirius said. “I can’t say there haven’t been others out there who either continued it or studied it independent of my ancestors. It seems rather obvious to me that it should be looked into. But, unless it has been published in some form since I went off on my extended holiday, nothing seems to have come of it at least here. I’m certain any such findings would have been suppressed and their publication prohibited, at least here in Britain. Then again, I wish I could say I was surprised that nothing seems to have come of it.”

“Oh?” Anna asked.

“House Black has been a leader within the Traditionalists for ages,” Sirius said. “The Traditionalists at best are not keen on Muggleborns and at worst include the Supremacist movement. Thus for the Leadership to produce a theory that does anything more than marginalize the importance of Muggleborns… ,” he finished with a shrug.

“There’s no telling,” her mother said. “The last researcher died a long time ago. Lord Arcturus told me that for ages House Black had more than its fair share of researchers in all kinds of fields, although he did point out that they were more interested in coming up with something new than its potential uses or implications. Their journals are filled with spells that are… disturbing to say the least along with ones that are not. Many have accused them of being Dark and, perhaps, a fair few of them may have been. But they were far more interested in knowledge for knowledge’s sake than whether it fit into a Light box or Dark box and, according to Lord Arcturus, a lot of the ‘more interesting’ knowledge and discoveries would be seen as Dark these days. But it’s been some time since House Black’s been active that way. Your four times Great-Grandfather had no interest in research of any kind even going so far as to try and have it outlawed when he attained his House Seat. He felt further research was a waste of effort as - in his opinion - there was nothing new to learn or discover. His son, Phineus Nigelus, was even less interested in research. Oh, he did become a Potions Master, but Lord Arcturus was convinced that was only so he could become a Professor at Hogwarts so he could pursue his real interests.”

“Which were?” Anna asked noting the look of disgust on her mother’s face.

“Begetting children out of wedlock,” Connie replied. “His first child, a daughter, was born the summer after his Fourth Year at Hogwarts to a ‘girl of low birth’ who was a year behind him at school.”

“You mean a Muggleborn?”

“Don’t know,” Connie said. “Back then, ‘low birth’ did not necessarily mean that. His journals used that term for anyone who was not from an influential or very old and respected magical family as was custom back then. Odds are she was not Muggleborn as he was in Slytherin and seduced a girl from his own House. Seduced several, in fact. He kept a string of ‘low birth’ Slytherin mistresses for the rest of his life who bore him more than one child all of whom he got pregnant while they were in school. But he also made it a point to impregnate at least one new witch a year and those who he did not keep as a long term mistress were almost always Muggleborns and with the exception of a couple of years before he became a professor, he succeeded in doing so. Not including his wife, with whom he had five children and who was the only woman he did not impregnate while she was still at Hogwarts, he had about hundred and fifteen children by eighty-seven different mothers, all of whom had to drop out of Hogwarts because of their pregnancies. He had more than that if one counts his other liaisons over the years, but he never kept track of them all.”

“How did he get away with it? How could it have happened at all? I mean magical birth control’s been around for ages, right?”

“There are potions that can counteract the potions you take,” Connie said.

“Some of which he’s believed to have invented,” Sirius added. “As for how he could get away with it? He was in the line of succession to head and Ancient and Noble House and later its Head. There was not much one could do unless they were similarly situated. Muggleborns had no recourse. Their parents have no rights in our world at all and neither do they on their own - not ‘til they are of age.”

“And many if not most of his conquests were underage,” Connie added. “According to Lord Arcturus, it was not as if many of the faculty or Headmasters of that time would take an interest in such things. They considered Muggleborns to be from promiscuous stock so underage pregnancies were almost expected. Phineus Black made it pretty much a self fulfilling prophecy. Likewise, non-Muggleborns of low birth would be seen as trying to get something out of the situation so they too were ignored. Of course, it did not help matters a whit for the last dozen years of his life seeing as he was Headmaster. By then his predations were a well known secret in the older families and Wizengamot, but few seemed to care. It did not help the victims that the Wizengamot was not about to risk the young women of their families by opposing him and passing laws to make his behavior illegal. Lord Arcturus believed he used potions to bed the girls and get them pregnant and was adept at it. For Wizengamot families, they had no way of knowing whether he would do the same to their girls if they stood against him and were not about to take such a risk. They did not want their girls to be the mother of the next Fitzblack.”

“Fitzblack?” Sirius and Anna asked.

“Agnes Fitzblack was born in 1862 and Lord Arcturus believes she was the first child of his Grandfather Phineus Nigelus Black. There was no girl at Hogwarts by that name at that time and nothing in the Journals clearly identifies the mother. But Phineus Black did brag about begetting Agnes. Agnes gave birth to Magda Fitzblack in 1876 who was born the same day Phineus Black married his only legal wife and was also his daughter.”

“He slept with his own daughter?” Anna asked in shock.

Connie nodded. “And when Magda’s daughter came to Hogwarts, he slept with her as well and her daughter. The last Fitzblack, his daughter, granddaughter, Great-granddaughter and Great-great granddaughter was born in 1918 and the only reason there were no others was that she was killed a few days after she was born in a bombing raid in the Great Muggle War of the time. (A/N1)”

“That’s so wrong! Why’d he do that?” Anna asked.

“Aside from the fact that he could?” her mother replied. “According to Lord Arcturus, his journals said he wanted to see if anything interesting came of it. Don’t ask what that means ‘cause apparently he never explained it. Lord Arcturus suspects he was experimenting somehow, maybe trying to disprove the Source Magic theory of his ancestors, but as he was probably insane, who can say?”

“Back then it would be considered eccentric,” Sirius added. “Rich people from proper families are eccentric, not insane. But it was not what they would consider rational behavior. He was ultimately shot to death by the Muggle father of one of his victims. Some think his magical enemies put the man up to it.”

“Why? ‘Cause he was a Muggle?”

“No,” Connie answered. “Lord Arcturus said that aside from his acknowledged mistresses and the Fitzblacks, none of his conquests were ever named nor did any identify him as the father of their child. Lord Arcturus was all but certain that he used some form of memory charm on them at some point so that they had no idea who it was who fathered their child. His journals were clear that he had gotten a student pregnant and she gave birth and such, but that was all. Lord Arcturus identified several probable ‘cousins’ based on school records and such but there’s no way to be certain that they are truly his progeny. (A/N2)”

“It’s disgusting to think I’m descended from that!” Anna said.

“How do you think I felt growing up?” Sirius said. “The more I learned, the more disgusted I became and the more I loathed my parents. My mother would’ve worshiped the ground he walked on had he lived long enough. She was born a couple months after he was gunned down. Growing up, all I heard was about how great a man he was: visionary Headmaster of Hogwarts, astute politician, father of the Pure-blood Supremacists, inspiration for patriots - which meant Voldemort and his Death Eaters. Made me sick to hear it and that was before I learned anything about his Hogwarts children.”

“We began by saying the Pure-blood Supremacist movement is hypocrisy,” Connie continued. “Well, it’s worse than that. Before Phineus Black, there were Pure-bloods. Most were not intentional. People generally didn’t marry that way on purpose. While arranged marriages were common back then, they were not about being Pure-bloods. You arranged marriages to advance your family and their interests and back then, if you could not marry into a politically advantageous family, you sought an economically advantageous one. Rich Muggleborns were deemed very desirable. Still, there was a fringe element that misread its history and believed blood status was more important than anything. They often married within their own families because those were the only ones whose ancestry was not in question in their minds. Phineus Nigelus changed that and made that way of thinking almost popular and his reasons had nothing to do with blood purity.”

“Okay, what’s that mean?” Anna asked.

“He was as indifferent as most people in his station in society to blood status, or at least that’s what his writings reveal early on,” Connie said. “Back then - and this is 120 years ago or so - the upper tier of our society, while it might not have had a favorable opinion of Muggle Borns, was not on about being or trying to become Pure-bloods. As I said, most married into families that would either benefit them personally or benefit their family and one could not pass on an advantageous marriage on such a meaningless thing as blood status. The truth is, back then had the Muggle Queen Victoria sought a marriage for one of her numerous children with a witch or wizard, there were few families in our world that would have balked. Too much could’ve been gained by such a match to be concerned about the blood status of the Bride and Bridegroom.

“True, Phineus Nigelus Black did marry a ‘Pure-blood’ girl. She only just qualified as she had some Muggleborn Great-Great grandparents. Not that it could’ve mattered to Phineus seeing as his mother was a third generation witch and his father’s mother a second generation witch.”

“What?” Sirius asked. “Are you…? But that means…?”

“Phineus Nigelus Black, the father of modern day Pure-blood Supremacy was not one himself,” Connie said. “Lord Arcturus reconstructed that information years later. The two witches I mentioned were born overseas, thus there’s no record of their families here in Britain and at that time there was no requirement to record such things. His mother was from America, from a very wealthy family and one that wanted their daughter to marry into magical nobility for some reason (A/N 3). His Grandmother was from an Italian family, one that had very lucrative trade connections throughout southern Europe. There were not many - if any - Pure-blood families in Britain at the time who could come close in providing such incentives to marry their daughters. Such things as blood status were just not discussed back then. If that was your family had to offer, you had nothing to offer.”

“But…?” Sirius began.

“Lord Arcturus found it amusing that House Black changed its motto to Tejours Pur soon after Phineus Nigelus Black became Head of House. Before then, it was something else. There was a large library off the study in Black Manor that was off limits to everyone in the family. As a child, Lord Arcturus thought it contained secret family magics and such. What it contained was all ‘evidence’ that House Black was not as Pure-blooded as it pretended to be and had not supported or advocated for Pure-bloods until recently. It was only after becoming Lord Black that Phineus Black proclaimed his beliefs of the superiority of ‘Pure-blood.’ That was a year after his first legitimate son was born and, Lord Arcturus believes, that all of that Pure-blood rubbish Phineus spouted was nothing more than a way to both gain political advantages and, more importantly, ensure his legitimate descendants would not marry into his far more numerous illegitimate ones for some time. His legitimate children would, after all, attend Hogwarts with not less than forty-one half brothers and sisters. It would not do for them to intermingle and, if his legitimate children grew up ‘properly’ with disdain for their lessers, then seeing as all of his bastards were not and could not be their equals in terms of blood status, the risks of an unfortunate romance would be avoided.”

“Didn’t seem to stop him from having a go with his illegitimate daughters,” Anna said.

“Hence, one more reason why the Pure-blood Supremacy is hypocrisy.”

A/N1: Yes, there were air raids on Britain in WWI. Compared to WWII, those raids were a minor affair, but at the time it was a huge deal. Like WWII, London was a target for several raids, the last by German bombers was in May of 1918 which left 17 people dead or so. The last was by a Zepplin (Air ship filled with hydrogen gas) in August. It was shot down (blown up) before it reached its target. Over 1,000 died in the air raids of 1915-1918. Again, as compared to WWII, this was not much. (Estimates are that ~ 67,000 died in Britain in WWII from German attacks over 40,000 in the Blitz of 1940-41.)

A/N2: Arcturus Black died in 1991. It was only in his final years that DNA testing was available in the Muggle world as a tool but it was not used for tracing ancestry. This was in part due to the cost of the tests which would have been prohibitive for more than a handful of samples. (For most people, one sample was too expensive to be worth it and you would need several to trace ancestry.) It was also because at that time no one was yet using it for more than criminal investigations and paternity cases.

A/N3: British nobility marrying wealthy, American girls was something of a ‘fad’ in the Victorian Era. Downton Abbey aside, Winston Churchill’s mother was the daughter of a wealthy New York Real Estate speculator. His father was the third son of a Duke. (Duke of Marlborough). (Also in the list of nobility seeking rich American brides: the Duke of Wellington; the Duke of Marlborough - cousin of Churchill… Daughters came from American millionaires such as the Vanderbilts, Carrolls, Astors, and so on. They brought with them piles of something the British Aristocracy was short of: cash.)