InsaneJournal

Year of Death: 1979

                Walburga didn't seem half affected as he was. He shook as he sat next to her, gripping her hand tightly.

                "It's not fair," he murmured. "It's not fair. God gave us two great sons, only to tear them both away." His voice hitched.

                "Don't talk about the blood-traitor," snapped Walburga.

                "Shut up!" he snapped at her, squeezing her hand. "Shut up. All this petty 'blooood-traitor', 'haaaaalf-blood', 'muuuudblood' shit."

                "Stop squeezing my hand," she said after a moment. The ensuing silence was awkward.

He sent an owl to his brother-in-law, Alphard, hoping he'd allow him to meet with him sometime and talk about Sirius.

What do you need me for? came the reply, You already stole Walburga's last bit of sense.

Alright, he responded, subdued, Send Sirius my love. And a hundred galleons from our vault. He had sent a check to him for that amount.

I'm not telling him who it came from, said Alphard gruffly back.

So don't, then. Just give it to him.

Walburga didn't know what to make of her husband's increasingly-odd attitude. She figured Regulus's death was just affecting him oddly. She was only half right.

He would go into the room with the Black Tapestry, tracing the burnt spots over and over again. "I wonder what it's like to be disowned," he whispered once.

"Probably didn't affect Sirius at all," snorted Walburga from the doorway. "You know him. Confidence of a young dragon. And all the charm of a double-ended newt."

"No, he was rather charming. If stupid," he replied.

"Perhaps. Come down to the kitchen and eat. You are starving yourself over a death. People die, Orion. It happens."

His hand clenched the side of the tapestry. "Maybe . . . maybe I will join you."

"That's a good man, Ry," she said, heading down the stairs to yell at Kreacher to bring something up if Orion didn't come down to eat. He flinched, heading downstairs. She knew yelling at the house-elf would bring him right away.

"What was Regulus like?" he asked through the Floo. "Your brother, I mean, not my son."

Arcturus scratched his chin for a moment. "Always cheery. Could light up a room. "You might do best asking Gran Hesper, child. If she remembers who you are, that is. Regulus was handsomer than I, loads handsomer, and he could always have his way. "

"Sounds almost like my Regulus. Was he as willing to please?"

"No, he was more of a give and take sort. Your boy was such a good boy, Orion. Such a good grandson too. He always wanted to please. Of course, that lot always ends up dead."

"Thanks, father," said Orion in a choked voice. He yanked his head from the fire, summoned Kreacher to get him a glass of something strong, and slumped into a fading, ornate armchair.

"Why won'd you admit how muchyou misshim?" he slurred as she pulled him from the chair, leading him up the stairs to their room.

"I miss our son," she said stiffly.

"Siri's too?"

"No."

"Yes, 'shou do!"

"Shh. Tell me when you're going to sick up, won't you?"

". . . Yes."

"I'm not happy. I can't feel anything. I've been hitting myself with Stinging Hexes. What do I do, sis?"

She stared at him blankly. "I'm not sure. I've never felt that way before."

"Even when Uncle Reg died? Or Grandpa Sirius?"

"Not really. Though, I suppose I might feel that way if you died." She wound the fingers of one of her hands through his cold one. "It's rather unhealthy to dwell on your losses so."

"But no one is acknowledging them! I just want my little boys back. If I could find a way to go back in time, Luc, you know I would. I would. I would go to a time before Sirius left and before Regulus died. He was all I had left, Lucretia! Don't you understand? And now I don't even have him. I have to be the worst father on the entire Black Tapestry. And beyond. Why couldn't I save my little baby boys, Luc? Why?"

He collapsed in a heap, leaning against her, and she rocked him gently, shushing him. "You're a fine father. You're on our will in case the two of us die. Not that it's been born yet." She patted her stomach. "But I know you, Orion, and what happened to the boys was not your fault."

"But I let it happen—should have seen it coming!" he sobbed.

"No, Orion. There's no way to see these things coming. Not even through Divination."

He put on his best dress robes for the funeral, but it was very tough for him to sit through it without screaming, without running away. There was an ache inside of him he didn't think could ever be filled.

"You don't understand, Walburga," he said in the corridor outside the reception, "I think I'm going mad."

"It will pass," she repeated. "Do I not know my own husband?"

No, he wanted to scream at her, you sure as hell don't. But he said nothing.

"Why don't you go on up to bed? They will understand."

"Thank you, Walburga," he said.

"I think I'm going to get a portrait done of myself and maybe hang it in the entrance hall."

"What a wonderful idea," he said in a lackluster voice. He'd been staring into the fire for a good couple hours.

"Are you going to go back to work any time soon, Orion?" she asked, and the tone was more casual than biting.

He curled his arms around himself. He didn't want to go anywhere. "Yes," he said finally.

"Well, good, then."

He would dream of the times when they were a perfect family, all four of them. Fate was a cruel bitch. Kind of like his Aunt Lycoris. He shuddered to think how her children would have turned out. He didn't miss her much.

He went into work. Into it. And then left again.

"I really am going mad," he told his mirror. The mirror said nothing back. He wasn't even sure it was still a talking mirror. It hadn't spoken to him in ages. He drew his wand and lifted his shirt, crying out as he cast a Stinging Hex on his bared stomach. Repeating the process with a groan, and then with a sigh. Then he dropped his old jumper. One of Sirius's. Walburga had pursed her lips upon seeing it, but had made no comment. If she'd said anything, anything about it, he would have threatened her within an inch of her cold, apathetic life.

Well, she wasn't apathetic about blood.

"Maybe it's not so bad, being mudblood," he said. "Look at what fighting them did to . . . ."

"To Regulus," she finished. "If you talk to me like that again, I'm going to wash out your mouth with soap."

"Walburga, I am not your son!" he snapped. "I am your husband, and you will treat me like the equal you said I was when we got married."

"Right now I'm the breadwinner in this family, dear. And, plus, I should probably be sending you to Mungo's."

"You'd like it if I was gone, would you?"

"A little respite now and then wouldn't hurt, yeah. Go to bed. You look ill." She left, clicking the door shut behind her.

It was Kreacher who found his body. Walburga finally snapped. She had lost her good son and her husband within a month from each other. She began ranting and raving. They locked her away in Mungo's just like she'd threatened her husband.

But first came her portrait and, of course, the funeral. She had been raving mad when he'd painted her and . . . well . . . it showed.

At the funeral, all she could see were his soft, pale, bare feet and his cracked neck, and his lifeless body, Regulus's old broom—he must have used it to stand on—and the glow of the magical rope as it hung from the rafters.

She hexed the house-elf once or twice for carrying around Orion's pants or his socks, as the sight brought her to the edge of tears. She never quite let them fall.

Lucretia had a miscarriage and she and Ignatius did not try again. They both wept at his funeral, openly.

The constellation he was named for, the Great Hunter, looked just a bit more dull up in the sky that night.