firecracker ???

5-0

And no one questioned it.

Not even Voldemort.

Sirius didn't know how his brother lived with the lie. But he knew why he did it.

Some things were more useful alive.

He shifted his gaze to the left, where the family lines branched out in silver flourishes.

Narcissa.

Bellatrix.

Andromeda — or rather, the scorched space where she used to be.

Her name had been erased in the same way Sirius's had. Different reasons. Same judgement. She had loved outside the bloodline and paid the price.

He lingered a moment on Bella's name.

Still there. Still gleaming. Still beautiful, at least in thread.

She hadn't returned yet, but she would.

Regulus hadn't said it aloud, but it was coming. Voldemort would be wanting his followers back and out from prison. Sirius could feel it like pressure in his bones.

Bellatrix — brilliant, brutal, and utterly lost to her own madness — would walk through the doors of Grimmauld Place again. And when she did, everything would shift.

He didn't know who she would be this time.

He remembered her as a girl, ferocious and untouchable. The eldest cousin, the standard-bearer, the star that lit the path with fire.

He remembered her teaching him hexes before Hogwarts.

He remembered her once throwing her drink in Lucius's face at a winter party and then making everyone laugh so hard they forgot the scandal.

He remembered her braiding his hair as a joke when he was seven, reassuring that she didn't judge him for wondering if there was a different type of person he could grow up to be.

And he remembered her laughing again, years later — in chains, on the floor of the courtroom, her voice carrying over her sentencing like a hymn.

Growing up, she had told him they would never stop being family. The five of them.

He didn't know what version of her would come home.

But he knew the family would reunite. Just like how she always said in their childhood, like moths to the same flame.

He looked lower now, toward the newest names.

Draco Lucius Malfoy.
Elestara Lyra Black.

She wore her name well — proud, quiet, utterly poised. She was everything a Black was supposed to be and perhaps more. Beautiful in that same cold and untouchable way that made Bellatrix terrifying. Sharp like Narcissa. Political like Lucius.

But there was something else there, too. A glint of independence beneath the mask. A flicker of unpredictability that reminded Sirius too much of himself.

They had a strange relationship, he and Lyra. Not warm. Not soft. But she let him speak to her. Let him joke. Let him exist near her without the bite of judgement and hostility she showed at first.

Later, she'd allowed him to stand in front of her at the Quidditch World Cup, when panic shattered the sky. She hadn't said thank you. But she hadn't pulled away.

He wasn't sure if she tolerated him or trusted him. But she didn't ignore him.

And in this family, that counted for something.

She was Regulus's goddaughter. Bellatrix's, too.

And she'd grown up hearing that Sirius Black was a disgrace.