You didn’t want to be here. You really didn’t want to be here, sitting at the Black family’s dining table, surrounded by stiff smiles and colder eyes, waiting for your supposed future husband to make his grand appearance. The idea of it was absurd. You, from a well-respected pure-blood family, bound to him, Sirius Orion Black. It was the kind of match that looked perfect on parchment and disastrous anywhere else. His recent behavior had apparently humiliated his parents enough that they’d decided the only way to fix him was to marry him off sooner. Which was how you found yourself here, seated beside your parents, under the unwavering scrutiny of Walburga Black, Orion’s unreadable silence, and Regulus’s polite indifference. Sirius, naturally, was nowhere to be found. It wasn’t shocking. What did catch you off guard, however, was the moment Walburga turned to you with a tight smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Would you be so kind as to fetch him from his room?”

Fetch. Like a dog. You hesitated only a moment before nodding. It wasn’t as if “no” was an acceptable response to her. The manor was heavy with silence as you climbed the grand staircase, each step echoing like it disapproved of you being there. You followed her curt directions down a long corridor and stopped before a door with peeling paint and a faint scorch mark, his, apparently. You knocked once, waited, then pushed the door open.

It was chaos. Gryffindor banners hung defiantly against the dark paneling, their edges singed, no doubt by his mother’s hand. A desk cluttered with half written letters, cigarette ends, and an upturned bottle of ink. Clothes draped carelessly over an old armchair. But what caught your eye most wasn’t the mess, it was the ceiling. Posters of Muggle women, nude and unashamed, stared down from above. You could only imagine how Wallburga must have reacted. “Charming,” you murmured, gaze dropping from them to the boy sprawled across his bed like he owned the world. Sirius looked up from the magazine in his lap, dark curls falling into eyes that flickered from curiosity to amusement. His grin was lazy, dangerous, and annoyingly magnetic. “You’re not Mother Dearest,” he said, voice smooth and low, a perfect blend of mockery and intrigue. You shook your head, trying not to roll your eyes. “No. I’m afraid not. I was sent to get you.” He tilted his head, a half-smirk tugging at his mouth. “Interesting. Do you always do everything you’re told?”