HP: Monochrome

"We need to talk!"

Sirius looked up from the glass of expensive firewhiskey he held in his hand, and Harry immediately winced. The ideal symmetry of his godfather's face was stretched tight with tension. His eyes, normally grey with a slight stormy tinge, were now a reflective obsidian, and his cheeks were sunken and haggard with worry. It almost made him wish to run away and let the man live a burden-free life, seeing as how he was the cause behind the man's stress.

"What's new?" Sirius asked. "Is something troubling you?"

Yes. Seeing you like this.

Harry glanced at Andi, who was going through some files on the couch on the other side. "Have you been drinking too much? Your eyes are…" He trailed off, unsure how to proceed.

"I wish he had been drinking," Andi muttered. Judging from Sirius's scowl, he was involved in something worse. At Harry's look, she explained. "He was mucking around with the Family Library. For someone that spent half his life running away from the family, he's spending way too much time with those dusty tomes."

"Andi—"

"It's true."

"Sirius—" Harry began, "What's going on?"

His godfather sighed. "I'm the Lord Black, Harry. It's essential that I know the magic that fuels my bloodline."

"And there's a difference between diligence and overindulgence," Andi shot at him, standing up. She gave Harry a very crossed look. "Those tomes are ancient, and radiate a magic darker and denser than anything we use today. By Morgana, even Grandfather used to touch them with a ritually-purified scalpel and he wore silk gloves on top of that. Your godfather just went there and spent an entire hour with those books, because he was getting antsy."

"Sirius—" Harry narrowed his eyes. "Why are you doing this?"

"I'm doing my duty as the Lord Black," Sirius grunted, scowling. "Andi is just being paranoid. And you've got some balls talking down at me over safety hazards when you're doing the exact same thing."

"I've met Fleur there before," Harry shot back. "Nothing happened then."

"Misfortune strikes unannounced, Harry," Sirius replied. "What if something had happened to you?"

Technically something did happen. Like getting hit from a very dark curse, but there was no point mentioning that to Sirius.

"I beat them all, and got out safely."

"Bollocks, you got injured."

"Well, for some definitions of 'safely'…"

"Stop changing the subject. Tell me, what's troubling you?"

Harry arched an eyebrow. Was he really supposed to ignore that it was Sirius that had deftly changed the topic just to avoid talking about what he was doing in the Library? Still, one thing at a time. He really wished Fleur would have been there. If this went wrong, he could at least point fingers at her and blame her for putting this idea in his head in the first place.

"I had this talk with Fleur and…" he glanced towards Andi, "I think I should come clean about a few things."

"Oh goodie," Sirius barked, the light returning to his eyes. "Finally grew some balls, did you? So tell me, how was it?"

"Wait Sirius, I don't think—"

"Did you shag?" He asked bluntly.

"Sirius!" Andi scolded but broke her angry demeanour by laughing.

"It's just a question," Sirius shrugged. "One that's very reasonable to ask." he turned towards Andi. "He's been with the veela chick, going on dates at ice-cream parlours and she took him home too. And now he's all blushing and wants to talk about it."

"Can you two stop talking about my sex life?" Harry pleaded.

"So, did you?" Sirius grinned.

"Nah… I don't think he did," Andi pursed her lips in thought. "He'd be in a much better mood."

"Well this went weird fast." Harry laughed, thinking back on Fleur's proposition. It had been mortifying, how she had put him on the spot, stuck between blushing at the blatant offer, and deciphering if she was being serious. Personally, Harry was certain she was just fucking— erm, teasing him. There was no way why Fleur Delacour, Veela goddess, would be interested in a scrawny fellow with a deathwish.

"Welcome to the family," Sirius grinned. "We're Blacks. We make weird seem normal."

"You really need to stop being mean, Sirius," Andi said with a stern look that made her look incredibly cute.

"Sorry, sorry!" Sirius replied at Harry's glare. "So go on, what is it?"

Harry shoved all thoughts of Fleur Delacour away, and focussed on the subject he had come to actually discuss. "It's… erm, it's about what happened with that wraith."

And just like that, the happy mood was gone. "What about it?"

"Is this about your Peverell bloodline?" Andi asked. "Which I know next to nothing about," she quickly, and unconvincingly added.

"It's about my magic, and what happened because of it."

"Ah," Andi sat up straight. "That I did know about."

All of a sudden, Harry felt like the shadows around the room darkened a shade. It may have been instinct, or perhaps a trick of the light, but he knew the Lar took the security of the House and the people in it seriously.

"I think," Harry hesitated, "Kreacher should also be here for this."

At that, Sirius also sat up straight, his gaze boring into Harry's own to try and decipher what he wanted to talk about so badly. "Kreacher! Your presence is required."

"Nasty blood-traitor Master called for Kreacher?" said the elf, now standing beside Sirius's sofa as if he'd been there this entire time. "And Kreacher sees the demon has decided to spill the truth."

"What did you say?" Sirius grabbed his wand, looking shocked and angry at the elf's choice of words. "You are forbidden from addressing my heir with that kind of derogatory—"

"No, it's alright," Harry interrupted. "I just want to clear the air before things get, well, even more complicated."

His godfather pushed himself off of the couch and moved towards him, grabbing him gently by the shoulders. "Harry? What's wrong?"

"When the doxies and the wraith attacked me," Harry gulped, "I was—"

Sirius exhaled. "I checked for it, Harry. There was no wraith."

"There was," Harry replied, his eyes brimming with unspoken finality. "You couldn't find it because I destroyed it."

"Wraiths can't be destroyed," Sirius began, but Harry gave him a look that demanded he shut up. Exasperated, Sirius turned to Kreacher. "Tell him he's wrong."

Kreacher remained silent.

"Kreacher?" Sirius looked at him in surprise. "Are you telling me you knew about this?"

The house-elf bowed low. "I did, Master."

"And you did nothing to save him?!"

"No."

Even Harry flinched at the utter conviction in his tone.

"Harry is my godson, and a son of Black by My Command," Sirius began hotly. "I don't see how some wraith could possibly be more important than—"

"It was Walburga Black! Your mother!" Harry yelled, no longer willing to keep this going on. "Your mother cursed this house by committing suicide and stayed to haunt this place, purging all the muggleborns and half-breeds who entered."

"My… mother?" Sirius gaped.

"Still haunting us from beyond the grave," Andi murmured. "T'was a curse you say?"

Harry nodded.

"Then it'd require a trigger."

She looked at Harry. "She attacked you when you were alone, didn't she?"

"Half-blood brat is not blood. Mistress Walburga is."

Sirius clenched his fists, as if suppressing the urge to grab the elf by his neck and strangle him to death. But Harry knew he wouldn't.. Kreacher was programmed to behave in certain ways. Elves could be made to think, act, and even feel by the command of their masters, regardless of personal beliefs.

Kreacher was no different.

"Kreacher," asked Andi, "Do you find any desire to harm Harry any longer?"

Kreacher turned to Sirius for permission.

"Answer her."

Kreacher blinked his eyes very rapidly, as if arguing with itself. "The Potter brat is a Demon, Master. It would be safest for the House to get rid of his poisonous presence. And yet," he paused, "Harry Potter is also the Heir because the worthless Master willed it so. Perhaps Master can relocate Harry Potter's belongings to another Black property? Maybe the chateau in Shropshire. The Black Mausoleum is nearby."

And that, Harry decided, said everything that needed to be said about Kreacher's opinion of him. Not only was he a danger to the House, but the batty elf also thought he'd be happiest when living next to a graveyard.

Just like a demon.

Sirius choked on his own spit.

"That's kind of what I wanted to talk to you about," Harry finished lamely.

"Harry," Sirius glared at him, "get that idiocy out of your head right now, or I swear I will hex you six ways to Sunday. You are my godson. My heir. So what if you aren't blood, or if there's something odd about your magic? Family. Sticks. Together."

"But I'm not—"

"You are," Sirius softly replied. "To me."

"Sirius," Harry stressed, "you don't understand. It's not just my magic that's acting out. When I faced that wraith, I turned into something else. A demon. I— I ate your mother!"

His godfather stared at him for several horribly discomforting seconds. "I see. That explains a few things."

Harry stared at his godfather like he'd grown another head. "Err… wot?"

Sirius sighed and shook his head. "I suppose in the light of things, I need to come clean as well."

"Let me guess," he replied sarcastically, annoyance flooding into him, "it has something to do with House Peverell?"

His godfather gave him a brief nod. "I apologise, Harry. Had I known something like that was possible, I would've cleared the air between us. At least now, I finally see why you were declared worthy of the Peverell bloodline."

"Demon!" Kreacher growled.

"Oh shut it," Sirius scoffed. "I'm descended from the Black practitioners, descendants of Tezcatlipoca, am I not?"

That brought Kreacher to a pause.

"Harry here is a descendant of an equally old, if not older, lineage of necromancers. Practitioners of Magia de muerte, as Grand Aunt Cassie would say."

"Death magic," Andi translated, looking at Harry with growing interest.

"What's that?" Harry asked.

"You see Harry, what we use today is refined magic. It has proper incantations, systems, and rules to follow. We've taken a primal force of the universe and bent it to our convenience. Our forefathers would have required a ten-line aria, chanted with a particular mindset, to unleash a single bolt of lightning from the heavens. We? All that takes is the correct wand movement and a one-word incantation."

"I sense a but."

Sirius frowned. "The magic during the times of our forefathers was wild, untamed, part of Nature itself. Unlike the present days, you could only choose a single path of magic and do your best to become the best in that field. There were druids attuned with nature. There were necromancers who walked the valley of the dead. There were runesmiths and oracles, and battle-mages that could summon the power of winds and force to unleash havoc on the enemy. The magic in those times was crude, raw, limited, and… uncontrollable."

"You mean dangerous."

"I mean uncontrollable," Sirius countered. "Any magic is dangerous, Harry. I can kill you with an unforgivable just as easily as a cutting curse to your neck. But back then, Magic ran wild, which meant when you summoned it, it didn't come through a wand. It came as a force of nature. Modern wizards would use an Incendio Maxima to turn the battlefield to ash. Ancient wizards would use… volcanoes."

Harry blinked.

"Vol—"

"Yes."

"Real volcanoes?"

"Yes."

"Like lava-spitting, real vol—"

"Yes."

He shut up and sighed, recognizing a headache around the corner. "Go on."

"Most hermetic magic and occult systems arose from a need for order, Harry. To make sense. Form. Construct. Give shape and meaning. Purpose. But the Peverells were different. Their Death Magic was fueled by an instinctual desire to strip away all these extraneous elements, returning the universe to pure, primordial chaos. The natural state of the universe."

Harry was beginning to feel a little afraid.

"Magia de muerte," Andi said, "In the end, the earth stops moving and the sun and stars die out, returning the universe into infinite darkness." She glanced at Sirius. "Isn't that right?"

His godfather nodded.

Harry's mind raced. In the light of what he now knew, things began to make a weird amount of sense. Destroying the Dark Lord back then as a baby, burning Quirrell to ash, killing the basilisks and the dementors, then the graveyard, and finally the wraith—

"Are you telling me," he asked in a shaky voice, "that the only thing I can do is destroy?"

The irony was not lost on him. He was the Boy-Who-Lived, heralded as the vanquisher of the Dark Lord as a baby. And now, it turned out that was because destruction was the only thing he was capable of. But that couldn't be right, could it? He'd performed countless spells over the years, and not all of them had anything to do with destruction. Did they?

But the ones you know best are the most destructive, a dark corner of his soul whispered.

His Patronus Charm could kill dementors.

His mere touch charred a possessed man to death.

His freezing spell completely unmade—

"Not destroy, per se," Sirius clarified. "It really is more along the lines of unmaking. It breaks bonds, nullifies enchantments, and forces order to disintegrate into chaos. At least, that's what we know from the old tales. The Peverell name is notorious, Harry. Far more than even Grindelwald was at the height of his power. In fact, Grindelwald believed that finding the venerated Hallows would make him worthy of… never mind."

"What is this… Peverell magic, really?"

Sirius smiled. "I can't really say, Harry. But maybe you can."

Harry blinked. "Sirius, this isn't the time for jokes—"

"I'm not, Harry. I cannot tell you anything about Peverell Family Magic, because I'm not a Peverell. But you are. It's the same about all Family Magics really. I can only know about what is within my bloodline."

"Fine!" Harry growled. "Then tell me what you can."

Sirius's smile widened. The discussion made him go back to when he had a similar talk with Arcturus in that very Manor. "Don't get testy, Harry. This might take a moment. See, what you call magic is nothing but actualization of miracles, or magical effects, as per the rules of the thaumaturgy you utilise to achieve said effect."

"Thaumaturgy?"

"It refers to the system of magic you're using. Europe and MACUSA use the Roman Thaumaturgical System, which relies on foci using the cores of powerful magical species to help a witch or wizard focus the magic within their bodies, allowing one to perform spells. We call this witchcraft and wizardry. But if you're to go to, say, Ouagadougou, you'll find a spirit-based thaumaturgical system there, producing houngans, mambos and bokkor. The Navajo have medicine-men and yenaldooshi, and so on. Point is, every thaumaturgical system has rules, and the magic of that system obeys those rules."

"But not Family Magic?"

Sirius beamed with pride. "But not Family Magic. See Harry, what we call Family Magic is… something that defies all expectations, ignores the laws of nature and rewrites it to suit its whims. It is a form of magic that does… whatever you want."

"Whatever—"

"You want to, yes." Sirius said, chuckling at his expression. "I had the same look when Grandfather explained it to me."

"Well then, how does one bloody well get it?"

"Nobody knows, really. All we have are theories. Some believe its origin lies in the wellspring of Creation, the source of all events, phenomena and possibilities. The place where souls originate from and where they travel back after death. Others that prefer rationality, refer to it as Axioms, or Truths or Principles, or any related term really, prefering to describe these… existences as the governing or fundamental aspects of the universe. The ancients referred to them as Gods and Goddesses, often using their imagination and willpower to manifest them in the shape of anthropomorphic manifestations, sentient beings who rule the universe in a sort of divine pantheon, which is, incidentally, how muggles got their religions."

Harry felt like his head would explode at all the information he was receiving. "That still doesn't tell me how one gets it."

"Honestly, Harry, I don't know. My grandfather said that to gain Family Magic, one must travel a way that isn't there to open a door that doesn't exist."

"You're just fucking with me now."

Sirius chuckled. "I wish, but I'm not. Magic represents the pinnacle of human ingenuity, Harry. But Family Magic? That's the providence of a God."

"God," Harry repeated, unsure how it tasted on his lips. "A real God."

Sirius smiled blithely.

"That doesn't even make any sense!" Harry snapped. He was really getting frustrated with the non-answers. "You said that Family magic doesn't obey the laws of reality. So how does one achieve the power to ignore reality while using magic that obeys the same laws?"

"And you've hit the nail on the head, Harry," said his godfather. "It is why achieving Family Magic is considered impossible, and why modern wizards have given up any hopes of gaining new Family Magics, instead choosing to take pride in being born in a family blessed with it. Like the Blacks, or the Selwyns, the Greengrasses, the Rosiers, the Crouches and of course, the Peverells."

"Does that mean—?"

"That I can use my Family Magic?" Sirius finished for him. "Yes and No. As the current Lord, I have some degree of control over it. The Black Lar, for instance, is a manifestation of the same. But can I really control it? No. I can't. I'm not a Vessel."

Harry froze at the term. "Vessel. Bodrag used the same term."

"Bo— the Overlord, I see," said Sirius. "Yes, it isn't surprising. The thing is, Harry, not everyone can gain access to Family Magic. There are like two… three factors that govern it— your blood, your affinity, and your mental constitution. Blood, by being born in a Noble family, affinity— your skill at the branches of magic influenced by your Family Magic, and finally your mental constitution— you cannot use the Black Arts and yet retain a saint's mindset. Sometimes across generations, a person or two is born that holds all three in the right quantities, and it is through them that the Family Magic expresses itself, often to a devastating degree. These people are called Vessels. It is said that my great-grandfather Sirius Arcturus Black, after whom I'm named, was a Vessel. They called him the Chosen of Tezcatlipoca, my earliest ancestor who was worshipped as a God by the Aztecs."

"Kreacher's True Master," said the elf reverentially.

"Grandfather thought Bellatrix might be a Vessel," Andi murmured, "but she was sold off to the Lestranges before Grandfather could do anything about it."

"Yeah, uncle Cygnus. A right nutter that one."

Andi rolled her eyes. "Tell me about it."

"Bellatrix?" Harry repeated. "Bellatrix Lestrange?"

A sudden darkness flickered across Sirius's face. "Bellatrix Lestrange is a deranged mass-murderer. The Bellatrix I remembered was anything but that. Grandfather always thought that taking the Dark Mark did something to her. It made her go crazy. She could have been the brightest star in the Black Sky, and uncle Cygnus sold her like chattel."

"Why?" Harry demanded.

"Why else?" Sirius snarled at no one. "Money. Money and a desire to please that bastard of a Dark Lord."

Harry felt there was more to Sirius's rage than just that. It felt… personal. But he knew better than to pry.

"What about the Peverells?"

"The Peverells were necromancers, obsessed with the power of Death. Perhaps you've heard of Morrigan, a necromancer so perfect that her name became synonymous with a goddess of death. It was said that to see her was to die."

Harry swallowed. Just what kind of crazy, fucked up bloodline had he descended from?

"And the Family Magic?"

Sirius looked conflicted. "That's where it gets murky. It is believed that the legendary Peverell brothers were the ones to raise Death to the status of a Family Magic. And yet, no one seems to know what happened to them. A family as ancient and dreaded as the Peverells, went extinct down the male line within a few decades, and no one remembers anything about it."

Harry smoothed his face into a nonexpression. "...Okay."

"But that's the past, Harry. Modern witches and wizards have given up on trying to achieve any new Family Magic. We take pride in Nobility, in purity of bloodlines, in wealth and magical affinity. Hell, the idea that you are a Vessel for a bloodline extinct for over a millenia will draw all kinds of reactions. Honestly, I'm banking on using that in your favour for the trial."

"You think—"

"That what happened in the cemetery was your Peverell magic? I bloody well do. Can you think of anything else?"

Harry wisely kept silent.