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“Push!”
Walburga won’t. She fought so hard for this child, she has waited for him for so long; she wants to meet him, desperately, she wants Orion to meet him, but…
As soon as her labour started, she was gripped by fear, which only grew more intense as the hours passed by.
Pain, and love, and so much fear.
A thought she can’t shove away, even if she knows it’s irrational, whispers to her that her baby boy is only safe inside her. That as soon as he is ripped out of her, he will be without protection, without love.
She blinks, and she sees another child she bore, limp limbs, chest not moving. She only got a glimpse of that small little body before it was taken away from her.
What if -
No, no, she tells herself. This one is fine, she felt him kicking hours earlier, he’s alive! He is.
But what if this harsh world will kill him as soon as he’s out of her, as soon as she cannot protect him anymore?
“For the love of the gods, you stubborn child, push!” her mother yells at her. She takes Walburga’s face between her hands. “Walburga, push!”
Her mother looks tired, hair strands flying disorderly from her bun, her robe sleeves rolled back. She has a rare look of ….feeling in her eyes.
“No,” Walburga says. “You don’t understand, Mother. You don’t- he’s not safe outside of me.”
“She has a fever,” her mother snaps at someone. “Fix her!” she demands.
“Mrs Black, please, move away,” the Healer snaps back. “You’re not helping!”
“My daughter is clearly unwell, you imbecile!”
Walburga closes her eyes, bites her lip, tries to close her legs, resists the urge to push, bears the pain wrecking her.
Someone is holding her legs, but she kicks, wildly. They won’t take her son from her! Over her dead body! Not after all she did to keep him with her.
“Walburga, darling, listen to me-”
“SHUT UP!” Walburga screams, eyes still closed, but she knows Melania’s voice. “I hate you! Get away from me!”
Briefly, she worries Orion will lose his ever-present composure if he hears Walburga yelled at his precious mother, but she’s beyond caring about that now.
“Leave Auntie alone!” Smaller hands touch Walburga now, on her shoulder. “Don’t upset her!”
“Please, can someone take the child out of here!” the Healer asks. “It really is no place-”
“What do you need, Auntie? Tell me what you want, and I will make it happen,” Bellatrix promises. “DO NOT TOUCH ME, MOTHER!”
Walburga opens her eyes to see a struggle between Druella and Bella.
Bella is winning, but then Melania wrangles Bellatrix away, and together they push her out of the room.
Walburga is sad to see her go- from everyone in that room, she only likes Bella. If it were up to her, she’d have wanted only Bella there to meet her son.
Her poor baby doesn’t deserve the first people he meets in this world be Walburga’s horrible mother and mother-in-law.
They’ll take him from her, they will. They’ll take her baby to Arcturus, they’ll turn her baby boy into- into whatever they turn everyone around them. Cold-hearted, unfeeling monsters.
They’ll kill her baby, one way or another.
Everyone is yelling at her, trying to shove potions down her throat, trying to force her to push; Walburga fights them, even manages to get out of the bed, in her desperate attempt to reach her wand, but they subdue her and take her back to the bed.
It’s all a blur of misery, pain, and fear.
And then, just when she can’t take it anymore, when her vision grows black at the edges, when she’s losing the fight-
“Walburga.”
Orion’s voice pulls her out of it. His face is the only thing that seems real, that’s not blurred and tainted by the fear inside her. His voice is like a light in the darkness, a clear sound in the cacophony of noise around her.
Distantly, she hears someone-possibly her mother- yelling a man has no business being there, blaming Bellatrix for having brought him in.
His hand is curled around hers, and she grips it, hard. “He’ll die if he’s not inside me,” she whispers. “I won’t be able to protect him anymore. He’ll-”
“I will protect him,” Orion says. His face, his handsome, perfect face is as frozen as always.
Not always, not really. When they’re alone his face comes alive, his eyes warm up.
But they’re not alone. She hates this blank expression of his, she hates that it hides her little cousin, that cheerful, kind boy she loves.
And yet, right now, it calms her. Everyone around her is acting irrationally, even her mother looks scared, everyone lost their minds, but seeing Orion as calm as always, as cold as always-
She breathes in.
“You will?” she asks. “You promise?”
“I swear,” he says. “It’s alright, my love. I’m here. Nothing will happen to you or the boy.”
“You…” she swallows, weaker and weaker. She tries to grip his hand tighter, but her strength is leaving her. “You won’t let Arcturus ruin him?”
Everything that man touches turns to stone. That’s what he did to Orion. Orion was such a good boy, such a -
Her heart warms when she remembers him, young and carefree, and then it breaks when it sees what Arcturus did to him.
“I won’t.”
But you love your father, you respect him, she wants to add, untrusting.
And yet-
Orion never lets Arcturus bother Walburga. Orion never lets anyone bother Walburga.
You’re not the heir to your noble house. Your baby will be.
Orion lifts her hand, kisses her knuckles.
“I won’t,” he repeats. “Nothing will harm him. I won’t allow it. You just have to push.”
“Promise,” she demands, begs.
“I promise.”
“What if I can’t do it?” she asks, “what if-”
“You can do anything,” he assures her. And then, that smile, that smile that’s just for her, has always been just for her. “My stubborn wife.”
She looks only at him, and he holds her hand; he only lets the Healer speak, prohibits anyone else from doing so, including his beloved mother, and it’s easier that way. Walburga’s fears melt away when she looks into his eyes.
Maybe they can actually have it all; maybe they can really have their son, their baby boy, their heir, and everything will turn out alright.
When her son does come, when his voice fills the air, reaches all the way inside her, gives her back all the energy she lost-
It’s the most beautiful sound, but it also scares her, because he’s already in pain, her son, her perfect boy already suffers, and she tries to stand, but Orion holds her down, and before she can panic, Melania places the baby on her chest, and the world disappears.
Walburga falls in love.
Oh, she loves her husband, she loves her father, and her siblings, and even her mother. But she sometimes has to work hard to love them, she sometimes hates them. It took years for that love to bloom.
When she sets her eyes on her son, it’s instant, it’s earth-shattering. She thought she already loved him, since she first felt him kick, but it’s nothing to actually seeing him, alive, and hers, and Orion’s.
She lets go of Orion’s hand, focused only on her baby. He’s so small, how can he be so small when he’s everything, when she’s filled with this enormous love for him?
She never knew she could be so gentle, but she is, she’s so, so gentle when she handles him, when she draws him closer, to kiss him.
And he stops crying.
He loves me, too, she thinks. He loves me, too.
She curls her hands protectively around him, when her mother tries to touch him.
“Leave,” Orion says. “All of you, get out.”
Melania says something, but when Walburga looks at her husband, for the first time, he seems to have no ears for his mother. His eyes are on Walburga, and only Walburga.
“Out,” he repeats, and her mother hisses something, his mother whispers something else, but they leave, Druella leaves, the Healer says he’ll wait outside to check the baby-
“Can I see him, Uncle? Please?”
Orion doesn’t take his eyes off Walburga. She nods, and Orion says, “you may.”
Dear Bella, of course she can see the baby. Dear Bella, who brought Orion to her when she and the baby needed him most.
Dear Bella, the most beautiful girl in the world, hovering at Orion’s side, and Walburga moves her arm a little.
Her son doesn’t need to be protected from Bella’s gaze, after all. Many people will try to harm her son, but never Bella.
“I love him,” she declares, voice much softer than usual. “I love him already, Auntie! And I’m sure he’ll be so cute once we wash him!”
And then she leaves, and they’re alone.
“Are you alright?” Orion asks, his face losing some of its harshness. Never all of it, no. It’s been so many years since Orion could be himself. She thinks he forgot how to be that young boy, that the Black Heir took root inside him and destroyed whoever he was before.
“Yes,” she says. She never felt better.
“I love you,” he tells her.
He says that often. She rarely responds in kind; she regrets it now- she wished she’d have told him she loved him more often, before, when he was the one she loved the most in the world. Now-
Now she looks down at her son, and she’ll never be able to tell Orion she loves him with all her heart again.
“What will we name him?” she whispers. She doesn’t want to whisper, she wants to yell out to the world that her son is here, and he’s alive, and he’s perfect.
But she promised she wouldn’t yell around her baby. She has a difficult temper and little patience, she knows, but she did promise- she swore- to her baby, when she almost lost him, that if he clings on, that if he makes it, she’ll never yell at him, that she’ll love him and spoil him and protect him forever.
And the boy made it, he survived inside Walburga’s poisoned, faulty womb, he kept his end of the bargain, and now Walburga must keep her word, too.
“I believe you already named him,” Orion says, voice just as low.
She had. She named him months ago, when drunk old Sirius was the only one to visit her in her room, as she laid in bed fighting boredom and pains and fear.
“You’ll have a son. In fact, you’ll have two,” he kept telling her. “When was I ever wrong?”
“If he lives, I’ll name him after you,” she promised him and the old man laughed and laughed and said ‘of course you will’.
When Orion found out she had already taken to calling their son Sirius, he muttered something about ‘that will make it ten times worse’.
He didn’t explain what he meant by that, but he didn’t mean to. They lost so many children over the years, but at least none were already named.
“I did, yes,” she says and looks back to Orion, but this time he isn’t watching her, he’s finally looking at his son. “Yet you’re supposed to name him, Heir to our name and all that-”
“Sirius,” he agrees, and there it is. Walburga had called him Sirius for months, talked to her little Sirius every day, every hour, but now that Orion spoke the name out loud, now it’s real.
“May I hold him?” he asks, and Orion never asks, he demands, he orders, but now-
Now he asks, when it’s perhaps the only time he could demand.
Because Sirius is his, as much as he is hers; because Walburga can no longer tell if she was so desperate to have a baby because she wanted one, or because it was her duty to Orion to bear him one; because she saw how longingly he looked at Bella, how he couldn’t stop himself from holding her in his arms, taking her with them on almost every holiday.
He even started looking at Abraxas’ boy that way, with that same longing, and it was so painful for Walburga, the idea that her husband would never have a child of his own.
When she gently transfers Sirius to him-
Oh, his face defrosts entirely, going through all the emotions he has repressed during the past decade. He stares at Sirius, and then back at her, and he looks so happy, so awed.
She feels her face splitting into a smile so huge, it’s almost painful.
The door bursts open, and Orion turns his head to snarl at whoever it is, she’s convinced right now he’d do it even if it was Arcturus.
Alas, it’s not Arcturus.
It’s old Sirius.
And there’s no soul on earth to sneer or kick him out of any place. He is, if only just in name these days, the Head of their family.
For once, he’s not even drunk.
“Let me take a look at him,” he demands, strolling over to them. “He got the eyes, yes? Oh, yes, he does,” he confirms to himself when he squints at the baby. “Good job, you two. Well done.”
“Thank you,” Orion says, after a second of hesitation. “How is Uncle Regulus?”
“Dead.”
Walburga freezes. She heard, before her labour started, that Regulus had taken very ill, but-
“Grandfather,” Orion says, softly, just as Walburga says “I’m so sorry-”
“No matter,” the old man says. “He’ll live on in the stars from now on. Today is a joyous occasion for our family, what with the little one. I won’t have it otherwise.”
His son died, but-
Well, the old man has always been a little…off.
“Still set on Sirius, then?” he asks Walburga.
She worries, perhaps Orion will decide to honour Regulus now-
“Yes,” Orion says.
“Good. As it was already decided,” he mutters to himself. “Your father is making noise about meeting him. You should present him to the family.”
“In the morning,” Orion says, and Walburga relaxes further.
She knows there’s a room filled with men downstairs, waiting to meet the boy who will one day lead the Blacks, but Orion did promise, didn’t he?
“That’s hardly proper,” Sirius chides him.
Orion says nothing.
“You pick the strangest moments to break custom, boy,” the old man says, with a sigh, but then he pats Orion’s shoulder, gives Walburga a wink, and leaves them alone.
“You probably should go speak with Arcturus,” Walburga says, after a few moments.
What with the dead uncle and everything. She should probably feel sorry for the man, too, but she can’t feel anything but joy and hope.
She has her baby, and her husband, and the rest of the world can burn, for all she cares at the moment.
Orion, dutiful Orion, when he stands from his chair, slowly, Sirius still in his arms, doesn’t leave, just sits on the bed beside Walburga, gives their son back to her.
She’s propped with her back on the pillows, but once she has Sirius, Orion carefully pulls her closer to him. He buries his face in her neck; she’s sweaty, she knows she’s a right mess after the whole ordeal, but she doesn’t care, and clearly he doesn’t care either.
“Thank you,” he says, voice muffled by her hair. His arm comes around her shoulders, and it squeezes, slightly.
Her son stares up at her, gaze unfocused, but with the lightest grey eyes in existence. His mouth opens and closes, but he seems content.
It’s Orion that makes a strange noise, his fingers trembling slightly where they’re wrapped around her arm.
She’s never seen him cry, and she doubts she ever will, she knows that by the time he’ll pull his face out of her hair he’ll be back to himself, no trace of tears.
She’ll pretend she didn’t notice, and they’ll never mention it again. Blacks don’t cry, after all.
But she lets him hold her, and she relishes in it, because at least for a minute or two or however long it will last, she can be his pillar, the way Orion is her pillar, their entire family’s pillar of strength.
Look at you, Walburga thinks, with wonder, tracing a finger on her baby’s head. Look at you, you little wonder, accomplishing tasks giants have failed before you. You made Orion Black cry.
And with that feat done in the first half an hour of his life, Walburga knows nothing will be impossible for her son, that he will defeat anyone that stands before him, that he will get whatever he wants out of life.
Until then, all Walburga has to do is nourish him, love him, watch him grow tall and strong and beautiful.
Like his father.
Like his mother.
Like the love and blood that binds them all together.
Sirius really is the brightest star in the night sky; and he might not be the brightest in the universe at large, but he sure is the brightest in her universe.