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lomonaaerenTitle: Worthy of Being His
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Pre-Harry/Orion Black
Content Notes: Angst, implied time travel, mentions of violence
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 1800
Summary: Orion Black knew that his parents were planning to force him into a marriage with his cousin. Acting first to make sure he could only marry one person was the best plan he had. And it turned out to be the smartest one.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Solstitial Shorts,” very short fics being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice.
Worthy of Being His
Orion Black closed his eyes and rested his hands in the handprints carved into the walls on either side of his distant ancestor Cyrus Black’s portrait.
He was deep in the winding tunnels of Grimmauld Place, back beyond the parts of the house that were all visitors and even most Black family members ever saw. Cyrus Black’s portrait was framed in silver and surrounded by handprints of different shapes and sizes, as deep as if burned into the stone.
It took skill and courage and luck to know which pair of handprints he needed to press. And even then, one had to be found worthy, for the portrait to let you into the secret space that he guarded.
But Orion was both lucky and desperate, and he pushed with his hands and closed his eyes.
He could feel the judging eyes of the portrait on him. Cyrus Black was portrayed as sitting on a black throne with a silver crown carved into it, a crown that seemed to hover above his white hair. He held a black scepter rimmed with gold and silver across his lap. He had been one of the first Dark Lords, and he never spoke. He stared at Orion in silence.
But then the wall juddered beneath Orion’s hands, and Orion stepped back and breathed a soft prayer of thanks, addressed to no one and anyone who was listening.
The wall on either side of the portrait was thinning and turning to a maze of grey light. Even as Orion watched, the light thinned and vanished. Then the chunk of stone between the handprints, the one directly underneath Cyrus’s portrait, vanished, as well.
Orion ducked into the tunnel thus revealed, sensing his ancestor’s eyes on him. But Cyrus called nothing after him.
*
The tunnel bent and zigzagged several times. Orion kept walking, his eyes focused straight ahead. He could feel the prickling of torchfire on his back, for all that no torches were lit on the walls. He still kept walking. There was nothing else he could do.
In the end, the tunnel coiled like the tail of a snake and spat him out into a room made of sheer black stone, rather like the kind Orion had heard lined the Department of Mysteries. Torches with blue-white fire burned steady and motionless on the walls. There was no dust anywhere that Orion could smell or see.
And in front of him was a crude altar, made of black stone, with a blood grove on it, and covered with runes Orion didn’t know.
But that didn’t matter. What did was that he knew what would happen if he made a vow on the altar.
It would bind him, utterly. And it would take the place of any other vows that he might make, past or present or future.
Orion fell to his knees before the altar and swallowed loudly. He hadn’t brought a knife with him, and it seemed like an oversight, but the description of this room he had read in one of his ancestors’ journals had said the room would provide—
And there it was. A knife with a hilt of silver and a blade of obsidian rested on the altar. Orion doubted he would have seen it if it wasn’t for the hilt.
He reached out and picked up the knife, laying it against his palm. He closed his eyes, the better to shape the vow in his mind.
He knew what he didn’t want.
He didn’t want to be sworn in as one of Riddle’s Knights. He’d managed to escape that in Hogwarts, but now that Riddle was preparing to leave Britain and go abroad, he was pressuring Orion to take the Mark.
He didn’t want to marry his cousin Walburga. Father and Mother both seemed to think it was a fine idea. They wanted to bind Orion “to the family.”
Marrying Walburga would do that, of course. It would also make him miserable. But neither of his parents, who had been loving when he was younger, seemed to care about that. Orion would have suspected them of being under the Imperius if he hadn’t been familiar with the signs of that spell.
No, he needed someone who would protect him. Someone who would stand up to everything Riddle and the Black family could bring to bear.
Someone who would cherish him.
Orion nodded and began the vow.
“I swear on this altar, and by the obsidian blade of this knife,” he whispered, “that I will make no vows to and marry no one save Harry Potter.”
The obsidian parted his flesh with no pain, so sharp was it. The blood slithered forth, across his palm, and dropped onto the altar. Orion felt as though he was spinning abruptly through space, falling, even though he knelt perfectly still.
His mind filled with visions of Harry, as Orion had called him in his head for years, even though he’d only recently been invited to call Harry by his first name.
Harry had fallen the way Orion seemed to be falling now, right into the middle of the Great Hall during the Sorting in Orion’s fifth year. He’d picked himself up and stared dazedly around, and then gone over to the Sorting Hat and picked it up and tried it on before anyone could stop him.
“GRYFFINDOR!” the Hat had cried.
Flashes of moments in the other years, and the time after Hogwarts, filled Orion’s head: Harry clashing again and again with Riddle, standing up to him, protecting the people Riddle tried to make into victims. Harry saving Abraxas Malfoy’s life from a Dementor that had got into the school, Merlin knew how. Harry bringing Firewhisky to Orion one night when he was worn thin trying to avoid Riddle and Riddle’s insistence on Marking him.
How had Harry known where he was? Another unsolved mystery.
When other people wanted to get close to Orion for the power of his magic or the prestige of marrying into his family, Harry hadn’t cared about any of that. He had simply come and comforted Orion when he needed it, and always when he most needed it. If it was less than unbearable pain, Harry wasn’t there.
But then he was, and he’d carried Orion through some of the hardest moments of his life.
Other people had said that Harry had done the same thing for them. But Orion didn’t need to be unique, not if he could be special.
It had continued after Hogwarts. Harry always found him outside Grimmauld Place, seemingly (and rightfully) assuming that Orion’s mother and father wouldn’t welcome him. But suddenly he would be there, walking beside Orion down Diagon Alley and chatting about nothing at all, or dragging him into the Leaky Cauldron for a drink, or laughing at him about some joke that Orion didn’t think was funny at all.
But nothing compared to yesterday.
Yesterday, Orion had been in the middle of Diagon Alley, and a duel had started nearby. A stray spell had come flying towards him, a curse he had never seen before.
He’d had no idea how to deflect it. Orion had had one moment to think he was going to die.
And then Harry had Apparated in between Orion and the curse, and raised a shield. The curse had rebounded with a force that had shattered a plate glass window in Quality Quidditch Supplies.
Harry had turned around, panting. “You’re all right?” he asked.
Orion had blinked rapidly and nodded. Harry had nodded back, and then Apparated to the side of the dueling wizards and made then stop.
Orion sighed out slowly. He opened his eyes and found the altar gleaming with the image of blood-soaked black chains that couldn’t ever be broken.
“I will marry Harry Potter,” Orion whispered. “I will vow to him. I will have no other.”
The chains shuddered and sank into the altar. It was the ultimate protection, said the journal that Orion had read. It meant that no one could find them and even try to break them, not when they were part of the altar, and that black stone had endured since the founding of the world.
Orion stood on wobbling legs. The obsidian blade had vanished, and he was left with nothing but a healed scar on his palm. He glanced at it, and then stopped and stared.
The scar was silver, and the shape of the lightning bolt that Harry carried on his forehead.
Orion breathed out slowly, and smiled.
*
“Orion? Where have you been? You’ll be late to meet Walburga!”
Orion had stepped out of the tunnel beneath Cyrus Black’s portrait several minutes ago and had walked in a mindless daze until he came back to the main part of the house. Now, he lifted his head and turned to meet his mother’s eyes.
Melania Black froze when she saw him. Orion could only assume that some of the strange magic he had vowed by was lingering about him. “What in Merlin’s name?” she whispered.
“I have chosen whom I’m going to marry,” Orion said. He felt weirdly at peace. “You can’t force me to marry Walburga.”
“You—Orion, you can’t—”
Mother sounded shaken. Orion cocked his head, and decided, in a flash of insight that he probably ought to credit to the altar, that she had never thought he minded marrying Walburga all that much. She hadn’t known how strong his will was, or what Orion would do to resist the marriage.
“I have made a vow that I’ll marry Harry Potter or no one,” Orion said.
Mother sank down on a couch near the back of the room and closed her eyes. Orion smiled a little as he watched her.
He knew her. He knew she would recover, and send an owl to Harry, and ask him to come to the house. And Harry would come, and he would listen with wide eyes and probably yell at Orion. Harry was in favor of freedom for everyone, which meant he didn’t think Orion should take the Mark but would probably also think the vow Orion had made a stupid idea.
Orion didn’t care. If Harry didn’t want to be bound into marriage with him, that was all right. All it would mean was that Orion couldn’t marry anyone else. He would still be free.
And Harry would still come and talk to him and laugh with him and ease his pain.
But Orion hoped that he hadn’t mistaken the subtle signs he’d thought he’d seen sometimes, when he was flirting with Harry and Harry had looked startled but never, ever uncomfortable. He hoped he would see those green eyes soften, those cheeks fill with a blush, and Harry ask for time.
Orion would give him all the time in the world. They were twenty-two, both of them. They had long years, decades, to court and decide and associate and plan.
And marry, if Harry, in the end, chose that.
Orion looked forward to finding out.
The End.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Pre-Harry/Orion Black
Content Notes: Angst, implied time travel, mentions of violence
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 1800
Summary: Orion Black knew that his parents were planning to force him into a marriage with his cousin. Acting first to make sure he could only marry one person was the best plan he had. And it turned out to be the smartest one.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Solstitial Shorts,” very short fics being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice.
Orion Black closed his eyes and rested his hands in the handprints carved into the walls on either side of his distant ancestor Cyrus Black’s portrait.
He was deep in the winding tunnels of Grimmauld Place, back beyond the parts of the house that were all visitors and even most Black family members ever saw. Cyrus Black’s portrait was framed in silver and surrounded by handprints of different shapes and sizes, as deep as if burned into the stone.
It took skill and courage and luck to know which pair of handprints he needed to press. And even then, one had to be found worthy, for the portrait to let you into the secret space that he guarded.
But Orion was both lucky and desperate, and he pushed with his hands and closed his eyes.
He could feel the judging eyes of the portrait on him. Cyrus Black was portrayed as sitting on a black throne with a silver crown carved into it, a crown that seemed to hover above his white hair. He held a black scepter rimmed with gold and silver across his lap. He had been one of the first Dark Lords, and he never spoke. He stared at Orion in silence.
But then the wall juddered beneath Orion’s hands, and Orion stepped back and breathed a soft prayer of thanks, addressed to no one and anyone who was listening.
The wall on either side of the portrait was thinning and turning to a maze of grey light. Even as Orion watched, the light thinned and vanished. Then the chunk of stone between the handprints, the one directly underneath Cyrus’s portrait, vanished, as well.
Orion ducked into the tunnel thus revealed, sensing his ancestor’s eyes on him. But Cyrus called nothing after him.
*
The tunnel bent and zigzagged several times. Orion kept walking, his eyes focused straight ahead. He could feel the prickling of torchfire on his back, for all that no torches were lit on the walls. He still kept walking. There was nothing else he could do.
In the end, the tunnel coiled like the tail of a snake and spat him out into a room made of sheer black stone, rather like the kind Orion had heard lined the Department of Mysteries. Torches with blue-white fire burned steady and motionless on the walls. There was no dust anywhere that Orion could smell or see.
And in front of him was a crude altar, made of black stone, with a blood grove on it, and covered with runes Orion didn’t know.
But that didn’t matter. What did was that he knew what would happen if he made a vow on the altar.
It would bind him, utterly. And it would take the place of any other vows that he might make, past or present or future.
Orion fell to his knees before the altar and swallowed loudly. He hadn’t brought a knife with him, and it seemed like an oversight, but the description of this room he had read in one of his ancestors’ journals had said the room would provide—
And there it was. A knife with a hilt of silver and a blade of obsidian rested on the altar. Orion doubted he would have seen it if it wasn’t for the hilt.
He reached out and picked up the knife, laying it against his palm. He closed his eyes, the better to shape the vow in his mind.
He knew what he didn’t want.
He didn’t want to be sworn in as one of Riddle’s Knights. He’d managed to escape that in Hogwarts, but now that Riddle was preparing to leave Britain and go abroad, he was pressuring Orion to take the Mark.
He didn’t want to marry his cousin Walburga. Father and Mother both seemed to think it was a fine idea. They wanted to bind Orion “to the family.”
Marrying Walburga would do that, of course. It would also make him miserable. But neither of his parents, who had been loving when he was younger, seemed to care about that. Orion would have suspected them of being under the Imperius if he hadn’t been familiar with the signs of that spell.
No, he needed someone who would protect him. Someone who would stand up to everything Riddle and the Black family could bring to bear.
Someone who would cherish him.
Orion nodded and began the vow.
“I swear on this altar, and by the obsidian blade of this knife,” he whispered, “that I will make no vows to and marry no one save Harry Potter.”
The obsidian parted his flesh with no pain, so sharp was it. The blood slithered forth, across his palm, and dropped onto the altar. Orion felt as though he was spinning abruptly through space, falling, even though he knelt perfectly still.
His mind filled with visions of Harry, as Orion had called him in his head for years, even though he’d only recently been invited to call Harry by his first name.
Harry had fallen the way Orion seemed to be falling now, right into the middle of the Great Hall during the Sorting in Orion’s fifth year. He’d picked himself up and stared dazedly around, and then gone over to the Sorting Hat and picked it up and tried it on before anyone could stop him.
“GRYFFINDOR!” the Hat had cried.
Flashes of moments in the other years, and the time after Hogwarts, filled Orion’s head: Harry clashing again and again with Riddle, standing up to him, protecting the people Riddle tried to make into victims. Harry saving Abraxas Malfoy’s life from a Dementor that had got into the school, Merlin knew how. Harry bringing Firewhisky to Orion one night when he was worn thin trying to avoid Riddle and Riddle’s insistence on Marking him.
How had Harry known where he was? Another unsolved mystery.
When other people wanted to get close to Orion for the power of his magic or the prestige of marrying into his family, Harry hadn’t cared about any of that. He had simply come and comforted Orion when he needed it, and always when he most needed it. If it was less than unbearable pain, Harry wasn’t there.
But then he was, and he’d carried Orion through some of the hardest moments of his life.
Other people had said that Harry had done the same thing for them. But Orion didn’t need to be unique, not if he could be special.
It had continued after Hogwarts. Harry always found him outside Grimmauld Place, seemingly (and rightfully) assuming that Orion’s mother and father wouldn’t welcome him. But suddenly he would be there, walking beside Orion down Diagon Alley and chatting about nothing at all, or dragging him into the Leaky Cauldron for a drink, or laughing at him about some joke that Orion didn’t think was funny at all.
But nothing compared to yesterday.
Yesterday, Orion had been in the middle of Diagon Alley, and a duel had started nearby. A stray spell had come flying towards him, a curse he had never seen before.
He’d had no idea how to deflect it. Orion had had one moment to think he was going to die.
And then Harry had Apparated in between Orion and the curse, and raised a shield. The curse had rebounded with a force that had shattered a plate glass window in Quality Quidditch Supplies.
Harry had turned around, panting. “You’re all right?” he asked.
Orion had blinked rapidly and nodded. Harry had nodded back, and then Apparated to the side of the dueling wizards and made then stop.
Orion sighed out slowly. He opened his eyes and found the altar gleaming with the image of blood-soaked black chains that couldn’t ever be broken.
“I will marry Harry Potter,” Orion whispered. “I will vow to him. I will have no other.”
The chains shuddered and sank into the altar. It was the ultimate protection, said the journal that Orion had read. It meant that no one could find them and even try to break them, not when they were part of the altar, and that black stone had endured since the founding of the world.
Orion stood on wobbling legs. The obsidian blade had vanished, and he was left with nothing but a healed scar on his palm. He glanced at it, and then stopped and stared.
The scar was silver, and the shape of the lightning bolt that Harry carried on his forehead.
Orion breathed out slowly, and smiled.
*
“Orion? Where have you been? You’ll be late to meet Walburga!”
Orion had stepped out of the tunnel beneath Cyrus Black’s portrait several minutes ago and had walked in a mindless daze until he came back to the main part of the house. Now, he lifted his head and turned to meet his mother’s eyes.
Melania Black froze when she saw him. Orion could only assume that some of the strange magic he had vowed by was lingering about him. “What in Merlin’s name?” she whispered.
“I have chosen whom I’m going to marry,” Orion said. He felt weirdly at peace. “You can’t force me to marry Walburga.”
“You—Orion, you can’t—”
Mother sounded shaken. Orion cocked his head, and decided, in a flash of insight that he probably ought to credit to the altar, that she had never thought he minded marrying Walburga all that much. She hadn’t known how strong his will was, or what Orion would do to resist the marriage.
“I have made a vow that I’ll marry Harry Potter or no one,” Orion said.
Mother sank down on a couch near the back of the room and closed her eyes. Orion smiled a little as he watched her.
He knew her. He knew she would recover, and send an owl to Harry, and ask him to come to the house. And Harry would come, and he would listen with wide eyes and probably yell at Orion. Harry was in favor of freedom for everyone, which meant he didn’t think Orion should take the Mark but would probably also think the vow Orion had made a stupid idea.
Orion didn’t care. If Harry didn’t want to be bound into marriage with him, that was all right. All it would mean was that Orion couldn’t marry anyone else. He would still be free.
And Harry would still come and talk to him and laugh with him and ease his pain.
But Orion hoped that he hadn’t mistaken the subtle signs he’d thought he’d seen sometimes, when he was flirting with Harry and Harry had looked startled but never, ever uncomfortable. He hoped he would see those green eyes soften, those cheeks fill with a blush, and Harry ask for time.
Orion would give him all the time in the world. They were twenty-two, both of them. They had long years, decades, to court and decide and associate and plan.
And marry, if Harry, in the end, chose that.
Orion looked forward to finding out.
The End.
