Chapter 36.3- Doom Days

I stared at him while he kept his smile in place. He wanted me to ask. He really wanted me to ask. So I put down the newspaper, picked up a banana and began to unpeel it.

“Really?” He scoffed.

I looked up to meet his eyes before I placed the banana on the table and began to chop it into smaller pieces.

“Fine, I’ll tell you” I didn’t ask, I wanted to say, but I let him keep some of his aura.

“Cursed objects have little inherent value in this day and age simply by virtue of being cursed. They need to have been cursed to do something useful. And we’re Blacks, not Notts. I can guarantee you that half the cursed objects in that house were aimed at other Blacks and not likely to be of use to anyone else. For example, there’s an umbrella stand cursed to trip up any Black that happens to be a metamorphmagus. That’s not even the most insane bit. And even if we were Notts who designed useful curses, then that still wouldn’t matter because he’d have to find someone looking for that exact curse in object form. There’s a reason Borgin’s store is always full to the brim with shit. Cursed objects are hard to sell because most people would rather just place the curse with a spell rather than spending thousands of galleons on an object that could then be traced back to you. So you can see that cursed objects can hold little value even if they should ordinarily be priceless?” I nodded, and he smiled.

“Now, the second premise. Well, Lucius isn’t really a dark wizard. He’s not a light one by any means but the man probably knows less truly dark magic than I do”

“What?”

“It’s a question of capability more than interest. The Malfoy family have a natural talent for the mind arts more than anything else, so he’s probably a phenomenal occlumens, but when it comes to the dark arts. He’s nothing more than middling.”

“How do you know this?”

“He was ahead of me in school so we never dueled here, but we did cross wands more than a few times when he started playing dress up and hanging around with that crowd” Sirius said with a scoff.

“Why do you sound so chill about him?” I asked. I would have expected more hatred on Sirius’ end. Especially when it came to someone that he had fought on opposite sides of the war with.

“Oh, don’t get me wrong if Lucius and I run into each other in a dark alley, I’ll be the only one walking out of that alley. I am in no way friends with him, but I do have enough maturity to talk about someone I dislike without foaming at the mouth” he said.

“Besides, Lucius might have run with that crowd but he was far from the worst of them. Think my cousin and her husband, Crouch, the likes. He never actually tortured any wizards or killed any magicals to the best of my knowledge. The things he did to muggles were terrible, don’t get me wrong. But.. you know” he said. I did not, in fact, know. But I did have a fair idea what he was saying. Sirius might have thought that he escaped unscathed from the Black ideals and teachings, but times like this made it clear that he did not. He couldn’t even see just how racist he’d been just now.