Chapter 2 – Dark Magic

Four-year-old Tristan Rosier sat with his sketchbook and the wand he'd stolen from his Grandfather's house, in the Black family library. Sirius hadn't wanted to play with him, while Evan and Regulus were still fighting over the yellow toy dog he'd given them to play with, so he'd come to the library where at least there were books. He couldn't read yet – a fact that made him feel upset because Sirius and Mulciber and almost everyone else could, but he could look at the pictures.

The book he'd chosen had a thestral on the front. It had been on the bottom shelf, which was where he had assumed the children's books were because that was where they were found at home. Inside there had been pictures of thestrals, which he's already drawn pictures of, some gory images that he didn't like, and finally some unicorns. He'd drawn the happy unicorn first, giving him some grass to eat, and then tapped it with the stolen wand. As with his other drawings that he'd experimented with, the unicorn walked around on the page and nibbled at the grass.

He turned his attention to the unicorn on the next page. This one was clearly poorly. In the illustration, the unicorn was bleeding and was lying down. Tristan felt sorry for it. He thought about drawing a Mediwitch onto the page to make it better, but knew how angry Mrs Black would be if he drew in the book.

It was then that Sirius walked in. "What're you reading?" he asked.

Tristan showed him the front of the book, hoping that Sirius would read it for himself. Sirius didn't know that he couldn't read yet.

"The Use of Mag-ic-al Cr-eat-u-res…Creatures in Nec-ro-manc-y," read Sirius, reading necromancy as if it had a 'k' at the end. "What's Necromancy?"

Being only four, Tristan didn't know either. However, he knew that if he made up an answer, Sirius would soon find out that it was wrong and that would be bad. "It's a secret," he said. "Dad says I'm not allowed to tell you."

"That's a lie," said Sirius. "I bet it's dark magic again. You're always reading about dark magic!"

Last time, Sirius had caught him looking at a book on dementors, the most evil creatures in the world.

"It isn't about dark magic!" Tristan insisted. "Look it's got unicorns in. Unicorns aren't evil." He showed Sirius the page he'd been looking at, which turned out to be a mistake.

Sirius stared at it in horror. "The unicorn," he read, "must be killed slowly, over several days. It must then be left to hang, whilst it is drained of blood. Only then, can the blood be used in..." He looked up, distain written all over his face. "This is disgusting. I don't know why I bother with you." The slightly older boy walked away without looking back.

Tristan looked back at the unicorn picture, his eyes full of tears. He really was completely stupid – it was no wonder Sirius wouldn't play with him. How could he not have seen that the unicorn was dead? He should have realised it wasn't a children's book when he'd seen the other gruesome pictures. Killing unicorns was worse than dementors. He shoved the horrible book away from him, letting it skid across the table and onto the floor.

He tried to forget the incident and look for another book, but none of the books even seemed to have any pictures. Instead of going away, the tears just came faster until he was properly crying. Now he was trapped – he couldn't go outside the library in case he bumped into Sirius and the other boy found out that he'd been crying.

He wished he hadn't given Doggy away to Regulus, because now he really wanted to hold his soft fur and be comforted. At the time, he'd thought it a good idea: he was a big boy now and didn't need a cuddly toy and Regulus had looked up at him with his big grey eyes and declared that Doggy wanted to be friends with Sirius II. At first, Regulus had played nicely with Doggy and Sirius II, then Evan had come in and snatched Doggy from him, and then Tristan had decided that he couldn't watch them fighting over his toy and left them to it. Only now he wished he had just taken it off them in the first place, or even better, had never given it away in the first place.

He was still crying when he heard footsteps.

"Are you alright, boy," said a deep voice. He looked up to see a tall, dark-haired wizard. It was Sirius's father, a man he had only met once or twice at Sirius's Birthdays. He realised he must have been in the library for hours if Mr Black was already home from the Ministry.

"Sir, I…" began Tristan.

"Don't worry, Sirius has already told me what happened," Mr Black said. He stooped to pick the book up. "You shouldn't really have been reading this should you?"

"No, Sir. I'm sorry, I won't do it again," he said, panicking.

"Don't look so worried. We shouldn't have left it out for you. How about I get you a different one," said Mr Black. Tristan nodded and the man went to a different section of the library and pulled out a different book.

Although, it was hard-covered, the book was much thinner than all the others he'd seen that day. It looked more like the ones he had at home. "There you go. It's called Harry the Hungry Hippogriff. You can take it home with you if you like."

"Thank you, Mr Black."

"That's ok. Now run along and play with you brother. I've had enough of crying children for today."

Tristan ran out of the room carrying the book under one arm. He found Evan in Regulus's bedroom. Both of the littler boys were whimpering and were sitting together comforting each other. Clearly the fight was over.

"Where's Doggy?" Tristan asked. Sirius II was between them, but the other toy was nowhere to be seen.

"Doggy broken," said Evan. "His insides came out."

"Daddy took him away," cried Regulus.

Tristan frowned. Rips in toys could easily be fixed. His mother did it every time Damien broke something. The spell was Reparo.

"I'm sure he'll be fixed," said Tristan.

He went to ask Mr Black, but the man said the toy had been taken away as a punishment and they wouldn't be allowed to play with it again. In fact, it wasn't until ten years later, when Sirius wanted his dung bombs back, that he discovered Doggy was still there, ripped in half by Evan and Regulus.