September had come and gone. It was quick, at least a little too fast for Sirius' liking. The birch at the edge of the forest had begun turning by the third week, and by the time October arrived properly the oak had followed, copper at the edges and holding, and the pines stood unchanged among them the way they always did, indifferent to the whole proceeding.
Two letters had arrived in September, a day apart.
The first was from Nymphadora, written in the large enthusiastic handwriting of someone who had been waiting to use the school owls since she arrived.
Hufflepuff!!!! Tell Alphie I said hello. Tell Lyra I found a suit of armor that moved on its own and it was BRILLIANT. Give Rigel and Corvus my love. Thanks cousin!
The second was from Andromeda. Considerably more composed in handwriting, though Sirius suspected the composure had cost something.
She was sorted into Hufflepuff. Ted is beside himself with joy, which I find I cannot find fault with, though I confess I had hoped for Slytherin. Not out of sentiment — you know me better than that — but because the skills that house develops would have served her well in the years ahead. A Metamorphmagus who knows how to be careful, how to read a room, how to present exactly what is useful and nothing more — that is a considerable advantage. Hufflepuff will make her loyal and hardworking and loved, which are not small things. But the Ministry will not care how loyal she is.
Sirius had written back that it would be fine, and that Hufflepuff was not without its own kind of shrewdness, and that he had not forgotten his promise regarding the registration. He had not yet spoken to Arcturus about it. He had not yet spoken to Arcturus about anything yet — the headship, Nymphadora, any of it. Uncle Marius and Aunt Ophelia visit every other Sunday, which was its own gentle rhythm, and that was the extent of his Black family contact at present.
He was aware he was delaying.
October deepened. The forest went further into its colors. The smell of the grounds changed. Wet earth, fallen leaves, something cold underneath that had nothing to do with the sea wind and everything to do with the time of year. The castle felt it. Sirius felt it in the castle, in the way the stones had a quality in October they didn't have in August, something more present, more awake. He had stopped trying to explain this away and started simply noting it.
And then it was October 31st.
Samhain.
The word itself had lived in him for most of his adult life as something to be avoided, something belonging to a version of himself he had left behind deliberately. The Blacks had observed it with the cold formality they brought to everything that could be used to remind people of how old and powerful they were. Walburga had moved through the preparations with the expression of someone performing a legal obligation. The ritual had been correct in form and entirely hollow in feeling, and Sirius had spent his adolescence lumping it in with everything else he was rejecting — the blood purity, the politics, the ancestral weight of it all — and preferring to celebrate Halloween at Hogwarts instead. Sweets and pumpkins and pranks. The Muggle version, stripped of everything that made the original meaningful.
He had not understood, then, that the thing he was rejecting wasn't Samhain. It was what the Blacks and many of the dark families had made of it, but he lumps them both together as one.
It had taken years abroad to begin to see the difference. The ICW, and Esme's quiet and thorough explanations, had done the rest. These holidays were not observances to be done because it was tradition or culture, but rituals. Rituals were often lump as something dark and evil but everything one does even in celebrations both in muggles and wizarding kind is a ritual. Rituals were important. Rituals did something to the magical world. It fed the magic of the place they are celebrated on by keeping the magic alive. This is something that cannot be replicated.
Samhain, Yule, Imbolc, Beltane — the four threshold nights were when the leylines were most active and receptive. The leylines ran under every ancestral magical estate. Observing them correctly renewed the connection between the family's magic and the land's magic. It fed the accumulation that made an ancestral estate impenetrable in a way a simple warded house never could be. It was why Blackwood still stood and still held, centuries after the Blacks had stopped understanding why they were lighting the bonfires. It was why the Peverell estate in Germany still breathed with old magic despite standing empty for years. These observances had gone so deep into the stone over so many generations that the land remembered even without anyone left to do the work.
And it was why Blacktide needed this. The blood that had powered the castle's leyline was gone, the observances had ceased, and the castle had been sitting over a dormant line. They need new blood to recharge it. Renewal required the threshold night, properly observed and the that first threshold was Samhain.
Honestly, the main version why Sirius decided to engage in Samhain old ways celebration is that Sirius had four children sleeping in this castle and he wanted every layer of protection the land could give them, and this was how you gave the land what it needed to give that back.
So, he found himself on October 31st morning, gathering rowan branches from the treeline and carving faces into neeps at the kitchen table and placing unlit candles on every windowsill in the castle, and thinking that his seventeen-year-old self would have found this deeply ironic and that his current self-did not particularly care.
Uncle Marius and Aunt Ophelia were celebrating with their family in the South of England. He had considered inviting Andromeda and Ted but had decided against it. Samhain felt like something to do quietly this first time. He could invite Andromeda next year, when he knew what he was doing.
And Esme, it turned out, already knew exactly what she was doing.
"You know about Samhain? I thought the French celebrate Samonios?" Sirius asked.
Esme turned to him as she cut the neeps with faces that does not look very friendly than what Sirius has done. "We do. Samhain and Samonios are not that different from each other. Hearth of a fire, the silent supper, but we do visit family graves and light candles there the next day. But it was Portia who made me aware of the more traditional Celtic ritual."
"But if the Peverell's main estate is in Germany, shouldn't the Peverell follow their customs?"
Esme shrugged. "Portia told me that despite living up in Germany, their family still celebrated the Celtic ways."
"Winterfylleth is more common in that region," Sirius said. He was slightly surprised he remembered the word — it had lodged somewhere in the lessons he had spent most of his adolescence ignoring.
"Oui," Esme agreed. "But Winterfylleth marks the turning of the season. It is an astronomical observance." She set down her knife and looked at him. "The Peverells were not a family who needed reminding that winter was coming. What they needed was the night when the dead were closest. That is Samhain. That is always Samhain, regardless of where you live."
Sirius thought about that for a moment. "Because of their connection to death."
"The Peverells do have an unusual connection to death," Esme muttered. "Considering the legends of the Hallows, it makes sense why they would celebrate the one threshold where the veil between the living and the dead is so thin."
Sirius looked at the neeps on the table between them. His were competent and friendly. Hers more terrifying. "She taught you all of this?"
"She taught me what she knew. I read the rest." A pause. "It is also why I am the one leading the preparations today and not you."
"I noticed that."
"In the older Continental tradition, women led the threshold observances. The hearth, the supper, the welcome of the dead—these were considered feminine work. Not in the diminishing sense." She said it with the precision of someone who had encountered that interpretation and rejected it. "In the sense that women were considered closer to the threshold. Birth and death, and the spaces between them."
She looked up at the castle walls around them. "I do not know if I believe that entirely. But I believe the leyline does not particularly care who leads, so long as the work is done correctly. And I know the work. So..."
"So," Sirius murmured, a faint smirk playing on his lips. "You're taking charge, then?"
She handed him a candle. "The east wing windows next."
He took it and went to the east wing.
*****
"What's that, Papa?" Rigel asked.
Sirius turned, holding a bundle of branches. They were covered in long, feathery green leaves and clusters of bright red berries that looked like tiny beads.
"Oh, these are rowan," Sirius said, kneeling so he was at eye level with his son. "It's a special kind of tree. A lot of people call it a wizard tree because it's brilliant at protecting houses and keeping people safe."
Rigel looked around the room, his small brow furrowing. Bundles of the red berries were already hanging from the window frames. Next to them sat rows of unlit candles, lined up along the windowsills and the doorways. The little boy looked confused.
"It's for Samhain, actually," Sirius explained gently.
"Sam-hain?" Rigel repeated, tilting his head.
"Yes. Well, Muggles call it Halloween," Sirius said.
Rigel flinched. It was only a tiny twitch of his shoulders, but Sirius noticed it instantly. It was the exact same reaction Rigel and Corvus had whenever anyone said the word magic—a lingering reflex from a past they couldn't remember, but their bodies couldn't forget. It was the reason Sirius and Esme had taken to using the French word, magique, just to keep the boys from tensing up. They still do but less than before.
"What's wrong, pup?" Sirius asked, keeping his voice carefully soft and light so he wouldn't scare him.
He and Esme had long since realized that even if the boys had no conscious memories of their old life, their bodies held onto the scars. It was why Rigel panicked if a bedroom door was locked, why Corvus couldn't stand enclosed spaces, and why they both still jumped at the sharp clang of pots and pans in the kitchen.
"I don't like this day," Rigel muttered. He balled his hands into tight little fists, pressing them against his stomach.
"You don't?" Sirius asked, a quiet ache blooming in his chest. "Why, kiddo?"
Rigel shook his head, looking down at his small leather shoes. "I dunno. Just... bad things always happen."
Sirius closed his eyes for a brief second, swallowing the sudden lump in his throat. He didn't know the specifics, but he knew the calendar. Halloween. It was another phantom memory. The Dursleys must have done something terrible to him on the thirty-first of October, locking a piece of fear so deep into Rigel's bones that it outlived his actual memory of them.
Sirius didn't push for answers. Instead, he leaned forward and gathered his son into a tight, warm hug. He tucked Rigel's head under his chin, rubbing his back.
"You're safe here, Rigel. I promise," Sirius murmured into his hair. "Nothing bad is going to happen to you. Not on this day, not on any day."
Rigel let out a shaky breath, his tiny fists finally relaxing against Sirius's chest. The unease didn't completely vanish, but the tight knot in his tummy began to loosen.
Sirius pulled back just enough to look at him, giving him a small, encouraging smile. "Do you want to learn what Samhain is about? The magique way? There's no scary rubbish involved, I promise."
Rigel looked into his papa's eyes, took a final, deep breath, and nodded.