Sirius knocked once and opened the door before Amelia could answer.
He looked decent enough to make Amelia raise an eyebrow. His robes dark, hair tamed for once and boots polished. Even his expression had been combed into something respectable, though the effort sat on him the way a leash sat on a wolf.
"Amelia, love." He crossed the office, leaned over the desk, and placed a light kiss on her cheek.
It improved his mood at once.
Amelia, on the other hand, looked at him with a calm suspicion that had grown out of experience.
The Sirius she knew would usually open with something absurd, wait for her not to laugh, and then sulk until she pulled him back into a tolerable shape. The man in front of her had entered like somebody's idea of a proper suitor, which already meant disaster, considering who he might have gone to.
She set her quill down. "You are dressed like a man about to apologise for a murder."
Sirius lowered himself into the chair opposite her desk and straightened his cuffs. "That is deeply unfair."
Her eyes narrowed by a degree. "Then you are dressed like a man who has planned something."
That landed harder than the first guess.
He lifted one hand and started to count on his fingers while muttering under his breath. The words were too low to catch clearly.
After a moment he nodded to himself, reached into his robes, and brought out three flowers.
A red rose.
A white lily.
A yellow chrysanthemum.
He looked at them with the expression of a man trying to remember which one of his mistakes was currently loaded.
Then he raised his head, found her eyes, and extended the yellow one.
"My fluffy Fwooper."
Amelia was sure of one thing.
The lovely idiot was trying to follow a plan, and he had already forgotten it in real time.
As the only adult in the office, she accepted the yellow flower, laid it carefully on the desk, then reached for the red rose in his other hand.
"I believe you meant to give me this one," she said, turning the stem between her fingers. "Unless, of course, we are breaking up."
Sirius sat up so fast the chair complained.
"No. No, absolutely not." His hand went to his hair, stopped halfway there, then fell when he remembered some other instruction. "I meant the red one. Of course, I meant the red one. You know how dogs are with colours."
He caught himself, realised that defence had somehow made the matter worse, and shut his mouth with admirable speed.
Amelia began to enjoy herself.
She leaned back in her chair, kept her face stern, and waited.
Silence settled over the office, which was not helping him.
"Well." Sirius cleared his throat, then lifted one hand and began counting again. "I was hoping to have some of your time."
He reached into another pocket and came out with a fresh set.
This time it was worse.
A mooncalf daisy, which meant devotion.
A mourning iris, which meant grief and dignified distance.
And a puff pod bloom, still half closed and hissing lightly, which in old wizarding courtship meant the giver had no control over his impulses and should not be left unsupervised with a wand or an inheritance.
Amelia looked at the flowers. Then at him.
"You have brought me condolences, emotional instability, and one respectable choice."
Sirius followed her gaze, then swore softly. "Bella is going to murder me."
"She has had many chances." Amelia set the red rose aside with care. "What exactly did you do to deserve floral sabotage?"
His expression turned injured at once. "Nothing. I went to her because she is, under all the Black madness, a fluffy little thing."
Amelia's brows rose. "And how are you so sure she has Black Madness?"
"Oh, Amelia. Don't you know I am the only sane Black? Maybe Cassiopeia and Vega as well. But not Altair and Castor and Pollux. They tried to feed me to Medusa."
He realised what he had just said to a Director of Magical Law Enforcement about Bellatrix and the kids and pressed on anyway, because retreat was no longer available.
"I came prepared. Everything is under my control."
"Mm." Amelia folded her hands. "And yet you started with a yellow chrysanthemum. Should I consider it?"
"That one," Sirius pointed at the chrysanthemum with grave offence, "should not even have been in the same pocket as the rose. This is entrapment."
Amelia took the mooncalf daisy from his hand instead. "This one is acceptable."
He relaxed by a fraction.
Then she picked up the mourning iris.
"And this?"
Sirius stared at it like a man seeing the instrument of his own execution for the first time.
"I genuinely have no explanation for that one."
She allowed him another moment to drown.
He used it badly.
Sirius leaned forward, braced both hands on his knees, and tried for steady dignity. "In my defence, I have had a difficult morning."
"You arrived on time."
"Yes, that was one of the difficulties."
Amelia let out a sound that might have been amusement if she had not chosen to remain merciless.
He heard it anyway. Hope returned to his face with the recklessness of a man who had survived one curse and assumed the rest would miss.
"Right." He took a breath, sat straighter, and reached into the inner pocket of his robes with all the solemnity Bellatrix had clearly beaten into him. "No more flowers."
Amelia watched him in complete silence.
He pulled out a small circle of woven vines and flowers.
Then he stopped.
His eyes lost focus for a heartbeat while he counted again under his breath.
One. Two. Three. Breathe. Do not start with a joke. Compliment first. Then the cord.
He looked up.
At least this time, he had the right object in hand.
"Amelia." His voice lost the last of its easy swagger. The change suited him more than the polish had. "You are the best thing that has ever happened to me, which is a dramatic sentence, but I have led a dramatic life."
She kept still.
He held the cord with one hand and stood up. He extended it to her and waited.
"I love you. You know I do, even when I am being an idiot, which I admit is often enough that it counts as a weather pattern." His mouth twitched once. "You make me better than I am. You make me think before I bite... usually. You make the world quieter when I am with you, and I did not know how much I wanted that until you gave it to me."
The office had gone very still.
Even the paper aeroplanes outside the door seemed to have chosen another corridor.
"Marry me."
Amelia looked at him for a long moment.
Then she looked at the flowers spread across her desk like evidence from a very confused crime.
"The yellow one still concerns me."
The panic came back into his face so quickly she nearly laughed.
"I did not mean the yellow one."
"I know."
"You do?"
"I am not blind, Sirius." Her fingers closed over the cord. "You are simply badly supervised."
He blinked. "Bella supervised me."
"That is exactly what I said."
This time, she did laugh.
It was enough to take the last of the terror out of his shoulders.
Amelia stood.
She was shorter than him. Smaller built. None of that mattered when she looked at him directly and made a decision.
"Yes."
The word hit him hard enough that for one absurd second, he looked genuinely stunned.
Then his face broke open into something so bright and foolish that she had to look away or she would start smiling like one as well.
The vines of the cord unfastened and started to bind both their hands in knots.
He looked at it. Then at her. Then back in their hands. "That is real."
Amelia laid one hand against his cheek. "It usually helps if the proposal is sincere."
He kissed her then.
She let it happen for exactly as long as she wanted, then pushed him back by the chest before he forgot they were standing in her office at the Ministry.
Sirius looked entirely prepared to forget again.
A knock landed on the office door.
Neither moved for a heartbeat.
Then Amelia moved beside him as far as the knots allowed and hid her hand between them with the speed of a woman who had spent years mastering composure. "Enter."
The clerk who opened the door took one look at Sirius's face, one look at Amelia's, then noticed the flowers and decided to lower his eyes before curiosity killed the cat.
"Director, the interview files from Magical Transport."
"Leave them."
The man obeyed, left the files, and retreated fast enough to imply he had some instinct for danger.
When the door shut again, Sirius looked at the stack and then at her. "You are going back to work."
"I am the Director of Magical Law Enforcement." Amelia lifted her hand and studied the cord again before lowering it. "The world did not stop because you finally managed a sentence without ruining it."
"I rarely ruin my sentences."
"You ruin most of them."
That did not seem to trouble him at all.
His gaze had settled on their hands again and refused to leave.
Amelia watched him for a moment, then pointed to the vines. "Make them unfasten again, fiancé and sit down. You are distracting."
The vines released his hand and turned into a beautiful cord on her wrist.
He sat at once, proud and grinning like an idiot. A very happy idiot.
Amelia found that she did not mind.
--
While Sirius drowned in the finer details of courtship, Corvus decided to give in.
He raised the crystal vial, uncorked it, and swallowed everything in one go.
The effect hit him instantly.
It was nothing like a potion. Nothing like a draught, elixir, or any other thing the magical world had softened into glass and dosage and habit. It was like drinking a thunderstorm.
He felt it in every fibre of his being, in his sacred blood, and his magical core.
The substance did not move through him like liquid. It spread like a seizure. His veins burned. His nerves lit. His eyes flashed electric blue.
He had just enough time to understand that the body was accepting it before the world dropped out from under him, and Corvus lost consciousness.
His body hit the floor. For a while, he lay still.
Then the cooling started.
It moved in from the skin first. The excess heat left his body in waves. Electric arcs began to dance over him, snapping along his arms, shoulders, ribs, and legs in thin white, blue and purple threads that cracked the air and vanished before they could reach the desk.
When he opened his eyes again, he did not move at once.
He inhaled slowly; his mind remained intact. He pushed himself up and looked down at his hands.
Arcs danced over them in quick runs, slipping between his fingers, jumping from wrist to forearm, returning inward before they could lash outward. Each movement felt alive. Not sentient, but eager like the tendrils. The blood was not merely strengthening him. It was changing the expression of the power already present within him.
Consuming the blood of an Architect was a way to pass power down in measured doses to underlings or offspring. That was what Thanatos had meant when he spoke of blessings. Corvus had been carrying multiple traces already. This one happened to belong to something with dominion over thunder.
He watched another arc jump from one hand to the other and vanish with a sharp zap.
Thunder, lightning, or storm. Perhaps all three. The first task, however, was not theory.
It was control.
He was not going anywhere near the Black Library until the arcs obeyed him properly. He had no interest in discovering whether a shelf of ancient grimoires could catch fire.
By evening, he was standing in the ritual room at Grimmauld Place.
The first hours had not been elegant.
He had managed to stop the arcs from leaving his body and striking whatever stood nearest, but only after wrecking one training dummy, fusing the metal frame of another, and turning a sacrificial bowl into something no one would ever use again unless they wished to drink from a lightning scar.
Now the force stayed closer. Not calm perhaps, but closer
Corvus stood at the centre of the room while arcs crawled over his arms, shoulders, and bare chest in bright, narrow threads. The wards on the walls held. The runes underfoot absorbed what slipped free. His breathing stayed measured. His hands were loose at his sides.
By dawn, he had narrowed the likely owner of the blood.
Juracán.
The blood pointed toward the Caribbean region and a dominion of storm, thunder, hurricane, and chaos expressed through pressure, weather, and sudden ruin. At least on what was recorded by Muggle and Magical historians.
Corvus almost approved.
His last animagus form, the Thunderbird, had already given him some measure of control over weather and storm conditions. This blood had taken that existing line of affinity and driven it upward with brutal force.
Lightning had always been one of his favourite forms of attack. It was fast, direct, destructive, and hard to defend or counter unless the target could predict the line it would take.
He uncorked another vial.
There was no point pretending caution beyond the practical. He drank, and the second dose hit harder.
His back arched. One hand slammed against the warded floor. Light burst across the room in white, blue webs. The floor array flared at once, taking the impact, absorbing it down into the grounded circles beneath the chamber.
Corvus bared his teeth. He forced the arcs inward again, dragging them back across the skin and into the deeper channels of the body. The room smelled of ozone now.
He stayed there through the pulse. Through the heat. Through the brief moment where every part of him wanted to answer force with force and let the room learn what a storm looked like indoors.
He calmed it, and the arcs settled. They were not obedient yet.
Corvus opened his eyes and looked at the blackened mark his hand had left.
He reached for the next vial while considering range. Not the range of a cast spell, the range of influence of his new toy.
If Juracán's blood kept unfolding at this pace, then what would the ceiling be when the gift was fully integrated?
How far could he pull the storm, how wide could he spread pressure?
He pulled the stopper free and drank again.