#i certainly do plenty of it myself agjksljfk

[birlwrites]

okay my question is how close are/were walburga & orion to their kids? how well can they read regulus? (jusy in general but also specifically in the scene at the breakfast table. like, orion taught regulus how to occlude, right? so can he tell when he is?)

i've been going off the assumption that for most wizard kids, there's smthing like elementary school to help teach them to read & write etc before hogwarts when they're ready to start learning magicTM, & then the uber wealthy just hire tutors. so that gives me the thought that wizarding parents in general are just like, more involved in their kids' lives pre-hogwarts. & that + the fact that orion & walburga don't really... have things to do? like they're lord & lady but it's not like they have subjects to look after or snything… so how present were they in sirius & regulus' lives?

sorry if this is ramble-y, this probably should've been 2 different asks but i'm just really curious about if you've thought about any of it

walburga and orion are not what i would call super attuned to their kids' emotional state? like, not to put too fine a point on it, but regulus has not really been Relaxed around either of his parents since he was very young. he's always monitoring his behavior and actions very closely. in that scene, they get the sense that he is balancing the interests of the death eaters with 'ok but also barty is my friend so maybe Don't Kill Him Please.'

if regulus had been in the dining room when he'd started occluding, orion would have clocked it immediately, but since he was out on the stairs, there was no moment of bringing up the shields that orion could see

like, orion and walburga have been somewhat involved in their kids' lives, but regulus has been very conscious of the fact that he needs to Act A Certain Way around adults and non-family-members since he was little, and this includes his parents, although it didn't include his cousins until he was a little older, as bellatrix is bellatrix and regulus would let the people around him set the level of formality for the interaction. and sirius is sirius of course (he's never been as reserved as regulus, but he's also a great liar, so i'd hesitate to say that orion and walburga could read him any better than they can read regulus - sirius is very good at emotional/mental/verbal sleight of hand)

regulus and sirius learned purely academic/theoretical subjects from tutors, but their parents handled a lot of their magical training - obviously there was the family specialty, and dark arts in general, and occlumency, but also families like the blacks don't wait until hogwarts to start teaching their kids magic with wands, and so that was just kind of folded in along with the dark arts

they didn't really start with the tutors until they were, like, kindergarten-aged, or rather until sirius was kindergarten-aged and regulus was Not Going To Be Left Out

in addition, they had to learn about Society Stuff, and whoever was heir at the moment had to learn about Lord Stuff, which were handled by walburga and orion respectively. regulus used to spend more time practicing general dark arts (not the family specialty) than sirius did, as sirius had to learn Lord Stuff and walburga, keeping regulus busy, was like 'ah yes dark arts will hold his interest and prevent him from being upset about sirius doing things without him'

orion does actually have stuff to do - as the head of house black, he manages the entire family's finances, and he's also a member of the wizengamot. but yeah that's about it as far as formal obligations go lmao, plus when regulus was REALLY little (young enough that he doesn't remember this at all) orion was heir black and hadn't started taking on any of arcturus's responsibilities yet, so orion and walburga really had jack shit to do

so regulus and sirius spent a lot of time learning from their parents, but they didn't spend a lot of leisure time with them - there was always Something To Be Achieved in their interaction with their parents