The Unspeakable Sort ||Jegulus||

Chapter eleven: Like a fish out of water

A pale, sparse sun filtered through the canopy curtains. Thin rays lit the room feebly, timidly in front of the prelude of a freezing winter.

Regulus was curled up on the edge of the bed, his legs rumpled and the intimate sweetness of a tired, bare face. He was turned on his side, his hands clasped under the pillow and his face sullen, lazy in a state of half-sleep.

It was Saturday morning, and silence crowned the ghostly atmosphere of the Slytherin dormitories. A faint reflection of the stars could still be found on the saddened palette of the sky, and it was still far too early for the tender birds to decide to hum.

Black remained there, helpless. Too alert to rest, too comforted by the matted duvet to even debate getting up.

Walburga and Orion had contacted him the night before, the letter neatly enveloped and the stamp perfectly centered on the rough paper. Inside, he'd found a brief note, free of frivolous questions of circumstance or the usual ramblings that tended to find their way into letters exchanged between family members. No, Orion and Walburga Black asked him only two questions.

Have you caught up on your lessons? Is our intervention necessary to ensure your education receives the attention it deserves?

The boy was certain that those were his mother's words. Not only because of the obvious curvature in the larger letters—characteristics of her refined handwriting—but also because of the tone used. An urgency that only a mother could feel, a reticence as beguiling as it was repugnant that could only be attributed to his own mother's sadism.

Squinting, Regulus could even make out her image in the back of his head, as clear as the central figure in a painting: elegantly bent over the mahogany desk in the living room, her dark hair gathered and her slender wrist bent in a glimmer of paleness. Her aristocratic face, eager in its severity, tensed as she mused softly.

The creaking of the wood distracted the boy from his wandering mind, and he gazed out at the hazy sky before standing up.

Smoothing his pajamas with his hands, he leaned forward, and a sliver of light struck his face, reflecting heat on his pale, gaunt face. His brown curls tingled his forehead.

In that thin, echoing silence of reluctance, Regulus changed into his Slytherin robes.

The antique clock on his bedside table read precisely six in the morning, and Black decided to take that time to smoke a cigarette atop a turret he and Barty had discovered at the end of their third year.

Approaching Crouch's drawers, he began rummaging through the boy's myriad knick-knacks, soon discovering a half-empty pack of Muggle cigarettes.

Barty had acquired them over the summer, and now, in late November, he jealously hid his last stash.

The boy's efforts, however, were rather futile, as Regulus took an average of just over thirty seconds to uncover the new hiding place and grab entire packs every single time.

Exiting his dormitory briskly, he strode through the Slytherin common room until he reached the dungeons, which stretched out before him like a stony womb, ancient and sleepless. The air seemed suspended, heavy with humidity, like a breath held for centuries beneath the waters of the black lake. Each step of Regulus echoed muffledly on the flagstone floor, as if the castle itself wanted to swallow its echoes, enshrouding them in its own hieratic silence. The torches, arranged along the walls, spewed tired, intermittent tongues of fire: flames that flickered more from habit than ardor, casting elongated, trembling shadows, like ghosts dragging themselves like shadows across the walls.

The atmosphere was rigorously saddened, inert in its composure. Slow drops dripped from the walls, gathering in minute rivulets until they were lost in the cracks in the floor. Every sound—his breathing, a rustle of his cloak, a hesitant step—seemed too loud, almost an intrusion into that place consecrated to quiet and rigor. There, the world seemed distant, and even his thoughts seemed to move slower, more wary.