(no subject)
Another fic for a laurel_tx challenge. Ahhh, I can't believe how long this turned out. I meant it to be, like, six pages or so, but I just couldn't stop. I had to post it as two different lj entries. XS
Title: Equation
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Slash, Murder, Glossed-over sex, Mild cussing, Character Death, and important warning: nonsensical mathematical jargon.
To Summarise: Regulus Black loves Barty Crouch (and Arithmancy). This Monday will be his last seven days on earth.
Two months ago
Orgasm was only the result of a balanced equation. Regulus had realised this for a number of years. It became painfully obvious once he put his mind to it. Two people separated by a pair of bars that meant “equals”. Regulus Black = Barty Crouch. No discrepancies. Result: Orgasm.
Then the day came when someone forgot to carry the one between Regulus Black and the straw-haired scarecrow of a boy called Barty Crouch. Regulus couldn’t add up their numbers and come out with the same figure. Result: a false equation. Regulus Black does not equal Barty Crouch.
It was the day Antonin Dolohov’s addled cousin Marmion Dolohov told them about the Horcrux. After nine months of burning fresh, the Dark Mark’s tangled brown blush against their wrists was beginning to fade to the near-invisible colour that, Malfoy assured them, it would be whenever it was inactive. That day, Malfoy had summoned them both (Barty with robes on wrong-way round because he was so excited and Regulus suggested they stop and put them right but it was like Barty didn’t even hear him) and told them Marmion had not come to a meeting. He had no orders that might have delayed them. He had sent no message to his Lord. Barty and Regulus must find them.
“We’re errand boys,” Regulus said, bitter and wishing Barty would stop bouncing so.
“No, no, they’re just testing us, learning to trust us,” Barty replied, jerking his head to try and buck off the fringe that insisted upon dangling across his face. Regulus took his younger friend’s arm, held him still, licked his own palm and pressed Barty’s hair until it lay out of his eyes.
Barty was right, of course. Marmion Dolohov was very easy to find - in a bar on the border Scotland with six empty bottles of firewhisky and an empty purse. Malfoy could have picked him up in an hour, but Regulus and Barty had been sent because it was a test.
Marmion was very, very drunk. He resembled his skinny-faced brother only in stature, being several inches shorter than Regulus, who in turn was an inch smaller than Barty. His face was red and shapeless enough to be mistaken for the inside of a beating heart. He was crying into his seventh bottle of the potent liquor.
“Boys,” he said, when he saw the two black-cloaked youths slid up on either side of him. “Boys. You’ll kill me quick, won’t you? You’ll kill me here? I wasn’t running, Reggie, my lad, my friend. I knew they’d find me. I just wanted - last - drink...” he broke into uncontrollable sobbing.
“Come back to England, with us, Marmion,” said Regulus. Barty’s nose was wrinkled in disgust and it distracted Regulus. Barty looked sweet and kissable when he was disgusted and forgot to cover up his disgust. It didn’t happen as often as Regulus would have liked so it always distracted him. He forced himself to return his attention to Marmion. “Nobody thinks you’ve done anything, Marmion,” he said. “Why would we have to kill you? Come back and confess to the Dark Lord and he will be merciful.”
“Confess! Confess!” Marmion gasped, high and girlish. “No need! He knows! He’s sees in your head,” he swayed towards Regulus and grabbed the front of his robes, more to steady his drunken self than to make any kind of threat. “He sees what you know. Everything. What I know. He’ll kill me when He finds out what I know.”
Barty withdrew his wand and put the tip to the back of Marmion’s neck. “You’ll come back to England with us,” he hissed. “But first you’ll let go of my friend’s robes.”
Marmion did not let go. His lower lip stuck out, displaying the row of yellowed teeth packed into his bottom jaw and he groaned to Regulus. “Horcrux,” the two syllables sounded like a wave pounding in on the rocks and sucking back out again. “I found out about the Horcrux. You know what that is? No, no, boys, not something they teach at Hogwarts. I didn’t mean to find out, I was just curious, but he won’t believe that I mean no harm by it all. When He sees me He will know at once, at once. He’ll do... terrible... things...” his head spun wildly from Regulus’ face to Barty’s. “That’s why you have to kill me now, you understand? I can’t - face - Him!”
There were tears and sweat all over his face. The disgusted expression Barty had worn was now replaced by one of sickened pity. Regulus killed Marmion. It was not so hard as he had thought his first time would be. The bartender was out the back getting more firewhiskey and the two black-cloaked youths had vanished by the time he returned.
Horcrux. Horcrux. Regulus had never heard the word. Neither had Barty. They discussed it once they had Apparated back to London but no recollections surfaced.
“Let’s not tell anyone what he said,” Regulus instructed Barty. “Alright? He was no traitor to the Lord, but if he was that scared just knowing about the whatever-it-was, who’s to say what could happen to us for knowing as well? If Malfoy asks, he begged for mercy and we killed him. Nothing more.”
Barty nodded fretfully, but did not meet his eye.
Two hours after Regulus had returned home, he felt the burn of the mark on his arm. The Dark Lord’s summons. He threw on his cloak and mask - hidden under his socks in the bottom drawer so his mother wouldn’t find it - and Apparated away.
There was Barty. There was a masked Death Eater that was probably Malfoy. There was the Dark Lord, a black pillar with a white face and hands. Regulus felt his heart leap into frantic action, pumping so fast he was certain it would burst right out of his chest. He had never been so alone in the Dark Lord’s presence. There were always dozens of other masked figures at the gatherings. And always Barty was beside him. Sweat was already sticking his robes to his back.
“Tell me, Regulus,” said the Dark Lord, lazily running one very long, very pale finger up and down the yew wand in his hand. “Why you did not admit to Lucius everything Dolohov said before you killed him.”
Regulus tried to make a noise but his throat seemed to be full of rocks. He could barely find enough air to breathe. Barty stood to one side of the Dark Lord, unmasked but expressionless. And yet there was pride in his stance. He had pleased his master. Regulus felt sick and could not speak.
“That is what I thought,” said the Dark Lord. His head twisted on its neck a few degrees to look at his servant out of the corner of his eye, then he pointed his wand at Regulus. There was only pain after that.
When Regulus awoke, he was writhing in sinking sand, covered in snakes that were tightening around his throat and arms. A moment later he realised the snakes were bedclothes and the sinking sand was only the sagging mattress of Barty’s bed. His friend reached out in the darkness to put an arm around his chest, muttering something that was probably meant to be soothing but just sounded sleepy.
Regulus moved his hand and felt Barty’s thick hair on the pillow beside him, his steady breath betraying that he was already asleep again. Regulus unwound his muscles and lay back, turning on his side to curl around Barty, resting his hand on the soft flat skin of Barty’s stomach. He wanted to reach lower, wanted the comfort and familiarity between Barty’s legs, but his friend was always grouchy if Regulus woke him just for comfort sex. Instead, Regulus tried to think. He remembered nothing after they had gone to the Scottish bar to find Marmion. He knew at once that his memory had been Obliviated.
He closed his eyes. The mind was nothing more than layers of complex connections. Professor Vector had taught him that and then wished he could take the lesson back. Connections could be masked but not broken. A mask could always been removed as long as it could be found. A systematic and rigorous search was all it took. Regulus had done it before. When Sirius had tried to Obliviate him, to hide that afternoon when his younger brother had caught him in the library of Hogwarts, kissing that Potter boy with their hands on each other -
A systematic search for the masked memory was all it took. Regulus set to work.
By the time the sun was rising he had found the word Obliviated by his Lord and all the memories that came with it. Horcrux. Crucio. Barty. Barty had gone to Malfoy and told him everything... Barty had betrayed Regulus in return for the Dark Lord’s favour, but the Lord had been merciful to Regulus and now Barty lay here beside him without a trace of shame.
Result: false equation. Regulus Black does not equal Barty Crouch. Anymore.
Today, 1979
Monday
Regulus got up from his desk and swept his cloak over his shoulders. The grandfather clock in the corner was chiming nine and the one small window overlooking the concrete sidewalk of Grimmauld Place gushed a delicate filigree of sunlight through the dusty glass. Papers of every size carpeted the desk and Regulus’ thin scribble was trailed across all of them. Several grimy plates, some still bearing the remains of meals, were stacked by the overflowing waste bin. Regulus did not allow Kreacher into his private rooms even to clean, under any circumstances.
He stepped out into the corridor before the ninth chime and closed the door behind him. As the gong of the clock faded it was echoed by a muffled scream. Regulus paused. The scream sounded as if it had come from beneath his feet. Was Mother doing one of her experiments in the basement? But she hated going down there where it was damp and the old heirlooms had gone wild with magic. And the scream had sounded male. For a moment, he was tempted to kneel and press his ear for the floor but then he heard stumbling footsteps and discarded the idea and the scream.
A hooded figure had appeared at the end of the corridor. Regulus straightened his shoulders and tightened his fingers around his wand. He let the figure get within three feet of him before he said, “Stop. Lower your hood.”
The figure did so. The man’s hands were bandaged. Regulus wished his face had been treated likewise. The flesh was in twisted knots and scarred chords, healed by hasty magic, powerful but amateur. In some places it looked as if it had bubbled and melted. One eye was half-closed and weeping pus that had dried over it in a film. Regulus winced.
“Does that hurt?”
“It will,” wheezed the man. His upper lip was badly swollen, slurring his speech.
“Are things going well at your end?”
“Not as well as you wanted,” the man replied, giving a hur hur of laughter. “But as well as will be. Everything is just as I - as you - as we thought. Bella will have the answers. It’s in a cave by the sea, you’ll find. Don’t bother with Barty.”
Regulus felt his tongue stick dry to the roof of his mouth. He took control of it and asked, casually, “Will I see him?”
“Yes,” the man said. “Once. You…”
“No. Don’t say anything else. We’re on tenterhooks as it is.”
The man nodded, sighed and fixed his gaze on Regulus. “Now, listen to me. You must not live to see tomorrow. Please. For both of us.”
Regulus nodded, feeling his groin tighten and grow cold. On Tuesday I will be dead, he thought. Mother will be so angry.
“I should get going.” The man hunched his shoulders. “Oh, and when you’re in the Ministry - duck into the courtrooms on your way out and wait there three and a half minutes before you take the elevator back to the atrium. Otherwise I... I don’t what happens.”
Everything can be weighed and measured except the unknown. Regulus nodded to show he understood. The man turned and shuffled back along the corridor before disappearing up the thin flight of stairs that lead back into the main levels of the Black family house. Regulus checked his watch and then Disapparated.
----------------------------------------------------
When he was a prefect of sixteen he had met the forth-year boy in an empty classroom. The boy was thin, pale and badly in need of a haircut - and he was casting what was very clearly (to the Black raised Regulus) dark magic on the photograph of a snub-nosed girl. Regulus gave him two detentions and a warning that next time he would tell Slughorn and the boy could face suspension. The boy slunk away, ripping the photo viciously in two as he glanced back at Regulus.
By chance, Regulus was supervising both the detentions the boy attended. While the other boys in the room, one tiny-eyed and fat-fingered, another with robes falling down at the hems, and a second-year picking his nose with relish, squinted and scratched slowly at the written problems they had been set or ignored them completely, the pale boy flicked his quill down the parchment in only a few minutes and then pushed it aside. Regulus checked the answers afterwards. They were all perfect.
In the second detention, he watched the boy throughout. He watched the tendons flexing in his hands as he wrote, the gangly wrists and ankles of a boy with bones growing too quickly, the way the straw-coloured haired fell in a mop across the boy’s eyes and tickled his nose so that he scratched it idly and constantly.
Regulus, trying to smile and pretend he was doing a favour for all their sakes, told the boys this detention was being cut short and they could go back to their common rooms. He followed the straw-haired boy as they slipped into the twilight-lit corridor and fell into step behind him.
“What house are you in?” Regulus asked gruffly.
“Hufflepuff.”
“Oh. I had you pegged as a Ravenclaw, with those brains.”
The boy didn’t answer the compliment (which, it had to be supposed, might also be an insult to the boy’s house). Regulus realised he was sweating like a first-year with a crush on Lily Evans.
“Why were you trying to curse that girl? You could really have hurt her,” he said, disgruntled.
The boy adjusted his satchel over his shoulder and muttered, “She’s been calling me names since I turned her down. She’s a stupid slut. I was sick of it.”
“Is punishing her worth getting kicked out of Hogwarts for dark magic?” Regulus reprimanded, even as his stomach did a joyful back flip. Fourteen and turning down girls? Regulus only knew two other people who had ever done that. Their names were Regulus and Sirius Black and he knew exactly what their reasons had been.
The boy rolled his eyes but did not try and defend himself. They walked on a little further and Regulus knew that in a few moments he would have to part from the boy and take the staircase down to the dungeons.
“Listen,” he said, trying to put authority into his voice, as befitted a Slytherin prefect. “I noticed you got all those Arithimancy questions wrong tonight. Do you have trouble with Arithmancy?”
“Loads,” the boy grunted. Regulus smiled at the way his shoulders moved.
“I’m doing my Arthimancy NEWT a year early,” he boasted. “If you wanted tutorials, I’d be happy to…”
The boy glanced back at him. Both of them had stopped in the corridor, Regulus lugging his books under his arm and wishing he’d combed his hair better this afternoon. He waited throughout the stretched silence. Then the boy said, “Yeah. That’d be great.”
“Then it’s a date. You name the evening,” Regulus replied.
----------------------------------------------------
A cloud of ash burst out of the chimney in Regulus’ study, followed by Regulus himself. Coughing, still sure he could hear the shouts of Aurors on his heels, he stumbled towards his desk and put a hand on it to steady himself. He kept emptying the ash out of his lungs until his chest muscles ached. Finally he straightened and his head stopped spinning.
He held up the his prize. Stolen from that fabled Department of Mysteries, right under the noses of the Unspeakables in the next room. The highest ranked of the Death Eaters could not have done better! It was a small gold hourglass, about as long as Regulus’ forefinger. He turned it over very gently, unsure of whether the sand could be activated by movement alone. But the glistening specks stayed in the top of the cup. He put the timeturner up to his eye and saw three tiny dials set around the top. “22 hrs”, said the largest one, and the next, “7 mths”, and the smallest, “4 yrs.”
He touched the last dial with his forefinger. Four years. How easy it would be to twist that one notch, return to his fifth year at Hogwarts in an instant. Barty would recognise him and Regulus could tell him everything, warn him never talk to that slimy Severus Snape, never to let the Death Eaters brand him with their mark and take Regulus down with him. They could run away together, go to America or Australia, somewhere Barty would forget the dark arts and they would have to rely on each other completely. How nice a dream.
Regulus picked up a quill, turned to the blank sheet of paper tacked among a myriad of parchments torn from books on dark magic and arthimancy. On the blank sheet he wrote, “Left 9:00am, returned 7:34pm. Backtracked 7:42.”
He put the quill down and twisted the largest dial once.
Monday
Regulus booked two rooms in the Leaky Cauldron that night, but slept in only one. He returned to his study in the Black house at half past nine. It was empty by that time. He spent that day preparing the instruments. It was like trying to tune a violin without being about to draw a bow across its strings; he had no idea whether any of them would work when the time came, except of course that the man in the hallway had said Bella would have the answer and that meant it would work.
As the evening drew on he went to his mother’s rooms to find a needle and thread. Kreacher was in there, his knobbly finger joints folding a flood of bloomers into perfect squares and tenderly sinking them into the bureau. He bowed low to Regulus.
“Regulus Sir, what is it you seek?” his little whine of a voice begged.
“Make a quick dinner and leave it outside my door,” Regulus barked. Kreacher gave a flourish with his hand, the last bloomer floating into place, and was gone with a crack. Regulus went straight to his mother’s great black wardrobe.
It was locked, of course, but he stretched up on his toes to retrieve the dusty silver beech-wood box nestled on top. It lay where his fingers remembered it and he sat down on the bed while he opened in. Within was his mother’s sowing kit - self-threading needles, pins with a different poison on each tip, spools of black threads charmed with spells of concealment and befuddlement. His mother had used this sowing kit regularly in her younger years - to send her rivals and enemies cursed clothes, laced with dark magic, that burst into flames, tightened until they strangled their wearer, or reduced the female body into that of a hideous old crone.
“Regulus?”
He snapped the box shut. His mother stood in the doorway, a hairbrush stroking her thick black mane. Her face seemed thinner than Regulus remembered it from two days ago. He hadn’t seen his mother without her fine dresses and skin-creams for some years.
“Just borrowing some tools for a project, Mother,” he said cheerfully, standing up and tucking the box under his arm. “I’ll have them back in a couple of hours.”
“Of course,” said his mother faintly. Regulus suddenly realised she was trying to brush her hair with the bristles facing outwards. Her eyes wandered across the room, smiling faintly at the dusty ornaments on the shelves and bureau. He flashed her absent face a tense smile then tried to duck around her into the safety of the hallway beyond.
“Wait.”
Regulus looked back at her. The strap of her faded nightgown was hanging off her arm and the shape of one withered breast swayed into full view as she moved. He focused on her face and forced himself to keep smiling.
“You’ve got a lady, haven’t you, Regulus?” his mother sighed happily.
She had met Barty several times the year before. Regulus clearly remembered the two of them tersely trying to make conversation in the front hall. His mother had always acted as though Regulus and Barty were just a phase her best son - well, only son, really - was going through, but she’d still made Barty swear to her that he would find some pureblood girl for Regulus to marry, just long enough to have children. “I have nothing against your unorthodox relationship with each other, Bartemius, nothing,” she’d told him firmly, “and you may continue it till death part you if you wish, as long as Regulus has a wife as well.” She hadn’t asked him about Barty for months now. Sometimes she asked for Regulus’ father, Orion - she forgot that she’d already buried him.
Let her believe what her failing mind wanted to believe. Regulus nodded in answer to her question.
His mother beckoned with one finger and he reluctantly returned to the room. She was foraging in one cracked pearl jewellery box and at last her eyes lit up and she lifted out a small golden locket with a plain face. She took Regulus’ hand and folded his fingers over the locket.
“Your father gave it to me,” she said, beaming at him. “Give it to your wife.”
Regulus nodded mutely. He recognised the locket - it was a cheap birthday present from his mother’s youngest niece, Narcissa, when his cousin had been eleven years old. His mother had rolled her eyes in disgust afterwards and sworn never to wear it. He put it in his pocket, kissed his mother’s dry cheek and shut the door behind him. As he strode away, wiping his mouth, he heard her already screaming at his brother again. He wondered if Sirius would be gleeful to see their mother in such a state of insanity or if he would find it in his black heart to pity her.
Back in his study, he sowed the instruments into the lining of his good robes, ate the cold dinner Kreacher had left and then took the timeturner and twisted the largest dial again.
Monday
He slept in the leaky cauldron again that night, in the second room he had paid for. He lay with open eyes for hours, aware of every snuffle and creak from the rooms around him. Across the hall, he was sleeping in another room as well, two Regulus Blacks, one snoring peacefully and one dreading the coming day. One was going to spend their daylight hours adjusting instruments in the Black house and talking to his mother, the other heading for a different fate he couldn’t yet guess. Regulus could walk across the hall right now, open the door (he still had the key, of course) and bid himself goodnight. He’d recognise himself, he was sure of it. But he knew wouldn’t do it, because he’d already slept tonight, he already knew that he would not disturb himself - unless he had put a memory charm on himself so that he didn’t remember?
Just thinking about it made his head spin. He wriggled his shoulders against the sheets and forced himself to relive the calculations he had made, searching for any errors or variables which he had not accounted for.
----------------------------------------------------
He had never been so smug as he’d been in those early days with Barty. He’d glanced at Sirius whenever they brushed passed each other in the corridor, hoping Sirius would look at him and be jealous because Regulus had done just as well for himself. Better, because he knew Barty was nothing like that Potter. One of the other prefects had reported to Regulus that Potter was dating the Head Girl. Sirius would be left out in the cold while his younger brother shared a bed with Barty Crouch Jr. and the idea exhilarated Regulus.
But then he found himself lying next to Barty on Saturday afternoons while everyone else was in Hogsmeade and he forgot about Sirius. He knew the shape of Barty’s hipbone as if he wore the image in front of his face and he knew exactly how far up Barty’s leg he had to touch before the lean boy would shiver and close his eyes in anticipation. He knew every strand of Barty’s hair and the exact feel of the soft down where Barty’s beard was coming through.
He tried to teach Barty Arthimancy but the boy couldn’t manage it like Regulus could. The numbers didn’t flow and obey Barty the way they obeyed Regulus. All magic could be broken down into a series of numbers and symbols which in his mind became the warp and woof of a loom until he was certain even the Unforgiveable curses would be diverted by his mere thought. Barty didn’t see magic as numbers, just as flashes of light and splendid metamorphosis. He didn’t understand what Regulus understood: that the wizard’s magic was about ripping numbers out of the balanced equations of nature and exchanging them for new variables. Once you understood that, anything was open to you.
As he climaxed inside Barty the numbers flew through his mind. All relationships could be expressed by equation, all satisfaction could be increased by rearranging that equation. All was number. Number was beauty. For Regulus, those months were all beauty.
Then sixth year came and his father died waiting for Sirius to come home, died a frail old man blasted by his wife’s disgust for her eldest son. At school, Barty followed the Slytherin classes searching for Regulus, but Regulus would see no one and accept no comfort, so Barty got to talking to that other boy in Sirius’ year, the half-muggle Snape. Just casual conversations while he hung outside Regulus’ classrooms, conversations where one hint led to another and by the time Regulus hauled himself other of his depression it was already too late. He didn’t know it then, or even in the months after when he let Barty soothe his grief again and again, he didn’t know it at all until three years later on the day Marmion Dolohov told them about the Horcrux. But Snape had been the one to put the Dark Lord’s seed in Barty’s mind.
Sirius killed Father and drove Mother mad; Snape ensnared Barty and fed him the potent glory of the Dark Lord; but it was the Dark Lord himself who had destroyed everything that was left and that was why Regulus was going to kill him.
----------------------------------------------------
That Monday, he went to Bellatrix in that tall creature of a house that overlooked the Thames, the house her husband had bought for her as a wedding present before the two of them had squandered their finances in funding their master and his pursuits. Even the two house elves that Rodolphus had inherited had been sold, so Regulus admitted himself through the front door. The enchantments of the house recognised him as a pureblooded Black and gave no trouble.
He paced the halls waiting for Bellatrix to return home, his instruments shifting heavy in the hems and closed pockets of his robes. The wallpaper was stained and peeling, dust covering whole rooms like a carpet over the furniture that rotted where it stood. There were not the ornaments, paintings and figurines that filled the house where Regulus had grown up. Everything was as empty and bare as the day Bellatrix gave up her maiden name. Only her bedroom was clean and cared-for.
She was alone when she arrived, wearing heavy satin and a flush in her cheeks. Regulus knew she had been with her master - he had been studying her moves for weeks now.
“Cousin,” they greeted each other and Regulus offered a bottle of wine for their pleasure.
“I must speak with you,” he said, making his voice heavy with urgency.
“Of course, Regulus.”
He poured out the wine in Bellatrix’s kitchen (the dining room being too dusty for any enjoyment) and sipped first, deeply. He waited for Bellatrix to taste the wine as well before he began to speak.
“Bella, our master distances himself from me,” Regulus he began, trying to sound as solemn and unhappy as possible. His cousin stiffened and flushed again as he mentioned the Dark Lord. “Foolishly, I was wary of his glory and now he looks upon me as a worm. I see now how over-cautious I was. I want only to serve him, to worship him, but he looks upon with less favour than the Imperio-cursed drones that do his bidding in the ministry. It is tearing me apart, Bellatrix!”
Bellatrix took another sip of the wine and he saw her free hand twitch on the table. In his stomach he could feel the aphrodisiac elixir he had brewed stirring and working its way into his veins. He knew it would already be taking it effect on Bellatrix. She was always so susceptible to such potions.
“I do not know what you ask of me,” Bellatrix said tersely. “The Dark Lord gives his blessing to whom he will. If you have shamed yourself in his eyes, you deserve to bear that shame.”
“Yes, yes, but he can be generous too,” Regulus moaned. The elixir was in his loins now, perhaps he should have diluted the dosage, one sip and already he felt lust in his very bones. It was sickly. “To you, Bellatrix. He is good to you, treats you so much above the other servants,” she smiled at this flattery, sipping at the poisonous wine again, and Regulus drove on, “I do not ask you to give him my tidings, not at all, or tell him of my devotion. I only ask,” it took all his willpower to finish his request, “I ask you to simulate with me the love he shares with you. So that I may serve him as a loving worm.”
This might have been too vague if Bellatrix was in her right senses, but now - with the aphrodisiac coursing in her veins and the memory of her Lord fresh in her mind - the euphemism was clear. She frowned at him. “How do you know of this?”
“You - you burn with his passion,” Regulus said lamely. Did she guess that something was up?
But now she was getting to her feet. “Our lovemaking his harsh, young cousin. You must be prepared in mind and body if I am to show you all we share. Do you understand?”
“I do,” Regulus said and the spiked wine did the rest of the work. Bellatrix was on him like a wolf before he could do any more.
----------------------------------------------------
Two hours later, a young Muggle woman wearing the apron of a waitress was standing outside a café with a cigarette when she saw a young black-haired man wearing what looked like a shapeless dress come staggering down the Thames riverbank. She watched listlessly as he clutched at the back of a park bench and then, bent over, vomited onto the concrete. It was far too early in the day to be drunk and the young waitress felt some pity for the man - really nothing more than a boy. She checked her watched - five minutes until her coffee break finished - stubbed out the cigarette on the concrete and strode across the street to where the boy was now standing with his head tipped back, eyes closed as if in prayer.
“Hey,” she called. “Hey kid, you doing okay?”
The boy’s head snapped towards her. He had the palest grey eyes she had ever seen. A little trail of vomit marked the corner of his mouth.
“You look a bit rough. You want to come back to my café and get some coffee, kid?” she asked gently.
The boy stumbled away, raising one arm against her. He cried in a panicked voice, “Get away! Ugh, get away, you woman!”
“Hey, look…” the waitress began angrily, but she got no further. There was a sound like a pencil breaking and the boy vanished into thin air as if he had never existed.
----------------------------------------------------
The entire fic was too large to post at once, so the second half is here: tawabids.livejournal.com/4068.html
Title: Equation
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Slash, Murder, Glossed-over sex, Mild cussing, Character Death, and important warning: nonsensical mathematical jargon.
To Summarise: Regulus Black loves Barty Crouch (and Arithmancy). This Monday will be his last seven days on earth.
Two months ago
Orgasm was only the result of a balanced equation. Regulus had realised this for a number of years. It became painfully obvious once he put his mind to it. Two people separated by a pair of bars that meant “equals”. Regulus Black = Barty Crouch. No discrepancies. Result: Orgasm.
Then the day came when someone forgot to carry the one between Regulus Black and the straw-haired scarecrow of a boy called Barty Crouch. Regulus couldn’t add up their numbers and come out with the same figure. Result: a false equation. Regulus Black does not equal Barty Crouch.
It was the day Antonin Dolohov’s addled cousin Marmion Dolohov told them about the Horcrux. After nine months of burning fresh, the Dark Mark’s tangled brown blush against their wrists was beginning to fade to the near-invisible colour that, Malfoy assured them, it would be whenever it was inactive. That day, Malfoy had summoned them both (Barty with robes on wrong-way round because he was so excited and Regulus suggested they stop and put them right but it was like Barty didn’t even hear him) and told them Marmion had not come to a meeting. He had no orders that might have delayed them. He had sent no message to his Lord. Barty and Regulus must find them.
“We’re errand boys,” Regulus said, bitter and wishing Barty would stop bouncing so.
“No, no, they’re just testing us, learning to trust us,” Barty replied, jerking his head to try and buck off the fringe that insisted upon dangling across his face. Regulus took his younger friend’s arm, held him still, licked his own palm and pressed Barty’s hair until it lay out of his eyes.
Barty was right, of course. Marmion Dolohov was very easy to find - in a bar on the border Scotland with six empty bottles of firewhisky and an empty purse. Malfoy could have picked him up in an hour, but Regulus and Barty had been sent because it was a test.
Marmion was very, very drunk. He resembled his skinny-faced brother only in stature, being several inches shorter than Regulus, who in turn was an inch smaller than Barty. His face was red and shapeless enough to be mistaken for the inside of a beating heart. He was crying into his seventh bottle of the potent liquor.
“Boys,” he said, when he saw the two black-cloaked youths slid up on either side of him. “Boys. You’ll kill me quick, won’t you? You’ll kill me here? I wasn’t running, Reggie, my lad, my friend. I knew they’d find me. I just wanted - last - drink...” he broke into uncontrollable sobbing.
“Come back to England, with us, Marmion,” said Regulus. Barty’s nose was wrinkled in disgust and it distracted Regulus. Barty looked sweet and kissable when he was disgusted and forgot to cover up his disgust. It didn’t happen as often as Regulus would have liked so it always distracted him. He forced himself to return his attention to Marmion. “Nobody thinks you’ve done anything, Marmion,” he said. “Why would we have to kill you? Come back and confess to the Dark Lord and he will be merciful.”
“Confess! Confess!” Marmion gasped, high and girlish. “No need! He knows! He’s sees in your head,” he swayed towards Regulus and grabbed the front of his robes, more to steady his drunken self than to make any kind of threat. “He sees what you know. Everything. What I know. He’ll kill me when He finds out what I know.”
Barty withdrew his wand and put the tip to the back of Marmion’s neck. “You’ll come back to England with us,” he hissed. “But first you’ll let go of my friend’s robes.”
Marmion did not let go. His lower lip stuck out, displaying the row of yellowed teeth packed into his bottom jaw and he groaned to Regulus. “Horcrux,” the two syllables sounded like a wave pounding in on the rocks and sucking back out again. “I found out about the Horcrux. You know what that is? No, no, boys, not something they teach at Hogwarts. I didn’t mean to find out, I was just curious, but he won’t believe that I mean no harm by it all. When He sees me He will know at once, at once. He’ll do... terrible... things...” his head spun wildly from Regulus’ face to Barty’s. “That’s why you have to kill me now, you understand? I can’t - face - Him!”
There were tears and sweat all over his face. The disgusted expression Barty had worn was now replaced by one of sickened pity. Regulus killed Marmion. It was not so hard as he had thought his first time would be. The bartender was out the back getting more firewhiskey and the two black-cloaked youths had vanished by the time he returned.
Horcrux. Horcrux. Regulus had never heard the word. Neither had Barty. They discussed it once they had Apparated back to London but no recollections surfaced.
“Let’s not tell anyone what he said,” Regulus instructed Barty. “Alright? He was no traitor to the Lord, but if he was that scared just knowing about the whatever-it-was, who’s to say what could happen to us for knowing as well? If Malfoy asks, he begged for mercy and we killed him. Nothing more.”
Barty nodded fretfully, but did not meet his eye.
Two hours after Regulus had returned home, he felt the burn of the mark on his arm. The Dark Lord’s summons. He threw on his cloak and mask - hidden under his socks in the bottom drawer so his mother wouldn’t find it - and Apparated away.
There was Barty. There was a masked Death Eater that was probably Malfoy. There was the Dark Lord, a black pillar with a white face and hands. Regulus felt his heart leap into frantic action, pumping so fast he was certain it would burst right out of his chest. He had never been so alone in the Dark Lord’s presence. There were always dozens of other masked figures at the gatherings. And always Barty was beside him. Sweat was already sticking his robes to his back.
“Tell me, Regulus,” said the Dark Lord, lazily running one very long, very pale finger up and down the yew wand in his hand. “Why you did not admit to Lucius everything Dolohov said before you killed him.”
Regulus tried to make a noise but his throat seemed to be full of rocks. He could barely find enough air to breathe. Barty stood to one side of the Dark Lord, unmasked but expressionless. And yet there was pride in his stance. He had pleased his master. Regulus felt sick and could not speak.
“That is what I thought,” said the Dark Lord. His head twisted on its neck a few degrees to look at his servant out of the corner of his eye, then he pointed his wand at Regulus. There was only pain after that.
When Regulus awoke, he was writhing in sinking sand, covered in snakes that were tightening around his throat and arms. A moment later he realised the snakes were bedclothes and the sinking sand was only the sagging mattress of Barty’s bed. His friend reached out in the darkness to put an arm around his chest, muttering something that was probably meant to be soothing but just sounded sleepy.
Regulus moved his hand and felt Barty’s thick hair on the pillow beside him, his steady breath betraying that he was already asleep again. Regulus unwound his muscles and lay back, turning on his side to curl around Barty, resting his hand on the soft flat skin of Barty’s stomach. He wanted to reach lower, wanted the comfort and familiarity between Barty’s legs, but his friend was always grouchy if Regulus woke him just for comfort sex. Instead, Regulus tried to think. He remembered nothing after they had gone to the Scottish bar to find Marmion. He knew at once that his memory had been Obliviated.
He closed his eyes. The mind was nothing more than layers of complex connections. Professor Vector had taught him that and then wished he could take the lesson back. Connections could be masked but not broken. A mask could always been removed as long as it could be found. A systematic and rigorous search was all it took. Regulus had done it before. When Sirius had tried to Obliviate him, to hide that afternoon when his younger brother had caught him in the library of Hogwarts, kissing that Potter boy with their hands on each other -
A systematic search for the masked memory was all it took. Regulus set to work.
By the time the sun was rising he had found the word Obliviated by his Lord and all the memories that came with it. Horcrux. Crucio. Barty. Barty had gone to Malfoy and told him everything... Barty had betrayed Regulus in return for the Dark Lord’s favour, but the Lord had been merciful to Regulus and now Barty lay here beside him without a trace of shame.
Result: false equation. Regulus Black does not equal Barty Crouch. Anymore.
Today, 1979
Monday
Regulus got up from his desk and swept his cloak over his shoulders. The grandfather clock in the corner was chiming nine and the one small window overlooking the concrete sidewalk of Grimmauld Place gushed a delicate filigree of sunlight through the dusty glass. Papers of every size carpeted the desk and Regulus’ thin scribble was trailed across all of them. Several grimy plates, some still bearing the remains of meals, were stacked by the overflowing waste bin. Regulus did not allow Kreacher into his private rooms even to clean, under any circumstances.
He stepped out into the corridor before the ninth chime and closed the door behind him. As the gong of the clock faded it was echoed by a muffled scream. Regulus paused. The scream sounded as if it had come from beneath his feet. Was Mother doing one of her experiments in the basement? But she hated going down there where it was damp and the old heirlooms had gone wild with magic. And the scream had sounded male. For a moment, he was tempted to kneel and press his ear for the floor but then he heard stumbling footsteps and discarded the idea and the scream.
A hooded figure had appeared at the end of the corridor. Regulus straightened his shoulders and tightened his fingers around his wand. He let the figure get within three feet of him before he said, “Stop. Lower your hood.”
The figure did so. The man’s hands were bandaged. Regulus wished his face had been treated likewise. The flesh was in twisted knots and scarred chords, healed by hasty magic, powerful but amateur. In some places it looked as if it had bubbled and melted. One eye was half-closed and weeping pus that had dried over it in a film. Regulus winced.
“Does that hurt?”
“It will,” wheezed the man. His upper lip was badly swollen, slurring his speech.
“Are things going well at your end?”
“Not as well as you wanted,” the man replied, giving a hur hur of laughter. “But as well as will be. Everything is just as I - as you - as we thought. Bella will have the answers. It’s in a cave by the sea, you’ll find. Don’t bother with Barty.”
Regulus felt his tongue stick dry to the roof of his mouth. He took control of it and asked, casually, “Will I see him?”
“Yes,” the man said. “Once. You…”
“No. Don’t say anything else. We’re on tenterhooks as it is.”
The man nodded, sighed and fixed his gaze on Regulus. “Now, listen to me. You must not live to see tomorrow. Please. For both of us.”
Regulus nodded, feeling his groin tighten and grow cold. On Tuesday I will be dead, he thought. Mother will be so angry.
“I should get going.” The man hunched his shoulders. “Oh, and when you’re in the Ministry - duck into the courtrooms on your way out and wait there three and a half minutes before you take the elevator back to the atrium. Otherwise I... I don’t what happens.”
Everything can be weighed and measured except the unknown. Regulus nodded to show he understood. The man turned and shuffled back along the corridor before disappearing up the thin flight of stairs that lead back into the main levels of the Black family house. Regulus checked his watch and then Disapparated.
----------------------------------------------------
When he was a prefect of sixteen he had met the forth-year boy in an empty classroom. The boy was thin, pale and badly in need of a haircut - and he was casting what was very clearly (to the Black raised Regulus) dark magic on the photograph of a snub-nosed girl. Regulus gave him two detentions and a warning that next time he would tell Slughorn and the boy could face suspension. The boy slunk away, ripping the photo viciously in two as he glanced back at Regulus.
By chance, Regulus was supervising both the detentions the boy attended. While the other boys in the room, one tiny-eyed and fat-fingered, another with robes falling down at the hems, and a second-year picking his nose with relish, squinted and scratched slowly at the written problems they had been set or ignored them completely, the pale boy flicked his quill down the parchment in only a few minutes and then pushed it aside. Regulus checked the answers afterwards. They were all perfect.
In the second detention, he watched the boy throughout. He watched the tendons flexing in his hands as he wrote, the gangly wrists and ankles of a boy with bones growing too quickly, the way the straw-coloured haired fell in a mop across the boy’s eyes and tickled his nose so that he scratched it idly and constantly.
Regulus, trying to smile and pretend he was doing a favour for all their sakes, told the boys this detention was being cut short and they could go back to their common rooms. He followed the straw-haired boy as they slipped into the twilight-lit corridor and fell into step behind him.
“What house are you in?” Regulus asked gruffly.
“Hufflepuff.”
“Oh. I had you pegged as a Ravenclaw, with those brains.”
The boy didn’t answer the compliment (which, it had to be supposed, might also be an insult to the boy’s house). Regulus realised he was sweating like a first-year with a crush on Lily Evans.
“Why were you trying to curse that girl? You could really have hurt her,” he said, disgruntled.
The boy adjusted his satchel over his shoulder and muttered, “She’s been calling me names since I turned her down. She’s a stupid slut. I was sick of it.”
“Is punishing her worth getting kicked out of Hogwarts for dark magic?” Regulus reprimanded, even as his stomach did a joyful back flip. Fourteen and turning down girls? Regulus only knew two other people who had ever done that. Their names were Regulus and Sirius Black and he knew exactly what their reasons had been.
The boy rolled his eyes but did not try and defend himself. They walked on a little further and Regulus knew that in a few moments he would have to part from the boy and take the staircase down to the dungeons.
“Listen,” he said, trying to put authority into his voice, as befitted a Slytherin prefect. “I noticed you got all those Arithimancy questions wrong tonight. Do you have trouble with Arithmancy?”
“Loads,” the boy grunted. Regulus smiled at the way his shoulders moved.
“I’m doing my Arthimancy NEWT a year early,” he boasted. “If you wanted tutorials, I’d be happy to…”
The boy glanced back at him. Both of them had stopped in the corridor, Regulus lugging his books under his arm and wishing he’d combed his hair better this afternoon. He waited throughout the stretched silence. Then the boy said, “Yeah. That’d be great.”
“Then it’s a date. You name the evening,” Regulus replied.
----------------------------------------------------
A cloud of ash burst out of the chimney in Regulus’ study, followed by Regulus himself. Coughing, still sure he could hear the shouts of Aurors on his heels, he stumbled towards his desk and put a hand on it to steady himself. He kept emptying the ash out of his lungs until his chest muscles ached. Finally he straightened and his head stopped spinning.
He held up the his prize. Stolen from that fabled Department of Mysteries, right under the noses of the Unspeakables in the next room. The highest ranked of the Death Eaters could not have done better! It was a small gold hourglass, about as long as Regulus’ forefinger. He turned it over very gently, unsure of whether the sand could be activated by movement alone. But the glistening specks stayed in the top of the cup. He put the timeturner up to his eye and saw three tiny dials set around the top. “22 hrs”, said the largest one, and the next, “7 mths”, and the smallest, “4 yrs.”
He touched the last dial with his forefinger. Four years. How easy it would be to twist that one notch, return to his fifth year at Hogwarts in an instant. Barty would recognise him and Regulus could tell him everything, warn him never talk to that slimy Severus Snape, never to let the Death Eaters brand him with their mark and take Regulus down with him. They could run away together, go to America or Australia, somewhere Barty would forget the dark arts and they would have to rely on each other completely. How nice a dream.
Regulus picked up a quill, turned to the blank sheet of paper tacked among a myriad of parchments torn from books on dark magic and arthimancy. On the blank sheet he wrote, “Left 9:00am, returned 7:34pm. Backtracked 7:42.”
He put the quill down and twisted the largest dial once.
Monday
Regulus booked two rooms in the Leaky Cauldron that night, but slept in only one. He returned to his study in the Black house at half past nine. It was empty by that time. He spent that day preparing the instruments. It was like trying to tune a violin without being about to draw a bow across its strings; he had no idea whether any of them would work when the time came, except of course that the man in the hallway had said Bella would have the answer and that meant it would work.
As the evening drew on he went to his mother’s rooms to find a needle and thread. Kreacher was in there, his knobbly finger joints folding a flood of bloomers into perfect squares and tenderly sinking them into the bureau. He bowed low to Regulus.
“Regulus Sir, what is it you seek?” his little whine of a voice begged.
“Make a quick dinner and leave it outside my door,” Regulus barked. Kreacher gave a flourish with his hand, the last bloomer floating into place, and was gone with a crack. Regulus went straight to his mother’s great black wardrobe.
It was locked, of course, but he stretched up on his toes to retrieve the dusty silver beech-wood box nestled on top. It lay where his fingers remembered it and he sat down on the bed while he opened in. Within was his mother’s sowing kit - self-threading needles, pins with a different poison on each tip, spools of black threads charmed with spells of concealment and befuddlement. His mother had used this sowing kit regularly in her younger years - to send her rivals and enemies cursed clothes, laced with dark magic, that burst into flames, tightened until they strangled their wearer, or reduced the female body into that of a hideous old crone.
“Regulus?”
He snapped the box shut. His mother stood in the doorway, a hairbrush stroking her thick black mane. Her face seemed thinner than Regulus remembered it from two days ago. He hadn’t seen his mother without her fine dresses and skin-creams for some years.
“Just borrowing some tools for a project, Mother,” he said cheerfully, standing up and tucking the box under his arm. “I’ll have them back in a couple of hours.”
“Of course,” said his mother faintly. Regulus suddenly realised she was trying to brush her hair with the bristles facing outwards. Her eyes wandered across the room, smiling faintly at the dusty ornaments on the shelves and bureau. He flashed her absent face a tense smile then tried to duck around her into the safety of the hallway beyond.
“Wait.”
Regulus looked back at her. The strap of her faded nightgown was hanging off her arm and the shape of one withered breast swayed into full view as she moved. He focused on her face and forced himself to keep smiling.
“You’ve got a lady, haven’t you, Regulus?” his mother sighed happily.
She had met Barty several times the year before. Regulus clearly remembered the two of them tersely trying to make conversation in the front hall. His mother had always acted as though Regulus and Barty were just a phase her best son - well, only son, really - was going through, but she’d still made Barty swear to her that he would find some pureblood girl for Regulus to marry, just long enough to have children. “I have nothing against your unorthodox relationship with each other, Bartemius, nothing,” she’d told him firmly, “and you may continue it till death part you if you wish, as long as Regulus has a wife as well.” She hadn’t asked him about Barty for months now. Sometimes she asked for Regulus’ father, Orion - she forgot that she’d already buried him.
Let her believe what her failing mind wanted to believe. Regulus nodded in answer to her question.
His mother beckoned with one finger and he reluctantly returned to the room. She was foraging in one cracked pearl jewellery box and at last her eyes lit up and she lifted out a small golden locket with a plain face. She took Regulus’ hand and folded his fingers over the locket.
“Your father gave it to me,” she said, beaming at him. “Give it to your wife.”
Regulus nodded mutely. He recognised the locket - it was a cheap birthday present from his mother’s youngest niece, Narcissa, when his cousin had been eleven years old. His mother had rolled her eyes in disgust afterwards and sworn never to wear it. He put it in his pocket, kissed his mother’s dry cheek and shut the door behind him. As he strode away, wiping his mouth, he heard her already screaming at his brother again. He wondered if Sirius would be gleeful to see their mother in such a state of insanity or if he would find it in his black heart to pity her.
Back in his study, he sowed the instruments into the lining of his good robes, ate the cold dinner Kreacher had left and then took the timeturner and twisted the largest dial again.
Monday
He slept in the leaky cauldron again that night, in the second room he had paid for. He lay with open eyes for hours, aware of every snuffle and creak from the rooms around him. Across the hall, he was sleeping in another room as well, two Regulus Blacks, one snoring peacefully and one dreading the coming day. One was going to spend their daylight hours adjusting instruments in the Black house and talking to his mother, the other heading for a different fate he couldn’t yet guess. Regulus could walk across the hall right now, open the door (he still had the key, of course) and bid himself goodnight. He’d recognise himself, he was sure of it. But he knew wouldn’t do it, because he’d already slept tonight, he already knew that he would not disturb himself - unless he had put a memory charm on himself so that he didn’t remember?
Just thinking about it made his head spin. He wriggled his shoulders against the sheets and forced himself to relive the calculations he had made, searching for any errors or variables which he had not accounted for.
----------------------------------------------------
He had never been so smug as he’d been in those early days with Barty. He’d glanced at Sirius whenever they brushed passed each other in the corridor, hoping Sirius would look at him and be jealous because Regulus had done just as well for himself. Better, because he knew Barty was nothing like that Potter. One of the other prefects had reported to Regulus that Potter was dating the Head Girl. Sirius would be left out in the cold while his younger brother shared a bed with Barty Crouch Jr. and the idea exhilarated Regulus.
But then he found himself lying next to Barty on Saturday afternoons while everyone else was in Hogsmeade and he forgot about Sirius. He knew the shape of Barty’s hipbone as if he wore the image in front of his face and he knew exactly how far up Barty’s leg he had to touch before the lean boy would shiver and close his eyes in anticipation. He knew every strand of Barty’s hair and the exact feel of the soft down where Barty’s beard was coming through.
He tried to teach Barty Arthimancy but the boy couldn’t manage it like Regulus could. The numbers didn’t flow and obey Barty the way they obeyed Regulus. All magic could be broken down into a series of numbers and symbols which in his mind became the warp and woof of a loom until he was certain even the Unforgiveable curses would be diverted by his mere thought. Barty didn’t see magic as numbers, just as flashes of light and splendid metamorphosis. He didn’t understand what Regulus understood: that the wizard’s magic was about ripping numbers out of the balanced equations of nature and exchanging them for new variables. Once you understood that, anything was open to you.
As he climaxed inside Barty the numbers flew through his mind. All relationships could be expressed by equation, all satisfaction could be increased by rearranging that equation. All was number. Number was beauty. For Regulus, those months were all beauty.
Then sixth year came and his father died waiting for Sirius to come home, died a frail old man blasted by his wife’s disgust for her eldest son. At school, Barty followed the Slytherin classes searching for Regulus, but Regulus would see no one and accept no comfort, so Barty got to talking to that other boy in Sirius’ year, the half-muggle Snape. Just casual conversations while he hung outside Regulus’ classrooms, conversations where one hint led to another and by the time Regulus hauled himself other of his depression it was already too late. He didn’t know it then, or even in the months after when he let Barty soothe his grief again and again, he didn’t know it at all until three years later on the day Marmion Dolohov told them about the Horcrux. But Snape had been the one to put the Dark Lord’s seed in Barty’s mind.
Sirius killed Father and drove Mother mad; Snape ensnared Barty and fed him the potent glory of the Dark Lord; but it was the Dark Lord himself who had destroyed everything that was left and that was why Regulus was going to kill him.
----------------------------------------------------
That Monday, he went to Bellatrix in that tall creature of a house that overlooked the Thames, the house her husband had bought for her as a wedding present before the two of them had squandered their finances in funding their master and his pursuits. Even the two house elves that Rodolphus had inherited had been sold, so Regulus admitted himself through the front door. The enchantments of the house recognised him as a pureblooded Black and gave no trouble.
He paced the halls waiting for Bellatrix to return home, his instruments shifting heavy in the hems and closed pockets of his robes. The wallpaper was stained and peeling, dust covering whole rooms like a carpet over the furniture that rotted where it stood. There were not the ornaments, paintings and figurines that filled the house where Regulus had grown up. Everything was as empty and bare as the day Bellatrix gave up her maiden name. Only her bedroom was clean and cared-for.
She was alone when she arrived, wearing heavy satin and a flush in her cheeks. Regulus knew she had been with her master - he had been studying her moves for weeks now.
“Cousin,” they greeted each other and Regulus offered a bottle of wine for their pleasure.
“I must speak with you,” he said, making his voice heavy with urgency.
“Of course, Regulus.”
He poured out the wine in Bellatrix’s kitchen (the dining room being too dusty for any enjoyment) and sipped first, deeply. He waited for Bellatrix to taste the wine as well before he began to speak.
“Bella, our master distances himself from me,” Regulus he began, trying to sound as solemn and unhappy as possible. His cousin stiffened and flushed again as he mentioned the Dark Lord. “Foolishly, I was wary of his glory and now he looks upon me as a worm. I see now how over-cautious I was. I want only to serve him, to worship him, but he looks upon with less favour than the Imperio-cursed drones that do his bidding in the ministry. It is tearing me apart, Bellatrix!”
Bellatrix took another sip of the wine and he saw her free hand twitch on the table. In his stomach he could feel the aphrodisiac elixir he had brewed stirring and working its way into his veins. He knew it would already be taking it effect on Bellatrix. She was always so susceptible to such potions.
“I do not know what you ask of me,” Bellatrix said tersely. “The Dark Lord gives his blessing to whom he will. If you have shamed yourself in his eyes, you deserve to bear that shame.”
“Yes, yes, but he can be generous too,” Regulus moaned. The elixir was in his loins now, perhaps he should have diluted the dosage, one sip and already he felt lust in his very bones. It was sickly. “To you, Bellatrix. He is good to you, treats you so much above the other servants,” she smiled at this flattery, sipping at the poisonous wine again, and Regulus drove on, “I do not ask you to give him my tidings, not at all, or tell him of my devotion. I only ask,” it took all his willpower to finish his request, “I ask you to simulate with me the love he shares with you. So that I may serve him as a loving worm.”
This might have been too vague if Bellatrix was in her right senses, but now - with the aphrodisiac coursing in her veins and the memory of her Lord fresh in her mind - the euphemism was clear. She frowned at him. “How do you know of this?”
“You - you burn with his passion,” Regulus said lamely. Did she guess that something was up?
But now she was getting to her feet. “Our lovemaking his harsh, young cousin. You must be prepared in mind and body if I am to show you all we share. Do you understand?”
“I do,” Regulus said and the spiked wine did the rest of the work. Bellatrix was on him like a wolf before he could do any more.
----------------------------------------------------
Two hours later, a young Muggle woman wearing the apron of a waitress was standing outside a café with a cigarette when she saw a young black-haired man wearing what looked like a shapeless dress come staggering down the Thames riverbank. She watched listlessly as he clutched at the back of a park bench and then, bent over, vomited onto the concrete. It was far too early in the day to be drunk and the young waitress felt some pity for the man - really nothing more than a boy. She checked her watched - five minutes until her coffee break finished - stubbed out the cigarette on the concrete and strode across the street to where the boy was now standing with his head tipped back, eyes closed as if in prayer.
“Hey,” she called. “Hey kid, you doing okay?”
The boy’s head snapped towards her. He had the palest grey eyes she had ever seen. A little trail of vomit marked the corner of his mouth.
“You look a bit rough. You want to come back to my café and get some coffee, kid?” she asked gently.
The boy stumbled away, raising one arm against her. He cried in a panicked voice, “Get away! Ugh, get away, you woman!”
“Hey, look…” the waitress began angrily, but she got no further. There was a sound like a pencil breaking and the boy vanished into thin air as if he had never existed.
----------------------------------------------------
The entire fic was too large to post at once, so the second half is here: tawabids.livejournal.com/4068.html