Come rest your head, come stay with me awhile

[fatalfrenzy.livejournal.com]

*Bellatrix has never been maternal--even the suggestion of such a thing would send more than a few titters around a drawing-room and she knows it. She has patted the odd child on the head, certainly--cooed a bit over Draco a handful of times--admonished older children at family gatherings who were misbehaving or loud or simply too close to her. But that is all, and all she has any desire for. So maybe it's odd that at Barty's incomprehensible, dense, very much fucking Bartyesque letter she's immediately set off for the house without so much as a pause for reflection. Perhaps it's odd that an overwhelming urgency, a sense of this is not right is thrumming in her veins and urging her to hurry, as she's always heard it does in the veins of mothers when their children are in need.

Considering her singular fondness for Barty, perhaps it isn't odd. Considering her connection to Regulus, perhaps it's anything but odd.

Either way within minutes she's dressed and ready--robes as grim and utilitarian as she owns, and for some reason she's braided her hair flat against her head as she does when doing the Dark Lord's work--like she's spoiling for a fight. For some reason her hand is wound rightly around her wand and her heart is in her throat as she straightens her cloak around her and Apparates into the ever-shifting house: a grim, black-robed apparition no less frightening for its lack of a mask.*

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[spindleform.livejournal.com]

*Though only a handful have admitted it in so many words, and it's always been kept hushed, Regulus is far, far from the first in his family to begin to see or imagine or feel things that aren't truly there. It isn't anything so common or grisly as madness, anyone would tell you that. But then again, no one in any generation has really found it necessary to sit down and give it a name at all.

What is unique about Regulus is not his frayed and flighty nerves, his growing need for a walking stick, or even his apparent fascination with grim omens, all of these things are rather run of the mill once one gets to know enough of the Blacks through the years. No, what makes him stand out is simply how very little time it took him to get there. It has been a long while indeed since someone younger than Regulus Black has had quite so long a list of fears.

As impressive as this is, it really doesn't help matters when a dark figure of a woman appears to one side of the windowseat he occupies. He may have the Mark on his arm, but when faced with danger in a house he had thought to be secure, Regulus' brain doesn't recognise his cousin's face until after the frantic moment when he scrambles off the edge to land embarrassingly on the floor, one arm tangled in curtains.*

[fatalfrenzy.livejournal.com]

*They make an unlikely foursome, stepping out onto the hearth with linked arms: the mistress of the house, two disheveled boys, and one sad toothbrush.

She's keenly aware of this, and that she hasn't exactly told her husband any of this, so when Bellatrix calls out into the house it's almost meekly--just the slightest hint about it of the child who has brought home a mess.*

Roddy?