bait_backup | That doesn't look good, doesn't bode well, kid (Reply)

*The Black family residence in London is a narrow, haunting, and beautiful place, mostly silent but for the creaks and moans of it's historic skeleton settling day and night. From cellar to attic, it's aesthetic home is somewhere in a ghostly monochromatic muggle film, with it's dark ornately carved woods, Victorian patterned wallpapers, long thick curtains draping down to the floors, clawfooted furniture, and the echoes of familial footfalls. Regulus was raised here, spent many long nights of his childhood with his bedsheets pulled high around his face. As a child he preferred waiting uncomfortably until morning rather than braving the lightless, high-ceilinged hallways and stairwells to go use the bathroom or fetch a drink of water. When wandering in the evening, he could never enter a darkened room without a candle or a lamp to search around for a knob or a switch or a match. Even well into his teens, if he tried, unease would creep up his spine and he would leave, only returning once he had something to light his way. He has never feared the dark anywhere else, not at Hogwarts or on any raid, but in his own home he feels comfortable making himself comfortable instead of carrying on and sallying forth into shadows.

Now that he has finished his schooling and returned home for good, Regulus' childhood timidity has hardly changed it's face. He keeps a full pitcher and glass at his bedside now, and rarely leaves his room once he's retired. His bedroom is alone near the top of the house, and even in the daylight he absently trails his fingers across each baluster of the staircases as he climbs them, just as he used to in his childhood to count how far away he was from the landing. These precautions are no longer out of fundamental fears of being lost or attacked in the dark as they once were, but are instead his own personal traditions to ward off misfortune. It would be wrong to assume Regulus to be a superstitious young man - he is, if anything, burdened by his own logic - but he knows far too many secrets to feel safe.

His school trunk has been unpacked, but the physical remains of Regulus' deepest secret have stayed with him since his journey home from Hogwarts. From being tucked inside a box in his carry-on luggage, to keeping it locked in his desk since he's arrived home, no one has been given the chance to catch sight of it but him. Now, seated at his desk after dinner, he unlocks it quietly as though someone were listening, and brings out the locket.

Cupping it in the palm of his hand, it's weight seems impossibly heavy for it's size, the green stones glinting coldly in the yellow lamplight of his bedroom. It's been weighing on him since Christmas, staying unscratched no matter what he's done to it despite it being obvious gold and not merely plated. Not able to find any information to help and certainly unable to ask for it, Regulus has resorted to hiding the locket instead - but the knowledge that it is still in his possession makes him continually sick to his stomach with nerves. He had risked everything to get this, his plan had made so much sense to him then. But now, as a Hogwarts graduate alone in his parent's house with no way out of a mess he's created, some whispering part of him can't help but wish he was gone along with this thing, for good.*