![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hp fic: Houses of the Holy
Title: Houses of the Holy
Pairing: Regulus/Bellatrix
Rating: NC-17
Words: ~4,100
Summary: Grimmauld Place is alive; Regulus learns this at an early age.
Warnings: Possible mindfucking. Regulus is underage.
A/N: This is wrong. All apologies. Thanks to![[personal profile]](https://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=88)
happiestwhen, for taking wibble-duty.
Houses of the Holy
::
i.
Grimmauld Place is alive; Regulus learns this at an early age.
Voices fill the empty spaces in the dark rooms and darker hallways. Whispers follow him from his bedroom to the kitchen, hovering behind him in the doorways and chasing him him up the stairs.
They watch and wait, cataloguing his every move. When he goes to bed they tattle to his mother; he learns this at an early age, too.
The night Sirius leaves for Hogwarts Regulus cries himself to sleep. In the morning, his mother punishes him for weakness and cowardice, beats him with both hexes and her hands.
"The house told her," Regulus says. "I know it did. I know it."
"You're being silly, Master Regulus." Kreacher speaks softly, and he bandages Regulus' cuts and scrapes with patient, childlike fingers. "Houses don't talk."
Regulus doesn't argue, but he knows Kreacher is wrong, because there's no one else that could have told. His father died the same week Regulus was born, and the house-elves are as scared of his mother as he is.
ii.
To be a Black is to be royal; Regulus learns this after Sirius leaves for school.
His mother passes the empty, grey afternoons with history lessons made into stories of greatness. She tells Regulus of the Pharaohs, of Tutankhamen and Amenhotep and Ramses the Great, tells him how the people of Egypt worshipped their rulers and held them up as Gods.
She says the Blacks are the purest and most honourable of the pureblood families, says they are the Pharaohs of the ancient Wizarding lines. She says the Blacks have a duty to lead the Wizarding World by example, says they are the stars come down to Earth to outshine all others.
Regulus believes her, because a mother wouldn't lie. He believes her, because he's seen the way Sirius can make himself the centre of attention, because he's seen the way Sirius' smile can light up a room.
And he misses it. Misses Sirius.
He doesn't say that, because he's afraid of what his mother will do if he does. He tries his best not to think it, in case the walls can hear inside his head.
iii.
Bellatrix visits Grimmauld Place once a month with her parents and sisters. His mother fusses when they come, choosing Regulus' clothes and combing his hair herself, and they sit for hours in the cavernous dining room, making strained conversation over expensive, heavy foods.
Regulus studies her silently as he sips the one glass of wine he's allowed at dinner, and he wonders if this is what his mother had looked like when she was younger.
He sees his mother in Bellatrix's perfect doll-like features, in her sleek, carefully knotted hair and her delicate hands. Her face is powdered until it's almost white, as pale as the bone China under Regulus' half-eaten duck, and her lips are stained a colour that remind Regulus of blood.
Bellatrix makes a show of listening to the adults' dreary conversation, laughing and murmuring in all the right places. Her fork flashes bright and silver against her slim, red-tipped fingers as she picks at her food, and once the candles have burned low, her gaze drifts across the table to Sirius. Her eyes darken as she takes him in, and her full mouth curves into an ugly frown.
She looks at Regulus only once, favouring him with a disinterested glance as he's excused from the table. She forgets him before he's even left the room, but when Regulus goes upstairs he finds he cannot sleep. The walls' words ring in his ears, and he breaks into a fevered sweat despite the wind and rain battering his bedroom window.
iv.
Bellatrix sits in the grass with blue and purple pansies piled at her knee. She is the oldest of the three, yet she plays, braiding the wilting flowers into a chain. Her hands are deft and quick, and Regulus stares as the bright green stems bend and twist around her fingers.
Sirius lounges a few feet away, his back propped against a polished statue of a nameless Black who died long before Regulus was born. His hair wants cutting, and his tie is loose. Ugly, Muggle boots peek out from under the hem of his dust-spattered dress robes, and Regulus wonders if the garden reports to his mother the way the house does.
The sun glares down, making Regulus uncomfortably warm. The grass looks crisp and cool, and he wants to have it under his hands, wants to feel it between his fingers, but inside his head his mother shrieks about proper behaviour. Regulus stays on the hard, marble bench for fear of mussing himself, and he ignores the way Sirius smirks when he pulls irritably at his collar.
Bellatrix forms her chain of pansies into a circlet, and places it on Sirius' head. It slips down, hanging crookedly over one eye, and Bellatrix's laughter tinkles through the garden like chimes. Sirius tosses it to Regulus with a sigh, and Regulus blushes at the way Bellatrix smiles.
v.
Grimmauld Place is alive; Regulus often forgets this when he's away at school, but the house is quick to remind him once he walks through the door.
The voices are everywhere, hiding inside everything. He hears whispers in the billow of the drawing room curtains, hears laughter in the creak of the floorboards and the crackle of the fire. His mother rarely speaks at all, running her household with icy glares and chiselled frowns. Regulus wonders if she's finally run out of words, wonders if she's given up trying to heard over the walls.
Dinner is quiet to the point of silence. His mother ignores her onion-roasted pheasant, and Bellatrix's parents fill the emptiness with glass after glass of a wine so dark it's almost black.
Regulus listens to the house talk to itself, listens to the horrible things it has to say. He wants to argue with it, wants to call it a liar, and he continues to eat well after he's full to keep himself quiet, to stop himself from embarrassing his mother by shouting at no one.
The house tells him that his mother's running mad, tells him that his mother is a schemer, a murderer. It tells him that his father's body is somewhere inside the walls, tells him that the silver dagger embedded in what's left of his chest is etched with the Black family crest.
It says that upstairs, Sirius touches himself the way his mother always said they shouldn't. It says that upstairs, Bellatrix watches him from inside his wardrobe.
Regulus runs for his room, bolting from the table without being properly excused. The voices are worse upstairs, chattering until he thinks the walls are breathing, closing in, and the whispers turn to screams after he closes his eyes.
He wakes to darkness, to near silence, to the house lulling him with soft, quiet words. He stops himself from shouting by biting his fist until copper spreads across his tongue, and he touches himself because the walls say he shouldn't.
He strokes himself to hardness with a nervous, unsure hand, his fingers slipping clumsily over his sweat-slick skin. Heat spirals through his body, dangerous and foreign, and a strange pressure coils low in his belly, spreading up through his chest until he can barely breathe.
His hand steadies, sliding firmly over his cock, and the house changes its story, turning no and stop into more and yes. It chants at him, a mantra, a prayer, urging and coaxing him as his hips snap off the bed to meet the circle of his hand.
The house talks about Sirius, telling him Sirius was doing just this only hours before, remind him of Sirius until he can hardly stand it. He does his best to think of someone else, anyone else, and when he twists his wrist and presses just there the house almost wins, but as he tumbles over the edge he clings to a vision of sleek, black hair and blood-coloured lips.
Ashamed, he wipes his sticky hand on his nightshirt and sleeps with his face buried in his pillow.
The house talks, but it doesn't tell all. It doesn't tell him Bellatrix was watching through the keyhole until the next time her family comes to visit.
vi.
A chill wind stirs through the garden, threading through the leaves and twisting around the vines. The roses dying quietly around the fountain are the same deep red as Bellatrix's lips, and her hand seems small and cold inside of his.
"Your mother doesn't like me," Bellatrix says suddenly. She tilts her head like a child, and Regulus finds it hard to breathe.
"You're family," Regulus replies. It's the best he can do.
"She doesn't," Bellatrix argues, coiling a strand of hair around her finger. Her voice is as sharp and frigid as the wind.
"She does," Regulus says, and it's a lie.
His mother thinks Bellatrix is broken, flawed. She distrusts Bellatrix's intentions, believes every word out of her mouth is sugar-coated and barbed. His mother has never said as much; the house has said it for her.
Bellatrix uses his hand like a leash, leading him down a neatly-gravelled path that twists behind the fountain to a thicket of trees. It's darker here, and colder, and Regulus decides the fragment of space between the moss-covered oaks is the place where the wind goes to die.
She kisses him carefully, a soft brush of lips that tests as much as it tastes. He allows it, but backed up against the tree as he is he doesn't have much choice.
"I'm not Sirius," Regulus mumbles against her mouth. It's the first thing that comes to his mind, and as Bellatrix pulls away she frowns like a knife.
"I know that," she replies. Her voice is hard, sharp-edged. "If I wanted Sirius, I wouldn't be here."
Regulus doesn't argue because he can't, because Sirius is gone. Sirius ran away from this madness two days after he came home from school.
She kisses him again, harder this time, pushing at his lips with a slick, wet tongue, and he allows this, too, as much as he knows he shouldn't. She tastes sweet and sour at once, like heavy wine and spoiled fruit, and he shivers when her hand comes up to cup his face.
"I'm not Sirius," he says again, and her fingers twist painfully in his hair.
"I know that," she replies, and this time her knife-frown cuts him, slicing his neck with the sharp scrape of teeth.
She's lying, he thinks, but he can't find the words to tell her.
"Can I touch you?" she asks, and she's all sweetness again, her red lips forced into a parody of a smile.
No, he thinks, because the house mocks him when he touches himself, laughs when he fists his cock to the hazy image of her face. No, he thinks, because his mother would hate him, hate him the way she hates Sirius, because he still doesn't trust the garden to keep quiet.
Bellatrix watches him as her hand slips inside his robes, her mouth twisted into a smile that's almost real, the tip of her tongue waiting on the curve of her lower lip. No, he thinks, but his body betrays him, shifting toward the spectre of her touch before it's even there. Her tongue moves then, darting out to find his own, and Regulus closes his eyes.
She slides her hand up his cock slowly, with soft, delicate motions that are just a tease wrapped in lies. A whine builds in his throat, a desperate, childlike sound, but he swallows it, unwilling to give that to her, unwilling to let the house hear him crumble like the rotting basement walls.
"Such a pretty thing," she murmurs, pressing closer, her free hand grasping at his robes.
She moves in earnest then, pretence given over for a firm hand and tightly-curled fingers, and he realises the house has not been lying about her watching because she touches him the same way he touches himself. Heat washes over him, threatening to pull him under, and he wonders how many times she's watched him, wonders if she's ever heard him choke out her name.
Regulus lets out a sharp gasp when she drops to her knees, his hands snatching at the tree behind him, at her hair, at anything that will keep him from falling. He feels warmth, wetness, the slick slide of tongue, and he explodes inside her mouth before he can catch his next breath.
He waits for her to laugh at his clumsiness, at his youth and inexperience, embarrassment burning over his skin as the icy wind whips around his face. She doesn't; silence fills the stretched minutes that follow, broken only by the distant rustle of leaves and the soft sounds of her licking him clean.
"Such a pretty thing," she says again. Her smile is slow, molten, and she watches him through heavy-lidded eyes as she pulls his hand inside her robes and between her legs.
He closes his eyes again, because he can't see this, can't watch himself touch her, because the sudden fever-pitch of her voice sounds like the pained creaks of the house settling for the night. He's completely lost, his fingers slipping helplessly between her slick folds, but she guides him through it, teaches him with warm whispers against his ear, with a hand tight around his wrist and the slow roll of her hips.
She hisses as she shudders against him, her hands pulling at his hair and tearing at his robes. He dares to look then, sees her wild hair and smudged lips, and he understands why his mother thinks she's broken and flawed.
Whore, the house whispers as they walk inside, and Regulus pretends he doesn't know who it's talking to.
vii.
The first time she lets him inside her, inside her, Regulus thinks he's going to die.
Bellatrix lays him out like an offering, spreads him across the tiny bed in the room she rented at the Hogs Head. The dusty sheets are rough against his naked skin, burning him as he twists and moves and breathes. Candles flicker on a rickety table next to the bed, a failed attempt at tenderness in something tawdry.
The silence in the dingy room is so strange and sudden it hurts. The walls don't whisper to him, they don't laugh at him or mock him or even speak, and the timbre of her moans and the sharpness of her breaths ring so hard and loud in his ears he's sure they'll start to bleed.
She smiles when she shifts on top of him, her tongue darting out to wet her lips as she uses her body to pin him to the bed. He keeps his eyes open because she commands him to, because she wants him to watch her take this from him. She slides down on his cock slowly, and he manages to obey, but they flutter closed as she starts to move, as the measured roll of her hips drives him insane.
She's too hot, too wet, and it's too much -- different from her mouth and hands in a hundred wonderful and horrible ways. She rides him faster, her hitched breaths a perfect counterpoint to the sway of her breasts and the rise and fall of her hips. He tries to hold on, fisting the sheets and clinging to the stubborn silence of the walls, imagining someone else on top of him, imagining what the house would say if it could see him, if it knew what he was doing.
He holds on as best he can, but his end comes before she's really begun. He can tell she's still wanting, still needing, can tell by the strain in her voice and the dangerous thrum under her skin. He can tell by the restless shift in her hips, and he pulls her toward his mouth with fingers that press hard enough to bruise.
He's grown good at this; a skill borne of constant practise. He licks her the way he knows she likes, the way she's taught him to, tongue pushing between her lips, sliding up to swirl over her clit before dropping down to plunge inside. She arches against him, pushing herself into his mouth, and he can taste himself on her, fancies the salty bitterness is the flavour of defeat.
She comes with a shout that drowns out the speechlessness of the room, moaning his name as her hips snap taut around his face.
Whore, he whispers against the inside of her thigh, and he knows exactly who he's talking to.
viii.
Her body is still a mystery to him, despite the number of times they've done this. Each time she comes to him he finds something he's never seen before -- a new curve, a new arch, a new spot that makes her call out his name.
She's only asked for Sirius once, and he let it go because Sirius is not the only one she's ever asked for, because she forgave him the one time he asked for Sirius himself.
They've never done this here, never kissed and touched inside this house. It's always been in the garden, in her family's summer cottage, in wretched, rented rooms. The house jeers as his hand maps the swell of her breasts, screams in laughter as his thumb skates over her clit and his fingers slip inside.
He fucks her with his hand until she writhes underneath him, mouths at her nipples until they're wet and red, peaked and hard as they glisten in the candlelight. He wants inside her, wants to feel her around him, and her legs fall open in invitation as she arches off the bed, but the house begs him to wait, and he listens.
The walls tell him she wants his mouth, and he gives it to her, his tongue twining around his fingers as he pushes them deeper inside. She screams then, a deathly, desperate wail that threatens to drown out the chanting of the house. He sucks at her clit, teasing it with his lips and tongue, and she falls apart under his hands.
Now, the house says, now and fast and hard, and he obeys, pulling her closer by the hips and driving into her with a single thrust. His name tumbles past her lips as he pulls back and slides in again, her head dropping against the pillow and her legs wrapping around his waist.
You'll never have her, the house says. She'll never be yours. You'll never have more of her than you have right now.
Regulus calls the house a liar, chokes the word out against her neck, but he knows the house is telling the truth, knows he's only lying to himself. He kisses her to stop himself from shouting at the house again, crushing his mouth against hers and pushing his tongue roughly between her lips.
He pulls out of her, smiling as the house laughs at the way she whines, and he rolls her, yanking her up and back by the hips to thrust into her from behind. She moans, a long, low sound that makes the house chant louder than before, and she tears at the sheets, her fingers twisting around soft, smooth linen.
She doesn't love you, the house insists. She doesn't love anyone but herself.
The words sting, burning across Regulus' skin like a slap in the face, but he knows the house speaks the truth. He thinks she might have loved Sirius once, before he left, before he fell from grace, but he knows that if she did, it was only because when she looked at Sirius she thought she saw something of herself.
He rakes his nails down her back, wanting her to hurt, wanting her to feel, wanting her to understand. Blood wells bright and red in the wheals his nails left behind, and she comes, screaming, her body tensing around him, pulling at his cock until it pushes him over the edge.
The house remains silent as she slips out the room, and as the door clicks closed, Regulus thanks it out loud for keeping its own council.
ix.
The garden is bright, cheerful, awash in the golden glow of the afternoon sun. White roses symbolise purity and light as they flank the archway and hang from the trellis, and Regulus laughs bitterly inside.
He watches Bellatrix become a Lestrange in detachment. He's distantly aware of Bellatrix's mother crying, of his own mother's thigh pressed against his on the narrow, uncomfortable bench, of Narcissa standing in the aisle, throwing petals almost the colour of her hair. The farce plays out in front of him in pantomime, and when Bellatrix speaks her vows he doesn't hear a thing.
Bellatrix smiles at him as she passes. Lestrange doesn't look at him at all. Regulus isn't sure what is worse -- that Lestrange doesn't know, or that Lestrange wouldn't consider him a threat if he did.
Regulus hasn't thought of Sirius in months, but as a pegasus-drawn carriage whisks Bellatrix Lestrange away, he wonders what Sirius would say if he was here.
After, the house is silent for the first time in Regulus' memory. He wonders if the whispers have been his imagination, or if the house has been speaking with Bellatrix's voice all along.
x.
The Mark doesn't hurt the way Regulus expects it to. He thinks it should burn, thinks it should sear, but it doesn't; it simply aches, a dull but pointed reminder that he sold his soul to a madman for a woman who's married to someone else.
She kisses him after he takes it, kisses him for the first time since she became a Lestrange. She tastes different somehow, the familiar sweet-sourness of her mouth muted in a way that's almost stale.
He fucks her up against the wall, in the same room where the madman branded him and claimed him as his own. The hard, ancient stone is cold under his hands, but her fingers are colder as they steal inside his robes.
She tells him Lord Voldemort is watching them, in a voice that reminds him of Grimmauld Place when Grimmauld Place still knew how to talk. He bites her lips to silence her, slams into her so hard her head whips back, hitting the wall with a solid crack.
She's quiet after that, and Regulus is glad. She leans into him, limp and doll-like, submitting to his hard, fast thrusts and the rough touch of his hands. She shivers as he comes, a hitched breath shifting to a whine as he pulls out and steps away.
He makes her finish it herself, watching as she kneels on the floor, her fingers lost in the tangle of hair between her legs. She rubs herself as hard and fast as he fucked her, her teeth creasing her lower lip and her hips rocking forward to meet her hand.
"Lord Voldemort is watching", he tells her.
She comes then, her body shaking so hard she collapses into the floor, and Regulus turns away.
xi.
Grimmauld Place is dead.
The house no longer speaks, whispers no longer chase him through the halls. His mother has finally broken her silence, but she only opens her mouth to rave, and he finds her madness painful to listen to.
His father is a large, robust man in the portrait over the mantle, but the skeleton Regulus finds in the drawing room wall seems small and frail. The knife resting between his ribs is tiny, almost delicate. It's a woman's weapon. A child's toy.
The house no longer speaks, but he listens to his mother's screams, feels the slow, dull ache in his arm, and he knows there was a time when the walls had words -- maybe his mother's, maybe Bellatrix's.
Maybe his mother and Bellatrix are one and the same, two halves of a single, maddened whole.
He thinks of the Pharaohs, of Tutankhamen and Amenhotep and Ramses the Great, thinks of stars come down to Earth to outshine all others. Sirius is the brightest, if the charts can be believed, but Bellatrix managed to burn him all the same.
"You're dead," he tells the house.
Grimmauld Place doesn't bother to reply, and the locket is cold and heavy in his hand.
FIN
Pairing: Regulus/Bellatrix
Rating: NC-17
Words: ~4,100
Summary: Grimmauld Place is alive; Regulus learns this at an early age.
Warnings: Possible mindfucking. Regulus is underage.
A/N: This is wrong. All apologies. Thanks to
happiestwhen, for taking wibble-duty.::
i.
Grimmauld Place is alive; Regulus learns this at an early age.
Voices fill the empty spaces in the dark rooms and darker hallways. Whispers follow him from his bedroom to the kitchen, hovering behind him in the doorways and chasing him him up the stairs.
They watch and wait, cataloguing his every move. When he goes to bed they tattle to his mother; he learns this at an early age, too.
The night Sirius leaves for Hogwarts Regulus cries himself to sleep. In the morning, his mother punishes him for weakness and cowardice, beats him with both hexes and her hands.
"The house told her," Regulus says. "I know it did. I know it."
"You're being silly, Master Regulus." Kreacher speaks softly, and he bandages Regulus' cuts and scrapes with patient, childlike fingers. "Houses don't talk."
Regulus doesn't argue, but he knows Kreacher is wrong, because there's no one else that could have told. His father died the same week Regulus was born, and the house-elves are as scared of his mother as he is.
ii.
To be a Black is to be royal; Regulus learns this after Sirius leaves for school.
His mother passes the empty, grey afternoons with history lessons made into stories of greatness. She tells Regulus of the Pharaohs, of Tutankhamen and Amenhotep and Ramses the Great, tells him how the people of Egypt worshipped their rulers and held them up as Gods.
She says the Blacks are the purest and most honourable of the pureblood families, says they are the Pharaohs of the ancient Wizarding lines. She says the Blacks have a duty to lead the Wizarding World by example, says they are the stars come down to Earth to outshine all others.
Regulus believes her, because a mother wouldn't lie. He believes her, because he's seen the way Sirius can make himself the centre of attention, because he's seen the way Sirius' smile can light up a room.
And he misses it. Misses Sirius.
He doesn't say that, because he's afraid of what his mother will do if he does. He tries his best not to think it, in case the walls can hear inside his head.
iii.
Bellatrix visits Grimmauld Place once a month with her parents and sisters. His mother fusses when they come, choosing Regulus' clothes and combing his hair herself, and they sit for hours in the cavernous dining room, making strained conversation over expensive, heavy foods.
Regulus studies her silently as he sips the one glass of wine he's allowed at dinner, and he wonders if this is what his mother had looked like when she was younger.
He sees his mother in Bellatrix's perfect doll-like features, in her sleek, carefully knotted hair and her delicate hands. Her face is powdered until it's almost white, as pale as the bone China under Regulus' half-eaten duck, and her lips are stained a colour that remind Regulus of blood.
Bellatrix makes a show of listening to the adults' dreary conversation, laughing and murmuring in all the right places. Her fork flashes bright and silver against her slim, red-tipped fingers as she picks at her food, and once the candles have burned low, her gaze drifts across the table to Sirius. Her eyes darken as she takes him in, and her full mouth curves into an ugly frown.
She looks at Regulus only once, favouring him with a disinterested glance as he's excused from the table. She forgets him before he's even left the room, but when Regulus goes upstairs he finds he cannot sleep. The walls' words ring in his ears, and he breaks into a fevered sweat despite the wind and rain battering his bedroom window.
iv.
Bellatrix sits in the grass with blue and purple pansies piled at her knee. She is the oldest of the three, yet she plays, braiding the wilting flowers into a chain. Her hands are deft and quick, and Regulus stares as the bright green stems bend and twist around her fingers.
Sirius lounges a few feet away, his back propped against a polished statue of a nameless Black who died long before Regulus was born. His hair wants cutting, and his tie is loose. Ugly, Muggle boots peek out from under the hem of his dust-spattered dress robes, and Regulus wonders if the garden reports to his mother the way the house does.
The sun glares down, making Regulus uncomfortably warm. The grass looks crisp and cool, and he wants to have it under his hands, wants to feel it between his fingers, but inside his head his mother shrieks about proper behaviour. Regulus stays on the hard, marble bench for fear of mussing himself, and he ignores the way Sirius smirks when he pulls irritably at his collar.
Bellatrix forms her chain of pansies into a circlet, and places it on Sirius' head. It slips down, hanging crookedly over one eye, and Bellatrix's laughter tinkles through the garden like chimes. Sirius tosses it to Regulus with a sigh, and Regulus blushes at the way Bellatrix smiles.
v.
Grimmauld Place is alive; Regulus often forgets this when he's away at school, but the house is quick to remind him once he walks through the door.
The voices are everywhere, hiding inside everything. He hears whispers in the billow of the drawing room curtains, hears laughter in the creak of the floorboards and the crackle of the fire. His mother rarely speaks at all, running her household with icy glares and chiselled frowns. Regulus wonders if she's finally run out of words, wonders if she's given up trying to heard over the walls.
Dinner is quiet to the point of silence. His mother ignores her onion-roasted pheasant, and Bellatrix's parents fill the emptiness with glass after glass of a wine so dark it's almost black.
Regulus listens to the house talk to itself, listens to the horrible things it has to say. He wants to argue with it, wants to call it a liar, and he continues to eat well after he's full to keep himself quiet, to stop himself from embarrassing his mother by shouting at no one.
The house tells him that his mother's running mad, tells him that his mother is a schemer, a murderer. It tells him that his father's body is somewhere inside the walls, tells him that the silver dagger embedded in what's left of his chest is etched with the Black family crest.
It says that upstairs, Sirius touches himself the way his mother always said they shouldn't. It says that upstairs, Bellatrix watches him from inside his wardrobe.
Regulus runs for his room, bolting from the table without being properly excused. The voices are worse upstairs, chattering until he thinks the walls are breathing, closing in, and the whispers turn to screams after he closes his eyes.
He wakes to darkness, to near silence, to the house lulling him with soft, quiet words. He stops himself from shouting by biting his fist until copper spreads across his tongue, and he touches himself because the walls say he shouldn't.
He strokes himself to hardness with a nervous, unsure hand, his fingers slipping clumsily over his sweat-slick skin. Heat spirals through his body, dangerous and foreign, and a strange pressure coils low in his belly, spreading up through his chest until he can barely breathe.
His hand steadies, sliding firmly over his cock, and the house changes its story, turning no and stop into more and yes. It chants at him, a mantra, a prayer, urging and coaxing him as his hips snap off the bed to meet the circle of his hand.
The house talks about Sirius, telling him Sirius was doing just this only hours before, remind him of Sirius until he can hardly stand it. He does his best to think of someone else, anyone else, and when he twists his wrist and presses just there the house almost wins, but as he tumbles over the edge he clings to a vision of sleek, black hair and blood-coloured lips.
Ashamed, he wipes his sticky hand on his nightshirt and sleeps with his face buried in his pillow.
The house talks, but it doesn't tell all. It doesn't tell him Bellatrix was watching through the keyhole until the next time her family comes to visit.
vi.
A chill wind stirs through the garden, threading through the leaves and twisting around the vines. The roses dying quietly around the fountain are the same deep red as Bellatrix's lips, and her hand seems small and cold inside of his.
"Your mother doesn't like me," Bellatrix says suddenly. She tilts her head like a child, and Regulus finds it hard to breathe.
"You're family," Regulus replies. It's the best he can do.
"She doesn't," Bellatrix argues, coiling a strand of hair around her finger. Her voice is as sharp and frigid as the wind.
"She does," Regulus says, and it's a lie.
His mother thinks Bellatrix is broken, flawed. She distrusts Bellatrix's intentions, believes every word out of her mouth is sugar-coated and barbed. His mother has never said as much; the house has said it for her.
Bellatrix uses his hand like a leash, leading him down a neatly-gravelled path that twists behind the fountain to a thicket of trees. It's darker here, and colder, and Regulus decides the fragment of space between the moss-covered oaks is the place where the wind goes to die.
She kisses him carefully, a soft brush of lips that tests as much as it tastes. He allows it, but backed up against the tree as he is he doesn't have much choice.
"I'm not Sirius," Regulus mumbles against her mouth. It's the first thing that comes to his mind, and as Bellatrix pulls away she frowns like a knife.
"I know that," she replies. Her voice is hard, sharp-edged. "If I wanted Sirius, I wouldn't be here."
Regulus doesn't argue because he can't, because Sirius is gone. Sirius ran away from this madness two days after he came home from school.
She kisses him again, harder this time, pushing at his lips with a slick, wet tongue, and he allows this, too, as much as he knows he shouldn't. She tastes sweet and sour at once, like heavy wine and spoiled fruit, and he shivers when her hand comes up to cup his face.
"I'm not Sirius," he says again, and her fingers twist painfully in his hair.
"I know that," she replies, and this time her knife-frown cuts him, slicing his neck with the sharp scrape of teeth.
She's lying, he thinks, but he can't find the words to tell her.
"Can I touch you?" she asks, and she's all sweetness again, her red lips forced into a parody of a smile.
No, he thinks, because the house mocks him when he touches himself, laughs when he fists his cock to the hazy image of her face. No, he thinks, because his mother would hate him, hate him the way she hates Sirius, because he still doesn't trust the garden to keep quiet.
Bellatrix watches him as her hand slips inside his robes, her mouth twisted into a smile that's almost real, the tip of her tongue waiting on the curve of her lower lip. No, he thinks, but his body betrays him, shifting toward the spectre of her touch before it's even there. Her tongue moves then, darting out to find his own, and Regulus closes his eyes.
She slides her hand up his cock slowly, with soft, delicate motions that are just a tease wrapped in lies. A whine builds in his throat, a desperate, childlike sound, but he swallows it, unwilling to give that to her, unwilling to let the house hear him crumble like the rotting basement walls.
"Such a pretty thing," she murmurs, pressing closer, her free hand grasping at his robes.
She moves in earnest then, pretence given over for a firm hand and tightly-curled fingers, and he realises the house has not been lying about her watching because she touches him the same way he touches himself. Heat washes over him, threatening to pull him under, and he wonders how many times she's watched him, wonders if she's ever heard him choke out her name.
Regulus lets out a sharp gasp when she drops to her knees, his hands snatching at the tree behind him, at her hair, at anything that will keep him from falling. He feels warmth, wetness, the slick slide of tongue, and he explodes inside her mouth before he can catch his next breath.
He waits for her to laugh at his clumsiness, at his youth and inexperience, embarrassment burning over his skin as the icy wind whips around his face. She doesn't; silence fills the stretched minutes that follow, broken only by the distant rustle of leaves and the soft sounds of her licking him clean.
"Such a pretty thing," she says again. Her smile is slow, molten, and she watches him through heavy-lidded eyes as she pulls his hand inside her robes and between her legs.
He closes his eyes again, because he can't see this, can't watch himself touch her, because the sudden fever-pitch of her voice sounds like the pained creaks of the house settling for the night. He's completely lost, his fingers slipping helplessly between her slick folds, but she guides him through it, teaches him with warm whispers against his ear, with a hand tight around his wrist and the slow roll of her hips.
She hisses as she shudders against him, her hands pulling at his hair and tearing at his robes. He dares to look then, sees her wild hair and smudged lips, and he understands why his mother thinks she's broken and flawed.
Whore, the house whispers as they walk inside, and Regulus pretends he doesn't know who it's talking to.
vii.
The first time she lets him inside her, inside her, Regulus thinks he's going to die.
Bellatrix lays him out like an offering, spreads him across the tiny bed in the room she rented at the Hogs Head. The dusty sheets are rough against his naked skin, burning him as he twists and moves and breathes. Candles flicker on a rickety table next to the bed, a failed attempt at tenderness in something tawdry.
The silence in the dingy room is so strange and sudden it hurts. The walls don't whisper to him, they don't laugh at him or mock him or even speak, and the timbre of her moans and the sharpness of her breaths ring so hard and loud in his ears he's sure they'll start to bleed.
She smiles when she shifts on top of him, her tongue darting out to wet her lips as she uses her body to pin him to the bed. He keeps his eyes open because she commands him to, because she wants him to watch her take this from him. She slides down on his cock slowly, and he manages to obey, but they flutter closed as she starts to move, as the measured roll of her hips drives him insane.
She's too hot, too wet, and it's too much -- different from her mouth and hands in a hundred wonderful and horrible ways. She rides him faster, her hitched breaths a perfect counterpoint to the sway of her breasts and the rise and fall of her hips. He tries to hold on, fisting the sheets and clinging to the stubborn silence of the walls, imagining someone else on top of him, imagining what the house would say if it could see him, if it knew what he was doing.
He holds on as best he can, but his end comes before she's really begun. He can tell she's still wanting, still needing, can tell by the strain in her voice and the dangerous thrum under her skin. He can tell by the restless shift in her hips, and he pulls her toward his mouth with fingers that press hard enough to bruise.
He's grown good at this; a skill borne of constant practise. He licks her the way he knows she likes, the way she's taught him to, tongue pushing between her lips, sliding up to swirl over her clit before dropping down to plunge inside. She arches against him, pushing herself into his mouth, and he can taste himself on her, fancies the salty bitterness is the flavour of defeat.
She comes with a shout that drowns out the speechlessness of the room, moaning his name as her hips snap taut around his face.
Whore, he whispers against the inside of her thigh, and he knows exactly who he's talking to.
viii.
Her body is still a mystery to him, despite the number of times they've done this. Each time she comes to him he finds something he's never seen before -- a new curve, a new arch, a new spot that makes her call out his name.
She's only asked for Sirius once, and he let it go because Sirius is not the only one she's ever asked for, because she forgave him the one time he asked for Sirius himself.
They've never done this here, never kissed and touched inside this house. It's always been in the garden, in her family's summer cottage, in wretched, rented rooms. The house jeers as his hand maps the swell of her breasts, screams in laughter as his thumb skates over her clit and his fingers slip inside.
He fucks her with his hand until she writhes underneath him, mouths at her nipples until they're wet and red, peaked and hard as they glisten in the candlelight. He wants inside her, wants to feel her around him, and her legs fall open in invitation as she arches off the bed, but the house begs him to wait, and he listens.
The walls tell him she wants his mouth, and he gives it to her, his tongue twining around his fingers as he pushes them deeper inside. She screams then, a deathly, desperate wail that threatens to drown out the chanting of the house. He sucks at her clit, teasing it with his lips and tongue, and she falls apart under his hands.
Now, the house says, now and fast and hard, and he obeys, pulling her closer by the hips and driving into her with a single thrust. His name tumbles past her lips as he pulls back and slides in again, her head dropping against the pillow and her legs wrapping around his waist.
You'll never have her, the house says. She'll never be yours. You'll never have more of her than you have right now.
Regulus calls the house a liar, chokes the word out against her neck, but he knows the house is telling the truth, knows he's only lying to himself. He kisses her to stop himself from shouting at the house again, crushing his mouth against hers and pushing his tongue roughly between her lips.
He pulls out of her, smiling as the house laughs at the way she whines, and he rolls her, yanking her up and back by the hips to thrust into her from behind. She moans, a long, low sound that makes the house chant louder than before, and she tears at the sheets, her fingers twisting around soft, smooth linen.
She doesn't love you, the house insists. She doesn't love anyone but herself.
The words sting, burning across Regulus' skin like a slap in the face, but he knows the house speaks the truth. He thinks she might have loved Sirius once, before he left, before he fell from grace, but he knows that if she did, it was only because when she looked at Sirius she thought she saw something of herself.
He rakes his nails down her back, wanting her to hurt, wanting her to feel, wanting her to understand. Blood wells bright and red in the wheals his nails left behind, and she comes, screaming, her body tensing around him, pulling at his cock until it pushes him over the edge.
The house remains silent as she slips out the room, and as the door clicks closed, Regulus thanks it out loud for keeping its own council.
ix.
The garden is bright, cheerful, awash in the golden glow of the afternoon sun. White roses symbolise purity and light as they flank the archway and hang from the trellis, and Regulus laughs bitterly inside.
He watches Bellatrix become a Lestrange in detachment. He's distantly aware of Bellatrix's mother crying, of his own mother's thigh pressed against his on the narrow, uncomfortable bench, of Narcissa standing in the aisle, throwing petals almost the colour of her hair. The farce plays out in front of him in pantomime, and when Bellatrix speaks her vows he doesn't hear a thing.
Bellatrix smiles at him as she passes. Lestrange doesn't look at him at all. Regulus isn't sure what is worse -- that Lestrange doesn't know, or that Lestrange wouldn't consider him a threat if he did.
Regulus hasn't thought of Sirius in months, but as a pegasus-drawn carriage whisks Bellatrix Lestrange away, he wonders what Sirius would say if he was here.
After, the house is silent for the first time in Regulus' memory. He wonders if the whispers have been his imagination, or if the house has been speaking with Bellatrix's voice all along.
x.
The Mark doesn't hurt the way Regulus expects it to. He thinks it should burn, thinks it should sear, but it doesn't; it simply aches, a dull but pointed reminder that he sold his soul to a madman for a woman who's married to someone else.
She kisses him after he takes it, kisses him for the first time since she became a Lestrange. She tastes different somehow, the familiar sweet-sourness of her mouth muted in a way that's almost stale.
He fucks her up against the wall, in the same room where the madman branded him and claimed him as his own. The hard, ancient stone is cold under his hands, but her fingers are colder as they steal inside his robes.
She tells him Lord Voldemort is watching them, in a voice that reminds him of Grimmauld Place when Grimmauld Place still knew how to talk. He bites her lips to silence her, slams into her so hard her head whips back, hitting the wall with a solid crack.
She's quiet after that, and Regulus is glad. She leans into him, limp and doll-like, submitting to his hard, fast thrusts and the rough touch of his hands. She shivers as he comes, a hitched breath shifting to a whine as he pulls out and steps away.
He makes her finish it herself, watching as she kneels on the floor, her fingers lost in the tangle of hair between her legs. She rubs herself as hard and fast as he fucked her, her teeth creasing her lower lip and her hips rocking forward to meet her hand.
"Lord Voldemort is watching", he tells her.
She comes then, her body shaking so hard she collapses into the floor, and Regulus turns away.
xi.
Grimmauld Place is dead.
The house no longer speaks, whispers no longer chase him through the halls. His mother has finally broken her silence, but she only opens her mouth to rave, and he finds her madness painful to listen to.
His father is a large, robust man in the portrait over the mantle, but the skeleton Regulus finds in the drawing room wall seems small and frail. The knife resting between his ribs is tiny, almost delicate. It's a woman's weapon. A child's toy.
The house no longer speaks, but he listens to his mother's screams, feels the slow, dull ache in his arm, and he knows there was a time when the walls had words -- maybe his mother's, maybe Bellatrix's.
Maybe his mother and Bellatrix are one and the same, two halves of a single, maddened whole.
He thinks of the Pharaohs, of Tutankhamen and Amenhotep and Ramses the Great, thinks of stars come down to Earth to outshine all others. Sirius is the brightest, if the charts can be believed, but Bellatrix managed to burn him all the same.
"You're dead," he tells the house.
Grimmauld Place doesn't bother to reply, and the locket is cold and heavy in his hand.