unspeakable | jegulus

we both get so blue

chapter title: all i want by joni mitchell

cw: sexual content

They floo'd to Potter Manor, because James felt too sick with worry  to apparate without fear of splinching himself. Normally, he didn't feel any sense of dread when he was going to see his own mother. Today was  different. He knew he had let her down in so many important ways over  the past few months. A lot of the awful things he had done didn't seem  all that necessary to him in retrospect. He was sick with worry about  what his mother would see when she looked at his face again. Euphemia  had always been willing to guide him through the hard parts of life, but  this? All of this? Everything he'd done?

He knew exactly what she would see as soon as she looked at him.

Disappointment.  A son she is not happy with. A boy still owned by his own anger, and  now his own fear. Would she be able to see what was monstrous about him  when he met her gaze? Regulus was nervous too, for completely different  reasons. They both stood in stiff silence in front of the fireplace, as  if waiting for an execution. Regulus had the jar of floo powder in his  hands. Walburga wasn't sending them off, which surprised James a little,  considering how watchful she had proven to be. Her attention as  oppressive as fog, filling every room in this house.

"Will  you go first?" Regulus asked him. James nodded. His heartbeat was in  his throat. "Thank you, I'll be right behind you." James gathered a  handful of powder, watched the fire glow green in front of him, and  stepped inside.

   "Potter Manor!" 

Home. The familiar light of their hearth filled the  living room with a gentle golden glow. Everything about this room was  familiar. He loved the green couch, the same one they'd had since he was  born, the same woven rug, a record playing quietly, one they'd had as  far back as he could remember. Ella Fitzgerald was singing about  Christmas. There was always music playing here. His parents couldn't  stand to have a quiet house. They'd have music playing, or movies on for  empty rooms full of empty furniture. Silence felt strange, because it  was never ever silent. All around him was the comforting buzz of a house  that was alive, perhaps sleeping. Their Christmas tree was set up, with  ornaments he'd made as a child still proudly hanging on all of the  branches, a mess of colour and light, so tall it nearly touched the  ceiling. Stars, the ones his father told him were everywhere in Kerala  at Christmas, were festooned all over the ceiling, in the banisters, in  the trees. They were vibrant, in every colour you could imagine, and  beautiful. It was the opposite of the House of Black. It was like  stepping into a warm room after getting caught in a blizzard for days.  James felt like crying.

The room was empty.

His parents knew the time to expect them, yet they weren't here. Not a great sign.

He  heard Regulus step through the fire behind him. The living room was  full of bright winter sunlight, shining in through the massive windows  to the east. The curtains were pulled open. His parents had expensive  taste just as most pureblood families did, but their extravagance was a  little different than the Black family's proclivity for expensive  magical objects and the wizarding equivalent of exotic hunting trophies.  Expensive paintings hung on the walls, from his father's collection.  James glanced up and met the eye of one of  Vermeer's pale women, a  painting of a girl reading a letter by a window in a room that looked a  lot like this one. Pale walls, airy, with high ceilings. This ceiling  was dotted with an enchanted painting of the sky that moved through  every room of the house, clouds drifting as if they were part of a  living portrait. The Christmas stars looked like they were festooned on  the heavens themselves. Hogwarts wasn't nearly as magical as Potter  Manor. Regulus looked around with a mix of wonder and fear written all  over him. James bit his lip.