On a cold day in October, Regulus Black asks James Potter to help him kill the Dark Lord.
James is swept up in machinations beyond his comprehension, and before his eighteenth birthday he has a Dark Mark on his arm and an innocent death on his consc...
cw: sexual content, discussions of abuse, discussions of self-harm, very mild violence
an:
sorry for skipping a week. i needed more time to prewrite :) i made art for this fic!! my james (my son) & a physical manifestation of the darkness waking up inside of him i guess idk
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i hope you enjoy this chapter <3 thank you for reading my story
xoxo elliott
James didn't want to get out of bed. He didn't want to speak to his parents, or Sirius, or anyone but Regulus. He laid with his head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat. He pressed his fingers into the bruises scattered over his skin, poking each one. I did that, he thought, with a strange pride blossoming inside of him. Mine. Regulus played with his hair and flipped through the channels on the television, barely watching more than a minute of each show before he was on to the next one.
"...You're traveling through another dimension – a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's a signpost up ahead: your next stop: the Twilight Zone!"
They watched the intro fade, and a woman with her face wrapped in bandages took over his TV set. Regulus was completely engrossed, watching the woman in bandages and the shadowy nurses and doctors tending her in her bed. The show was in black and white–all shades of grey, like him. The doctors promised to make the woman beautiful, so beautiful that no one would scream at the sight of her hideousness ever again. James suppressed a smile.
"I've seen this episode," he told him quietly. Regulus looked down at him for a moment, then back at the television. "It's a good one. This show has been around as long as I've been alive."
"Suspended in time and space for a moment, your introduction to Miss Janet Tyler, who lives in a very private world of darkness, a universe whose dimensions are the size, thickness, length of a swath of bandages that cover her face. In a moment, we'll go back into this room, and also in a moment, we'll look under those bandages, keeping in mind, of course, that we're not to be surprised by what we see, because this isn't just a hospital, and this patient 307 is not just a woman. This happens to be The Twilight Zone, and Miss Janet Tyler, with you, is about to enter it."
James leaned back on his pillows, then over the edge of the bed to pull on his belt loop, picking up his pants without getting out of bed, and dug through his trouser pockets for his pack of smokes. He wordlessly offered one to Regulus. He accepted. Regulus blew smoke in his hair, James blew smoke at the ceiling, watching it dissipate slowly above them. Regulus watched television, and James watched Regulus. He wasn't wearing his glasses, so his face was fuzzy and soft around the edges. He scattered cigarette ash in the sheets.
