unspeakable | jegulus

an empty heart

chapter title: what kind of fool am i? by lesley gore

cw: graphic violence/gore

if you'd like, you can add:

Valentine, Texas by Mitski / Roman Candle by Elliott Smith / Misuse Oh by Ethel Cain / Real Pain by Indigo De Souza

to your queue in that order.

<3

(Valentine by Fiona Apple is James' real song for this arc of the fic tho. my poor baby. something about the hurt and rage in that song just fits him. the helplessness of it. the idea of him "growing" as much as a plucked flower. the repeating, increasingly accusatory: you you you you, YOU YOU YOU. the heartbeat at the beginning. the way the anger creeps up over the sadness and then at the end weakens and sinks back into misery. it mimics the cycle they're trapped in so precisely. Regulus' song for this arc is Arsonist's Lullabye by Hozier btw. i would tell you why specifically but i don't want to spoil anything or tell you too much about what is going on in his head. anyways, i'll stop rambling. enjoy the chapter. i hope it is everything you wished it would be.)

The Lestrange House was imposing. It was all stretched looking, uncannily tall, with the permanent and deeply ominous feeling that many ancient magic homes seem to have, like the house itself was a thing that had existed in one place for as long as the earth underfoot had existed, like it was wrought from the world itself instead of made by the hands or the magic of men. A thing that had appeared one day that the Lestranges found. A thing that took them in like ancient men might have been taken in by caves in the sides of mountains. The many yellow windows looked to him like eyes peering down at them, spitting murky light over the gloomy, snow-covered grounds. It was enormous. House was an ill-fitting word. It was more like a castle than any house James had ever seen. It was solid stone, dark and black as ink. It wasn't nearly as opulent or glossy as Malfoy Manor, but it more than compensated for its inelegance with scale alone.

Gothic, pointed spires stabbed the sky above them, full of accusatory stars and a smirking sliver of a moon. It was cloudless here. There had been a flat expanse of weeping, featureless white in the London skies. For some reason, that made the keen knife of fear sharpen in his belly a little more.

Had he ever been more afraid?

James was nothing but a beating heart, fragile and wavering like smoke on a breeze everywhere he knew he should be steel and stone. He couldn't let Regulus see it. He tried to swallow the feeling, but it stuck in his throat. It was everywhere. It was all over him.

"Regulus!" Bellatrix ran from her front door and embraced Regulus. His face twisted, then went as blank as the untouched snow in every direction. He hugged her back. "I'm so proud that you're here. You of all of our family, I really hoped it would be you. This is it. We are carving our place in the world, a place our ancestors would have coveted just as we do." Her black eyes fixed on James. She smirked. "Take a bite, Potter."

"He did before we got here, why do you think we're late?" Bellatrix cackled. Her laughter was like the sound of ice cracking in a melting river. Awful. Unsettling. James felt sick. She pulled Regulus under her arm again and kissed his cheek. They sort of looked alike, when he was looking at them out of the corner of his eye they looked more like siblings than cousins. Bellatrix was just as beautiful as the rest of their family, but she carried herself so differently it was hard to notice. She reminded him more of Sirius than Regulus, as much as James knew he would resent the comparison. Her black curls were absolutely wild, and tangled. They fell in feral coils to her hips, and they were so tall that her hair alone must add half a foot to her height. She looked like the perfect opposite of Walburga, untamed and imperfect. Bellatrix noticed him staring.