In the mornings, Walburga wakes to the sound of a charmed bell. It was a gift from her mother, the year that she had turned eleven, in preparation for her studies at Hogwarts.
She had been so pleased at that age to receive the bell. It felt like a certain amount of freedom. Before attending school, she - as was common for children in any proper house elf possessing family - had been woken each morning by the house elf entering her room and drawing the curtains. She had not been allowed to leave her room, or indeed, her bed until she had been officially woken up. In the Black ancestral estate, located in Brittany, the floorboards in children's’ bedrooms were jinxed to scream should a child step out of bed once they had been dismissed for the night. She had grown up there, and probably her strongest memory was of waiting for her morning wake-up call.
It was also her most hated memory.
Her childhood room had been panelled with dark walnut and the narrow curtains dark green brocade. Daylight had no hope of penetrating in, and she was not permitted to keep a taper or candle past her bedtime. The darkness of the room had seemed so much more than it should have. Everything, the few furnishings, her bedsheets and clothes, had seemed to absorb the darkness too, growing heavier and more suffocating in the gloom. She would lie, flat on her back, staring up to where she knew the canopy of her bed should be, and see only shifting shadows and odd colours that her mind conjured up to fill the abject darkness that was there. She had no way of knowing the time. Whether she had woken in the morning or still the full night was a mystery. She would have to lie there, eyes stuck open to the darkness, waiting for the endless stretch black night to resolve itself in minutes or hours.
The only relief was the abrupt groan of her door when it was opened by the house-elf. For most of her childhood, it had been Notty, Kreacher’s aunt, to do the task. She would often hum softly when she entered the room.
More than once, in the past month, Walburga had walked by her mounted head and been brought to her knees when she heard the familiar formless hum. It's time to wake up, she had thought, believing for a second that she was still a child in her dark bed, waiting for the dawn; and that, all this , her life up to that very moment and the wrinkles on her hands, had been a dream.
The bell had been freedom. The allowance to set a time and be awoken. If she ever woke up early, she could press its top and hear it ring out the number of the house. Most often though, she would set it to ring an alarm in the morning just a bit earlier than she would wake up naturally. It was a pleasure to hear its ring and know that morning would be there when she opened her eyes.
This habit of early alarms did not win her many friends in her Slytherin dorm. Even Orion had frequently objected to it. Still she had refused to stop and whenever she found herself waking up before the bell, she would set it earlier still, again and again, till exhaustion would force her to return to a more normal waking time. Currently she had it set to wake her at just quarter past three. She was not inclined to put it later anytime soon, though she did not go to bed until ten at night. She had not felt the need to sleep as much recently. Not since Orion had died.
When she had departed for bed last night, Regulus had still been down in the study, alternating between scribbling notes and pacing around the room. He had seemed agitated recently, though she did not know why. Her heir was doing good at school, had kept associating with only the best of the pure bloods, and she was sure she would be able to find a match for him amongst good stock once he left Hogwarts.
He didn’t have long now before that would happen. He was… he was sixteen or seventeen now. She could not keep his age, nor the month quite straight in her head. It was September soon… or April? She drifted over to the window and looked out at the garden. It was too dark to see, but she thought the trees looked full of leaves.
A slight panic ran through her, she was almost running out of time to ensure that a good match was made. She ought to have been calling around the other families by now. It would be tricky to find a pure enough match, now that all his cousins had been married off already.
Tomorrow she would go out and start her search. It was just so hard to orient herself to the time and day to leave the house.
She turned back. “The pure blood girls in your year… what are their names? Which are the most proper?” she said. Of course, his choices wouldn’t matter for much, but he might be able to steer her to the better prospects to start.
Regulus, sitting at his desk but already looking up at her, did not reply immediately. His mouth was open as if he had been speaking when she had asked. Rude habit, to let your mouth gape, very common of him.
“I’ll… I’ll tell you tomorrow. But Mother, you know that… Kreacher will take care of you when I’m gone.”
Gone? Gone? Gone in marriage must be, though that wasn’t right? Regulus was the Black heir, any wife of his would have to come here, be absorbed into the Black lineage. Though, perhaps, Regulus intended on making the old estate his matrimonial home. It had laid empty since Alph- her brothe- that man had died.
It would be a good place to raise children, she thought, confused at the odd nauseous darkness she felt.
“I’ll get Kreacher to start cleaning the rooms in advance. The tapestry will be glad to return to its original place.”
“What?” Regulus said. “What rooms? No mother, I…”
His voice trailed off. She got the sense he was looking right through her. She got the sense that she was looking right through him too.
“I’m trying to make the right choice,” her son said slowly, testing each word. There was guilt on his face. He looked smaller than he should have.
Her heir was a sturdy boy just like Orion had been. Tall and handsome and completely unmanageable in his moods and rages. Why was there guilt on his face? Was Sirius finally repentant for having abandoned her and the family?
No, not Sirius, this was Regulus. Their dark hair was the same, but the face different. She must keep that straight in her head from now on.
Regulus, he second son, smaller and quieter but good and obedient. He was reaching out with his arm. His left arm, defaced by that awful tattoo. That curse that none of them had seen was an issue until Orion had realised something and died from the horror.
He was trying to tell her something she realised. His words seemed so far away though. She had found Orion's body, cold and so very dead in this study. He had died in the night, it had been dark. She had reached out to touch his forehead and been shocked to feel just how unhuman the cool skin had felt under her fingers.
A cold hand touched hers.
Instantly recoiling, she felt a shriek leave her. That cold dead hand and that cold dead wrist that she had felt in vain for a pulse on. A dead thing in the place of her husband. A dead thing in her house.
“No!” she shouted, watching as her son stumbled back. He looked oddly hurt. She didn’t understand why.
As soon as she could, she regained her composure. Orion had been buried nicely. There had been a funeral. Some of the worthy families had come by to offer their fit condolences. His dead cold hands had no place but in her fitful dreams.
Her son looked, with his sour sad face, like he was about to speak. She cut him off sharply.
“I’m going to bed. In the morning, we shall discuss your future prospects further”.
She did not look directly at him, but his pale face seemed to flatten out. His mouth stayed closed. He nodded at her, and looked back down to his desk and notes before she had even left.
That had been the night before, and now it was morning. Somehow, blessedly, she had escaped any dreams of Orion and also kept herself in deep slumber till the bell ran.
It was dark when she got up. She did not bother to dress herself properly, just placing a heavy dark green robe on top of her night gown. For a second she picked up her hair brush and considered using it. But then she caught sight of a shockingly grey and lined face in the mirror and decided to leave it. She would ask Regulus to undo whatever hex was on the mirror later, if she decided to get ready. But really she had no plans for the day anyway; there was no need.
An odd quietness was in the house. The gloom was somehow stronger than usual. Kreacher, that lazy thing, must have neglected to light the torches this morning. She would beat his ears for it. He knew she could not abide a completely unlit house in the morning.
That was not the only thing queer in the house. A sharp smell hit her nose as she passed the study. Metallic.
“Boy?”, she called out to her son. He had been messing with many of his father books recently. Perhaps this was the consequences of a spell gone wrong. If so, he would have his punishment alongside Kreacher.
The study was not dark when she entered. A candle still burnt on the desk. A book lay open and scattered on the table. Its pages were stained dark black, a few had been ripped out and scattered. Next to it, lay a human arm.
It felt very cold in the room suddenly. The feeling so strong that she wanted to sit down. The armchair in the corner of the room had been overturned. There was blood on it too.
There was a slight cold breeze in the air. She realised that the window behind the desk had been broken. That should not happen. Orion and herself had been very good at wards. Even now she still would go around and renew them each month.
A quick examination revealed there was a hole in the wards. There was also a strange tinge of foreign Dark magic, unfamiliar to her. It was concentrated on the bloody end of the arm. Some variation on a severing charm, she supposed. Perhaps Regulus would be able to figure out what had been used, when she asked him later. He was a good student and researcher, her boy.
She was not quite sure how long she stood in the study, but abruptly, down in the entrance hall she had a sudden pop of house-elf Apparition and an awful deep keening.
She found Kreacher, wailing, clutching something in his fist.
“What on earth is the matter?” she asked. Then a bit peevishly, “You did not light the corridor this morning.”
The wailing made no signs of stopping. This would go nowhere. When Kreacher got like this, the only thing to do was to banish him to the atticn or enlist the services of Regulus who best placed to quiet him. On that note…
“Where has that boy gotten to? Where is Regulus?”
The wailing grew exponentially louder.
She had no time for this. She felt the stirrings of a headache coming on. “Just fetch him now, beast.”
Finally, he seems to hear her. The house elf look up at her with his droopy dripping eyes. . “Fetch Master Regulus? Bring him here now?”
The thing's voice is oddly horse yet hopeful. Walburga does not understand why he seems to be struggling so much with simple orders. Perhaps he is going senile, she thinks. That had happened to Notty, who had begun neglecting all tasks to scream-sing wordless tunes in her later years. Grandfather had brought that to a rather swift end by mounting her head a little perhaps before her time.
“Yes, you muggle-brained toad, it is an order! Fetch him now!”
She goes to kick him, but he disappears off before her slippered foot can connect.
For a second all is quiet again. She looks up at the front door of the house and watches the dawns soft light start to creep through its stained glass panels.
Then, with a pop as Kreacher reappears, all hell breaks loose.
There is a young man on her floor, clothes torn, hair dark, and completely soaking wet. She realises with a startle that it is both water and blood darkening his clothes and staining the rug at the front door. He looks for a second, quite dead.
Kreacher is holding onto his arm, and wailing, wailing, wailing. Then the intruder on her floor, starts convulsing himself, torn between deep racking, wet coughs and half sobbing screams. His words, ripped out of him and mangled in his throat, resolve themselves into sense in her ears.
He is begging for water and air all in the same breath.
Eventually he manages to regain sense to turn over and she sees the deep wounds on his arm (only one uncovered? That's.. that's…) and around his neck and face. His hair is scraggly flailing down on his forehead and sticking to the scratch-like wound on his cheek. His eyes look just like Orion’s. His eyes look mad.
Walburga hears another higher note join the cacophony. Her throat begins to burn. She ought to be calling for help, trying to get this man out of her house, this odd, wounded stranger wearing her family's face. She can only seem to scream.
He makes to stand, now just gasping. He looks at her with panic, looks at Kreacher with confusion, and then spots something in the house-elf's hands and begins to curse frantically.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he says, then grabs the thing out of Kreacher’s hands and turns to the front door. There was only a simple chain on the inside, no real locks, but he still seems to scrabble, ungainly with the hand holding the locket(?) at the handle before opening it.
“Oh fucking fuck, look after her, please, I need to-” he yelled over his shoulder, attempting to pull open the door. Outside was a Muggle street. No one ever tried to exit that door since Sirius had left; there was no need to expose themselves to their odd shining, noisy carriages thundering past or the noise of a thousand conversations trying to invade the house.
But in the early dawn it seemed almost empty, only a few people in the distance and only one large reddish shape heading down the road.
The intruder stares at her face one last time, and then almost brokenly, he shouts, “I’m sorry!”, down towards the floor, before stumbling out of the door and rushing forward.
Abruptly, all the chaos ended. The door shut behind him, the muggle street disappeared, and all the noise left. She realised that Kreacher had fainted, lying down upon the entrance hall’s carpet. She does not touch him, but instead wanders back upstairs.
A dream, she thought, a dream.
An arm still lay on the study table, blood all around.
Eventually she realised, from the bitten ragged nails and awful mark, that it was Regulus' arm. That was a lot of blood to lose, she thought.
A bit later she wandered back to the front hallway. She could not think why the entrance carpet had been rucked up and stained or why the chain was not on the door. No one used that door. Anyone she wanted to visit would come by Flue. None of her good stock would go out that door into the Muggle nosiness.
She found Kreacher, sitting by the door, sobbing softly. He must be going senile she decided. Notty had been crying a lot in the end too, she would sometimes cry instead of hum when she had entered her childhood room in the morning. The bell had been such a relief after those last months of sob-humming.
When she finally managed to get him to listen, Walburga ordered him to put things in the entrance hall right, cursing him out. Careless thing, she thought.
She went back into the study and looked again at the arm and the blood. She did not ask Kreacher to clean them up. It was what remained of the House of Black.
Her son was dead. The House of Black was no more. She would have to ask Kreacher to amend the tapestry tomorrow. He would know what date to put. She couldn’t think of what date it was, but he would know.
She walked over to the staircase and sat heavily down on the stair. Her legs ached at the motion, she was not sure whether she would be able to stand again. Eventually she closed her eyes, and for an endless amount of darkness, waited to hear a humming.
Nothing stirred.
For the first time in several months, Walburga felt tired.