Chapther 2
It was a little before 6am when Tom awoke from his sleep gasping for air. He was quick to pull on his right sleeve to make sure what happened last night wasn’t just a twisted dream. When he got his sleeve up just enough to see his whole forearm, he felt the tension leave his body and relief settled back in, the mark was still there. The name ‘Regulus Arcturus Black’ still stood on his forearm in beautiful contrast to his pale skin, his soulmate’s name, a sign that last night wasn’t just a hallucination of something he could never have.
It wouldn’t have been the first time he had a dream about having a soulmate. He had been having them since he was 11 but, unlike now, every time he woke up and checked his body for that special name, there was nothing to find. Being disappointed every time he checked, slowly the dreams of having a soulmate vanished and turned into nightmares of faceless people dying right after he meets them, leading up to him being disappointed, over and over again.There was a period, about two decades ago, where he drank the dreamless sleep potion daily just to keep the nightmares at bay.
‘Not this time though’ thought Tom, smiling softly at his soulmate’s name on his forearm. He just sat there, admiring his soulmark and caressing it, for almost an hour. When he finally raised his gaze from his arm, the sun was peeking through the dark curtains. After casting the ‘tempus’ charm to figure out what time it was, and discovering that it was almost 7 in the morning, he decided to get up and get ready for the day.
As he finished putting on his black robes, he decided against wearing his glamour as there was no reason to, the lower death eaters would not be around today and his inner circle knew how he looks. While walking out of his chambers Tom headed straight to the door opposite of his, wanting to check if Regulus was awake.
After knocking on the door a few times and getting no response from the other side of the door, Tom quietly opened the door and peeked in to make sure everything was alright. The sight that greeted him made his heart melt a little, not that he would ever admit to anything.
There in the middle of the huge bed snuggled into the blankets, hugging a pillow was his soulmate, the brightest wizard of his generation and the most promising soon to be lord in wizarding Britain, Regulus Black. ‘How anyone can think he is anything but adorable and perfect is beyond me’ thought Tom as he closed the door and walked to his study to finish some paperwork before his soulmate woke.
Much to Tom’s frustration, even Dark Lords have to do paperwork. In all honesty he had kind of hoped that he wouldn’t have to do any of that after quitting politics but alas life didn’t always go in his favour.
He had been working on his stacks of paperwork for maybe 20 minutes, before there was a knock on his door. Checking the wards, to know who was behind the door, told him that behind the door were two of his youngest inner circle members Barty Crouch Jr and Evan Rosier. Assuming that it was something about Regulus, as according to his information they were close in school. He called them in “Come in!” It didn’t take Barty even a second after that to barge into the study like he owned it and plop his arse into an armchair, while Evan walked in and closed the door right behind him before joining Barty on the chairs.
Before Tom could inquire about them being in his study this early into the day, Barty opened his mouth “You may be the Dark Lord and all but if you hurt our Reggie you should know that between Evan and I we know of 593 ways to kill someone and we could make half of them look like accidents, soulmate or not. So don’t even think about hurting him!” Throughout his rant Evan was murdering Tom with his eyes nodding along to Crouch’s words.
Though Tom had kind of expected this from those two, he was still a little shocked as he didn’t really think they had it in them to threaten him, he was a Dark Lord after all, and the only person to ever threaten him before was Dumbledore, and that too was years ago. He didn’t know whether to be amused at their audacity to threaten him, offended that they would think that he would ever hurt his soulmate or proud that Regulus had such loyal friends who were willing to confront the Dark Lords for him. Deciding to start from the beginning, he responded “It is not my intention to hurt my Regulus and if you think otherwise I will prove it to you. And even though I am happy that Regulus has friends who are willing to threaten a Dark Lord for him, I’m going to warn you that this is the only time I’m letting you get away with it, next time you will find yourself at the end of my wand screaming for mercy and Regulus will sadly have to mourn you because no one will find your bodies before you die of blood loss” Safe to say Barty and Evan were sufficiently threatened as both were pale and sweating in their seats, but they looked satisfied with his response.
“Of course, my Lord. It won’t come to that. As long as Regulus remains happy, any threats towards your being and your safety, will remain minimal. But as soon as I hear a word of Regulus being hurt, I can’t promise anything” said Evan, after gathering his thoughts a little. The Dark Lord knew to take that seriously as he had seen the Rosier library and knew the types of dark spells it contained. But he didn’t need to worry about that as he had no plans to hurt his soulmate “It won’t come to that. You two are dismissed”. When neither moved which made Tom curious “Did you need anything else, besides threatening me? Or do you really want to test your luck and continue to threaten me?”
They looked at each other, then Barty stepped forward and asked “We would like to know where Regulus is right now my Lord?” Seeing no reason not to, Tom told them that Regulus was still sleeping in his room. After hearing that Barty continued “ We would like your permission to go wake Regulus, my Lord.” Tom thought about it a little and decided, why not, what's the worst they can do? They are Regulus’ friends after all and it wasn’t that early anymore “Fine, you are allowed to go wake him” As soon as those words left his lips the duo quickly bid him their goodbyes with grins on their faces and ran out the door, weirdly Tom could feel that he was going to regret that decision. But he decided to ignore that feeling, as what is the worst that could happen?
Oh, how wrong he was. He was going to regret letting those two go wake his Star. He just didn’t know it yet.
Meanwhile, Barty and Evan had reached the wing of the manor where the Dark Lord’s chambers were located, which to be fair weren’t that far from the study. Before they could make it to the door, they knew Regulus was behind, they were stopped by Nagini. The great snake eyed them wearily as they tried to move as little as possible, frozen with fear, everyone knew that Nagini’s bite was deadly. Luckily the snake didn’t smell any danger on them so she slithered past them on a greater quest, she had a certain rat to catch after all.
The moment Nagini disappeared from the view, they continued their mad dash towards Regulus’s door. Lucky for them it was just around the corner. When they reached the door, both of them stopped before entering the room.
Barty started digging around in his pockets while Evan looked at him expectantly. Finally after some time of searching Barty pulled out a shrunken package out of his jeans’ back pocket. Evan took out his wand and tapped the package three times to unshrink it, the package grew to the size of a big bucket and it looked like it. Barty, who was still holding it, looked inside to make sure everything was in order and nodded to Evan. They grinned at each other slyly before they opened the door and walked in, ready to cause chaos.