Enough to Make a Man Go Mad
It is one of those days where the skies are empty except for masses of grey clouds, where the rain starts at dawn and continues well past dusk, where leaves give themselves up to an autumn's death and cracks trace their once alive veins as they fill the streets' gutters.
It is the type of day to drive one mad.
The dining room clock is ticking, each second drowned out by the downpour beating against the roof and walls, and its chiming midnight is barely audible. It is this the racket, grating years off his eardrums, that finds Orion awake and going over his bank statements from Gringotts, his gnarled finger tracing the numbers in each column, marking the interest in the margins, leisurely testifying to the accurateness of the goblins' work: a calming past time if there is one, and one which Orion always resorts to when unable to sleep. A slight tapping noise disrupts his mental calculations, causing him to grunt an annoyed exhalation and start over, before the same tapping noise pierces his concentration again.
It takes him almost half a minute of the ticking clock, the pounding rain, and the intermittent tapping, to realize that the tapping sounds less of an imagined tick pirouetting around the folds of his nerve endings and more of a knocking on the front door. The thought springs to his mind fully-formed: Merlin's beard, who would have the audacity to knock at this time of night?
The response is instantaneous: a flash of a memory, of dark hair and white teeth and a youthful face and —
No. Orion will not — cannot - let himself think like that. He has long ago resolved to not waste his years away with silly fantasies and useless memories of a son that is no longer his and yet
(a baby's slate grey eyes, a three-year old counting on pudgy fingers, a four-year old pushing puckered wet lips against Orion's check, 'papa' and 'I want to be just like you!' and his first time on a broom and buying his first wand and — )
Snap. The tip of Orion's quill flies into the air, the man's grip having become too much for the fragile quill as he reminds himself for the umpteenth time that now he only has one son, one son —
Tap. Tap.
One son. He grits his teeth, the tectonic sound of bone on bone reverberating through his body and adding to the cacophony of night time sounds the tick tap grit tock tick snap plink tap plunk tock enough to make a man go mad.
And what if the tapping sound at the door is — is Sirius? (the name sounds dusty and water-stained and misshaped from lack of use, even if the crags of his subconscious have been whispering it since the first tap, haven't stopped whispering it since that day four years ago when his first born son decided he was no longer their son.) Only family and close family friends even knew the location of 12 Grimmauld Place and who except Sirius would have the audacity and reason to knock past midnight?
And now, as though a seer, an image swirls into focus before Orion's eyes: Sirius, a bit older, perhaps a bit thinner and a bit more haggard, standing on the front step having renounced his way of life with those Mudbloods and blood traitors (and 'I'm sorry' and 'It doesn't matter anymore' and the prodigal son having finally decided to come home.) Walburga will not forgive Sirius immediately, the wound to her pride having become a festering sore long ago, but that is of no matter—Sirius will have his redemption and she will forgive him eventually and in the meantime Orion's word is law.
Tap. Tap.
Each step he takes towards the door feels as though it is supported by the weight of the universe, something to be marked and sketched in a corner of his mind as a memory to never forget. Even the door, has he ever really seen the door before, with its intricately carved brass handle that he now places his hand on? The words are on the tip of his tongue:
"Sirius, welcome home."
When he swings the door wide open he almost sees Sirius on the front step, his handsome face unchanged in the past four years, the corners of his eyes crinkling into a genuine smile at seeing his father again and his mouth open to utter those words of reconciliation. And then the wind blows specks of drizzle against Orion's eyes and a cold clamminess crawls across his skin at the realization that he has lost his first born son for the second time because there is no Sirius standing on the doorstep. Instead, there is a lanky man with light brown hair who resembles a drowned rat more than he resembles Regulus's best friend, and for a split second Orion is tempted to let his years of social training slide away from him just so that he can slam the door right in the man's pointed nose.
"Regulus is not here," Orion venomously states, "He is renting an apartment in central London to broaden his horizons" (because Sirius always complained that he was treated as a prisoner in Grimmauld Place, and Orion wasn't going to make that mistake twice.) "Regulus has been living there since shortly after he graduated from Hogwarts. I am surprised he did not inform you of this."
The other man's teeth are loudly clattering together as he tries to speak, the rain beating against his head and streaming in torrents down his face, "I — no — know."
"To what, then, do I owe this pleasure, Tarazet?" While Orion does not normally mind Regulus's best friend, he is currently imaging various violent scenarios that involve Tarazet not standing on his front step.
(and he has to force the thoughts of his first born son away, because now the moments of 'papa' and a cherub face are being replaced by an impudent twelve-year old wearing a red and gold scarf and 'You disgust me' and the wave of dark hair as he walked out without so much as a backwards glance.)
The murderous glint to Orion's eyes must show through the dim light and sheets of rain for a hesitant look appears on Tarazet's face as he incoherently stutters, "I – uh – have to – uh – may I come in?"
Jerkily swinging the door open a crack wider, he gestures to a nearby coat rack with the icy words, "I would rather you not drip on my floor."
"Yes sir. Sorry sir."
Orion momentarily scrutinizes the man's hesitant, pale face and red-rimmed eyes. Merlin, is he drunk? That would certainly explain his behavior, knocking on the Black's door past midnight. He takes a sudden step closer and brings his face very close to Tarazet's. Hm. No smell of alcohol, just a startled look on the other man's face at being so suddenly approached.
"Do you drink, Tarazet?" he sharply articulates, his face still uncomfortably close.
A baffled expression. "No, no thank you."
"That wasn't an offer. That was a question."
A pink tinge creeps across his face. "No, I don't drink." And then, for good measure, "Sir."
His doubtful scrutinizing of the speaking man's face is interrupted when his wife's icily authoritative voice echoes from the stairs, cutting through the stiffly insulated air of the house. "I was not aware we had company at this time of night."
Walburga, unlike Orion, is not fond of Regulus's friend even under better conditions. The first hiss to leak between her incisors upon learning of eleven-year old Regulus's befriending Tarazet was "But, Regulus, the Colburns are poor."
His younger son (because this was in the time where he still had two sons) was not used to Walburga's threatening tone of voice, the saccharine sweet hiss that slithered like steam across your ear canal, before engraining itself somewhere behind your temple. "But they're purebloods! And not blood traitors, and—and they're all in Slytherin, too!" his son's eleven-year old voice had spluttered in response.
"Salazar Slytherin never accepted those who could not pay their own way." Walburga's voice sounded of ink bleeding across parchment, of chalk grating against a blackboard. "I thought you were going to be friends with Walden Macnair; they have a lovely family."
"Walden makes fun of me whenever I'm not the first to learn a spell," Regulus mumbled. "Besides, it's not like the Colburns live off of charity, they're just…not quite as wealthy as us." He finished his feeble statement with a helpless glance at his father, who until that moment had been watching the exchange silently.
"The boy makes a point, Walburga," Orion lazily replied, not even bothering to make eye contact with his wife. "As long as they don't come begging to us for money, there's no reason the two boys can't be friends" (because they spent two weeks arguing with Sirius about his friends and all it did was make Sirius hate them, and he wasn't going to make that mistake twice.)
Walburga accepted Orion's ruling for lack of any alternatives, but her hostility to 'that lower-class rubbish' had not weakened over the years, and even now as she speaks her voice seems more reminiscent of a snake about to swallow its prey than a proper hostess:
"Mr. Colburn, you are bleeding on my floor."
Orion looks at Tarazet in surprise before noticing that, indeed, the man's right sleeve has a seeping red stain.
"I'm terribly sorry, Mrs. Black, I thought I had already healed it." Awkwardly fumbling his wand from his wet robes' pocket, he mutters an incantation before holding his arm close to his body in an unobtrusive way.
Attempting to clumsily fit together puzzle pieces, a vague memory of Tarazet being a Death Eater, of being in the same regiment as Regulus, comes to his mind. "There was a Death Eater meeting today?"
"Yes, sir, there was." Orion gives a generic nod in response before a moment later a flash of terror strikes his skull, wraps around his lungs and squeezes the life out of them while images of Regulus's beautiful face—his hair a shorter, a bit neater than Sirius's, his eyes a lighter shade of grey—play before his eyes, because he has heard stories about the Death Eaters' high casualty rates but Merlin, dear Merlin, no, that can't be why he is here, it simply can't be.
"Mr. Colburn, there are things I would prefer to do at this time of night, such as sleeping, other than entertain guests. Please state your reason for inviting yourself into our home or return to your own abode," Walburga crushes each word between her teeth before spitting it out in a vibration of vocal chords and air.
"I—I need to tell you something."
(and he isn't meeting their eyes and Orion wants to grasp the man by his scrawny neck just so that he will look. them. in. the. eyes.)
"It's about Regulus."
The entire house seems to fall silent — the rain, the ticking of the clock, the creaking of the floorboards, their tiny breaths, the insignificant beating of their hearts – all collapse into a deafening silence that is crashing around Orion's ears, a shrieking hurricane surrounding the eye of the storm.
"Regulus isn't…coming home again." The words are practically a whisper, apologetic and meek, the sound of a dying fire flickering weakly in the wind. And all Orion can see is red red red because this can't be true, because this was never supposed to happen, and he would have expected praise for a war hero and medals and military parades honoring his son, two men in dress robes - no - the Dark Lord himself, offering condolences.
But instead there is only a clawing hollowness somewhere behind his ribcage and a drowned rat of a nineteen-year old dripping water and blood and tripping over whispered cinders of an apology
"Why was it Regulus? Why. Not. You?" Every syllable of Walburga's sentence is overflowing with hatred, "You would have been in battle together, would you have not? He has been your friend for eight years you ungrateful brat, and yet you stand back and receive a scratch, a mere scratch for your trouble while our son, our only son - !" And now it is not so much words as it is a terrible screeching sound, no longer the eye of the storm but the thick of the storm itself.
"It wasn't the battle," Tarazet hastily adds, a look of near fear shaping his face at Walburga's obscenely deafening screaming. "The—the commander of our regiment informed us."
The words can barely squeeze themselves between Orion's clenched jaw: "So, what, he was on a special mission at the time, then?"
There is no response, and for a moment Orion watches the man, a puddle forming around his feet, his face still rain-slicked, his sleeve bleeding, looking young beyond his years, while he silently opens his mouth. After the third time, Orion realizes he is actually speaking, a miniscule voice breathing ash into the air. "Regulus…didn't like the Death Eaters very much."
"Regulus loved the Death Eaters!" Walburga immediately shrieks, "He followed them for years before joining them. He had his heart set on improving our world!"
"What do you mean he didn't like the Death Eaters?" Orion barks at the young man, ignoring his wife's contrary comments.
"He mentioned leaving. I didn't think he was serious because—because we can't leave. We can't desert, on punishment of death." The words are alternatively hurried and creakingly slow, a translucent string tangled over itself into a mess of intersecting knots.
"Are you telling me, that Regulus deserted and was executed?" Walburga disbelievingly spits from between gritted teeth, every explosive consonant dripping with the accusation: "You. Are. Lying."
A barely imperceptible sinking of Tarazet's head in a weak imitation of a nod is the strongest response she receives. "I don't think there's a body," he quietly states, and an almost triumphant expression appears on Walburga's face.
"You have no evidence then—no evidence!" Walburga's hysterical screech is no longer grief-filled but instead cruelly triumphant and sickeningly hopeful. "Regulus might still be alive somewhere!"
"But the commander of our regiment tried to call him, and he announced that Regulus is—is dead." The words seem to be hard for Tarazet himself, and a muscle in his jaw tightens as he speaks.
Orion's mind is blank, utterly blank for one blissful moment, the shock of the actual word "dead" taking a bullet to his brain, wiping it clean even as it utterly destroys him. And then in a painful rush the memories return: Regulus tracing his finger along the family tree, Regulus capturing his first snitch, Regulus graduating from Hogwarts, Regulus only last week, his nineteen-year old face alive and smiling.
"What is the name of your commander?" The words, staggered and jerky, come from Orion in an almost dream-like stance.
"I don't know. We're not supposed to know anyone's name."
"Tell. Me. His. Name." A deadly, authoritative rumbling from the back of his throat, because he will not let the last of his sons disappear quietly, a light snuffed out: he will spill the blood of half the world and tear the stars from the sky itself if that is what it takes to avenge his son's death.
"I—I told you, we don't know the names of the other people in our regiment."
With a movement to crack skulls, Orion grasps the collar of Tarazet's wet robes in a near chokehold. "You will tell me your commander's name or, so help me Merlin, you will not leave this house alive."
A shocked, gasping sound comes from the man – no – the boy. Because, Merlin, he's only Regulus's age, just a teenager, a veritable child, nothing but wide eyes and fumbling words and a century of life left in front of him. "I heard someone say 'Monroe' once, but I d—on't know if it's a first name or a surname or if they were even referring to the commander, but that's the only name I've ever heard," he hurriedly splutters, his eyes helplessly wide with genuine fear at the crazed grief in the senior Black's eyes.
Releasing his grasp, Orion replies in a shaking voice, "I think you should go."
Tarazet already has his first foot through the front door when he turns to face the two Blacks again, his voice cracking on his parting words: "I'm sorry."
The slam of the door shakes the house. The clock is still ticking. The rain is still pouring. The wind is still blowing. Nothing is different, except in the expanse of an hour, that Dementor has arrived and with a few words taken away his last son. There is nothing left for Orion but the drowning tides of memories and the animal-like rage in his veins that says he will avenge his son's death even if it is his end.
…
A/N: For those of you who don't know, the Black family tree shows Orion as having the same year of death as Regulus. Onto other things: a huge thank you to tat1312 for being an amazing beta-reader! Also, this was written for the Slytherin Competition on the HPFC. As another note, the OC of Tarazet Colburn is borrowed from a much longer story of mine on another account (and is related to the Colburn in my one-shot "The Changing of Seasons"), but this one-shot is intended to be able to stand alone, so let me know if something doesn't make sense. I also wrote this originally in past tense, and then switched it to present tense, and although I think I corrected everything, let me know if I missed anything; other constructive criticism is also always appreciated.