Author's note: Enjoy!
Disclaimer: The following characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and this story derives from her original works, storylines, and world. You can tell I'm not her because #transrights
Hogwarts: Assignment #3, Etiquette Task #1 Write about someone insulting another person.
Dedication: The Crownless Queen, whose plot bunny this is!
Warnings: NA
Playing With Fire
Remus tore the curtain off of Walburga Black's painting in one quick and uncharacteristically swift motion. The gesture was so sudden that Walburga looked taken aback for a second, which delayed the inevitable screaming.
"You," she hissed. "You beast of a man, you bring tainted blood and cursed bone into my home!"
"Yes," Remus said. "Yes, I do. And that's not all I've got to me."
He took the lighter from his pocket and flicked it on with his thumb, the tiny flame at its tip coming to life. Walburga's eyes focused on the flame. He could swear that she paled, even if that should have been impossible.
"Quiet, all of a sudden?" Remus asked. "Has someone remembered that she is currently made out of highly flammable canvas and held up by a wooden frame?"
"You dare to threaten me! The Lady of this House, the bearer of the most ancient and noble house of Black…"
"I don't think it's a threat so much as a very generous offer," Remus said, his free hand hovering over the flame, playing with its warmth. "You'll watch your mouth and I'll watch my light."
Walburga scowled at him, the oils composing her painting shifting across the canvas as she did. She squinted as if recognizing something within him.
"You're that horrible boy," Walburga said. "You were so quiet I never thought you had the worst influence on Sirius, but at least that Potter boy had the courtesy to die first!"
Part of Remus wanted to try his luck at burning her down immediately, but he had to play the long game here. Just in case.
"See, that kind of foul-mouthed outburst is what I'm here to talk to you about," he said, moving so that the lighter was just under the gilded frame. Walburga gathered her skirts and scrambled up from the seat where she'd sat posing, alarm in her beady black eyes.
"You wouldn't dare," Walburga said. "It… it would take down the whole house!"
"Maybe," Remus said. "Or maybe the protective curses you put on your painting before passing only work on magical means and threats. Maybe you forgot about handy little Muggle devices like my lighter here, since you never thought they'd find themselves in your house…"
He wasn't necessarily proud of it, but he enjoyed the look of hesitation and panic in Walburga's eye as she tried to recall her exact words and decide on the legitimacy of Remus' loophole. Maybe Mrs. Black had been right after all; Remus had never been as good of an influence as everyone had thought he was.
Ultimately, as he'd known, Walburga Black was not a very brave woman when she wasn't the biggest one in the room. She would not gamble with whatever afterlife she could have mounted on her own wall.
"What do you want?" she asked bitterly.
Remus' thumb released the lighter's switch.
"Sirius," Remus said. "You'll leave him alone. You'll shut up about him—about his looks, about his past, about his being in the house, about everything. Not a word to or about Sirius from now on and we won't have a problem."
"I don't trust werewolves," Walburga said spitefully.
"I didn't say you had to trust me," Remus said. "Although I do promise that I'll be keeping this on me in case you're not able to uphold your end of the bargain."
He showed her the cheap plastic lighter one more time before tucking it in his back pocket.
"You sad and pathetic man," Walburga snarled.
"Oh, I'm not done," Remus said. "There's a woman who's here quite a lot—usually has pink hair, but changes it often."
"A mark so dark on the house of Black that her own traitor of a mother was snapped away from the family tree before she was even born in this world, a bastard to us all in the absence of a sanctioned marriage," Walburga hissed.
"Well, she has a name that's somewhat catchier," Remus said. "But you don't need to know it. What you do need to know is that if you say another word about her or keep yelling at her when she trips on her way in, there'll be hell to pay. Maybe that'd actually be hellfire to you, come to think of it."
"What?" Walburga said tauntingly. "Does someone have a little crush on the blood traitor's bastard? Does someone like her even if he's too poor and too wickedly corrupt to deserve her?"
"I like both of them," Remus said squarely. "Though I could learn to love playing with fire. Do you want to come out of this charred or not, Mrs. Black?"
Walburga hissed one last time, but it was the mean and performative hiss of a cornered animal.
"Deal," she said bitterly.
Remus smiled and dropped the curtain back down over the painting.
WC: 808