He doesn’t speak at first. Just stares at the thin strip of parchment in your trembling hand, the silence between you stretching long and taut, like a held breath.

You’d whispered it. Just once. “I’m pregnant.”

And now the fire burns low, forgotten. The tea gone cold on the table. You don’t know what you expected—tears? a smile? fury?—but not this: Regulus, standing there like he’s been turned to marble, the world tilting out from under him.

When he finally moves, it’s slow. He sinks down onto the edge of the armchair like he’s afraid his knees might not hold. One hand comes up to cover his mouth. His eyes don’t leave the empty hearth.

“A child,” he says quietly, as if trying out the weight of it. “Our child.”

You nod. His hand falls away. And only then do you see the flicker of something you hadn’t expected—joy. Fleeting and fragile, but unmistakable. His lips part slightly, and for a moment, you swear he almost smiles.

But then it fades.

The silence comes crashing back.

His voice is quieter now. Hollow. “It’ gonna be a Black.”

He says it like a sentence.

You move to him instinctively, but he doesn’t meet your eyes. He’s somewhere far away, standing once more beneath the stony portraits of his childhood home, a boy with too-straight shoulders and a name that didn’t belong to him, only claimed him.

“She’ll want it,” he murmurs. “My mother. She’ll take it. Wrap it in silver thread and mould it into something perfect. Cold. Obedient. Pure.” His jaw tightens. “It won’t matter who you are. She’ll say it’s a mercy, raising it in the Black tradition. That she’s preserving the line.”

He looks up then. The storm in his eyes isn’t rage—it’s terror.

“I know what they do to children like that,” he says, barely audible. “Children who show softness. Children who ask questions.”

You reach for him, but he catches your hand before you do. Holds it so tightly it almost hurts.

“I love you,” he says, with such stark urgency it robs the breath from your lungs. “But this changes everything.”

And it does. The wedding comes fast, coldly orchestrated in dark silk and duty, not music and light. No lace-trimmed invitations, no whispered toasts under a starry sky. Only binding spells and the echo of the Black family motto carved into old stone.

Your child is claimed before they even draw breath.

His mother begins weaving plans before the ink on your vows is dry. She insists on names, on traditions, on tutors. On where the cradle will sit. On what lineage must be passed on. And Regulus—Regulus, who once read poetry in secret and dreamt of something more—stands beside her, silent. Obedient.

But only on the surface.

Late at night, when the house sleeps and duty loosens its grip, he wraps himself around you like armor and whispers against your skin:

“I will love this child the way no one loved me. I swear it.”

That’s the only rebellion he dares.