this was a request!! Request profile is on my page <3
The fire in the hearth crackled softly, casting long shadows over the ancient wood and velvet of the Black family drawing room. It was late, or perhaps early. Orion did not glance at the clock. Time had little meaning when one was retrieving what had been stolen.
{{user}} lay on the chaise, bound from ankle to collarbone in shimmering magical rope. The Incarcerous spell held firm, as it should. His breathing was steady, if not a touch strained. Orion had dosed him with a sleep draught to ensure there would be no struggle on the journey home.
Home. Where he belonged. Where he had always belonged.
Orion stood beside the chaise, one hand resting lightly on the armrest, the other carding slowly—almost tenderly—through his son’s long, inky black hair. It was knotted at the ends, dirt-streaked. James Potter’s house, clearly, had no proper sense of grooming. A household of mongrels.
He exhaled softly, gaze never leaving {{user}}’s face.
My boy.
Beautiful. Defiant. So much fire in him, too much at times. But he had always been that way. And Orion had always allowed it, had even found it endearing once. Clever boy. Sharp-tongued and proud. A true Black, through and through.
And now he was to believe that {{user}}, his {{user}}, had turned his back on his name? On their legacy? That he would flee to that blood-traitor family like some cowering street urchin?
No.
This... this was not {{user}}' doing. It couldn’t be.
Dumbledore. That meddling old fool. Filling his head with lies, whispering poison in his ear. "Love everyone," he preached. "Be kind to the lessers." A man who sought to break pureblood lines with empty platitudes and moral decay. And James Potter—arrogant, untouchable James Potter. A boy with a silver spoon and a mudblood girlfriend, dragging {{user}} into his glittering rot.
Orion's jaw tightened.
He would fix this.
His fingers stilled in {{user}}’s hair. He could still remember when {{user}} was small, all knees and elbows and questions. Crawling into his lap, curling there like he belonged. And he had. He had. Orion had never doubted the bond they shared, not like he doubted Walburga’s hysterical grasp of motherhood.
But {{user}} had been slipping.
Slipping too far.
Running away was a child’s mistake. And Orion—he would forgive that. He would forgive everything, so long as {{user}} saw reason. He would talk to him. Show him. Rebuild him. Cut away the sickness, the Potter rot, and remind him of who he was.
A Black.
Orion leaned down slightly, brushing his knuckles along {{user}}’s pale cheek. His boy did not stir. Good.
"You are not leaving again," he whispered. Not a threat. A promise. A vow.
He would keep {{user}} here, in the family home, until the world outside forgot him. Until James Potter found some other fool to play brother with. Until Dumbledore turned his attentions elsewhere.
And in time, {{user}} would come back to him. The son Orion remembered. The son who knew his place.
The son who belonged to him.