Rodolphus wanted to die. By the Kiss of a Dementor, by the Veil, by a careless shove from the highest parapet. Anything to stop this. His mind had splintered seven times already. Each time the monster fed him a potion that braught him back to see the faintly smiling face. Always at the brink of madness, just enough for more. Each Crucio stretched five seconds longer than the last until the seconds lost their edges and became an ocean he drowned in.
Another scream tore up his throat. The sound should have broken something. It had, again and again, but the young man across from him would heal the damage with practised efficiency. A polite rescue from silence so the next scream would be clear. How thoughtful...
A vial touched his lips. Bitter burned down. Strength returned where he did not want it. Five more pulses of Aetherveil and then his voice died to a ragged whisper. His head lolled. The wand in those elegant fingers twitched and rose. Panic outran pain.
He lurched forward on the bench. "Yes." The word cracked like old plaster. "Yes to whatever. Stop. I beg you. Stop or kill me. Please."
The young man did not flinch. He adjusted his sleeve as if he were about to pour tea. He stood there without haste and smoothed the front of his robe.
"Mr Lestrange. Allow me to start again, my name is Corvus Black. Lord of the Noble and Ancient House of Rosier. Heir to the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black. My purpose today is plain. As I have mentioned at the start of our... meeting. You are, unfortunately, married to Bellatrix Lestrange, née Black. The marriage contract approved by Cygnus Black is barbaric." A fingertip touched his own breastbone in a small gesture of wounded civility. "As a civilised wizard and as Heir Black I cannot ignore such cruelty. I am confident, of course, that you have never exercised the authority that foul parchment grants you over my distant cousin."
The words floated like silk. The wand continued to turn with lazy grace between long fingers. Every time those strange turquoise silver eyes passed over him he fought not to fold in on himself. He had faced the Dark Lord's anger. He had borne the Cruciatus from that pale hand and learned what a god's contempt felt like. This was worse. This devil enjoyed order. This devil enjoyed neatness. This monster healed vocal cords so that the next note would be pure.
He tried to keep still. The shackles rattled anyway. Fear lived in the bone now. He could feel it there, a cold threaded into marrow. He swallowed and found no saliva. The room smelled faintly of old salt and potion glass. Somewhere beyond the door a distant metal hinge groaned and fell quiet. The wards tightened and settled like frost.
He risked a glance at the ceiling to steady his breath. The tip of the wand found him again.
"Please." The word scraped free. "I will do whatever you want. Tell me. I will do it."
Disappointment crossed the monster's young face, small and genuine, the way a teacher frowns when a pupil answers too soon. Corvus folded his hands behind his back and studied him as if he were a line in a ledger that refused to add up.
"You interrupt," he observed, mild as milk. "I had prepared an outline that would have been quite persuasive. It included definitions, a review of obligations, and a moral argument. Which, I belive was the strongest point of my speech."
The wand lowered by a fraction. Relief tried to bloom and died when the boy's smile arrived. It was courteous. It did not reach the eyes.
"Let us be efficient. You will sign a dissolution acknowledging that the contract was coerced and is therefore void. You will sign with blood quill that control provisions were exercised by the Lestrange line through compulsion provided by the contract. You will agree to renounce any claim to the Black dowry attached to that parchment. You will transfer everything Lestrange's have, vaults and deeds. In return I will leave, Mr Lestrange."
Leave. Yes, he would love that. Let the devil leave. He nodded so hard the iron bit into his skin. A whimper escaped before he caught it. His throat threatened to fray again. He swallowed blood and salt and nodded once more for clarity.
"Excellent." Corvus drew a set scrolls from an inner pocket and placed them on the table with care. A quill floated down beside it, the nib catching the light. "We will begin with the acknowledgement."
His hands shook. Yet he signed the last parchment. The Monster was 'kind enough' to explain each and every one of them. He signed. Ink scratched and dried. He dared to look up. The young lord's attention rested on the text with professional interest. His wand flicked flicked lazily.
Rodolphus was crying. He was not sure if those were tears of joy or fear. The tears ignored his attempts to stop and slid anyway. Corvus gathered the parchment, checked the signatures, and neatly placed them on the table. The polite smile returned.
"That will do for today. I had hoped for a longer discussion, but I will accept prompt agreement. It was a pleasure to meet you Mr. Lestrange."
Pleasure. The word chimed in his skull like a bell in a storm. The boy angled his head, listening to something beyond the door, then returned his attention with that same bright, careful interest.
"One final note. You will never again speak Bellatrix Black's name with any claim attached to it. Unless of course you want a repeat of this meeting."
He nodded until the iron bit again. The wand finally lowered and vanished into a holster with a smooth motion. Relief fluttered in his chest like a moth that could not find the window.
Corvus looked faintly bored. He looked faintly disappointed that the speech had been ruined. He looked, above all, finished. Rodolphus fixed his stare on the tabletop and tried to breathe without shaking while avoiding eye contact.
--
Rufus Scrimgeour leaned against the cold stone and watched his breath curl in the corridor like a tired ghost. Azkaban did not have a tea trolley, a clock, or a single comfortable chair. It had moisture, rust, and the kind of silence that made a man count his own heartbeats. He considered taking a stroll to see if the inmates were well, then snorted at himself. Ask a Dementor about its daily routine while he was at it. He rubbed at a scar on his knuckles and listened to the wind gnaw at the tower.
Three slow knocks reached him through the door. He pushed it open, hinges complaining. Rodolphus Lestrange looked up with the stunned joy of a man who had just seen his mother climb out of her grave. The Death Eater's eyes shone with relief and terror mixed into one awful color. Across the table, Corvus Black flipped a parchment with all the disappointment of a clerk who discovered a smudge on an otherwise perfect ledger.
Rufus lifted a hand. "Back to your cell, Lestrange." The cuffs clicked and Lestrange was already on his feet, eager to leave the room as if the devil himself rented the far chair by the hour. The man trembled in small, constant jolts from jaw to heel. Rufus decided he did not need to know why. He guided the prisoner toward the corridor, and the young lord did not even look up from his papers.
"Until our next meeting, Mr. Lestrange," Corvus murmured without lifting his eyes. The words fell into the room like frost. Rodolphus stifled a whimper and quickened his steps.
Rufus closed the door again and glanced once through the viewing slit. Black sorted parchments in tidy stacks. New signatures. Transfers. The Lestrange name was the only thing left with the brothers, everything else clearly on the move. Unaware of the details of the 'meeting's details' Rufus shook his head and headed for the stairs, boots finding the familiar rhythm.
--
Far from the sea, in an office filled with strange knic knacks, Albus Dumbledore paced a narrow strip of floor until the boards threatened to complain. The Chief Warlock, Headmaster and Supreme Mugwump had learned many arts over a long life. Losing was not one of them. He needed his chairs because each one mattered to a different piece of the same design, a design he had woven for decades. One chair gave reach, one gave law, one gave the stage. Arcturus Black had dragged two of them into public light in a single morning and fed them to a room full of jackals. They were in the hands of Arcturus as a leash.
He stopped locked gazes with a figure in a frame and clasped his hands. "Phineas, if you please. A brief word regarding the house you so admire."
Phineas Nigellus Black took one look at him and exhaled through the nose like a bored tutor. The figure blurred and vanished. A few breaths later the same long face returned and delivered the message without a blink. The portrait was not where it had been. It had been relocated to a place with no visitors, likely deep in storage. No landing, no stairwell, no watchful audience. The Black household had folded its walls and left him outside.
Dumbledore locked his gaze with the frame a moment longer and released it. He went to his desk and drew a fresh sheet. A letter to Sirius could yet serve a purpose. The young man owed the light a debt, whether he remembered it or not. A patient word here, an appeal to dead friends there, a reminder of old loyalties. Ink gathered at the nib. The tip hovered. He thought of Arcturus in the Minister's seat, of Greengrass nodding, of Corvus smiling as the Registrar's seal dried. The nib touched down and began to move. The plan would bend. It would not break.
In the deep of Grimmauld Place, under the quiet weight of old wards and older grudges, Sirius Black planted a boot in the ribs of the man on the floor and breathed through his teeth. The ritual room smelled of stone, wax, and sweat. A lantern hissed. The figure on the flagstones did not groaned not even moved an inch. Sirius watched him without speaking and let the anger settle again into something colder.
He had thought himself a good man once, brave and clever and light on his feet. He had thought wrong. The family he ran from had a grammar for pain and a memory like iron. Corvus had walked into that grammar as he was born to it. Somehow he had made space there for Sirius as well. Not with shouting. Not with his mother's shrieking portrait and its failed lessons. With a rescure first and a purpose next.
Sirius crouched, touched the man's shoulder, and judged him fit for nothing but another punch to that ugly mug. He liked the silence afterwards, but screams were better for his sanity. Never forget. Never forgive. The words felt different when a Black spoke them and meant them. He had been a foot soldier once. He will be more. He will be the blade that remembered who wronged him. He looked toward the corridor and listened. The house was quiet. "Not for long..." he smiled.
The lantern guttered and steadied. Sirius straightened and rolled his shoulders until the ache eased. The next session would come when Corvus is back. He would be ready to pour the potions, pull the man back from the edge only to walk him to it again. He was learning what it meant to get revenge. He was learning life was larger than one boyhood room and one broken school.
Back in Azkaban's corridor, Rufus reached the stairhead and paused. A faint, distant scream rose through the stone from another tier and died without echo. He adjusted his cloak and continued his descent down with Corvus Black. Some days a man wrote reports. Some days he moved pieces. Today he had watched a monster run with it's tail between his legs. He did not know whether to be impressed or concerned. He decided to settle for both and keep walking.