Chapter Text
"Where is he?!" Bellatrix shouts, glaring at Regulus from the rubble of his former doorway as bits of ash spin through the air around her like agitated snowflakes.
Regulus cringes away from her, but his feet don't move, still blocking her way into the rest of the house, and he looks up to meet her eyes, jaw set. "I'll tell you that when I know he's safe from you."
"He is my son!" she snarls, readying her wand for another overpowered reducto. "Get out of the way, Reggie."
"Oh really?" says Regulus. "Because I have distinct memories of you telling me when we were younger that if you ever gave birth to a squib they would be 'no child of yours'. And that Uncle Marius should've been drowned as soon as they figured out he wasn't a wizard."
"Caelum is not a squib!" Bellatrix says, sneering. "He is an obnoxious brat who still isn't over being sent to Durmstrang instead of Hogwarts, and you, my dearest cousin, are an idiot who has been taken in by his pathetic plea for attention."
"Yes he is, Bella," Regulus says, infuriatingly calm. "This isn't some story he cooked up and came to me with this morning. I've suspected for years."
"Oh, you've suspected, have you?" Bellatrix coos, before dropping her voice dangerously. "Tell me, Reggie. What reason could you possibly have to think my son is a squib?"
"Perhaps 'suspect' is too mild a word," Regulus says, something in his tone going ever-so-slightly harder. "He doesn't remember a single instance of accidental magic in his entire life, and neither do the house elves you have practically raising him. He doesn't heal from injuries as quickly as a magical child would. He's also…" Regulus winces. "...susceptible, to certain types of anti-muggle wards." He swallows. "That was how I first knew."
Bellatrix stares at him, looking for any sign of a lie, a miscommunication, a twist of truth.
There are none.
A sick feeling of disgust crawls up her throat, strangling her words inside her as Regulus's words sink in.
Anti-muggle wards. Anti-bloody-muggle wards.
Her son.
"You're telling me," she says, "that Caelum is a bloody muggle?"
Her voice almost snags on his name. It was a name for a wizard, for a Black, the one she'd known since she was a girl she would bestow on one of her children.
She hadn't given it to a muggle. That name didn't belong to a muggle.
"Squib, Bella," he says softly. "Not muggle."
He sounds almost compassionate, which only made Bellatrix want to hex him. "That's hardly better."
"He still has magical blood," Regulus says, silver eyes stupidly soft. "He still knows our ways. He's still your son."
The squib , Bellatrix thinks, sick.
It's disgusting--to have wizard blood--her blood--flowing through the veins of a muggle child.
Because that is what squibs are, regardless of wizard law and the statute of secrecy's exemption. Wizard-born muggles.
The fact that it is Caelum she is thinking of does little to stem the tide of her horror.
She had raised him. She had raised the impertinent little snit, had taught him their traditions, had held him in her lap, had carried him in her womb--
"No," she says, something inside her snapping into place. "He isn't."
Regulus shakes his head, something broken in his eyes. "You don't mean that, Bella."
"I do," she says coldly.
He shakes his head again, the motion jerky. "You must--if you won't keep him because he's your son, do it because he's your heir. Your only possible blood heir, might I remind you. You would let the line of Lestrange die over this?"
"This is everything we fight for, Regulus," Bellatrix hisses. "Purity--"
Regulus explodes. "He is pure! He is as pure as you or I, purer, even, whether or not he can use magic. He also happens to be a bloody child prodigy, and is ridiculously loyal to you despite how little you deserve it, and I will not let you throw him away!"
He's panting when he finishes, naked anger on his face making him look more like his brother than himself.
Bellatrix snorts. "Poor little Reggie. The rumors about your ability to have your own spawn must be true, if you've sunk to coveting my bloody squib."
Regulus flinches, and she knows she's scored a hit.
"You need him," he says. "The fade..."
Bellatrix sneers. "Better a dead child than a child like him ."
She can see Regulus pale at that, but he doesn't back down. "Is it? Think, Bella. You need an heir. Someone to carry on the family name and secrets, someone to take care of the businesses and assets when you and Rodolphus die… you can pass him over in favor of his children if you need to, but that will never be an option if you disown him at eleven. Keep him. Raise him in society--make sure he makes a good marriage--and then if you want to get rid of him afterward, send him off to Australia or the muggles or what-have-you and write him out of your will. If you keep it quiet enough, it won't even damage your reputation."
"You think I care about our reputation?" Bellatrix snarls. "We'll be a tainted line!"
"Are you a Griffyndor or Slytherin?" Regulus asks. "Last time I checked they were the ones that pointlessly martyred themselves for their causes and we were the survivors."
"You dare--"
"Am I wrong, Bella?"
He holds her stare for a long moment, daring her to disagree, and Bellatrix's desire to hex him where he stands grows stronger, fingers twitching around her wand.
"And how, exactly, are we supposed to keep this quiet when everyone already knows he's down for Durmstrang?"
Regulus doesn't even blink. "Play on their expectations. I know Karkaroff--he's not difficult to buy off. It won't be hard to fake records, and it's a big enough school that anyone who's been there will just assume they never met each other. Keep him in his Russian tutoring, find someone who can teach him enough day-to-day details about the school for him to carry a conversation about it… no one will look too closely as long as it seems right on the outside. As for where he'll actually be... I've found a school abroad that accepts squibs, where he can get the OWLs required to keep a wand."
"What self-respecting magic school would accept squibs?"
Regulus smiles wryly. "The American Institute of Magic."