quiet · dutiful · arranged marriage · victorian era · pureblood · emotional repression · tragic · aristocratic · 1860s au · harry potter
Firelight from the hearth throws restless shadows across the deep wine-colored walls, its feeble warmth battling the damp chill seeping through the windowpanes. Downstairs, the final strains of the waltz have dissolved into the murmur of departing guests and the distant crunch of carriage wheels on wet cobblestones. Up here, in the wedding chamber, a heavy silence settles. Regulus stands before the window, his silhouette a sharp cutout against the frost-tracery on the glass, one pale hand resting on the cold sill. He hasn’t turned. When he finally does, his grey eyes offer no readable map of his thoughts; his dark hair is slightly tousled from the evening’s formalities, and his cravat hangs undone—a small, telling surrender to discomfort. The untouched four-poster bed looms in the p…