Chapter Text
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“BLACK!”
Regulus’ eyes fly open, his face hit with a squashy pillow. With a groan, he grows from his mattress sending the pillow back in the darkness to one of his dormmates. He drags his bare feet against the cold ground towards the only one source of light—the gap under the bathroom door, where a female voice travels from throughout the entire room that is the dormitory of five Slytherin boys. The witch is humming melodically, while she’s not sparing them with silence in the very early morning. This is definitely not the start of sixth year Regulus Black has imagined it to be. He grasps the handle only for the door to be blocked. A female hum falls quiet for a moment, during which he knocks. As if his knocking was a wake up sign, she starts to hum like a siren trying to trap them all again. He leans his forehead against the door, knocking with it softly.
“Vivien,” His voice triggers her.
Humming of the unknown melodies gets louder as she becomes louder as well, slamming, smacking, and hitting harder.
“Can’t you take care of your bitch and catch her on the leash?” Doyle Mulciber groans, snapping into a sitting position in his bed like a broken wand.
Soon Amycus Carrow, Evan Rosier, and Barty Crouch Jr. sat up in their beds too. The fire of candles arises brightening the room with dim light. Regulus spins around, leaning his back against the door.
“How is it possible that you bark this much and still miss every time, every word, Doyle? Why would I leash her, when you already trip over yours all the time?” He crosses his arms over his chest.
His dormmates burst like bubbles, laughing. Evan’s hands drop from his face, revealing his snort. Doyle jumps to his feet and marches to Black at the bathroom door. Loud glugging echoes through the entire room, making all the boys grimace in disgust. Regulus turns around towards the door, his face winced.
“Did she just-”
Regulus can’t hear the rest of the sentence because Mulciber pushes him and grabs the door. He steps to the side, hands raised in the air, observing him break down the old handle of the door. He straightens, when the door swings slowly open. In front of the five boys lurking inside is Vivien Esmé Beauchêne smiling sweetly in a fake manner. It is a shite-eating one. Regulus leans on the doorway and rolls his eyes.
Vivien stands there innocently, dressed in her Ravenclaw uniform ready for the sixth-year classes, while all the boys are slapped in the faces with a horrible smell. Casually, she moves about to pass the two Slytherins at the broken door of their own bathroom. Mulciber is stopping himself from puking at the smell but Black grabs her by her slim elbow. She stops and her innocent eyes meet his steady, icy cold grey. They are sharp like icicles ready to stab her any moment.
“Est-ce qu'il y a un problème?” She asks in fake concern, her brows softening.
He looks at her and inside the bathroom—it’s a mess—her dirty pajamas and underwear thrown on the ground, the stony floor flooded with thin layer of water, her cosmetics are thrown all over the five boys' cabinets. The worst is the toilet—it’s clogged and the greenish filth is starting to spill out of it—the source of the smell. Vivien follows his look over her shoulder. She cringes with her whole face apologetically.
“Sorry. Period.” She says and the two of them tear away their gazes from the view to focus on each other.
“Period? It smells like someone left graphorn’s shite on a warm day in the sun.” Barty gags.
“That’s very specific and odd.” She comments, glancing at him.
“Merlin, what the fuck did you eat?” Evan questions. He’s the first to get up. He approaches the door to their dormitory, swinging it back and forth to get the smell out of the room. “Smells like a dead body. Did you eat a dead body?”
Vivien shrugs, not being able to stop herself from smiling anymore.
“Maybe the ghost of the haunted witch did. We have our whims.” She assures, barely making the words out without giggling.
“Very funny,” Regulus yanks her—not brutally but quite energetically making her look at him. He leans to her height. “Now, you’re going to clean it.”
“No.” She grins wider and slaps her hand against his chest and he feels something puffy stick to it. “You’re going to clean it.” He looks down to her hand against his chest and his eye twitches.
“Is that-” His points his stare at her. She stares the same at him.
“Used?” She asks, dropping her hand as a rolled pad is stuck to his jumper. “I don’t know. Still, I suggest starting cleaning from your rubbish bin—it’s full, which I admit is a pathetic view. All the crumpled toilet paper, cummed on. It’s quite sad—the success of convincing only your hands to stick around. It seems your size is not the great thing about you all.” He boils alive, his blood on fire. The hand that has slapped him on the chest before, slaps him on the crotch now, making his dormmates’ eyes widen. “Not great at all.”
Regulus smirks as sarcastically as Vivien, leaning lower towards her.
“Yet, you come for more all the way from your private, princess chamber in the Ravenclaw Tower.”
“To shite all over your bathroom.” She nods, leaning to his face with a self-satisfied smirk prominent on her lips. “My shite stuck around, I guess. It may tell you why none wants to be your all’s girlfriends. You’re shiteless.” Her eyebrows wiggles to emphasise.
“And it all may tell you why none wants to be your friend.” Regulus chuckles.
Vivien’s face falls into fake sadness.
“Ohhh, your brother does. Your dormmates do. I see—we’re jealous that I am what they want, and you’re what they are forced to?”
“I assure you, Vivien—they want your big mouth to move for a completely different reason than to talk. I’m quite glad to not be their type. It means they choose me for other matters than to bend me down. Who chooses you for any sensible reason? Not even bitches of your mothers and they literally have risked their freedom to create the thing you are. Regrets seem to be high, when it’s about you.” He matches her shite-eating expression.
Even though Vivien keeps her prideful demeanour, Regulus sees it in her eyes. He rubs the salt directly into her wound. Her eyes twitch, blinking away the real sadness.
Vivien feels the other four boys watch and listen to the scene between her and Black, keeping their own reactions quiet. She feels Regulus’ hand loosen, letting her finally go. She takes her arm away and backs away a step from him. She shakes her head to herself and turns around. She hears him chuckle, his friends observing her give up this easily.
No fucking way. Vivien feels a rush in her chest. She spins around and smacks her fist into Regulus’ jaw. He stumbles, catching his face into his hand.
“If I’m such a regret, doll—what makes you that then? An error of existence? Not even your queer brother chose you. You're not even his type, you rejected inbred. Now, go clean the fucking toilet and try not to trip over your worthless sense of importance-” She points her sharp nail at Carrow and Mulciber leaning together on the dresser, watching the scene entertained. “-or these things' leash.”
“Ten points from Ravenclaw,” Regulus says, straightening. He starts to move his jaw around stiffly.
“Maybe these point will choose you,”
“Twenty,”
“Don’t flatter yourself—that little thing in your trousers won’t handle them.”
“Thirty.”
“Maybe the house cup will fuck you. Would make you speechless for the first time in your life, wouldn’t it?”
“Fourty,”
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“Can one of you two tell me why Ravenclaw has negative house points?” McGonagall asks harshly, standing over the two teenagers.
The two is sitting on the bench at a safe distance from one another. Vivien and Regulus see other students glancing at them. It's the busiest moment of breakfast, while Professor McGonagall has caught Regulus in the Great Hall and approached lonely Vivien at the Ravenclaw table, his creeping after her like a shadow. Now the arseclown sits spread out nonchalantly a few feet away from Vivien, who is resting her back against the table.
“He took them.” Vivien points her finger at Black accusingly.
“Black,” McGonagall directs her stare at him, her eyebrows frowning. “-was one hundred and seventy of them really necessary?”
“She came into my dormitory in the early morning, used my bathroom, left her period blood all over my bathtub, clogged my toilet with a dungbomb, stuck an old pad to me, told me to clean it all myself, insulted me, and punched me in the face.” He counts cockily.
McGonagall directs her stare at Vivien, processing all the information.
“That’s why the whole Slytherin common room smells? Elves are looking for a dead animal in the pipes right now.” She sighs, learning the mystery behind the smelly house of Slytherin. “Can you elaborate why, Beauchêne? It’s been only ten days of the semester.”
Regulus looks to the side at Vivien. She doesn’t spare him a single stare. She has an innocent expression on her face but her body betrays her. She sits confidently, her chin raised highly, not ashamed of her actions or shameful. She has her arms crossed over her chest defensively, her legs are spread in the trousers of uniform in a very unlady-like position. Mother would disapprove. Vivien has no regrets about her choices, only deep resentment for Regulus.
“He told me that boys bend me down, none likes me, and my mothers don’t love me.” She says straight to her point.
McGonagall looks at him with raised eyebrows judgingly. Regulus’ lips gap open for a split second in shock that Vivien has McGonagall on her side so easily and effortlessly.
“She went through the contents of our rubbish bin and commented on them! On my behalf, it was after most of these things has already happened on hers.” He argues.
“I didn’t go through their rubbish, I only wanted to throw the pad away.” Vivien murmurs. “Which, by the way, I’m not surprised that no girls visit your room.”
“You have visited their room, Beauchêne.” McGonagall states, making Regulus smirk triumphally. “Next time, throw away your old pad in your own bathroom and keep yourself to it. Your mothers pay highly for your own dormitory.” Her stare hops between the two teenagers, a sigh leaving her mouth. “You’re soon to turn seventeen, then eighteen. It's a blink of an eye until you leave this castle and you act worse than the first year. You age backwards.”
Regulus looks up at McGonagall only to realise she’s looking as much at him as she does at Vivien.
“Detention. The two of you.”
They watch her leave, marching towards the doorway of the Great Hall—to inform elves there was no dead animal. Instead there was dung—if they didn’t find it yet by now. Vivien’s eyes snap from McGonagall to Regulus, who still watches her. She stares at his profile—the crooked and ugly lines of his stupid face. When McGonagall is out of his sight, he scoffs to himself. He looks ahead, shaking his head in disbelief.
“I am not moving a finger.” He informs Vivien, standing from the bench. Their eyes meet and he figures she was already storming him quietly with the glare of her wild, green eyes.
Vivien looks him up and down—his slim posture. She snorts.
“Nothing new.” She states and spins around on the bench towards her plate of food.
“I didn't know that the princess of sluts works as a house elf? Mopping the floor with yourself, are you?”
“That’s still more than you are, Black.” Vivien smiles at him, waving her hand dismissively to go. “Shoo or you will catch something from the slut I am. Appeal—for example. Suddenly girls will start to fall to your feet—we wouldn’t want that. Not, when the toilet paper is so soft.”
“Or you will drop to your knees for me. We wouldn’t want that—when your lips are so loose that my cock could get lost between them.” Regulus smirks sarcastically.
The corners of Vivien's lips lower steadily and her brows softens.
“Is it that tiny?” She asks mockingly with a gentle tone of voice she would only use for a child.
Regulus clicks his tongue, turning around. He begins to walk away.
“Harlot,”
“Prick,”
“Trollop,”
“Arseclown,”
“Have a fucking, nice day.”
“Trip over, smash your stupid face, and die.”
Regulus turns to walk backwards. Vivien ignores him, even if she feels his eyes linger on her figure.
“When only you speak so affectionately to me and know the deepest desires of my heart? Careful, Beauchêne. I may fall—for you like you want me to, don’t you?” He turns away. Vitch.
Only now, Vivien looks at him, her lips twisting. Arseclown.
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Vivien hates a lot of things and she hates another this much Regulus Black. For every thing she hates, she hates Regulus. He is a student, he talks, he walks—sometimes too slow, he’s cold, he’s annoying like a bug, and he has smacked his lips against hers once. It was the worst moment of Vivien’s life—worse than tearing her family apart and worse than her mom dying because of her. These two events in her life were not as traumatising as Regulus' long, wet tongue slipping against hers.
Vivien hates a lot and another a lot she hates Regulus. He’s half of the things she hates. Boy, prejudiced, cocky, thinks too highly of himself, smells, is stupid and arrogant at his lack of brain. The thought of Regulus causes a spasm to go through her whole body, her face grimaces in disgust. It physically hurts her to remember Regulus Black exists and is in fact a real being.
“Are you well?” Zahara Hassani leans towards the witch, her warm breath strokes against her skin as she whispers in the quiet classroom.
Everyone else notes down the information from the blackboard, while Professor Binns tells the sixth-years his historical nonsense about wandlore unhurriedly. Vivien looks at Zahara. She doesn’t hate Zahara Hassani. She’s too pretty for that with her honey skin, cocoa-brown eyes, slim face, full lips and high cheekbones. Vivien leans towards her.
“I’ve got another detention and I haven't even finished the last one yet.” She announces.
“So I’ve heard—after dunging the idiots' toilet. Everyone knows.”
“Don’t skip the part, where I smacked the greatest idiot of them all across his idiotic face.” She mentions. “It's the most important part of the story to me.”
“How’s that the most important?” Zahara furrows her eyebrows.
“My greatest achievement—smacking the stupidity out of him—and you ask how it is important?” Vivien scowls, her hand on her chest, hurt and insulted.
Sitting at the desk in front of the two, Emmeline Vance and Sybill Trelawney snorts. Vivien looks at them. The two of them have curls, one messier than the other. She doesn’t hate them either.
“It’s just obvious why you would do that. Quite the opposite is, why would you keep going to his dormitory for the last ten mornings and abruptly wake them idiots?” One of the girls murmurs.
“Their annoyance is satisfactory enough for me.” She answers simply and honestly.
“There are more pleasurable methods to satisfy yourself, foxy.” Barty comments from across the classroom, his eyes moving between his piece of parchment and the board as he writes down the informations like everyone else. His joke earns him the laughter of other sixth-years.
Vivien directs her stare at him, making a childish, petty face at his back. She doesn’t like him that much. Still, she doesn’t hate him.
“Like what? Finishing on the toilet paper?” She questions quietly, making nearly everyong look at her in amusement.
“Let me finish on you and you will learn.” Barty offers with a smug smirk, meeting her eyes with a wink of his playful brown ones.
“Only if you let me finish you first.” Vivien lets the words roll down her tongue quicker than she can think about them.
It causes the Slytherins boys to snap their heads around. The arseclown does it the fastest to stare down at her, his eyebrows flying up so high they hide in his hair. Only when other teenagers giggle, Vivien realises how suggestive her words sounded. I meant beating that boy and not beating his thing. She feels her cheeks warm up. She looks down to her own piece of parchment with her lips pursed to stop herself from saying one suggestive word too much.
“Why so shy now?”
None pays a sickle of attention to Binns and his monologue.
“Leaves the fox alone before she attacks again.” Comments Dorcas Meadowes with her dark locs and skin. She is too occupied and busy with thinking about different quidditch techniques to care about making notes.
Vivien glances at her out of the corners of her eyes. Cassie winks at her over her parchments that she draws on. Vivien smiles softly at her and pearly pale Pandora Malfoy. Rora beams brightly at her. She doesn’t hate these two either. Unwillingly, her eyes slip to the side of the girls. In the background she sees still staring Black. Oh, how she hates him.
“What.” She hisses, signifying an attack.
He shrugs.
“I am surprised it’s so easy to satisfy you. I would expect more ambition than shite in my toilet.”
“It’s as yours as Barty’s or Evan’s.” The two boys’ glances fly and land on her. She winks with her long eyelashes flirtatiously at them, giving them her most alluring gaze.
“They jerk off to the toilet paper—I don’t think it’s what your heart desires deeply.” Regulus cuts in her flirts.
“Not to it. Just on it.” Evan corrects politely.
Vivien ignores it, even if other girls grimace their faces at his confession.
“After all, you think so highly of me, Black?” She questions with a grin of irony.
“Loosely.” He bites back, his lips twisting poisonously.
“Highly, loosely. It’s still a lot of time I spent on your mind?”
“Caught me. My life’s purpose—thinking of you.”
“Wishfully, not when you're with your round roll of toilet paper.”
“Especially when I’m with it.”
“Die.” Vivien smirks, her whole face sculpted in sarcasm.
Regulus runs his hand through his ink black curls.
“Oh, when you know so well how to get into my head?” He sighs, closing his eyes at the dream of her voice and words.
“Will be thinking of this tonight?”
“How would I not?” Oh, how Vivien hates him! They stare at each other until a scoff, at the audacity of that boy, escapes her mouth. She sinks her own teeth in her bottom lip, lowering her face. Minutes pass in silence that Vivien doesn’t interrupt with her loud whisper that everyone can hear perfectly.
“Can anyone explain the role of a wand’s core in its magical properties?”
Vivien’s head raises steadily. Her eyes flicker, her lips part. Until her whole face falls-
“A core is the source of a wand’s magical essence. It determines the wand’s character an-”
“Actually, Professor, while the core is important, the wood of the wand plays an equally critical role. The core may provide the essence but the wood determines how that magic is tempered in the owner’s hands.” Vivien pipes in.
Regulus turns around, slowly facing the witch sitting in the back of the classroom. Their stares cross again. What they don’t notice or hear as soon as one stares at another, is how Zahara's eyes roll or Evan's sigh. Nor Vivien or Regulus acknowledge the dissatisfied reactions of sixth-years, their groans of annoyance or throws of heads in irritation because they know what is about to happen.
“Yes, yes, valid poi-”
“With no due respect, Vivien, you’re oversimplifying. The core is the heart of the wand. Without it, the wand would be nothing more than a stick.”
“And without the wood, Stupidulus, the wand would be nothing more than a splinter of heartstring or phoenix feather. Good luck casting a spell with that.”
“Maybe, if you read Ollivander’s essay on cores, you’d understand that they are what truly bond with the wizards, not the wood. Wand loyalty is from the core.”
“Except when it isn’t! What about elder wood? Its unique properties override most core tendencies. Ollivander literally admits that.”
“Fascinating, Vivien. Your clinging to a note instead of grasping the entirety of the text. Not the sharpest wand—are we? Core is every-"
“And typical of you to ignore the truth you don’t like. Wand's wood dictates its compatibility as much as the core.”
“If so, tell me why do wands with phoenix feather cores adapt better to multiple owners if the wood is so important?”
“Easy! The phoenix feather is a snake like you.” Vivien smiles, putting her hand into the air as she starts count on her fingers. “No loyalty, no honesty, dodgy, and fake ass-”
“My little bump is real, I assure.” Regulus winks meaningfully at her.
“And I am going to kick it as real.”
“Oh my-” Evan murmurs under his nose.
The two squint their stares sharply at each other, trying to stab one another from the distance.
“JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP THE TWO OF YOU.” Rosalie Parkinson speaks out and they look at her with their squints. She looks at them from her own corner of the classroom. “SHUT UP. NONE CARES.”
Vivien and Regulus look at each other once more, their faces twisting. The witch folds her arms over her white button-up and drops in the seat, facing the front of the classroom, where Professor Binns is not. Vivien frowns, leaning towards Zahara. Zahara is holding her head in her hands—tired and given up.
“Did he go away?” She whispers.
“Almost as soon as you two opened your big mouths.”
Vivien rests with her eyes closed until the door of the classroom opens and a sigh comes in.
“Beauchêne, Black, detention, the whole month every evening, my office.” McGonagall informs strictly, while Binns floats through the wall, his hands behind his back after he has told on Vivien and Black to McGonagall.
“What!” Vivien jumps up to her feet, looking at the professor lurking into the classroom. “I didn’t even finish the one from last year!”
“I think Mister Black’s presence will be enough of punishment during your shared detention to make up for hitting him last year.”
“How does that make up to me?” Regulus asks, his brows pressed.
Vivien points her hand at him with a disgusted face.
“There’s no need to make up to you. Basically, I did you a favour—for the first time in your pathetic life, you had a girl wanting to touch you. Thanks to me.”
“I believe it was the second time. Indeed, thanks to you both of those times.” He says with an attitude that Vivien hopes to smack off of him soon.
She snaps her head to the professor, still pointing her hand at him. “See, Professor?! This is like a punishment for being assaulted. That’s shameful to punish me, when it’s all his fault for assaulting me.”
“Don’t dramatise, Vivien. And Black, I don’t care. I do not care who began what, when, where, and how. This is not a duel club. The duel club is every Saturday morning—there you two are welcome to dwell.”
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Vivien stops at McGonagall's left side, Black on her right. The three of them face the room. Vivien’s eyes examine all the trophies.
“This is all yours tonight. Dust it off and polish. Mister Finch left you all the necessities there.” McGonagall points her eyes at the corner of the room.
In the corner of her eyes, Vivien sees him—her nemesis that is being ignored.
“Now, give me your wands.”
When Regulus looks at Professor McGonagall, Vivien tears her gaze towards anything else. Still, she feels his eyes jump between her and McGonagall.
“Professor, I have prefect du-”
“Oh, I assure you—I let Potter and Evans know that you might be absent for them. They will send out someone to check on you two. Now, your wands.” She stretches her hand out, waiting.
Vivien glances at it out of corners of her eyes. She observes Regulus’ hand lays his wand in it. McGonagall and Regulus direct their eyes at her, their eyebrows furrowing. Vivien takes a dramatic breath, turning to the bag on her shoulder. She buries her hand in it to dig out a deeply shoved wand among her other things. She places it in the professor’s hand. The hand closes.
“Now, you may start. The sooner you two finish, the sooner you two leave.” McGonagall tells them, turning away in the doorway to leave.
Vivien’s eyes follow her until she’s gone. She straightens, and her eyes roll after they meet with Regulus'. She sees he has done the same—walked McGonagall away.
Quietly, Vivien moves and she places her school bag under the wall. She goes for the cleaning supplies Finch supposedly prepared for her and Black. She sees him approach them first and she rushes. Wordlessly, she pushes past him, nudging him and picking the things. Regulus straightens, when Vivien does too, everything hugged to her chest. Their eyes lock for a moment as they stand face to face. Regulus’ sharp icicles draw against the delicate lines of Vivien’s face that winces at his coolness. A spasm goes through her body. Regulus’ lips part to say something. But Vivien immadietly marches away. She stops across the room from him.
“How am I supposed to clean? With my spit and tongue? What am I supposed to do? Lick the dust off?” He questions, while Vivien takes the wet cloth and picks up one of the trophies on the cabinet to start somewhere.
“You want to torture the thropies like that too?” She asks, yet her eyes don’t move to the object of her hatred.
“You didn’t appear that tortured, when I did it to you, Vivien.”
“I was being high and horny. I don’t know if you really want to brag about taking advantage of me in a state like that one for the gain of a few laughs you later had with your little friends.”
“If you were being taken advantage of, I was being as much because I was just the same state as you—high and horny.”
“Yet, only one of us brags about it and makes the other one the butt of jokes. Me and you are not the same, Black.” She says and listens to the famous silence of Regulus Black. She rolls her eyes, thinking he sat down comfortably to watch her struggle for hours with all the trophies.
Suddenly, she feels hands on her waist, carelessly pushing her to the side. Her heart skips more than one beat. His cold hands leave her with creeps, while Regulus crouches down to the supplies to take some of them for himself. Out of irritation, Vivien slaps him on the face with dirty cloth in her hand before he manages to straighten properly.
“Whoopsie,” She lets out innocently. One of his eye twitches. He feels the wet dirt on his face that he rubs off with the sleeve of his jumper as he stands up. “I don’t need your help.” The witch adds more serious and harsher.
“With what exactly, Vivien? There’s two of us stuck in detention. If you think, I try to do you a favour, you’re even naïver than I thought you to be that night.” He remarks, leaning to her height—his sneer echoing in her ears. He slips to the other side of the room on his slim, long legs. His coolness is gone. Vivien bites on her bottom lip, instead of biting him back.
She lowers her face to focus on the trophies but the frustration wins over.
“Is it the moment you pull an elf out of your arse?” She quirks an eyebrow at Regulus, who's about to actually move a finger of his.
His glare strikes her. She ignores him with a satisfied smile plastred to her face.