"Alohamora." 

The lock clicked.

Regulus carefully slipped through the door, then closed it, and turned back to it.

"Colloportus. Lumos."

The wand tip lit up and Regulus brought the wand downward to lessen the glow so it wasn't quite the shining beacon it had been when it had first ignited. He looked about himself. He was standing in a large kitchen. There was no food out on the counters or anything, but it was clear from looking around that the kitchen had been in the middle of being used when Tom Riddle had come calling - simply by the placement of the pots and pans that were scattered over muggle gas stoves and the pile of dishes set on a small brass handcart. Everything was prepared for an evening meal service. Everything that is, except for the meal, that is. 

The Riddle's staff members had had no way of knowing that whatever they'd been working hard to prepare would not be what was on the menu at the table that evening.

Someone must have come through and cleared the food itself away. Probably the groundskeeper. 

Regulus moved from the kitchen into the dining room. This, according to the article he had read, was where it happened. The Riddles were found dead sitting about the table here in this very room.

Everything was perfectly normal looking, and may have just been set for dinner that very evening for how normal it all looked... except that there were thick cobwebs and layers of dust built up over time. Some crafty spider had strung it's webs over the centerpieces and out to the place settings and between the glasses... The engineering little thing was no where to be seen.

The table was neatly set, the candelabra still fixed with unburned candles, a full proper setting at each place. He recited each piece looking it over, in his mind hearing himself and Sirius speaking in chorus as Walburga directed Kreacher at setting a proper table: "Bread plate, dessert fork and spoon, water goblet, sherry glass, wine glass, champagne glass, napkin, fish fork, entree fork, salad fork, place plate, salad knife, entree knife, fish knife, soup spoon, and the oyster fork."

He picked up one of the oyster forks, turning it in his fingers slowly, then putting it back down.

"I hate those tiny forks," Sirius said once. 

They'd been sitting in the clubhouse, and Sirius had started a game in which they had to tell each other the truth about something - something they might not normally say because they could get in trouble for it. 

"The oyster forks?" Regulus had asked.

"Yes, they're stupid," Sirius answered. "They're stupid tiny forks and I hate them. Have we ever once used one?"

"They're for when we have oysters."

"Okay, but why do we put it out every time we eat, we don't have oysters every time we eat, do we? And she makes Kreacher polish them every time, too, even though we never touch them."

"That's what good house elves do and Kreacher's a good house elf," Regulus answered.

"Tomorrow morning... I'm going to use my oyster fork to eat my beans."

Regulus gasped. 

He laughed now - for it was such a Sirius thing to do - but at the time it really had been a perfectly scandalous thing to say, much less do, and he'd thought at the time that Sirius would forget all about it. But Sirius never forgot about following through on things like that. 

Regulus put the oyster fork back down in the setting. He put it down a little bit crooked - just because Sirius would've liked that it wasn't perfect anymore - and his eyes moved over the table, imagining the Riddles sitting about in the chairs. He imagined Tom Senior looking nearly exactly like his son.

What was it like for Voldemort, Regulus wondered, to stand here and murder his own father in such a brutal manner as he'd seen Alabastar die? 

He stood at the head of the table, where there was no chair, and he let his fingers slide over the wood surface of the table. For a fleeting second, he allowed himself to imagine it - and he glared down his nose the way he imagined Voldemort might have done. "I'm such a prick that I can't just kill my prey I have to stand here and debate about it for thirty or more minutes!" Regulus said in a high pitched mockery of Voldemort's breathy tone. "I am too insecure to  simply do the job without an entire discourse, a full serving of word vomit, if you will..." He mimed puking, sticking out his tongue and rolling his shoulders forward.

"What a tosser," Regulus muttered. 

For good measure, he reached down and knocked the oyster fork crooked at the nearest place setting at this end, too.

But really, he thought, having finished his little game, how horribly scared the Riddles must have been. He looked at the chairs around the table.

Mrs. Riddle sat to the right in his imagination, the one who would have been You Know Who's grandmother. She would have watched her grandson murder her son before being murdered herself. And Mr. Riddle - the grandfather - did he do anything to stop it? Did he stand up and try to stop You Know Who like a decent chap or did he sit there like a coward and watch his boy's heart?

Regulus looked around the room from where he stood, his eyes roving over the furniture against the walls and the paintings hanging over long narrow tables where the platters of feasts would be set. The formal dining room in most mansions looked the same, he reckoned, for there was nothing special about the room, nothing that suggested anything except that the Riddles had sat themselves down to dinner on a perfectly ordinary afternoon. Nothing seemed out of place, nothing out of the ordinary... 

He wasn't sure what he'd expected to find here. He knew from the article that nothing had been out of sorts. It wasn't a messy murder scene - it was hardly a scene at all, save for the fact that the Riddles had been dead. That's what the newspaper had said.

He stepped out of the dining room and into a large foyer. There was a coat rack and a brass umbrella stand next to the door, and a door across the foyer that led into what looked like a large sitting room, thick clumps of dust gathered on all the surfaces as it had been in the kitchen. More cobwebs strung across the door frame, and Regulus didn't bother going in at all. It was a place where guests would be set to wait for their gracious hosts. There would be loads of secrets kept in that room, but there would be nothing that would reveal them.

He turned and looked at the dark stairwell, waving his wand over the first couple steps going upward and it seemed safe enough, so he started to climb up them, holding onto the bannister and his wand lit and held ahead of him. 

There wasn't a sound anywhere in the house, save for the creaking of the stairs under his feet. 

On the second floor, the stairs turned to a long corridor and there were about a dozen rooms off either way, but what interested Regulus was there was one door slightly ajar and from it there was coming a very low, very dim glow.

The rest of the house was dark as the night outside. 

Suddenly, he felt foolish because he'd broken in and been downstairs yanking around in the dining room mocking Voldemort without having done a hominio-revelio or anything of the sort to be sure that he was alone. What if there was someone in the house and he hadn't realized it? What if they'd heard him?

If they heard you and they wanted you dead, they would've been downstairs in a second to destroy you when you were unaware. 

He felt a twinge bit better at that thought, but not fully. If he was a dog, he would say his hackles were raised. That's how he felt as he crept closer to the door, sliding his feet over the carpet rather than taking full steps - a trick to sneaking about that Sirius once taught him. He stopped with his back against the wall beside the door and worked to angle himself so he could see through the crack in the door.

He couldn't see anyone, nor hear anyone.

He used magic to slowly inch the door open, his wand held up and ready to shout a defensive shield charm the moment he heard a peep from within... but the door was wide open without any response from within.

Regulus looked around fully now, and saw no one still. There was a high-backed chair before the fireplace, but it was turned so he could see that it was empty. The offender of the dim glow was a small jar of bluebell flames that sat tucked into the hearth. They were fading, but not completely out.

Somebody had been here but perhaps not very recently... he wasn't sure how long it took bluebells to burn themselves out. They were a variant of everlasting fire, so he reckoned it would take a bit longer than a few minutes' time for them to burn out... so there probably hadn't been anyone here just now, when he was talking in the dining room, at least.

He lowered his wand and snuck further into the room.

On the mantel were old dusty photographs of a muggle man - here he was on a horse and there in a ridiculous looking outfit holding a mallet and standing next to what looked like a set for croquet or in another photo all trussed up for fencing.

Mother had talked about putting Regulus and Sirius into fencing but had changed her mind later. She said she didn't trust Sirius with a sword around her ickle babykins - the ickle babykins being him, Regulus. Regulus thought that was a rather wise choice - by that time they were a little bit older and Sirius was starting to change and he'd taken on an attitude toward Regulus. If he'd been relieved about not getting the mickey taken out of him at sword point, then he was certainly relieved he'd never been made to wear the stupid white uniform.

Why does bloody everything relate to my brother in my head? Regulus sighed as he continued walking around the room, looking at books and muggle knickknacks that lined the shelves. Boring things like horses made of iron and award placards for Equestrian Training. The books were mostly either about horses or fencing, some travel books about America, and one on Albania. There were classics Regulus recognized from the Muggle Studies library, by a bloke called Charles Dickens.

There was a desk in the room, and Regulus went over and saw the things on the desk had clearly once been rummaged through - though long ago as the dust and such were on these things as well. There were muggle pens and notepads and envelopes and stamps strewn about the desk top and what looked like tickets to a ship dated for May 1943. There was a photograph in black and white photograph with scalloped edges.  It was of a woman with black hair and sunken eyes that seemed in high contrast but for the scenery behind the woman was normal - she was just exceedingly pale with very dark features.

There were several sheaths of paper that had writing upon it, and looked as though it had been violently torn from the pages of a bound diary rather violently. Regulus leaned over to read it.

...the days of madness, as I shall call them henceforth. To sat that my heart and body still feel as though violated is to lack a description powerful enough to encapsulate the anguish which I have suffered in the past sixteen years. As though waking from a dream - or rather a nightmare - in which I was held captive against my will or in a prison cell I could not change my mind from. Oh how I wish the doctor Mother and Father insist that I see could actually help my nerves. I fear seeing her again, and yet long to at the same time as though the poisonous bewitching done to my soul has forever tainted my idea of...

The page broke off and Regulus scooped it and the pages surrounding it from the desktop, throwing the lot of them into his pocket, along with the photograph of the woman. Crossing back over the room he stared at the pictures on the mantel for a moment, then took one of the ones on the horses because there, sitting tall in the saddle, was a very distinguished, strong version of Tom Riddle, looking handsome and arrogant -- just like his son must've once been. Regulus opened the frame and took the photo out, tucking it in with the writing and the photograph of what he assumed was Merope Gaunt.

When he moved the picture frame, he noticed there on the mantel several small vials, filled with some sort of liquid. The glass was dark brown, so the color of the liquid was not visible, and it was labeled simply medicine, but not what sort. It seemed suspicious to Regulus that anyone would label something as medicine and not any details of what the medicine cured. He picked it up, looking it over, but there was no further labelings anywhere, so he pulled out the stopper and lifted the bottle to his nose.

It had been a year since he had smelled her, but there was absolutely no mistaking the soft scent of Maryrose Jenkins that rose from the uncorked vial. 

Regulus gasped and breathed all the deeper. "You're practically here," he whispered, eyes closed.

He could've stood there for hours, smelling her. 

Eyes closed, he could almost imagine she was standing one step away from him.

Suddenly, there was a sound downstairs - the front door opening - and Regulus opened his eyes and plugged the stopper back into the top of the vial hastily. He grabbed the other vials from the shelf and shoved them into his pockets. "Nox," he whispered and the light of the wand went out. Only the bluebells glowed now and he hesitated then took out his wand and sent a silent extinguishing spell at them. They hissed and blinked out. The entire room was plunged in utmost darkness. The curtains that covered the windows even blocked out the moon itself, and Regulus slid behind the desk and crouched down, listening.

Floorboards creaked below - he could hear whoever had entered the house walking through the dining room, the parlor he hadn't entered. Then there was foot fall on the stairwell and a heavy, rasping breathing echoing in the hall. 

"Come out and play, ickle ones," a voice hissed. "The Dark Lord will forgive you breaking the windows if you ask him real nice like." 

Greyback.