[Intro] House of Black. Sounds refined, doesn’t it? Silver cutlery. Silk upholstery. Sacred purity. Right. Now picture screaming muffled through velvet walls thick enough to keep the neighbors comfortable. That’s closer. [Verse 1] Raised where the chandeliers glittered like threats, where affection came measured and softened by threats. Walburga worshipped bloodlines like scripture at mass, every dinner tasted staged, every silence had class. Old money. Cold mothers. Gold crests on the plates. Whole damn house smelled of perfume and decay. Father sat still while the madness grew roots, quiet men breed horrors that louder ones don’t. And me? I bit back. Black sheep, back streets, ash on the trainers, running half-feral through alleys and stations. Regulus stayed polished, composed, proper bred— I learned rebellion with smoke in my chest. Funny thing is— I mocked the family name for years with a grin, then caught my own reflection and heard them underneath it. [Hook] So I barked louder. Drank longer. Laughed like a man possessed. Better rabid than captive, better chaos than dressed. But late at night, when the house went still— I could hear Walburga breathing through me. [Verse 2] Then came James. God— James with the windburn grin and the stupid courage, acting like danger was mostly a storage issue. Boy collected strays like religion. Took one look at me—angry, starving, half-crazed— and made room. Just like that. People romanticize us now. Moonlit troublemakers. Schoolboy legends. Cute version. Want the real one? Remus coughing blood into forest moss. Peter sweating through every lie he ever told us. James throwing himself between death and his friends like loyalty alone could rewrite endings. And me? Too arrogant to notice fear becoming strategy. We switched Secret-Keepers thinking paranoia was brilliance. Thought we’d outsmart the war. Then Lily died. James died. Peter disappeared into gutters and whispers. And I— I ran straight to the wreckage already knowing. Tell me what Azkaban was supposed to destroy that guilt hadn’t already gnawed to bone. [Bridge] Twelve years. Twelve years breathing rot and Dementor frost. Funny thing about Azkaban— after a while the screaming turns conversational. Honestly, the place was marvelous for weight loss. See? Still got jokes. That’s usually how you tell someone’s drowning. [Verse 3 / Doubletime] Back in Grimmauld Place with the portraits shrieking, dust in the lungs and the floorboards creaking. Order downstairs talking war, strategy, missions, while I’m upstairs decomposing with family tradition. Snape sneering sideways like he finally won. Moody eye twitching every time I touched a wand. Couldn’t even blame them—Azkaban sticks to your posture, turns every silence hostile, every mirror distorted. Then Harry walked in— same reckless posture, same mess in the hair, same look in the eyes like he’d die if you dared him. Nearly broke me. Because boys like James burn bright, fast, tragic. And men like me? We survive long enough to watch it happen twice. [Hook] So I bark louder. Fight harder. Act untouched by it all. Like prison left nothing feral scratching under the walls. But late at night, when the silence turns vicious— I still hear the Black family living in my lungs. [Outro] Bellatrix called me traitor like it was meant to wound. Funny thing— coming from her, it sounded almost clean. And when I fell through that veil— for half a breath through all that cold— I swear I heard James laughing somewhere ahead of me.
