"Bella." Voldemort's voice carried no particular volume, no discernible emotion. "How did it go?"
Bellatrix straightened but kept a slight bow, maintaining her posture of deference.
She launched into her report, speaking fast, her voice pitched sharp with excitement, hands cutting through the air to punctuate her words.
"My Lord, the moment he touched the Awakening, it was like he was pulled under! I was right there watching. His whole body seized, his eyes went blank, sweat pouring down his forehead. But he didn't collapse, didn't fall, didn't scream. He froze. That stunned stillness you get after something hits you harder than you can process."
She edged half a step closer, as though proximity would lend the next part more weight.
"And I saw it, my Lord. Pain and struggle on his face, yes, but more than that, it was awe. And greed. Greed for power. He was captivated by what was inside, no question!"
Voldemort listened without moving. Those red eyes didn't blink, fixed on Bellatrix's face as if he were looking through her, reconstructing the scene from behind her retinas.
She pressed on, voice climbing with fervor.
"The key thing is, he held. First contact, and he held right there on the spot. Took him a while. I'd say roughly ten minutes? Face went white as chalk, breathing ragged. But he said it himself, his exact words..."
She cleared her throat, dropped her voice, and did her best imitation of Regulus's deliberately low, steady tone, threaded with a faint tremor.
"'This... this is the Dark Lord's power?'"
She broke character with a short laugh.
"He even mumbled a few ancient syllables without realizing it! I couldn't make them out, but they had to be something from inside the Awakening. My Lord, he grasped it on some level, and he was trying to master it! His talent might be even greater than we estimated!"
Voldemort's finger tapped once against the edge of the page.
"Orion?" Still no emotion in the voice. "What was his reaction?"
Bellatrix curled her lip, contempt unhidden.
"Orion put on that sanctimonious face of his, naturally. Said all the proper things. 'The House of Black is grateful for your regard.' Walburga was beside herself with joy, sobbing and laughing over Regulus at the same time. As for Sirius, that traitor..."
A cold sneer, and she let it go at that.
Her report finished, Bellatrix drew a deep breath. A smile bloomed across her face, equal parts pride and devotion.
"My Lord, I believe Regulus Black has felt the full weight of what you bestowed upon him, and he has taken his first steps down the path we hoped he would walk. His desire for power is genuine. The greatness you showed him has left him yearning for more."
She looked at Voldemort, expectant. Waiting for praise. Waiting for approval.
Voldemort was silent for a moment.
Those red eyes stayed on her. The pupils contracted, narrowing to slits as they focused.
Then he spoke, his voice low and cold.
"When he touched the Awakening, what did his magic do? Was it fighting back, or did it accept the contact on its own?"
Bellatrix faltered.
She hadn't paid attention to that. Her focus at the time had been entirely on Regulus's expression and his physical reactions. Magical fluctuations... she vaguely recalled some disturbance, but nothing violent. Fairly stable, if anything.
"Acceptance, I think." She strained to remember, her tone uncertain. "Nothing violent. Quite smooth."
Voldemort gave no reaction to the vague answer. He moved on.
"At the end, did Regulus ask anything further about the Awakening?"
A glint of cold light passed through those red irises.
"How to control it, for instance. What risks it carried. Or did he seem like someone making his own decisions rather than passively receiving what was given?"
Bellatrix shook her head.
"No. He expressed shock and reverence, and then... he still seemed immersed. He didn't ask anything else."
Voldemort asked nothing more.
He settled back into the high-backed chair, hands interlaced over his midsection, and shifted his gaze from Bellatrix's face to the wall behind her.
The silence in the room was suffocating.
Bellatrix stood where she was, palms beginning to sweat. She sensed her report had been too shallow, too imprecise, that it hadn't satisfied what her master needed.
But resentment stirred alongside the anxiety. She'd told him everything she'd seen and heard. What more could she have done?
Then his voice came again, colder than before.
"I'll see for myself."
The words had barely landed when something forced its way into her skull.
Nothing gentle about it. Nothing courteous. Pure, brutal intrusion.
Agony detonated at her temples and raced along every nerve into the walls of her cranium. Pressure built behind her eyes until they felt ready to burst from their sockets. Her body convulsed, her knees buckled, and she nearly crumpled to the floor. Her fingers clawed into the fabric at her sides.
Her breathing went ragged, a sound close to a whimper climbing her throat.
But something else was rising with the pain.
Being entered by her master. Being searched. Being owned completely. The sensation flooded her bloodstream like the highest concentration of Elixir to Induce Euphoria ever brewed. Pain and pleasure tangled at every nerve ending, collided, sent her body into spasms. An unnatural flush spread across her cheeks. Her eyes fell half shut, lips parting, broken gasps escaping between them.
Voldemort was sifting through her memories, focused on one narrow segment: the dining room at Grimmauld Place, that morning.
The method was savage.
He saw Bellatrix stepping from the fireplace. Saw Walburga's embrace. Saw Orion's furrowed brow. Saw the disgust on Sirius's face.
He saw Regulus setting down his cutlery, dabbing his mouth with a napkin, looking up at Bellatrix with an expression of polite inquiry.
He saw the bone box produced, the dining room's temperature plummeting, the silverware rattling.
He saw Regulus reaching out, fingertips making contact with the box's edge, the jolt through his body, the eyes going unfocused.
Then the critical window. The ten minutes between contact and the moment those eyes opened again.
Through Bellatrix's perspective, Voldemort hunted for details she'd missed or couldn't comprehend.
As a supreme master of Legilimency, he could penetrate nearly any wizard's mental defenses and extract memories down to their deepest layers. But the art's nature was extraction, not creation. It retrieved information already stored in memory. It couldn't conjure what had never been recorded.
Magical fluctuations were instantaneous phenomena, not visual data. Bellatrix's memory held none of that, so Voldemort found none either.
But in the moments after Regulus opened his eyes, Voldemort caught one detail Bellatrix had overlooked entirely.
What Orion had been sharp enough to notice, Voldemort was never going to miss.
He withdrew.
The intrusion cut off without warning. Bellatrix's legs gave way and she dropped to her knees. She gasped for air, forehead pressed against the back of her hand, her whole body still trembling.
Voldemort paid her no attention. He leaned back and turned the analysis over in his mind.
Stabilizing on first contact, even achieving a degree of comprehension. The talent was genuine. The boy hadn't shattered like the weak-willed ones, hadn't spiraled into madness. That spoke to potential as a powerful wizard. Soul strength and mental resilience well beyond his age.
Good.
Valuable subordinates required exactly those qualities.
But those textbook reactions. Too deliberate.
For a twelve-year-old, especially one raised by Orion and Walburga, reportedly precocious and unnervingly composed, the performance was suspicious in its perfection. Perfect in a way that suggested he'd known what his audience expected to see and had delivered precisely that.
And Orion's silence. Powerlessness, or tacit complicity?
Orion himself was no simple man. His son was likely less simple still.
No matter.
The Dark Awakening's corruption was gradual and penetrating. The first exposure could be faked, performed, the product of some mental defense technique.
But the tenth? The hundredth?
So long as Regulus continued engaging with the Awakening, drawn by the formidable knowledge and power it contained, even if the initial response was fabricated, guarded, performed with every shield raised...
Time would do the rest. The knowledge would reshape how he thought. The power would erode his soul. The whispers would wear through his defenses.
Once he grew accustomed to solving problems with dark magic, to drawing strength from pain and domination, to the intoxication of standing above others...
Turning back would be difficult.
For now, the initial phase could be called a success.
He filed Regulus Black as a target of high cultivation value, requiring sustained observation and continued influence.
Voldemort looked down at Bellatrix, still on her knees. She'd recovered enough to press one hand against the floor and push herself slowly upright, though the mingled flush of pain and pleasure hadn't fully left her face. Her wet eyes found his, brimming with devout anticipation.
"You've done well, Bella." Voldemort's voice returned to its neutral register. "Regulus Black has shown promising potential."
That single, flat line of praise sent another tremor through her. A smile split her face, radiant to the point of distortion.
"Serving you is my glory." Her voice shook with conviction.
"Keep watching him," Voldemort continued.
Bellatrix nodded hard.
"And one more thing." His tone shifted. "Monitor Orion Black's movements. All of them. And at Hogwarts, note whether any eyes that shouldn't be watching are spending too much time on the boy."
She understood.
Hogwarts.
Dumbledore.
"Yes, my Lord!" The words burst out of her. "I'll watch every moment!"
Voldemort waved a hand. She was dismissed.
Bellatrix bowed deeply once more, then turned and walked out, her steps still unsteady.
The study fell quiet.
Voldemort settled against the chair and gazed through the window at the barren garden beyond.
Regulus Black.
An interesting child.
The heir the Blacks were pouring everything into, shaped to face the upheaval bearing down on the wizarding world? A trap laid by Dumbledore? Or was he nothing more than what he appeared: a gifted pure-blood boy hungry for power?
It didn't matter which. He'd accepted the gift.
The power it revealed was real. The path to greatness it offered was seductive.
So long as Regulus harbored even a sliver of desire for that power, he would walk the road Voldemort had paved.
The only question was whether he'd walk it willingly, or be dragged.
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