Dumbledore talked about Transfiguration theory. Regulus filled in the physics.
One of them stood at the peak of magic. The other brought in a view from outside it. Two directions that really shouldn't have fit together, but somehow, they did.
Dumbledore grew more and more animated as he spoke. Regulus listened with the kind of focus that made people forget he was still a student.
Neither of them noticed the time passing.
At last, Dumbledore stopped. He glanced up, though there was nothing to see. The fog was too thick. Above them was only a flat sheet of white.
He clicked his tongue, sounding genuinely regretful.
"We're out of time."
He looked back at Regulus, eyes bright with appreciation.
That conversation had told him plenty.
Regulus was unlike any young wizard he had ever met.
Gifted children tended to be proud. Pride itself was not some unforgivable flaw, but it often came with blinders. Once they stood high enough, they stopped looking down. Anything below them became too small to bother with.
Children from old families had a different problem. Their worldview was poured into them from birth, then left to harden. Magic was noble. Muggle things were crude. Crude things were beneath notice.
Regulus was neither.
He could use magic, but he could also step outside it. Muggle ideas, concepts from beyond the wizarding world, did not become lesser in his hands.
If something was useful, take it. If it worked well, keep using it. Simple as that.
Dumbledore had no idea how Regulus had learned to think like this. It certainly had not come from the Black family's education. Hogwarts did not teach it either.
But it was exactly the kind of attitude that put him at ease.
A person who was not trapped by his own talent would not be trapped by magic either. A person who was not chained to inherited dogma would not be chained by anyone else's rules.
Regulus knew who he was, what he wanted, and how to get there.
People like that did not drift easily.
They were also, frankly, pleasant to deal with.
Dumbledore had lived long enough to meet more people than he cared to count. Most stayed locked inside their own little worlds. Few looked up. Fewer looked outward.
Regulus looked up, looked out, and somehow folded what he saw into himself.
Talking with someone like that did not feel tiring. Teaching him did not feel wasteful. Watching him move forward made one wonder just how far he would go.
Warmth settled in Dumbledore's chest. He extended an arm.
"Well then, Regulus. It's about time we were off."
Regulus was still turning over everything they had discussed. What Dumbledore had explained had opened a new door in his head.
Complex Transfiguration. Borrowing animal traits. Making the body itself adapt to flight.
This was not a small upgrade. This was thinking on an entirely different level.
If he could make it work, his flight system would no longer be just a machine. It would become an extension of his own body.
He dragged his attention back, stuffed the ideas away for later, and raised his own arm, copying Dumbledore's gesture.
Dumbledore watched him.
His expression shifted. Amusement crept in, his brows lifting, the smile in his eyes getting deeper.
Regulus said nothing.
Light began to bloom from his chest.
Silver-white radiance spilled outward, growing brighter, denser, until it gathered in front of him and took shape.
The Starlight Kite.
Its silver-white wings opened to their full span. Every feather was sharply outlined, starlight rippling along the edges like cold fire.
It perched on Regulus's shoulder, tilted its head at Dumbledore, and gave a clear, bright cry.
It called to him once, as if saying hello.
Dumbledore's eyes widened.
He stared at the silver bird, and something flickered behind his gaze.
The Kite stayed on Regulus's shoulder for a moment, then launched itself into the air. It circled once above Dumbledore's head.
Starlight drifted down like scattered sparks, settling on the moon-white robes and wrapping the old man in a thin veil of light.
Dumbledore looked at the falling glow.
And understood.
A Patronus of this caliber. A spell application at this level.
No matter how much dark magic Regulus mastered, no matter how deeply he walked into those places, this blaze of pure light made it all impossible to judge in a simple way.
His gaze returned to Regulus, softer than before.
This child must have encountered something beautiful over the holidays. Something that made his Patronus burn so brightly.
The corner of Dumbledore's mouth curved upward despite himself.
He let his magic settle on purpose.
Any resistance, even a thread of it, might cause the Patronus's spatial travel to fail. So he allowed his power to go still, calm as an undisturbed lake.
Regulus sensed it.
He gave Dumbledore a look that was equal parts satisfied and smug.
Dumbledore accepted it with a smile.
The Starlight Kite finished its circle, returned to hover above Regulus, hung still for a heartbeat, and dove.
It struck him head-on.
White light burst outward, wrapping Regulus completely.
The next moment, the light contracted, vanished, and took him with it.
Dumbledore stood alone.
He looked down at his robes. A few traces of starlight still clung to the fabric.
He reached out and touched one with his finger.
It shimmered against his fingertip, then dissolved.
Dumbledore smiled.
Then he, too, disappeared.
---
Provence that day had weather that bordered on absurd.
The sky looked freshly washed, a blue so vivid it almost glowed. So deep it dragged the eyes up and refused to let go.
There were barely any clouds. The few that did exist were thin, lazy things, drifting east as if they had no plans and no shame about it.
Sunlight poured over the valley, gilding everything in warm gold.
The lavender had already been harvested, so those endless purple fields were gone. Still, along the edges of the fields and in the cracks between stones, grey-green stems and leaves remained.
Whenever the breeze passed, it carried a faint trace of lavender with it.
The courtyard was small, ringed by a low stone wall capped with moss.
A few olive trees grew in the corners. Their trunks were gnarled and crooked, their branches throwing broken shadows across the ground.
The whole place felt lazy and unhurried. Free, even. Like time had slowed down because nobody here was in the mood to chase it.
Silver-white light flared and faded.
Regulus and Dumbledore appeared in a clearing at the foot of the mountain.
Dumbledore looked up at the sky, then toward the distant peaks, and took a long breath.
"What a sensation."
He turned to Regulus, smiling.
"The Starlight Kite. Remarkable."
Regulus nodded, accepting that assessment without much modesty.
Then he asked, "Professor, what does phoenix travel feel like?"
Dumbledore blinked.
"You want to know?"
Regulus nodded.
Of course he wanted to know. It was a phoenix.
Dumbledore's smile widened.
"You'll have to ask Fawkes yourself. He's quite fond of you, and I imagine he misses his little friend."
Regulus paused.
He remembered something Dumbledore had said last term in the headmaster's office.
A phoenix could see souls. It was drawn to pure and warm hearts.
Something stirred in him.
If it can see souls, what did it see in mine?
And compared to last time, would anything be different now?
He quietly made up his mind. When he got back, he would spend some proper time with Fawkes.
Dumbledore noticed his thoughtful expression. He smiled, but did not say anything.
Together, they turned toward the distance.
Near the stone house, people were busy.
Figures moved in and out, carrying things. White gauze hung from the low courtyard walls, lifting gently in the breeze.
Someone was arranging flowers. White and pink, piled across the ground.
Wedding preparations. Already underway.
Dumbledore's gaze softened.
He knew why Regulus had come to France.
Andromeda Black's wedding.
This generation of the Black family had produced three sisters. Bellatrix would marry into the Lestranges. Narcissa would marry a Malfoy.
Both were core pure-blood alliances. Both were exactly the sort of choices the family expected. Only Andromeda had taken a different road.
A Muggle-born wizard.
To the Blacks, that was betrayal. An unforgivable stain.
By Black family tradition, she should already have been struck from the record. Burned off that famous tapestry. Erased from the family's memory as if she had never existed.
But Regulus had come.
The boy stood in the sunlight, gaze resting on the wedding preparations in the distance.
His face showed nothing, but there was something alive in his eyes.
He was watching. Really watching.
He had come for his cousin's wedding. Even though the family had disowned her. Even though the wrong person hearing about it could bring consequences.
He came anyway.
Dumbledore studied the boy's profile, and a feeling rose in his chest that he could not quite untangle.
Pride, perhaps.
Something moved.
And something else too.
Regulus knew Dumbledore was watching him.
That did not stop him from thinking.
Everything he had shown the old man today had been good.
The advanced Patronus application spoke for itself. That kind of purity and warmth, enough to carry another person through space, was proof that light lived in him.
Whatever doubts Dumbledore still had, that should have beaten most of them flat.
And now the old man was watching him attend Andromeda's wedding. Watching him value family.
Coming for his cousin despite the family's rejection. That was exactly the sort of thing Dumbledore liked.
There was only one little problem.
Regulus knew something Dumbledore did not.
In the old man's mind, this was probably an act of defiance. A boy risking his family's anger to do what he believed was right.
The reality was much simpler. He had come because he could. There was nothing to worry about.
The address for Andromeda's wedding had come in a letter from Orion. The news of the wedding itself had also come from Orion.
That was not just permission. That was his father placing the choice in his hands.
Regulus knew Orion would not cage him with old rules. His father would lay out the facts, then let his son decide what to do with them.
So this scene, which probably looked to Dumbledore like a quiet little moment of moral courage, was really just...
Convenient.
The faintest hint of a smile touched the corner of Regulus's mouth.
Good enough.
The effect was what mattered.
He knew exactly what Dumbledore wanted to see.
The old man wore love almost openly. He naturally leaned toward the bright, the positive, the hopeful.
He valued what was inside a person. He valued choices. He valued anything that suggested the world still had some goodness left in it.
Sometimes, Regulus wondered whether Dumbledore was truly unaware of how complicated human hearts were.
People were messy.
Someone could be full of darkness and still only do good things, because it served their interests, their reputation, or some other calculation.
Someone could be impossibly gentle at their core and still do terrible things, because they were weak, afraid, or cornered past the point of reason.
Most people were somewhere in between. Light and dark tangled together. Right and wrong taking turns. Better one day, worse the next.
A man who had lived as long as Dumbledore could not possibly be ignorant of that.
And yet he still cared.
He still looked for light. Still valued love. Still weighed the choice itself more heavily than the result.
He is probably past the stage of needing to sort people into good and evil, Regulus thought.
Dumbledore knew people were complex. He knew everyone had more than one face.
But he still chose to look for the good.
Perhaps, in his eyes, as long as a witch or wizard carried light, carried love, carried bonds worth keeping, then they were good.
Worth accepting. Worth nurturing. Worth trusting.
And the opposite?
That was dangerous. Something to watch.
Like Tom Riddle.
But that suited Regulus perfectly.
If Dumbledore wanted to see those things, Regulus would show them to him.
None of it was false, anyway.
The Starlight Kite was real. That light was real. The freedom, warmth, and purity of it were real.
Coming for Andromeda's wedding was real too. For no grand reason, no shining ideal. Just because she had once been kind to him.
As for what kind of person he truly was...
He had killed. He used Fiendfyre with ease. The Decomposition Curse, a spell created purely to destroy, probably went beyond the normal boundaries of dark magic altogether.
But the Patronus was real. His care for family was real. There was light in his heart.
So he was a good person.
Regulus pulled himself back to the present.
In the distance, the wedding site hummed with activity.
Someone tied a bundle of white flowers to the courtyard gate. Someone else adjusted the drape of gauze. Sunlight stretched their busy shadows long across the ground.
Regulus watched it all.
And let the rest go.
---
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