Aragog's fury wasn't bluster, but it didn't amount to much either. Not in Regulus's estimation.
The Ministry of Magic had classified Acromantulas as maximum danger. Fair enough. But to Regulus, spiders were spiders.
Numbers didn't matter. Spiders feared fire. They feared Fiendfyre even more.
And from a certain angle, more was better. Whether for magical experimentation or for their intrinsic value, a larger population only worked in his favor.
Acromantula venom was a scarce potions ingredient.
Professor Slughorn ranked it alongside phoenix tail feathers as one of those materials you could only acquire through the right connections.
Last Christmas, the head of the family's potions ingredient workshop had mentioned that Acromantula venom from Africa had gone up thirty percent over the previous year.
A pint of high-quality venom was worth a hundred Galleons.
Regulus kept his composure. "No, Aragog. You misunderstand."
Aragog's foreleg froze mid-rise. All eight legs locked in place, and the upper row of eyes shifted, something like confusion crossing its face.
On a spider, that expression should have been comical. But the sheer mass of the creature, the thickness of those chelicerae, turned even confusion into menace.
Regulus met all eight eyes. His tone didn't waver. "It's you I need, Aragog. You, cooperating with my experiment. Not your people."
The air inside the nest seemed to vanish.
Aragog's chelicerae snapped wide. The dark-red inner walls were fully exposed now, row upon row of barbs standing rigid like staggered ranks of spears.
A foreleg slammed down. The impact shuddered through the nearby silk pillars, and dewdrops pattered from the surrounding webs like rain.
But it didn't lunge.
It was Hagrid's spider.
Back when it had lived inside Hagrid's cupboard, it had seen the wizards of that castle.
It had been the size of a small dog then, curled in the corner of a box, peering out through the cracks.
Robed figures passed through the castle doors. Some carried magic that was gentle.
Others were sharp...
Every signature was different. Every one was powerful.
It knew what lived in that castle. Knew there were beings inside who could grind it and its entire colony to dust without breaking stride.
It knew the wizard standing before it, wearing the shape of a human child, came from there. From Hogwarts.
Tearing apart some nameless wanderer who'd stumbled into the deep forest was one thing. Killing a wizard from that castle was something else entirely.
Hagrid's face, and the blurred but overwhelming silhouettes of the professors, formed an invisible leash around its predatory mind.
A thin leash. What Regulus had said was naked provocation. Treating it, Aragog, lord of the Acromantulas, like some lesser creature to be ordered around at will.
Rage seared through its nervous system. Red light flickered in its compound eyes.
But the part of Aragog's nature that belonged to intelligence overrode the killing impulse.
It also understood what it meant for a wizard child to walk this far and only reveal himself here. That wasn't courage alone.
Too many things in the Forbidden Forest could kill a young wizard. And yet this one had crossed half the forest in the dark, passed through the spider perimeter, threaded through fog and webbing, and now stood in the heart of the nest.
That meant he'd been certain, from his very first step into the trees, that nothing would touch him.
More unsettling still was what Aragog's innate predatory senses were screaming at it. Something close to instinct. A primal warning.
This small wizard was dangerous.
Like standing at the edge of an abyss. Bottomless dark below. Wind rising from the depths. Nothing had happened, nothing visible, but the body knew: one more step forward and there was no coming back.
Aragog couldn't name what it was. But decades of survival instinct were shrieking at it not to move.
Its eight legs shuffled backward without conscious thought.
"You know what we are." Intelligence chose communication. "We speak. We think. But we also eat meat. Including human meat."
Its two foremost legs bent slightly, lowering its center of mass. The enormous head extended forward another fraction, compound eyes almost level with Regulus's face. "Hagrid restrains me. I restrain my colony. We don't attack young wizards who wander into the forest. But that does not mean you can break into my nest in the dead of night, make demands, and expect me to submit to your experiments."
Regulus said nothing for a moment. But something shifted in his expression. One eyebrow lifted slightly. The giant spider was more interesting than he'd expected.
Aragog had brought up Hagrid on its own. That was curious, and it didn't feel like a test.
If the spider had wanted to use Hagrid's name as leverage, it would have led with that from the start.
Mentioning him now read differently. More like: I have connections to your kind. Don't push it.
Or, put another way: I haven't torn you apart yet, and Hagrid's face is the reason.
A thought struck him.
The moment he'd dropped the Disillusionment Charm, he'd called it by name. Aragog.
The name wasn't exactly secret, but few would know it.
At Hogwarts, probably only Hagrid and a handful of professors close to him.
So was that what Aragog was doing? Trading signals?
You know Hagrid?
Where did you hear about me?
Whose side are you on?
The corner of Regulus's mouth twitched. A spider, exchanging coded probes with a wizard.
When Regulus showed no reaction to the mention of Hagrid, neither seizing the connection nor betraying guilt, Aragog's suspicion faded.
Its massive body shifted forward. Eight legs moved in alternating sequence, and shadow swallowed Regulus almost entirely.
The surrounding spiders tightened the circle. Chelicerae clicked from every direction, dense as a downpour hammering stone.
All eight eyes looked down at him. "Young wizard. You are bold."
His reflection appeared in those eyes. Standing at the center of eight identical images, like eight mirrors trained on a single figure.
A right foreleg rose and tapped the ground. The thud was deep. "Or you are foolish."
"You think because your magic carried you this far, you've earned the right to make demands? My webs cover this entire basin. Every strand connects to this nest. The moment you set foot inside, I knew something had entered. I didn't order them to attack because I wanted to see what would dare."
Regulus answered, his voice as level as before. "I know your webs serve as early warning. I know you held off the attack. That's why I'm standing here talking, not casting."
He lifted his gaze to meet the uppermost pair of eyes. "In fact, you should be grateful to yourself for that."
Nothing else. No shift in posture. No gesture. His magic remained perfectly contained, not a wisp leaking outward.
Aragog's right foreleg had already started to rise for an intimidation strike.
Now it hung in the air. The claw tips trembled, unable to decide whether to fall forward or pull back.
Like something hibernating that sensed a torch drawing close. No heat yet. But the body already knew to flinch.
The small wizard hadn't done a thing. His magic was sealed tight. And yet Aragog's body refused to obey.
Nothing there. Nothing at all. And still it couldn't move.
Aragog closed its chelicerae. The barbs folded inward. The suspended foreleg withdrew, settling onto the silk floor so gently the claw tips barely whispered against the surface.
One lateral chelicera flicked outward. A single short, low click.
The surrounding spiders obeyed instantly, pulling back to reform their circle at a distance.
A few were slow. Nearby colony members nudged them with a foreleg until they shuffled into position.
Regulus watched all of this with quiet interest.
He'd shown nothing. His magic was flawlessly contained. Yet the great spider behaved as though guided by some eerie intuition, exercising a caution that went far beyond what the situation warranted.
Spider intuition?
The thought was faintly absurd, and it crossed his mind anyway.
Those eight compound eyes should have been capable of only the most rudimentary vision. Yet somehow they managed to convey uncertainty. Calculation. The weighing of risks against gains.
He found it genuinely fascinating.
Acromantulas were pure predators. Limited intelligence. Driven primarily by instinct.
Aggression, hunting, reproduction, territory, colony hierarchy. All hardwired into the blood.
But Aragog's behavior was miles from instinct.
It communicated. It weighed options. It read situations. It had even dropped Hagrid's name to draw a line and probe for information.
His gaze drifted to the female.
Mosag crouched deep in the nest, legs tucked, chelicerae closed, compound eyes half-lidded. There was alertness in her posture, but it was blunt, unfocused. She didn't understand what had just happened. She knew only that danger was present and hadn't left.
Regulus looked away.
That kind of intelligence wasn't innate. It was cultivated.
Hagrid's gift with magical creatures was, in a word, unreasonable. This result was something even Dumbledore might not have been able to achieve.
Raising an Acromantula from a hatchling to adulthood while instilling in it a respect for wizards. Teaching it to restrain an entire colony from attacking young students.
Anyone who could accomplish that was no ordinary person.
When it came to magical creatures, Hagrid was probably more gifted than any professor at Hogwarts. He'd rank highly anywhere.
No one acknowledged it, though. In everyone else's eyes, he was just a large man with a fondness for dangerous oddities. The word talent never entered the conversation.
A waste.
Aragog was silent for a long time. Light flickered in its compound eyes, brightening and dimming, visibly working through something.
Its chelicerae opened and closed now and then with a dull click, but there was no aggression behind it.
Regulus didn't push. His first real exchange with a thoroughly non-human intelligence was novel enough to be worth the patience.
And he had to admit, Aragog wasn't behaving the way he'd expected.