Lily stood in the center of the classroom, eyes bright. "What are we practicing?"
Regulus didn't answer right away. He looked at her first, reaching out with his senses to read her magical signature for the first time.
Though "reaching out" was generous. He glanced at her once, shifting from surface to something deeper, and that was enough.
A standard young witch.
He knew, of course, that raw magical strength didn't tell the whole story. Two people with similar reserves could cast the same spell and get wildly different results. Some had talent. Some didn't. Some loved a particular branch of magic. Some couldn't be bothered. Some drilled every day. Some forgot everything the moment class ended. Some cast with empty minds. Others cast with deep understanding of what their spell was supposed to do.
But from where he stood, those differences didn't matter much.
Past a certain threshold, power was power. No wizard with vast reserves was ever truly weak. They might dislike combat, might hate fighting altogether, but weakness wasn't an option. That much magic was its own kind of strength, whether you wanted it to be or not.
Lily was nowhere near that threshold. Not remotely close.
Few wizards ever reached it, in truth. Only those who walked deeper into magic itself, not those who merely learned to cast spells.
He looked at the expectation in her eyes, let the smile fade from his lips, and his expression turned serious. "We're not practicing yet. First, a test."
She blinked, caught the shift in his face, and understood this wasn't the time for playing around.
They were good friends, she and Regulus. But right now he was the teacher, and if the teacher was serious, the student should match.
She straightened. "Alright."
He nodded, satisfied. Switching gears that fast was a good sign.
Lily ducked her head and rolled her eyes so quickly it could have passed for a blink. The corner of her mouth twitched upward, but she caught it.
She looked up again, voice even. "What do I do?"
Regulus stepped back, opening the distance between them. His stance was ready but loose. Relaxed.
She was a student, after all.
"Cast everything you know. At me."
Lily stared.
His hands were empty. No wand drawn, nothing. He stood there, casual, with no sign of bracing for anything.
Her mouth opened, then closed. She didn't say it, but something stubborn flickered behind her eyes.
Her mind spun through options. No wand in his hand meant the Disarming Charm was pointless. Nothing to disarm. In that case...
She raised her wand. "Petrificus Totalus!"
A streak of light shot from the tip, fast enough, the distance short enough that it reached him in the space of a blink.
She was still wondering whether he'd dodge when his hand came up, fingers spread, palm forward. The instant the spell made contact, his fingers closed.
The light thrashed in his fist, leaking through the gaps between his fingers in thin wisps, struggling to escape but going nowhere.
Her eyes went wide.
Regulus glanced down at his palm. The captured magic twisted, condensing into a tight knot, swelling, shrinking back again. He rubbed his thumb across his forefinger, and the spell shattered into motes of light that drifted upward and vanished.
He took a moment to assess what he'd felt. Stable output. Clean structure. No hesitation at the moment of release. Genuinely good work, clearly practiced.
But it was excellent for a young witch, and a young witch was still a young witch.
He looked at her.
She stood across from him, lips parted, eyes a full size larger than normal, as if she'd witnessed something that shouldn't exist.
"Keep going," he said. "Every spell you have."
Lily drew a deep breath. Her chest rose, then her shoulders settled as she pressed the air down and held it.
When it reached the bottom, she put force into every spell that followed.
"Incendio!"
Orange-red flame erupted from her wand, spiraling into a ribbon that fanned out as it reached him. His hand came up, fingers closing, and the fire peeled away from her wand tip as though pulled by an invisible thread, gathering into his palm. It jumped between his fingers twice, shrank, and collapsed to a point the size of a fingernail before winking out.
Not a mark on his skin.
"Confringo!"
The white flash cracked loud enough to echo twice around the empty room. His palm cupped the detonating magic the way someone might catch a handful of water. It thrashed against his skin for a moment, then died.
"Avis!"
A flock of silver birds burst from her wand and rushed at him in a flurry of beating wings. He reached out and snagged the one in front. The rest froze in midair, pinned by something unseen. His fingers tightened. The bird in his hand burst into sparks, and the others shattered with it.
Petrificus Totalus, Stupefy, Expelliarmus, Locomotor Mortis, Impedimenta...
Each spell that flew at him, he caught bare-handed, squeezed, rolled between his fingers, and snuffed out.
Over a dozen in a row.
Lily stood across from him, wand still raised, breathing hard.
Regulus lowered his hand to his side. "Take a break."
She let out a long breath.
She watched him, and the warmth had returned to his face, nothing like the person who'd been plucking spells out of the air a moment ago.
The tension in her chest eased, then tightened again. What she'd witnessed... she hadn't seen anything like it before. Hadn't even heard of it.
Snatching a spell out of the air with bare hands, the way you'd catch a gnat, then crushing it between your fingers.
What even was that?
She didn't know. But she knew one thing: the gap between her and Regulus was far wider than she'd imagined.
She walked forward until she stood in front of him. Her voice came out unsteady, as if part of her was still stuck in the last few minutes. "How did you do that?"
A trace of a smile at the corner of his mouth. "Basics."
Lily snapped back to the present. Green eyes pinned him.
She remembered what he'd told her before.
Basics.
The basics of basics.
Those words had stuck with her. But if what he'd done could only be called basics, then what had she been practicing all this time?
Not even the basics of the basics?
Her voice carried a thread of frustration. "You said 'basics' last time too. This is still basics?"
Regulus smiled and said nothing. It was basics.
In his framework, or outside of it, the fact remained. This was foundational.
Magical control, nothing more. A minor technique, barely worth calling sophisticated.
He watched her expression and found it entertaining. Her face all but spelled out: Are you messing with me?
Then, gently: "It's basics. Truly."
She stared at him for two full seconds, checking whether he was joking.
He wasn't.
Everything she'd understood about what "basics" meant crumbled in that moment.
She'd thought basics meant being able to cast a spell. Casting it accurately. Casting it steadily. That was what Regulus had described before.
Now she saw it was something else entirely. Or at least, not only that.
Silence settled over her. A long moment passed before she spoke again. "Then what do you mean by basics?"
"Magical control," he said.
He continued. "Beyond spells, a witch or wizard can do a great deal with magic alone. No incantation, no wand. The magic itself. Your magic lives inside you, around you, in places you can see and places you can't. You decide what you want it to do, and it does it. Not casting a spell, but shaping the magic into the effect directly."
Lily frowned. "Isn't that just non-verbal wandless magic?"
"Non-verbal spells start in third year. Wandless Magic in fifth." A smile played at his lips. "You knew that. Reading ahead?"
She nodded.
Something approving flickered in his eyes.
She caught it and swatted his arm. "Don't change the subject. I asked you a question. Isn't that non-verbal Wandless Magic?"
"Non-verbal Wandless Magic uses willpower to replace the incantation and the wand. But that's the result, not the process."
She listened closely, didn't interrupt, and waited for him to go on.
"When you first practice, you have to think hard and visualize what the spell should look like, what effect you want it to produce. Once you can truly cast it, you stop needing to think. A flicker of intent, and the spell leaves on its own."
His gaze was warm, his pace unhurried. "But that only means your magic has memorized the pathway for that particular spell. You give it a direction, and it walks there by itself. Magical control isn't that. Non-verbal Wandless Magic is the result. Control is the process."
Lily listened with full attention, her mind working to keep pace.
Nothing he'd said appeared in any textbook she'd read. But when she turned it over, it rang true.
He stopped there. They'd gone deep enough. What mattered now was still the fundamentals.
He glanced at her again, still lost in thought, and added silently: No. The fundamentals of the fundamentals.
"Let's set that aside for now," he said quietly. "Let's talk about your test results."
She came back to the present. This was what she wanted to hear more, anyway. Magical control could wait.
"You had me cast all those spells," she said, curious. "What were you testing?"
He looked at her, his expression carrying equal parts seriousness and amusement. "You're an excellent young witch."
She glared at him. Said nothing.
"But."
Still glaring. Still silent.
The corner of his mouth curved. "Plenty of room for improvement."
She huffed.
"Rested?"
A firm nod, voice crisp. "Yes."
He stepped back. "Again. This time I won't catch them. Watch how I cast, then do the same."
Over the next stretch of time, Lily learned what the word teaching could actually mean.
Regulus could see the flow of magic inside her, the way it moved and behaved as she cast. Where a spell went wrong, he spotted it instantly. Whether her output was strong enough, whether the spell's structure held, whether the rhythm from gathering to release was right. All of it, visible to him.
The precision of it was staggering.
Professors in class taught the what: the incantation, the wand movement. Then they sent students off to practice on their own. Repetition bred familiarity, familiarity bred speed, but the path between was fumbling and self-discovery.
Regulus skipped the fumbling entirely. He told her exactly what was wrong and how to fix it.
Lily threw herself into it, correcting wherever he pointed, then feeling out the difference on her own.
The difference was enormous.
The hour crept toward ten.
Regulus glanced at the window. "That's enough for today."
Lily lowered her wand and let out a long exhale. Exhaustion hung on her face, but her eyes were bright.
He smiled at her. "Good work today."
She smiled back, crossed from the window, tilted her head. "Will Professor Regulus be teaching again tomorrow?"
The corner of his mouth bent. "We'll see."
She rolled her eyes again, bigger this time, not bothering to hide it.