Regulus studied Snape's face, and his thoughts drifted somewhere unexpected.
He had no comment on this.
Then he looked at Snape again.
Something had been smeared over it, probably some kind of potion. An ordinary young wizard might only notice the skin looked unnaturally white.
But Regulus's magical perception followed his gaze beneath the surface, and the color underneath came through clear as day.
Normal at the forehead. Normal at the cheekbones. Deepening as it went down, nearly solid black at the chin.
It looked awful.
He withdrew his gaze.
Snape stood rooted to the spot. The corridor's dim yellow light made it hard to gauge the exact shade of his skin, but his brows were knotted tight, his lips pressed into a thin line.
He'd stood in his dormitory staring at a mirror for God knew how long, endured Rabastan looking down at him, then waited in this corridor corner for another half hour.
The anger in his chest wouldn't go down and wouldn't come up. It sat lodged behind his ribs, not quite pain, not quite anything else.
When Regulus had stepped back just now, the distaste plain on his face, Snape couldn't decide what category to put it in.
Insult?
He wasn't sure.
What he'd felt from Lestrange was something different entirely.
That kind of gaze swept from head to toe, but it never landed on him. It landed on his origins, his blood, his family's poverty, the worn cuffs of his robes.
So Snape hadn't thought at all. His mind was blank. He'd just started walking toward the Library.
He knew this Black... the Slytherin Black was different.
He couldn't articulate how, exactly, but after more than two years in Slytherin, he'd seen enough varieties of contempt to tell them apart.
Some people looked down on him because he was lesser. Family, blood, clothes, everything weighed and found wanting.
Regulus looked down on people too, but not with that system.
The purity of the Black family's blood went without saying. Near the top of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, a family tree stretching back a dozen generations of unbroken pure-blood, so thoroughly pure that wielding it as a weapon against anyone would be redundant.
And then there was Regulus himself. That quality he carried, the way he could stand somewhere doing nothing and still press down on everyone around him, made Snape think that blood and birth probably didn't register in his eyes at all.
As though his gaze operated on a different plane entirely, and even if it dropped, it wouldn't fall far enough to land on something as small as bloodline.
Entirely different from Lestrange, who used blood status as a stepping stool to stand on while kicking downward.
But that step backward from Regulus...
Snape's brow tightened further.
He could tell. Regulus had only been looking at his face as it was now, at the sorry state of him. There was nothing else in that gaze...
No. There was something else. Distaste.
His frown deepened.
Then he thought of Sirius. That bastard was a Black too, and the reason he looked like this in the first place was that spell.
The one standing in front of him was also a Black.
Snape's expression darkened another shade.
Regulus watched the face shifting beneath the hood's shadow, expressions cycling through one after another, and gathered that someone had done this to him. That he hadn't chosen it.
Regulus raised one finger and pointed it at Snape.
Snape's body jerked backward, his hand already reaching for his robe pocket. The motion was fast, pure reflex.
Then he stopped.
If Regulus wanted to attack him, it wouldn't be here. And besides, there was no reason.
He steadied himself and let his hand drift away from his pocket.
A moment later, he felt something shift beneath his skin. It came from the level of magic itself, like something being quietly unraveled.
Before he could identify it, Regulus's voice reached him from ahead, lighter than before. "Wipe your face."
Snape raised his hand, drew his wand, and tapped it against his own face. The caked layer of potion vanished.
He flicked the wand again. A fine water mist gathered at its tip, condensed, and formed a thin reflective surface hovering in the air.
He leaned in and looked.
Sallow.
Normal.
He lowered his head. His voice came out dry and flat. "Thanks."
Regulus nodded. Said nothing.
Snape had been waiting here for him, lurking in a corridor corner, hood pulled low, face like that, and he'd still come out. He wanted something.
Snape raised his head. His gaze rested on Regulus's face for a moment, then pulled away and settled on the stone wall beside them.
When he spoke, his voice was finally level. "Tonight. Rabastan Lestrange came to see me. He wants me to find out why you're protecting Lina Costa and Samuel Vance. Whether you've got them doing something."
Regulus said nothing. Only nodded once.
"He said to report back when I had answers." Snape's eyes left the wall, flicked to Regulus, then away again. "Also said not to let you know he'd sent me."
He closed his mouth and stood there, waiting.
Through all of it, Regulus's expression barely changed. An occasional nod while Snape spoke. When he finished, a single response: "Got it."
The corridor fell quiet.
Rabastan Lestrange. Last year, Cuthbert, Alex, and Hermes had dealt with him.
They'd been first-years at the time, and they'd still left him humiliated, stuck in the Hospital Wing over the holidays, unable to go home.
On his own, Rabastan was hardly worth discussing. Just... that.
But his timing was wrong.
Rabastan was a Lestrange, and the Lestranges carried real weight on Voldemort's side.
Bellatrix had married Rodolphus. Rabastan was Rodolphus's younger brother, Bellatrix's brother-in-law.
Him surfacing now required no guesswork. He was feeding information to Bellatrix.
But that wasn't what mattered. What mattered was that he'd surfaced at all.
The Lestrange family didn't match the Blacks, but they were a named house in pure-blood circles. Sacred Twenty-Eight. Core supporters of Voldemort. Death Eaters to the last.
If Regulus moved against Rabastan directly, it wouldn't be a scuffle between students.
It would be Black against Lestrange. Two pure-blood families. The kind of conflict that, once escalated, became difficult to contain.
The key was letting Rabastan make the first move.
Lina and Samuel were under Regulus's protection. If Rabastan touched them, Regulus would have grounds to respond, and it would read as retaliation for a provocation. The logic held. It could be escalated upward if needed, and the justification would stand.
This wasn't hard to arrange. Rabastan and cunning didn't belong in the same sentence. Sending Snape to gather intelligence, only to have Snape turn around and sell him out, said everything about his judgment.
And regardless of whether Rabastan was truly acting on Bellatrix's behalf, Regulus could make it look that way.
He targeted someone under the protection of House Black. He crossed the line first. The reasoning wasn't difficult to construct, and once events moved in that direction, Regulus would have room to maneuver.
There was one more thing. Saiph.
Rabastan had volunteered himself. No sense letting that go to waste.
Regulus asked, his tone calm: "Why didn't you do as he said?"
Snape didn't answer. His eyes shifted sideways.
Regulus waited. Nothing came. He didn't press.
He could guess.
He didn't know Rabastan well. Only that the boy was stupid enough to qualify.
But he knew the Lestrange family. A half-blood like Snape would find no dignity there.
Regulus looked at him. "Rosier will be in touch."
Snape blinked.
He'd come to Regulus with this information on instinct. After delivering it, he'd assumed that was the end of it.
He'd even expected, based on how Regulus operated, some form of repayment. Proportional, possibly exceeding expectations.
That much he'd never doubted.
But Rosier reaching out was something else entirely.
Alex Rosier. Part of Regulus's inner circle. Everyone in Slytherin knew it. Snape certainly did.
He even knew that Rosier was the one directly handling Costa and Vance, those two half-bloods.
The meaning behind Regulus's words was obvious. He intended to use Snape against Rabastan, possibly entangling the Lestrange family in the process.
This was Regulus drawing him in. Drawing him to his side.
And what the Lestrange family represented, Snape understood perfectly well.
He looked up at Regulus, his gaze dark and guarded.
Regulus stood there. No urging. No expression at all. Just waiting.
The only sound in the corridor was the torch, crackling once, its shadow flinching on the wall.
Snape stood for a long time. The thoughts turned over and over in his head until they finally settled on one thing.
He'd already come. He'd already told Regulus everything. That step, once taken, was already choosing a side. He just hadn't realized it at the time.
Now Regulus was simply making the terms explicit.
And when it came down to it, everything he'd done so far, every effort he'd made, wasn't it all for the sake of getting into that circle?
Black...
He lowered his head and nodded once.
Regulus returned the nod without a word, turned, and pushed open the Library door.
Snape stood where he was, staring at the closed door. He stayed like that for a while before finally turning and walking toward the other end of the corridor.
The decision was made. Strangely, the pressure in his chest eased.
His face was back to normal too. No need to dodge anyone in the hallways now.
The Great Hall hadn't emptied yet. He picked up his pace.
Time to eat.