Regulus touched down at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Hagrid's hut sat dark. In the pumpkin patch, the big dog was curled in her kennel, one ear flicking upright before drooping back down.
He Apparated directly. The next instant, his feet sank into the sticky, fibrous matting that carpeted the floor of the hollow's central nest.
He'd barely lifted his head, his magical perception spreading outward on instinct, when he saw something he shouldn't have.
In the clearing at the center of the nest, Aragog and Mosag were tangled together, sixteen legs interlocked.
They were mating. ( ;-; )
Aragog's body dwarfed Mosag's, his dark-black carapace pressing down against her grey abdomen. His two thickest forelegs clamped her torso in a vise grip, the barbed tips of his feet puncturing the soft membrane along the edge of her ventral plates, sunk deep and locked in place.
Mosag let out a long, drawn-out shriek, the tail end of it pitching upward, as if something inside her were being forced apart.
The sound traveled along the silk lines and spread across the entire hollow. Every small spider in the surrounding shadows froze, flattening itself against the ground, chelicerae tucked beneath their cephalothorax, all eight legs curled inward, prostrate, as if in worship.
Aragog moved faster.
Mosag's shrieks grew louder, her abdomen swelling higher, the carapace stretched nearly translucent, something churning visibly beneath the surface.
Mucus seeped from the seams of her ventral plates, dripping down the silk strands, pooling on the ground in a cloudy puddle.
Several small spiders crept from the shadows, scrambling over one another to reach it, plunging their chelicerae into the slick and lapping at it. Their abdomens swelled slightly as they fed, the same murky film coating their shells.
Regulus's magical perception was still open. He took the full hit.
The impact through his magical senses struck harder than anything visual. Predator instinct tangled with breeding drive, thick, primal, carrying the particular dark signature that Acromantula vitality produced at full release.
The crushing weight of a living organism surrendering completely to its most fundamental need. The sensation was as dense and inescapable as having his face shoved into it.
Mosag's magic surged in violent waves, rolling outward pulse after pulse. Aragog's magic bore down on top, grinding each wave apart, then letting the fragments coalesce again.
He stood there. Two full seconds of blank shock.
He was twelve years old. When had he ever seen anything like this?
Even with an entire second lifetime of memories loaded into his soul, even with everything that lifetime contained, the scene in front of him exceeded anything he'd encountered or imagined.
He could swear his own magic flinched.
His mind had been contaminated.
His eyes had been assaulted.
He was tainted.
He Apparated out.
The next instant he stood on a jutting rock at the rim of the hollow, his back to the nest, facing the deep forest.
No trees grew around the hollow's edge. The moon hung overhead, mist drifting on the wind, but everything felt distant, slightly less than real.
He drew a deep breath, trying to push the churning in his chest downward. It didn't go. He drew another. Still didn't go.
Residual impressions from his magical perception clung to his mind, every detail crisp enough to make his skin crawl.
He closed his eyes, ready to engage Occlumency, strip that memory from his surface consciousness, shove it into a quarantine partition, and seal it shut.
Technically, he could do it. Full containment or outright destruction, either one. His current mental fortitude made it trivial.
But he didn't act immediately. A thought jumped into his head.
The shock that scene had inflicted on his mind came from the information itself. From what that image carried. Nobody had attacked him. The information had done the work on its own.
It made him uncomfortable. It made him nauseous. It produced a genuine physical revulsion. But that was all. Nothing more.
So what if a piece of information could carry something capable of destroying sanity?
Then it wouldn't just be information. It would be a weapon.
No incantation required. No clash of magical force. No active mental intrusion or passive mental defense. You simply let the target come into contact with the information, and the information finished the rest.
See it. Hear it. Perceive it. Then collapse on your own.
He drew another breath and followed the thread deeper.
Could something exist whose very concept shattered anyone who grasped it?
Not by being seen. Not by attacking. Merely by being known. Merely by being understood. The act of comprehension itself would tear a person's rational structure apart.
The human mind had boundaries. Anything inside those boundaries could be processed. Anything outside them fell fundamentally beyond what the human psyche could bear.
Contact with something like that, and reason would break before fear had time to form. Because fear was still a response, and the collapse would happen before any response was possible.
A weapon built along those lines would be impossible to defend against.
Occlumency could block active intrusion. It couldn't stop a mind from dissolving after a piece of information entered its field of vision.
Could he become something like that?
Regulus thought of his Light Source Magic.
Light could carry information. He'd already proven it.
If he could encode that kind of information into light, he wouldn't need to cast a spell. Wouldn't need to lift a finger. The instant light reflected off his body, the information would already be woven in.
Everyone who saw him would receive it simultaneously. Collapse simultaneously. Or go mad simultaneously.
But the idea was still far off. Not because it was impossible, but because no such information sample existed.
The mating scene he'd just witnessed was disgusting, physically revolting, but nowhere close to the threshold of mental collapse.
Then again, even something that only made people sick had its uses. It all depended on application. Done right, it could still be devastating.
He peeled the memory away from his surface consciousness, compressed it into the quarantine partition, sealed it separately, tagged it, and filed it as raw material for external projection.
Then he crushed the last of that churning feeling and reset himself.
Back still turned to the nest, he pulled his thoughts together. He'd come here tonight for a reason.
Aragog had already crawled out.
His bulk materialized through the mist, eight legs settling with deliberate weight, each step sending a faint tremor through the ground.
He stopped a few meters from Regulus. His uppermost pair of eyes locked on, their pale glow sharp against the dark.
A beat of silence, then Aragog spoke first, his voice rough and low as always. "Your timing was poor."
Regulus didn't turn. Didn't speak.
Aragog's chelicerae clicked once, a soft snap.
His tone carried frank bewilderment, as if Regulus's reaction were genuinely incomprehensible. "Breeding is a necessary act for the continuation of a colony. Mosag is in excellent condition this year. That's a good thing. Why did you leave?"
Regulus turned and looked at him.
Aragog crouched there, legs folded along his flanks, his abdomen rising and falling in a slow rhythm.
In those topmost eyes there was no provocation, no mockery. Only a pure, biological confusion.
He was asking the question in earnest.
"I felt I was intruding," Regulus said, his voice carefully measured.
After a moment, he added, "Spiders don't care about that sort of thing?"
"Care about what? Mating? Reproduction?" The bewilderment in Aragog's voice was absolute. "Do wizards not mate?"
"We mate," Regulus said flatly.
"And when you mate, you don't allow others to watch?"
The question landed, and for a split second Regulus thought Aragog sounded like a philosopher. Profoundly so.
He was quiet for a while, genuinely considering it. "Generally, no."
He'd never witnessed wizards mating either, but he was fairly confident wizards didn't require an audience.
Then again, maybe some did. ( ;-; )
He shoved that thought out of his head.
"Carry on," Regulus said. "I'm here for Baruk."
Aragog let out a short, clipped click.
From deep inside the nest came an answering sound, thinner than Aragog's, carrying a quick, eager rhythm.
Aragog turned, eight legs cycling in alternation, and crawled back toward the nest.
His pace was unhurried, abdomen swaying side to side, chelicerae half-open, half-closed, producing a low, rumbling purr.
At the entrance he paused, glanced back once, then turned and vanished into the shadows.
Baruk emerged from the nest moving fast.
He stopped in front of Regulus, his front half dipping slightly, his two foremost legs extending forward, claws tapping the rock once with a delicate click.
Regulus watched the gesture and waved a hand in return.
The spider was greeting him.
All eight of Baruk's eyes fixed on him. His forelegs rose, dropped, rose again, his whole body telegraphing eager anticipation.
Regulus swept his magical perception outward in a quick scan.
Baruk's magic was the same as before. Spider magic. Primal, predatory, dark. The racial signature unmistakable.
But layered over it was emotion. Anticipation, curiosity, excitement and something else he couldn't quite pin down, something that felt like affection.
Regulus stepped closer and looked at him. "Want that feeling from last time again?"
Baruk rattled off a string of clicks.
"That... strong..." His forelegs drummed the ground twice, the rhythm urgent. "Want... feel..."
Regulus raised his wand. Silver-white light gathered at the tip.
This time he didn't tune it to arrogance and contempt. He tuned it to curiosity and eager anticipation.
The light washed over Baruk. His body seized, but far more briefly than before. Less than two seconds and he loosened up.
No confusion this time, no disorientation. He spun in place, two full circles, forelegs tapping and drumming against the ground. Tak-tak-tak-tak. Like he was testing something out from the inside.
Then he lifted his head and fired off a rapid burst of clicks.
Regulus couldn't parse the sounds exactly, but the meaning was clear enough.
Again.
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A/n - ;-;