The last Wednesday of November.
Breakfast.
Students chattered in every direction. Someone at the Gryffindor table was reaching across to steal bacon. Hufflepuff was deep in debate over the weekend's Quidditch. Ravenclaws huddled in clusters, voices low.
Owls streamed through the high windows in waves, wingbeats layering over one another, letters and parcels dropping like rain.
A tawny eagle owl landed in front of Regulus.
Its talons gripped a folded piece of parchment. No signature, no family seal, no wax. A single sheet, folded twice.
The owl extended its leg and nudged the paper toward his hand.
Regulus took it and unfolded it.
"Regulus:
What I told you over the holidays, do you remember!
You didn't listen!
This is the second time. There won't be a third!
Bellatrix Lestrange"
The handwriting bore down hard, each stroke pressing deep, the turns of the letters nearly tearing through the parchment. The final words ended abruptly, as though the emotion behind them had outrun the writer's control, the quill forced down with finality. Indentations scored the surface.
Regulus set the letter on the table and regarded it, expression blank.
He thought of the letter Bellatrix had sent him in first year.
Back then he'd only just arrived at Hogwarts. His magical path hadn't begun. What he could have put forward would have been embarrassing to name.
Beyond the magic circulation and magical control he'd figured out on his own as a child, plus a handful of foundational spells, there was nothing.
He'd never doubted his talent. That had never required proof.
Whatever basic magic he could access, he'd learned it the moment he tried. None of it posed difficulty.
But at that stage, he'd had nothing to show.
No star guided neditation. No patronus. No decomposition curse, no fiendfyre, no spatial magic, no light source magic.
The honest word was weak.
When that first letter arrived, he remembered the feeling. Irritation, and a thin edge of cold pressure.
Not because of Bellatrix herself. Bellatrix had never been a source of pressure.
She was strong, in her way. The Black family talent, her command of the Dark Arts, by then probably already receiving instruction from Voldemort.
But in Regulus's estimation, that was the extent of it. Even back then, he'd calculated that with a few years of work, killing Bellatrix wouldn't be a problem.
And that had been a year ago. Looking back now, the estimate had been conservative.
But her letter hadn't carried only her gaze. It carried Voldemort's attention, and that attention had weight of its own. Bellatrix was Voldemort's mouthpiece. Her letters were threads extended from that side. Take hold and you walked forward. Refuse and it became a statement.
Then came this past year, and Regulus had advanced too fast.
Every concept he'd envisioned had become real power, held in his hands.
His magical path was confirmed. Following it forward, even he couldn't say how far it would go.
Stack all of that together, and the boy who'd walked into Hogwarts a year ago might as well have been a different person.
But Bellatrix didn't know any of this. She knew only what he'd shown at school: the classrooms, the corridors, the common room. She might have factored in the Dark Awakening, assumed its gift had taken root.
But even that probably didn't register as much in her eyes. A young wizard, no matter how impressive, was still a young wizard.
Twelve years old.
In truth, Regulus reflected, no one alive knew his full capabilities.
Dumbledore knew a portion.
But the Headmaster likely didn't know about the Decomposition Curse or Light Source Magic. Regulus had never used either at Hogwarts.
Orion knew a different portion, but everything after Bellatrix's ignition, the soul becoming visible, Light Source Magic, the Spatial Network, none of that had reached his father.
No single person held the complete picture.
Bellatrix's timing was perfect, even better than he'd expected. If she hadn't noticed what he'd been doing, he would have had to find a way to make her notice. Her coming to him first saved the trouble.
He reached out, ready to burn the parchment, then reconsidered. He looked up. The owl had just launched from the table's edge, wings beating, not yet past the high windows.
A single thought. Magic extended outward and pulled the bird back.
The owl flipped mid-air, wings flailing, shedding feathers, dragged backward. It shrieked once, talons clawing at nothing.
It stumbled on landing, claws snagging the tablecloth, eyes wide with alarm, shuddering twice, dropping three or four more feathers onto the table.
Regulus ignored its distress. He reached for the chips on his plate.
As his fingers touched one, it deformed, stretching, thinning, the tip sharpening into a point. A quill.
He pinched the shaft and dipped it toward the ketchup on his plate. The instant the nib made contact, the ketchup transformed too. The color shifted from dark red to deep black, the consistency thinning, pooling at the bottom of the plate in a small puddle of ink.
Unchanged ketchup sat beside it, red and black side by side, the boundary crisp.
A few heads turned nearby. Down the Slytherin table, several older students exchanged glances.
Regulus spread the parchment flat and wrote his reply directly over Bellatrix's handwriting. One word.
"SO?"
The lettering was bold, the S oversized...
He folded the letter and held it out to the owl. "Back where you came from."
A wisp of Verdant Magic seeped from his fingertip and settled across the owl's feathers.
The bird calmed. The frantic flapping stopped. The panic drained from its eyes, though something wounded lingered.
It dipped its head and jabbed its beak hard against the back of Regulus's hand, then seized the letter, spread its wings, and flew.
Cuthbert sat close enough to catch the contents.
Regulus hadn't hidden anything. Cuthbert glanced over, saw the lines of text, saw the "SO?"
He said nothing, only looked a question at Regulus. A small shake of the head. Cuthbert shrugged, returned to his breakfast. If Regulus wasn't sharing, he wasn't asking.
Regulus went back to eating. Everything was on schedule.
But Costa and Vance needed more attention. His stance toward them had to be made clearer.
Inside Hogwarts, the people under his explicit protection were untouchable. No one would dare.
Schemes might drift their way, but as long as he kept watch, nothing would come of it.
Outside the school was the concern. He didn't doubt Bellatrix's capacity for madness, the same way he didn't overestimate her strength.
If he wanted those two to establish themselves in Slytherin, to have somewhere to land even after graduation, he couldn't turn them into targets.
Over the holidays, he'd use Bellatrix to draw a line. The people under his protection were off-limits.
That message could travel through Bellatrix outward. A public declaration, of sorts.
She could serve as the blade to show his edge, the line to mark his territory, and the channel to project his influence.
Bellatrix, it had to be said, was endlessly useful.
As for letting Costa and Vance take a hit along the way, Regulus saw nothing excessive in that.
He'd endured the Cruciatus Curse himself.
A few bruises, a few cuts, traded for unmistakable protection, and the benefits that came beyond it. Others wouldn't get the opportunity.
He gave them shelter. They worked for him. He carried risk. They carried risk. No one owed anyone.
Now he was waiting on Rabastan's end. Ideally everything would converge, resolved in one stroke.
But he wasn't rushing Alex and the others. Let them find the rhythm themselves, bring it off steady and clean.
The day passed normally. Classes ran their course. After the afternoon Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson ended, students scattered through the corridors.
Regulus told Cuthbert and the others to head back without him. He turned in a different direction, climbed the stairs, and walked toward Professor McGonagall's office.
Spatial Transfiguration was progressing. Nearly three months of practice since the term began. The duration he could sustain it had stretched from a few seconds to close to a minute, and the structure was far sharper than before.
No longer the vague, blurred distortion it had been. Now he could produce recognizable shapes. Squares were square, circles were round. The edges still lacked precision, but at least the forms were identifiable.
He knocked.
"Come in."
McGonagall's voice carried through the door. Regulus pushed it open and stepped inside.
Professor McGonagall sat behind her desk. Someone else occupied the chair across from her.
Sirius.
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