Regulus asked without waiting for an answer. He already knew most of it.
Greyback had not been with Voldemort's camp for long. The conversation made that obvious. Every sentence had to be pried out of him. Every compromise came only after Lucius invoked the Dark Lord's name.
Greyback feared Voldemort, but there was resentment tangled up in that fear. He knew better than to defy him outright. Still, the beast in him had never accepted the idea of a master, so he haggled instead of obeying.
That told Regulus all he needed to know. Greyback was a recent recruit.
At the end of the day, he was a slightly oversized werewolf with a pack behind him. Thirty or forty wolves, perhaps. Useful to Voldemort, certainly, but not irreplaceable.
If Regulus killed him, Voldemort would be annoyed. He would not fall out with Lucius over it, and he certainly would not turn on the Black family.
So if Lucius said the Dark Lord did not care much about Greyback, Regulus could handle the wolf here and now.
Not that he actually planned to kill him.
A live Greyback was much more valuable than a dead one. The research was the point, and dead specimens were terrible at being studied.
For a werewolf to get this far through magic alone was a talent in itself. Greyback was the biggest fish in a very particular pond. Most werewolves either hid in the wilderness or spent their lives running from Aurors. This one had turned himself into an armed force Voldemort was willing to acknowledge. That took power and a functioning brain.
Werewolves were everywhere. Wherever wizards lived, someone eventually got bitten. Wherever someone got bitten, a pack formed. It spread like a virus.
From a population that large, Greyback was probably not the only one who could have reached this level. There might even be stronger ones. Finding one quickly, though, would be a pain.
And here was a specimen delivered right to his doorstep. Throwing that away would be stupid.
Regulus almost found Greyback considerate.
He had come all this way with werewolf material sitting in front of him. Going home empty-handed was not happening. If the pack had kept quiet and minded its business, he would have needed an excuse to poke at one of them.
Instead, Greyback had marched over, shoved that scarred face close, sniffed at him, bared his teeth, and tried to loom.
Provocation, offered for free. How thoughtful.
The question was never about permission. Regulus was arranging who would take the blame afterward. More importantly, he was feeding the fire.
You poke me, I poke back. Let's see which one of us loses their head first.
If Greyback snapped, even better.
Lucius understood a beat later, and his expression changed.
What he had feared was Regulus attacking outright. A boy that young, with that kind of ability, would not normally let a provocation slide. If he made a move, the entire errand was wrecked.
Greyback's pack would stop cooperating with recruitment, whether Greyback lived or died, and explaining that to Voldemort would be miserable.
But Regulus had not attacked. He had asked a question, and that question nailed Lucius in place.
What was he supposed to say?
If he said the Dark Lord valued Greyback highly, he was protecting Greyback and holding Regulus back. If he said otherwise, he was practically giving the boy permission to put the wolf down on the spot.
Either answer was a ditch.
Lucius cursed under his breath, and not elegantly.
All this effort to deliver a message. All this dignity spent negotiating with an animal. For what?
If the wolf had possessed even a scrap of tact and agreed cleanly, Lucius and Regulus would already be gone. Instead, Greyback had to bare his teeth, show off his wild side, and drag the Black heir into it.
Regulus thought Greyback was considerate. Lucius thought he was a complete nuisance.
His fingers had already settled around his wand, ready to deal with whatever happened next.
Greyback heard the question too.
The contempt on his face froze. So did the pleasure he had taken in playing with prey.
Beast or man, anyone with half a brain could hear what the whelp was saying. He was being ignored.
And to Greyback, it hurt worse than a challenge.
Before Lucius could get a word out, Regulus moved.
Greyback's preparation was obvious the moment it began. Regulus could practically see the magic moving through him, spilling out from his core into his limbs, claws, teeth, and muscles.
It was a werewolf's way of readying for a fight. Similar to a wizard using magic, but rougher, more instinctive, less refined.
Most wizards would either strike first or raise their guard when they saw a werewolf coil like that.
Regulus did neither.
This was a good chance to test something.
His conversation with Dumbledore outside the Shrieking Shack, all that talk about werewolves and the animal inside them, had been theory. There had been no specimen to examine.
Now one stood in front of him with its teeth out.
What exactly was the animal in a werewolf?
During a transformation, reason vanished and instinct took over. Fine. But what about when they were human? Did that animal sleep, or did it stay awake beneath the surface, soaking into everything they did?
When faced with real death, would a werewolf think like a man? Or would the body decide before the mind had a chance to catch up?
Regulus wanted to know.
Conveniently, Greyback was volunteering.
Regulus did not lift a hand. He did not draw his wand. He barely looked at Greyback.
He simply thought of Fiendfyre.
Magic answered at once.
There was no incantation, no gesture, no careful construction followed by release. Those steps had fallen away a long time ago. If he wanted a spell, his magic already knew where to go.
The thought had barely formed before the matching structure settled into place inside his mind, tucked between the star-tracks and waiting for a single decision.
It was not practice anymore. His magic had learned the shape of his thoughts.
Regulus recalled Fiendfyre: cursed flame, a cursed creation, destruction that had a will of its own. Orange-red fire rolled through his memory, dark crimson veins pulsing through every tongue of flame.
The structure unfolded in his consciousness. He did not cast it. He only let the summoning run through his mind, stopping just before the end.
A trace of it seeped out anyway. Thin. Faint.
Nothing changed on the surface. No light. No heat. Not even a stir in his robes. There was no magical flare, no detectable spell trace. For a brief instant, the idea of Fiendfyre had touched him, leaving the faintest residue in the air around him.
It drifted over Lucius and the two werewolves behind Greyback. None of them noticed.
Lucius was not tuned to that frequency. The other two wolves were simply too dull to catch it.
Greyback reacted.
His pupils narrowed into slits. One heel scraped backward through the dirt.
The hackles along his neck and shoulders rose a moment later, and a growl caught in his throat.
His mind had not even started working yet. His body had moved first.
The muscles in his legs tightened. His weight shifted back. His upper body was still standing there, but the lower half of him had already decided to run.
Animals carry an ancient fear of fire. Werewolves, though, do not really fear ordinary flames.
An adult werewolf has thick hide. Normal fire will not burn through its pelt. Stick a torch in its face and it will flinch, shake itself off, and come right back.
Fire is unpleasant to a werewolf. It is not fatal.
Fiendfyre was not fire.
It was a cursed thing that devoured everything, flammable or not. Matter... Magic... It did not care.
Greyback's instinct could not tell Fiendfyre from flame in any sensible way. It felt something older than that. It sensed destruction that killed on contact, something that gave no room to fight back.
The oldest terror of flame had been dragged past every limit and turned into something absolute.
That fear skipped thought entirely. It was in the blood, older than werewolves by millions of years.
The instant that trace reached him, Greyback's body had already retreated.
Heel scraping. Muscles locking. Weight shifting. All of it was over before he understood that anything had happened.
His mind was still turning over the boy's question. His body had backed away without permission.
Regulus watched it and felt the urge to prod him grow sharper.
Beautifully responsive.
The moment he allowed himself to think of Fiendfyre, the fire already existed. It was not burning yet. It sat on the possible side of the line, waiting to become real.
But Greyback's end, burned down to nothing, had been decided the instant the thought appeared. The only question was whether Regulus would let it cross that final step.
That was what Greyback's instinct had smelled.
A death sentence, passed but not carried out.
It did not know when it would happen. It did not know how. It did not know who would deliver the blow. It knew only one thing: one more half-step, and he was dead.
Regulus pulled the thread back as quickly and quietly as he had let it out.
Greyback's hackles lowered partway. His body relaxed. Muscles that had tensed against an invisible threat suddenly had nothing to brace for, and the lost momentum tipped his upper body forward.
Only then did his mind catch up, trying to understand what had happened in less than a tenth of a second.
He looked down at his feet. Why had he stepped back?
There was no fire. No smoke. The whelp had not moved a finger. Yet Greyback's body had made a choice he could not explain.
A low rumble crawled out of his throat. He looked at himself, then at Regulus, frowning hard.
Regulus's interest sharpened.
The experiment had confirmed it. The animal never slept. It remained awake at the very bottom of a werewolf, somewhere even Greyback could not reach, and it was frighteningly sensitive.
Put a genuine threat of death in front of it, and the body made the choice without consulting the brain.
Under Greyback's human shape was a beast that could take control whenever it pleased.
Verified.
Now Regulus wanted to go deeper.
That had been fire. What about something else? A different kind of death. How would the animal react? How would it sort threats and choose between them?
He wanted to see.
Another thought, and his magic moved again.
This time, he built a sphere in his mind.
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