The structure assembled itself in Regulus's mind: a sphere folding inward, every layer collapsing toward the center.
Magic packed down to the limit. Each piece sat exactly where it belonged, all of it aimed at the same result.
Make the target stop being whole. Strip away the very idea of what it was.
The Decomposition Curse.
A presence seeped from him, nothing like Fiendfyre.
Fiendfyre wanted to consume. It wanted to burn its victim until nothing was left but part of the fire.
The Decomposition Curse didn't care about any of that. It erased. Being hit by it wasn't really death, because death meant something had lived first. This went beneath that. It reduced a living thing to scattered pieces that no longer counted as alive, and there was no coming back from it.
The pressure touched Greyback.
His reaction put the last one to shame.
The hair on his arms shot up. So did the rough mane at the back of his neck and the grey fur visible through his torn vest. Gooseflesh rolled down him from shoulders to spine, every hair standing stiff.
His whole body folded in on itself. Legs drew up. Back curved. His head sank between his shoulders, and a thin whine slipped out before terror crushed it flat.
This was fear, sure. Just not the same kind as before.
Fiendfyre was simple. Fire... pain... burning... death.... His body knew what all of that meant.
This thing was unknown.
Nobody beyond Orion and Freya even knew the Decomposition Curse existed. Greyback had no hope of understanding it. All he knew was that the small boy in front of him could make him simply... not exist. No blood. No bones. No trace of the curse in his veins. Nothing.
Death was at least familiar. Prey lying in a pool of blood, motionless forever. He had made that happen too many times to count.
But absence?
An animal feared pain. It feared death. Both were things it could picture.
It couldn't picture not being.
The whine kept leaking from Greyback's throat. He didn't even seem aware he was making it.
Regulus watched the wolf for a moment. The amusement faded, replaced by genuine thought.
Greyback had never encountered the Decomposition Curse. He had no name for it, no experience with it, yet his body had reacted with frightening precision.
Retreat for one kind of annihilation. Terror for another.
The animal instinct inside him wasn't merely sensitive. It categorized. It had a different answer for every threat.
Now that's interesting.
This werewolf was built differently from any wizard Regulus had studied. Somewhere at the bottom, the machinery had been replaced. At the rawest level of survival, the human part of Greyback was gone.
What remained was animal instinct, pure and unfiltered by reason. Its map of danger had little in common with human judgment. In some ways, it was more honest.
Greyback finally caught up to what his body had been doing, though he still had no idea why.
Twice now. First he had backed away, then he had curled up, and each time his body moved while his brain was still standing there stupidly blinking.
At least one thing was clear. The whelp was behind it. He wasn't going mad on his own.
From start to finish, this was the work of that black-haired, grey-eyed boy in fine clothes, the sort of boy Greyback should have been able to break with one hand.
His body didn't shake for no reason. His instincts didn't panic for no reason.
Greyback stared at Regulus, and the predator vanished from his yellow eyes.
He couldn't understand the method. He only knew where it came from.
Wariness took its place. He needed to leave.
For a beast like him, only one instinct mattered now.
Run. Get as far from the whelp as possible.
He didn't run, not because of pride. Pride had never meant much to Fenrir Greyback. His body simply refused to move. The traces of those two terrible presences still seemed to cling to the air, pinning him in place.
Stay still.
Move, and something worse might happen.
So he stood frozen, staring at Regulus. The challenge had gone out of him completely.
Regulus noticed the urge to flee. That wasn't happening. Where else was he going to find material this rare?
He glanced around.
Greyback had been the target, but neither Fiendfyre nor the Decomposition Curse had traveled like a spell aimed at a single throat. Their intent spread outward, washing over everything nearby.
The two wolves behind Greyback were still rooted to the spot. They had watched their leader bristle and whimper for no obvious reason, and neither had the faintest clue what was wrong with him.
Lucius, standing beside Regulus, looked even more lost.
Regulus flicked his eyes toward him.
Lucius wore almost the same expression as the wolves. A werewolf had shoved his scarred face into Regulus's a minute earlier. Then he'd backed away, curled up, and twice erupted in fur while making that awful sound.
What in the world had happened to the animal?
There had been no incantation. No flash. No sound. Regulus had stood there quietly, and Greyback had started shaking.
Nothing had touched Lucius. Both killing intents had passed straight through him without leaving so much as a ripple. All he could see was the effect, completely blind to the cause.
Regulus found the sight amusing on its own.
Lucius Malfoy. Polished and clever. Standing on a Yorkshire moor, baffled by a werewolf.
He turned back to his work.
A new structure formed in his mind. This time, it was a tree.
The trunk lit up first. Branches split at each node, dividing again and again until they ended in tiny release points, each no wider than a needle tip. Magic poured into the trunk, divided through every fork, cycled through two and a half oscillations, then compressed at the ends.
The intent of pure physical destruction spread out.
Greyback's response caught Regulus off guard.
The wolf changed tactics.
His jaw snapped shut. Yellow teeth ground together hard enough to crack. Muscles bulged along his jaw, and his clawed fingers opened one at a time, the splits in their tips peeling wider.
He leaned forward. The balls of his feet dug into the mud. His shoulders lowered.
He was ready to lunge.
This time, he wanted to fight.
Regulus blinked, surprised. Then it made perfect sense.
The Disintegration Curse was something Greyback could understand.
Rip, shatter and break something whole into pieces.
That was physical violence, and physical violence was Greyback's native language. Claws, teeth, torn flesh and broken bone. The living turned dead and the whole turned ruined.
The vicious one survived. Whoever tore out the other throat first won.
His instincts told him retreat was useless. Running was useless.
This was a death he could fight.
The first two killing intents made him recoil. This one made him bare his teeth.
His body chose the third answer for him.
Fight.
Regulus studied him for a long moment before letting the tree dissolve.
Without the disintegration intent bracing him, Greyback's coiled body lost its target. He jerked forward less than an inch, then stopped himself so hard his forefeet carved two lines through the mud.
His head cleared. The instinctive machinery shut down, and his mind grabbed the controls again.
The instant it did, any trace of swagger died.
Remembering the stance he'd just taken made his stomach turn cold.
What exactly was standing in front of him?
A whelp who hadn't lifted a hand, yet had played with his body three times while Greyback himself got no say in it.
A low keening sound crawled from his throat.
He backed away. One step. Then another. Then a third, walking backward without daring to lift his head.
Those eyes stayed fixed on Regulus. The boy was small enough for Greyback to fit his head in his mouth, and still he couldn't make himself step closer.
After several paces, he stopped. Shoulders drooping, tail tucked without there being a tail to tuck. He watched Regulus like a beaten dog.
Regulus let him be and went over the results.
It had started as a bit of fun. Poke the wolf, see what happened. Like teasing a snake with a fingertip just to find out when it would strike.
Somewhere along the way, he'd found something real.
Greyback's reactions were too fast. His body moved first, and his mind stumbled after it.
Put an ordinary wizard in his place, even one sensitive enough to feel that thread of intent, and their mind would engage first.
How dangerous is this? Can I block it? Do I run?
Fear would follow, but it would pass through thought before it became movement. Analyze, dread, decide. A tiny gap, maybe only a fraction of a second, but enough to show the brain was still in charge.
Greyback had no gap at all. His body bypassed the brain and acted by itself.
By the end of it, Regulus was honestly fascinated.
Fun was fun. But this was useful.
Three spells. Three completely different ways to erase someone from the world. Three clean reactions.
Fiendfyre meant retreat. Decomposition brought terror. Disintegration provoked aggression.
Fire, primal fear. Conceptual erasure, fear of the unknown. Physical ruin, the urge to fight.
At the deepest level of survival, there was no human left in Greyback.
Regulus had just considered three ways to kill him, and any one of them could have become real in the next second.
Fiendfyre could swallow the whole valley, burning every wolf and every stone house to ash.
The Decomposition Curse could leave behind residue no one would recognize, with the lycanthropy dissolved along with the rest.
The Disintegration Curse could tear Greyback apart from within and drop the pieces into the mud.
Regulus chose not to do any of it. Greyback alive and frightened was more valuable than Greyback dead.
The wolf stood there breathing hard. Sweat shone across his scarred face and ran through its deeper grooves. The wildest animal in the valley had been reduced to standing at a distance from a thirteen-year-old boy, afraid to shift his weight.
Regulus's expression hadn't changed once. His brow was still faintly furrowed at the stink rolling off Greyback.
Lucius had watched the entire thing and understood none of it.
He didn't know what Regulus had done. He only knew the result.
Lucius had met powerful wizards. He had seen powerful magic. Some of it was easy to follow; some wasn't, though his eye for such things usually let him guess the rough shape of the spell.
This was different. He had seen nothing.
As far as Lucius could tell, Regulus had done absolutely nothing. A child stood quietly in the mud while a wolf lost its mind.
Lucius had already decided that this thirteen-year-old Black would become someone extraordinary. In the future where the Dark Lord inevitably won, a Regulus like this would hold a very high place.
He had set that estimate high when he began nurturing the relationship. Otherwise, he would never have invested so much care in it.
Looking at Regulus now, Lucius realized he still hadn't set it high enough.
Nothing showed on his face. His gaze brushed Regulus once, then moved away.
Regulus had the field, and he wasn't finished with it yet.
Those three tests had only shown him the outside, the instinct Greyback's body produced when it was hooked.
Interesting, but not enough. He wanted to look deeper.
What did the inside of this wolf's head actually look like? How did man and beast share one body? How had the animal overwritten the human? Was the human part still somewhere underneath?
And if it was, what shape was it in?
If it wasn't... had it been eaten?
Or had it simply disappeared?
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