The Gaunt shack's wards were brittle things in the face of intent. They were old, stitched from bitterness and superstition, but not the sort of iron that could hold back a will like mine — not anymore. I let a single drop of blood fall to the earth and the runes around the cave flared and died, like candles snuffed by a storm.
The water of the lake drank that light and lay still.
I moved in silence. The Inferi drifted like a slow plague beneath the surface, their pale hands reaching for shapes they could not name. Their hunger smelled like cold iron and old grave-mud. In another life Tom might have felt a twinge of sentimental horror; in this one, I felt only usefulness.
Wandless, I let a ring of earth rise beneath my feet and a column of air split the surface until a narrow channel opened like a seam in the world. I stepped into that seam and sailed across as though the water itself obeyed the cadence of my breath. No Inferi stirred to stop me; their attention, for the moment, was not mine.
At the island's centre I found him — the inferi that had been Regulus Black, chained in death and shivering with an obedience that had been hammered into him by fear and by the crude magics that had made him that thing. The body was a thing of pale cloth and soaked hair, a shell animated into grotesque mimicry of living motion. But the soul residue was there, and the System's necromancy diagrams unfurled inside my head like a jeweller's map.
I did not bother with theatrics. Telekinesis is a child's trick to most, but my control was surgical. With a thought I hooked the dead thing by its ribs and hauled it through the air toward me. It hit the shore and slumped like a puppet with its strings cut. For a second the cavern echoed only with my breath. Then I raised my wand.
The patterns I traced were complicated — sigils layered in hexagonal precision, lines that would have taken lesser minds hours to plan. I threaded the necromantic cadences with the Resurrection of Undead formula until the stones seemed to sing along. The lake mist twisted; the Inferi's jaws opened and closed like a man trying to remember a name.
I fed a pulse of elemental fire into the ritual to burn the rot that clung to the body, smoke licking the runes I had drawn. A second later I siphoned water into the spell to cool it, to keep flesh from cracking like old clay. The elements answered me because I had learned to speak all of them.
The undead shell shuddered. Flesh threaded itself back over bone with an almost sickening slowness. Skin pinked. Eyes cleared. A coughing fit tore out from the chest and a sixteen-year-old boy spat black water and stared at me with the clarity of the living.
Regulus Black blinked, alive and bewildered.
He had my sigils etched into his bones now — compensations I had embedded into the ritual. I did not waste time on moralities. With quick, elegant motions of my wand I placed compulsion knots in the quiet places of his mind and wove a memory-lattice over the areas that would otherwise protest. The techniques were a mixture of necromantic binding and the memory-patterns I had traded for in the System's darker libraries. He would not be a slave in the crude sense; I preferred devotion that believed itself chosen.
"Regulus," I said softly. The name tasted like old promises. "You are awake. You serve me."
He struggled for a moment — an instinctual flail that the bindings smoothed like a seam. The look in his face went from confusion to docile clarity as if someone had tugged a veil aside. My alterations were surgical: loyalty threaded with a taste of purpose, a small, covert sense of debt and the comforting certainty that this was the right thing to do. I left his private shame and courage intact — honesty makes better servants than broken, hollow shells.
"You will go to Lucius Malfoy," I instructed. My tone did not demand so much as convince. "You will tell him I sent you. You will inform him that his family is in danger from investigations and that I can help. You will claim to be seeking assistance to restore your standing. You will take whatever steps necessary to access Grimmauld Place and recover the locket."
Regulus nodded, as if agreeing to a practical, reasonable plan. His voice was raw but steady. "I will do it."
"Good." I slid a minor geas into the lattice, not to shackle but to guide: a series of small compulsions that would bias decisions toward my ends when he hesitated, and a fail-safe rune that would draw him back to me if he tried to betray me. I taught him a single phrase — a coded sentence that would unlock trust from a contact I had patiently cultivated inside the old Black household: Beneath the stars, debts are paid. It meant nothing to anyone except those who knew the game.
Before I left, I gave him one more thing: a shard of truth — enough to steer him but not enough to make him dangerous. I allowed a few memories to return: flashes of youthful arrogance, the bitter taste of being second to family tradition, a small, wounded loyalty to his brother that would make him susceptible to guilt and thus obedientness to direction framed as redemption. It was cruel, clinical, and effective.
He bowed — the old, archaic black-nobility bow, a reflex I had expected — and then he straightened. His eyes met mine with a new focus, a new service that felt like respect.
"Go now," I said. "Find Lucius. Tell him I wish to ensure he remains free to prosper."
He left without question, moving through the shadows as though he belonged to them. The Inferi of the lake watched his retreat with blind, eternal eyes; none of them stirred. I let a small smile touch my lips. Micromanagement is for those who fear unpredictability. I preferred leverage.
Apparition back to Nurmengard was a triviality after such focus. We arrived in the midnight library, the Palantír humming faintly nearby as if in curiosity. Grindelwald raised an eyebrow when I entered, his expression similar to an old man watching a child play with fire and decide which things to burn.
"Did you succeed?" he asked simply.
I turned my hand to show him — the magic in my fingers still smelled faintly of the lake and the things I had remade.
"Regulus is moving toward Lucius," I said. "He will secure access to the Black holdings. He will convince Lucius to intervene on his behalf and to return those assets to the family's stewardship. We will use their wealth."
Grindelwald's laugh was a dry, pleased thing. "Practicality always becomes our greatest weapon," he mused. "Good. Let the Black fortunes flow toward those who will use them properly."
I seated myself beneath the high windows and felt, for a suspended breath, the simple elation of an operation executed without squeal. Plans unfurled inside me: the locket returned to me, the Horcrux sensor fashioned, Gringotts bribed or fooled, funds diverted, alliances paid in silver and fear. Regulus would be my opening through the domestic lineages that still valued their names above their ethics.
I allowed myself, for a moment, to imagine the face of Dumbledore when the threads I'd begun reached across the Channel. He polished his spectacles and read the world like a man of infinite patience — patience he would soon spend.
But not yet. I had staged the first move in a forty-move game. The pieces were behaving.
Nurmengard kept its solemn watch. Outside, the wind gnawed at old stone. Inside, Grindelwald's advisors whispered and the Palantír sighed and the child who had been a monster and a scholar sat very still and planned the next theft of history.
Regulus' footsteps were already a memory on the path.