Hermes took one look at the odd little object in Regulus's hand and wrote it off.
Sure, fundamentals mattered. He could admit that much. Regulus's basics were terrifyingly solid.
But Hermes had his own stubborn belief. Real combat came down to one thing: whether you had magic strong enough to decide life and death in one move.
The Transfiguration and classroom spells they learned at school were flashy tricks at best when real dark magic showed up.
He could not see what Regulus was even practicing, let alone the danger buried in that tiny, precise restructuring of matter.
To Hermes, it was just making a stone a little harder or shinier. So what?
What were you supposed to do in a duel, bean someone with a polished rock?
Ridiculous.
Cuthbert tried to signal him to shut up. Hermes ignored him and made his footsteps deliberately heavy.
He walked to his bed and dropped an old blank-covered book onto the bedside table.
Thump.
The dull impact sounded extra loud in the quiet dorm.
That finally dragged Regulus out of deep focus.
He let the magic around the graphite disperse. The stone returned to normal and fell back to the desk.
Then he looked up. Gray eyes, calm and flat, landing on Hermes.
"Need something?" Regulus asked.
Hermes turned and leaned on the bedpost, his usual gloom now edged with a little provocation.
"Not really. Just seems like a waste, some people spending their time on... flashy little tricks.
Real power isn't molding rocks into pretty shapes."
The jab was obvious. Cuthbert frowned. Alex lowered his head and said nothing.
Regulus answered evenly, "Your view of power is extreme, and way too narrow.
You only notice destruction and pain. You miss the strength inside the rules this world is built on.
And perspective..."
He shook his head. "You probably don't know this, but the wizard most widely recognized as the strongest today, Albus Dumbledore, is also a top-tier Transfiguration master."
Hermes's expression tightened.
Of course he knew the name Dumbledore. What Dumbledore specialized in was something a dark-magic-obsessed first-year had never cared to learn.
"One more thing." Regulus stood.
At some point his wand had already slipped into his hand.
He happened to need a live target for a thought he'd just formed, and Hermes had handed him one.
"You don't think much of my magic," Regulus said. "Coincidentally, I don't think yours is impressive either."
Before the last word fully landed, Regulus lifted his wand and pointed it at Hermes.
Hermes reacted fast, reaching for his own wand to block or counter.
Regulus was faster.
Or rather, the way his spell worked ignored what Hermes expected a spell to look like.
There was no flash, no sound. Nothing at all.
Hermes suddenly felt his breathing lock up.
The air entering his nose and mouth lost every property that made it breathable.
It was like sucking in something useless, something that would not interact with his lungs, would not give him even a trace of oxygen.
His eyes flew wide.
His mouth opened as he tried to drag in more air, but it did nothing. The panic came fast, then faster.
He tried to speak, to demand what Regulus had done, but no sound came out.
He tried to raise his wand, but oxygen starvation blurred his thoughts and made his arms feel like lead.
And he could not cast nonverbal spells.
He stared at Regulus in raw terror.
Regulus held his wand steady, expression blank, like he wasn't looking at a person at all.
This was an extension of Regulus's earlier idea.
He had not attempted complicated elemental conversion. At his current level, that would be too slow.
What he did was rougher and more direct.
He did not define a precise end state. He only set a condition.
Using broad, non-targeted Transfiguration, he forced a high-output magical intervention and turned the gas in that area into something unbreathable.
At this stage, it was more practical than converting oxygen directly into poison.
He wasn't trying to kill anyone.
Cuthbert watched with shining eyes.
He didn't understand the mechanism and wasn't even sure this counted as dark magic, but that only made Regulus look more terrifying to him.
If he couldn't understand it, it had to be a higher level.
Alex, meanwhile, had gone pale.
He clapped both hands over his mouth, afraid to make even a sound.
He'd just started feeling like dorm life was getting better. In a blink, it turned into this.
They were first-years.
This wasn't a normal classmate scuffle. It looked like the beginning of a killing.
He watched Hermes's face shift from red to blue, eyes bulging, body twitching, and fear flooded his chest.
Hermes's panic peaked.
He couldn't breathe. He couldn't cast.
Under the crushing combo of suffocation and terror, his magic wouldn't gather at all.
Death felt close. Close enough to touch.
He desperately tried to identify the spell.
What was this?
Silent, invisible, bizarre in function, stripping away the basis of life itself.
It had to be some horrifying advanced dark magic.
He had lost completely.
He didn't even understand what method he'd been hit with.
Seconds crawled.
Around the half-minute mark, Hermes's struggles weakened. His eyes started to lose focus.
Even Cuthbert, excited at first, felt cold sweat break out.
He worshiped power, sure, but he understood limits.
Killing a student on campus, especially someone from the Mulciber family, would be a total disaster.
Everything would blow up.
He opened his mouth, ready to beg Regulus to stop.
Then he saw Regulus's face, calm to the point of chilling, no frenzy, no madness, and swallowed the words.
Instinct told him Regulus wouldn't cross that line.
Someone this composed, this rational, someone who calculated each step, wouldn't kill over a dorm-room argument.
Right when Hermes was about to black out, Regulus gave a small flick of his wrist and withdrew the magic.
"Hah...!"
Hermes collapsed forward, catching himself on both hands, sucking in air like a broken bellows.
He coughed violently. Tears and mucus ran down his face in a miserable mess.
It took him over a minute of desperate gasping before he could even lift his head.
His bloodshot eyes, full of fear and disbelief, locked onto Regulus.
Regulus had already put his wand away.
He looked down at Hermes and asked, calm as ever, "So, what do you think of Transfiguration now?"
He offered no explanation.
Let Hermes guess. Let him fear, let him claw at the principle behind this invisible, formless, lethal thing.
Hermes stayed slumped on the floor, body trembling from leftover terror.
His thoughts were a mess.
Transfiguration?
How was that possible?
Transfiguration could make him unable to breathe?
That overturned everything he thought he knew about the subject.
But if it wasn't Transfiguration, then what was it?
There was no sinister dark-magic aura, no curse-like feeling.
The unknown only made him more afraid.
He realized he couldn't see through Regulus Black at all.
Regulus didn't just crush him with raw ability.
He also seemed to command methods Hermes couldn't understand, couldn't even classify.
Against techniques like that, there was no defense.
Cuthbert finally let out a breath, only for it to turn into a stronger rush of pride and resolve.
Look at this.
This was the person he chose to follow. Powerful, clear-headed and unfathomable.
Then his mind started working.
If he had to face that move himself, what could he do?
Set up a Bubble-Head Charm in advance?
Keep defensive magic active all the time?
Too passive.
Alex also relaxed a little, though his legs were still weak.
Seeing Hermes collapsed on the floor and Regulus standing there perfectly calm, he finally understood who the real danger in this dorm was.
Silently, he promised himself he'd watch every word and action from now on, and never provoke Regulus.
Regulus ignored the mess of thoughts around him.
He sat back down at his desk, mind still turning.
That short test confirmed one of his assumptions.
Manipulating the basic substances present everywhere in the environment was a blind spot in most wizards' thinking, and a direction with huge offensive potential.
But what if he pushed it one step further?