Alex's ears burned red at the tips. He ducked his head, then raised it again, eyes shining.
Cuthbert bumped him with an elbow. Their gazes met, and something had shifted in Cuthbert's expression. A new equality in the recognition there.
Regulus noted it with quiet satisfaction. Nothing bonded kids faster than a shared fight.
The experience of conflict, especially the high of winning together, accomplished more than a hundred pretty words ever could.
He turned to Hermes. No shoulder clap. Just a nod.
Hermes returned it with studied composure, but the corners of his mouth were pulled too tight, betraying the effort it took to hold his expression in place.
Regulus reached into his robes and produced two small glass vials, tossing them in twin arcs toward Cuthbert and Alex. Both fumbled to catch them.
"Dittany essence," he said. "Put it on yourselves."
Cuthbert unscrewed the stopper and dabbed a drop of the clear salve near his eye. The cooling sensation made him sigh, eyelids fluttering half-shut.
Alex copied him, spreading the ointment over the bruise on his shin. It worked fast. The purple-red discoloration faded visibly beneath his skin.
That was the end of it. Regulus didn't ask for a play-by-play, didn't ask who hit whom, didn't ask what threats were exchanged.
Cuthbert opened his mouth to volunteer the story, but Regulus had already crossed to the wooden table at the center of the training room. Cuthbert shut his mouth and swallowed the words.
Practice began.
Maybe the night's adrenaline hadn't fully drained, because Alex's Protego showed marked improvement.
He raised his wand, closed his eyes, drew a slow breath. When they opened again, his gaze had sharpened.
"Protego."
Silver light surged from the wand tip, spreading rapidly into a translucent barrier. The edges rippled, the shape not quite uniform, but this time it held.
It lasted only five seconds before shattering into motes of light, yet compared to the formless attempts before, this was a leap.
Cuthbert wanted to test the barrier's strength. He backed up three paces, leveled his wand. "Impedimenta!"
Light struck the shield. It shuddered violently, spiderweb cracks racing across its surface, but it held. Didn't break.
Not until Cuthbert fired a second Impedimenta did the barrier finally collapse.
Alex stood panting, sweat beading on his forehead, but his eyes burned brighter than before. He stared at his own wand like he was seeing it for the first time.
Regulus watched from beside the table, a thought turning over in his mind.
When emotions ran high, magic responded more directly. For young wizards especially.
Their magical control was imprecise, their spell structures unstable, but strong emotion crystallized intent. That fierce desire to make something happen overrode the usual self-doubt, and magic flowed along the path of will, filling in the gaps that technique left behind.
When Alex had cast the Protego just now, his mind would have been locked on one thought: block it. That urgency had drowned out his habitual hesitation, and the spell had formed.
Worth arranging more of these activities. Not necessarily fights. Competitions, challenges, simulated duels. Let the emotions kindle, let the magic rise to match, and practice in that state. The results might far surpass what came from reciting spells out of a textbook.
Regulus pulled himself back to the present and started his own practice.
Tonight was Fiendfyre.
He drew an iron box from the table's drawer, prepared by the Room of Requirement to his specifications. Inside were small combustibles for practice.
A few wood chips. A ball of cotton wadding. A tiny vial of rendered fat. He emptied them onto the tabletop.
Then he raised his hand.
The incantation structure for Fiendfyre had long since been burned into his consciousness. All he needed was the right emotional fuel.
He recalled the despair of the grey mist on the Astronomy Tower. The crushing weight of Voldemort's presence. The consequences of failure. He let those dark emotions become kindling.
His magic stirred, restless.
Palm facing upward, fingers loosely curled, a point of orange-red flame ignited three inches above his fingertips, conjured from nothing.
The flame was tiny, no larger than a fingernail. Its core burned white-hot, edges rimmed with gold.
The heat was perfectly contained. Not even the fine hairs on his palm curled.
Control.
A shift of intent, and the flame began to reshape.
It stretched from a sphere into a thin line.
Seconds later, a matchstick-sized fire serpent hovered above his palm, body coiling, head raised, mimicking the flick of a forked tongue.
It had no tongue to speak of, but the Fiendfyre captured the gesture all the same.
The little serpent crawled between his fingers.
From index to middle, sliding to ring finger, its tail sweeping through the gap at his pinky.
The temperature stayed safely leashed. His skin registered warmth, nothing more. Nowhere near a burn.
This kind of control required splitting his consciousness in two: one stream maintaining the Fiendfyre's shape, the other suppressing its instinct to devour.
Fiendfyre had life, but it wasn't truly alive. What it possessed was closer to an existential inclination hardwired into the magic itself.
It wanted to burn. To spread. To turn everything it touched into fuel.
What Regulus was doing now was yoking it with pure will, confining it to the boundaries he'd drawn.
The serpent crawled to his wrist, then up along his forearm. He channeled more magic, tightening the fire's density.
Its body solidified, color deepening from orange-red to a dark crimson. Where it passed, it left a brief trail of light on his skin, but not a singed hair, not a scorch mark.
Thirty seconds.
The serpent destabilized. Sparks spat from its tail end, the first sign of slipping control.
Regulus immediately reined in his magic. The serpent contracted, shrank back to the original flame, and winked out.
He lowered his hand and exhaled.
Five seconds longer than last time. Slow progress, but progress all the same.
Fiendfyre's danger lay in its lack of middle ground. Either total mastery or total backlash.
Those five extra seconds meant his understanding of the fire's nature had deepened by another fraction.
His Fiendfyre was still absurdly small. It wouldn't match a single scale-edge of one of Voldemort's fire serpents.
But he felt no discouragement. Even Voldemort couldn't have suppressed Fiendfyre in his first year.
He rested for two minutes, waiting for his magic to stabilize, then began a second attempt.
This time he tried splitting.
After the flame ignited, he guided it with intent, coaxing it to divide into two.
Both wisps of fire writhed, each trying to become its own small serpent, but the instant they separated, the control difficulty spiked exponentially.
Like trying to pin down two frenzied cats at once. Hold the left and the right one claws you.
One serpent took shape. The other detonated before it could fully form, spraying sparks onto the wood chips on the table. The sparks twisted immediately, already trying to morph into something with purpose.
Regulus crushed it with will alone.
Splitting demanded far finer magical allocation. And unlike the dual-channel processing needed for combining Space Warp and the Space Anchor Charm, where his brain divided into two independent calculation zones, this might require pairing with mental partition techniques.
Next time.
---
The following morning at breakfast, the daily flood of owls poured into the Great Hall.
Grey and brown and white wings beat the air, feathers mingling with the morning light.
Regulus was spreading blueberry jam on toast when an unfamiliar owl dove straight toward him.
Its plumage was deep brown, with a ring of white markings around each eye. An uncommon breed.
In its talons it clutched a rolled parchment. No envelope. The scroll was tied with twine, hastily done, bearing no seal or crest of any kind.
The owl landed on the rim of his silver plate, claws scraping faintly against the metal.
Regulus set down his butter knife.
He swept the parchment with a pulse of magical awareness first. No trace of Dark magic. No curse signatures. No tracking or alarm charms attached.
An ordinary piece of parchment, rolled and tied.
Only after confirming it was clean did he reach for it.
The owl extended the scroll, and because Regulus was half a beat too slow in taking it, the bird pecked his hand in irritation.
With his other hand, he plucked a strip of dried meat from the table and offered it over. The owl snatched it, tipped its head back to swallow, let out a satisfied coo, and launched itself back into the air.
Regulus untied the twine and unrolled the parchment.
The handwriting was unremarkable. No personal character to it at all. Every letter as uniform as typeset, the stroke width perfectly consistent throughout.
Either the product of deliberate training or a charmed quill.
The content was equally spare. A single line:
"Tonight, someone will make a public statement in the common room. The topic concerns the recent shift in sentiment. Recommend observing. No need to intervene."
No signature. No closing. No specific time.
But the meaning was pointed enough. Tonight, the Slytherin Common Room. Someone was making a move.
The recent shift in sentiment. Vague phrasing, but in context it could only refer to what had been building since the Thorne family attack: that swelling undercurrent within the house, the whispered talk of cleaning out the unworthy.
Regulus read it through, his expression unchanged. He rolled the parchment back up and tucked it into his robe's inner pocket.
Cuthbert shot him a questioning look from the side. Regulus gave a slight shake of his head, and Cuthbert dropped his gaze at once, returning to the fried egg on his plate.
Regulus let his eyes drift casually down the length of the Slytherin table.
Lucretius Burke sat at the far end, speaking with a seventh-year girl beside him.
He held a goblet of pumpkin juice, sipping occasionally, his gaze roaming the hall with the easy attentiveness of a Prefect surveying his domain.
When that gaze swept toward Regulus's end of the table, their eyes didn't meet directly. Lucretius was looking at the tapestry behind Regulus. Regulus was looking at the candelabra beside Lucretius.
But in that instant, Regulus understood.
The letter was from Lucretius.