What if he infused Soothing Flower's calming magic into Fiendfyre? Would it tame the spell's volatility?
Or flip it around. Blend in the magical properties of something aggressive, amplify the destructive power.
He ran through every magical plant he'd studied.
Soothing Flower: calming, sedative.
Bubotuber: skin irritant.
Venomous Tentacula: corrosive, paralytic. M
oonlight Orchid: repels darkness.
Sunlight Ebony Bush: purifies evil.
Each species carried a unique magical signature. If those signatures could be woven into Fiendfyre...
Add Soothing Flower's properties, and the flames might grow docile, easier to rein in.
Add Venomous Tentacula's, and the fire could carry a corrosive edge, burning through not just matter but magic itself.
Fold in the radiant nature of Sunlight Ebony Bush, and Fiendfyre might develop a purifying effect.
What about Dittany? Burn someone with Fiendfyre laced with Dittany, and would it heal wounds instead?
And the Whomping Willow's essence might simply make the fire hit harder.
But how would the fusion even work?
Natural plant magic and Fiendfyre were fundamentally opposed. Force them together and the whole thing might detonate. He'd need to find a balance point, or some kind of intermediary medium to bridge the gap.
His thoughts drifted to the star imagery.
It could enhance conventional spells. Channel that vast, cold stillness into Protego, and the barrier grew more resilient. Pour images of explosive annihilation into a Blasting Curse, and the power multiplied.
So was there a star suited to binding Fiendfyre?
Regulus thought of stars.
Stars burned too, but their combustion was steady, sustained, governed by rules. Immense mass generated gravity, constraining the fury of fusion reactions, releasing energy as light and heat in a controlled flow.
That concept of gravitational containment might be worth borrowing.
Only as imagery, of course.
He couldn't actually simulate stellar gravity. That was astrophysics, and whether magic could achieve it was an open question. He certainly couldn't. But he could borrow the core concepts of restraint and stability, construct a mental image around them, and use it to assist his control over Fiendfyre.
Regulus decided to try.
He summoned Fiendfyre again, shaped it into a bird, and while maintaining both control and form, called up the star image.
A picture formed in his mind: a blazing fireball wrapped in an invisible gravitational field, flames raging but bound within a fixed radius, burning steady.
He projected the image onto the Fiendfyre bird.
The creature shuddered.
Flames began to ripple unevenly. Ghost images flickered along the edges of its form, wings stretching and contracting, a burst of sparks erupting from the tail.
The overall shape started to shift, not toward refinement but toward something more compact, more uniform. As though an invisible force were compressing the fire inward, condensing the form.
Then the instability hit.
The containment image clashed violently with Fiendfyre's instinct to expand. Core temperature spiked. Color shifted from orange-red to searing white, and the air in the training room began to warp.
Regulus felt his grip slipping fast. The fire was about to break free.
He killed the flames immediately.
The concept worked, but he'd applied it wrong, or misjudged the intensity. Fiendfyre was cursed fire. Forcing the analogy too hard could backfire.
Still, it was a direction. Using starry imagery to assist control rather than brute-forcing everything through willpower alone.
Now flip the question. When he truly needed Fiendfyre to burn everything to nothing, what imagery would serve?
A supernova. The violent death-blast of a star at the end of its life, releasing energy equal to everything it had ever radiated combined. That instant of absolute eruption, light that annihilated all it touched.
Or a black hole's pull. A gravity well so deep that not even light escaped, devouring every scrap of matter and energy in its path.
These images couldn't truly replicate celestial phenomena, but they might amplify Fiendfyre's destructive properties. When the moment demanded it, the imagery could guide the flames toward something more extreme, more total.
Not yet, though.
Four and a half stars lit on his Star Guided Meditation. The mental strength and control that provided weren't enough to sustain imagery projection at that level.
Once he'd ignited all seven stars of Orion, once the meditation system truly matured, then perhaps.
At that point, Fiendfyre alone would be enough to call him powerful.
The kind of mastery Dumbledore and Voldemort wielded was still far beyond his reach. But he had a direction and he had time. What he couldn't do now, he'd keep practicing until he could.
He'd actually considered sending Fiendfyre through a spatial corridor. Teleporting a fire-bird behind an enemy for a sudden strike would be a lethal ambush.
But he thought better of it.
Fiendfyre didn't play by the rules. It had its own will, its own inclinations. If, in the instant of crossing through a spatial corridor, the fire decided this passage looks nice, I think I'll burn it too and tried to carve its own path through the fabric of space...
There was no telling where it would end up. Maybe the intended destination. Maybe trapped between dimensions. Maybe it would trigger a spatial collapse.
Too much risk. Not at this stage.
Two in the morning. Regulus left the Room of Requirement and headed back to the dormitory.
The corridors were silent, nothing but his own footsteps echoing off stone walls. Moonlight poured through the stained glass windows, scattering patches of color across the floor.
Exam week was nearly done. The holidays were coming.
He needed to plan.
Arnold Belmont never returned to Hogwarts, not even for exams.
It stirred a bit of talk within Slytherin, though only a handful of cold jokes circulating among the upper years.
Belmont family business must not be doing too well if they can't even buy their son a seat at the exam table.
Maybe they're relocating the whole family to Bulgaria.
The other Houses barely noticed. Hogwarts always had fresh gossip. Like the Thorne family attack, already forgotten.
Orion hadn't written with details. In the Head of House's view, this probably fell under the category of matters handled and not worth revisiting.
Regulus heard the rest from Narcissa. The Belmont family had surrendered all their holdings and smuggling channels in Britain, packed up their accumulated Galleons, and relocated to Eastern Europe. No one mentioned which country specifically.
The Blacks hadn't touched their gold. For one, it would have looked greedy. For another, how much of that money survived the move depended entirely on Belmont's own resourcefulness.
"Scrambling for scraps." That was how Narcissa put it, a hint of mockery at the corner of her mouth. "Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria... the Pure-blood families out there are just as territorial as the ones here. If Belmont wants to establish a foothold, he'll have to cough up most of those Galleons as tribute. Whatever's left after that? That's up to fate."
Regulus listened, nodded once, and didn't ask more.
It wasn't his concern anymore, and it didn't need to be.
Exam week ended. The day results were posted, the bulletin board in the Great Hall drew a crush of bodies.
Regulus didn't bother joining the crowd. He already knew.
Cuthbert squeezed his way in, came back wearing an expression of flat resignation. "All O's. Every single one."
"Mm." Regulus barely acknowledged it, kept packing his trunk.
Tomorrow was the holiday. Tonight, the end-of-term feast.
The younger students had completely lost it. A week's worth of suppressed exam stress erupted all at once, and the corridors filled with running figures.
In the common room, someone had cast Wingardium Leviosa on a pile of pillows and started a floating pillow fight. Down by the Black Lake, a group of Hufflepuffs had spread out a picnic on the grass, their laughter carrying from half the grounds away.
Cuthbert dragged Alex and Hermes toward the lake and asked if Regulus wanted to come.
He shook his head, gathered up a stack of borrowed books due for return, and headed for the library.
At this hour, the place was practically deserted. Even Ravenclaw's most dedicated studiers were soaking in the post-exam relief.
Madam Pince dozed behind the counter, her head dipping forward in slow nods.
Regulus settled into his usual spot by the window. He'd been sitting for maybe ten minutes when footsteps approached.
He looked up. Lily Evans stood at the edge of his table.
She wasn't wearing her school robes today. A light blue sundress instead, red hair pulled back in a ponytail. She looked relaxed, lighter somehow.
"Not many people in the library at a time like this," Lily said, her tone easy.
"And yet here you are." Regulus nodded.
She sat down across from him and set her book on the table, an advanced Potions text. She didn't open it. Instead, her eyes settled on him, and she asked the question she'd been sitting on for nearly a month.
"Regulus, can you tell me why you treated that person the way you did?"
He knew she meant Arnold Belmont.
The last time he'd run into her and Snape in the library, he'd caught the curiosity in her eyes. She'd held it in all this time. Finally let it out.
He didn't answer directly. His voice was gentle when he turned it back on her. "What do you think my reasons were?"
Lily blinked, studying his expression, and a laugh slipped out before she could stop it.
She wasn't even sure why she was laughing. Maybe it reminded her of the time Regulus had explained that friendship was a two-way choice, all composed logic and quiet authority, like someone years older than he was.
Now he was doing it again, turning the question around on her, and she found it... kind of amusing.
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