The Apparition landing point was at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, on the grass.
Full dark.
Professor Sprout walked ahead, wand raised, the five-meter soil ball floating above and in front of her, rock-steady, not a wobble.
Trunk and branches jutted from the top, swaying gently in the night wind.
The professor wasn't tall, but she moved fast. Regulus followed behind.
Baruk poked his head from the inner pocket, all eight eyes locked on the enormous soil ball ahead. His chelicerae parted and closed once, silent.
At the clearing behind Greenhouse Four, Sprout set the ball down.
A light flick of her wand, no incantation, the tip touching the earth once. The soil ball loosened on its own, roots unfurling one by one.
The ground ahead sank inward naturally, earth churning, forming a hollow. The Whomping Willow settled in, and the soil wrapped back around, compacted, smoothed flat.
The whole process took seconds. She'd done this kind of work so many times it was no different from breathing.
Regulus stood beside her, magical perception spread wide, resting on the Whomping Willow. Its condition had improved since Cornwall.
Root absorption channels were more active. Magical flow through the trunk had picked up slightly from the afternoon. The circuits he'd rebuilt with Verdant magic were still running, no degradation.
He let his perception drift toward the professor.
Beyond the magic she'd used to levitate the soil ball, something else flowed continuously into the trunk, seeping from the wand tip through the air and into the tree, all the way down to the root tips.
Different from Verdant magic. Different texture entirely.
The professor's magic was gentler, slower, without strong directionality. It flowed where it flowed, carrying a quality of nourishment and clearing, like water finding its own path through dry soil.
Much like the professor herself. Warm, patient, unhurried.
The Whomping Willow was planted.
Its branches stirred once in the night wind, barely moving. No aggression.
The new buds at the tips were hard to see in the darkness, but his perception caught the faint green magic still seeping outward, sluggish and weak, but growing.
Sprout glanced back at him. Regulus blinked and casually withdrew his perception.
The professor gave him a sidelong look, said nothing, turned back around, and crouched by the tree. Her fingers traced the grain of the bark downward, stopping at a particular spot.
She tilted her head. Pressed the bark, released, pressed again. One eyebrow rose, and the corner of her mouth curved.
"Mr. Black, come have a look."
Her left hand beckoned. Her right fingertip stayed planted on the bark.
Regulus walked over and crouched beside her.
The professor's finger rested on a spot near the base. "Here."
He pressed his magical perception against it.
The newly grown magical circuits were different from the originals.
The old ones were the tree's own. Linear, fast, clearly directed. Standard oscillation-conduction structure, straight and efficient.
The new growth ran differently.
Gentler. Slower. Like side roads branching off from the main highway.
The side roads wound and curved, sometimes running parallel to the main channels, sometimes forking away. They looked inefficient, but they were functioning.
The texture carried something familiar. His Verdant Magic.
What he'd poured in to rebuild the circulation, the Whomping Willow hadn't preserved as-is. Hadn't rejected it either.
It had digested his magic, regrown in its own way, producing new structures that carried his signature.
The trace was there, but it had become part of the tree.
Sprout watched his face, saw the recognition.
"These new circuits grew on their own," she said, patting the trunk, palm flat against the bark. "You gave it magic. It remembered. It used what you gave to grow something new."
She pulled her hand back and wiped it on her robes. "Before, when you touched it, it would've lashed first and asked questions never. Now when you touch it..."
She looked at Regulus, chin tilting toward the trunk.
He reached out and pressed his right palm against the bark.
A branch moved. The nearest one drifted toward his arm, sluggish, its tip drooping, stopping half a foot away.
It hovered there. The very end curled slightly, nudging toward the inside of his wrist. No strike.
After a few breaths, the branch slowly withdrew, swayed twice, and hung limp in its original position.
"It's figuring out whether you're you," the professor said, her gaze on the branch, a trace of amusement at the corner of her mouth. "It decided, so it didn't hit. Someone else touches it, though, and it'll still..."
She looked at the Whomping Willow's exhausted state, and the amusement deepened.
"Of course, that's a future concern. Right now it doesn't have the energy."
She glanced at Regulus, eyes carrying no reproach but not entirely without implication either.
Regulus avoided her gaze, deliberately staring at the trunk.
An old crack ran through the bark, probably scuffed during the transplant. The edges had already started to heal.
He stared at it for a long time, in no hurry to look away.
Sprout let out a soft laugh through her nose.
She stood, brushing dirt from her knees, several attempts, none successful. She gave up.
"Most wizards think Verdant magic is about making plants obey."
She looked at the Whomping Willow, her gaze as tender as it had been that afternoon in Cornwall. Her voice was quiet in the night wind, pitched somewhere between speaking to the tree and speaking to him.
"You give something to a plant, and it remembers. It'll give back in its own way. Not immediately, and not the way you'd expect, but it will."
Regulus stood as well, wiping his fingers on the side of his robes.
He turned the professor's words over.
His use of Verdant magic had always been one-directional. Extract, replicate, infuse, direct.
Twenty Mandrakes drained dry. The Whomping Willow drained to its current half-dead state.
When grafting Baruk, Verdant magic served as a buffer. When studying magical plants, Verdant magic served as a tool.
Useful. Extremely useful.
But at the end of the day, Verdant magic had always been something he used to get something else.
The extracted magic became the Decomposition Curse. Became the Disintegration Curse. Became the fire affinity module grafted onto Baruk.
Verdant magic itself, from start to finish, was a transitional step, a means, an intermediary picked up and put down.
But what the professor described went beyond use. It was exchange.
The magic he'd given, the tree remembered. Then it used that memory to grow something new. What he'd taken, the tree remembered that too. Trees couldn't speak.
He glanced down at his shoulder.
Baruk was staring at the Whomping Willow, all eight eyes unblinking, chelicerae half-open, front two legs reaching toward the tree, falling short, settling back down.
The spider was watching the tree.
Regulus's gaze fixed on the dark red patterns the Salamander graft had left on Baruk's carapace.
During the graft, he'd used Verdant magic as a buffer to keep the new module and the host system in balance.
That Verdant magic had been inside Baruk for a while now. If what the professor said was true, if plants remembered magic given to them and grew new structures from it...
Was Baruk remembering too?
The Salamander module had been forced in from the outside, held in place by Verdant magic to prevent rejection.
But if Verdant magic itself could leave an imprint on the host system, then grafting wasn't merely inserting a foreign module. It meant something existed between host and module that served as a translator.
Something that let both sides understand each other.
He filed the thought away without digging further. Baruk's situation could wait.
Following the professor's line of reasoning, his mind turned a corner he couldn't avoid.
Stripped to its essence, what she meant was that after Verdant magic was given, some kind of connection formed between recipient and giver.
Plants recognized him. How far could that recognition extend?
A patch of grassland he'd nurtured with Verdant Magic ahead of time. At a critical moment, would those plants act on his will? Entangling, screening, releasing paralytic toxins?
Scale it up.
A prepared position, pre-saturated with Verdant magic. Every blade of grass, every leaf, carrying his magical signature.
When an enemy stepped onto it, the ground turns slick. Grass wraps around ankles. Roots heave up from the earth to trip them.
If plants were willing to stand with him, it was fundamentally a transaction. He gave goodwill, they returned cooperation. If he could control the scale and method of giving, an entire area became his territory.
No spellcasting required. The land itself would fight for him.
Scale it further. What if he burned the Forbidden Forest? One burst of Fiendfyre, reducing it to scorched earth, then used Verdant magic to grow it all back.
From seed. From soil. Every new tree, every new blade of grass, carrying his magic from the first moment of its existence.
Once the thought surfaced, it wouldn't stop.
Destroy first. Then rebuild. Destruction as the method, rebuilding as the channel.
The Forbidden Forest was a complete ecosystem now, with its own balance, maybe even its own will, something more primal.
Centuries of accumulated magic saturated the soil, threaded through the root systems. It wouldn't welcome an outside wizard any more than a body would welcome a foreign organ.
But what if the existing order were broken first?
Burn the old. Start from zero.
Ash was the cleanest starting point. No predecessor's imprint in the soil. No legacy connections between roots. The entire system's magic wiped clean.
Then rebuild everything with Verdant magic. New plants growing from the ashes, every circuit in every root system running with his signature.
When that was done, would he become the master of the Forbidden Forest?
Follow the thought further, and what the ancestor had achieved was probably along these lines.
The ancestor had the gift. Direct resonance with verdant magic. From the faintest spark of life in a flower to the vast energy of mountains, forests, and rivers, all of it could be drawn upon.
No barrier between him and nature. An innate language, an innate bridge.
Regulus didn't have that gift. But there was more than one key. The ancestor had walked through the front door. He could tear down the wall.
Destroy first, rebuild after. Give first, harvest later. The crude approach, the slow approach, but one that might arrive at the same destination.
The corner of his mouth twitched. He'd gotten ahead of himself.
Burning the Forbidden Forest was easy enough. One fire would do it. Growing it back was the hard part.
A single Whomping Willow had cost him enormous amounts of Verdant magic. The Forbidden Forest's sheer scale was beyond his current reserves.
Small-scale, he could manage. A lawn. A garden. Maybe a thicket.
But the Forbidden Forest? That would have to wait.
The direction was clear, though. Use destruction to shatter the old order. Use Verdant magic to build a new one. Let the rebuilt ecosystem carry his imprint.
Not the ancestor's path. But the same destination.
He shelved the thought. Later.
Small-scale experiments were worth trying. Find the time, pick a small patch at the plantation or the forest's edge, and test it.
Large-scale could wait until his reserves grew.
Sprout bent to pick up her tool bag, fastened the clasp, brushed off the dust, and glanced at Regulus as she straightened.
The boy was standing there, eyes slightly lowered, gaze resting on some indefinite point.
He'd taken in what she'd said. That made her feel the words hadn't been wasted.
The corner of her mouth curved, and she slung the bag over her shoulder with a lighter step.
Talking to a child who could think wasn't tiring.
She'd seen plenty of talented young wizards. Talented ones who could also listen? Those were rare.
The satisfaction stayed internal. Her expression gave away little.
"We should let the headmaster know about the planting spot. Get him to approve a location."
She spoke as she walked toward the greenhouse door, tone casual. "Though Albus isn't at the school these past couple of days. We'll plant first and sort it out when he's back."
Regulus pulled himself from his thoughts and caught up.
1974. Voldemort's name was growing louder in the wizarding world. Death Eater activity was escalating. What Dumbledore was busy with, he could guess well enough.
The Order of the Phoenix.
This was the period when Dumbledore was traveling constantly, reaching out to allies, setting up defenses, responding to attacks that had begun happening in the open.
He glanced toward the castle. The floor window of the headmaster's office was dark.
Sprout stopped at the greenhouse door and turned, looking at Regulus, then at Baruk on his shoulder.
Baruk was leaning his head out from Regulus's shoulder, all eight amber eyes catching the moonlight in faint glimmers, chelicerae opening and closing once, like a greeting.
The professor didn't ask questions. She smiled. "Long day. Get some rest."
Regulus inclined his head slightly. "You too, Professor."
Sprout pushed open the greenhouse door and slipped inside. It closed behind her.
Regulus stood outside the greenhouse.
Night wind blew in from the direction of the Black Lake, carrying damp, cold air. Frost on the lawn caught the moonlight in a faint shimmer.
Baruk retreated into the inner pocket, only half a head visible, chelicerae clicking once.
He looked up.
His stomach growled.
He hadn't eaten.
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