"No reason?" Regulus cut him off, tossing out his counterpoint like it was obvious. "The primary conflict and the secondary conflict can switch places, and the main aspect of a contradiction can become the lesser one, and vice versa.
Right now, the primary conflict might be Pure-bloods versus half-bloods, but when we reach that stage, internal consolidation of power becomes the new primary conflict."
Orion snapped his head up and stared at him.
There was shock in that look, and confusion, and something complicated that didn't have an easy name.
His lips moved. He looked like he wanted to say something, then swallowed it back down.
After a long moment, he spoke at last. Even in the privacy of his study, his voice stayed low. "Where did you learn that?"
This time Regulus was the one caught off guard. He hadn't expected Orion to know it at all.
He'd only quoted it on instinct, because that theory was the cleanest way to explain his logic. He hadn't thought his father would understand it.
"I read it somewhere." Regulus kept it vague. "Political philosophy. Some of it's interesting."
Orion watched him for a long time. Finally, he shook his head, and something close to wonder crossed his face.
"It is… sharp," he said, his tone softer, edged with memory.
"When I was young, I picked up a book in a Muggle bookshop by accident. Back then it just felt novel. Later, after I'd lived through more, I thought back on those ideas… and I understood why some people end up doing great things."
A strange feeling rose in Regulus's chest.
He hadn't expected that, not in this world, not in a Black family that treated Pure-blood supremacy like scripture. The fact that his father had read those books, and more than that, had seen value in them…
The thought flickered through him and was gone.
Orion pulled the conversation back where it belonged. "How likely is your speculation?"
"I don't know," Regulus said honestly. "Maybe thirty percent. Maybe fifty.
But even if something like this has a one percent chance, you prepare as if it's certain. If Abraxas really does go down, it means the wind has shifted."
"The wind…" Orion repeated, eyes narrowing slightly.
"From cooperation to control," Regulus said.
"From recruiting allies to eliminating anyone who won't fall in line. If the elder Malfoy dies, and it happens the way we're talking about, it becomes a signal.
It tells every Pure-blood family there are only two choices. Total obedience, or you're out. No middle ground."
Orion was silent for a long time.
He went to the bookshelf, pulled out a heavy family genealogy, and turned to the pages that recorded the more recent web of alliances. His finger traced along the Malfoy entry, then stopped at the Black line.
"If it really is like you say," he asked at last, voice low and careful, "what do we do?"
"We wait." Regulus didn't hesitate.
"We wait for it to happen. We wait for Lucius to take over the Malfoy family. We wait until he feels the pressure, until he realizes money isn't enough, and he needs real allies. Then we move."
He added, "Narcissa is my cousin. That connection exists. Malfoy and Black are natural allies already. It's just that while the elder Malfoy was alive, the two houses were more like equal partners.
If it becomes Lucius, we can give him what he'll be missing."
"And what is that?" Orion asked, even though he already knew where this was heading.
"Wisdom, Experience, Strength and Connections," Regulus said.
"And most importantly, how to keep a family alive when the storm hits. Lucius doesn't have that now, and it'll be hard for him to gain it on his own. We do."
Orion closed the genealogy and returned it to the shelf.
When he came back to the desk, he looked at Regulus with a faint, unmistakable edge of pride.
"Lucius," Orion said slowly, "is clever and social. But like you said, he lacks his father's depth.
He tends to act for immediate gain. He doesn't have the same patience for long games. From a family perspective, he hasn't done anything unforgivable, at least not publicly, but…"
He continued, "Last year the Ministry of Magic had a proposal regarding magical creature protections. It should've passed. Lucius spent ten thousand galleons lobbying until it died.
The reason was simple. Several families were smuggling those creatures, and they promised to let him in.
And there was a Muggle-born Ministry employee up for a promotion. Lucius quietly put obstacles in the way until the man was forced to resign.
No real reason. He just thought someone Muggle-born didn't deserve to climb that high."
Orion shook his head. "These things aren't huge on their own, and in Pure-blood circles people even praise that sort of behavior as 'protecting your own,' but pile up enough of it and it plants problems you can't see yet."
Regulus nodded. "Which is why he'll need allies even more. One person makes a mistake, they pay the price. A group makes the same mistake, the price spreads out."
"You understand this far too well," Orion said, still unsettled. He had no idea how his son had learned to think like this. Magic education couldn't cultivate it.
This was pure intelligence. It had nothing to do with spells.
By then, the conversation had reached a natural end.
It was deep enough.
Orion told him he would keep an eye on the Malfoys, and he'd start preparing accordingly.
Then he said, "Go rest. School starts tomorrow."
"Alright."
Regulus left the study and closed the door behind him.
---
Back in his room, Regulus's thoughts felt… off. The conversation had a taste to it.
It stirred him in a way that almost never happened. He sat at his desk, closed his eyes, and let his awareness sink inward.
The star guided meditation began to turn. The vast image of it smoothed down the tangled edges of his mind.
When his emotions finally settled, he opened his eyes and started thinking again.
He'd said everything he could about the Malfoys. His father would handle the rest.
What Regulus needed to focus on now was something concrete.
Strength.
There was half a day left of break, enough time to do one thing.
To take a second inheritance.
Verdant Magic, the first inheritance, had given him direction, but it lacked immediate combat power.
What he needed now was something that could take effect instantly in real fighting. Space magic suited that perfectly, and the Black family inheritance happened to contain exactly what he needed.
The Space Anchor Charm.
Regulus stood and went to the family's hidden chamber. By now, he had access to most of the house.
He moved through without resistance, pushed open the obsidian door, and stepped into the wide, solemn chamber.
On the stone platform, more than a dozen memory crystal spheres reflected a faint silver sheen under the light of the magical torches.
He touched the cold surface, and an immense flood of memory and magic poured straight into his mind.
That ancestor had lived in the fourteenth century, an era when space magic research reached a peak.
The Space Anchor Charm she left behind was not an offensive spell, and not a defensive spell in the usual sense. It was stabilization magic for space itself.
The principle was simple. You set invisible magical anchor points in the void, fixing the surrounding structure of space in place.
It had two effects.
First, it resisted apparition ambushes, though it worked differently from modern anti-apparition wards.
Within the range of an anchor, space became unnaturally viscous. Forcing apparition into it was like jumping into cement that hadn't finished setting. Movement slowed dramatically, or the attempt failed entirely.
Second, it stabilized spatial structure, pushing back against magic meant to twist, tear, expand, or fold space, reducing those effects to a fraction of what they should be.
Regulus watched scenes from the ancestor's battles through the inheritance memory.
In one, she faced a dark wizard who specialized in apparition strikes. She laid three space anchors around herself first.
He tried to blink behind her for a kill, and the moment he appeared, his body locked in midair, trapped like he'd sunk into an invisible bog. She ended the fight with a single slashing curse, smooth as turning a page.
In another scene, an enemy tried to shred her with spatial distortion, but the anchors held the surrounding structure steady. The distortion only took hold outside the anchored range, while she stood at the center, untouched.
The inheritance memory lasted about half an hour.
When Regulus finally pulled his fingers away, fine sweat dotted his forehead.
Taking two inheritances in such a short time was a heavy strain. He could feel a dull pressure deep in his mind, as if his skull had been stuffed too full and needed time to settle.
But he understood the core principle of the space anchors now.
You used magic to tie a knot into the structure of space, making that area stable, solid, difficult to shake.
Anchor positions could be chosen freely. The number of anchors could stack. The range could be adjusted.
In theory, if you laid enough anchors, close enough together, you could create a domain where space magic simply didn't function.
House-elves would be restricted.
Portkeys too.
Whether a phoenix could break it, he didn't know, but a Starlight Kite probably wouldn't manage it.
Regulus left the chamber and returned to his room.
He sat on the edge of the bed and let the knowledge settle, slow and heavy. There was too much in his head right now. It would take time to sort it.
Outside the window, London's night was calm. In the distance, Big Ben struck ten. The sound came through the magical barrier, muffled and long.
Regulus lay back and closed his eyes.
The last few days replayed in his mind. Knockturn Alley's gloom. The test of real combat. His talk with his father. The second inheritance.
Every piece of it pushed him forward. Every piece of it added to his strength.
Break was over.
Tomorrow, he went back to Hogwarts.
----
Stone plzzzzzzz... next target 100PS :)