Back in the dormitory after dinner, Cuthbert flopped onto his bed and grabbed a copy of Quidditch Season Review from the nightstand. He made it through a few pages before yawning.
Alex sat at his desk organizing notes, quill dipping into ink, copying line after line.
Hermes perched on the edge of his bed, wand resting across his knees, polishing it with a square of velvet in slow, mechanical strokes. His gaze had gone somewhere else entirely.
Baruk had just finished his meat and lay sprawled in the fireplace.
Term had only been back a few days, and Regulus wasn't rushing to the Room of Requirement.
It wasn't as though he'd ever dragged them to practice. He went, and they followed. That was how it worked.
The first days of term were always busy. The professors had their hands full, and his own schedule was no quieter.
News of the Christmas banquet had traveled the entire holiday. Everyone who needed to know, knew. The ripple effects were still spreading.
The Black family's door wasn't easy to knock on. Outsiders couldn't simply attach themselves. Family to family, the thresholds were high, the channels few. You needed a pretext, comparable standing, the right intermediary.
Hogwarts was different.
Everyone ate and studied under the same roof. You couldn't avoid running into people. Identities naturally leveled out: all Slytherin, all Pure-blood, all classmates.
Outside school, someone from a minor family who wanted a word with a Black would have to work through layers of introduction and still might get nowhere.
Inside school, you could bump into him in a corridor between classes, slide into the seat beside him at lunch, or wander past in the Library pretending to look something up and say hello. Any chance encounter was an opening.
After a few busy days, things had finally quieted down.
Regulus sat at his desk. Baruk crawled out of the fireplace, shook the sparks from his bristles, launched himself off the ground, and landed on his shoulder.
He tapped Baruk's carapace lightly twice and was about to open the Alchemy book he'd borrowed from the Library when Hermes's voice drifted over from the bed.
"At the Lestranges'. What did you use?"
No real curiosity in the tone. He wanted to know, so he asked. Blunt as always.
He'd finished polishing his wand and tossed the velvet cloth aside, lifting his head. His gaze settled on Regulus.
Regulus could feel it. Hermes had an instinctive hunger for stronger magic. It had nothing to do with greed. The drive was pure.
His attitude toward power had always been straightforward: he wanted it, so he chased it.
Cuthbert tossed his book onto the pillow, rolled upright, and craned his neck toward them, eyes lighting up.
Alex set down his quill, swiveled his chair around, curiosity plain on his face.
Regulus glanced at Hermes, the corner of his mouth lifting. "Want to try it?"
Hermes's eyes lit up too.
"Room of Requirement."
Regulus stood. Baruk climbed down from his shoulder, picking his way along the sleeve and disappearing into an inner pocket of his robes.
---
The four of them crossed the Slytherin Common Room. It was close to eight o'clock, the corridors deserted, torchlight dim against the stone walls, dragging long shadows behind them.
Up to the eighth floor, opposite the tapestry. Regulus paced three times, and a door surfaced in the wall.
He pushed it open. The Room of Requirement had already configured itself as a training ground.
Regulus walked to the center of the floor and turned. Hermes took his position a dozen meters across from him.
Cuthbert and Alex stood off to the side, a few meters back.
Regulus tilted his head slightly toward Baruk.
Baruk leapt from his shoulder, eight legs pattering across the floor to Cuthbert, coiled, and sprang onto Cuthbert's head in one bound.
Cuthbert froze for a beat. Then a grin split his face, and he shot Alex a smug look, eyebrows raised.
Alex gave him an envious glance, then pursed his lips.
Baruk settled on top of Cuthbert's head, all eight amber eyes fixed on the center of the floor. His chelicerae drew together. He was quiet.
Hermes dropped into a stance, weight low and forward, wand raised to his chest. A textbook dueling opening.
He thought they were sparring.
The corner of Regulus's mouth twitched. He gripped his wand in his right hand and slashed outward.
Black flame streamed from the tip, stretching, solidifying.
A whip fifteen or sixteen meters long unfurled through the air. Its body was pitch-dark, traced with deep crimson veins. The fire didn't radiate outward. It pulled inward.
The surrounding air rushed toward the whip, sucked in by the heat. The tail hung suspended, motionless, yet waves of scorching pressure rolled outward. Every breath burned.
The protective runes on the walls sensed the surge and began to hum, a low vibration that shook the entire room.
Hermes's pupils contracted.
Instinct took over. His wand swept up and Protego flared to life, a silver barrier spreading before him.
Regulus turned his wrist. The whip swept horizontal.
Its tip screamed past a foot from Hermes's flank, striking nothing, but the instant the air tore apart, a sonic boom cracked through the room.
A sonic boom in an enclosed space was nothing like one in the open. The sound wave hit the stone walls and bounced back, compounding. The room erupted in a concussive roar that shuddered from floor to ceiling.
The shockwave slammed into the Protego. The barrier shuddered violently.
Hermes staggered back two steps, jaw clenched, both hands locked around his wand, feeding magic in continuously to hold the shield.
Regulus sent the second lash, this time dead center.
The whip's tail carved an arc through the air, black flame trailing an afterimage behind it.
Hermes's Protego had reached its current ceiling. The translucent barrier turned dense, taking on a metallic silver sheen.
The tip detonated an inch from the shield's surface.
Silver light blasted outward from the point of impact, and a web of fractures bloomed across the barrier.
It held. But the force punched through.
In the instant the whip struck, Regulus had already read the distribution of magic across Hermes's shield.
The barrier survived because he let it survive.
But the impact drove straight through a weak point, passing through the shield and slamming into Hermes behind it.
He was hurled backward, flying several meters before his soles screeched against the hardwood. He crashed into a training dummy and stopped.
The Protego shattered, dissolving into a scatter of silver motes that drifted through the air and winked out.
Regulus pulled back. The flame whip coiled once overhead, and the dark body began to dissipate from its tip, fragments of fire drifting briefly before dying before they touched the ground.
Hermes stood there, hair blown wild by the shockwave, collar twisted to one side, wand still raised.
He looked down at himself. No injuries, nothing burned, but his chest felt compressed and his skull was buzzing, the remnants of the sonic boom still ringing in his ears.
He glanced at his wand. The tip trembled faintly. The magic output had been severed by the shock. The Protego was gone.
He raised his head, looked at Regulus, shook his head to clear it, and spoke, a slight tremor in his voice. "What was that?"
Regulus slid his wand back into his sleeve, tone easy. "Flame Whip. Fiendfyre, reshaped."
Fiendfyre?
The corner of Hermes's mouth twitched, and his eye followed. Disbelief edged into his voice. "You hit me with Fiendfyre?"
Cuthbert leaned against the wall, a good dozen meters from Hermes, but in a sealed room a sonic boom didn't care about distance.
Both lashes had bounced around the chamber several times before reaching him, and they still packed enough force to press down on his chest and set his ears ringing for a while.
But the expression on his face was something to see: awe, excitement, and a thread of retroactive fear.
Baruk's eight legs gripped Cuthbert's hair with perfect stability, amber eyes still locked on the center of the floor. His chelicerae had drawn shut. He looked calm.
Alex had backed up two steps, face a shade paler.
Those two strikes had made the air itself shake. His lungs felt compressed, as if someone had driven an elbow into his sternum.
He swallowed and kept his eyes fixed on the center of the floor.
---
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