Saturday morning, Regulus woke to a spider's face.
Baruk had lowered itself from the curtain rail on a single strand of silk, legs folded against its sides, hanging one leg-length from the tip of his nose.
It dangled there in perfect silence, all eight amber eyes trained on him, chelicerae opening and closing without a sound.
The moment his eyes opened, chelicerae went off in a rapid clatter, sharp and urgent.
Regulus had promised yesterday. Today it would get stronger.
It had woken before dawn, crawled from the pillow up to the curtain rail, spun a line, and lowered itself to exactly the height where it could watch his eyelids. How long it had waited was anyone's guess.
No noise, no fuss, no climbing onto his face. Just hanging there, staring, waiting.
The corner of his mouth lifted.
Hard to refuse a thing like that first thing in the morning, all fuzz and dark red bristles catching the murky light off the Black Lake, eight eyes fixed on you with naked hope.
He reached up and nudged it aside. "What kind of habit is this, hanging over people's faces at dawn?"
Baruk swung twice, bit through the silk, dropped onto the pillow, and scrambled up the blanket to his shoulder, where its chelicerae clicked once beside his ear.
Something like: I didn't wake you. I only waited.
He let it stay and sat up.
Cuthbert and Alex were still asleep behind tightly drawn curtains. Alex rolled over now and then; half of Cuthbert's blanket lay puddled on the floor.
He left them to it. There was work today.
Washed and dressed, he came out of the washroom and walked straight into Hermes.
Rare, for him to be up this early.
In that short stretch of time the boy had hauled himself out of bed and into his robes without so much as washing his face, and now stood planted in the middle of the dormitory, eyes locked on the washroom door.
The moment Regulus appeared, he closed in.
Regulus gave him a look.
Hermes retreated two steps. His eyes stayed glued in place.
Regulus went to the wardrobe for a robe. Hermes watched.
Regulus lifted Baruk off his shoulder and set it on the bedside table. Hermes watched.
Regulus fastened his buttons and turned for the door, and Hermes fell in behind him.
It wasn't hard to guess what was going on in that head.
All through detention yesterday he'd kept glancing toward the deep forest, neck craned, halfway to walking in on his own.
Getting up at this hour to ambush the washroom door meant he'd worked out that today involved the Forbidden Forest. Which it did.
Regulus didn't bother responding. He let the boy trail him out of the dormitory, and Hermes trailed.
The Great Hall on a Saturday was far emptier than usual, most students still buried in their beds.
The food was laid out as always: bacon fried crisp, scrambled eggs steaming, bread baskets heaped over the rim, jugs of pumpkin juice and milk spaced along the tables.
A scattering of early risers sat here and there, mostly Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws, heads down over books or yawning as they prodded their fried eggs.
Regulus ate two eggs, a few rashers of bacon, and drank half a glass of Pumpkin Juice.
Hermes sat opposite and ate faster, then stared at him for the rest of the meal, as though one lapse in attention would let him slip away.
Regulus stood; Hermes stood. Regulus made for the doors; Hermes followed.
Outside the castle entrance, Hermes glanced east toward the forest, and his theory firmed into certainty.
At this hour, where else could Regulus be going?
He wasn't out for a stroll. Anyone else, fine, a bit of morning air, a walk around the grounds, perfectly ordinary.
Regulus, no. Out of the castle at this time meant the Forbidden Forest and nothing else.
A trace of smugness surfaced on his face, the look of a boy pleased with his own deduction. It lingered a moment before smoothing into something more solemn and knowing.
Beyond the doors, the sky had barely begun to pale.
Mid-February mornings still carried a bite in the wind. Frost was melting off the lawn, and the flagstones underfoot were slick with it.
Mist drifted over the Black Lake, and the treetops of the Forbidden Forest cut a grey-green line against the early light.
The castle hadn't woken. A few crows lifted off a tower roof, called twice, and vanished into the fog.
Regulus stopped and turned to face him.
Two paces back, hands in his pockets, shoulders slightly hunched, that expression still not entirely wiped away.
He clearly thought he'd been clever.
Regulus drew a breath. "What do you want?"
No answer. Hermes's gaze wandered off to a particular block of stone in the castle wall, drifted back, and settled. He stayed put.
"You want to go into the Forbidden Forest too?"
A nod, crisp, without a flicker of hesitation, entirely unashamed.
Wherever Regulus went, he went. Regulus was going to the forest, so he was going to the forest. Simple.
"Why not go by yourself?"
The look that got him changed entirely. Something close to exasperation.
His brows drew together, his mouth turned down a fraction, and the message was written plain across his face: how can you ask something that stupid?
That place wasn't somewhere you went alone. He hadn't lost his mind.
The outer edge, sure, he'd walked it by himself before. But what was the point of the outer edge?
Everyone knew going deeper was dangerous. He wasn't some Gryffindor idiot who'd wander into the depths alone because he was tired of living.
And Regulus was asking him that? Did he look like a fool?
Regulus studied him and the sheer self-evidence stamped across his face.
More nerve than sense, and more will than nerve. He knew the danger and wanted to go anyway, but he was sharp enough to know that going alone was suicide, so he'd attached himself to the one person who made it survivable.
Thinking it over, there wasn't much reason to refuse.
Today's trip to Aragog's lair meant Baruk's second round of modification, worked through human transfiguration and cross-species ability transfer, drawn from Transfiguration: Beyond Form.
Nothing shameful in that.
The magic itself wasn't dark. At most it was an experiment. A second-year Slytherin running a bit of magical creature modification in the forest, hardly the crime of the century.
And this was Hermes. The boy's chief virtue lived in his mouth: he said little, did as he was told, and never asked why.
As for Aragog, a word afterward would do. Don't mention you were ever there.
Regulus's reason for keeping his own visits quiet was simple. He didn't want the old spider chatting idly with Hagrid one day and letting slip that a boy in school robes came around at night doing strange magic.
Hagrid would know, and within two days it would reach a certain headmaster's ear. Not trouble exactly, but Dumbledore had a habit of thinking things through to the bottom, and Regulus knew that habit because he had it himself.
That could wait, though. No need to raise it now.
Besides, the boy had been itching for the deep forest since yesterday and had dragged himself up at dawn to corner him. Give him credit for the persistence. He'd moved so fast he hadn't even cleared the sleep from his eyes.
Regulus said nothing more, only nodded. "Keep up."
He turned and started toward the treeline.
Hermes's eyes brightened. He fell in behind.
The two of them crossed the grounds in single file.
At this hour there wasn't a soul outside the castle.
They followed the edge of the lawn, avoiding Hagrid's hut, and Regulus took a small detour toward the stretch of outer forest where detention had been held.
A quarter of an hour later the black wall of trees stood in front of them.
He walked in without pausing, and Hermes followed.
Some distance in, he glanced back at his companion.
They'd come this far. No sense wasting the trip.
"Go catch Bowtruckles." He pointed toward the bearing he'd marked yesterday. "West by north, a few old trees. There's a nest in the crown. Alive, intact, the whole nest. Don't damage them."
Hermes blinked, looked where he was pointing, and turned and went.
His hand came out of his pocket with his wand. No question about why, no wondering what Regulus wanted them for.
Told to do a thing, he did the thing. It was his best quality, and the reason he cost Regulus so little effort.
Bowtruckles were harmless enough on the magical level. No venom, no curses, and a bite from one barely stung.
But they went for the eyes.
Those two twig-thin fingers were sharp and accurate, and they defended their trees with total disregard for their own survival. Whoever you were, they stabbed first.
Regulus didn't tell him to be careful. He didn't explain how to catch them either.
If a twig took Hermes's eyeball out, that would be unfortunate.
Not fatal, though. Madam Pomfrey had remedies. Anything that wasn't dark magic hardly registered as an injury with her. An eyeball was an eyeball, and as long as the socket remained, she'd have a new one grown before lunch.
Hermes probably didn't need the warning anyway.
Regulus walked a few more paces. Any further and they'd be past the perimeter.
He shrugged his shoulder, and Baruk dropped to the ground.
Raising a hand, he pointed a fingertip at it, and the spell began to unravel.
The body swelled, carapace spreading, fine down coarsening back into thick bristles, eight legs stretching out while the warm-toned markings at the joints flashed once in the filtered light.
Faster than last time. Within minutes, a full-grown Acromantula stood on the rotting leaves of the Forbidden Forest.
Bigger than before, too. With a steady supply of dragon meat, it might well grow further.
Baruk stamped its legs in place, crunching leaf litter and gravel, then bolted.
It circled Regulus once, legs alternating so fast they kicked up a spray of dry leaves and grass.
Then it flung itself at a tree, scrabbling up the trunk, twisted at the halfway point, and shot a line of silk from its raised abdomen to snag a branch. The whole body swung out and came down clean.
It landed running, circling the clearing hard enough to raise a wind, then slammed to a halt at a tree, leaf litter fountaining up around its feet.
It hissed at the sky, chelicerae grinding.
Back at full size, brimming with unspent strength, and aware that all this was the prelude to becoming stronger, it ran wilder still, savage and delighted at once.
Regulus leaned against a trunk and watched, his expression easing.
Footsteps came from further off. Hermes was back, right hand full of Bowtruckles, seven or eight of them, all unconscious.
Twig-thin bodies, brown-green bark grain, a few curled leaves at the crown, palm-length and papery dry, thin arms hanging limp, bean-sized eyes shut.
He opened his mouth to speak, then looked up and saw the two-meter spider in the middle of the clearing.
He'd seen Baruk at this size before. Envy and hunger flickered through his eyes.
Walking over, he held out the fistful of Bowtruckles.
That was when Baruk came charging back.
It came in loud, eight legs hammering, straight at Hermes, and pulled up short only at the last instant, sliding half a meter through the leaf litter before stopping.
The great head lowered. Eight amber eyes fixed on the limp little things in his hand, and chelicerae snapped twice in quick succession.
It understood. These stick creatures, which weren't even worth eating, were what would make it stronger.
So it stared at them, and every one of those eight eyes said the same thing: want.
Hermes stared back. He had only two eyes to work with, but the message in them was identical.
His gaze slid from the dark red bristles to the warm markings at the joints, and came to rest on the pair of amber eyes currently inspecting the Bowtruckles in his hand.
Regulus looked between them, and one corner of his mouth curled.
One fixed on the Bowtruckles, one fixed on the spider, each wanting what the other had.
"Hold on to those," he told Hermes, then called to Baruk. "Come here."
The spider pulled its head back from Hermes's hand and sidled over.
Regulus laid one hand on the carapace and set the other on Hermes's shoulder.
Crack. Apparition.