Chapter 34: Bloodline, Stance, and Reality
In a quiet corner of the Library, candlelight warmed the edges of thick pages and turned the air between the shelves into something almost gentle.
Lily Evans finally set down the heavy Potions tome in her hands and looked across the table at Regulus, green eyes intent.
"That duel in the Slytherin common room," she said in a low voice. "Against a fifth year. I heard about it."
She hesitated, then continued, her curiosity clear and untainted by malice.
"They said you only used basic spells, but the result was completely different. Like we are not even studying from the same textbook. How is that possible?"
Regulus lifted an eyebrow, faintly surprised. He had not expected her to ask so directly, though it made sense. Lily's interest was not gossip. It was the kind of fascination that belonged to magic itself.
Slytherin matters were meant to stay in Slytherin. That was the unspoken rule. But Travers's provocation, and his humiliating defeat, were too useful for rumour. No one protected him out of principle.
"The spells are from the books," Regulus said evenly. "The difference is how they are used."
"You mean there is a trick to it?"
"Not a trick." Regulus lifted his wand and cast an Imperturbable Charm around their table. The faint shimmer settled like a thin sheet of stillness, muffling the world beyond.
Then he looked at Lily again.
"Understanding, proficiency, body, and consciousness."
Lily blinked. "All of that?"
"All of that."
Regulus spoke with the calm precision of someone explaining something he had already dismantled and rebuilt in his own mind.
"Understanding means knowing what the spell is actually doing. What properties of magic it draws on, what it acts upon, and what change it is meant to create."
He tapped the edge of his book lightly, as if to anchor the idea.
"Proficiency is practice, until the casting becomes close to instinct. Incantation, wand movement, and magical output must align perfectly. No waste. No hesitation."
Lily listened without interrupting, her expression sharpening the way it did when she was working through a difficult passage.
"Body," Regulus continued, "is what most witches and wizards ignore, because they prefer to pretend duelling is standing still and saying Latin at one another."
Lily's mouth twitched, as if she was trying not to smile.
"You move to avoid spells. You shift your angle to cast from a better position. You keep your balance so you can respond instantly. Strength and reflexes matter. If you cannot move well, you will be hit more often than you should."
He paused, then added, almost as an aside, "People like to think that is beneath them. It is not."
Lily's eyes stayed on him, unblinking.
"And consciousness?" she asked.
Regulus's grey eyes looked darker in the candlelight.
"Predicting intent. Calculating trajectories and intersections. Choosing the best option in a breath. Most duels are decided in the mind before they ever collide in magic."
Lily sat back slightly, stunned. No professor had ever laid it out like that for them. They taught pronunciation, wandwork, repetition. They rarely spoke of the caster as a complete system.
It made something uncomfortable stir in her chest.
A gap.
A gap between students like her and students raised in old families, where even the dinner table probably came with lessons disguised as conversation.
She opened her mouth, the question already forming.
As if he had seen it in her eyes, Regulus shook his head once.
"This is not tied to being pureblood."
Lily froze.
Regulus continued, voice steady.
"Family heritage can expose you to ideas earlier. That is knowing. Turning knowing into doing takes work, practice, and thought. Many purebloods never cross that line. Some do not practise at all, because they assume blood will do the work for them."
His gaze did not soften, but it did not sharpen either.
"My level is not because I was born into something. It is because I invested in it."
The words landed like cold water. Not cruel, just undeniable.
Lily remembered Slughorn's praise, remembered long evenings at the common room table, grinding through theory while other students laughed and wasted time. She and Severus had earned results through effort. She could not pretend otherwise.
Resources were not equal, but effort and intelligence were not owned by any surname.
She nodded slowly.
And yet, another thought came uninvited, quieter and more bitter.
Would any other pureblood have said this to her?
The conversation drifted, without either of them quite noticing, into deeper water.
Lily hesitated, then asked the doubt that had been circling her for weeks.
"Lately the atmosphere feels strange," she said softly. "Especially in Slytherin, and even with some older pureblood students in other houses. They whisper about That Person, or some great wizard. They sound fanatical."
Her fingers tightened on the edge of her book.
"Is something happening outside?"
Regulus went still for a moment.
He understood what she was and was not being told. Lily came from the Muggle world. She had instincts and intelligence, but no access. The people who hoarded information were not going to offer it to a Muggle born girl out of kindness.
Regulus did not mind giving her a small piece of the truth. Not enough to be reckless, but enough to be real.
"The wizarding world is approaching a change," he said carefully.
He avoided a name. If Lily learned it, it would not be from his mouth.
"A powerful wizard is rising, preaching pureblood supremacy. He has drawn support from many old families. He believes purebloods should rule the wizarding world absolutely, and that anyone he considers impure should be removed."
Lily's eyes widened. "That is insane. Over birth?"
"Whether it is insane depends on where you stand," Regulus replied, calm as ever.
"For many ancient families, their dominance has lasted centuries. They hold much of the wealth, knowledge, and influence. They think of that as natural, as something earned by bloodline and maintained by tradition."
His gaze stayed on Lily, direct and unflinching.
"And as more half bloods and Muggle born witches and wizards enter the world, those families feel their control thinning. That wizard's arguments feed their fear and their ambition."
Lily swallowed. "But Potter, Longbottom, Prewett, Weasley. They are pureblood too."
"Yes," Regulus said. "And their families are more open minded, or more content with the current balance. Perhaps both."
He let the next part settle.
"For Slytherin, and for families tied closely to it, the situation is not the same."
Lily's voice lowered further.
"Then what about you?" she asked. "You are a Black. That is practically a synonym for pureblood. You must support it, do you not?"
Regulus did not answer at once.
He turned his head and looked out the tall Library window, where night pressed against the glass and Hogwarts lay quiet, pretending the world beyond its walls did not exist.
When he spoke, his voice was slow and deliberate.
"Bloodline is an old key," he said. "It opens certain doors. It grants access to resources and perspectives others may never see. It represents tradition, and interests already entrenched."
He turned back to her.
"I will not pretend I do not benefit from it. I use what it gives me."
Lily held her breath.
"But bloodline does not equal wisdom," Regulus continued, eyes steady. "It does not equal character. It does not determine value."
He spoke like someone giving a diagnosis rather than an opinion.
"Historically, many witches and wizards who pushed magical progress were not pureblood. Reducing everything to blood is lazy. Narrow. It is a shortcut for people who do not want to think."
Lily's expression shifted, caught between relief and disbelief.
Regulus went on, unmoved by it.
"For many pureblood families, their stance is not faith. It is preservation. They maintain dominance, monopolise knowledge and resources, and use marriage to keep the class closed and powerful."
He paused, and something dry flickered through his thoughts, uninvited.
In his past life he had owned a dog with an impeccable pedigree. Beautiful, delicate, and as dim as a burnt out candle. Blood did not make it cleverer than the mutts in the street.
The thought stayed where it belonged, inside his head.
Across the table, Lily looked shaken.
She had expected a Black to be defensive, fanatical, or at the very least dismissive.
Instead, he was coldly analytical, as if he were dissecting a structure to show her where the supports really were.
It made her wonder if Regulus Black was anything like the pureblood supremacist she had assumed him to be.
If she had asked the question aloud, he would have told her the truth.
He could be.
And he could also not be.
For a while after that, they returned to their books.
Regulus searched for references on skin adherent potion carriers, magical slow release matrices, and the stability of rune engraving mediums. The texts he pulled were far beyond ordinary OWL material and wandered into N E W T territory with casual ease.
Lily began by pretending she was only curious, but each time Regulus murmured a question to himself or made an incisive comment about a difficult passage, she found herself startled again by the depth of his understanding.
Whatever he was researching, it was specialised. Obscure. Advanced.
"What are you researching?" she asked at last, unable to hold it back. "This is not ordinary reading. It is… very specific."
Regulus looked up. For a few seconds, he did not speak.
Lily Evans was brilliant at Potions. Slughorn had noticed it. Anyone with eyes would notice it. Sharp mind, sharper curiosity. If he chose his words carefully, she could be useful.
But he could not tell her the real purpose.