Chapter 60: Some Thoughts and Apparition
After dinner, Regulus returned to his room and stood by the window.
Outside, the London street lay under a thin dusting of snow. Carriages and cars alike had churned the slush into rutted tracks, dark lines running through grey mud. Farther off, Muggle lights blurred into hazy orbs behind the falling flakes, and those distant glows seemed to stop at an invisible boundary where the wards around Grimmauld Place began.
He thought of Walburga's expression at the table.
Maternal affection was not absent. It simply came second, always, after glory.
There was a peculiar light in his mother's eyes, fervent and stubborn, as though she could will the world into acknowledging the Black family by force of belief alone. She had praised his performance at the Malfoy gathering, said he had brought honour to the Blacks, said the other families now understood the Blacks had a promising heir with a bright future.
Regulus lifted a finger and traced a smiling face on the cold glass. The condensation smeared under his touch, the curve of it childish and faintly ridiculous.
He did understand Walburga. Or rather, he understood people like her.
She did not want her son to live a happy, comfortable life. She wanted a son she could hold up like a trophy in drawing rooms. Family glory was her faith, and her children were offerings laid at its altar. The brighter the offering, the higher her standing before the thing she worshipped.
A mother like that was not difficult to deal with.
Let her say what she pleased. Give her what she wanted to hear.
Truth mattered far less than conviction. His words only needed to reinforce her belief that she had raised a son capable of dragging the Black family back to its peak, or even pushing it beyond. Give her enough to boast about and she would be satisfied, swallowed by her own glittering fantasy, no longer interfering with what he actually needed to do.
Regulus turned away from the window and sat at his desk.
His practice of Nature Magic was finally moving in the right direction.
The magic inside magical plants truly did have an inclination of its own, as natural as water flowing downhill or flame climbing upward. Wizards turned those inclinations into potions through boiling, mixing, fermenting, and ritual work. He skipped all of that and guided the magic itself.
The direction was correct.
The efficiency, however, was laughable.
The total magic he could draw from a single pot of white dittany barely healed a small cut, and cultivating the plant took three full months. At this rate, it was not a weapon. It was not even a reliable tool.
Yet Eldrin's memories made one point painfully clear.
This path would not remain so small.
When a witch or wizard could draw on the vitality of an entire forest, the flow of a river, or the raw force contained in storms and lightning, then Nature Magic became something worth pursuing.
Regulus was still at the starting line. He held only a few seeds. But he knew where to plant them.
He leaned back in his chair and let his thoughts drift.
His current magical framework felt patched together from mismatched parts. Starry Sky Meditation formed the base, and everything else sat on top of it like stacked stones.
He knew a little of everything, but nothing deeply enough to become an absolute force, something that could decide a battle by its very presence.
When a wizard's strength was still limited, mastering a handful of powerful spells could raise combat ability quickly. Expelliarmus could still topple several opponents. The Shield Charm could block most straightforward attacks.
But to go higher, spells alone would never be enough.
It was like building a tower out of sand. You could pile it up and make it impressive from a distance, but it was still sand. One wave and it was gone.
He thought of Dumbledore and Grindelwald. They were not terrifying because of a single spell. They were terrifying because they understood magic itself. They had a complete structure, a system of thought, and the ability to integrate different branches into one coherent whole.
Voldemort was harder to judge.
Dumbledore had said he had gone farther than anyone in the Dark Arts, that he understood death more deeply than any other wizard alive. Yet Voldemort's style was blunt. He began with the Killing Curse, and he relied on fear and inevitability more than variety.
Regulus's mind supplied an image of Harry Potter firing Expelliarmus at everything that moved, and he dismissed it immediately. That was not a model worth considering.
He pulled himself back and continued thinking with care.
He was still in a period of rapid growth. His talent suggested his ceiling was not low, and aside from fields that required rare aptitudes, he had no obvious weaknesses.
Until he found his true core path, broad development was the sensible choice.
Spatial magic was a promising direction, and Apparition was the first step.
In the original timeline, Apparition was taught in sixth year, and legal use required a Ministry exam. That was interesting in itself. Space should have been high level territory, yet it was treated as a skill students could master.
The likely reason was that Apparition's principle was relatively direct. Fix the destination. Hold determination. Keep your deliberation clear. Tear a passage and move through it.
Regulus already met those requirements. Learning it would not be difficult.
More importantly, Apparition would give him his first true contact with the nature of space. It would lay the groundwork for exploring deeper spatial magic later.
He needed it for more than travel. He needed it to understand the rules of space, just as Nature Magic was teaching him to understand the inclinations and attributes of natural power.
Regulus stood, straightened the cuffs of his robe, and left his room.
Orion was in the study, reviewing Wizengamot files that had piled up. A quill whispered across parchment as he wrote notes beside a clause.
At Regulus's knock, Orion said, "Come in," without looking up.
Regulus entered and stopped before the desk.
Orion finished the last few words, set the quill aside, and leaned back in his chair. His eyes settled on his son, calm and unreadable.
"I want to learn Apparition," Regulus said. "I need you to supervise."
Splinching was a risk, though not one he feared blindly. The real issue was the Anti Apparition protections on the house, which required Orion to loosen them.
Orion studied him for two seconds, nodded once, closed the file, and stood.
"To the practice room."
The black iron door of the family training room opened slowly. Orion crossed to a runic array in the corner, raised his wand, and a flash of silver light ran through the carved lines.
"The Anti Apparition protection is lifted," he said, "but only within this room. Do not attempt to jump outside."
Regulus walked to the centre of the room and stilled himself, wand settling into his palm.
For a moment, an unwelcome future flickered in his mind.
This old house, twenty years from now.
The Weasley twins would turn this training room into a laboratory. They would brew, charm, test, and detonate every ridiculous idea they had until the walls and floor were battered into a chaos worse than the aftermath of Regulus's last duel with Orion.
By then, the house would be held together by one stubborn piece of magic, the Fidelius Charm, either the original or one cast later. Most other protections, including the Anti Apparition wards currently humming through the bones of the place, would have failed.
It would be as though the house had died, leaving only a shell behind. The living magic within it would have vanished with its masters.
Sirius. What a wastrel.
Regulus pushed the thought away and forced his attention onto the present.
Orion stood near the door and spoke in the same steady tone he used when teaching duelling.
"Three things. Destination. Determination. Deliberation."
He looked Regulus in the eye.
"Miss one and you can be Splinched. It can be a handful of hair. It can be an arm. It can be worse."
Regulus nodded, gaze fixing on the stone platform in the far corner. That would be his destination.
He took a light breath, raised his wand, and held the target in his mind with absolute clarity.
"Apparate."
The world squeezed.
Compression struck from every direction, like being forced through a narrow tube. The air was crushed out of his lungs. His ribs creaked under the pressure. His vision dimmed and a sharp ringing flooded his ears.
Then the pressure vanished.
Regulus stood beside the stone platform, wand still raised.
Orion watched him. His face remained blank, but a flicker of approval shone in his eyes.
First attempt success. As expected.
Regulus did not move at once. He stood and tasted every sensation of that brief, brutal transition.
This was nothing like Side Along Apparition, where he had been a passenger, dragged through the squeeze and release with no control.
It was nothing like house elf magic either. Kreacher's travel had felt like blinking. You were here, and then you were not, and then you were elsewhere, with no struggle in between.
This time, Regulus had been in command.
He had felt space being pried open by force. He had pushed through the gap and emerged on the other side.
Tearing open space and tunnelling from one point to another worked, but it was crude and inelegant, more like smashing a locked door than finding the key.
Orion walked over.
"How did it feel?"
"Like being stuffed into a tube," Regulus said, rolling his shoulders as stiffness faded, "and then having to force my way out."
"That is the sensation," Orion replied, and for an instant the edge of a smile appeared. "You will adjust after enough practice. Once your body accepts it, it stops feeling so unpleasant."
Regulus did not answer.
He raised his left hand and traced the air slowly, as if drawing an invisible line.
Because in that instant, just now, he had seen something.