Chapter 62: Spatial Warp and Partnered Deception
For the next three days, Regulus stopped practising Apparition.
Once you could do it, you could do it.
Instead, he shut himself away in his room until the air tasted of ink and old parchment, and his desk looked like the aftermath of a careful storm. A few quills. Two ink bottles. A roll of parchment. A handful of Galleons and Sickles. And the House of Black brooch he wore as naturally as a second skin.
He picked up the brooch and laid it in his palm.
Then he closed his eyes.
The world changed.
The room did not vanish, exactly. It reassembled itself inside his awareness. Space revealed its bones, an unseen web of countless nodes and lines, joints and threads, each connection humming with its own weight. Every object sat upon a point in that structure, dense or loose, steady or trembling.
The brooch was a knot of stability in his hand. Dense. Firm. Anchored.
Regulus wanted the web to move.
Just like Kreacher did.
House elves did not travel through space so much as fold it. They drew two points together, slipped through, and let the world settle behind them as if nothing had happened. The theory was simple in his mind, neat as a diagram.
Reality was not so obliging.
The first day, the brooch did not shift at all.
The second day, the air around it began to warp, as if heat rose from a candle flame. The edges of the silver flickered, momentarily uncertain, like an object half remembered.
But it stayed where it was, heavy in his palm, unmoved by even a millimetre.
On the third afternoon, Regulus changed his approach.
Folding the whole room was arrogance. He could feel how vast it was, how many threads would need to be gathered and bent at once. He did not have that strength, not yet.
So he narrowed his focus.
Not space itself, but the small patch of space that held the brooch.
Just a handspan. Just a breath of distance.
He let his magic gather, condensed in his palm. No incantation. No wand. No gesture beyond the quiet tightening of his fingers.
Will. Perception. Magic.
He fixed his attention on the node that belonged to the brooch and imagined it like a buoy on dark water. Not dragged, not yanked, but coaxed. Guided. Sliding towards a nearby empty node as if an invisible slope had always been there.
The air shuddered.
The web rippled in widening circles, invisible to the naked eye but unmistakable to him, like a pond struck by a stone. At the centre, the brooch blurred. Its silver turned thin, then translucent.
Then it vanished.
Regulus snapped his eyes open.
His palm was empty.
His stomach clenched hard enough to hurt. He leaned forward, scanning the desk, the carpet, the corners, the shadowed shelf beneath his window. Nothing. Not a gleam, not a whisper of metal.
Three seconds passed.
They stretched, each one slow and sharp.
Then, with a soft pop, the brooch dropped onto the desk's edge, perhaps five centimetres from where it had been. The silver felt hot when he snatched it up, as if it had been held too near a fire.
He had done it.
Five centimetres. A ridiculous distance. A terrifying cost.
He might have lost it to somewhere he could not name, somewhere space did not easily return from. His magic had been burned through at an alarming rate, leaving a faint tremor in his fingers.
But he had succeeded.
A crude application of an understanding no one had taught him. Something carved out of stubbornness, observation, and the way the world looked when he listened closely enough.
Regulus turned the brooch over, thumb brushing the Sirius star etched into the metal.
In a duel, mobility was everything.
It did not matter how vicious your curses were, or how deep your reserves ran. If you could not strike, if you could not reach, your power amounted to nothing.
That was why Apparition mattered. It let a witch or wizard appear and vanish with cruel suddenness, to hit and slip away before an opponent could respond.
Yet even Apparition had limits. It required a moment of preparation. It could not be used endlessly. It could be blocked entirely by an Anti Apparition Jinx.
If he could master this, truly master it, he would not need to move his whole body at all. Not always.
The spell could move instead.
An Expelliarmus that vanished midway and reappeared behind its target.
A Shield Charm wrapped around an enemy from a distance, not to protect them, but to trap their arms and choke off their casting like a reversed ward.
And if he dared to think further, if his perception grew sharp enough to read what lay beneath skin and bone, could he see into the structure of a body the same way he saw the room?
Could he make magic bypass every outer defence and erupt inside a heart, or behind the eyes, where no shield could stand between intent and consequence?
Then shieldwork and protective enchantments and even Salvio Hexia wards would be decoration. Pretty. Useless.
To strike would be to hit, because there would be no travel between the spell and the target. Cause and effect pressed together until they were nearly the same thing.
Regulus set the brooch down with care and walked to the window.
Outside, the sky was already dark. Snow began to fall again, each flake tapping the glass before melting into tiny beads of water. London's lights blurred into soft smears behind the veil, and at this distance it was impossible to say which belonged to Muggle streets and which to wizarding ones.
The idea was sound.
He was not.
Not yet.
These thoughts were castles built in fog. He did not even have the foundations laid. He had only brushed the edge of spatial magic. His work with elemental and natural charms was still at the very beginning. Transfiguration remained a discipline of fundamentals, and fundamentals demanded time.
But he had a direction.
A path no one around him was walking.
A path he was carving out with his own hands.
That evening at dinner, Walburga brought up Sirius again.
"That unfilial son," she snapped, cutting into her steak with such force it sounded like an attack. The cutlery clattered against porcelain. "Not coming home for Christmas, and not even writing a single letter. What sort of bewitching potion did the Potters feed him to make him abandon his own name?"
Orion kept his head down, eating roasted potatoes as if silence were armour.
Regulus sliced his lamb into neat, identical pieces, then ate them one by one.
They both understood that Walburga did not want an answer. She wanted an audience.
If someone spoke back, she would seize the thread and unravel it into half an hour of fury. If no one did, she would eventually exhaust herself. Her anger burned hot and fast, then sputtered out.
Regulus found himself thinking that this was only the opening act.
This year Sirius did not come home for Christmas, and Walburga would rant for an evening. Next year, if he stayed away again, she would rage for days. When he stopped coming back entirely, when he moved himself into the Potter household and let Grimmauld Place become a place he avoided, she would perform the same script every winter.
Unfilial son became traitor.
Not wanting the name became not worthy of it.
A play performed on schedule, lines memorised, emotions rehearsed.
Walburga went on for ten minutes before finally faltering. She set down her knife and fork, lifted her glass, and swallowed a heavy mouthful of red wine. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes still sharp with agitation.
Then she turned to Regulus.
"By the way."
Her voice softened abruptly, too controlled to be natural, as if she had only just remembered something trivial.
"Several people have praised you to me lately. Mrs Malfoy, Mrs Nott, and Mrs Yaxley." Her gaze fixed on him with that familiar blend of curiosity and hunger. "They were all hinting that you are bound for greatness."
Regulus had known that look since he was small. Pride, yes, but also possession. A desire to display him like a jewel and watch others flinch.
"Just how far," Walburga leaned forward, lowering her voice like she was fishing for a secret, "have you progressed now? They were being so mysterious about it, as if you could walk into the Ministry tomorrow and become Minister."
Regulus set down his fork. He dabbed the corners of his mouth with his napkin and glanced towards Orion at the far end of the long table.
He could not tell Walburga the truth.
Orion would weigh risk, lock information away, and understand why silence mattered. Walburga would take a secret and turn it into a trophy. If she knew something tonight, it would be in every drawing room and tea circle by tomorrow.
Yet he could not give her nothing.
Walburga needed details to boast about. If he refused her entirely, she would pry harder, or invent her own version, and that was worse. A wild guess from Walburga could do more damage than a true statement from him.
Orion caught the look and, without a word, set down his own wine glass.
"Regulus does have talent," he said, steady as if delivering a report before the Wizengamot. "He has already mastered most of the first year curriculum at Hogwarts, and he is teaching himself some of the higher year material."
Walburga's eyes brightened instantly. "For example?"
"For example, Apparition," Orion said, and did not flinch from the truth. "I took him to practise a few days ago. He succeeded on his first attempt."
"Really?" Walburga's voice leapt. "He is only eleven."
Orion nodded and continued, patient and precise.
"In Potions, Professor Slughorn says his current level already exceeds that of a fifth year student. In Transfiguration, Professor McGonagall is tutoring him personally, and she has even given him a copy of her own research notes."
Regulus kept his face calm, letting Orion speak for him. This was the deception, shared and managed. A measured truth offered in a safe shape.
"In Charms, Professor Flitwick often awards him extra points," Orion finished. "He says Regulus's standard is well beyond his peers."
With each sentence, Walburga's smile widened. By the time Orion fell silent, she looked almost luminous, as if pride itself had set her alight.
"I knew it," she declared, triumph bright and unashamed. "My Regulus has been extraordinary since he was little. What do the sons of those other ladies amount to? This one is good at Quidditch, that one can brew a potion or two, but our Regulus is excellent at everything."