flstandardbreds Chapter 294: A Changed Texture of Magic [bonus]
Chapter 294: A Changed Texture of Magic [bonus]
Six stars, each tracing its own orbit.
The system ran smoothly. No deviation in any trajectory.
He let his consciousness rise, up through the mental layers, into the space between, and found the containment room.
A pure white chamber. No doors, no windows.
The virtual persona crouched in the corner, its magical aura dense and murky, edges trailing a film of corrosive grey shadow.
The runes it had been carving into the floor now covered every inch, sprawling crookedly up the walls, like tally marks scratched by a prisoner who’d been locked away too long.
It had sensed. The bone box was out there. Fresh material was coming.
It rose from the corner, crossed to the wall, pressed a palm flat against it, fingers splayed, tips dragging across the white surface.
No sound. Only what surged in those eyes: hunger, curiosity, and a focus wound tight as a spring.
Regulus opened the magic conduit.
Last time it had been a trickle. This time he turned the flow wide open.
Information and magic from the Dark Awakening poured from the bone box through the mental channel into the containment room. Grey-black matter rushed down the conduit, denser than before, greater in volume.
The virtual persona lifted its head and caught it.
Grey-black magic pooled in its palms. Its eyes brightened, pupils reflecting the churning mass, then in the next instant turned solid black, like ink dissolving through water.
It began to work.
Hands traced patterns in the air, sketching rune structures one after another, some pulled from spell fragments carried in the bone box, others variants it had derived on its own during the idle hours.
Its expression sharpened into fixation, eyes blazing with fervor, lips moving in soundless incantation, pace accelerating, gestures growing tighter and more intricate.
No more tantrums.
With material to study, the restlessness was gone. The wall-scratching, the fits, all of it, replaced by pure research.
Regulus watched for a while, confirmed the persona’s state was stable, verified the conduit’s flow showed no anomalies.
Then he turned to what he’d actually come to do.
The filter layer.
The previous setting had been maximum filtration. Everything carrying contamination properties, information and magic alike, was trapped in the containment room. Only purified, clean knowledge passed through.
Now he dialed it down. Widened the mesh.
Filtration dropped from full to roughly sixty percent. The semi-contaminated material that had been caught before, the grey matter that lived between pure dark magic and clean knowledge, began to seep out.
The direction was from containment toward the main consciousness, but the star tracks stood between.
Grey matter drifted along the mental channels, outward, like smoke, like fog, shapeless, carrying only a leaden weight, a downward pressure.
That pressure held no aggression. It was more like a declaration.
Kneel.
Obey.
This was the nature of what Voldemort had given.
A force that demanded submission from anything it touched, at the root level. It made you want to kneel, or want to make others kneel.
Pain and domination. The underlying color of the magical path the Dark Awakening revealed.
The grey matter seeped to the outer edge of the star guided meditation and met the first layer.
Betelgeuse.
Dark red light burned there, not as flame but as a continuously expanding heat source, pushing outward, detonating outward.
Grey matter touched the region cloaked in red light and recoiled.
Pure elemental opposition.
Betelgeuse’s essence was outward expansion, outward eruption. Its magic pushed from inside out. The grey matter’s magic pressed from outside in.
The two forces collided head-on. Red light drove the grey mass back like floodwater meeting a spillway. No contest.
It retreated, found another route, slipping through gaps beyond Betelgeuse’s reach.
Grey matter threaded along the spaces between orbital tracks, skirting Betelgeuse’s territory, pushing deeper.
It met Bellatrix.
Blue-white light, still, unmoving, burning where it stood.
The grey matter stopped.
Like a man walking into a wall, except this wall had nothing to do with physics. It was definition.
Everything within this boundary was Regulus. His will, his soul, his self as he’d defined it. All of it lived inside.
Everything outside did not belong.
Bellatrix didn’t act. It only shone. And the shining was enough.
Grey matter piled against the outer edge of the blue-white glow, churning, accumulating, but unable to cross.
It had force enough. The problem was category.
This was Voldemort’s power. Immense, heavy, steeped in domination.
But what Bellatrix guarded existed outside the dimension of force altogether.
It guarded the fact of I am myself. Regulus’s independent will, whole and entire.
That boundary didn’t hold through strength. It held through knowing who he was, knowing what he wanted, knowing he would not be reshaped by anything from outside.
Deeper still, the three belt stars linked their light into a closed circuit, enclosing the soul at the very center.
Grey matter swirled outside the circuit, churning, waves breaking against rock, surge after surge, ceaseless, and useless.
The circuit was order. The grey matter was chaos.
Where order held, chaos could not enter.
The soul figure stood in the starlight’s center, shielded by Bellatrix, ringed by the three-star circuit.
It glowed there, undisturbed, the turmoil outside having nothing to do with it.
Regulus glanced at Saiph.
Outermost edge. A glimmer so faint it barely registered. No change.
As expected.
He withdrew from the mental world. The results were clear.
The grey matter was confined to the outermost layer of his Magic Circulation, beyond the star tracks, within the mental barrier.
It clung to the surface of his magic, altering its original texture.
He could feel it. Something new layered over him. From the bone box.
He raised his right hand and pointed his index finger at the candlestick on the desk corner.
A small flame leapt from his fingertip and landed on the wick.
The candle caught.
The flame burned normally. Orange-yellow. But not entirely normal.
At its base sat a ring of grey so faint it was invisible at a glance, barely noticeable even on close inspection, but present.
When the magic left his hand, he felt the difference.
Heavier than usual. Thicker and denser. As if the surface of his magic had been wrapped in lead.
It didn’t affect casting precision or speed, but it changed the texture of magic as it reached the outside world.
Anyone sensitive to Dark magic standing in front of him would feel it. Something wrong with this person’s magic. Something corroding him, or something he intended to use to corrode others.
But that was all it was.
He reset the filter to full, narrowed the containment room’s conduit to the minimum, leaving only the thin stream the virtual persona needed to process material.
The source of grey matter was cut.
What had already adhered to his magic’s outer layer wouldn’t disappear immediately. It would take a few hours to dissipate naturally, or he could clear it manually.
He didn’t clear it. Left it.
One more session before the banquet the day after tomorrow, adjusted to the right concentration, and that would be enough.
He placed the bone box back in the rune-inscribed chest, sealed the inscriptions shut, slid it into the drawer, and closed it.
The moment his hand left the drawer, Baruk crept over.
It rested a foreleg on the back of his hand, chelicerae clicking once. Click.
Regulus tapped his index finger against the carapace on its back.
Baruk flinched, then propped itself up again, foreleg settling back onto his hand.
He let it stay.
Candlelight flickered on the desk, shadows swaying.
Baruk perched on his hand for a while, then crawled back to the desk corner on its own and curled into a ball.
Regulus stood, crossed to the bed, and lay down.
---
December 25th. Half past five in the evening. The entrance hall of 12 Grimmauld Place.
Orion stood at the door in a black dress robe, collar fastened just below the Adam’s apple. Pinned to his right chest was the Black family crest.
His left hand wore the family ring. His right hung at his side. His face held no expression at all.
Regulus stood at his right, robe cut along similar lines: narrow shoulders, tapered waist, hem brushing just past the ankles, the silver threadwork at the cuffs one tier simpler than his father’s.
On his left hand sat a ring identical to Orion’s in style and pattern, though it carried no Head of House authority.
Sirius stood beside Regulus in the same black dress robe, the same dark-patterned cuffs, though he wore it like it didn’t quite belong to him. The collar fit, but he tugged at it anyway.
His hands were bare.
Walburga wore a dark emerald gown, high-waisted, narrow-sleeved, the skirt falling to her feet, a fine silver chain at her throat, hair swept up and pinned.
Every detail immaculate. Standing beside three men in black, she was the only point of color.
"Once we arrive, go straight to the main hall. Don’t linger in the foyer." Walburga checked her gloves as she spoke, gaze sweeping across all three without settling on anyone in particular.
"Rodolphus is the host, Bella is the hostess. The Lestranges are hosting this year, so formalities will be stricter than usual. Orion, remember to spend some time with Rodolphus. Last year at the Malfoys’ you spoke with old Abraxas for ages. We can’t look distant from this side."
Orion said nothing.
Walburga turned to Regulus. "Regulus, Bella will certainly come find you tonight. You..."
"Mm."
"Don’t ’mm’ me, I’m not finished. Her temper’s been getting worse and..."
She paused, gloves on, and began smoothing her skirt. "Remember what I’m telling you. Bella is family. When she talks to you, listen properly."
Orion didn’t move.
Regulus didn’t move.
The two of them stood in the entrance hall like a pair of robed statues.
Sirius couldn’t hold still.
Walburga kept talking.
She covered banquet etiquette. Though tonight was a buffet, the way one held a glass still mattered.
She covered the proper way to address Bella. Bella was now the Lady of House Lestrange; they couldn’t call her Cousin Bella the way they used to. It was Mrs. Lestrange now.
She covered what to say if anyone asked why Sirius had been absent last year. The answer was ill health, convalescing at Grimmauld Place.
Sirius’s entire face clenched at that. Mouth pulled down, nose scrunched, looking as though he’d stepped in something.
He’d been enduring Walburga’s fussing this whole time, but this pushed him over the edge. "I wasn’t sick."
Walburga finally turned to look at him. Her gaze sharpened instantly, brow pinching, on the verge of erupting.
Orion lifted his head and pressed a palm downward. "It’s time."
Regulus took in the scene.
There was something amusing about it. His father knew what tonight was for. He knew what tonight was for. Sirius knew the banquet’s true nature.
None of them treated the occasion as anything that truly mattered.
The Christmas banquet, everyone in the inner circle understood what it was: a performance staged for all to see.
The banquet was a stage. Pure-blood families acted out their roles on it, and the audience was themselves. Symbolic value dwarfed any practical purpose.
Real decisions were made in studies, in whispered conversations by the fire, in what was written between the lines of letters. Never while a room full of people clinked glasses.
And beyond all that, he was going tonight to make something happen.
Meanwhile, Walburga was teaching them how to hold their wine.
She alone cared about these things.
Pure-blood glory. Social etiquette. The face of House Black. What Mrs. Nott might think. How the Malfoys might judge them.
What mattered to her was whether the pure-blood world approved of the Blacks. Whether her husband looked distinguished enough. Whether her sons were impressive enough. Whether her gown was worthy of her surname.
To her, that was everything.
Orion walked toward the door. Walburga followed, taking his right arm.
He let her hold it. Didn’t pull away. Didn’t look at her either.
He tilted his head toward Regulus and said, "He’s yours."
Regulus nodded.
Orion and Walburga stepped out of the entrance hall, Apparated, and vanished.
The hall held only the two brothers.
Regulus turned to Sirius, the faintest smile at the corner of his mouth.
Sirius’s expression shifted. "Don’t..."
Regulus had never been to Lestrange Manor, but he could follow Orion’s trail.
He seized Sirius’s right arm. The next instant space compressed, crack, and they were gone.
---
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