Chapter 130. Black Star.
Half an hour later, when Severus checked on Nagini again, the fruit's shell had almost entirely dissolved. He pulled out the golden pocket watch engraved with the Hogwarts faculty crests, uncorked a golden vial of Liquid Luck, met Nagini's bright, agitated eyes, and nodded.
"One minute." He poured the potion carefully into her mouth and ran his palm along her muzzle. "It'll be fine. Don't worry." Her nervous tension gradually eased.
"Ready," Nagini hissed, closing her eyes and turning her attention inward, trying to feel the fruit resting somewhere deep inside her.
Then the shell gave way entirely. Magic poured out of it in great rushing torrents, flooding her body all at once. The force of it surprised Severus. He had seen this process before, but it had never been this violent or this sudden. He focused completely.
Changes began to show from within. The most dramatic were near the venom sac by her fangs, where magic was pooling rapidly and the tissue was expanding. He could also feel it concentrating along her skin, which was exactly what he had hoped for. The direction this was taking reminded him favorably of a basilisk.
He opened his eyes and watched her scales coarsen and thicken, watched her body lengthen, slowly enough that you had to look carefully to notice it happening. One thing wasn't going to manifest: the basilisk's ability to petrify. That was a disappointment, but a minor one. She'd built well where it counted: speed, venom, and defense, and that was a more useful foundation than it might sound.
The whole process took roughly half an hour. She grew from ten meters to fifteen, and her colors deepened and intensified. The scales were what caught the eye after the size: each one protruded slightly and had a faint metallic sheen, but they lay so perfectly flush against one another that a needle could not have found a gap. Nothing was getting through those.
The moment it was over, Nagini let out a sound somewhere between a hiss and a delighted shriek, shrank back down to her usual size, and launched herself at him. She climbed up his body, coiled around his neck, and pressed her face against his cheek.
"You can stop now," Severus said mildly, one finger stroking her head. He was smiling. "You did very well."
"I know! I did exactly what you told me!"
"Did you?"
"You said focus on venom and scales. And when the magic came, I could actually feel it, I could steer it. So I did." She was talking very fast, eyes lit up. He went still.
"That's strange. When I asked the Black Hound about her own transformation, she told me she lost consciousness the moment it started." He turned it over. The she-wolf had not been lying. "So how did you..."
"Because I'm special, obviously."
"Almost certainly." He nodded softly, still thinking. Whatever part of her human mind persisted, it was clearly enough to keep her conscious during a process that knocked everyone else out. Something worth studying. Later. He stood up and moved to the desk. "Right. Let's check everything over properly. I need to make sure nothing went wrong internally. And I'll need a small venom sample to measure the increase in potency. Otherwise you'll bite me by accident someday and I'll be out of commission for a week." He said it with a slight smirk. Nagini had the grace to look a little sheepish.
She slid off him as he sat down, and he got to work.
Two days of near-total quiet followed. In magical Britain, that was not normal. Small skirmishes between Death Eaters and Aurors, Muggle-born casualties, the steady low-level violence of an ongoing war: these were constants. The silence unnerved people. No one knew what it meant. Even the old aristocratic families, watching events from a careful distance, could not figure out what was happening.
Tucked inside a small three-story house in London, a stone's throw from the entrance to Diagon Alley and practically within sight of both opposing sides, was the Steel division's temporary headquarters. Five men sat around a table on the top floor, in a plain, windowless room with no furniture beyond the table and their chairs. A single lamp burned. Severus would have recognized every face immediately; they had all been in Nestor's memory.
The green-haired man at the head of the table, somewhere around forty, was Vitold Alegria, commander of the Steel division. The other four were group captains, Nestor's peers.
Nobody spoke. None of the four captains was looking at Vitold.
"So what you're telling me," Vitold said, his voice even and controlled in a way that was somehow worse than shouting, "is that he defected and went to work for the boy." The four men flinched as one. "I see."
"H-he also said..." The captain with the eye patch swallowed. "...he said to leave. If any of us wanted to survive."
"He said that." Vitold's tone shifted from controlled anger to something closer to genuine interest. He knew Nestor. Nestor was, above all else, a cautious man. You didn't make an enemy of Black Star carelessly, and Nestor understood better than most what the organization did to traitors. For Nestor to switch sides openly, without covering his tracks, without even pretending—that meant whoever stood behind the boy was someone Nestor had decided he would rather be on the right side of. "Right."
"Yes."
"Anything else from him?" The captain shook his head. "What about the others? Any trace?"
"The marks don't respond. Most likely they're dead." That was the captain with the short beard.
"Leave the boy alone for now. The rumors about someone powerful behind him were apparently accurate."
Vitold's gaze cut to a captain clad in all black, the one called Spencer, built like he could weather any storm. "Your group takes over intelligence. Rough methods authorized."
"Understood." Spencer's voice was flat. A dark aura swelled around him for a moment, then collapsed, and he was gone.
"Status of the infiltration?" Vitold looked at the bald captain with the round spectacles.
"On track. No sign of suspicion. But." He paused, took the spectacles off, and began polishing them with a handkerchief in a way that suggested his hands needed something to do. "Our people vanished recently, and now there's a recruitment announcement. Aurors and the clerical office. Tomorrow. It feels wrong. Nothing I can prove, but." He shook his head and put the glasses back on. "My recommendation is we send a token presence at most, or skip it entirely."
"Your call. I trust your read on these things." The man was sometimes too cautious. But being too cautious had kept them alive on at least four separate occasions that Vitold could name.
"Then ten people, none with an aura exceeding twenty centimeters. If it's a trap, we lose nothing significant."
"Agreed." Vitold's gaze moved to the final captain, the youngest, whose green hair and bone structure were close enough to Vitold's to make the relationship unmistakable. "Death Eaters?"
"Sealed shut. No way in." The youngest said it flatly. Vitold was not surprised, exactly, but it was still an irritant. Voldemort had turned out to be far more careful than they had expected. They had assumed he would be the easiest entry point of the three.
"Take over Nestor's assignments. Keep the pressure on the gangs. I'll deal with them myself in due course."
"Yes, br..." The youngest stopped himself. "Yes, Leader." Vitold let it pass.
"Meeting's done. Dismissed." He stood. The four captains bowed and filed out without a word.
Vitold went to the cabinet and took out a folder. The cover had two words on it: Severus Prince. He looked at it for a moment, and something like a smile appeared.
What kind of monster, he wondered, could frighten Nestor badly enough to make him flip without even trying to hide it?
He was genuinely looking forward to finding out.
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