Going to see Grindelwald. No matter how well-prepared he was, no matter how strong he'd become, facing a wizard of that caliber meant no guarantees. He might be suppressed or influenced. Might not realize something was off until after he'd already left.
Grindelwald was not Dumbledore.
With Dumbledore, Regulus had direct experience. He'd heard the man's guidance, felt his methods. Not deep familiarity, but enough that their interactions carried a baseline of trust.
Grindelwald was secondhand. Books, other people's accounts, old newspaper clippings. The image those fragments assembled was too blurred to be useful.
An impossibly powerful wizard? A defeated man? A prisoner locked away for decades? Someone who'd once set all of Europe on fire?
None of it was accurate. Not really.
Regulus wasn't about to decide Grindelwald was friendly just because this particular arrangement had benefited him. The opposite, if anything. At that level, people couldn't be sorted into simple categories of good and evil.
They sorted into two kinds: useful and not useful.
If you were useful, you got placed on the board, given resources, guided into position. If you weren't, you didn't even register.
He'd been placed.
Seen.
Invested in.
That told him exactly one thing: in Grindelwald's calculus, he fell into the "needed" column.
What he was needed for, what he was expected to become, where and when he was supposed to appear... none of that had been disclosed.
But Freya could tell him. Or rather, she'd stand on his side.
He looked at her, held her gaze for a moment, and nodded. "Understood."
They stood in silence. Freya looked at him, opened her mouth, seemed about to say something.
In the end she just shook her head. "Never mind. Next time."
Regulus didn't press. He turned to face her.
She held out an object: a Portkey, a silver coin etched with runes.
He didn't take it. Something stirred inside him, a pull from his Patronus.
The Patronus was a mirror of his inner self. What it wanted, he wanted.
And right now, deep in his consciousness, the bird spread its wings.
It wanted to fly.
It wanted to carry him.
It wanted him to leave this place the way it loved best.
Regulus looked at Freya and smiled, a touch of pride in it, a touch of showing off.
Before he left, he wanted to leave one more impression. Not just for her, but for anyone who might be watching.
Same model as Dumbledore's. Like it?
Starlight Kite surged from his chest. Silver-white radiance, wings unfurling, starlight scattering in all directions.
It was brighter than before. Every feather rendered in sharp detail, every thread of starlight moving as though alive.
It circled once above Freya's head, and the light fell like dust, settling on her hair, her shoulders, the length of her braid.
She froze. Her chin tilted up, eyes wide, tracking the bird's arc. The starlight draped over her like a thin veil of luminescence.
Her expression shifted in layers.
Confusion.
Then recognition.
Then disbelief.
She knew what this was. A Patronus. A corporeal, physically manifest Patronus.
She recognized the bird, too. She'd known what it was the first time she'd seen it. A magical creature capable of traversing space itself.
She understood what that meant.
This bird stood on the same level as a phoenix.
Dumbledore's phoenix.
Her lips parted. She stared at the bird, at the falling starlight, at the boy standing beside her.
Starlight Kite completed its circle, then beat its wings wide. The silver-white glow flared, sudden and bright, as though something inside it had caught fire.
It dove into Regulus. Merged with him. Light enveloped his entire body, wrapping him in a cocoon of silver-white radiance.
The cocoon pulsed once, flowing and winding around him like something alive.
Then it vanished. Nothing left.
Only starlight still drifting in the air, settling slowly onto Freya's hair, her shoulders, her braid.
She stood rooted to the spot.
A long time passed. She looked down at her hand. A faint trace of starlight still clung to her skin.
She looked up again at the place where Regulus had stood.
Empty now.
Her mouth opened. No words came. Another stretch of silence, and then she laughed, sudden and loud, her shoulders shaking with it.
The laughter faded. She went quiet, still gazing in the direction he'd disappeared, eyes on the distance.
Her expression was impossible to read.
Regulus moved through a corridor.
Starlight Kite had opened a passage through space, as if it had carved a path where none existed, or perhaps as if the path had always been there and the bird had simply found it.
The scenery around him was indistinct. Occasional flashes of brightness slid past, like stars, or distant lamplight.
He and Starlight Kite flew together, and he perceived everything it perceived.
Its method of traversal was nothing like Apparition. As though it was asking space to step aside rather than forcing its way through.
It reminded him of something the presence had described.
An invitation.
12 Grimmauld Place. He sensed the old house's location, but he sensed something else too.
A barrier, solid as a wall, encasing the entire building.
Anti-Apparition wards. And more beyond that. The space around the house had been sealed. Apparition couldn't get in.
But Starlight Kite was different.
He let it continue forward. The instant they touched the barrier, resistance pressed in.
Like pushing through deep water. Like walking into dense fog. But it couldn't stop them. The bird slowed, kept going.
Broke through.
His feet hit solid ground. A study.
Grimmauld Place. Orion's study. Behind the desk, Orion sat in his chair.
Before Regulus could speak, before their eyes even met, Orion vanished.
One heartbeat he was seated there. The next, gone.
Regulus detected no spatial distortion, no flicker of darkness in his vision.
In the same instant, something pressed against the small of his back. A wand tip.
Magic gathered at its point, dense and volatile, right at the threshold of release.
The Killing Curse.
A rare flicker of surprise passed through him. The speed was staggering.
From the moment he'd landed to the wand at his spine, there had been almost no interval.
A voice from behind. "Regulus?"
He held still. "Father. It's me."
The wand pressed harder for a fraction of a second, then withdrew.
Orion stepped around him, circled to the front, and looked him over. His expression was complicated.
Part anger. Part relief. Part not knowing what to do with him.
Regulus figured his father's nerves were a bit frayed, and fair enough.
No one knew the density of the house's defensive enchantments better than Orion. In all the years they'd stood, no one had ever penetrated them like this.
No alarm triggered. No warning. Just a person standing in the study.
As the holder of the house's highest authority, Orion would have sensed the intrusion the instant it happened. His response had been immediate: the Killing Curse, no hesitation.
Regulus knew he probably should have thought this through. He'd meant it as a surprise. What he'd delivered was closer to a cardiac event.
Orion stood across from him, eyes traveling up and down.
The complicated expression gradually smoothed into something else: uncertainty over whether to be pleased.
The way this kid had appeared was terrifying. But the fact that he could appear this way at all... what did that mean?
It meant his abilities had advanced again. And not by a small margin.
The anti-Apparition wards on this house had been reinforced by generations of Blacks. Passing through them meant his spatial magic had reached a level that was...
Orion couldn't find the right comparison. He settled for clapping Regulus on the shoulder and flicking his wand once.
The low-grade hostility Regulus had felt since landing, that watched sensation, the feeling of an attack poised to fall at any moment, dissolved.
Orion returned to his desk and sat. He pointed at the armchair opposite. "Sit."
Regulus sat.
Orion watched him, expectation plain in his gaze.
Less than a month. Sent out on a family assignment. Came back able to punch straight through every defensive ward on the ancestral home. What had this boy been through?
"How did it go?"
Regulus began.
Combat on the first day. One kill, using the Decomposition Curse's first form.
How the masked figure had reacted, severed his own left shoulder, regenerated.
The opponent's magic...
Then, over a week later, a raid on one of their outposts. Two more killed with the Decomposition Curse's second form, three burned with Fiendfyre.
How the island had burned. Two escaped. The rest didn't.
Orion listened without interrupting, but his expression slowly shifted toward puzzlement.
That was it?
He had no particular reaction to his son killing people. Last year in Knockturn Alley, he'd already confirmed where Regulus stood on the matter. This was simply confirmation.
The Decomposition Curse was impressive by any measure, especially the second form: invisible, intangible, area-of-effect. A wizard who could develop a spell like that was worth being proud of.
The Fiendfyre was respectable but unremarkable. Fiendfyre out of control was Fiendfyre out of control.
But none of this explained what had just happened in the study.
Regulus finished the mission summary, paused, and thought it over. Some things needed to be shared. About Grindelwald.
That was a wizard on an entirely different plane. He stood alongside Dumbledore and Voldemort, and in certain circles, his influence surpassed them both.
Nearly two decades locked in Nurmengard, and it didn't matter. As long as he breathed, he was still who he was.
If this only concerned Regulus himself, he could handle it alone. But Grindelwald's involvement meant potential consequences for the entire House of Black.
His father needed to know.