Lily spotted Regulus through the compartment window.
He started to give her a polite nod. She answered with a glare and kept walking.
For a second, he didn't get it.
Then he remembered.
Before the holidays, he'd told her he would write.
He had not written.
In his defense, quite a lot had happened. Training, Voldemort's gift, new magic, Germany, Freya, the ruins and bellatrix getting lit up. Somewhere in the middle of all that, a promise to a young girl had been completely shoved out of his head.
Across from him, Cuthbert and Alex exchanged a look and tried very hard not to grin.
The second Regulus looked over, both of them straightened up like model students.
He let it go. Lily was still young. He'd admit he forgot, smooth things over, and that would be that. Probably.
The compartment door opened, and Hermes stepped inside.
Regulus looked up, and his eyes narrowed a fraction.
Hermes clearly hadn't spent the summer lying around doing nothing. There was a faint residue clinging to him, the kind most people would never notice.
Regulus did.
Dark magic had a feel to it. With Cuthbert and Alex sitting right there as a comparison, the trace on Hermes stood out almost absurdly clearly.
And it wasn't the residue of practice, either. It felt used. Lived in. Like Hermes had pointed that magic at something real.
Hermes dropped into the seat across from him. "Good holiday?"
"Not bad."
Only then did Hermes glance at Cuthbert and Alex and respond to their chatter with perfunctory politeness. His tone was flat. His attention wandered.
Something had changed.
It was obvious to Regulus. Sitting in a train compartment full of normal school-aged wizards, Hermes felt just slightly out of place, like someone who'd seen enough over the summer that stories about family visits and gifts suddenly seemed stupid.
Cuthbert and Alex noticed nothing. They kept talking.
"Pull it in," Regulus said.
Both of them stopped and stared at him.
What, they couldn't talk now?
Then they followed his gaze to Hermes.
They looked him over. Saw absolutely nothing.
Hermes blinked once, then went still.
He didn't argue. Didn't ask what Regulus meant.
Regulus felt the change immediately. The residue around him started folding inward, compressing, sinking out of sight.
Before, it had been faint enough that ordinary people would miss it.
Hogwarts professors were not ordinary people.
Now it was subtle enough that even if one of them noticed something off, they'd be more likely to dismiss it than press.
That Hermes could do it at all said a lot.
Regulus didn't comment further. The train jolted, the platform slid backward, and they were on their way.
By the time evening settled over the countryside, the Hogwarts Express was pulling into Hogsmeade Station. They stepped out with the rest of the students and joined the flow of bodies heading toward the carriages.
Regulus climbed into one, then looked at what was pulling it.
Black hide stretched over a skeletal frame. A reptilian face. Huge wings folded neatly against its sides.
A Thestral.
He hadn't been able to see them before.
Now he could.
Everyone in the wizarding world knew the rule. Only people who had witnessed death could see Thestrals.
That wasn't the part Regulus cared about.
It was the why.
Why death?
Thestrals were strange creatures. They could fly through storms, punch through magical obstacles, and according to some accounts, slip through warped folds of space for brief moments. They were built for bad places, bad weather, bad endings.
So what did that mean?
That only people who had faced death were fit to see that kind of creature?
Or that death itself was a threshold, and anyone who truly encountered it gained the ability to notice things everyone else remained blind to?
Regulus sat with the thought.
To witness death. To accept it. To understand it.
Maybe that was the point. Death was the final boundary, the wall life could not cross.
But if merely seeing it changed your perspective, if watching a life go from present to gone could alter the way you perceived the world, then maybe the boundary wasn't quite as absolute as people liked to pretend.
Maybe that was what Thestrals represented.
You saw death, and afterward, you saw more than other people did.
So what came next?
Witness death. Accept death. Understand death. Transcend it.
If death stopped being a limit, what else would become visible?
A bit of French surfaced in his mind.
Vol de mort.
Flight from death.
Rearranged, it became Voldemort.
Regulus dragged his thoughts back before they went too far down that road. Maybe Voldemort really did have an answer buried in there somewhere, but asking was out of the question.
He was hardly about to walk up to the Dark Lord and say, So. About this escaping death business. Did it work?
That would be a fantastic way to die.
Then he noticed Hermes was looking at the Thestral too.
Their eyes met.
Neither of them said a word.
Neither needed to.
Hermes had seen death as well.
Regulus had no idea what had happened to him over the summer, but anything that left a person able to see Thestrals was not minor.
Cuthbert and Alex were still talking beside them, completely oblivious.
The carriage lurched forward. Hooves rang against stone as they rolled away from Hogsmeade and toward Hogwarts. In the dark, the castle slowly took shape.
Regulus noticed the changes almost at once.
The grounds were wrapped in layers of defensive enchantments.
Multiple Anti-Dark Magic Charms. A Dementor Banishing Charm. Protego Totalum. Salvio Hexia. And several other high-level wards he didn't recognize, all layered over the school like invisible armor.
Things were getting worse.
He knew exactly what the Ministry was like from the inside. Weak, compromised, forever retreating.
The few people with any backbone got buried under politics, procedure, and endless half-measures. They weren't allowed to fight properly when it mattered, and they couldn't hold what they did manage to defend. In the end, all that remained was performance.
Dumbledore had clearly lost faith in the Ministry doing its job and had started handling matters himself. Fortify the school. Prepare for what was coming.
The Order of the Phoenix was probably about to be founded, if it hadn't been already.
Still, Regulus didn't think Dumbledore's efforts would actually stop Voldemort's spread. War was coming, and it was going to be ugly.
Those wards could protect Hogwarts.
They could protect the students inside these walls.
But outside them? Outside the gates, in the rest of Britain?
Different question.
He let it go.
That was Dumbledore's problem.
Maybe one day it would become his problem too. Not yet, though. He didn't have the reach for that, and he knew it.
For now, managing himself and the House of Black was enough.
The carriage passed through the gates and came to a stop in front of the castle. Regulus stepped down and followed the crowd into the Great Hall.
Candlelight floated overhead. The enchanted ceiling reflected the night sky outside. Four long house tables were already packed, and the noise in the room blurred into one broad wave of sound.
The younger students were relaxed, leaning close together and swapping stories about the holidays.
The older students looked more mixed. Some serious. Some excited. Some like they couldn't care less.
The Muggle-borns looked uneasy.
The pure-bloods clustered together.
The half-bloods watched both groups.
The Sorting began.
Professor McGonagall read the names one by one. Each first-year went forward, sat down, and put on the Sorting Hat.
When it was over, Dumbledore stood.
The hall quieted.
"Welcome back," he said, his voice carrying cleanly through the room. "Another new year has begun. I know that for many of you, the past year was not a peaceful one. The year ahead may not be either."
His eyes moved over the four tables, pausing for a beat at Slytherin before continuing on.
"But I still hope you will find time here for the things that matter most. Learning, Growing and Friendship. Those are the things you should be focused on right now."
Regulus listened, but only halfway.
"One more thing." He looked toward the staff table. "This year, the Defense Against the Dark Arts curriculum will be adjusted. Students in third year and above will receive additional instruction in practical defensive spells, including Protego, the Disarming Charm, and the Impediment Jinx. These will be taught alongside the existing curriculum, with extra time set aside for practice."
A murmur ran through the hall.
Regulus understood exactly what it meant.
Dumbledore was raising the students' odds of surviving what was coming.
This was the first time Hogwarts had changed its curriculum because of the war.
Regulus looked toward the staff table. The new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor rose and gave the students a nod.
Gryffindor exploded into applause.
Hufflepuff responded more politely.
Ravenclaw watched the new professor with open curiosity.
The Slytherin reaction was more complicated.
Some faces stayed blank. Some curved into faint, cold smiles. A few sharpened with something nastier.
They understood Dumbledore's message perfectly well.
Those extra defensive spells were aimed at them.
At most of them, anyway.
But that same realization also put a quiet sort of pride on certain Slytherin faces, as if they were thinking, Look at that. They need extra classes just to keep up with us.
The feast ended. Slytherin students rose and headed for the common room.
Back in the dormitory, Cuthbert threw himself onto his bed and exhaled hard.
Alex sat on the edge of his own, fidgeting with his hands. "What the headmaster said..."
Cuthbert turned his head. "About what?"
"The new lessons." Alex lowered his voice. "Protego and all that..."
He trailed off, but he didn't need to finish.
Is war really coming?
Regulus watched him for a moment.
A summer back home with family had softened Alex again.
That kind of warm, gentle pure-blood household did not produce hard people. His parents loved him. His home was comfortable. He didn't want to look too closely at what was waiting outside.
Still, compared to the boy who had first arrived at Hogwarts, he had changed.
At least now he could sit there and think about it instead of shutting down entirely.
Cuthbert didn't react much. Maybe a little concern, but that was all.
Boys like Cuthbert and Alex, pure-blood sons from sheltered homes, usually weren't taught politics or strategy in any serious way. In some respects, they were more naive than children from declining pure-blood families or ordinary half-blood homes.
Hermes, on the other hand, could not have cared less.
He was leaning against his headboard with his eyes closed, looking like he might fall asleep at any second.
Regulus could feel the truth of it.
Hermes wasn't just calm. He was genuinely indifferent.
If anything, he might have preferred things to get worse.
Chaos created chances. Chaos gave strength room to speak. Chaos let people prove what they were worth.
Regulus said nothing.
He lay back on his own bed.
Outside, the Black Lake gave off a dim green glow, and the shifting light played softly across the dormitory ceiling.