The road ahead for spatial magic was long, but the idea itself held up. The ceiling on it was absurdly high.
The problem was making the Spatial Network useful in an actual fight. That meant clearing a pile of technical issues first.
The biggest one was computation.
Every spell moving through the network had its own path. If he stored multiple spells at once, every single one needed a route laid out in advance. They could not crash into each other.
And "crash" wasn't a simple thing here.
Spells had different properties. Different strengths. If two met inside the network, the reaction wouldn't stop at the point of contact. It would keep going.
A Stunning Spell running into a Disarming Charm might just cancel both. Annoying, but manageable.
But if a healing spell hit the Killing Curse?
The whole network could blow apart on the spot.
If the structure failed, every spell stored inside it would fire at once in all directions, no distinction between friend or foe. Just one huge magical detonation.
Regulus did the math.
One stored spell was easy. There was only one trajectory to manage, so any route that didn't scrape a wall would do.
Two spells meant staggering them. Route A. Route B. Make sure they never occupied the same node at the same moment.
Three meant accounting for every pairwise crossing. Three moving trajectories, all running at once, all needing to avoid each other.
Five...
Five spells across twelve channels was where things stopped being cute. The number of possible intersections shot up fast.
Not five times more complicated. Dozens of times. Hundreds. Every added spell made the mental load jump again.
He'd need five separate trajectory models running in his head at once, constantly adjusting angle, speed, and position in real time.
And that was only the baseline. On top of that, he'd need to predict every possible collision point seconds ahead and reroute before the crash ever happened.
That was the real wall.
Before, he couldn't have done it. His brain could handle the calculations, sure, but his magical control hadn't been good enough to keep up. After refining the Star Guided Meditation, that bottleneck was gone.
Setting Bellatrix on fire had dragged his whole mental structure upward with it. Managing five trajectories at once, calculating and controlling them in parallel, no longer felt difficult.
Past five, though, the pressure climbed hard.
Ten spells. Twenty spells. That would take far more mental bandwidth, and much finer separation of tasks.
The Mind Splitting Technique could help with that.
Split his consciousness into separate partitions. Give each partition its own compartment. Let each one monitor part of the network.
Multiple threads... Parallel processing... Clean... Efficient... No overlap.
He'd already tested the idea. Three active windows of awareness handling fifteen trajectories at once. It worked.
Barely.
He couldn't hold it for long, and one mistake would be enough to turn the entire structure into a bomb.
No point rushing it. Practice first. Then more practice.
Regulus pushed open the door to the small chamber and stepped back into the main training space. The first thing he saw was Hermes.
Hermes was sprawled in the middle of the floor, limbs thrown wide. If his chest hadn't still been moving, he could've passed for a corpse.
Regulus walked over and looked down at him.
Hermes had his eyes shut, breathing like he'd just survived a murder attempt. Sweat glued his hair to his forehead. His clothes were soaked through. He looked like someone had hauled him straight out of the Black Lake and dumped him on the floorboards.
Regulus nudged his leg with the tip of his shoe. "Up."
Hermes opened his eyes. Looked at him. Twitched a little. Then gave up.
"You can't get up?"
Hermes's eyelids twitched again.
Regulus lifted a finger and cast a light Wingardium Leviosa.
Not enough to raise him into the air. Just enough to strip away his weight so the slightest push from his feet would send him sliding.
Hermes immediately felt the invisible force catch him. He pressed his toes against the floor and glided forward.
He looked at Regulus.
That look said plenty.
Regulus ignored it, opened the door, and walked out. They headed back to the dormitory together, one on foot, one floating.
Quick wash. Straight to bed.
---
Mid-September. The Room of Requirement. Just before dawn.
Regulus could now keep five spells running inside the spatial network at the same time. Not just stored, either. Proper steady-state circulation.
Five spells moving through twelve channels, weaving around each other without making contact.
Whichever one he wanted to release, he could lock onto it with a thought. If he wanted to fire all five together, that worked too.
He stood in the middle of the training field and tapped his finger five times in quick succession. Five Disarming Charms shot out, each entering a different anchor channel.
They circulated for ten seconds.
Then all five burst from separate anchors at once, streaking off in five different directions.
It looked good.
In an actual fight, it would be a nightmare.
Ten-second delay. Five-spell volley. Randomized vectors. Against anyone who didn't understand spatial magic, that alone was enough to get them killed.
He left the Room of Requirement and headed back toward the dormitory.
At the end of the corridor stood a huge window facing the night sky.
The moon hung there, full and heavy, spilling silver across the stone sill. Every groove in the frame stood out under the light.
Regulus slowed, looking at it, and a thought surfaced.
The Forbidden Forest.
He'd been meaning to go ever since last term. He just hadn't found the right opening.
Well. This works.
The decision took no time at all. He turned and headed downstairs.
His steps were light. Ten minutes later, he was near the castle's main entrance.
The front doors were the fastest way out, but also the route Filch and the caretakers watched most closely. His original plan had been to cut around through the Astronomy Tower and avoid attention altogether.
Hogwarts' defenses were thicker these days too. For all he knew, opening the main doors at this hour would trigger something unpleasant.
But when he reached the entrance hall, three figures came into view ahead of him, sneaking toward the doors.
Regulus stopped.
Even in the dark, they were easy to recognize.
In front, walking with the kind of swagger that practically shouted look at me, I'm having an adventure, James Potter.
Half a step behind him, hunched small and jumpy, like the dark itself might grab his ankle at any second, Peter Pettigrew.
At the rear, posture loose but eyes still moving, checking behind them every few steps, Sirius.
Regulus's first reaction was simple.
What the hell were these idiots doing?
Three boys. Middle of the night. Full moon. Sneaking out of the castle.
You didn't need to be a genius to guess the destination. Lupin wasn't in his bed tonight.
Full moon. Werewolf transformation.
James and Sirius always claimed Lupin shared everything with them, but did they actually know what his monthly "illness" really was?
Maybe not. Maybe tonight was them confirming a suspicion.
Or maybe they'd known for a while, and this was some harebrained attempt to be there for him.
Either way, it was stupid.
Dumbledore would never have admitted Lupin without safeguards in place. The transformation site had to be warded. Staff would be nearby, maybe a professor.
And these three were heading straight at it like they were on a midnight picnic.
What if they tripped the wards? What if Lupin lost control? What if they got in the way of whoever was guarding the place?
And if that happened, what exactly was their plan?
Wing it?
Play one of their little prank games with a fully transformed werewolf?
Use one of themselves as bait and hope the rest got lucky?
Regulus considered taking another way out and leaving them to their stupidity. None of this had anything to do with him.
Someone had to be watching over Lupin. Nothing truly disastrous was likely to happen.
And besides, this kind of nonsense was exactly how they lived, and somehow they always got away with it.
He looked away, ready to forget about them.
Then, as he turned, his eyes dropped to the ring on his hand.
He raised it slightly.
Silver, with the Black family crest carved into the face.
When his father had first given it to him, he'd explained what it did: if another member of the Black family was in mortal danger, the ring would heat up. The more immediate the danger, the hotter it would get.
Right now, it was cool against his skin.
Silent.
Regulus thought for another second anyway, then decided to follow. Just to take one look.
James and Peter could do whatever they liked. Live, die, get mauled, get smacked into a tree trunk, not his concern.
But Sirius...
He cut the thought off there.
His raised hand touched his own chest. The improved Disillusionment Charm washed over him, cold spreading across his skin as his body dissolved into the air.
He followed them from a distance.
Not that he needed to be especially cautious. He could've tailed them in plain sight and still been fine. Their awareness was about what you'd expect.
The three slipped out of the castle, crossed the lawn, skirted the edge of the Black Lake, and made for the Whomping Willow.
Regulus shadowed them, watching their silhouettes move under the moonlight.
James stayed in front, all restless energy, turning back now and then to urge the others to hurry. His voice was low, just not low enough.
Peter scuttled behind him, twitching every time the wind moved the grass, jerking his head around like he expected something to leap out. He saw absolutely nothing.
Sirius brought up the rear, slouching, at least showing a bit of caution. He looked back several times.
He also saw nothing.
Close to competent. Just not actually there.
The Whomping Willow rose ahead of them.
In the moonlight, the enormous tree looked almost still, except for the occasional twitch of a branch even though there was no wind. The whole thing looked wrong, like a sleeping beast with bad dreams.
James dropped into a crouch behind a patch of bushes and pointed toward something near the base of the trunk, whispering.
Peter nodded so hard he looked ready to shake his head off. Sirius frowned, apparently trying to think it through.
Then James moved.
He burst out from the bushes and sprinted at the tree.
The branches came alive instantly, lashing down at him from every angle.
He tried to force his way through, but there were too many of them and they were too fast. He dodged left, ducked right, nearly lost his footing.
One branch clipped his shoulder and sent him stumbling. Another slammed into his leg and almost folded him.
Sirius rushed in to help, but the second he crossed into range, the whipping branches drove him back too. He pulled his wand and tried to line up a spell, but the flailing limbs never gave him a clean shot.
Peter stayed behind the bushes, shaking from head to toe and contributing nothing at all.
Regulus watched from the dark and, despite himself, started ranking them.
James Potter. Brave, driven, and incapable of keeping a plan in his head once his blood got hot. Classic Gryffindor.
Sirius. Sharper than James, but still too willing to throw himself in before finishing the thought. Also Gryffindor.
Peter Pettigrew. Timid, dependent, and useless the moment things went bad. An unusual but somehow still fitting Gryffindor.
Watching their miserable attempt, Regulus didn't feel much.
Aside from a faint urge to laugh.
The Whomping Willow was Dumbledore's first layer of defense. Its attack rhythm wasn't random. Figure out the pattern and you could pass through it.
These three didn't know that. All they understood was brute force.
Then Regulus's eyes sharpened.
Under an old oak beside the Whomping Willow stood someone who definitely had not been there a moment ago.
Moonlight caught a long silver beard. Half-moon spectacles flashed once in the dark.
He stood there without moving, silently watching the three boys make fools of themselves. He looked less like a man who had walked over and more like something the moonlight had simply decided to shape into a person.
Dumbledore.
Regulus blinked.
His magical perception had been active the entire time. He hadn't sensed anyone approaching. Dumbledore had appeared as if from nowhere, like he'd been there all along and only now allowed himself to be noticed.
Dumbledore watched the boys for another moment. Then he turned his head.
His eyes crossed the bushes, passed through the silver light, and landed exactly where Regulus was standing under the Disillusionment Charm.
He tilted his head slightly and made a small gesture toward a path outside the Whomping Willow's reach.
Regulus understood at once.
Dumbledore had shown himself on purpose. Otherwise, Regulus never would've noticed him.
And maybe Dumbledore had known he'd come here in the first place.
Known Sirius and the others would come.
Known Regulus would still be awake. Known he might follow.
So he had simply waited.
One thought slid through Regulus's mind.
This old man doesn't even need to do anything. He just stands there and somehow becomes incomprehensible.
He let the Disillusionment Charm drop, stepped out from hiding, and walked toward the path Dumbledore had indicated.
Behind him, the three boys were still busy wrestling with the Whomping Willow, completely unaware that one person had emerged from the shadows while another quietly slipped away.
---
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