Back in the dormitory, he tossed Hermes onto the bed and left him there.
A quick wash, and Regulus lay down himself, letting his consciousness sink inward.
At the center of the star orbits, the figure was still there. Small, glowing and standing where all the light converged.
He watched it, and that strange feeling rose again.
So this was a soul.
He'd heard countless things said about souls.
Dark magic damaged them. The Killing Curse destroyed them. The Cruciatus Curse tore them. The Imperius Curse twisted them.
Nearly every wizard knew these claims. Could rattle off a line or two about the soul without thinking.
But what was a soul, exactly?
What shape did it take?
How did it exist?
What was its true relationship to the body?
Few people knew. Regulus did now.
He looked at the figure and thought about the wizards who truly stood at the summit.
Dumbledore knew. That was certain.
In the future that was supposed to happen, Dumbledore drank the poison and his consciousness nearly died. What had he seen in that state?
The books never said. But afterward, he'd told Harry: "What I saw at King's Cross Station, Harry, I will not tell you."
More important still, when the Killing Curse struck Harry and he arrived in that space between life and death, Dumbledore's soul had been waiting. Guiding him.
Dumbledore could not only perceive the soul. He could preserve consciousness after death, hold a conversation with the living.
His understanding of the soul ran far deeper than anything Regulus had reached.
Of course it did. He was Dumbledore.
And Voldemort?
Voldemort was the only wizard known to have systematically observed, split, and manipulated his own soul. He'd torn it apart through murder, sealed the fragments into Horcruxes, and ensured his survival beyond the destruction of his body.
But his observation was pathological. He saw the soul and treated it as a tool.
A thought surfaced unbidden. When Voldemort split his soul, how had he done it?
Piece by piece, like hacking off limbs? Cut away the left arm, then the right leg, until nothing remained but a head serving as the primary soul?
Or layer by layer, peeling it back? Each Horcrux dimming the whole a little more, until at the end he couldn't even hold a human shape?
Regulus looked at the small glowing figure.
What did Voldemort's soul look like now?
Mangled and incomplete, limbs missing? Or just... dim? A grey, faded thing too weak to hold its own light?
He didn't know. He'd never split a soul, and those who had weren't exactly giving interviews.
If the chance ever came, he'd genuinely like to see for himself.
Dumbledore and Voldemort were the greatest wizards alive. Their understanding of the soul was only natural.
Curiosity aside, what he really wanted was to confirm with his own eyes what a soul looked like after being put through that kind of abuse.
Voldemort probably wouldn't agree to a viewing. That was a problem.
Regulus pulled his thoughts back.
Dumbledore and Voldemort. Both at the peak. Both with their own grasp of the soul. But the roads they'd walked couldn't have been more different.
Dumbledore explored inward. What he saw was essence. Voldemort exploited outward. What he saw was a resource.
Beyond them, there was one unexpected observer: Harry Potter.
At King's Cross Station, Harry had seen Voldemort's ruined soul.
That was the only time in the original story that a living wizard directly witnessed another person's soul in its raw form.
But the world was vast. There had to be more than just these few exceptions.
The Unspeakables at the Ministry of Magic studied time, love, emotion, the soul. They had to have something worth knowing. Perhaps even complete records of soul observation.
And Grindelwald?
Regulus refused to believe he couldn't see his own soul. That level of mental will, that mastery over the magic of the mind... it would be stranger if he couldn't.
Regulus stopped thinking about them and turned his attention to himself. He didn't know what it meant that he could already see his soul.
Good, or bad?
The small figure still had room to grow. He had no doubt he'd eventually reach their level, no doubt that when he did, perceiving the soul would come naturally.
But now was too early. Twelve years old. Second year.
Yet when he traced the process back, every step had been organic.
Star Guided Meditation. Five stars in orbit. Bellatrix ignited as guardian. Then, in the deepest layer of his mental landscape, asking himself that question over and over. Who am I?
He kept asking, and eventually, he saw.
No outside force. No accident. Nothing tainted slipping in. Every step had been his own.
So it probably wasn't a bad thing.
Then again, Voldemort had been splitting his soul by fifth year. All Regulus had done was learn to see his.
Put it that way, and it didn't seem like much.
Whether splitting and seeing were necessarily connected, he couldn't say. Either way, it didn't matter. He set it aside.
He continued cataloguing the changes.
Self-knowledge had solidified. Not just intellectual certainty but something confirmed from the inside out. He didn't just know who he was. He'd seen it.
That probably meant his magical perception would break past the material plane.
Seeing the soul might mean his awareness had entered a conceptual layer. From sensing magic to sensing existence itself.
And then there was the absolute confirmation of self.
To see the soul was to see the unchangeable "I."
From this point forward, any force that tried to alter his essential nature, the erosion of the Dark Awakening, attacks on the level of cognition, tampering at the level of the soul, none of it could bypass his defenses.
Because he'd seen the core that needed guarding. Against soul-level assault, he now held a natural shield.
When he knew what his soul was supposed to look like, he could detect the moment something tried to change it. That was leagues beyond Occlumency.
Occlumency defended against intrusion into consciousness. What he had now defended against the alteration of existence itself.
Every attack that entered would first pass through its light. Disguises stripped bare. Alterations denied purchase.
Bellatrix had illuminated the boundary of self. Seeing the soul was an extension of that.
The star guarded the border. The soul was what lay within it.
If Bellatrix told him who he was, seeing the soul showed him where that "I" resided.
Together, his mental defense was no longer a simple barrier. It was absolute confirmation, built on direct knowledge of his own nature.
Regulus let the soul go and moved to the next thing. The sixth star of Orion.
Astronomical data surfaced in his mind. Lower right of the constellation. Together with Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, and Rigel, it formed the great quadrilateral.
Its Arabic name meant "Sword of the Giant." Six hundred and fifty light-years from Earth. Fifteen or sixteen solar masses. Surface temperature: twenty-six thousand degrees.
The characteristics were interesting.
Most of its energy radiated in the ultraviolet spectrum, invisible to the naked eye. It appeared dim, but its true luminosity was immense.
And it would end its life in a supernova.
Invisible edge.
An ending written in fire.
Regulus turned the analysis over. If Betelgeuse was a fist and Bellatrix a shield, then the sixth star should be a sword.
A fist could swing. A shield could rise. But a sword belonged in its sheath.
No display. No flash of edge. Yet everyone knew it was there.
When the time came to draw it, the outcome was already decided.
The image was clear.
So what were the conditions to ignite it?
He considered several directions.
It might require the first time he actively imposed a decisive influence outward, rather than reacting to something.
It might be seeing through what others couldn't, and using that clarity to achieve a goal.
It might mean accepting that the edge would bring destruction, and choosing to wield it anyway.
Or perhaps the soul-figure needed to hold it.
He imagined the scene. Starlight flowing toward the figure, condensing in its hand into the shape of a blade.
Maybe the figure wasn't meant to be nourished by the starlight. Maybe it was meant to grasp it.
Regulus held these thoughts as he turned his attention to the star field within his mind.
Five stars in orbit. Positions fixed. Paths clear. He began constructing a new model, placing the sixth star into the system.
Past experience told him this kind of work demanded extensive calculation. Orbital parameters. Gravitational influence. The balance of magical flow. Each step took hours of tuning, round after round of adjustment.
This time was different.
The moment he focused, the data appeared as if it already knew where to go. Numbers arranging themselves without effort.
Not as though he'd calculated them. As though the stars had offered them up.
Betelgeuse's eruption. Bellatrix's guardianship. The belt's order. All of them telling him exactly where the sixth star belonged.
He tried adjusting the position. There was nothing to adjust. It was already there.
He placed the sixth star's model into the system, and the six stars moved on their own.
Orbits shifting. Distances fine-tuning. Each one adapting to the others. The whole process took less than ten minutes before a new equilibrium settled into place.
Six stars, each where it belonged. The sixth was alight.
Faint and weak. Barely more than a glimmer. But it was burning, connected to the other five, forming a new whole.
Five and a half.
Regulus studied the new star and tried to draw on its image.
Nothing came.
Not like Betelgeuse, whose force could fold into the Blasting Curse. Not like Bellatrix, whose nature could merge with protection.
The sixth star simply hung there, glowing faintly, supplementing Star Guided Meditation itself.
The system's stability had increased. Magical flow ran smoother. Perception sharpened further. But the star's image wouldn't answer his call.
Regulus thought it might have something to do with its invisible edge.
Or perhaps he needed to do something first. Experience something. A kind of ritual.
He guessed it was the latter.
For now, it was only a glimmer. Only part of the system. When it would truly ignite, he didn't know.
He looked toward the center of the star orbits.
The figure stood there, glowing. Light from six stars washing over it.
Regulus withdrew from his mind. Five and a half stars turned quietly in the depths of his consciousness.
He slept.
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