The gargoyle moved aside before he could speak.
Stone wings folded back, revealing the spiral staircase behind it. Regulus stepped on, and it carried him upward in a slow, steady rotation.
His last visit had been in first year, at Dumbledore's invitation. This time he'd come on his own.
The staircase reached the top. The oak door stood ajar. He pushed it open and walked in.
The Headmaster's office was the same as before.
Portraits of former headmasters covered the walls. Most were dozing.
Regulus swept his gaze upward, settling on the portrait at the very top.
Phineas Nigellus Black. Green robes, silver cravat, posture rigid.
When he noticed Regulus, his eyes shifted, moving from the boy's face to his stance, then to the detail of his empty hands, no wand drawn.
A pause. Then he looked away, facing forward again, expression perfectly blank.
Regulus gave him a nod.
Phineas returned the faintest dip of his chin, and his gaze didn't wander back.
On the perch, Fawkes had his neck tucked in, head buried beneath one wing.
Regulus glanced at him and offered a polite greeting. "Good evening, Fawkes."
A wing shifted. The head stayed down. Not even an open eye.
Regulus shrugged.
Last time he'd been here, Dumbledore had said Fawkes liked him. That phoenixes could see souls. That his was pure and warm.
And yet the bird couldn't be bothered to look at him.
Had the old man been lying?
Dumbledore sat behind his desk in white robes. A tea set sat before him... two cups, the pot still trailing steam.
Two cups.
Something clicked in Regulus's mind.
Either the old man had known he'd come tonight, or he always kept an extra cup on the desk.
The first meant Dumbledore knew everything that happened in this castle. The second meant he was perpetually ready for whoever might walk through the door.
Either way, it was very Dumbledore.
"Good evening, Regulus." Dumbledore looked up with the ease of greeting an old friend dropping by, casual and warm. He nudged a teacup forward. "Sit. Tea?"
Regulus crossed to the desk, pulled back the chair, sat, and inclined his head slightly as he took the cup. "Good evening, Professor."
Dumbledore produced a dish of Sherbet Lemons from a drawer and set it in the center of the desk, then brought out a second dish of Cockroach Clusters and placed it beside the first.
He pushed the Cockroach Clusters toward Regulus, blinked twice, a glint of anticipation in his eyes, like someone sharing a personal treasure. "Try one?"
Regulus looked at the heap of brown, insect-shaped sweets. A few still had legs twitching, antennae quivering, as though they might crawl off the dish at any moment.
His expression stayed courteous. His body leaned back a fraction, polite but firm. "I'll pass, Professor."
Last visit, he'd asked Dumbledore a question: when eating Cockroach Clusters, did he ever check whether a real cockroach had gotten mixed in?
The old man hadn't answered directly. His eyes had flickered, and he'd stopped eating them.
Better prepared this time?
Dumbledore plucked a Cockroach Cluster from the dish, held it up to his eye, and tapped it once with the index finger of his other hand. A pale blue light flashed at his fingertip.
"I developed a little charm afterward, specifically to detect live cockroaches hiding among the sweets. See? Perfectly clean. You can eat them without worry."
A note of pride crept into his voice, even satisfaction, as though he'd finally resolved a problem that had nagged at him for some time.
Regulus held his teacup and made no move toward the dish. "Can it detect all cockroaches?"
Dumbledore's hand hovered in place. A note of puzzlement entered his voice. "What do you mean?"
Regulus sipped his tea, tone casual. "Ground beetles, wood roaches, lobster cockroaches, sugarcane roaches, spotted roaches. They look nothing like common cockroaches, but they're all relatives. Cockroaches, technically. If your charm identifies them by appearance, it might miss them entirely."
He watched Dumbledore's hand frozen in midair and added, "There's also the hooded cockroach. Lives in rotting wood. Looks like a cross between a cockroach and a stonefly. And armored cockroaches, shells so hard they don't resemble ordinary roaches at all. And ant cockroaches, which look like ants."
A beat of kindness at the end: "If your charm can't catch those, it's not really the charm's fault."
Dumbledore's fingers still pinched the Cockroach Cluster. Behind the spectacles, blue eyes blinked twice.
He looked down at the sweet in his hand. Then at the ones still on the dish. Without any visible change in expression, he eased the entire plate to the side, away from Regulus and away from himself.
"The Sherbet Lemons are safe." He pushed the other dish forward, voice returned to normal, though the earlier pride had vanished from his eyes.
The corner of Regulus's mouth curved. He raised his cup and took another sip.
The old man was something else, devising a charm solely to verify his candy's safety.
Most people would call that absurd. For Dumbledore, it was probably a passing thought while eating sweets, executed with a flick of the wrist, a few seconds' work.
"How have things been?" Dumbledore settled back in his chair, tone conversational.
"Fine," Regulus set down his cup. "Homework's all done."
"Professor Slughorn has mentioned you to me. Several times, in fact." A smile crossed Dumbledore's face. "He says your potions talent is remarkable but your interest lies elsewhere. It troubles him."
"Potions aren't my path."
"I know. Magic is vast, and there's always something more compelling." Dumbledore nodded. "Though if Horace heard you say that, he'd probably be even more troubled."
Regulus smiled, picked up a Sherbet Lemon, chewed it twice, and decided against a second.
Too sweet.
Enough small talk.
"Professor." He looked at Dumbledore, his pace unchanged, unhurried and even. "I need help."
A small shift passed across Dumbledore's expression.
Not quite surprise, not quite expectation. More like hearing something he'd known would come eventually, though he hadn't expected it tonight.
He leaned forward, hands folded on the desk, blue eyes resting on Regulus with a gentle focus. "What kind of help?"
"I may encounter certain situations over the holiday," Regulus said. "I need an escape method. One that works anywhere, unrestricted by Anti-Apparition Charms."
Dumbledore didn't answer immediately.
Anywhere.
Unrestricted.
The locations where Anti-Apparition Charms applied were few. Pure-blood family manors. The deep vaults of Gringotts. Certain areas within the Ministry of Magic. Azkaban and Hogwarts.
But Regulus was talking about the holiday. During the holiday he wouldn't be at Hogwarts, the Ministry, or the Gringotts vaults. And presumably not Azkaban.
That left Pure-blood family manors.
Christmas. The Pure-blood families would hold their banquet. This year the Lestranges were hosting, and the Blacks would certainly attend.
But what level of threat at the Lestrange banquet would make Regulus feel he couldn't handle it alone?
Dumbledore ran through everything he knew of Regulus's capabilities.
Spatial magic, Starlight Kite, Fiendfyre, Verdant Magic, Transfiguration. All of these abilities combined meant conventional threats posed no real danger.
Even against multiple opponents, he had Fiendfyre for area suppression, spatial magic for maneuverability, and Starlight Kite to slip away entirely. In a many-against-one scenario, that configuration was more advantage than liability.
Dumbledore was speculating, of course. He'd never witnessed Regulus fighting at full capacity. But based on everything he knew, the assessment held.
So Regulus hadn't come for help against numbers.
Dumbledore knew what Regulus had been doing lately.
He'd openly taken two half-blood students under his wing in Slytherin, seated them in the core section of the long table. It had caused a considerable stir within the house.
The two students now kept close to Regulus's circle, following before and after every class.
That alone might have drawn displeasure from certain quarters.
And then there was Lily Evans.
Dumbledore knew Regulus had been teaching her magic. Protego, shoring up her fundamentals, combat practice. Now he'd moved on to the Patronus Charm.
A Pure-blood Slytherin heir, teaching a Muggle-born Gryffindor witch to conjure a Patronus. Across houses, across blood status, sustained for nearly a full term.