The group came into a more open stretch to the west, old trees spaced further apart, gaps in the canopy showing deep blue sky.
Regulus raised a hand and swept it lightly before him. The Disillusionment Charm peeled away starting from his head.
Then the ripples came apart layer by layer, his shape sharpening out of the blur, and he stood square in the dusk.
Cuthbert had been waiting, a bellyful of grievance ready, and closed in the moment he appeared.
Alex turned too, shoulders dropping, breath going out of him.
Lina and Samuel looked over at the same instant. Neither had seen Regulus come out of invisibility before, and they watched that patch of air twist and resolve without blinking once.
Hermes only flicked his eyelids, glanced over, and put his eyes back on the forest depths, neck craning forward slightly. He looked ready to walk straight in.
Cuthbert spoke first, thick with resentment. "Where does he get off!"
His face had been cold the whole way from the hut.
A Slytherin held himself well. The Cuthbert heir held himself better. Nobody in the group had said a word.
Now, with nobody around and Regulus visible again, the pressure found somewhere to go.
"Same detention," he said, heat under it. "All smiles and jokes for that pack of lions, and for us one cold face and not a full sentence between them."
It wasn't that he wanted Hagrid's warmth. The Cuthbert heir had no need of it. What was a gamekeeper's goodwill worth?
It was the two faces, worn that openly.
What Slytherin was, what a Cuthbert was, even a first-year a week into term understood. The professors understood better.
And not one professor had ever treated him differently. Not in a classroom, not in a corridor, not anywhere.
Now some gamekeeper left him standing out in the cold, and it sat badly.
"A gamekeeper." Cuthbert's mouth twisted, contempt all through it. "Putting on airs."
Regulus wasn't about to take Hagrid's side, but he didn't join in either. He knew the shape of Hagrid's history and couldn't be bothered holding it against him.
"He came out of Gryffindor." The tone stayed easy. "And Dumbledore trusts him."
A glance at Cuthbert, no weight added. "Not worth fighting."
Cuthbert snorted. Of course he wasn't going to fight the big man.
Consider who he was and who that was. Spending any effort on Hagrid at all would be embarrassing.
The man watched trees. Did his labor with his own two hands, as if he had no wand. Put unkindly, where was the difference between him and a Muggle?
"I'm not fighting him," Cuthbert muttered. "I just can't stand that face he pulls."
The more he talked the angrier he got. "Professors would never do that. But him, he flips in a heartbeat, can't even walk us out to a job without playing favorites!" He finished with, "Like anyone wanted it!"
Regulus let that pass. Privately he thought the business had roots.
Hagrid's prejudice against Slytherin traced back not just to the House but to the House's heir.
Tom Riddle had hung a murder on him. Wand snapped in half, thrown out of school. Anyone would carry that grudge to the grave.
Given all that, the fact that Hagrid managed no worse than a cold face said something for the man's decency.
Someone pettier, handed a few Slytherin children in the Forbidden Forest, would have had no end of options.
Point them down the wrong path. Leave a snare unmentioned. Afterward, I did tell them not to go in deep, and no one could fault a word of it.
Hagrid hadn't. He'd sent his dog along to guide them instead. Decent enough. Small wonder Dumbledore trusted him.
None of which Regulus intended to say aloud. Voldemort's history needed covering.
He looked at Cuthbert again, and his thoughts took another turn.
If the slight really rankled that badly, there was a way to settle it once and for all.
Cuthbert only had to die out here tonight, and Hagrid was finished.
An heir of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, dead during a detention Hagrid oversaw, dead under the nose of the dog Hagrid sent. Dumbledore could shield him all he liked and it wouldn't hold. Packed up and out of Hogwarts at minimum.
And once he was out of Hogwarts, short of Dumbledore guarding him personally, he wouldn't last long.
Weighed that way, the price of Hagrid's cold face was one Cuthbert could comfortably afford.
The Cuthbert heir, straight trade, one life for one. No losses on that ledger. Pity Cuthbert would balk at putting himself up.
His eyes drifted to Lina and Samuel.
No good there. Not enough weight. Half-bloods, no family behind them. Die in the Forbidden Forest and the ripple would be nothing. The papers might not spare two lines. Hagrid wouldn't lose a hair.
The thought passed through and went. Regulus scanned what they'd gathered. Almost no Moonlight Moss to speak of.
Hermes had no intention of bending down at all. He leaned against a trunk with his hands in his pockets, gaze wandering off into the trees.
Cuthbert was still fuming, wand turning over between his fingers.
Alex, at least, had started. He crouched by a scatter of broken stone, digging moss out of the cracks with his fingertips, half a handful in.
Samuel and Lina had spread out a little, heads down, searching between roots and rocks.
"That special ingredient moss," Regulus said. "How do you plan to find it?"
He tipped his chin at that field of broken light. "By eye?"
Cuthbert blinked, looked down at the mess of glow around his own feet, then over at the small handful in Alex's hand.
Alex caught on first. He tucked the moss into his cloth bag, stood, and brushed the dirt off his knees.
Something was about to be taught.
Lina and Samuel straightened as well, traded a glance, and stayed where they were.
Regulus took stock.
Hermes, Alex, Cuthbert had all trained with him a good while. The foundations were there.
Lina and Samuel had never trained properly. What they knew came out of lessons, which was enough for a classroom and not enough for him.
Yesterday's fight, though, they'd all fought together.
The two of them had taken Peter down between them, clean work. Whatever the quality of the opposition, they'd gone in with the group and held the line.
Since they'd moved against another party as one body, and the chance had come round, he'd teach them together.
Call it a reward. Something given should get something back.
Alex came over, dragging Lina and Samuel along with him.
Both of them lit up.
Lina's eyes shone in that half-lit world, the grin refusing to stay off her mouth, and she hauled Samuel by the arm toward Regulus.
Samuel raised his head. The two looked at each other, found the same excitement staring back, and turned to face him together.
Hermes shuffled over too, eyelids low, gaze settling on Regulus.
Cuthbert came round last of all. The wand stopped turning in his fingers, Hagrid long since dropped from his mind.
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