Rodolphus waved a hand.
The servants still clearing up froze, set their platters and glasses back on the long table, and withdrew without a sound.
The house-elves were faster. They vanished before the servants had even reached the door, gone without stirring the air.
The ballroom doors closed.
Bella stood at the center of the hall, wine glass still in hand.
Her gaze settled on Regulus. She didn’t speak right away.
She tilted her head back and drained the last mouthful, spun the glass once in her fingers, then set it on the edge of the nearest table.
She began to circle him. Heels on stone. Click. Click. Unhurried, each step landing before the echo of the last had fully died.
Then she laughed. Not the fervor she’d spread across a hundred faces during the speech. That performance was over.
This one was for him alone.
She’d finished addressing a hundred people. Now she wanted to play with one.
And this one couldn’t leave. He’d kept his father, his mother, his brother, his cousin all here. In her eyes, that was the sa as bringing the ceremony to her doorstep.
She’d been planning to go to Grimmauld Place, to make him bow in front of Orion and Walburga.
No need now. He’d assembled the audience himself.
So she could take her ti.
Regulus stood where he was, still, face blank.
She kept walking. Around to the front, past him, through most of the circle, back to his right.
"Everyone’s gone." Satisfaction bled through her tone, like an actress savoring an empty stage after the house had cleared.
She ca around to face him and stepped closer, leaning in toward his ear.
She was still taller than he was. When she bent, her curls spilled from her shoulder and nearly brushed his collar.
"You do pick your monts." Her voice dropped to a whisper, breath warm against his ear, tinged with wine.
Regulus didn’t move. Didn’t answer. Didn’t lean away even a fraction.
Bella pulled back half a step, mouth curling, eyes bright, gaze wandering across his face like she was examining sothing interesting she wasn’t ready to unwrap.
She started walking again, drifting to his left, footsteps slowing, voice dropping with them, quieter now.
"Does Auntie know what you’ve been up to?"
Her stride didn’t break. The hem of her skirt swept past his feet.
"Or is it only Uncle who knows?"
She continued around to the other side, and her pitch leaped back to full volu, sharp enough for every person in the hall to hear.
"You were right to stay, Regulus."
"We’re family. Everything can be worked out."
She turned to face him fully, raised a hand, and set it on his shoulder. Five fingers squeezed lightly, the gesture intimate.
"Regulus. My dear little cousin."
Two pats on his shoulder, and the hand slid away.
She stepped back. The smile stayed, warm and familiar, but behind her eyes the warmth was draining, degree by degree.
"I’m confused." She tilted her head, words slowing. "A Black family heir, openly sheltering half-bloods at Hogwarts. Two of them."
She held up two fingers and waggled them in the air. "Have you thought about what that ans?"
Regulus still said nothing. He stood, watching her.
Bella stared into those eyes, withdrew her hand, stepped back, tilted her head the other way, eyes narrowing a fraction.
"Or did you think word wouldn’t reach ?"
Regulus finally spoke.
"Cousin hears everything."
Bella’s motion hitched.
The answer caught her off guard, because the answer said nothing at all.
She’d circled him, spoken all those words, and Regulus gave her this?
No explanation. No defense. No admission. Nothing.
Her mouth curled again, though the arc was tighter than before. "I gave you advice. At Hogwarts."
She stepped forward. Her face hung less than a foot from his. "More than once."
Pupil to pupil.
"Why did you do it?"
He looked back at her and answered, brief. "Passing thing."
Bella’s expression locked. A muscle beneath her left eye twitched, quick, barely a flicker.
A passing thing?
He’d answered, but it was the sa as not answering.
This wasn’t what she wanted.
He could have said he cared about Pure-blood glory. He could have said the two half-bloods were tools to consolidate his standing in Slytherin, disposable once they’d served their purpose. He could have said it was a calculated political statent.
He could have told her to her face that he didn’t feel like listening to her.
He could have called it a deliberate provocation against the Pure-blood camp, even. Any of it.
But he said passing thing.
She needed sothing she could catch, sothing she could argue against, sothing that let the scene keep playing.
Passing thing gave her nothing to catch.
She retreated half a step, then lifted her brows, mouth bending upward again, as though sothing absurd had amused her.
"So?"
She tilted her head, wearing exaggerated bewildernt, repeating the word in a tone that was almost singsong.
"So?"
She turned it into a family anecdote, performing for everyone present.
"I wrote him a letter. Spent ages choosing the right words."
She swiveled toward Orion, then Walburga, hands spread, voice dripping with sincerity, like she was recounting sothing that had kept her up at night.
"Worried it was too gentle and he wouldn’t take it seriously. Worried it was too harsh and it’d damage what we have."
"And what did he write back? One word. So. In ketchup."
She laughed out loud, as though the whole affair were too ridiculous not to share, shaking her head, curls swaying against her shoulders.
Then she turned toward Walburga, eyes brimming with wounded dignity.
Confusion crossed Walburga’s face, chased quickly by mortification.
She’d known Regulus’s reply had been arrogant. She hadn’t imagined this.
So?
Ketchup?
The Black family heir, replying to his cousin in ketchup.
Her gaze shifted to Regulus. Her lips pressed into a line, disappointnt and anger tangled together with sothing less familiar: the sudden strangeness of her own son.
He was standing right in front of her, but she felt, for an instant, as though she didn’t know him.
He watched Bella with no expression at all, as though none of this concerned him.
He’d known this mont was coming. Everything he’d said at the dinner table had been a lie.
She glanced at Orion. He wasn’t looking at her. His gaze rested sowhere ahead, eyelids unmoving.
Sothing felt wrong. She couldn’t place it. She opened her mouth to speak, but Bella’s voice was already rising again.
She closed it.
When she looked at Regulus next, the warmth in her eyes had cooled.
She stole another glance at Orion. Did he know?
She didn’t want to follow that thought. She only knew that she felt, all at once, cold.
"Regulus, honestly, you couldn’t have used ink?"
Bella held up a hand, index finger hooking the air, shaking her head, the smile wide and helpless. "Ketchup. Do you know what my letter slled like that day?"
The hall was quiet enough to hear the candle wicks burning.
Bella pulled her gaze from Walburga and nailed it back onto Regulus.
Sa eyes. Sa curve of the mouth. But the whole face transmitted sothing different now.
"So what you’re telling is you don’t care." Her voice sank, the performance draining out of it. "Don’t care about my advice. Don’t care about that great wizard’s goodwill."
Her pupils contracted. "Don’t care about forever pure."
Regulus looked at her.
She’d said a great deal. He didn’t care to engage with any of it. Tedious. He couldn’t even muster the desire to argue.
Ti for the next step.
His gaze left her face, passed over her shoulder, and landed on the figure standing where the entrance t the ballroom. Rodolphus.
"Rodolphus. There’s sothing I’d like to discuss. Might as well do it tonight, face to face."
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