The Gothic vaulted ceiling of the banquet hall still stood, but that was about all that remained.
Not much ti had passed since the fighting started.
Outside the manor, most of the guests had already left. But a handful lingered, clustering in twos and threes on the flagstones or beneath the portico, chatting. That was how Christmas banquet socializing worked: those who couldn't get a word in during the event often ca alive once it ended, making new acquaintances, expanding their networks, arranging a tea for next week.
They'd seen it all, of course. The collapsing walls, the flying debris, firelight and black fog pouring from the shattered windows, explosions that shook the night sky.
Nobody went to look.
What shouldn't be seen goes unseen. What shouldn't be known stays unknown. There's a fight in there, and that's soone else's business. Seeing ans taking a position. Taking a position ans picking a side. Picking a side ans taking a risk.
Better not to look.
But nobody left early either, as though whoever walked away first would be admitting they had sothing to do with whatever was happening inside.
In the hall, Regulus stood at the edge of the flas.
White-blue light carved sharp outlines across the rubble on his half. On the other side, where the dark fog had just dispersed, the flagstones still bore the scars of corrosion. The ground there had been eaten down a visible layer, the stone surface pockmarked and crumbling to fine powder at the edges.
Regulus had sensed the change in Bellatrix before the fog cleared. His hostility perception and magical sense both reported back at once: her magic had fundantally shifted.
Before, when she'd used Dark magic, there had been darkness in it, but it was controlled, structured, directed.
Now all of that had shattered.
Only one thing remained in her magic. Emotion. Pure, unfiltered by any trace of reason. Rage, fanaticism, the hatred of sothing profaned, all poured in, driving every drop of magic in her body to a boil.
Emotional drive was the core property of Dark magic. Ordinary wizards had to deliberately summon emotion to fuel it. Bellatrix no longer needed to. Her emotion was her magic now.
The realization arrived faster than the image.
The onlookers had no idea what had happened inside that wall of darkness. All they saw was the black fog swallowing the banquet hall one mont and dissolving the next, two figures erging from the wreckage.
Bellatrix's left arm hung limp. Her right hand gripped her wand. Her gown had been torn to half its length, her face covered in ash and blood.
Regulus stood a dozen ters away, his robes finally dusted with gri, but uninjured.
No one had imagined that sothing beginning as a family conversation would escalate to this. And no one had imagined Regulus could fight Bellatrix to a standstill.
For a mont, they didn't know what they were looking at.
The next mont, they did.
"Avada Kedavra!"
Bellatrix's voice carried sothing none of these Blacks had ever heard from her. Shrill, torn, every syllable fractured, yet the spell's power was so imnse the air trembled.
A bolt of green light shot from her wand tip, splitting the dust above the ruins, flooding the entire hall with its glow. The light itself made no sound, but the air moaned low as it passed, as though sothing belonging to the living had been ripped from it.
Everyone froze.
If everything before had been a fight, this green light was murder.
An Unforgivable Curse.
Orion didn't look at Bellatrix, didn't look at Regulus, didn't look at the green light. He was watching Rodolphus.
Rodolphus stood by the doorfra. The green flash swept across his face, and his body instinctively retreated half a step. He wanted to do sothing. Stop Bellatrix, or leave, or at least find a less conspicuous place to stand.
But before his foot left the ground, he t Orion's gaze.
Orion stood right there, the barrier still holding, one hand resting on Walburga's wrist, the other hanging at his side with his wand. He hadn't pointed it at Rodolphus. He hadn't made any threatening gesture. He was simply looking at him.
The aning in those eyes was perfectly clear.
Your wife is casting the Killing Curse at my son. If anything happens to my son, you die first. If you try to run, you die faster.
Rodolphus pulled his foot back.
He could see it now. Orion was using his own son as bait, using Lestrange Manor as an execution ground, forcing Bellatrix to lose control on her own. And then enforcing the oldest family instinct with nothing but a look: Harm my heir, and I will tear the Lestrange na from the Pure-blood registry root and branch.
Rodolphus's hand trembled slightly inside his sleeve. He couldn't tell if it was anger or fear. If it was fear, he'd never feared anyone in his life. If it was anger, he should have charged forward instead of trembling against the wall.
Maybe it was a little of both. Either way, he didn't dare test it.
Even here, in the Lestrange family seat, if Orion was determined to kill him, neither the Anti-Apparition Charm nor the family wards would save him.
Only one thought filled his mind: The Blacks are all out of their goddamn minds.
Sirius lunged forward. Orion's hand shifted from his shoulder to the back of his collar and yanked him back, hard.
Narcissa let out a sharp cry. Lucius's eyes narrowed to slits. He caught her around the waist from behind and held her in place, his own expression unreadable.
Walburga watched Regulus raise his wand, green light glowing at its tip, aid at the woman kneeling in the rubble. Sothing more complex surfaced on her face.
Satisfaction.
And the deep, visceral pleasure of watching a woman who had hurled the Killing Curse at her son now kneeling on the ground, about to be put down with that sa green light. The complete inversion of power.
Orion's expression didn't change. He kept watching Rodolphus.
Rodolphus raised his wand. Got it halfway up. Then lowered it again.
He couldn't lift it.
All he could do was stand there and watch the green light grow brighter.
---
Regulus activated the Side-Shift Spell the instant the green bolt left her wand.
A dozen ters. He landed beside one of the hall's surviving stone pillars, feet barely touching down before his body was already facing Bellatrix. The green light tore across the hall and struck a broken column, which exploded from the impact point, cracks spreading like living things across the stone.
He glanced at the damage. His expression didn't change. Then he looked at Bellatrix.
She was already whipping out her second spell.
A purple beam, silent, without warning, shot from her wand tip in a flat trajectory, faster than the Killing Curse.
Regulus side-shifted again. Once he was steady, he looked at where the spell had landed. There was no visible explosion or crack where he'd been standing, just a point of purple light touching down and vanishing.
But what his magical sense picked up was sothing else entirely. Dangerous. Lethally dangerous.
He recognized the spell. In the tiline that was supposed to have been, Bellatrix had used it during the Battle at the Ministry of Magic. An unnad curse, dark, or more precisely, deep purple. No records of what it did on impact, but judging from the magical signature, a hit almost certainly ant total incapacitation. At worst, instant death.
The third spell was already incoming. Killing Curse.
Fourth. Cruciatus Curse.
Fifth. Another purple beam.
Bellatrix cast in rapid succession while moving, her feet crunching over rubble, direction unpredictable, changing her angle after every shot. Her attacks had no pattern left, her restraint completely gone in the grip of madness. Killing Curse, Cruciatus Curse, purple beams, Dark variants of blasting hexes, cycling through in alternation, sotis two spells launching simultaneously to cover both sides of his movent.
She used the explosions to box in his footwork, the Killing Curse and purple beams to herd him into traps she'd set, and threaded the Cruciatus between them to exploit his reaction gaps.
Insane, but thodical.
The killing instincts honed on real battlefields hadn't vanished with her loss of control. If anything, the total release of emotion made them more savage. She no longer cared about stamina. She no longer cared about consequences. Every spell had one purpose: to kill him.
Regulus moved at high speed through the wreckage, chaining Side-Shift Spells into Sprint Spells with minimal intervals, his silhouette flickering between rubble and shattered pillars.
A purple beam grazed the hem of his robes. Less than two inches.
He caught the gap between her rapid casts. His wand snapped toward Bellatrix's throat.
A suffocation Hex. Silent, invisible, no incantation required. Maximum surprise.
Bellatrix's throat clamped shut. A ragged, hacking gasp escaped her, and her whole body hitched, the spell she'd been casting cut short.
Regulus was about to follow up when her body vanished.
Crack. Apparition.
He wasn't surprised. Bellatrix was a Lestrange now. She had the authority. In her own manor, she could jump wherever she pleased.
She appeared twenty ters away at the far end of the hall, wand pressed to her throat, airway forced open, and sucked in a desperate breath.
Regulus flicked his wand to the right.
Black fla spiraled from the tip, stretching, solidifying, unfurling into a whip so thirteen or fourteen ters long. Dark red veins wound along its length, and the fire didn't radiate outward. It pulled inward, the surrounding air drawn into the whip by sheer heat.
His wrist turned. The entire whip carved a wide arc through the air and swept across the hall.
The air tore. A deep hum, then the whip's tip broke the sound barrier.
Crack!
The report split the silence. Flagstones where the tip grazed the ground lted on contact, leaving a blackened trench in its wake.
Bellatrix Apparated again, vanishing from the whip's path and reappearing seven or eight ters behind Regulus and to his right. The mont her feet hit the ground, two spells flew from her wand: a purple beam and a Killing Curse, one left, one right, both aid at his back.
Regulus had already side-shifted the instant she appeared.
He could have pinpointed her landing spot. He could sense the position the mont her spatial corridor opened. But not yet.
He dodged both spells, and as his feet touched down, the fire whip lashed out again, this ti cleaving downward from above.
She Apparated behind him, but this ti sothing went wrong.
Regulus had already turned. His wand was aid at the exact spot where she materialized, as though he'd been waiting.
Before she could blink out again, his spell arrived.
Bone-Lock Hex.
Every joint in Bellatrix's body seized. She froze mid-step, unable to move.
Regulus flicked his wand again, and she dropped to her knees.
Bellatrix knelt in the center of the ruins, but her head was tilted back. She stared up at Regulus, her face beyond all control. Lips twisted, jaw trembling, her eyes flickering between fury, chaos, and sothing deeper, sothing truly mad.
She knelt there like a sacrifice nailed to the wreckage.
Regulus held his wand at his side, looking down at her, his face utterly blank.
Then he raised it. The tip leveled at her face.
"Cousin Bella."
His voice was calm. Emotionless. "Goodbye."
Green light gathered at the wand's tip, falling across Bellatrix's upturned face, turning the ash and blood on her skin a sickly color.
"Avada..."
He drew the incantation out deliberately, and a thought flickered through his mind.
If you've got sothing left, now's the ti. If you don't, then this is it.
Bellatrix had thrown the Killing Curse at him. At this point, if he actually killed her, it was justified. That was simply how her fate fell.
The only pity was the wand. Kill soone with the Killing Curse, and it becos inconvenient to carry around afterward. At Hogwarts, at least, it wouldn't do.
Sirius threw himself forward again. Orion's hand moved from his shoulder to his collar and wrenched him back.
Narcissa had gone white as bone. She'd already broken free, and Lucius grabbed her from behind, arms locked around her waist, holding tight. His own face wore an expression he probably couldn't have nad.
Walburga watched Regulus raise his wand, green light at its tip, aid at the woman kneeling on the ground, and sothing surfaced on her face. Pleasure.
And the satisfaction of watching a woman who had fired the Killing Curse at her son now kneeling, about to be executed by that sa green light. Power, completely reversed.
Orion remained impassive. He kept watching Rodolphus.
Rodolphus raised his wand. Halfway up. Then lowered it.
He couldn't lift it.
All he could do was stand there, watching the green light grow brighter.
Bellatrix knelt on the ground, and a wild, twisted grin split her face. Magic surged violently inside her, compressing inward, crushing down to so critical threshold.
The next instant, a black shockwave erupted from her body. Solid, opaque.
Raw magical force expanding outward, too fast, too wide. It scoured the ground, grinding rubble to powder. It swept over the remains of stone pillars, the surfaces cracking and peeling away.
The bone-lock Hex shattered instantly, and all her joints unlocked.
Regulus barely had ti to throw up a Protego. The silver barrier splintered on impact, fragnts of light scattering outward like shrapnel. His Constant Protego triggered on reflex. Fused long ago with the guardian image of Bellatrix the star, its defensive power far exceeded a standard shield, absorbing nearly all of the force.
But the residual blast still sent him flying, hurling him over the rubble a dozen ters before he hit the ground and staggered, barely keeping his feet.
His robes were torn. His hair was finally out of place.
Still not injured.
A asured amount of dishevelnt.
It looked like enough.
Across the hall, Orion saw this and knew it was ti.
What they'd agreed on in the study. The Dark Awakening.
Regulus straightened from the rubble.
His consciousness plunged into his ntal space. Grey matter surged from the isolation zone of the Containnt Room, flowing along the channels laid out by the filtration layer, seeping outward. From the surface of his mind into his magical channels, then through every circuit, then through every pore.
His magic changed.
A grey film rose to the surface of his power, like fog, like a mbrane, settling over him, dimming his entire presence by a shade.
His eyes changed.
The calm, asured restraint that had always lived behind those eyes cracked open.
My expression is changing too.
The corners of his mouth pulled downward, carving a sharp arc, carrying the ghost of a suppressed smile, like sothing held down too long finally stretching toward release.
He walked out from the wreckage, stepping over broken stone. Grey magic seeped from his feet into the ground, and the rubble it touched darkened faintly.
He looked at the green light across the hall, and let a grin spread across his face. Brazen. Unrestrained.
---
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