Harry Potter: Reborn as Regulus Black

The elves cleared the hot dishes and brought out dessert and after-dinner wine.

Narcissa poured for herself and Lucius. Regulus’s sparkling water was topped up as well.

Lucius sipped his wine, and the conversation drifted outward, to matters beyond the manor.

"It’s been a busy stretch." He swirled the glass, excitement he couldn’t quite flatten out of his voice. "The Dark Lord rarely appears these days. Most assignments go to those beneath him while he handles his own affairs elsewhere. Where he goes, what he does, none of it is explained to us. Even I can’t place him. Sometimes word arrives after passing through two or three hands."

Regulus listened over his glass, giving away nothing.

Voldemort had pulled himself out of sight, handing recruitment to Lucius and men like him, keeping for himself whatever nobody else could do and nobody else could be allowed to know.

All that expansion and courting of allies was scaffolding to him. It had never been what he cared about.

What he cared about was outliving everyone. Deathlessness. Transcendence.

And every step of that road he had to walk alone. Creating a Horcrux, hiding it, guarding it, not one part of it could be touched by another hand.

"If the Dark Lord attends to it personally," Regulus said easily, following the thread, "it must be important."

Lucius nodded, apparently taking that for agreement, as though Regulus shared his sense that great things were being set in motion.

Which was what Lucius wanted to hear, and the signal he’d come to send tonight.

He stood close to the Dark Lord. His information was good. Stand beside him and you’d never miss which way the wind turned.

Regulus read a different layer beneath it. Voldemort trusted the Malfoys not at all, not Lucius, not Abraxas.

The essential work he did alone.

Lucius believed himself inside the circle. He hadn’t found its edge.

"Last month, a Muggle village near Little Hangleton was emptied overnight. Cleanly. A batch of Inferi came out of it."

To Lucius, that was splendid news.

Slaughter a village of Muggles, raise a company of Inferi, and you were building strength. A sign that the real work was coming, the thing he’d waited years for.

He set down his glass, light in his eyes, satisfaction running through every word. "All these years of restraint, all these years of wagering. This is what it was for. The good days for Pure-bloods are ahead of us."

Regulus nodded along. His own reading ran otherwise.

Strength was being gathered, certainly. But Voldemort hardly needed to butcher a village to gather it.

A village of Muggles, a batch of Inferi. That was nothing to a man of his power.

Inferi burned. What competent wizard couldn’t set a fire?

Beyond frightening Muggles and stirring panic, they were worthless in an open fight.

But in confined terrain, guarding something, they’d suit perfectly.

Little Hangleton. The old Riddle house stood in that area, and the Gaunt family’s ancestral hovel wasn’t far off.

An image surfaced: a cave by the sea, and bodies in the water.

Line up the dates, and this batch of Inferi might well be the ones destined for that cave.

Strange, how convinced he was that the place and he were bound together.

His appointed place. His promised ground. He rather wanted to see it.

Wake that crowd of Inferi and find out whether they could actually drag him under.

Or take it a step further, and send House-elves in and out of that cave. Not his own, obviously.

He glanced at Lucius, and an entertaining thought surfaced.

Your elves are well made. Well trained, obedient. Someday I’ll invent a reason to send one in, then let you learn what’s down there. And we’ll see whether a man of your manners pretends he never heard, or wades in after me.

He let it go. Ideas only, for now.

"The werewolf business was handed to me," Lucius went on. "You saw today. Hardly a great matter."

His mouth curled with undisguised distaste. "Carrying messages, nothing more. You can’t reason with animals. It costs no effort, only patience." He sipped his wine. "The giants are further off and harder work. Old Avery drew that one."

Regulus listened in silence.

Werewolves. Giants. More would follow. Voldemort was assembling an inhuman army.

"The Ministry has loosened up too." Lucius set his glass down, tone growing more casual. "Several positions are held by our own people now. There are contacts inside the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Certain cases get filed and then sit, and nothing ever comes of them."

He smiled. "Even at Azkaban, the Dementors have come around. When the Dark Lord has need of them, they’ll answer."

Regulus held his glass and said nothing.

The Ministry’s rot hadn’t started yesterday. It was fixed the day Minchum took office. A Minister with neutrality always on his lips never sees what his people are doing.

The Department of Magical Law Enforcement was the heart of enforcement, and the Auror Office sat under it.

People inside there meant Auror movements leaking out ahead of time and important cases quietly buried.

The Dementors mattered most. Compared to werewolves and giants, those were the real problem.

However savage a werewolf or a giant, a competent wizard who couldn’t beat one could still Apparate, still use a Portkey, still get out.

Dementors were another matter. Spells didn’t touch them. Physical force didn’t touch them. They flew, which made running hard and blocking harder.

Fighting them meant a Patronus, and the wizards in Britain who could produce a corporeal one could be counted on your fingers.

Lucius glanced at Narcissa before speaking again. "I saw Bellatrix not long ago."

"She isn’t what she was. She talks less. She’s... quiet."

Narcissa’s hand paused on her dessert fork, and her eyes lifted to Lucius.

He shielded her from this sort of thing. He’d never brought Bella’s condition to her before.

Hearing it now, in front of Regulus, was the first she’d known of it.

Worry crossed her face, and then she looked at Regulus, and the worry withdrew.

She dropped her gaze, pushed at the dessert on her plate, her fingers tightening on the fork’s handle and easing again. She said nothing.

Lucius took her hand. She turned to him and he gave the smallest nod, and she pressed her lips together, and everything passed between them unspoken.

Regulus watched all of it and let it go by.

A quiet Bella was good news, as far as it went.

She hated him. That much was certain. But a snarling, clawing Bella was only ever what she was.

Fanatical, yes. Skilled, not particularly. She hit hard and folded fast.

That Bella had never occupied a corner of his mind.

Quiet was different.

Hearing Lucius describe her, this Bella who didn’t rage or shriek held his attention far better than the old one.

That fervor had always been her engine, all the madness thrown outward. The harder it poured out, the more clearly there was nothing else inside her.

She’d stopped pouring. Something might be gathering inward instead.

Only Voldemort could still a woman like her. Training her himself, perhaps. Her loyalty and her faith had their uses to him.

He found himself half looking forward to their next meeting. It might prove interesting.

"She’s with the Dark Lord, at any rate." Narcissa’s voice came in softly, turning the subject. "She won’t want for anything."

She lifted a hand toward the elves. "Bring something else sweet. This jelly has gone cold."

Lucius smiled along with her and let Bella drop.

Narcissa asked Regulus a few things about school, and whether there was any girl he’d taken an interest in.

He shook his head and looked at Lucius. Lucius’s eyes widened slightly, at a loss as to why he’d become the subject. Narcissa looked at Lucius too, eyes narrowing a fraction.

The meal ran late into the night.

Regulus rose to leave, and Lucius walked him to the manor gates.

"Come again." Lucius tapped his cane against his leg, at ease.

Regulus nodded, and with a crack he was gone into the dark.

---

At Grimmauld Place the lamps were out and the curtains drawn.

Baruk rolled across the pillow, flipped belly-up, kicked eight legs at the ceiling, and rolled back, the dark red bristles catching a faint shine in the dark.

Regulus lay on the bed.

The Dark Lord abroad on his own business meant something enormous coming.

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