Chapter 28: The First-Year Chief
They faced one another at a measured distance, wands raised, and bowed with the barest courtesy.
"Begin," Narcissa announced.
Hermes moved the instant the word left her mouth.
"Tickling Jinx!"
A sharp flick, a clean line of silver, and the spell snapped through the air towards Regulus. It was not the most vicious opening, but it was fast, and it carried the intent of taking control of the pace.
Regulus did not even shift his feet.
He lifted his wand in a lazy arc and released a matching burst of silver. The two lights met perfectly in mid air and shattered into a spray of glittering fragments that winked out like falling sparks.
Hermes did not pause to admire the collision.
"Leg Locker Curse!"
A strip of blue light skated low along the ground, aiming for Regulus's ankles.
Regulus tapped his wand tip to the stone.
An unseen barrier rose in front of him with the simplicity of a door being closed. The curse struck it and kicked upward at an angle, as if it had hit a slanted ramp, then flew harmlessly towards the wall and faded.
Hermes's jaw tightened.
"Impedimenta!"
He tried to slip the third spell in without warning, as if the speed alone could make up for the gap.
"Impedimenta," Regulus replied, calm as a tutor correcting a student's pronunciation.
Two identical curses slammed together in the centre of the clearing with a dull double thud.
Hermes's spell broke first.
Regulus's did not. It punched through the collision and kept coming.
Hermes threw himself into a roll, robes flaring, and came up looking suddenly less composed, wand clutched hard, breath sharper than before.
The younger students at the edge of the crowd widened their eyes. Several older ones nodded, openly pleased.
It was impossible to miss what was happening. Regulus's magic was not merely stronger. It was cleaner, steadier, and more controlled, as if every spell had been filed down to its most efficient shape.
And Regulus still did not attack.
He simply stood within the small patch of space where he had begun, blocking or deflecting each strike with the minimum movement required.
A Binding Curse was brushed aside as if it were a nuisance.
Incendio flared and was smothered at once by Aguamenti.
Some spells he did not even counter with magic. He slid his shoulder a fraction, leaned a breath to the left, and let the light pass.
From start to finish, his expression barely shifted. He did not look like a boy fighting. He looked like someone demonstrating, quietly, how fighting should be done.
Hermes, however, was no ordinary first year.
His casting grew quicker, his choices more cunning, the rhythm of his attacks showing a foundation that could not have come from a single month of lessons. Someone had trained him long before Hogwarts.
Yet the more he pushed, the paler he became. His breathing grew heavier, and the tightness around his eyes began to show.
Because Hermes was not stupid.
He could see it.
Regulus was not using his full strength. Regulus might not even be trying.
That effortless refusal to take him seriously was worse than any direct insult. It turned every spell Hermes cast into proof of his own inadequacy.
"Is all you can do hide, Black?" Hermes growled.
Anger flashed in his eyes, something sharper beneath it, something that did not belong in a school duel.
He stopped the rapid fire sequence and raised his wand high.
His voice changed, dropping into a deeper, more convoluted cadence. The air around the wand tip seemed to tighten, as if the light itself were being pulled thin.
A dark red glow gathered, thickening into something almost black. The temperature in the Common Room dipped, subtle but unmistakable.
Several older students frowned at once.
Lucretius took a step forward, as if preparing to intervene.
Narcissa's brow furrowed, her fingers tightening around her wand.
But Hermes was already past the point of stopping.
"Bone and Blood Stripping!"
The final syllables hissed out like a threat.
A beam of dark red, nearly black light shot violently towards Regulus, carrying a coldness that felt like pain made visible.
Dark Arts.
Even weakened and incomplete, even wrapped in the excuse of a duel, its vicious nature was obvious. A chorus of gasps ran through the room, followed by a silence so sharp it felt physical.
Regulus's eyes changed, only slightly.
The calm remained, but something within it sharpened into certainty.
So this is what you brought with you, he thought, not surprised at all.
He could feel it clearly. Hermes had used this kind of magic on a living person before.
Family heritage.
Regulus stopped responding with first year textbook counters.
He pointed his wand forward with the smallest motion imaginable.
No incantation. No flourish.
A silver barrier appeared in front of him, solid as a crystal wall. Its surface flowed with complex, orderly ripples, precise and calm, as if it had been built from rules rather than force.
The dark beam hit it.
A grating sizzle rose at the point of contact, like metal being eaten by acid.
Dark red light crawled across the silver surface, trying to erode it, frantic and hungry.
It could not get through.
For two seconds, the room watched a pure contest of intent and control.
Then, under Hermes's widening eyes, the dark beam began to lose momentum. It thinned, flickered, and collapsed into nothing.
The silver barrier did not crack. It did not even waver.
The moment the dark light vanished, Regulus moved.
Not fast. Precise.
He stepped forward once. A speck of red glowed at his wand tip.
"Expelliarmus."
The red bolt struck Hermes in the chest like a snapped whip.
"Crack!"
Hermes's wand flew high, spinning in a clean arc.
Regulus caught it neatly with his free hand as though he had been expecting exactly that trajectory.
The duel was over.
From the instant Hermes unleashed the Dark Arts spell to the moment Regulus dismantled it and disarmed him, less than five seconds passed. Many students had not even finished processing what they had seen before it ended.
The Common Room fell into a dead silence.
Hermes stood frozen, his right hand still lifted in the posture of holding a wand that was no longer there. His body trembled faintly. His face had gone paper pale, and his eyes looked hollow, as if he could not accept that the weapon he trusted most had been stopped so cleanly.
Regulus walked forward and held out Hermes's wand.
His voice did not carry triumph. It did not carry disgust, either. There was no moral lecture, no performance. Only calm evaluation.
"A good attempt," Regulus said. "But the spell structure was unstable, and your magic supply was intermittent. Next time you use it, you had better stop thinking about restraint and start thinking about killing me."
The word landed like ice.
Kill, spoken evenly by an eleven year old boy, sent a chill through the room that had nothing to do with the fading cold from the dark spell.
The older students reacted first.
Lucretius's eyebrows shot up, and for a brief moment his expression showed open approval, almost pleased surprise.
Nearby, several fifth and sixth years from the pure blood core exchanged looks and began whispering.
"Did you hear that? 'Start thinking about killing me.'"
"Merlin. From a first year."
A seventh year girl from the Carrow family licked her lips, eyes bright with intensity.
"He isn't fussy about the Dark Arts. He knows what they are. That is how a Slytherin should be."
"The House of Black might have produced someone truly formidable this time," a boy from the Nott family murmured, his tone edged with caution.
To them, Regulus's attitude was not simple cruelty. It was objectivity. He evaluated the caster's skill and ignored the inherent evil of the tool, as if morality did not affect efficiency.
For certain ancient families, that was not a flaw. It was a virtue.
Alex Rosier's lips parted as if he meant to speak.
He looked at Hermes, still pale and shaking, then at Regulus, calm and unmoved.
The words hovered at the tip of his tongue. This was only a match. Talking about killing is too far. Dark Arts are wrong.
But when Regulus's gaze swept past him, Alex's thoughts froze. All that childish certainty shrank into his throat. He dropped his eyes to his shoes, panic tightening his chest.
Avery Cuthbert felt something different.
After the incident in Flying class, he had convinced himself the gap between him and Regulus was not impossible, that cleverness and effort could close it.
Now the difference stood in plain sight.
He clenched his fists. Then, slowly, he forced them open again. He did nothing, only watched the centre of the room with an expression that twisted between frustration and unwilling respect.
Hermes finally moved.
The hollowness in his eyes snapped into focus, locking onto Regulus with humiliation, shock, fear, and something like desperation.
He had hesitated. Of course he had. He did not dare, and he could not, truly unleash the full power of that curse in front of everyone.
He snatched his wand back, fingers gripping so hard his knuckles whitened, then lowered his head and retreated into the shadows at the edge of the crowd, dragging every emotion behind the familiar gloom like a curtain.
"Ahem."
Narcissa cleared her throat, breaking the eerie stillness.
She and Lucretius exchanged a look. Both of them understood that tonight's welcoming had achieved its purpose, and then some.
There was no need for more.
Lucretius stepped forward and scanned the remaining first years.
"So," he said evenly, "does anyone wish to challenge Black or Mulciber?"
His gaze moved across the line of boys and girls.
Alex kept his head down.
The others shook their heads quickly, avoiding his eyes.
Even Avery, who might once have considered it, stood stiffly silent.
"In that case," Lucretius concluded, voice steady and final, "the title of First Year Chief goes to Regulus Black."
He let the words settle, then added, with the faint cold satisfaction of tradition.
"I suggest you take that as your benchmark and improve yourselves accordingly."