Chapter 74: Small Spell, Big Inspiration
At breakfast, Avery was still prattling on about his holiday.
He waved his fork as he described the size of the ballroom at Malfoy Manor, the enchanted murals on the ceiling that shifted patterns at a whim, and the delicate snacks with names so elaborate they seemed designed to be mispronounced. House elves, he insisted, had served them on trays that floated at shoulder height like obedient moons.
Alex sat beside him with his head lowered, listening and occasionally supplying a question for Avery to answer. Hermes simply ate, knife and fork clicking lightly against his plate with the steady focus of someone who preferred food to conversation.
Regulus chewed his toast slowly and felt, for once, slightly dazed.
The holiday sat behind a thin veil. Clear, yet distant.
Dinner at the Malfoy home. Pure blood gatherings with polite smiles and sharp eyes. Lucius on the terrace, words that had sounded casual while carrying weight.
Then the other half of the world. The long days inspecting family holdings. Knockturn Alley. That brief, decisive fight in a side street that stank of sewage and old magic.
All of it had fit into a short break, dense with events, dense with decisions.
He had done those things and thought those thoughts with the mind of an adult, because that was how he functioned. He had weighed relationships like coins and calculated consequences like an equation.
And then, in what felt like a blink, he was back at Hogwarts, sitting in the middle of a first year routine.
At the Gryffindor table, James Potter was loudly retelling some broomstick race he had done over the holiday with Sirius. Peter Pettigrew sat beside him, asking questions with a face full of envy.
At Ravenclaw, several girls were comparing hair ribbons they had bought during the break, debating colours with solemn intensity.
A few Hufflepuff boys complained about having so much homework they nearly failed to finish it, as if the universe had personally wronged them.
On the Slytherin side, besides Avery's performance, others were talking too. Someone had bought a new broom. Someone else had travelled to France and boasted about what they ate. Another claimed to have found an interesting little gadget in Knockturn Alley and was careful not to describe it in detail.
Trivial topics. Ordinary excitement. Childish complaints and small victories.
Regulus found it strangely interesting.
That pure focus on the details of life. Curiosity that did not need to justify itself. The pursuit of simple happiness.
He had not felt that in so long that he had almost forgotten something obvious.
He was eleven.
The first lesson of term was Charms.
Professor Flitwick stood atop his stack of books and announced the day's subject in a bright, high voice.
"A jinx," he said. "A small one, but an amusing one. It makes the target's mouth curl up uncontrollably, which tends to produce laughter whether the target wants it or not."
He made a careful gesture with his wand and tapped a practice dummy on the front table.
A thin beam of pink light struck the wooden face. The dummy's mouth immediately pulled into a wide arc, as if it were laughing silently at some private joke.
"The spell is harmless," Flitwick continued, "but when used well, it can interfere with spellcasting. It is rather difficult to speak clearly while laughing."
Then he clapped his hands.
"Now, practise in pairs."
Regulus was paired with Avery.
It was a minor charm, the sort of spell many children in wizarding families had already seen or half learned before arriving at Hogwarts. It demanded little magic and less imagination.
Avery managed it on his first attempt. The dummy's mouth tugged upward, but the arc was small, more like a strained smile than true laughter. On a wooden face, it looked unsettling.
Regulus lifted his wand and cast the jinx.
The pink light landed, and the dummy's mouth split almost to its ears. Its whole face twisted into a comical grin, exaggerated enough to look absurd even from the back row.
"Perfect," Professor Flitwick said, hopping in delight. "Clear incantation, stable effect, excellent control. Five points to Slytherin."
Regulus inclined his head politely.
Inside, there was no surge of satisfaction. He had known the spell for a long time. He might have seen it in a book, or watched some child practise it somewhere, and it had simply lodged itself in his mind like a scrap of music.
Still, he practised seriously because the professor was teaching and the classroom had its own rules.
Wand raised. Light. The dummy grinned. A counter charm. Then again.
His movements were smooth, without effort.
And as his hands moved, his thoughts drifted.
A question surfaced.
Regulus lowered his wand and raised his hand as Professor Flitwick passed nearby.
Several students close enough to hear straightened in their seats. Regulus Black asking a question in Charms class was, for some, entertainment. For others, a warning that they were about to feel inadequate.
"Professor," Regulus said, voice polite, "I have a question about this jinx."
Flitwick peered down at him.
"Of course, Mr Black."
"Is it only effective on humans?"
"It works on most living creatures," Flitwick replied. "Mammals, birds, and even some reptiles. For certain magical creatures with high resistance, a small charm like this may fail. Much depends on the caster as well. A skilled witch or wizard can push a simple spell further than a textbook expects."
Flitwick's expression suggested that should be the end of it.
Regulus continued anyway.
"What if the target has no mouth?"
The room went quiet.
A few people blinked as if they had misheard.
Regulus did not flinch.
"Or," he added, calmly, "for creatures where the mouth and the excretory opening are the same orifice. For example, certain coelenterates. Jellyfish, sea anemones, coral polyps. How would the jinx take effect?"
Some students exchanged baffled looks.
A few Slytherins wore expressions that suggested they wanted to laugh but feared being seen laughing.
Several Ravenclaws frowned, actually thinking.
Professor Flitwick paused. He pushed his spectacles up his nose and considered the question with the seriousness of someone who respected questions even when they were inconvenient.
"That," he said at last, "is an unusually creative line of thought."
"As far as I know, no one has ever cast this jinx on a coelenterate. In theory, if the target lacks a clear mouth structure, the spell may fail to locate what it seeks, or the effect may be greatly reduced. It could even be completely ineffective."
Regulus nodded once.
Then, as if the thought were simply continuing on its own path, he asked again.
"And earthworms? They have a mouth and an anus, but both are small openings on the body. Slugs, whose mouths are on the underside and very small. Some deep sea fish have mouths in strange positions, or do not have one in what we would call a traditional sense. Does the jinx adapt, or does it require adjustment?"
"Mr Black," Flitwick said gently, and there was a mild warning in the tone, "very few witches or wizards have studied the examples you are naming."
"Charms tends to focus on spells that are useful for humans and common magical creatures. For creatures with unusual structures, a charm may need to be modified for a consistent effect."
Regulus inclined his head again.
"Understood. Thank you, Professor."
Flitwick gave him a look that was both bemused and approving.
"You are welcome. Questions are always welcome in my class."
Regulus returned to practice, but his attention had shifted.
He had not asked because he cared about the anatomy of jellyfish. Curiosity, yes, but not practical curiosity.
What mattered was the implication beneath it.
This jinx, from the day it was invented, had been designed to do one thing.
Curl the target's mouth.
Make laughter happen.
Its creator had not designed it with coral polyps in mind. They had not cared about earthworms or slugs. They might not have cared about anything except humans.
The spell had a purpose and an effect.
Between those two points, there did not seem to be a clean underlying principle at all.
No careful study of magical structure. No deep analysis of a target's muscles and nerves. No explanation for why that gesture and that incantation produced that result.
Someone, somewhere, had simply thought: I want to make people laugh.
Then, by intuition, inspiration, or endless trial and error, they found a way to make magic obey that desire.
The spell was written down, passed on, taught for generations, memorised for generations.
Textbooks recorded the wand motion, the pronunciation, warnings, and even a few variations.
They did not explain why it worked.
Because either no one knew, or too few knew, until the knowledge became a secret, and then became a rumour, and then became nothing at all.
Regulus felt something shift inside him.
For a long time, he had tried to understand magic as if it were a system that could always be reduced to logic.
Magic as energy.
Spells as code.
Gestures as guidance.
Effects as output.
That view had served him well. It let him learn quickly, refine technique, optimise casting, and build new applications with alarming efficiency.
But some magic was not like that.
The Patronus Charm did not appear because one understood the chemistry of happiness or could define protection in philosophical terms. It appeared because the caster felt, in the simplest and most brutal sense, something real.
A desire.
A joy.
A reason to protect.
That was not calculation. It was the soul.
And perhaps even small spells, harmless tricks like a laughing jinx, were closer to that truth than he had wanted to admit.
The creator had not needed to understand everything.
They had needed to want something, and then force magic to follow.
The student did not need to understand everything either.
They needed to remember, practise, and let magic take the shape the spell demanded.
Through one small jinx, Regulus understood something he had been circling for years.
Magic could be studied like a science.
But it could also be lived like an art.