Regulus stood, leaving the window behind.
One last glance at the row of planting troughs. Twenty Mandrake husks still lying where they'd fallen. Agnes would take care of them.
He pushed open the greenhouse door, crossed back to the main house, climbed the stairs, opened his bedroom door, and collapsed onto the bed.
Ten days.
Less than twenty hours of sleep across all of them. Even with his mental resilience and physical conditioning, exhaustion was seeping out of every cell.
Star Guided meditation could restore energy, but it couldn't replace sleep. Some debts could only be repaid the old-fashioned way.
His eyes closed. Consciousness sank into black.
When they opened again, daylight flooded the window.
He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling beams for a while.
A dense, heavy satisfaction filled his body, the looseness that came after sleeping enough. He flexed his fingers. Magic circulated smoothly, no blockages, no sluggishness.
Get up.
Wash up.
Change into clean clothes.
Agnes was in the kitchen of the adjacent cottage. When he found her, she was conducting a pile of carrots through their peeling with her wand.
She spotted him in the doorway, set the wand down, and turned. "Young Mr. Black. Heading off?"
"Mm." He nodded. "Thank you for these past few days."
A calm smile creased her face, the wrinkles deepening at the corners of her eyes. "Hardly any trouble. Brought you meals, that's all. Couldn't help with much else."
Regulus fished a small cloth pouch from his pocket and set it on the counter. Thirty Galleons inside, well above the standard cost of room and board.
The loss of twenty Mandrakes wasn't his to cover, but Agnes's labor deserved compensation.
She glanced at the pouch without refusing or counting.
"Next time you visit, give me a heads-up. I'll get the east greenhouse tidied properly."
He nodded. "I will. Goodbye."
Then he turned and left.
The Apparition landing point was outside Grimmauld Place. He steadied himself, drew his wand, and tapped the door. It swung open.
In the entrance hall, the ancestral portraits along the walls were dozing. A few cracked their eyelids at him, then drooped shut again.
Upstairs, into his room. A bath first.
Hot water washed away ten days of accumulated sea-wind smell. He changed into a clean house robe, soft fabric, deep grey.
Then downstairs, to his father's study door.
"Come in."
He pushed the door open.
Orion sat behind the desk, a document in hand. He looked up, gaze settling on his son's face.
"You're back."
"Mm."
Orion set the document down and leaned into the chair. The way he looked at Regulus was different from usual, carrying something that could only be called anticipation.
"How did the magic go?"
Regulus caught the interest tucked beneath his father's measured tone.
Orion knew why he'd gone to the plantation.
Verdant Magic.
Mandrakes.
In Orion's estimation, the Mandrake's medicinal value was worth acknowledging, but its magical cost-to-benefit ratio was poor, especially in combat.
The cry was loud and easy to detect. Once detected, a Protego or a simple ear-sealing charm could block it. A Bubble-Head Charm worked too.
And the plant itself was unwieldy. Lugging a potted shrub into a fight and hurling it at the enemy was pitifully inefficient.
Others had studied the thing before. The magical world had never lacked for clever minds.
Something as lethal as the Mandrake had been picked apart and examined from every conceivable angle, many times over.
The most common tactic was to carry one into range, fling it while the opponent wasn't paying attention, and strike during the split second they covered their ears.
But you rarely heard of an adult wizard being killed outright by a Mandrake.
So Orion was curious.
He knew his son wouldn't retread ground others had worn flat. And over the past six months, every one of Regulus's magical projects had given him reason for anticipation.
He'd come to believe that anything, no matter how common, how simple, how thoroughly understood, would become something extraordinary once Regulus got his hands on it.
Regulus met his gaze and nodded once. "It's done."
Then the corner of his mouth lifted. "Met expectations."
Orion's eyebrows shifted.
A beat of silence. His eyes made the request. Show me?
Already his mind was guessing. An intensified cry? Instant vertigo on contact?
Or some directed application that didn't require pulling a Mandrake out of its pot?
Regulus said nothing. He raised his hand. His fingers moved, barely.
Orion sensed it instantly. As a wizard of considerable skill, his sensitivity to magical fluctuations far exceeded the norm.
In the instant Regulus's fingers stirred, he perceived a spell expanding outward from his son's body.
Invisible.
Inaudible.
No color, no light.
But it was there.
The spell radiated from Regulus in concentric rings, spreading like ripples across still water.
Fast.
Of course it was fast. Roughly three hundred and forty meters per second. The speed of sound.
The spell used sound waves as its medium, so it naturally traveled at the speed of sound.
The ripple struck Orion's body, passed through skin, seeped into flesh, diffused through every limb.
His brow creased. Something was off.
An indescribable discomfort. Like food gone bad, his stomach churning, his throat tightening.
Nausea.
The urge to vomit, with nothing to bring up.
A thought flickered through Orion's mind.
That's it?
This couldn't even cause real damage. It was unpleasant, nothing more. If Regulus had spent ten days and produced this, then frankly...
The next instant, the discomfort intensified.
Not because Regulus had increased the spell's power. The ripple had struck the study's four walls, bounced back, and layered over the spell already saturating his body.
The stacked amplitude was greater. The magic stronger. The nausea doubled.
Orion understood immediately. The spell rebounded in enclosed spaces. Its force compounded with each reflection.
In a room small enough, sustained long enough, the effect could escalate without limit in theory.
Interesting.
His mind began mapping applications. Lure an opponent into a confined space. Combine with sealing wards to create a kill box. Or...
Before Orion finished the thought, Regulus raised the output.
Objects in his field of vision began to wobble. His sense of balance dulled. His skull felt packed with botched potion.
It reminded him of a time in his youth, chasing a rival wizard. Five consecutive Apparitions. He'd hit the ground on landing and stayed on his face for ten minutes before he could stand. Exactly that feeling.
The stacking continued.
After the third rebound, the vertigo was impossible to ignore.
Magic inside Orion's body began condensing on its own, the instinctive response of a skilled wizard facing a sustained threat.
He was considering casting Protego.
Regulus cranked the intensity higher.
The sensation shifted again. Layered onto the nausea and vertigo came a violent rattling.
His organs shook. His brain shook. His eyeballs trembled in their sockets. Pain wasn't quite the word, but his entire body felt like it was coming apart at the joints.
Orion's expression finally changed.
He realized this thing was no joke.
His hand rose. The wand hadn't fully lifted before the Protego snapped into place, a translucent barrier unfolding in front of him.
The sound wave hit the shield. Most of the magic was blocked, only a fraction penetrating.
But the sound wave itself wasn't fully stopped. Protego wasn't a Bubble-Head Charm. It couldn't seal out air, so it couldn't seal out vibration, and therefore couldn't seal out sound.
Even a Bubble-Head Charm would need to encase the whole body. Covering the head alone wouldn't be enough.
Sound was only the medium. The effect targeted the entire body.
The ripple passed through the barrier and kept working on him, though with less magic behind it, the force dropped sharply.
Orion sat in the armchair, breathing heavier than before.
Regulus watched him, mouth twitching at the corner. A slight motion of the fingers, and the magic withdrew.
The energy saturating the study vanished in an instant. The sound waves died with it. Only faint tremors lingered in the air before settling into stillness.
Orion held his hand up for several seconds before lowering it.
He sat there, expression difficult to read.
Brow still furrowed. Lips pressed tight. His throat worked once, as though swallowing the nausea back down.
A few seconds passed. Then a slow, drawn-out exhale.
Regulus stood where he was, a faint upward curve at the corner of his mouth, a glint of amusement in his eyes, watching his father.
Orion felt the spell dissipate completely, but the residual discomfort hadn't quite faded. He cast a healing charm on himself, a common one, easing the dizziness and settling his stomach.
A few more seconds of recovery before he raised his eyes to Regulus.
The look in them was complicated.
---
Join my Patreon for early access to chapters: patreon.com/rivyura
Next Target 600PS