Bella’s left hand swept across her waist, magic flowing through her fingertips. The hem of her gown shrank to above the knee, the heels flattened, the fabric pulled tight against her body. Every excess scrap of cloth vanished.

She stood there in a short black dress, bare calves, wand in her right hand, feet planted on stone.

Something lit up in her face, different from the anger before, different from the fervor of her speech.

Pure excitement.

But not because of Regulus.

What excited her was that she finally got to fight.

Bellatrix was born for this. Combat, destruction, the sound of magic tearing through flesh. She could skip meals, skip sleep, but not this.

She didn’t plan to use anything advanced. No need. Standard curses would do.

She didn’t plan to end it quickly, either. She wanted this presumptuous little cousin to learn the cost.

To understand that bullying students at Hogwarts didn’t count as skill. Real wizards spoke through magic.

And to know that his so-called talent was nothing in front of her.

Her wand flicked. The first curse flew.

Reducto, silent, a streak of light from her wand tip, fast enough to tear the air with a muffled shriek. Aimed straight at Regulus’s chest.

Regulus didn’t even raise his wand.

The curse struck a point a foot in front of him and silver light erupted. Protego.

The impact rang through the hall like a hammer on an anvil, a deep hum that echoed off the walls. Bright fragments sprayed outward. The nearest long table caught a piece and its surface blew apart.

His expression didn’t change.

But he felt it. Through the shield, the shock pulsed once. Not heavy, but real.

Enough to punch through an adult wizard’s unfortified Protego.

She wasn’t serious yet. A greeting.

Regulus took a step forward.

Bella’s mouth stretched wide. Her tongue flicked across her upper lip, eyes burning. Without a word, her wand moved again.

Blasting Curse.

This one hit harder than the Reducto, an orange-red bolt slamming into his shield. Ripples bloomed across the barrier’s surface, radiating outward from the point of impact.

Not violent. The ripples bounced twice and faded. The shield held.

But the power had climbed.

He thought of Orion’s curses in the training room, the kind that could numb your arm through a Protego. Bella wasn’t close to that.

Which was expected. Orion was the Head of House Black, heir to the family’s magical legacy. Age mattered too; a wizard’s power and experience grew with years. Bella was barely past twenty. Hitting this hard at her age said plenty about her talent.

But Orion was still stronger. At least based on these two spells.

Something in Bella’s expression loosened, as though she’d set down a worry. She’d been afraid of shattering her little cousin in one blow. Now that she knew he could take it, the restraints came off.

"Regulus," she said, grinning so wide the creases fanned from her eyes, brows arched, mouth split open, "you actually have some skill."

He looked at her, voice still low. "You flatter me, Cousin."

Bella’s right eye twitched.

Is that what I meant?

You think I’m complimenting you?

Her tongue scraped across her teeth. She swallowed the words and raised her wand.

Regulus kept walking forward. Unhurried, stride measured, breathing even.

He finally raised his wand and swept it in a horizontal arc, sending out a Diffindo.

Fast, precise, aimed straight at her wand wrist.

Bella flicked her wand upward, the tip catching the Diffindo’s path. Light sprayed. The thread deflected, angling sideways, and bit into the nearest stone pillar.

A groove appeared in the stone, half an inch deep, edges clean, white smoke curling from the cut.

One brow lifted slightly.

Not weak.

She glanced at Regulus, and her expression shifted. No longer disciplining a child. Now it was this child has some bite.

But only that. At best, this was sixth- or seventh-year level.

She pressed the attack, moving now, footwork light, two quick steps to the side, wand snapping in rapid succession.

A Confringo came head-on. Regulus’s Protego caught it, detonation spraying curse-light in every direction. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

A Diffindo followed immediately, skimming the floor from a lateral angle, slicing toward the bottom edge of his shield.

Regulus shifted his weight and pulled the shield’s coverage back a few inches. He didn’t block it.

The Diffindo scraped past the base of the barrier and struck a table leg behind him. The leg severed clean. Half the table collapsed, plates and goblets crashing to the floor.

Regulus began to return fire.

A Reducto at the flagstones beneath Bella’s feet. She sidestepped, and the stone exploded where she’d stood, shrapnel spraying upward.

The instant she landed she sent back a jet of flame, a column of fire that slammed into his Protego and burst into a wall of blazing heat.

The wave pushed outward. Several nearby portraits caught fire, flames crawling up their wooden frames.

Regulus walked through the firewall. The flames on his shield died the moment he passed, leaving the silver surface immaculate.

Mid-stride he fired back a Confringo. Bella twisted aside. The curse struck the wall behind her, blowing a basin-sized crater, stone dust and debris erupting outward.

She ratcheted the power up another notch, past the range of a young wizard.

A Piercing Curse lanced from her wand, a hair-thin beam of pale light, fast, minimal windup, nearly invisible amid the lingering fire and dust.

The beam struck his Protego. The silver barrier convulsed, shrieking like glass scraped by metal.

The shield warped for an instant, then snapped back.

Regulus blocked it. Still without strain.

The banquet hall’s central tables were mostly gone.

Walburga’s face was bloodless.

She watched her son trade blows with her niece, color draining layer by layer. This had never occurred to her, not in any version of tonight. Her youngest fighting Bella in the Lestrange banquet hall with real killing force.

Orion’s hand stayed on her wrist. She hadn’t erupted, but the color of her face had gone past ugly into something ashen.

The way she looked at Regulus had shifted to something close to how she looked at Sirius. The tenderness, the pride, my Regulus, all of it gone in a single breath, replaced by a strangeness she couldn’t name.

Then she watched him walk through fire and rubble with his wand raised, exchanging curses with Bella, his face completely blank, as though none of this warranted so much as tension.

The expression on Walburga’s face changed again.

The anger remained. But something else crept in alongside it. She didn’t know what to call it. Shock, perhaps. Or bewilderment.

She was seeing Regulus display power for the first time.

When did her little boy become this?

How had she never known?

What else didn’t she know?

Orion glanced at her, then looked away, eyes returning to the center of the hall.

This level of intensity didn’t even qualify as a warm-up.

The tempo climbed.

Bella’s curses came in torrents now, firing nearly twice as fast as before. One still airborne, the next already leaving her wand.

Confringo, Diffindo, Reducto, Petrificus Totalus.... cycling through, angles unpredictable, trajectories shifting. Some came straight on; others hugged the floor or arced from the ceiling. She moved constantly, quick choppy steps, changing position with every cast.

Regulus moved too.

Side-Shift Spell. His body slid three meters to the right. A Confringo tore through the space he’d occupied and detonated against the stone wall behind him, rubble flying.

The instant his feet touched down his wand was already swinging, a Confringo of his own angled at Bella’s left flank, forcing her right.

She dodged right, landed, and fired back three compressed fireballs, fist-sized, covering a fan-shaped spread.

Regulus triggered a Swiftness Spell and accelerated, blowing through the kill zone. The three fireballs detonated behind him, lighting up half the hall.

Still moving, his wand lashed twice. Two Diffindos from different angles, one head-on, one looping from the side.

Bella caught the first, deflecting it off her wand tip. The second forced an extra step before she dodged, and the flagstone beneath her foot split open in a deep groove.

Regulus gave her no time to recover.

He sent a Blasting Curse into the ground half a foot to her left.

The explosion shook the floor. Flagstones shattered. Debris launched skyward.

Bella dodged. Her reflexes were genuine; she’d cleared the blast radius before the detonation fully bloomed.

But that was what he wanted. She’d dodged. The debris had not.

The stones hanging in midair began to change.

A dozen fist-sized chunks stretched, narrowed, sharpened under transfiguration, condensing into stone spikes that spun at high speed, friction turning them red-hot, the air around them humming with a thin, keening vibration.

The whole sequence took less than a second. Explosion to spike formation to launch.

A dozen spikes fired at Bella simultaneously from every direction. Above, left, right, low from an oblique angle, covering most of the space around her.

The sound of air being torn was shrill enough to hurt. The spikes glowed, trailing heat shimmer, ripples spreading outward in concentric rings that traveled the length of the hall.

Bella threw up a Protego.

The silver barrier bloomed in front of her. The first spikes hit and shattered to powder, but the shield buckled. The ones behind punched through.

Superheated air streaked past her face, her arm, her waist. Fresh scorch marks appeared across her robes.

One spike grazed her left arm, carving a blackened burn into the skin. The smell of singed flesh drifted through the air.

Bella looked down at the wound. The scorched skin still trailed wisps of white smoke.

She touched the edge of the burn with her right index finger, raised it to her eyes, studied the dark residue on her fingertip, then brought it to her lips and licked it.

A low, raspy laugh rose from her throat, carrying its own echo.

Her face broke into a wide, genuine smile, radiant and unrestrained, brows flying up, eyes wide, mouth split in delight.

"Not bad, little cousin." Real admiration in her voice. "Who taught you that?"

Regulus looked at her, same expression as always. "You flatter me, Cousin."

Bella’s smile stiffened. Her masseter clenched, eye twitching in tandem.

That line again.

She stopped talking. Lost all interest in words.

All night Regulus had been like this, start to finish, the same handful of syllables. No matter what she said, no matter what she threw at him, the same blank wall.

She saw it clearly now. Regulus believed he was strong enough, and she simply didn’t register in his eyes.

But strangely, the anger faded.

Something else took over entirely. She burned.