Three Reductos in succession, same direction, same angle, hammering into Regulus’s Protego.

The first struck and the silver barrier shuddered violently, ripples radiating outward from the impact, the entire spherical shield trembling.

The second crashed in right behind it. A crack split across the barrier’s surface, branching outward from the point of contact with a sharp snap.

The third arrived and Regulus didn’t feed magic into the repair. Instead he let the shield’s shape change, dimpling inward like a saucer.

The third Reducto hit the concave surface, deflected at an angle, and sailed across the hall to detonate in a far corner. Half a wall collapsed in a roar of rubble and dust.

That was the ceiling for his standard Protego. Without weaving in Bellatrix’s guardian aspect, three full-power Reductos from Bella was the limit of what he could absorb head-on.

Enough.

If Bella was hitting at this level, her magic reserves were burning to match.

His Protego cost a fraction of what her attacks did. Defense was always cheaper than offense.

Bella kept moving, faster now, curses denser.

She started using the terrain. Her wand jabbed downward, and stone spikes erupted through the cracked floor, one after another, extending from her feet toward Regulus, churning the ground to ruin.

Side-Shift Spell, lateral slide, clearing the spikes. The moment he touched down the Sprint Spell kicked in, carrying him in a straight cut to Bella’s flank.

Her reaction was instant. She arched backward while sweeping her wand horizontal, and a storm of luminous, razor-edged fragments burst forth, spinning at high velocity, hissing through the air like a cloud of blades.

Regulus traced an arc in front of him with his wand. The attack struck his shield in a cascade of metallic pings, magic shards scattering, several embedding themselves in a nearby pillar.

He pushed through the debris cloud and sent a backhand Diffindo in return.

The silvery thread slipped through the gaps in the fading storm of fragments. Fast, precise, aimed at Bella’s right shoulder.

She twisted aside. The Diffindo passed her ear. A lock of black curls, severed, drifted in the air and settled to the floor.

She glanced down at the hair on the ground, then looked back at Regulus.

He stood amid rubble and haze, wand in hand. Not a scratch on him, not a speck of dust on his robes. Breathing steady.

Bella’s robes were burned through in several places. The wound on her left arm still seeped. A chunk of hair was gone, ash smeared her face, sweat beaded on her forehead.

She smiled. Said nothing. Raised her wand.

Everyone watching could see it clearly. The fight was escalating, but Regulus hadn’t lost ground. He wasn’t even injured.

Bella had taken a cut to the shoulder, a burn on her arm. The scorch marks across her robes made her look more like her true self than she had while delivering her polished speech.

Rodolphus stood by the doorframe, right hand now gripping his wand, face blank.

Regulus could fight Bella to this degree.

A twelve-year-old. A second-year. The Black heir, drawing blood from Bella.

His gaze flicked to Orion by the fireplace. In his prime, his eldest planted in Gryffindor holding a position there, his youngest capable of this.

House Black was rising.

He looked back at the center of the hall. At Bella.

He understood her better than anyone. She was still using conventional curses, the power cranked high, but kept within the bounds of non-Dark magic.

Dark magic was where she truly lived.

With the Blacks all present, Orion standing right there watching, Bella couldn’t use the Dark Arts on Regulus. Not even after he’d played her. Not even after he’d wounded her.

But if this continued, if Regulus kept outclassing her with standard spells, if her injuries mounted, she wouldn’t stop. She’d lose control.

And a Bella beyond control was something no one could predict.

That was a Black family problem. The Lestrange matter was settled.

He went on watching, expression neutral, though one question nagged: How was the Black family’s youngest son trained?

This was absurd.

Bella’s curses stopped coming one at a time. They came in sheets.

A volley of compressed fireballs, fist-sized, seven or eight launched in a single breath, each detonating into a wall of flame on contact. Reductos, Diffindos, Piercing Curses followed in a torrent, the gaps between them so short the spells nearly overlapped.

She cast while moving, feet never stopping, hands never stopping...

Sounds started spilling from her mouth. Hissing laughter, clipped shouts, fragments of muttered conversation with no one.

"You keep dodging. You always dodge. Can’t you stand still and take one?"

She shouted mid-stride, her voice carrying a petulant, almost coquettish whine, and her wand lashed out. The floor split open beneath Regulus, three jagged spikes of stone punching upward in a sudden, violent surge.

Side-Shift Spell, lateral. The spikes erupted where he’d stood, tips crashing into the ceiling and raining debris.

Her voice climbed, dripping provocation, equal parts teasing and threatening.

She’d stopped expecting Regulus to answer. But her mouth wouldn’t close.

Curses poured out alongside the words, the pace blistering, the force several times what she’d opened with.

Explosions cratered the banquet hall one after another. Floor tiles and rubble launched skyward; some were struck by follow-up curses before they could land, shattering into finer fragments in midair.

"Girls dodge, Regulus. Are you a girl?"

Another shout, voice pitched high, laced with laughter. A flick of the wrist sent a storm of fragments paired with a Piercing Curse.

Regulus shoved his wand forward. The Protego’s surface pulsed, and the storm of fragments bounced away. The Piercing Curse emerged, its pale beam flickering through the gap in the scattering debris.

He flicked his wand and nudged the beam’s trajectory two inches off course. It scraped past his shoulder and punched a charred hole into the wall behind him.

Regulus began his counterattack.

His spells hadn’t changed in power. Same output as the opening exchange. But they came faster, and they landed closer.

Side-Shift Spell and Sprint Spell alternated beneath him, tracing a fluid arc across the hall.

Every position change produced a curse, the angle never repeated, the direction never the same. Each time Bella blocked one, the next was already incoming from somewhere else.

Then he began weaving in the Betelgeuse aspect.

Not every spell. One laced in among several clean ones.

A standard Blasting Curse flew out. Bella deflected it, rubble scattering. The next was another Blasting Curse. She moved to deflect again...

This one was different.

The moment it left his wand the air tore. Temperature spiked along the trajectory, scorching a line into the flagstones. Deep red motes flickered in the beam’s core.

Bella’s wand made contact and the impact drove her back three steps, her soles scraping white trails through the rubble.

She blocked it. But her arm was numb, the bones in her wrist feeling as though they’d been shaken apart.

Before she could process why that curse had been different, the next arrived. An ordinary Diffindo, same power as before. She blocked it.

Then a Reducto.

Different again. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

The light blazed at least three times brighter than a normal Reducto. It slammed into the Protego she’d thrown up in haste and the barrier shattered outright. The curse punched through, striking her right shoulder.

Bella staggered half a step, steadied herself.

She glanced at her shoulder, then at Regulus.

She understood now. He was hiding the real strikes among the rest. Which blow carried lethal force and which was routine was impossible to tell.

That meant she had to treat every single curse as maximum power. No gambling.

The cost of that was enormous. Magic, stamina, concentration, all of it doubled.

Bella licked the blood on her arm. Her tongue grazed the wound and she hissed, then bared a savage grin, mouth stretched to its limit, teeth showing.

Her assault intensified. Blasting Curses, Severing Charm, Piercing Curses, Flame..... pouring toward Regulus one after another, as though she meant to bury him alive under sheer volume of fire.

Regulus dismantled each in turn.

Bella felt it. She was being herded.

Her curses grew fiercer with every exchange, but Regulus blocked everything, dodged everything, and still countered, and his counters were getting harder to live with.

Every one landed in the instant she’d finished repositioning and hadn’t set her feet, or in the gap between the end of one spell chain and the start of the next.

He gave her no time to think. The next Blasting Curse arrived, then another, then another.

Relentless pressure, no breathing room, each one aimed at a spot she had to answer with everything she had.

Bella threw up a Protego and tanked two. The barrier bucked. Her heels started sliding backward.

Before the third hit she squeezed out a Piercing Curse to buy counter-pressure, and in the sliver of space while Regulus deflected the beam, she jabbed her wand at the ground in front of her.

A row of spikes burst from the tiles, forcing him back. In that gap she sucked in a lungful of air, the shield flared bright, and she reset it.

Regulus shifted aside, landed, and didn’t cast immediately. A deliberate half-second delay.

That half-second was exactly enough for Bella to bring her wand back to bear.

Another volley of fireballs, then a double Reducto, then a Piercing Curse hidden in the firelight.

He unpicked it all with ease.

He pressed back. A Blasting Curse from the front, a Severing Charm sealing off her flanking lane, then another Blasting Curse aimed at the spot she’d retreated to a moment before.

Bella twisted clear, hadn’t yet steadied, and another Blasting Curse struck at her feet, forcing her behind a Protego again.

Two Blasting Curses hammered the barrier in quick succession. She gritted her teeth, arm shaking, and patched the shield whole...

Then she saw it.

Regulus was leaving her openings. Every time.

Two bursts of pressure, one release. Let her recover, let her maneuver, then squeeze again.

He was controlling the rate at which she spent her reserves. He was using her as a moving target on a practice range, drilling his rhythm.

Her expression cracked in that instant. The smile still clung to her mouth, but her eyes blazed with the fury of being toyed with, and beneath the fury, a humiliation that cut deeper.

Her fingers trembled against her wand. Unstable light sputtered from its tip, magic she couldn’t suppress.

Regulus gave her another opening.

Bella seized it. Her wand snapped up, charged for one heartbeat, and a Piercing Curse lanced out, faster than any before, more concentrated than any before.

A single strike. She abandoned every follow-up combination, compressing all her remaining power into this one curse, focusing it to a pinpoint.

The air hadn’t finished splitting along the trajectory before the beam had crossed most of the distance between them.

Regulus raised his left hand, palm forward. A circular barrier condensed in front of it, less than a foot across, smaller than his head.

The Piercing Curse hit.

The Protego held, but it was punctured. The pale beam broke through the far side, attenuated but still lethal, a translucent ray aimed straight at his right eye.

He tilted his head. The beam grazed above his right temple, severing a few strands of hair that floated upward on residual magic before dissolving into the air.

The next instant, his entire right arm, shoulder down, wand and all, vanished.

Disillusionment Charm. Partial.

Bella’s pupils contracted.

She saw Regulus standing there, left hand still visible, right side empty. She didn’t know where the wand was. She didn’t know where it was aimed.

A curse materialized from midair to her left.

No trajectory, no origin point, no glow from a wand tip as warning. It appeared two feet to her left and hurtled toward her.

A Blasting Curse infused with the Betelgeuse aspect. Air tore. Deep red motes pulsed in the beam’s core.

Bella couldn’t get a full Protego up in time. All she managed was to throw her wand across her body, a thin membrane of a shield barely forming.

The Blasting Curse struck. The shield shattered. The concussion launched her off her feet.

She flew. Four, five meters. Her back slammed into a stone pillar, cracks spidering through the stone, debris raining down.

She bounced off the pillar, lurched forward two steps, and dropped to one knee, a hand braced against the floor, wand still clenched in her grip.

She lifted her head. Curls fell across her face, framing eyes wide with disbelief and rage burned white-hot.

She’d been blasted off her feet.

The earlier injuries she could dismiss. The shoulder cut she’d ignored. The arm burn she’d licked clean. But this was different. She’d gone airborne.

A twelve-year-old had knocked her flying.

Regulus stepped over the edge of a shattered tile, his arm shimmering back into view, wand in hand.

He stood there, watching Bella push herself up from the ground.

The smoke hadn’t cleared. Through the grey haze, he walked toward her.