The situation was plain for everyone to see.

Regulus had never intended to talk things out with Bella. From the very first moment, this was what he’d come for.

Her performance earlier, circling him, patting his shoulder, leaning in to whisper in his ear, dragging out the ketchup story in front of everyone. Every word dripping with the tone of an elder disciplining a child who didn’t know his place. She’d believed she held all the strings. Believed this was post-dinner entertainment after clearing the room. Believed Regulus was a boy she could press down whenever she liked, dealt with at her convenience.

The boy had grown claws and fangs.

When he’d thrown that remark at Rodolphus, some thought he was deflecting. When Sirius hit Rabastan, some called it impulse. When Bella drew her wand on Sirius and Regulus stepped in, only then did everyone realize he’d been steering her toward violence the entire time.

The method wasn’t clever. Each step, taken apart, was blunt and obvious. Nothing intricate about it.

But the result defied every expectation.

Bellatrix Lestrange, in her own manor’s banquet hall, had been knocked flying by a twelve-year-old wizard.

Orion stood by the fireplace, his hand still pressed over Walburga’s wrist, eyes on the center of the hall.

He knew this wasn’t the real fight. Not yet.

Others saw Regulus winning, or at least holding the upper hand. He knew better.

From start to finish, Regulus had used standard spells. What he’d demonstrated was precise spellwork and combat instincts far beyond his age, exceeding every expectation in the room.

But this was still a contest of conventional magic. A long way from serious.

The same was true of Bella. She looked like she’d lost ground, taken wounds, been sent flying, but beyond the humiliation, the actual damage was negligible. Those injuries didn’t even qualify as a warm-up cost for someone like her.

Bella was the core of the Death Eaters, Voldemort’s most devoted follower. The name "Death Eater" hadn’t been spoken aloud in public circles yet, but behind closed doors it was no secret. The disappearances in dark corners, the Muggle-born witches and wizards found dead in their homes, the handful of attacks quietly suppressed within the Ministry of Magic... Bella had been part of all of it.

She’d done the work. More than once or twice. Killing, interrogation, cleaning up afterward, disposing of traitors. The number of people she’d tortured with Dark magic exceeded the guest count at tonight’s banquet.

Her fanaticism wasn’t just talk. She’d driven every ounce of it into the ground.

That stain of Dark magic soaked into the soul couldn’t be hidden from a skilled wizard. And even setting the Dark Arts aside, the skills she’d honed on actual battlefields, techniques refined purely for lethality, were deadly enough on their own.

None of that had come out yet.

But now she’d been knocked flying. Whether that line still held was anyone’s guess.

Orion’s gaze drew back from the center of the hall and dropped to his own hand, the one pressed over Walburga’s wrist. He’d held her since the moment Sirius struck Rabastan, and he hadn’t let go. She’d struggled a few times, each attempt weaker than the last, until she stopped altogether.

From the outside it might have looked like a loving couple, a wife leaning on her husband, standing arm in arm to watch the younger generation spar.

It was nothing of the sort. She simply didn’t know what to do anymore.

Walburga watched the center of the hall. Regulus was walking through the haze toward Bella. The words she’d said to him before they arrived still echoed in her head.

In the entrance hall she’d instructed him: talk things out with Bella, family can always find common ground. She’d called Bella one of their own, called her the lady of House Lestrange, said that that lord valued House Black. She’d told Regulus to bow his head, because she believed Bella’s standing was higher.

This wasn’t flattery. She never flattered. The lady of House Black didn’t grovel before anyone.

But Bella was a formidable dark witch, and in certain circles among the Pure-blood elite, her reputation carried weight. The families the Death Eaters had attacked, the people whose doors had been smashed open in the dead of night, they trembled when they spoke the name Bellatrix.

Walburga knew all of this, so she’d processed her relationship with Bella through the lens of social hierarchy. Bella had Voldemort behind her. Bella herself was a powerful dark witch. Therefore Bella’s rank was higher. When someone of higher rank spoke, someone of lower rank listened. That was the rule of Pure-blood society. She’d lived inside that rule her entire life.

So she’d told Regulus to bow.

It had nothing to do with right or wrong. In her calculation, given House Black’s current position, going head-to-head with the power behind Bella was a losing proposition.

She was the lady of House Black. Had been for over twenty years. Every decision she’d made fit within this framework. Who to court, who to avoid, what to say at which occasion, when to advance, when to retreat. She relied on the Pure-blood circle, on alliances through marriage, on social maneuvering, on their seat in the Wizengamot and connections within the Ministry of Magic, on the wealth and prestige House Black had accumulated over generations.

That was how she ran a family. These tools worked. They’d always worked.

But she wasn’t only the lady of House Black. She was Black-born herself. She believed in the glory of Pure-blood. She pursued House Black’s standing in the wizarding world. She understood where that standing came from.

And she understood, more clearly still, that these tools worked only because no single force existed that could overturn them all at once.

The deepest logic of the wizarding world had never been social capital. The deepest logic was power itself.

If the power in one person’s hands grew large enough to bypass marriage alliances, wealth, politics, social networks, large enough to settle matters directly, large enough to upend everything, then none of the rest mattered.

She’d always known this. But knowing and encountering it were different things.

House Black didn’t possess that kind of power. Orion was strong, she knew, but his strength operated within House Black’s framework. He maintained the family; he didn’t use force beyond what the framework allowed. That was why her approach worked. Inside the framework, social capital, politics, connections, those were hard currency.

And Bella? After following that lord, Bella had become a different kind of symbol. She’d gained something beyond personal power. Behind her stood a man capable of reshaping everything.

That was why Bella’s position in Walburga’s eyes had risen so high. Why she’d spoken on Bella’s behalf, built steps for Bella to climb down gracefully, told her own son to lower his head. Whatever justification she’d used, at its core it was a concession.

Now she watched her younger son knock Bella flying. A straight-up fight, curse after curse. Bella battered and bleeding, launched into a pillar by a Blasting Curse, while Regulus didn’t have a speck of dust on him.

The calculus in her mind was still running, but one critical variable had changed.

She’d been reading these relationships through social rank. Bella’s position was high, therefore concessions were owed. But what about the hierarchy of power?

Her younger son was walking through the smoke, moving the same way he walked through Grimmauld Place. Nothing extra. Nothing wasted.

Regulus was twelve. He didn’t have Voldemort standing behind him. He was alone, and he’d knocked Bella flying.

The woman Walburga had been deferring to was kneeling in a pile of rubble.

Her lips moved. No sound came out.

Something in her mind was loosening. Not broken yet, but cracking.

Orion felt the tension beneath his hand shift. He eased his grip slightly. Didn’t let go.

---

Bella rose from the ground.

She held the kneeling position for a few seconds, pressed her left hand against the rubble, then straightened her back and found her footing.

She stood atop the debris, wand clutched in her right hand, tip pointed at the floor, trembling faintly.

With her left hand she raked the hair from her face, revealing eyes far too bright for someone who’d just been hit that hard. Pupils blown wide, breathing shallow and rapid, her entire face beneath the grime and blood lit with an unhealthy glow.

A remnant of a smile still clung to the corner of her mouth, but the expression was closer to reflex than intent. The muscles at her lip twitched, something between a grin and something deeper forcing its way to the surface.

Being knocked flying hadn’t made her retreat.

Quite the opposite. She was exhilarated.

Regulus walked toward her, stepping over a snapped table leg, skirting an upturned flagstone. Unhurried, arms hanging naturally, wand in his right hand with the tip down, tracing small arcs with the swing of his arm as he moved.

No dust on his robes, no scorch marks, hair neat, breathing even.

Bella’s gaze tracked him. He watched her back.

He had a read on her state. She was more excited now than before, more dangerous, but it wasn’t enough.

She was still fighting with conventional magic. The output was high, but she’d stayed above that line. She hadn’t touched the Dark Arts.

Not enough.

What he needed was Bella’s true madness. The kind that abandoned all restraint, that surged from somewhere deep in the soul, the kind even she couldn’t hold down.

Only when she reached that point could the next act of this play unfold.

If she won’t lose control, how can I?

And if I don’t lose control, what is there for Voldemort to see?

One more push.

---

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