March at Hogwarts.
The snow was melting, baring patches of brown earth around the castle grounds.
Regulus stood in the Room of Requirement, wand at his side.
Leave room. Don't push to full power.
The idea had been turning in his head for two weeks. The principle was simple enough: do what needed doing, let magic handle the rest.
But the specifics eluded him. How much room to leave. How much force to apply. No formula existed for that.
He stared at the stone pedestal three meters ahead. A single Galleon sat on its surface, the standard target for practicing Space Warp.
The problem was obvious.
Space Warp lagged behind every other branch of his magic.
He could move small objects now. Range had stretched to five meters, margin of error down to two centimeters, spatial friction decreasing steadily.
But practical application was still far off. At minimum, he needed to move himself before he could call the technique truly mastered.
His previous approach had been blunt. Lock onto the target position with spatial perception. Map the spatial structure. Calculate output and frequency through magical sensing and raw mental math. Fold the space with magic, then push the object through the resulting corridor.
Every step ran on precision control and sustained output. Brute force shoving something from point A to point B.
Dumbledore's words had shown him the flaw. He was forcing it.
Space Warp in his hands had become pure magical labor, missing the element that made magic magic.
He thought of building a house. He'd been hauling bricks by hand, forgetting pulleys and scaffolding existed.
Maybe Space Warp needed an incantation and wand movement.
Not to make the magic look more like magic. He had no such vanity.
He wanted to give his power a framework. A structure. A guide that told the magic what it was supposed to do.
He began.
First attempt. Wand raised, syllables forming in his mind.
He referenced the incantation structure of Apparition, the most mature spatial magic in the wizarding world. Apparition's core demanded clear destination and self-integrity. Space Warp required something different: a clean path and precise coordinates.
He spoke the first draft of the incantation. The wand traced its matching arc.
Nothing. The Galleon sat motionless. Magic swirled at the wand tip, finding no outlet.
Regulus wasn't surprised.
Creating a new spell was never simple. Those legends of wizards struck by sudden inspiration and conjuring new magic on the spot were almost certainly embellished by later generations.
The reality was trial after trial. Adjustment, failure, another try.
Minor charms could come together quickly, sure. But Space Warp was no minor charm.
He did have advantages.
Spatial perception let him watch how magic interacted with the fabric of space in real time. His control let him make fine adjustments to each attempt's effects.
Most importantly, he knew what Space Warp was supposed to do at a fundamental level: bend a section of space so that two points briefly touched.
Knowing the destination made the journey far more efficient than groping in the dark.
He started logging data.
With each attempt, he tracked how magic flowed through space. Which syllables strengthened the resonance between power and spatial structure. Which wand movements stabilized the fold. Which combinations caused turbulence.
Attempt twenty-three: the Galleon wobbled.
Attempt thirty-seven: the Galleon vanished for half a second and reappeared two centimeters to the side.
Attempt fifty-two: the Galleon relocated one meter away, landing three centimeters off target.
He kept refining.
He'd accepted that reason and intuition walked together. But at his core, he wasn't an intuitive caster. He wouldn't conjure magic through flashes of inspiration or gut feeling.
His tools were data analysis and logical deduction. Every failure was a data point. Every success was validation.
The process stretched across nearly two weeks. Every evening after classes, he stood in the Room of Requirement, wand moving, incantation shifting, the Galleon blinking in and out of existence across the space.
One night in mid-March, he stood at the center of the training floor and raised his wand.
Something felt different.
As the syllables formed on his lips, magic began flowing before he directed it. No forcing. No brute push. It ran along some natural pathway of its own accord.
When the wand traced its arc, the spatial structure responded, opening the corridor willingly.
"Space Warp."
A silver glow kindled at the wand tip, faint, nearly transparent, but visible in the dim training room as a thin halo of light.
The wand's path left ripples in the air. Space itself was flexing.
The Galleon vanished.
No visible transit. No arc of motion. One instant on the pedestal, the next on a table five meters away.
Dead center.
Regulus stood still, staring at the coin.
He flicked his wand again, targeting a heavy book this time.
It disappeared from the shelf and appeared on the floor, spine up, cover down, angled exactly as he'd intended.
Third test: something smaller. A silver Sickle.
The coin jumped three times in rapid succession. From the left shelf to the right table, then to the floor ahead, then back into his palm.
Each jump took less than half a second. Landing error under one centimeter.
He stopped.
Breathing steady, pulse a touch faster than normal.
It worked.
This wasn't a rough prototype anymore.
The spell was complete.
Space Warp was now a fully formed piece of magic: fixed incantation, standardized wand movement, a repeatable casting process. Any wizard with sufficient power, a clear head, and mastery of the incantation could theoretically learn it.
He walked to the Galleon and picked it up. The coin was cold, its edges worn smooth from months of use.
This magic had started the day he first sensed the folds in space, progressed through reverse-engineering how house-elves moved, and culminated tonight in a finished spell. The better part of a year.
It had finally crossed from Regulus's personal ability to teachable magic.
That mattered.
Not only as growth in his own power. It proved something larger that wizards could master the spatial magic of house-elves. Could even refine it, adapt it to suit human casters.
He began testing limits.
Range: anything within line of sight could be moved. A glass twenty meters out. A chair at thirty. A map pinned to the wall at fifty.
Pinpoint accuracy throughout. Error grew with distance, but stayed under five centimeters within fifty meters.
Object size had a ceiling. The largest thing he could reliably move was an armchair. Anything bigger destabilized the spatial structure and spiked his magic consumption.
Sustained use had a cooldown. After each cast, space needed roughly one second to resettle. Past ten consecutive casts, landing error climbed noticeably.
All of it normal. Every spell had constraints.
He set down his wand and tried without it.
Fingers traced the pattern through the air. The incantation left his lips in a murmur. The Galleon vanished and appeared three meters away.
First try.
Clean.
He studied the sensation carefully.
Compared to casting with a wand, the magic flowed more directly. Cost a bit more power but result was the same.
The incantation and gesture were like a key. Once the door was open, you didn't need the key anymore.
The interesting part was how easy the magic had become once it had a fixed form. No loss of power, but the casting process ran smooth.
Let the world work alongside you. Regulus understood the phrase more deeply now.
Before, he'd been muscling his way through space. That was hard. Space didn't appreciate being manhandled.
Now he'd found the right method, and with the right method, the world cooperated.
The Space Warp incantation was that method. It didn't alter the nature of space. It provided an approach that aligned with spatial rules, and magic did the rest.
He stowed his wand and left the Room of Requirement, mind already moving to something else.
Why didn't the Black family's inherited spells, Verdant Magic and the Space Anchor Charm, have fixed incantations?
The Space Anchor Charm was manageable. Its effect was clear, its application consistent. Through practice, he could now maintain five simultaneous anchors for twenty minutes.
But Verdant Magic?
The ancestor Eldrin had possessed a rare gift, direct resonance with natural magical energy. For a wizard at that level, incantations might genuinely have been unnecessary. His talent functioned on instinct.
But the purpose of inherited magic was to let descendants learn.
If Verdant Magic truly required innate talent as a barrier to entry, wouldn't Eldrin have known? Wouldn't he have found a solution?
Regulus let his thoughts branch. Maybe Verdant Magic was never meant to have a fixed form.
Everyone resonated with nature differently. The point of entry shifted from person to person. The pathways for guiding magic diverged. Forcing a single incantation onto it might limit development rather than aid it.
Regardless, the concern didn't weigh on him anymore.
With the experience of developing the Space Warp incantation behind him, if Verdant Magic ever did need a spell framework, he'd build one himself.
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