Space Warp plus anchor. It worked. Spells could pass through spatial corridors.
The limitations were obvious: only Impediment Jinxes and Disarming Charms so far, with power loss on the other side, and the caster left half-dead from exertion. But the path was open.
Nothing like this existed in known magic.
Apparition transported the wizard themselves. Portkeys moved objects to fixed locations. No existing spell could send an attack curse from point A to point B without it traveling in a straight line between them.
If Regulus could truly fuse these two spells into a stable method of warping curses through space, the combat advantage would be devastating.
His Disarming Charm could bypass an opponent's Protego and materialize behind them.
A Stunning Spell could strike upward through the floor, hitting from a visual blind spot.
He could even transport Fiendfyre inside an enemy's defensive perimeter and detonate it from within.
But all of that was a long way off.
The Space Anchor Charm could sustain three simultaneous anchor points at most, each lasting fifteen minutes.
For real combat, he'd need at least five, with double the duration.
More advanced development, like giving the anchors selective stabilization, locking space without locking magic, remained beyond his reach.
His mind drifted back to Professor McGonagall's lesson.
She'd stretched her office space, flipped it, warped it. That kind of direct spatial manipulation operated a full dimension above his warp and anchor work.
Could the three be combined?
Space Warp was point-to-point transfer. Space Anchor was regional stabilization. Spatial transformation was structural reshaping.
If all three could be unified, something far more complex might emerge.
Folding a section of space into a pocket and trapping an enemy inside it.
Flipping space like a mirror, reflecting every curse back at the caster.
Tearing space open entirely, generating a brief black-hole effect.
The ideas spiraled through his mind. Regulus pushed them back down.
Too far ahead.
Each spell held enormous potential, but he hadn't even mastered the basics. Space Warp could barely transport inert objects. The anchor was still in quantity training. Spatial transformation, he hadn't even set foot through the door.
The level of control McGonagall demonstrated required at least a decade of Transfiguration expertise.
One step at a time.
He walked back to the wooden table and raised his wand again.
---
The Thorne attack kept spreading, and nobody was containing it.
Dumbledore's breakfast speech had suppressed the chatter briefly, but over the following week that pressurized atmosphere fermented into something else entirely.
In Ravenclaw, Ileana Thorne had taken three days off. After returning, she rarely spoke, head down through every lesson. Professor Flitwick had moved her to the front row. The students around her kept their distance, whether from rejection, discomfort, or simply not knowing what to say.
Hufflepuff maintained their usual stance. Sympathy, but no involvement.
Gryffindor was different. They treated it as a declaration of war.
The conflicts began.
The target was clear: Slytherin.
But Slytherin never took a beating lying down. They hit back in equal measure.
Gryffindors preferred the direct approach. Spell volleys, fists, head-on confrontation. They relished the collision, as though courage could only prove itself through opposition.
Slytherin's responses were subtler. No open standoffs. They chose their moments, but struck harder.
By week's end, beds in the Hospital Wing were getting scarce.
The irony was that the fighting stayed confined to the lower years. The upper-years on both sides watched with the detached amusement of adults observing children roughhousing.
Perhaps, in their view, this was nothing more than a dress rehearsal before the real war. Let the novices get a taste of the atmosphere.
Tuesday night, Regulus returned from the Room of Requirement to the Slytherin common room close to ten o'clock.
Normally at this hour, the common room held only a handful of upper-years by the fireplace reviewing for their O.W.L.s, or a couple tucked into a corner sofa whispering to each other.
The younger students would have gone to bed already. Eleven-year-old bodies couldn't handle late nights. A full day of running wild, and by nine their eyelids were losing the fight.
Tonight was different.
When Regulus pushed open the stone door, two first-years were standing just inside.
They looked like they'd been waiting for someone, or standing guard. Rigid posture, eyes darting.
The moment they saw him, both dropped their gazes to their own shoes. Their breathing went deliberately quiet.
Samuel Vance and Lina Costa. First-year half-bloods.
Regulus glanced at them and walked straight past.
Neither looked up. Only after his footsteps disappeared around the corner toward the dormitory corridor did he hear the faint sound of exhaled breath behind him.
Back in the dormitory, a thought flickered. Do I look that unfriendly?
It lasted half a second before he dismissed it. Friendly or not didn't matter. Distance did.
He didn't need to have a relationship with every Slytherin. Too exhausting, and pointless.
Relationship management was Alex's job. That was exactly how Regulus had positioned him.
He reached his bed and hung up his outer robe.
Cuthbert and Hermes came in one after the other, each heading for their own beds.
A few minutes later, Alex pushed through the door.
His expression was odd. Like he'd heard something unexpected.
He walked to Regulus's bed and hesitated.
Regulus looked up.
Alex fumbled. "So, um..."
"Spit it out." Regulus watched him.
Cuthbert and Hermes glanced over, then turned back to their work. Cuthbert had a Charms essay to write. Hermes had Herbology. When they finished, they'd swap and copy.
Alex took a breath.
"Samuel and Lina were waiting for me outside," he said, speaking fast. "They said they've been getting cornered by Gryffindors all week. On the way to the greenhouses, in the library corridor, and yesterday evening by the Black Lake."
He paused, watching Regulus's face.
Regulus motioned for him to continue.
"They tried to fight back." Alex's voice dropped. "Samuel landed a Jelly-Legs Jinx on Macmillan, but there were three of them. Lina's Impediment Jinx didn't form before her wand got taken. After that... they got locked in the abandoned girls' bathroom. Stuck for nearly an hour before a Hufflepuff happened by and let them out."
Cuthbert slapped his quill down on the parchment.
"Who?" He turned around, brow furrowed. "Which Gryffindors?"
"Alphard Prewett," Alex said. "Plus Colin Macmillan and Gareth Diggory. The three of them always move together."
Cuthbert's lip curled. "The Prewett family's youngest? I met his father last year. Two drinks in and he wouldn't stop boasting about his son having Gryffindor courage. And this is what that courage looks like? Bullying first-year half-bloods?"
His tone dripped contempt.
Cuthbert looked down on mixed-bloods. He believed Pure-blood talent ran deeper, that the lineage was cleaner, that mixed blood was dilution and Muggle birth was contamination.
But none of that stopped him from believing Slytherin's people were Slytherin's to deal with.
Outsiders laying hands on them, especially Gryffindors, was a slap across the entire house's face.
Alex waited for him to finish, then filled in the details.
Alphard Prewett was a troublemaker. The youngest son, two older brothers both in Gryffindor.
He'd provoked Regulus during their first flying lesson, gotten put in his place, and hadn't come back for more.
Now, it seemed, he'd redirected his attention toward easier targets.
Colin Macmillan's family dealt in magical herbs and had ties to the Prewetts, so the two boys had grown up together.
Gareth Diggory. The Diggory family had some connections in the Ministry of Magic, but they weren't core Pure-blood.
A trio that exclusively targeted Slytherins caught alone.
Within Slytherin's first-year class, the dynamics were delicate.
Regulus and his three formed their own faction. Nobody dared touch them.
A handful of other Pure-blood students had clustered into a second group, eating together, attending classes together, a self-contained unit.
That left Samuel Vance and Lina Costa.
Both half-bloods. Samuel's father was an ordinary wizard running a small secondhand magical goods shop in Diagon Alley. His mother was a Muggle, reportedly a primary school teacher. Lina's mother came from a minor Portuguese magical family without Pure-blood standing. Her father had died young, and she carried her mother's surname.
By rights, that background shouldn't have gotten either of them into Slytherin. The house accepted half-bloods, but usually required some family pedigree or exceptional personal talent.
Yet here they were.
Which meant the Sorting Hat had seen something in them. Ambition, perhaps. Or maybe a certain ruthlessness, a willingness to do whatever survival demanded.
Those qualities hadn't yet converted into strength at age eleven.
They couldn't cast advanced spells. Their magical control was average. In a house that valued bloodline and power, marginalization was inevitable.
Nobody explicitly shut them out, but nobody let them in either. Group work always left two students over. Common room conversations never had room for their voices.
So the two of them clung together. Like two small animals in winter, pressing close, surviving on each other's warmth.
Regulus knew all this. He didn't normally pay attention, but information found its way to him regardless.
He could intervene. A single sentence would change everything.
All he had to do was publicly declare that these two were under his protection, and he was certain no one would touch them again. The quiet exclusion inside Slytherin would ease up too.
But he didn't want to step in directly.