Harry Potter: Reborn as Regulus Black

Chapter 397: Chapter 397 - Sirius’s Instinct

Hagrid turned, as if noticing Cuthbert’s group for the first time.

The warmth dropped off his face at once. Under the beard there was nothing you’d call fierce, but nothing friendly either.

He hung the storm lantern on the doorframe and took two steps toward them.

Flossie tucked her tail and shrank in behind his legs, curling small, ears flat to her skull.

Potter’s lot followed and lined up at his back.

James folded his arms, eyes fixed across the gap, mouth pulled down at the corners.

Sirius came around from behind Flossie and settled beside him, loose-limbed.

Lupin stood further back wearing the look of a man who’d rather be elsewhere. Peter hovered at the tail end with half a head showing.

Tension went up between the two groups fast.

They’d fought yesterday, been caught by a professor, and were serving the sentence for it right now.

Hard to say whether Slytherin had come off worse. Potter had taken Cuthbert’s fist to the nose, and Lupin had caught a curse in the face, so on paper the Gryffindors were the ones behind.

People behind on points tend to lead with their mouths.

Before anyone on the Slytherin side spoke, James went first.

He’d been enjoying himself with Hagrid, then caught sight of those faces and yesterday’s temper came straight back up his throat.

"Well now." He tilted his head, making a noise of disgust. "Thought you wouldn’t have the nerve to turn up. Getting beaten wasn’t enough for you?"

Cuthbert’s mouth curved. "What’s wrong with turning up?"

His delivery came slow and easy. "Beats some people. Nose caved in by one punch, then off to Madam Pomfrey with your hands over your face, begging her to fix it."

He tipped his head and studied James’s nose at leisure, taking his time about it. "She set it well. You’d hardly know it had been flattened. The woman does good work."

James’s face darkened. "Who said I cried?"

"Nobody said anyone did." Cuthbert spread his hands, all innocence. "You matched yourself to it."

That stopped James short.

"That curse yesterday," Cuthbert pressed, stepping forward before he could recover, eyes narrowing. "My leg still remembers. Want to settle it now?"

"Fine by me!" James thrust his head forward, glaring. "I’m not scared of you! Didn’t get enough yesterday, did you?"

"Oh, I got enough." Cuthbert laughed and let his gaze drift lazily over the four of them. "The five of us had the four of you in hand. Nothing left wanting on my end. You, though..." He drew the syllable out. "Not enough for you?"

"Five on four and you’ve got the cheek to brag!" James’s voice climbed.

Cuthbert didn’t answer that. He looked over his own side, then over at James’s, and arrived at understanding. "You mean five second-years?" He pulled a face. "It can’t have been easy, getting that sentence out." A moment’s thought, and he added, "All right, then. Third-years can’t beat second-years because we outnumbered them. We’ll drop one. One on one. You and me. Care to?"

James went scarlet to the ears, lips twitching twice with nothing coming out.

What was there to say?

Agree to the duel and he was conceding that third-years couldn’t handle second-years. Refuse and he had to swallow it.

He wasn’t afraid of anyone with a wand. With his mouth, he was no match for Cuthbert.

He jabbed a finger out, worked at it, and produced one strangled line. "You bloody..."

Cuthbert dug at his ear and stood there letting it come.

Only when James paused for breath did he answer, unhurried.

Every sentence found a sore spot, precise and slow, not a curse word in any of them, courteous on the surface and worse for it.

James cycled through the same handful of insults, loud, full of force, landing nothing. Cuthbert batted them all back with a few light words.

Peter kept his head down, half his body behind Hagrid’s leg, eyes wide, silent, taking no side.

Lupin pulled at James’s arm, got nowhere, and pulled again. "James, that’s enough..."

Alex tugged Cuthbert’s sleeve and dropped his voice. "That’ll do."

Cuthbert didn’t lean in the way James had. He stood exactly where he was, smile hooked on his mouth, and it stung more than advancing would have.

Hermes watched Sirius for a long stretch, something dark behind his eyes.

Then, remembering himself, he shifted his stare off Sirius and onto James, and held it.

Lina and Samuel glared across as well. At James. At Lupin. At Peter tucked behind Hagrid’s leg.

Without a word between them, every gaze routed around Sirius. Not one landed on him.

Who’d fought whom yesterday was no mystery to any of the Slytherins.

But Sirius was Regulus’s brother, and Regulus was standing right there watching. Leave him alone, go around him.

So of the five opposite, three or four separate stares came down on James alone.

The weight of it told. One boy against several unfriendly pairs of eyes, already losing the argument, nostrils flaring.

He shot a glance sideways at Sirius.

Come on. Help me out. Your tongue’s sharper than mine.

Sirius wasn’t looking at him at all.

His eyes swept over the group opposite, then to either side, out across the empty lawn, along the base of Hagrid’s wall, hunting something.

At first he’d taken it for imagination. Thin, drifting, gone the moment you reached for it. But it hadn’t dispersed. It hung there.

His brow creased. Another sweep, a twitch of his nose, and then his gaze settled dead on a patch of empty air.

Regulus stood there behind the improved Disillusionment Charm.

That stretch of air looked no different from anything around it. Grey-blue dusk, nothing in it.

Sirius saw nothing, and still his eyes stayed nailed to the spot, forehead knotted, unable to name what he was searching for.

Instinct told him something was there. Nothing to take hold of.

He’d never been perceptive. His instincts had always been accurate, unreasonably so.

Where the knack came from, nobody knew. It had been in him the whole time. Black blood carried plenty of strange things.

Now the instinct had woken and gave him nothing.

He stared at that empty air a while longer, and something unsettled and unsatisfied crept into his face.

Something was there, right in front of him, and he couldn’t touch it, couldn’t see it, couldn’t get a grip. Reaching for a thing with your fingertips short by a hair and no way to close the gap.

"Sirius." James knocked into his shoulder. "What are you gawping at? Give me a hand!"

He came back to himself, eyes leaving the spot, and pushed the itch down.

Regulus hadn’t moved.

Sirius couldn’t see him. That was certain. Not by sight, not by smell, not by magic.

And yet those eyes had found their way to him.

Instinct, Regulus knew. Something his brother had carried since childhood, deaf to logic and indifferent to how strong anyone’s magic was.

The charm fooled eyes and noses. It couldn’t fool that.

Two boys born of the same mother, separated by a spell that swallowed body heat and scent alike, and still he’d caught the faintest shape of it.

They stood close together with a layer of magic between them.

He watched the frown, watched the letdown settle on his brother’s face, watched James’s shove turn him back around to the argument.

Regulus stayed put, quiet, watching.

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