January was almost over.

The first month’s commotion had faded. Echoes of the Christmas banquet still rippled through pure-blood circles.

Classes ran on schedule. Meals came and went. The young witches and wizards filling the corridors had shifted their concerns from holiday gossip back to homework and Quidditch.

Dumbledore only appeared in the Great Hall occasionally.

He’d sit at the center of the staff table during meals, exchange a few words with McGonagall or Flitwick, sometimes laughing warmly, sometimes listening with a furrowed brow. More often than not, he left before finishing his plate.

The Daily Prophet remained a picture of calm prosperity. The new Minister, Harold Minchum, had his photograph on the front page twice a week.

Once in the editorial section, emphasizing that the Ministry maintained the highest vigilance regarding the current situation and would take all necessary measures in accordance with the law.

Once in the international section, attending the annual reception of the Department of International Magical Cooperation, shaking hands and smiling with the French Minister for Magic.

Page three carried the occasional brief report on werewolf attacks. Short pieces, restrained language, stressing that investigations were underway, urging witches and wizards to remain alert.

The editorial published on the same day ran under the headline: Peace and Order in the Wizarding World: We Are on the Right Path.

Reporters swarmed around the Minister, flashbulbs popping, every caption built from the same vocabulary: stability, order, peace.

"The Ministry of Magic will, as always, safeguard the tranquility of the wizarding world."

"The current situation is broadly stable. Isolated destabilizing elements are being dealt with in accordance with the law."

Isolated destabilizing elements.

Last week’s family correspondence had included a briefing. A Muggle-born wizarding family in the Cotswolds had been wiped out. Seven people. The youngest was two.

The Aurors arrived to find the bodies still warm, the Dark Mark hovering above the house, its serpent coiling from the skull’s mouth, glowing sickly green against the night sky for what felt like an eternity. Half the town’s Muggles had seen it.

The Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes deployed over twenty Obliviators, going door to door, scrubbing memories for two straight days.

The papers hadn’t printed a word. That same edition’s front page featured Minchum donating a batch of potion cabinets to St Mungo’s.

Things weren’t much better on the Muggle side. The aftershocks of the oil crisis were still compounding.

The three-day work week had been scrapped, but the coal miners had launched another round of strikes. Heath’s Conservative government was teetering, and all of Britain sat under the shadow of inflation and unemployment.

Factories cut production. Shops raised prices. Bread queues stretched from one street corner around to the next.

None of it touched Hogwarts. The castle’s stone walls kept everything out, or rather, none of it had grown large enough to climb over them.

What the young witches and wizards discussed in the corridors was the Gryffindor versus Ravenclaw Quidditch match, how to pad their Transfiguration essays to meet the word count, which shop to visit on the Hogsmeade weekend.

A pack of first-years tore through the corridors, knocked over Peeves’s ink bucket, and got chased up three flights of stairs.

A fifth-year Hufflepuff practiced a Summoning Charm by the Black Lake, hauled a fish onto the bank, watched it flop twice on the grass, and tossed it back.

They didn’t know what was happening outside. They didn’t need to.

Someone was shielding them.

Dumbledore working tirelessly beyond the walls. McGonagall holding the castle. The professors maintaining the rhythm of lessons and routine.

The young witches and wizards felt no storm, only sunlight streaming through the corridor windows, warm and golden, no different from any other January.

Slytherin was different. Pure-blood children never relied on the papers alone.

Their news came from home. From fragments dropped at the dinner table. From family gatherings over the Christmas holidays. From conversations the adults assumed children couldn’t follow but that every child absorbed completely.

Which family had drawn closer to the Death Eaters. Which was still watching. Which had already turned. Which was holding the line.

This intelligence circulated through the Slytherin common room. Never openly, never loudly, but fast.

The atmosphere was shifting. A restlessness creeping back in.

Different from last year. No one shouted slogans. No one stood in the common room pumping a fist and chanting about pure-blood glory.

After Arnold Belmont had been taken away, that surface-level fanaticism had been snuffed out. Everyone had seen what happened that day. Everyone knew who’d done it.

But the fire above ground had died. The embers beneath it hadn’t.

The voice of pure-blood supremacy had never disappeared. It had simply dropped from a shout to a whisper.

A few seventh-years huddled in a corner, voices deliberately low, glancing toward Regulus whenever certain topics came up.

Someone mentioned a graduated senior by name, said he was working for the Dark Lord now. Someone else said their family had received an inquiry letter from the Ministry, and their father had spent half the night cursing in his study.

A handful of fifth- and sixth-years had started pinning small silver serpent badges to their cuffs, calling them traditional Slytherin ornaments, though no one had ever worn them before.

A fourth-year called a Muggle-born Hufflepuff a Mudblood in the corridor, tone vicious, overheard by someone nearby.

No fight. No confrontation. The Hufflepuff walked away with her head down, and a classmate put a hand on her shoulder.

That was the scale of it. Water warming slowly.

Professor Slughorn was paying closer attention than last year.

He knew what was brewing in his house. A man who’d been Head of Slytherin for nearly fifty years couldn’t miss that acrid scent of unease.

His patrols had increased. He lingered in the common room more often, chatting with a few upper-years, all smiles, never touching anything sensitive.

He watched. He wouldn’t step in to crack down directly.

This kind of sentiment, born within the pure-blood ranks, transmitted inward from the shifting climate outside, couldn’t be suppressed by a Head of House. Even if it could, he wouldn’t force it.

Slughorn was a shrewd old man. He knew what to act on and what to leave alone.

Fortunately, everything remained manageable.

Regulus hadn’t made any public declaration. Hadn’t stood up and said a single word that leaned one way or the other. But his presence alone was a form of suppression.

He’d been the one to stamp out last year’s fire. As long as he didn’t stand with the extremists, those in Slytherin who wanted to stir things up under the banner of pure-blood glory had no figurehead.

Everyone knew the Black heir could fight. Everyone knew he didn’t buy into their recruitment rhetoric.

As long as he was there, as long as he stayed silent, the restlessness couldn’t reach a boil.

Because no one knew which side Black would take if it did.

That uncertainty was more effective than any declaration could ever be.

---

The last Saturday of January. Good sunlight, rare weather for the season. Wind blowing in from the Black Lake, carrying a trace of moisture but no real chill.

Midday. Regulus left the Great Hall and walked the flagstone path toward Greenhouse Four.

Weather like this was unusual for the Scottish Highlands in January. Nothing to do after lunch, so he figured he’d check on the Whomping Willow.

Ever since Professor Sprout had told him the tree recognized him, he’d been visiting the greenhouse area every few days.

Checking on its growth. Monitoring its recovery. Feeding it a bit of verdant magic along the way.

The professor had said it: reciprocity. What you give, the tree remembers.

Nothing to debate. Give.

He wanted to see whether sustained infusions of verdant magic might shape the Whomping Willow into something aligned with him.

Right now, it merely recognized him. Touched him and didn’t swing.

But if verdant magic seeped deep enough, if its circuits were saturated with his traces, then once it recovered its strength, it would still thrash anyone else who came close. When it came to him, though, maybe it would thrash people for him.

Professor Sprout welcomed his frequent appearances near the greenhouses.

In her eyes, young Black was finally developing a genuine interest in plants.

She knew perfectly well that he had no love for magical plants themselves. What interested him was the magic they represented: things that could be extracted, replicated, converted.

The life of the plant didn’t concern him.

That left her admiring his talent while harboring a quiet worry.

But things were different now.

This boy would come of his own accord to channel magic into a Whomping Willow. He’d crouch beside it watching the speed of new shoots. He’d ask whether overfeeding might disrupt its natural cycle.

The professor believed her words that day had made an impression.

She was gratified. This was clearly a student learning to tend magical plants, clearly moving in the direction she’d always hoped for.

Her gaze on Regulus grew warmer by the visit.

Regulus knew exactly what the professor was thinking. He had no intention of correcting her.

He was tending the tree. He was observing its growth. He was also, incidentally, figuring out how to incorporate it into a pre-set defensive position.

The two weren’t contradictory. If anything, they complemented each other perfectly.

He followed the flagstone path toward Greenhouse Four. Twenty-some meters out, he stopped.

Wind carried something from the greenhouse’s direction. A smell so thick it was almost visible.

Sharp. Eye-watering. A cocktail of sulfur, charcoal, and rotting vegetation, baked by the midday sun into an invisible wall hanging in the air, obscenely assertive.

Dragon dung fertiliser. Fresh.

Regulus fought down a wave of nausea and sniffed again.

The first thing that hit was the peppery bite of sulfur. Beneath it lay the deeper, stewing reek of decomposed organic matter, the kind of odor that came from wet peat, leaf mold, and animal dung piled together for months.

Because of the dragon’s inherent nature, there was also a metallic, scorched aftertaste threaded through it all, like heated sheet iron.

Layered beautifully. Exquisite bouquet.

The professor was crouching beside the Whomping Willow, fingers buried in the soil, muttering to herself.

Three wooden barrels sat on the ground beside her, lids askew. Brown paste oozed over the rims, steaming faintly, catching the sunlight with an oily sheen.

Regulus held his breath.

He’d planned to walk over, say hello, and channel some magic into the Willow while he was at it.

But the smell was simply too aggressive. Taking a single step closer felt like an act of violence against his own sinuses.

He watched the professor crouching there, working away in obvious delight, and quietly turned around.

She didn’t like being interrupted when she was in the middle of something.

He was about to head back when his gaze swept sideways.

Behind the glass wall of Greenhouse Three, two figures. Blurry through the condensation, but their outlines were clear enough.

One was tall, gesturing broadly, arms waving in animated conversation.

The other... he squinted. Much shorter. He looked again and realized not shorter. Crouching. Kneeling in front of a planting trough.

Regulus hadn’t been looking deliberately. His eyes had simply landed there, and his magical perception swept across automatically.

The tall one. Magic abundant, lively, carrying a restlessness so familiar it barely registered anymore.

Sirius.

The crouching one. Magic steady, unhurried, carrying a presence he recognized well enough.

Eleanor Bones.

Regulus’s interest sparked. He’d already turned to leave, but he turned back.

The dragon dung fertiliser’s stench was still oppressive, but a Bubble-Head Charm could solve anything.

His right hand rose, brushing the air in front of him. The modified Disillusionment Charm spread outward.

Light bent and his shape vanished.

By any ordinary wizard’s senses, he was completely invisible.

A sufficiently skilled witch or wizard would see through it, of course. But for spying on two students, it was more than enough.

He moved along the greenhouse’s outer wall until he reached the glass of Greenhouse Three, and stopped.

Through the glass and the condensation, the figures inside were sharper now. He couldn’t make out their words, but the picture was clear.

Both wore earmuffs. Heavy leather padded with cotton, sealed tight around their ears.

Mandrake cries were lethal. Earmuffs were the baseline precaution. Sirius had actually remembered.

Regulus gave a small, satisfied nod.

---

Join my Patreon for early access to Chapters: patreon.com/rivyura

Next Target 200PS :)