Chapter 325: Where Regulus Belongs [bonus] |
The Apparition landing wore a different face from last time.
On his last visit the morning mist had hung thin as gauze, gone the moment the sun touched it, and the sea wind had carried a warm, salty breath, only dew on the blades of grass.
Now it was late December, the mist thick as a grey wall shoved straight up off the water, visibility under twenty meters.
White frost coated the grass, crunching underfoot, every step leaving a dark print.
The glass roofs of the greenhouses in the distance had iced over, blurred in the fog, the sun not yet up, the sky a grey-blue.
Regulus was wrapped in a dark, heavy wool robe, a thick black cloak thrown over it, hood down.
Baruk poked his head out from the inner pocket, felt the cold wind, and pulled straight back in with a grudging click.
"Young Mr. Black."
Agnes came up the side of the stone path, her stride quick as ever, gravel crunching lightly under her feet.
She hadn't shrunk, of course. He'd grown.
Last visit she'd come up to just below his ear. This time only to about his shoulder.
"Ms. Agnes," Regulus said with a nod. "Merry Christmas. Sorry to trouble you so early."
She tipped her head back to look up at him and smiled. "Merry Christmas, young Mr. Black. You've grown again."
Regulus rubbed his chin. "Have I?"
"Last time you came, I looked at you, head up about this high." She held her hand to the tip of her nose, then lifted it two inches. "This time it's got to be this high."
The corner of his mouth tugged up.
"North, this way," Agnes said, turning to lead. "I've set you up on the north side. This way, please."
The two of them followed the stone path north. Passing the greenhouse cluster on the east, the glass roof of greenhouse three drifted in and out of the fog.
Regulus glanced at it. Where he'd studied the Mandrakes last time.
Agnes caught the look. "That one's still empty. A bit of tidying and it's ready whenever you want."
"No need," Regulus said. "The north side's fine this time."
The path cut between the greenhouses and the main house, opening wider the farther north it ran, the greenhouses and stone walls falling away behind, ahead a long slope of land once planted with windbreak shrubs.
Two rows of old holly and a row of low heather blocked most of the north wind. In summer the shrubs grew dense enough that not even a dog could push through. Half of it had been cleared now, opening a patch of ground about fifty meters across.
Around the outer edge a temporary ring of short wooden stakes had been set, each waist-high, the heads carved with Gnome-repelling runes, the cuts fresh, shavings still curling from the edges. Thick hemp rope ran between the stakes, swaying faintly in the wind.
At the center of the clearing stood the two Whomping Willows.
Regulus stopped outside the low stakes.
Wild, full-grown specimens, twenty-five feet tall.
The branches moved even with no target near, each with its own swing and rhythm, never touching, never tangling. The few thickest moved slowest yet swept widest, carving great arcs through the low air. The thin ones moved far faster, sweeping back and forth up high. The thick and thin ran in entirely different directions, the heavy branches scribing broad circles left to right, the fine ones cutting down from above again and again. Two layers stacked, and at any given moment more than one branch swept across the same point in the tree's reach.
Regulus noticed that the two willows' branches swung in complement. One leaned left, the other right, the heavy branches' arcs never overlapping, the fine branches' sweeps meeting just at the border. Between the two trees a nearly invisible seam was left, and every branch stopped at the edge of it, never crossing.
Plainly it had been deliberately tuned. Studying the trunks and branches, he found no clear sign of injury or wither. The transplant work was no low standard.
Agnes stood beside him and jerked her chin inward. "When they came in, the branches were lashed three times over with magic rope. We undid it the next morning. First branch that sprang loose whipped two passing seagulls to bits. Gulls, fine, that's nothing. But three of the wizards doing the transplant got hit when they got close. One had two ribs broken, one a dislocated arm, and one got whipped clean off his feet into the stone wall, two days in St Mungo's."
Regulus nodded and kept his eyes on the two willows.
He thought of the one at school. James and Sirius had crawled in under it more times than anyone could count, and the worst was a yowling thrashing. Never once had he heard of a broken bone.
Tamed, like. The branches' striking power deliberately dialed down, so even a small wizard worming inside wouldn't be killed.
These two had been dug out of the Bulgarian Magical Reserve, wild specimens that had grown for centuries with no one to meddle, every branch a weapon of survival.
Agnes pointed at the clearing's edge. "Reach's about fifteen feet or so. Outside this ring it ignores you. Step in, and the branches come."
Regulus studied the range. Fifteen feet, about four and a half meters.
She went on. "There's a little stone hut on the north side, used to hold tools. We've cleared it out for you. Fireplace, bed, table. The south window looks straight at the two trees. Clear view."
"Thank you."
"No trouble," she said, waving a hand. "Shout if you need me. I'm usually over at the east greenhouses."
She turned and went, her footsteps fading fast behind the low stakes.
Regulus stood where he was.
The wind came in off the sea with its harsh, salt-bitter edge, knocking a few dead leaves loose from the shrub wall, tumbling them across the clearing.
One withered leaf drifted into the fifteen-foot range.
A branch lashed down without warning, fast enough to tear a sharp whistle from the air, splitting the leaf in two. The fragments hadn't touched ground before a second branch swept over and slapped them down into the dirt.
Then the branch withdrew, going back to its lazy sway.
Regulus watched a while longer, then turned.
The stone hut sat about twenty meters from the clearing's edge, walls of local granite. The door was thick planks, unpainted, the wood's own color showing, a brass key hung on the iron ring.
He pushed it open. Inside was cleaner than he'd expected, a fire already lit in the grate, small, just enough to take the chill off. A table against the south wall, the south window facing the clearing, the two willows framed clear in it. An oil lamp and a jug of water sat on the table.
Baruk climbed out of the inner pocket, scaled the sleeve to his shoulder, eight eyes turning together to the two tree-shapes beyond the window.
"...tree."
The corner of Regulus's mouth lifted. "Tree."
He reached over and touched Baruk's back plate, tapping the shell twice with his fingertip. "I get strong first. Then you get strong."
Baruk's chelicerae opened and closed twice, click click, his eight legs treading back and forth on the shoulder, a full circle and back to where he'd started. "...Regulus... strong... Baruk... strong..."
He looked outside.
The willows swung their branches under the light, slow, unhurried.
The magical nature of the Whomping Willow, Professor Sprout had covered it. Conduction and oscillation. [resonance->oscillation]
Stack the two together and you had the willow's attack mechanism. Conduct first, then oscillate. Send the magic to the branch tip, then send the oscillation into the target's interior.
The Decomposition Curse replicated the Mandrake's tendency toward breakdown, stripping a whole of its definition at the level of magic.
This time he meant to replicate the willow's oscillating conduction, collapsing structure at the level of the physical.
Two roads. One ran through concept, one through the physical. The only difference was the object.
He turned, pushed the door open, and walked toward the clearing.
Baruk burrowed into the inner pocket, only half his body showing, eight eyes watching out.
He came to the edge of the low stakes and stopped outside the fifteen-foot reach.
The willow's branches still swung, slow, languid.
He stood there, closed his eyes, and let his magical sense spread out.
His ordinary magical sense had long since fused with his sight. To see was to perceive, no extra step needed.
But now he wanted something finer. The texture of magic, its flow, its direction, its core, and deeper still those properties and tendencies that had no concrete shape at all.
He peeled the magical sense out of his vision, spread it alone, laid it over the two willows.
The feedback came back.
Nothing like the Mandrakes.
The Mandrake's magic was a web, slow, many entrances and exits.
The willow's magic was linear, fast, its direction fixed. It traveled up from the roots, conducting upward through the trunk's main channel, splitting at every fork, flowing into the branches, from heavy to fine, all the way to the tips.
Fast. His sense had only just caught onto the main channel before the magic had already rushed from root to the topmost branch tip, a full round trip under half a second.
The conduction paths ran clear, every channel's course, width, and forking angle as though designed, the magic running through with almost no loss, strength barely fading from root to tip.
The magic vibrated as it conducted, the vibration coming from the magic itself. The oscillation was bound inside the conduction path, like water in a sealed pipe rushing forward and boiling at once. The pipe held all the energy to one direction, the vibration only rebounding off the inner walls, never spreading sideways, released only at the branch tip.
He could sense that release point, about a foot from the very front of the branch, where the magic abruptly changed nature, from conduction to invasion, from flow to explosion.
A tiny, bound burst, completed in the instant of contact with the target.
The moment the magic rushed out of the pipe's end, it went from bound flow to unbound oscillation, then bored into the target and poured the oscillation in.
But that conversion at the branch tip, how the magic at the very front turned from conduction into invasion plus oscillation, he hadn't worked out yet.
To work it out, he'd have to get close. He needed to touch a branch, needed to press his sense against the tip in the instant it struck.
The Mandrake had quasi-biological traits, an instinctive resistance to outside magic. The willow was different. It resisted everything from outside. Or rather, it welcomed everything.
He couldn't get into the fifteen-foot ring yet.
Regulus opened his eyes, drew the magical sense back, and switched to a different output.
Verdant magic. What the First Inheritance had given him, the magic kin to all growing things.
He let it spread from his palm, carrying no purpose, not probing, not invading, only existing.
Verdant magic spread toward the two willows.
The first willow's branches stirred, the rhythm of their swing changing, shifting from that patrol pattern into a kind of wariness, the branches drawing in a little.
After a few seconds the wariness eased, the branches slowly opening out again, the swing slower than before, the arc smaller.
The second willow's reaction lagged a few seconds, but the trend was the same. Wary first, then loosening.
The Whomping Willow was a plant. However fierce its aggression, its roots, trunk, branches, leaves, every part of it was plant tissue. Its relationship with soil and sun and water and wind was the same as any ordinary tree's.
The branches still moved, but the strike had dropped by more than half.
They hadn't dropped their guard against him fully, and wouldn't today, at least. The kinship of verdant magic took time, the way the Mandrakes had repelled him on the first day. Trust came slowly.
Baruk had crawled out, eight legs treading back and forth on the fabric, chelicerae spreading slightly.
Baruk was comfortable.
"Baruk... want... spin web..."
"No spitting silk," Regulus said.
Baruk turned a circle on his shoulder, clicking away, lively, scrambling from the left shoulder to the right, then from the right up toward the top of his head.
Regulus gave his head a shake. Baruk slid loose, shot a thread of silk from his rump to stick to the shoulder, and swung himself back. The sea wind blew through and he dangled on the silk, swaying with it, eight legs kicking twice at the air before he drew his rump tight and dropped back to the shoulder.
The morning mist hadn't burned off. Grey-blue light leaked through a seam in the eastern cloud and fell across the willows' branches, the shadows sliding slowly over the clearing.
He watched it all, the corner of his mouth tipping up.
This was where he belonged.
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