The silence held for a beat, then the murmuring surged back.
This time, every house was looking at the Slytherin table. Some openly, some trying not to. Anger, suspicion, resentment, curiosity.
The Slytherin students met those stares. A few even sat up straighter.
A cluster of fifth-year boys bumped shoulders, smirks tugging at their mouths. The way they looked at the Muggle-born students at the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw tables was the way someone might look at objects in a display case. A little curious. Mostly cruel.
Regulus turned back to his toast.
Cuthbert folded the newspaper and set it on the table. He'd stopped eating.
His father held a senior position in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, leading the response team for magical exposure incidents in the Muggle world. Not a small job.
The Avery family belonged to the rationalist wing. They believed in Pure-blood dominance, that Pure-bloods were more gifted, their lineage cleaner, and that they deserved to lead. But the rationalists didn't advocate violent purges. Mixed-bloods could be absorbed. Muggle-borns needed strict vetting. Extreme measures only damaged Pure-blood credibility and drove the Ministry's centrists to the other side.
Cuthbert had been raised on this philosophy. He looked down on those of impure blood, thought them dirty, thought they didn't understand the traditions and customs of the wizarding world. But he'd never wished them dead in their homes. He didn't see the attack on a Ministry official's family as cause for celebration.
Alex was restless, picking up his fork and putting it down again. His porridge had gone cold, a skin forming across the surface.
The Rosier branch family didn't carry much weight. They sat at the margins of the Pure-blood circle. That position made him acutely sensitive to conflict. Any shift in the wind could sweep a small family like his into the grinder.
Hermes was indifferent. He finished his eggs, wiped his mouth with a napkin, folded it neatly beside his plate. The attack registered the way a forest fire in the distance registers: you could see the smoke, but the flames weren't close enough to feel. Dark magic, violence, casualties. In his framework, these were expressions of power. Nothing that warranted extra emotion.
Regulus drained the last of his pumpkin juice and stood.
Cuthbert, Alex, and Hermes rose with him. As the four of them moved along the table, eyes followed from every direction.
Regulus kept his gaze forward.
He knew this would fester.
Similar stories had appeared in the paper before, but to young witches and wizards they'd always been something that happened out there, filtered through a layer of newsprint, not quite real.
Today that layer had torn. The attack had happened to a classmate's parents. That classmate sat among them, shared their lessons, ate at the next table over.
The distance had collapsed.
Hogwarts was not going to stay quiet.
In History of Magic, Professor Binns droned through the textbook in his flat, colorless voice.
The sun was too warm through the windows, pulling everyone toward sleep.
Regulus felt eyes on him.
Two rows ahead and to the left, a pair of Ravenclaw boys had turned to stare. The look on their faces was hard to read.
He didn't lift his head. They turned back around, voices dropping low. Fragments drifted over: "...Slytherin... definitely knows..."
The bell rang. Professor Binns drifted straight through the blackboard and vanished. Students poured into the corridor, bottlenecking at the door.
On the way back to the Slytherin Common Room, Narcissa stepped out from a side passage.
"Regulus." Her voice was soft.
Cuthbert and the others glanced over. Regulus nodded for them to go ahead and turned to face her.
She drew him to one side of the corridor.
"The atmosphere outside has shifted." Narcissa didn't waste time.
She wore dark green robes today, the Black family crest pinned at her collar, hair swept back without a strand out of place.
"Both sides are sitting on a powder keg, but it won't hold much longer. The hardliners in the Ministry are waiting for a pretext. So is the other side."
Her eyes stayed on Regulus while she spoke, peripheral vision sweeping the corridor.
"If someone approaches you in the coming days, tries to pull you into something," her tone stayed gentle, "think it through before you decide. Some doors don't open back up once you walk through."
She didn't give specific advice. Didn't say join. Didn't say stay away. She laid out the landscape and left the rest to him.
Regulus nodded. "Thank you, cousin. I understand."
Narcissa reached out and straightened his collar, though it hadn't been crooked.
She withdrew her hand, turned, and walked away.
Regulus returned to the common room.
The fire in the hearth was burning high. A handful of upper-years sat clustered nearby, voices hushed and charged at the same time.
He settled into the sofa by the window. Beyond the glass, the green glow of the Black Lake shimmered and swayed.
The attack on the Thorne family probably wasn't complicated.
Death Eaters sending a message to Ministry officials who weren't cooperating enough. A show of force. A reminder to everyone that fence-sitting had consequences.
It had happened before. It would happen again.
Snape had mentioned it earlier in the year: voices inside Slytherin calling to take out the trash.
Now, those two threads might be converging.
The moment the Daily Prophet printed photos of the Thorne house alongside descriptions of Dark magic traces and put it in every student's hands, it became an ignition point.
Certain people would read the attack as a signal. A clear one.
The Pure-blood students who weren't thinking straight. The middle-years itching to prove themselves. The fanatics who believed Pure-blood glory had to be written in violence.
They'd treat it as a bugle call. Purge the Mudbloods. Purge the Muggle-borns. Purge everyone contaminating magical bloodlines.
The slogans could sound righteous. The action could come fast.
Regulus had no doubt they'd go through with it. Once people submerged into a group, thinking got easy to abandon. Individual judgment surrendered to collective emotion. People who were perfectly normal on their own could whip each other into a frenzy, knock back a couple of Firewhiskys, and march into the corridors with wands drawn to corner someone.
But whoever was leading wouldn't be stupid.
The person behind the scenes, the one assembling these people, issuing directives, planning the moves, wouldn't be a simple fanatic. What they wanted probably had little to do with blood purity. What they wanted was status.
Influence within Slytherin. Clout among the upper-years. Weight in the Death Eater pipeline.
They might be performing for a senior Death Eater. They might be pledging loyalty directly to Voldemort.
Voldemort was already making contact with students approaching graduation. Regulus knew that much. A few seventh-years already bore the Dark Mark on their left forearms.
That mark wasn't a tattoo. It was a contract, a locator, an identity stamp, a brand seared into the soul. It bound scattered individuals into an organization, the shared symbol hammering home a single message: we are on the same side.
For young witches and wizards, the pull of that belonging was immense. You were no longer alone. You belonged to something larger, something powerful, something with a noble cause.
Restore Pure-blood glory. Reshape the wizarding order.
Inside it you found comrades, validation, a sense of purpose. Even if that purpose required hurting people. Even if the organization would eventually spend you like ammunition. In the moment, the feeling of being needed was enough to blind you to the cost.
It was brainwashing, but done carefully and cleverly. No one forced you. They drew you in instead. They showed you the shiny outside and hid what was bad underneath. By the time you realized what was really going on, it was already too late to leave.
Regulus had spent this school year too quietly. No one challenged him anymore. No one dared test his limits.
That kind of calm wasn't normal. Conflict was inevitable. Only a question of when.
Someone would make a move.
Maybe to stir up trouble, dragging the war outside the walls into the school. Maybe to climb over Regulus's reputation: Look, I dared to challenge the Black heir. Maybe to perform for Voldemort, proving they were more worthy than the not-fanatical-enough younger Black son.
The Black family had enemies, of course.
But Regulus needed this opportunity.
Whether it was a brainless thug, a calculating schemer, someone nursing an old grudge against the Blacks, or someone who simply didn't like his face, it didn't matter who came. Anyone would do.
As long as the other side struck first, Regulus could turn it to his advantage. Keep the conflict inside a framework. Display strength. Eliminate a latent threat. Draw a line for anyone still watching from the sidelines.
Don't come for me.
But all of that was tactics. What truly mattered was power.
The cards in Regulus's hand fell into two categories: the magic he'd mastered, and the weight of the Black name. An ancient Pure-blood family's connections, holdings, political capital.
But strip it down, and the second depended on the first. If he wasn't strong enough on his own, the family name was nothing more than scenery.
Power was the foundation of everything.