Chapter 30: A Crushing Victory
Travers's words grew uglier by the second, deliberately twisting facts, dismissing Regulus's ability as "backstreet tricks and luck."
Regulus stood still, head slightly bowed. He knew what Travers was after — goad him into attacking first.
So long as Regulus threw the first spell, Travers — a fifth-year "forced to defend himself" — would hold the moral high ground regardless of the outcome.
And Travers was confident that if he focused and fought seriously, he would never be humiliated the way he had been on opening night.
The murmuring died down. Every eye settled on Regulus, waiting for his reaction.
Regulus stood there, absorbing the venomous words, feeling the cold irritation seeded by Bella's letter ferment and warm inside his chest.
He looked at Alger Travers's face — painted with calculation and malice — and found it equal parts laughable and tiresome.
'Why are there always people who can't read a room?'
Slowly, he tugged the corner of his mouth into a smile — cold, sharp, almost blade-edged.
The smile gave pause to everyone who knew him. Avery and Alex exchanged a startled look. Both sensed that Regulus's mood was... off.
Even Hermes, lurking in the shadows, went still for half a heartbeat.
Snape, watching from a dark corner, narrowed his black eyes, sizing up the boy who seemed to have become someone else entirely.
Regulus did not erupt in fury or fling back insults as Travers hoped. He did not so much as glance at the seniors waiting for entertainment.
He simply stepped forward twice and spoke in a tone so flat it lacked all inflection: "Save yourself the clumsy provocation, Travers.
You want me to attack first so you can claim the moral defense and salvage your pathetic pride.
A childish trick — and you are performing it so earnestly."
He watched the other boy's face contort, then continued in that same unsettling calm: "Like a clown."
Three words. Delivered lightly. Yet each struck like a slap across Alger Travers's face.
Then Regulus raised the hand holding his wand.
"So let's not waste time."
"Draw your wand."
Dead silence in the common room. Nothing but the occasional pop from the fireplace.
Alger Travers flushed in alternating waves of pallor and crimson — the shame of being publicly unmasked warring with the fury of being called a clown.
He had not expected Regulus to break every convention and strip his scheme bare in front of everyone.
"Fine!" Travers wrenched his wand free and leveled it at Regulus, forcing a savage expression. "Since you are so arrogant, let me show you the gap between a first-year and a fifth-year — and teach you how to respect your elders!"
The crowd fell back, opening the central floor again. A tide of whispers rose.
"Tsk tsk, Travers really is an idiot — and he still thinks everyone else is, too."
"The Black kid's got teeth. Went straight for the throat."
"Fifth-year versus first-year... even if Black beat Travers last time, that was basically a sneak attack, right?"
"Maybe. But did you see how he blocked that Dark spell...?"
"That's different — Mulciber's a first-year too. Travers has five proper years of study."
"This ought to be good."
Avery's fists clenched. Alex screwed his eyes shut. Hermes leaned against a nearby pillar, dark gaze locked on the floor.
Lucretius did not intervene. In Slytherin, private, mutually consensual confrontations were tacitly permitted so long as nothing irreversible happened.
"Begin!" yelled a spectator who relished chaos.
Alger Travers launched first, lesson learned — wand already in hand: "Stupefy!"
A blazing red bolt streaked at Regulus's face.
Regulus's wand drew a light arc. A flash, and the Stunner was intercepted in front of him.
"Incendio!" Travers switched spells. A searing fire-serpent erupted from his wand and roared across the gap.
Regulus remained planted. His wand flicked upward — a Flame-Freezing Charm.
The fire vanished mid-flight. Even the heat it radiated disappeared with it.
Regulus's dispassionate voice cut through: "Is that it?"
He gave Travers no chance to cast again. His wand snapped forward — a Jelly-Legs Curse struck home.
Travers's legs buckled. Before his body could tip forward, an Impediment Jinx slammed into his torso.
Boom.
Two spells in rapid succession. Travers was flung into a helpless mid-air tumble. Before he hit the ground, a second Impediment Jinx caught him on the follow-through.
BOOM.
Travers sailed through the air like a ragdoll.
The watching upperclassmen winced. Just looking at those hits was uncomfortable.
"Ohhh—" A sixth-year girl inhaled sharply and hugged herself, rocking. "That's got to hurt."
A boy beside her nodded. "More than the pain — Travers must be dying inside."
A fourth-year yelped: "Look at Black's spellwork — silent, fast, and the chaining is masterful!"
Others exchanged glances.
'Could you dodge that?'
'Maybe. You?'
'No chance.'
"Spongify."
Travers had absorbed three consecutive spells in mid-flight. His mind went blank; he still had not processed what was happening when his back slammed into the landing zone.
Yet the impact was not the bone-jarring crash he expected — he sank into a swamp.
"Reducto!" Panicked, Travers fired a Reductor Curse at the ground beneath him, trying to blast free of the muck.
But the instant the spell left his wand, an idle armchair nearby came alive.
Its wooden frame twisted, stretched, and reassembled itself — in a heartbeat, it had become a giant serpent, nearly ten meters long.
The serpent glided silently, coiled around Travers's waist in an instant, ripped him from the mud, and squeezed.
"Aaahh!" Travers screamed. He jabbed his wand wildly: "Diffindo!"
The cutting spell hit the serpent, blowing off a few scales; beneath them, realistic flesh and sinew showed.
But that was all. In retaliation, the coils tightened. Travers could barely breathe.
"Let go! Let me go!" Travers thrashed in vain, face scarlet.
Regulus walked forward at a leisurely pace, gazing at the serpent-wrapped, thoroughly wretched Travers without the faintest flicker of emotion.
He gave his wand a casual wave.
The serpent began to move, dragging the desperately struggling — but utterly helpless — Travers in wide circles around the center of the common room.
One lap. Two laps... parading a ludicrous trophy.
"Enough! Let him go!" A sixth-year boy, friendly with the Travers family, could watch no more and barked out.
Regulus spared him one glance — a glance that choked the rest of the boy's sentence in his throat.
Not until Travers began rolling his eyes from oxygen deprivation and sheer humiliation did Regulus seem to lose interest. A flick of his wand, and the serpent released its prey and reverted to a burst-upholstery armchair clattering onto the floor.
Alger Travers collapsed like a landed fish, coughing, gasping, robes streaked with drool, face smeared with tears and snot, his wand lost somewhere in the chaos.
The common room was utterly silent.
Every eye rested on the black-haired boy who looked as immaculate as if he had merely taken a stroll.
With the most elementary charms — combined with a single, precise, and imaginative piece of Transfiguration — he had toyed with a fifth-year, and the entire performance had not let his opponent so much as brush the edge of his robes.
Some even wondered whether, had this not been a crowded common room, Black might simply have killed Travers.
The serpent's parade made it clear to everyone in the room: Travers had been seconds from asphyxiation.
This was no longer a question of winning or losing. It was a statement of attitude and mastery — laced with a certain cruelty.
Regulus did not spare the prone loser another look, nor did he acknowledge the shock, the awe, or the hints of fear in the eyes around him.
The irritation inside him seemed to have vented somewhat through this one-sided display, yet the deeper, colder sense of urgency remained settled at the bottom of his being.
He pocketed his wand, turned, and in the hush, walked straight toward the dormitory corridor.
Avery opened his mouth but said nothing. Alex had gone blank.
Hermes watched Regulus's retreating back with an unreadable look, then glanced down at the crumpled Travers on the floor before melting noiselessly back into the shadows.
After tonight, the name Regulus Black would carry certain other meanings within Slytherin.