Chapter 31: Lighting the Fourth Star
The dormitory. Silence.
Regulus drew the heavy bed curtains, layered them with Silencing and privacy wards, and shut out everything beyond — the praise, the gossip, the wariness, the calculations, and the feverish afterglow of Bella's letter.
He sat cross-legged on the bed, closed his eyes, and sank inward.
The base magical circulation flowed along well-practiced paths, gently nourishing and tempering every limb, every tendon, every bone.
Then, in the upper layer of consciousness, his mental focus condensed and wove itself into structure.
Orion's Belt — three stars — kindled one by one in the dark expanse of his inner sea, drifting with motions imperceptibly slow yet undeniably real.
The Star-Orbit Guided Meditation engaged. The vast imagery smoothed away the tangle of his thoughts.
Once his state of mind was fully restored, Regulus attempted to light the fourth star.
Events were outpacing expectations. His pace had to quicken.
Three-star synchronization was only the beginning — the threshold of the Star-Orbit Guided Meditation. He turned his awareness toward Orion's brilliant right shoulder: Betelgeuse, the red supergiant wreathed in a dark crimson halo.
This required integrating a new point into the entire dynamic system while keeping the three-star model running.
Betelgeuse had its own trajectory. Its position and motion relative to the Belt stars formed the structural basis of Orion's upper body.
The difficulty surged exponentially.
Simulating stellar drift was a hundred times harder than building a static model.
It demanded precise computation, formidable spatial imagination, and absolute magical control.
He had to maintain every point's exact relative position in his mind while allowing each one to move with a tendency so slow as to be nearly invisible — yet consistent with actual celestial mechanics.
It was like simultaneously controlling multiple points of light, each tracing its own complex function, while ensuring: the overall shape remained coherent.
Extreme mental focus. Computation that never paused.
The slightest lapse in attention would throw one point's trajectory off course, breaking the dynamic equilibrium — or collapsing the model entirely.
That slowness did not reduce the difficulty; on the contrary, because the motion had to persist indefinitely, it imposed an even greater mental burden.
Simulating near-stillness required absolute patience, absolute precision, and constant, unbroken calibration.
Regulus first attempted to position Betelgeuse precisely in his awareness.
A point of light kindled — dark red, slightly larger than the Belt stars — in its correct position above and to the right of the Belt.
Next: imbuing it with motion.
Betelgeuse's proper-motion data differed from the Belt stars, and even its direction of travel diverged slightly.
Regulus had to partition a share of his mind solely for computing and maintaining Betelgeuse's trajectory, while simultaneously coordinating the dynamic geometry between it and the Belt.
Distance, angle, heading — all shifting with each star's individual motion.
The moment he layered Betelgeuse's drift onto the system, the stable three-star model faltered. Trajectories that should have been smooth turned erratic. The entire dynamic structure teetered.
He stopped at once, withdrew to the three-star state, re-stabilized, and tried again with greater care.
This time he introduced Betelgeuse as a static point first, locking its relative position to the Belt.
Then, with agonizing delicacy, he began feeding in its calculated drift while simultaneously fine-tuning the Belt's motion to accommodate the new variable — searching for a fresh dynamic equilibrium.
It was an enormously taxing process.
His mind felt like a bowstring drawn taut. A dull, throbbing ache built at his temples.
Maintaining a four-star dynamic model consumed far more mental energy than three — the growth was nearly geometric.
Time slipped by in silent struggle and adjustment.
After what felt like an eternity, an invisible gear finally clicked into place.
Betelgeuse's dark red point was no longer a foreign appendage.
Its motion had found harmony with the Belt's trajectory. The simple quadrilateral formed by the four stars began to move through the void of awareness in unified, synchronized rhythm.
Success.
The four-star dynamic model — initial construction complete.
Regulus held the state and noted every nuance of change.
The mental drain was substantial, yet a deeper serenity and a faint sense of spiritual expansion arrived simultaneously.
After lighting the fourth star, the layering and stability of the meditative state seemed to rise another notch. His sensitivity to ambient free-floating magic appeared to sharpen as well.
He withdrew slowly from the deep meditative state and glanced at the bedside chronometer.
From the first attempt to light the fourth star to initial success and stabilization — roughly two hours.
And that was built on thorough mastery of the three-star dynamic model; this was the time cost of adding just one star.
It was easy to foresee: as the model incorporated more celestial bodies and the web of dynamic relationships grew in complexity, the time, computation, and mental load required for each new star would escalate at a staggering rate.
But equally foreseeable: as meditation deepened and the mind endured sustained, high-intensity forging, mental resilience and vitality would grow. Computational power and spatial imagination would improve in tandem.
That would, in turn, accelerate the lighting of subsequent stars. A spiral of ascent — agonizingly slow at first, then faster as the foundation solidified.
Yet the greatest challenge was not lighting more stars. It was solidification.
Dynamism was the method's essence — and its hardest aspect.
He had to recalculate, rebuild, and maintain the dynamic model from scratch in every meditation session. It could not be entrenched as a fixed meditation pattern — as an instinctive magical circuit.
To solidify a dynamic star-orbit model to the level of "walking, sitting, lying — the mind runs it on its own" was a near-impossible feat.
Solidification normally implied fixity, but what he sought to solidify was a system in perpetual motion.
It required the deepest layer of his mind to develop an active structure capable of autonomously processing complex dynamic changes and auto-tuning synchronization.
The road ahead was long, but the light was plainly visible.
Regulus closed his eyes again, but he did not push for the fifth star.
Tonight's four-star achievement was already a breakthrough. He needed to consolidate — to make the four-star dynamic model steadier, more natural, more second-nature.
The star-orbit's extension would proceed quietly, breath by breath, calculation by calculation, synchronization by synchronization.
......
The news that Regulus had crushed a fifth-year, Alger Travers, splashed like cold water into hot oil — erupting through Slytherin and the broader Hogwarts pure-blood network.
Slytherin worshipped power and the wisdom to wield it. When the two merged in so dramatic a fashion, the impact was immense.
Overnight, Regulus's standing inside Slytherin underwent a subtle yet fundamental shift.
Upperclassmen no longer regarded him with the casual eye one reserved for a promising junior. There was a new measure of respect — even a trace of wariness.
No one said anything foolish anymore. Those minor pure-blood students who had kept their distance because of family politics or Sirius's defection began reassessing the young heir.
"This time the Blacks may truly be on the rise," one seventh-year murmured to a companion over breakfast.
"Think about it — the power he displayed, and his matter-of-fact attitude toward Dark Magic. That plays very well with certain people."
"What matters is strength." The companion answered carefully. "He's a first-year and already treating a fifth-year like a toy. What happens when he graduates?
Lord Voldemort is at his zenith. If the Blacks produce someone this formidable, their future position..."
Similar conversations took place in dozens of corners.
Pragmatism — one of Slytherin's survival tenets. When the scales of power tilt visibly, recalibrating posture and re-evaluating relationships is inevitable.
The post owls ran especially busy over the next few days.
Many Slytherin students — especially upperclassmen with close family ties — wrote home with detailed accounts of the duel and of a first-year named Regulus Black who had displayed power far beyond his age.
Thursday morning. Transfiguration had just dismissed when a seventh-year prefect stopped Regulus.
"Black, Professor Slughorn requests you at his office." The senior's tone was courteous — carrying even a hint of deference.
Regulus nodded, gathered his things, and headed for the subterranean classroom.