Chapter 401: Each With Their Own Thoughts
Regulus stopped watching them. He'd taught what needed teaching; the rest was theirs to figure out.
He spread his magical perception wide, past the faint pulse of ordinary plants, sweeping deeper into the Forbidden Forest.
He skirted the snarling signatures, the ones bristling with attack or defense, and hunted for something else entirely: magic with emotional texture, magic with no edge to it at all.
Bowtruckle magic was distinct. Quiet, outward-facing, neither aggressive nor guarded, a light resonance between magic and living things, like a conversation held with the surrounding trees.
Found them.
West by north, a stand of unusually well-formed trees, dense-grained and old. Good wand wood.
Bowtruckles favored trees like that. A whole nest of them tucked into the thin branches of the crown, that plant-like flicker of feeling seeping out through the leaves in thin threads.
He fixed the location in his mind and didn't move. No point catching them now.
Tonight was Friday. Detention ended once they'd gathered enough magical moss. Tomorrow was Saturday, better anyway. He'd come back in daylight and handle it along with returning Baruk to Aragog's lair.