Chapter 326: Let Father Have the First Taste
The Whomping Willow was more stubborn than Regulus had expected.
Half a day of verdant magic, poured out without a pause, and only then did it grudgingly settle, sliding from patrol to wariness to that fine threshold where hostility hovered just below the point of attack.
He laid his magical sense across it and felt the violent oscillation still coursing inside the branches, bound, held back for now, not yet released.
Morning to noon. Five hours on his feet.
Agnes came by once in the middle, carrying a tray with a warming lid clamped over it.
Maybe she saw what he was doing. Half a lifetime with magical plants, she'd know verdant magic when she met it. Or maybe she didn't, and she'd simply come to bring food and asked nothing.
The lid lifted on a steaming Shepherd's Pie and a pot of Ginger Tea. A warming charm had been worked into the underside of the cover, breathing out heat, keeping the food hot for the next half hour.
Agnes set the tray on a wooden stake. "Young Mr. Black, lunch."
Beside the tray sat a small stone basin holding a slab of raw meat, still steaming, the cut surface pink, blood pooled at the bottom.