A/N: I can't actually apologize for this being late, because in between ch13 and now I moved to the UK and started graduate school. I am basically in over my head on every single level, but I also get to learn things and do stuff that 4 year old me would have died to get the chance to do, so that's amazing. For example, I can't post in 2 weeks because I will be at an overnight stay at a wildlife park.

Best guess for post date is October 1. I'm going to kick my betas now and we'll aim for that. I really could not do this without them, so huge thanks to noaacat and sabreprincess.

TWs: Discussion of infanticide, canon typical racism, and physical abuse of an adult child. It gets lighter after that.

Without any warning, it seemed, it was May. Helped by Bones, and—unwittingly—Arcturus, Regulus started making weekly visits to the Ministry, starting up conversations with low level flunkies and collecting information on them and their more powerful relatives. He knew he was mostly imitating what Lucius Malfoy had already done in building an intelligence network, but unlike Malfoy, he wanted to use this information for everyone's good. So he chatted up secretaries and assistants, and then put his influence as Earl of Huntingdon to work resolving minor disputes. It was of little use, of course, to have Fatimah Shafiq owe him a favour after he resolved an incident involving import restrictions and ashwinder eggs if he didn't also know that Fatimah's second cousin, Ahmed, who was Earl of Westmoreland thanks to some shenanigans with debts and inheritances, was himself in a great deal of debt to the goblins and was looking for a way to resolve it. Regulus didn't have the answer for that, yet, but Westmoreland was unaffiliated and so therefore highly courted by both sides. Sure, he could outright buy Ahmed, but that would give away that he was a real player now, and the longer everyone believed that Regulus was just the naive and careless son of an ancient house, the safer he would be.

As far as the Ministry as a whole was concerned, the Death Eaters were an annoying but ultimately powerless threat—mostly a threat to people who didn't matter, like Mudbloods and their families. Everyone tried to pretend the Dark Lord didn't exist, or wasn't that terrifying, which was an attempt doomed to failure when no one would say his name but that wasn't Regulus's problem, and that the only thing to be concerned about was how many of the younger generation weren't employed. There were a few, mostly in Law Enforcement, who thought that the correct response was to arrest everyone and let the Dementors sort them out, and since Bagnold had won her election after all, that mentality was slowly increasing. If it weren't for Bones, Regulus would think there wasn't a single person in the Ministry with a reasonable attitude towards the Death Eaters.

The third weekend in May found Regulus compiling notes for his own purposes for once, not for any superior, but simply because he was finding it hard to keep track of who he knew now and who thought what about him. His mother was in her rooms where she—or the Horcrux—had been steadily gathering all of the Dark magic books from the library, an activity that Regulus was watching with concern.

He was midway through notes on the Junior Undersecretary to the Minister when Kreacher popped in. "Master Regulus, there is someone at the door."

His stomach sank. Someone at the door, someone Kreacher wouldn't name—and Kreacher had come for him, not Walburga. This had 'Death Eater business' written all over it. "Have Dobby hold them in the sitting room, I'll be right down."

Kreacher bowed and disappeared.

Throwing on a semi-formal robe over his loose house robes, Regulus went down to see who it was.

In the sitting room, Dobby took one look at him and disappeared. Standing by the fireplace, Severus looked up at him morosely, hair hanging in wet strands around his face.

Regulus came to a dead halt. Severus hadn't had access through the wards, but had known where the house was since a February meeting had put Regulus enough on edge to reveal the location. He knew Severus would not come here lightly, if for no other reason than his own pride. "Good day, Severus," he said, sitting.

"We will need to speak to him," Severus said without preamble, "directly. And bluntly. He's not thinking straight."

Regulus breathed out hard and sat down. "Well. Not straight by his standards?"

Severus nodded. "Incredibly." He stared at the ceiling. "In early April I was set to trail the Headmaster. He presented it as a test. He wants me to be the hidden double agent to your…"

"Yes," Regulus interrupted, not particularly needing to hear more of Severus's views on the idiocy of telling everyone you were a spy. "I see. And he wanted to find out if you could—"

"Yes, well," Severus said, cutting him off in turn. "I followed the Headmaster into a job interview. For a new Divination professor."

Regulus had a horrible sinking feeling. "A prophecy?" Authentic prophecies were rarer than basilisks, and at least as dangerous.

Severus made a muffled affirmative noise. "Specifically, about his fall."

Well now. "And you came here because…"

"Because last fall we had an interesting conversation after you were poisoned." It was the first time Severus had ever mentioned their quick exchange last autumn, at the first meeting Regulus attended after the cave. "If you're no longer interested, I can leave."

Regulus gave him a sharp look. "No, no, by all means, go ahead. You said about his fall, what about his fall?"

There was something cold and dead in Severus's eyes. "The prophecy speaks of an infant born this July. He plans to kill them."

"Narcissa," Regulus said, already nauseous. Merlin, Cissy was going to murder him.

Severus shook his head. "The prophecy spoke of parents who defied him three times. Lily would fit."

And Alice Marshall, Regulus remembered. Something that the Dark Lord had surely realized too. His stomach felt like lead. "So he's going to…what, put more effort into killing the Potters? He's been after them since James Potter drew blood on him fresh out of Hogwarts."

"He…" Severus looked down at his hands. "He was frothing. He isn't thinking about this as an opportunity. More like paranoia gone wild."

Regulus wasn't so sure he was thinking about it as an opportunity either. A prophecy about the person who could kill the Dark Lord? What did that mean for the Horcrux? "Tell me what you heard."

Miraculously, Severus didn't protest this. "I only heard the beginning. But: The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies. At which point I was caught eavesdropping and thrown out." He looked disgusted at his own clumsiness.

Reg had bigger problems. "A little vague, isn't it? Any child born at the end of July?"

"The parents have to have fought the Dark Lord, Reg," Severus snapped. "That narrows it down quite a bit."

"Not as much as you think." Regulus pulled his wand and quickly wrote the lines in air. "Defied, not fought."

Severus frowned at the lines. "Where are you going with this?"

Regulus wanted a drink. Spying was one thing, planning how to end the war using unborn children was quite another. "The Malfoys nearly qualify. If he's planning to wipe out any applicable child…"

This threw Severus. "Lucius?"

"Narcissa. She refused to take the Mark. And she did me a favour this last autumn that himself would not be pleased to find out about." Christ, if her child was the one, she would give him ten kinds of hell.

Severus's eyes flickered back and forth, a sure sign he was going through memories. "One of her incidents of morning sickness kept Lucius back from a mission in April. The Oxford one."

He hadn't heard about that, and Regulus couldn't keep his surprise from his face. He'd known that there was a mission targeting Oxford University, and had been aware that Lucius hadn't gone on it, but not that he had been supposed to. Not that Narcissa was keeping her husband away from high risk missions. "Three."

Groaning, Severus stared at the ceiling. "We need to—what do you want to happen here? What outcome do you want?"

Regulus thought of Walburga and the Horcrux, and he drew his wand. "Muffliato. My mother is upstairs so we'd best speak quickly."

Severus looked at him out of the corner of his eye. "If you wish me to go first, you will be waiting a very long time."

"I have given assurances to Bones," Regulus said quietly. "When the war is over, I will be protected."

Bringing his hands down to his lap, Severus sat up straight. "I expected the prophecy to shake him. I did not expect… He was raving about killing every woman with child. Just to be safe. I don't think he cares about any outcome other than his own immortality. Not even blood purity."

"Herod," Regulus said quietly. "Only looking out for his own skin." He wasn't sure what Severus knew or suspected, but for his part, Regulus doubted the Dark Lord had only the one Horcrux.

They stared at each other for a long moment.

Regulus spoke first, not wanting Severus to have the chance to make assumptions. It was all well and good for the other Death Eaters to know he was passing information both directions, and he trusted that Severus was as concerned about the Dark Lord's state of mind as he was. But it was another thing entirely to let Severus know that he wanted the Dark Lord very, very dead on a personal level and was working to achieve that, and that he was even starting to doubt the righteousness of their cause, leader aside. "We can't wait for him to come to his senses," he said.

"No." Severus, for once, looked anxious. "He's going to need to..."

So they had come to it. "Die."

Severus flinched, and only the fact that Regulus had come to terms with this months ago—had it really been almost a year?—kept him from doing the same. "Who's going to-?"

"Kill him?" Regulus said, because the other possible conclusion was replace him and he really didn't want to talk about that. That way lay uncomfortable conversations about beliefs and opinions that Regulus wasn't sure he held anymore.

Severus rubbed his face. "No, that one I know. The damned prophecy." He sighed, not looking at Regulus. "We need to plan. Make contacts. So that when—"

"I'll be damned if I let a child near him," Regulus said, surprising himself. It was true, and the prophecy galled him, but he hadn't intended to say such to Severus.

"The prophecy was quite clear," Severus said, twisting his lips. "Since I was the one to hear it."

Regulus ignored this. "He won't hesitate before killing a child, you know that, but there's no—a child, Sev."

Severus looked like he wanted to say something, but shut his mouth and shook his head.

"Look, you and I can come up with reasons for him to delay until August," Regulus said after a minute. "Then the child is at least born and we can work out who it is."

Severus wasn't paying attention, though. He had frozen in the chair and gone pale.

Chest cold, Regulus took down the charm and turned to look. Behind him was Walburga, looking furious.

"Hello, Mother," Regulus said cautiously.

She didn't have her wand out, which was a good sign, but her eyes were clearly red in the iris, and if Severus noticed—if he asked—Regulus didn't know what he'd say. "Who is this filth?"

Severus's lips were tight but he said nothing.

"Severus Snape. The Dark Lord ordered him to tutor me." If he said the truth, if he was honest, if he had answers for all of her questions, maybe then, maybe...

Walburga sneered at both of them. It wasn't her expression: normally if she was upset enough to show, she went straight to rage. But Severus didn't know that, he'd only met her in passing. "Leave us. You are not welcome here."

Severus looked furious, but when Regulus looked pleadingly at him, he stood stiffly and left without a word.

Walburga turned on Regulus the moment he was gone. "How dare you bring that filth into my home?" she shrieked.

Now that was his mother through and through. Regulus shuddered, and let his wand fall to the floor. It was easier if he was unarmed. It was also easier when his mother was his mother, instead of a strange mix of the Dark Lord in his mother's body. At least as herself, he knew what punishments were coming.

"A disgrace," she said, almost frothing at the mouth, "as bad as your brother! I should disown you, should make you live on your own, you've no right to this family." She stopped and breathed heavily for a minute, and then said, cool and calm, "He is of lesser blood and will not return here. Am I understood?"

Regulus's mouth was dry. "Yes, mother." He didn't dare make eye contact, but looked down and past her, so he could still see if she was about to move for him.

She didn't take a step, but she did draw her wand. "Some lessons need to be painful to be learned properly," she said.

Even if it was a good idea to move, he couldn't. That was not his mother, but it was the Dark Lord, and Regulus was still in the frantic, edged way of a rabbit, because there was no point to running when something meaner and scarier was already in the room with you.

There wasn't a word, there was just pain, splitting across his face like a whip, like fire— He yelped because it was easier than keeping it in, because it was always worse if he kept quiet.

Another strike of firewhippain, and he didn't know if it was his mother or his Dark Lord, because they both liked that spell, and did it really matter? He kept his hands away from his face and his eyes on the floor and cried out at the right times, and when it was done, when she went away still spitting about halfbloods, he picked up his wand and went to his room and—cried. Silently.

Regulus left Grimmauld Place the next morning for his meeting with Arcturus and didn't go back for two weeks. He knew it was only making the eventual punishment worse, but the thought of it made him nauseous—made him sick one morning—and he couldn't bring himself to end it. So he stayed at Teignbridge, or at Hunden Close, or one mutually awful night at Severus's place in some Muggle town, and tried to forget what was living at Grimmauld.

What. Not who, not really.

He knew the Horcrux was possessing his mother. He suspected there was no way to separate them, and even if there was, a horrible traitorous part of him didn't want to, because that meant if he killed the Horcrux then he wouldn't have to worry about Walburga anymore. Which made him feel faint and dizzy, and like there might be something to self-flagellation after all. And Christ, even if he wanted to, there was no way he would be safe if she knew he destroyed the Dark Lord's Horcrux.

The two weeks of exile only ended because he sat down with a calendar and yes, the baby should be fine now, if the due date was originally mid-July. There were potions for things like this, but some of the ingredients were prohibited, so even Severus didn't have them. Regulus went back to Grimmauld in the middle of the night, praying his mother was asleep, grabbed the ingredients, and snuck out again.

The potion itself was easy enough, and two weeks after the event was enough time to let the welts fade on his face—although he had gotten comments from a handful of Death Eaters and from Bones, none of whom were easy to dissuade—so the first weekend in June, Regulus made an appearance at Malfoy Manor.

A house elf met him at the door, looking rumpled. "Master is not home."

"That is not an issue," Regulus said, making sure his robes hung correctly. "I'm here to see your mistress."

The house elf gave him a judgmental look. "Mister Black will wait here," he said, and vanished.

Regulus waited patiently. Whatever Narcissa was up to, he was sure he would hear about it later—or soon, at length, probably. Pregnancy was not doing her patience any favours.

Sure enough, the elf popped back. "Mistress will see you," he said, sounding disgruntled. "Mistress is in her rooms."

"Thank you, ah—" He scrambled for a name, recognized the scowl as one given by a traditional elf who did not like recognition, and headed into the manor.

Narcissa had dictated that she receive her own suite separate from Lucius', and because Lucius was an infatuated idiot, he had agreed. Regulus assumed they still slept together, but Narcissa ran her sewing-and-gossip circle from the privacy of her own rooms where her husband couldn't accidentally spy on her for the Dark Lord.

She was not in her sitting room.

Regulus frowned and walked down the hall to her bedroom. The door was closed, and there was a Healer standing in front of it.

"Black." Decimus Selwyn was the one and only Healer recruited by the Death Eaters, although if he was being accurate, Decimus was really the only Death Eater recruited by the Healers. He and Regulus tolerated each other, as Decimus was also in line for his family's titles. "All of her visitors have to undergo a series of cleaning charms."

Regulus raised an eyebrow. "Even her doting husband?" Narcissa had been paranoid about the pregnancy, but nothing so far as this.

Decimus looked very smug. "All of her visitors. She will be delighted to explain," he said dryly.

Regulus could just imagine. No doubt there was some motherhood article that talked about the evil dust off the street, or what have you, and the horrors it could wreak upon your unborn infant. "Very well," he said, hoping that whatever Decimus was going to do wouldn't turn up the potion in his pocket.

It didn't, but by the time Decimus rather gleefully lowered his wand, he felt cleaned to within an inch of his life. Running his tongue over slightly-sensitive teeth, Regulus entered his cousin's bedroom.

Narcissa was lying in bed, propped up by pillows and with a heavy duvet covering her below the collarbone. Under the edge of the duvet, lying on her sternum, was—
If he had been holding the potion, he would've dropped it; as it was, he made a distinctly embarrassing noise.

Even paler than usual, Narcissa looked very pleased. "Hello, cousin. Let me introduce you to the newest Malfoy."

Regulus inched closer. He had been the youngest Black for his entire life, and personally thought the tiny white figure wouldn't be up for the position.

He'd had minimal experience with newborns before, but this one seemed too small and too quiet, just a shockingly pale head with a thin covering of transparent hair. "Greetings, I am Regulus Arcturus Black, Earl of Huntingdon" he said, and almost immediately felt embarrassed.

Narcissa smirked at him. "This is Draco Malfoy, who will be acknowledged as Lucius's heir when he can spend more than a minute away from me." She paused, and raised an eyebrow at him. "You can come closer, you know. I won't bite."

Regulus restrained any comments on Cissy's violence or lack thereof and stepped cautiously closer to his cousin. Cousins. "He's early," he said, standing next to Narcissa's bed.

"Selwyn says he refused to stay in," she said fondly, running a hand over her son's head.

"Oh," Regulus said, and then, "Guess I didn't need to come." Which was a remarkably stupid thing to say, he realized a heartbeat after it left his mouth, because if he could get out of this room without Narcissa knowing his original plan, then he probably should, except that was already a lost cause.

Narcissa folded her hands over the lump that was Draco and gave him a look worthy of McGonagall. "So if you didn't see his name on the tapestry—" Regulus's heart sank— "why then are you here?"

As terrifying as Narcissa was when she found out you were trying to interfere in her life, she was a thousand times more terrifying if she found out because you were a sloppy liar. Very quiet, he pulled the vial out of his pocket and tried to explain.

June passed with an increasing horror for Regulus: The Dark Lord, never stable, was raving near-continuously about overthrows and could not be rerouted onto any topic other than who was pregnant and when the due date was. It reminded him weirdly of talking with Narcissa, although Narcissa was focused on who Draco's classmates would be and the Dark Lord was focused on...other matters. That was his punishment for trying to interfere with her pregnancy; he had to sit and listen and offer pointers on who Draco should make friends with and potential future wives. Then there was his mother, or the Dark Lord, whoever. She kept going out to tea, or so she said, but Regulus was increasingly sure the Horcrux was looking for allies—or victims, or whatever a fragment of the Dark Lord's soul wanted with other people—because the older Death Eaters sometimes asked Regulus if his mother was okay, their wives hadn't seen her lately.

At any rate, Regulus was having fond daydreams of studying for the NEWTs.

At the tag end of June, Regulus came to the uncomfortable realization that he hadn't told Bones about the prophecy and it probably fell under things he was supposed to tell her about. Very abashed—and looking for anywhere to be other than Grimmauld Place—Regulus turned up at Hereford Manor. "There's something I didn't—forgot—didn't share with you."

Bones had a copy of her Head Auror's office on the first floor of the manor, and Regulus had found his way there without issue. Even at ten in the morning on a Saturday, she could be found there going through the reams of paperwork the war seemed to produce.

"What sort of something?" she said absently, signing a form with a scribble.

Regulus sat across from her and read the form upside down. Warrant for the arrest of Christopher Brodey, and then Bones moved it away and cleared her throat. He knew Brodey, distantly, a slapdash Charms specialist. Not Marked, but in Lucius's cell. He wondered if it was his information that was leading to Brodey's arrest.

"Black," Bones said, much more firmly. "What did you come here for?"

He'd sort of been hoping to avoid it after all, but the longer he put it off the more embarrassing and potentially disastrous it would be for him when it came out. "Sev heard the prophecy. The one the new Divination professor told the Headmaster."

She had gone horribly, terribly pale he saw when he looked up.

"The Dark Lord knows. I thought…I knew you knew it, but I was…I don't know." Prophecies seemed like things which should be kept secret, and then he had realized that the Headmaster must have told Bones, and somehow in there he had never thought that Bones wouldn't know.

"So. This would be why you have been distracted." She was fidgeting with her quill, one of her rare tells.

He wanted to sink through the floor. "Would it have made a difference?" The week before he had given last minute news of two simultaneous raids. The Order had blocked the one on Godric's Hollow, but a Muggle family with one school age child and a wife eight months pregnant were all killed.

She didn't pretend to misunderstand. "To that Muggleborn family? No, it wasn't a surprise. We just didn't have the people to cover them. We had to make a call between them and Godric's Hollow. She sighed. "Not that I didn't wish you had come here with some other news."

"I'm sorry," he said quietly.

Bones put the quill down, finally. "Be mad, Black. Be very, very mad. And be thankful we have a way to predict him now. But don't waste time being sorry."

She turned him loose again, but he spent the rest of the day thinking about that. He was surprised to find there was anger there, somewhere under the fear. Something else to be worried about, he figured, and went to bed.

Draco's christening was very nearly as interesting as Ronald Weasley's. The audience was almost completely different, and Regulus noted the exceptions to report to one side or the other.

Everyone who might question it had been given an explanation for what he was doing at both parties, although Regulus had privately told the younger Avery that he was seeking a wife and wanted to expand his options—a little confusion couldn't hurt.

Narcissa looked positively Marian, dressed in a pale blue silk dress and carrying Draco in the heirloom Malfoy christening dress.

Regulus, to his quiet, private delight had been named as godfather alongside Andrew Wilkes—not noble, but extremely wealthy and quite good with a wand—and Griselda Macnair as godmother. It was supposed to have been Bellatrix, but since she was officially wanted since the Diagon Alley incident, Narcissa was equally officially not speaking with her and had named Griselda as godmother. Griselda, neither titled nor wealthy, was visibly delighted with this outcome.

He wondered whether to point out to Bella—in the back of the room, poorly disguised—that if she was anywhere half as clever as Griselda, she too could walk around in public after murdering people. Of course, Bellatrix was three times as deadly as Griselda, so perhaps that was a factor.

It was interesting, verging on hilarious, to watch the collection of senior Blacks converge on Narcissa and Draco and have to be individually pried off and redirected by Lucius—looking proud, but when did he not?

Regulus avoided all but his essential tasks and eventually congregated with his co-godparents near the alcohol.

"To think that we wanted a hold on Malfoy," Griselda was saying to Wilkes. "Hello, Black. New drinking game: Take a sip anytime you see someone you last saw Monday."

Monday: the last Death Eater meeting, mostly memorable for Walden getting so drunk he nearly cursed his own foot off. "I think I'll pass, thanks. What's this about a hold on Lucius?"

Griselda drained her glass and grabbed another one. "He's never around for clean-up. Some of us," she jerked her head at Wilkes, and then looked over at Bellatrix—still lurking—with a nod, "think he's trying to keep himself clean. But now there's the three of us as godparents for his son, so he'd better toe the line."

Regulus couldn't decide which was more unbelievable: That Lucius Malfoy was suspected of being a traitor to the Death Eaters, that Regulus wasn't, or that Griselda thought an appropriate response was to threaten her new godson. "I think some of us have public faces to maintain, and as long as we obey the Dark Lord, I don't see why anyone else gets to question it."

Wilkes shook long blond hair out of his face. "That may be," he said mildly, "but Lucius has a lot of unaccounted for time. Narcissa was mentioning."

"Narcissa is seeing shadows," Regulus said, mostly defending Lucius out of a misplaced desire to defend anyone accused of spying. "Who among us doesn't take a few hours free?"

Griselda rolled her eyes. "Some of us work, Reg."

Oh yes, this was why Regulus didn't spend much time around Griselda.

"Well, fortunately for Lucius, there's hardly a person here who's not one of ours," Wilkes said. He was a year younger than Lucius, but they had become good friends as prefects together. And then, of course, there were the extracurriculars.

Regulus couldn't shake the cold feeling. "You really think Lucius?"

Wilkes and Griselda exchanged looks. "He's been locked up with himself so much," Wilkes, not a cell leader but Marked anyway, said.

Griselda sighed. "This whole situation puts my back up," she muttered. "Suspecting Regulus Black."

He tried to look trustworthy, and not show the cold sweat that had immediately broken out. They were suspecting him? Was it just a generic, suspect everyone, or had he slipped up somewhere? And how much of this was Griselda, who practiced distrust like the violin, and how much sent down from the Dark Lord?

"Someone's been leaking," Wilkes said glumly. "Baron Avery's cell is down three and he insists it's because the Aurors knew where to come. But the only people who knew he was going out were in the Inner Circle, and that's a short list. A few of us were thinking Lucius, since he's been in the Ministry so much, but he'd have to have balls of iron to do that and then invite so many here." He smiled thinly. "Here with his wife and child."

Regulus clamped down hard on the urge to shiver. That had been him, it had been his scribbled letter to Bones that had let the Aurors gatecrash Avery's cell as they tortured their way through a group of Muggles.

Fortunately, Griselda was bristling enough to distract from any of his unconscious physical reactions. "I think you would live to regret threatening Narcissa, Wilkes."

Oh yes, Regulus definitely agreed with that. "Not to mention her sister is around."

Wilkes looked disconcerted. "I only meant… You think Bellatrix would take care of him if it was true? But she's the one worried about his absences."

Regulus shrugged. "And Bella has had it out for Lucius since he started courting her baby sister. Don't tell her I said this, but Cissy was getting unbearable towards the end, so I'm not surprised Lucius made himself scarce." There. The pet names should hopefully…

Griselda, at least, looked swayed. "You think we're working ourselves up over nothing?"

Yes! "Not…quite." Could he convince them to look at someone else? Who? "There has to be a leak, there have been too many raids coming back short recently. But not Lucius—just like you were saying, look around! No, someone else." A name came to mind: he contemplated it and decided to go for broke. "Someone middle aged, I think."

He had both Wilkes and Griselda now, although he couldn't say why. "Not the oldest, of course," Wilkes said, "but why not from our generation?" It was well-substantiated rumour that the oldest Death Eaters had gone to school with the Dark Lord, although to Regulus's knowledge he was the only one to know the exact truth of that.

"Too idealistic," Regulus said blithely. "Think of how many of us were recruited from Hogwarts, I mean. There's very few that'll be thinking of turning for years yet."

"You are," said Wilkes. Too observant, too canny Wilkes.

Regulus plastered a smile on. "I've been trained for it. And himself has had me looking out." Only barely a lie, really. "No, the people you want to watch are those about thirty or so, forty, old enough to have children and be concerned for their safety, but too young to have known him before."

Griselda blinked. "Many of those are high in his favour," she said cautiously.

"But not all." Wilkes looked to have someone in mind.

Regulus wondered who but didn't know how to ask. For his part, he was thinking of Decimus Selwyn, who had the multiple advantages of being Marked, being not present, and being someone who could reasonably defect—to his sister, Augusta Longbottom. Although frankly, sending them off chasing Snigets was the safest thing he could possibly do, and he shouldn't worry too much which Sniget they were after.

They were interrupted by Walden Macnair, transparently heading for the alcohol rather than his sister. "Hello, Black. Any word what himself wants next week?"

He looked confusedly at Griselda for a moment, but she seemed to have a far better idea of what Walden was asking than he did. "No idea, no, sorry," Regulus said, and wanted to know why people were asking him what the Dark Lord was planning.

Walden shrugged. "Wilkes, let's go..." He grinned nastily, showing overly large, yellowed canines.

Wilkes only shook hair into his face. "Not here, Macnair." He didn't seem discomforted by Walden's general resemblance to a rabid dog. "We are celebrating this morning."

"We're also plotting," Griselda said. "Keep an eye out for anyone looking suspicious, won't you?"

Walden eyed her, no doubt looking for mockery. "Here?"

Griselda shrugged. "I'm sure we're not the only ones plotting."