1

"What is Magic?" asked Professor Lupin, circling around the class with his hands stretched around his back. "Could somebody please explain that to me?" Lyall Lupin had a certain way of talking, he learned within the first twenty minutes of the class, that made you want to listen when otherwise you wouldn't have. He talked about the subject like he actually cared to make you listen and learn, making it appear like it wasn't just one pay check for him, and when he spoke in that stern, but informative way of his, you listened even if you had no plans of doing so previously.

His cousin Andromeda would say that he had the voice of a very excellent storyteller, which was really saying something, because before today, he'd thought that she was the best storyteller there ever had been. "Well, Miss?" He asked the short witch that sat on the Ravenclaw side of the classroom who'd raised her hand with an excited grin etched on her face.

"Petrova, sir, Natalia Petrova," said the brown-haired witch that raised her hand, "Magic — fundamentally speaking, it's what we are. We are magic."

"Excellent answer, Ms. Petrova. Five points to Ravenclaw," Natalia went to smile at her housemates, and Professor Lupin rounded around the room again, and he appeared to be in quite a good mood, "Well then, if we are magic, what's the difference between what we wizards call dark and light magic?"

It was Barty who raised his hand this time around, his Ravenclaw tie hanging around his neck quite beautifully. Blue had always suited him the best, even when they'd been younger and used to hang out while their parents had their business dinners in one of their houses, and they would always drag them around with them.

He had a feeling it was done so with an intent to make them close, considering it would be useful to have one another as an ally, but Barty never had any interest in politics, even then, and always preferred to spend his time studying charms, or playing with his toys instead of doing as he was probably told by his father, which was to befriend him. "Dark magic is done with an intent to harm, while light magic is meant to protect."

He hummed, not in a disagreement, but not entirely in an agreement either. "But wouldn't you say, Mr. Crouch, that you can just as well harm somebody using what people would normally classify as a light magic?"

Barty merely stared, looking like he didn't know what else there was to say. "I do not know, sir."

He nodded his head. "Good job nevertheless, three points to Ravenclaw."

"There is no real difference, sir." He didn't even know he had raised his hand before he spoke, but now that the Professor's attention was on him, there was no going back to simply watching while his classmates tried to guess the answer the Professor so obviously wanted.

"Please do clarify, Mr. Black."

"What I mean to say, Professor, is that the idea behind black and light magic is simply ridiculous," From a young age, every member of a Black family was taught the significance of both light and dark magic, informed that even if the ministry may not approve, it was equally important to learn dark magic as well as the light one. Magic is a magic, his father had said, to classify them into categories was simply ridiculous, although he didn't expect anything less from the Ministry's incompetent dunderheads who can't even stop a single wizard from destroying all of United Kingdom into shreds. "Certainly, there are a few spells in what people classify as a dark magic that are indeed quite harmful, but there are also ones that could be used in a positive way. I think, Professor, it's all about intent, and that classifying magic as simply as dark and light is a very narrow way to see things when it's all so much more complicated than that. You can use light magic to cause harm, but you can use dark magic to protect too. The only major difference I can name between them is that while light magic may require very little to no sacrifice from the caster, dark magic requires a sacrifice, the sacrifice depending on how complicated the spell is, although it's usually by blood. So, in the conclusion, I would say that it all depends on the caster, Professor."

And then he blinked, surprised to see Professor Lupin widely smiling at him, almost beaming, because unless he got a wrong impression, he had thought that the wizard wasn't one that typically smiled, with very few exceptions, much like his own father.

"Excellent, five points to Slytherin," He informed him, and then immediately moved away from where he sat at the Slytherin side of the classroom with Grace Selwyn. "Now that's cleared, I think that we should start practicing some spells, don't you? So, here's a spell for you — Expelliarmus. The first one to successfully cast the spell before the class ends gets twenty points added to their house." That got everyone's attention, which was probably exactly what the Professor Lupin had intended to do. "Now, everyone, stand up, and form pairs. Petrova, you pair with Selwyn. Black, you get Crouch, and Fawley —,"

Regulus stood across Barty in a line with his wand drawn out of the pockets of his school robes, and it all felt just like old times.

Barty smiled at him anxiously, his brown hair falling in front of his face. "Everyone, get into your preferred positions," He stood tall, just like his father had introduced him and his brother to do, and with his feet straight on the ground. "And on the count of three, start. One, two — three."

"Expelliarmus!"

2

He received two letters that day.

Son,

Well done.

— Orion Arcturus Black

My dearest cousin Regulus,

I've heard you've been sorted into Slytherin — how I know, you ask, well that's a secret for you to discover — and can I just say how proud I am of you? You did well, though I want you to know that even if you got sorted into Ravenclaw, Gryffindor or Hufflepuff, I wouldn't have been any less proud.

I am just happy that you've arrived to Hogwarts safely, little cousin, but the true struggles start now. You have to think carefully about how you act and whom you become friends with.

In Slytherin, those things matter more than you think, which my dear husband seems to think is absolutely ridiculous, but you know my Ted. He is a Hufflepuff, so he wouldn't understand, but I was in that same house for seven years, and therefore, I have a bit of an advice for you.

Firstly, and this is very important, so read very carefully, stay away from Avery and his group. I want you to stay as far away from them as humanly possible. If I ever hear you got involved with them, or worse, joined that group I've been hearing so much about in the news, you'd better believe I am coming to give you an earful, although I wouldn't advice on making an enemy out of them.

It can make your life at Hogwarts a whole lot harder than it rightfully should be, if you make an enemy, and powerful one at that.

Secondly, surround yourself with friends that you can trust, and not ones that your parents would want you to have. This is equally as important as the first advice, Regulus, and it has the potential to change your entire Hogwarts experience. I don't know where I would've been if I didn't befriend Molly when I did, but I bet it wouldn't have been anywhere pretty.

Lastly, have fun. That's as important as the last two advices I've given you. If you are at Hogwarts and don't have fun, what's even the point of going?

P.S. I am pregnant! Ha! I bet you didn't see that one coming, now did you?

Your favourite cousin, Andromeda

He had just finished the letter when Lily appeared with very grumpy looking Severus by her side, who looked like he was torn between murdering the witch or going along with whatever she had planned, although he didn't see how he had any choice in the matter, because from what he could tell from their short interaction on the train, when Lily wanted something, she usually got it in the end. "We are going to library to study." She informed him pointedly, beaming at him, "So, I was thinking that maybe we should all go together, the three of us."

Make friends that you can trust, Andromeda had said, and he'd always trusted what his cousin had to say more than anything his parents would tell him to do. Besides, when it all came down to it, he thought that he would prefer friends who trusted and cared for him than allies that would fear him and his family's power, which was exactly what would happen if he did what his father wanted him to do, but more than anything else, he didn't want to be alone anymore.

He didn't want to spend hours upon hours surrounded by people who would gladly stab him in the back if the chance was given, who were only there to use him as means to further their ambitions. He didn't blame them, to be entirely honest. It was a natural thing to do, to want to find a quick way to further in their ambitions. He was just bitter that because of the family he was born in, it also meant that the quickest way to do it would be through him, making it essentially very difficult to find true friends.

So, the choice was simple, really. It wasn't even that much of a choice, to be honest.

He was under no delusions that he wouldn't suffer from such a choice once he would get home, though, but when such time would come around, he would face them then. In mean time, he would think through on a best strategy to face his parents.

He couldn't just go around on facing them without a plan in the hand.

That would be just stupid.

"Gladly," He responded with a small smile, falling to his feet. "Let me just get my bag."

Lily had a rather surprised look on her face, although he didn't know what there was to be surprised about.

"Lily, are you alright?"

She startled, as if caught deep in a thought. "Yes, you've got your school bag?" He nodded his head, pointing at the bag that he had hooked over his shoulder, "Splendid — let's go then."

And then, he fell into pace between the two of them, feeling like, for the first time in his life, that he truly belonged.

3

"I am just saying, it's all very ridiculous for a ghost to continue teaching long after he is dead," Severus was saying quite furiously, "Dumbledore should have fired him a long time ago, but because he is an incompetent idiot who neither cares about the school or his students unless it's his precious Gryffindor house, he doesn't even care enough to fire him."

"Can't somebody get him replaced?" He asked, while carrying all the books that Lily decided she wanted to read from the library to the Gryffindor Tower — the three of them had split them into a half, as they didn't know any spell that could fit them into their bags, although he was quite certain there was one. He made a mental note to ask his cousin when he would write a letter back to her in the response tonight. "Dumbledore, I mean."

"Maybe, but it's very difficult to do that." Lily informed him, "As nobody who wants him off Hogwarts is neither powerful or important enough in the eyes of the society and the Ministry of Magic. There's also the fact that most people consider him to be Merlin reincarnated, which I think is quite ridiculous, considering the fact that Merlin was a Slytherin, and from what I hear from the older Slytherins I am on friendly terms with that he'd hated them for as long as they remember, although he is very careful in showing it in public, and nobody even knows the reason why."

Severus snorted. "Do they really need a reason why?" He asked. "We've been hated since Salazar Slytherin was forced to leave the school all those centuries ago. It's nothing even remotely new."

"Although, don't you think it's very dangerous to have a headmaster that loathes one house, and favours the other one? I would be very concerned, if I were you."

"Yeah, but it's not like we can actually do something about it," Severus said, "The best we can do is to transfer schools, but there are so few choices with us living in England."

Lily sighed, sounding frustrated. "Right?"

Lily suddenly stopped in her tracks, resulting in him almost bumping into her, and he mouthed a quiet apology to her which she seemed to accept by the faint smile she offered his way, but then her face hardened into a look of a pure disgust mashed together with an annoyance when she looked at a boy he recognized to be Potter, his brother's best friend.

His brother appeared next to him, looking surprised at the sight of him next to Lily and Severus, who were glaring at them like they considered them to be the lowest of the low, and maybe they were, considering he didn't know what they'd done to anger them that much, but if anyone were to ask him, he was willing to trust their opinions than anyone else's even if he still did not know them that well (he thought he had quite an excellent judgement of people's character, if he were to say himself, so he doubted that they were wrong in their low opinion about them and besides, it wasn't like they gave him a good impression either), including his brother's, who'd always had a bad judgement of character, considering the fact that he would follow Bellatrix around in the very same way he followed Andromeda around when they were younger, at the very least, he did until Bellatrix had sent him flying to the lake when he was eight and he was forced to be rescued by Andromeda, who'd been enraged with her twin sister for throwing the eight years old him who couldn't even begin to know how to swim into a cold lake in the middle of September.

Any wish he had to learn how to swim died that day. He couldn't even get close to lakes and oceans without feeling like fainting now.

He hated her, he thought, hated her more than he'd thought it was possible to hate anybody in his entire life, even if Narcissa probably would say that it was unbecoming of him to hate a family, and much to his misfortune, she was a family.

Potter began to say something, but Lily merely walked past him, her hands holding tightly around the books she held against her small chest.

She only stopped to ask with a concerned look on her small face, while she watched the two of them with something unreadable passing in her eyes, "Reg, you coming?"

He stared at his brother for one last time, watched how Sirius was staring at him as if in a disbelief, and how Lupin was staring at his brother in almost brotherly concern, his mouth set in a tight line. "Yeah, I am coming," He said, and followed after the redhead and Severus, quickly falling into comfortable conversation with the two of them.

4

"If you need to talk, about anything, come and find me," Lily told him suddenly, with a strange look on her face, "I mean it. Talk to me."

He looked at Severus for an advice, but the look the other boy shot him clearly said, don't look at me, I don't know what's going on in her head either, "Okay, I will."

"Promise?"

He smiled at her in the response, "I promise." He said.

"Good." She grasped his hand one last time (he still wasn't used to being touched so frequently, but he figured that with enough time, he would come to expect it) before exchanging a weird look with Severus, who rolled his eyes at her, although he didn't say a word. "Go back to the dungeons safely, you two." Then she rounded the corner, and walked into the Gryffindor Tower after mouthing, "Maahes," which he thought to be quite obvious, but their house did not seem to be the most imaginative.

"What do you think is wrong with her?"

Severus shrugged. "Who even knows with her? I certainly do not most of the time, and I've known her since I was nine," He turned to him, his face impassive. "Shall we go then?"

Regulus nodded his head, and followed after the older boy.