Chapter 428 - The Marvelous Subcontinent

Chapter 428: Chapter 428 - The Marvelous Subcontinent

Eight in the evening, Room of Requirement.

Hermes stood in the middle of the floor, wand raised to his chest, textbook dueling stance.

Several rounds of getting flattened by Regulus had given him at least one thing: experience at being hit.

Regulus stood a dozen meters opposite, lifted a hand, flicked his wand without ceremony.

Hermes threw himself sideways at once, faster than last time, the dodge tighter and cheaper on effort.

He landed, rolled, brought his wand around, and before a single syllable left his mouth the second attack arrived.

A Curse skimmed the shell of his ear and punched a fist-sized crater in the wall.

No time to breathe. The floor under his boots went hot, heat coming straight through the leather.

He rolled backward clear of it, the hem of his robes catching, a thin curl of scorched smoke rising. Two quick slaps of his palm put the sparks out.

"Improving," Regulus said, offhand.

No breath spare for an answer. Hermes had already worked out the arrangement: however much he improved, Regulus nudged the intensity to sit exactly one notch above him.

His progress was absorbed, perfectly accommodated. The better he got, the harder he got hit.

A silver arc of Diffindo swept in horizontally. He ducked under it, caught Regulus’s wand moving again out of the corner of his eye, and threw up a Protego.

The barrier had barely formed when a Blasting Curse shattered it, the shockwave lifting him off his feet and slamming his back into the wall. He slid down onto his knees.

He never got settled there. An oppression type curse came down from above, pinning him flat, arms braced against the boards, holding on by force.

Teeth clenched, he poured magic into his legs, used Magical Manipulation to accelerate, and tore himself out of the pressure zone.

The instant he cleared it, Legilimency crashed in. His skull rang. He hauled his mind back together.

Consciousness barely secured, fireballs came next, a dozen white spheres the size of heads strung into a line. He bounced up off the floor and ran.

Regulus rationed his magic and stamina with care. Wrecking the target in one go would be a waste.

Beat him a while, pause a while, raise the intensity, shorten each burst. Sustainable violence.

When the pace told, Hermes got to catch his breath, and once his breathing evened out, another round, each one pitched a fraction higher than the last.

His Occlumency and his Magical Manipulation climbed under that treatment because they had no other option.

Don’t climb, get hit. Climb, still get hit, but take two fewer.

At the edge of the floor Cuthbert had one eye covered, peering out between his fingers, unable to watch and unable to look away.

Every spell that burst made his shoulders jerk in sympathy, air hissing between his teeth as though the curse had landed on him.

Alex stood beside him, worry all over his face, certain that one missed dodge would be the end of Hermes.

The thought had barely finished forming when Hermes went down again, cheek pressed to the wooden floor, his wand skidding away.

Alex pulled in a long breath and shut his eyes.

Lina had tucked herself behind him, eyes round as coins. Samuel leaned against the wall, not blinking, absorbed.

An hour or so in, Regulus stopped, slid his wand into his inner pocket, and rolled his wrist.

Letting magic off the leash felt good, if he was honest. As a living target, Hermes was doing the job.

He walked over and stood by his head.

Hermes lay on his back, ruined from end to end, robes slashed here and scorched there, hair a knotted mess, the general look of a boy a giant had used as a rag.

Not injured. Suffering, certainly.

Compared with the plan he’d hatched over dinner, reality had proved less accommodating.

Regulus bent slightly, tone easy. "How’s that for a level?"

The others had drifted over.

Cuthbert stood beside Hermes, arms folded, thumbing his chin, glancing from the wreckage on the floor to Regulus and back.

He was applying serious thought to a serious question: had Regulus forgiven him or not?

You beat a person into that condition and then ask how it was. What exactly did that mean?

"Still breathing." Alex crouched and checked under Hermes’s nose, then looked relieved. "Alive."

"Obviously." Cuthbert clicked his tongue. "Regulus wasn’t going to actually kill him."

Hermes’s eyes took a long time to focus. His chest showed almost no movement. A corpse giving off steam.

Then his lungs went off like a bellows, his chest heaving up, and he blinked twice with difficulty, lips working, the sound squeezed out of his throat. "...Good."

Lina’s face suggested she’d just seen Merlin. Samuel pulled his gaze off Regulus, then sneaked it back.

Regulus straightened and turned to Cuthbert. "I’m away next week."

Cuthbert blinked. "Where?"

"India."

Cuthbert’s eyes widened. "India?!"

"What are you going there for?"

Alex looked curious. "You’ve been?"

"I haven’t, but my father has!" Cuthbert raised both hands, his expression suddenly animated. "He says traveling there is an experience you’ll never forget."

He launched into the stories his father had told him over the years.

"There are magical creatures there that you’d never see in Britain. He once spent three days tracking a dragon through the mountains, only to discover it had doubled back and been following him the entire time!"

Alex stared.

"And the weather! He said one moment you’re walking beneath clear skies, and the next you’re caught in a monsoon. He once had to shelter inside a ruined temple for six hours while rain came down so hard he couldn’t see his own hand."

Lina blinked. "That sounds... unpleasant."

"Unpleasant? He said it was brilliant!"

Cuthbert was clearly enjoying himself now.

"He also told me about a magical expedition into the wetlands. They were looking for a rare potion ingredient when the entire team got chased halfway across the marsh by a herd of enchanted buffalo!"

Alex’s expression froze.

"Enchanted buffalo?"

"Apparently they were perfectly ordinary buffalo until someone tried to get past them."

Samuel’s eye twitched.

Cuthbert continued without noticing.

"And don’t get him started on the bureaucracy. That’s the real nightmare. You need one permit, they send you to another office. That office sends you somewhere else. Then someone discovers the first office was the right one all along!"

Alex stared at him.

"How long did that take?"

"Three weeks."

"Three weeks?"

"According to my father."

Cuthbert nodded solemnly, then added, "And apparently the file was eventually found sitting on someone’s desk."

There was a long silence.

Alex slowly rubbed his forehead.

Lina looked as though she wasn’t sure whether to laugh.

Samuel had stopped looking at Cuthbert altogether.

Regulus swept his eyes over them.

Alex was still trying to process the story. Lina looked entertained despite herself. Samuel appeared to have decided that silence was the safest possible response.

Regulus found it amusing.

India was a fabrication, of course.

He wasn’t going anywhere near India. He was going to see Dumbledore. The lie was simply a convenient destination to send anyone who happened to ask.

And as lies went, India was a useful choice.

It was far enough away that nobody would expect details to be easily verified, and the Avery family had legitimate business connections there. Several rare magical ingredients were sourced from the regions of the Deccan Plateau.

Cuthbert had never been there, but his father apparently had plenty of stories.

Regulus had merely given those stories a new purpose.

He could almost imagine Mr. Avery complaining about every one of them over dinner.

At least Cuthbert had made the lie entertaining.

Cuthbert was still going. Regulus cut in. "If anyone asks, that’s where I’ve gone."

Cuthbert stopped short, mouth finally shutting, and then his eyes lit up.

He’d caught it. He’d been handed something important. Regulus wasn’t going to India. India was for outside consumption.

A grin spread over his face and he thumped his chest hard enough to hear. "Leave it with me!"

Regulus looked at Alex, his gaze passing quickly over Lina and Samuel.

Alex met his eyes and nodded.

He knew what needed saying. Lina and Samuel kept their mouths shut, but somebody had to set the boundaries, and he’d handle it.

Regulus took them all in and his mouth tugged sideways.

"No telling how long I’ll be. But when I’m back I want to see progress, and anyone who falls short..."

He let it hang, his gaze resting a moment on the heap of mud that was Hermes on the floor before returning to their faces.

Cuthbert shivered. Alex nodded at once. Lina shrank backward into Samuel, who nearly lost his footing.

"Train. I’ve got things to do." Regulus turned and walked out.

The door of the Room of Requirement closed behind him.