Legilincy's magical structure leaned cold and invasive. The Wand-Lighting Charm was the opposite: neutral, diffuse. Forcing the two together produced either structural collapse or aningless shards of magical residue.
Then he thought of the Patronus.
The Patronus's silver light was condensed positive emotion in its purest form. It could scatter the despair of Dentors, which ant, on so level, it exerted direct influence over the emotional domain. Overrode it.
Its magical properties had an innate capacity to intervene in emotion and consciousness. Could that serve as a bonding agent?
Regulus didn't summon the Patronus outright. Instead, he turned inward and recalled the texture of the silver light when Starlight Kite appeared.
Warm but never scorching. Steady without being rigid. There was a strange quality to it, a kind of resonance, as if it could pass through things and make them hum in reply.
He drew out a thread of that quality, that tonal inclination, and layered it between the Legilincy frawork and the modified Lumos as a buffer.
When the new structure ran in ntal simulation, the friction and conflict dropped noticeably. Still far from smooth, but at least he could see a viable path.
Several more hours passed before a crude, inefficient initial frawork settled into place.
Massive, clumsy, energy-draining, and wildly unstable.
If he actually cast it, the preparation alone would take several seconds. The light it produced would be conspicuous, would need to hit the target's face and hold for several seconds to take effect, and the effect itself would last a fraction of a mont. Barely perceptible.
But it worked.
From here, the task was iteration. Adjust, optimize, strip away excess until the frawork could survive real use.
Beyond that lay information encoding, complex command delivery, long-term influence. Each step harder than the last.
But right now, all he wanted to know was whether this road led anywhere at all. He needed to test it.
The question was: on whom?
Young wizards were out. The initial version was too rough, the risks uncontrollable.
Ordinary forest animals wouldn't do either. Rabbits, foxes, owls. Their consciousness wasn't complex enough to provide clear emotional feedback. Running the experint on them would tell him nothing.
He considered werewolves, then dropped the idea. A transford werewolf had no rational mind left. Worse than a rabbit.
So the target needed to et several conditions.
Consciousness complex enough to register and reflect emotional shifts. Enough magical resistance to test the spell's penetrative force. Ideally, capable of speech, so he could ask directly what it felt.
And it couldn't be a young wizard. That would only invite trouble.
A na surfaced.
Aragog. The Acromantula Hagrid had raised.
It could speak. It possessed intelligence. Its magical resistance was considerable, and it had natural defenses against conventional spells. As leader of its colony, it could keep its brood in check.
Most importantly, it lived deep in the Forbidden Forest, far from the castle. If the experint went sideways, containnt would be straightforward.
The corner of Regulus's mouth shifted.
That was the one.
Acromantulas carried a Ministry of Magic classification of maximum danger. Not to be dosticated under any circumstances.
Hagrid had not only dosticated one but, worried Aragog might be lonely, had gone out and found a female to keep it company. Mosag.
The result was an entire Acromantula colony deep in the Forbidden Forest, generation after generation, now one of the most dangerous populations in the woods.
Did that qualify as an invasive species?
Hagrid himself had probably never considered the question. He'd simply thought one spider on its own was too sad. It needed a companion.
So there was Mosag. Then there were hatchlings. Then there were the hatchlings' hatchlings.
By now, the webbing in that part of the forest was probably dense enough to stop a bird mid-flight.
If not for the centaurs, give it a few more decades and the place wouldn't be called the Forbidden Forest anymore. It'd be the Spider Forest.
But who was going to do anything about it?
Nobody.
---
The first Tuesday of November. Predawn.
The wind at the top of the Astronomy Tower cut harder than last ti, carrying the bite of early winter.
Regulus stood at the edge of the battlents, looking out toward the dark silhouette of the forest beyond the Black Lake.
The Forbidden Forest lay beneath the night like so vast beast pressed flat against the earth.
The magic he intended to test tonight was still rough.
The intended effect was clear enough in theory: deliver a beam of modified light carrying the emotional inclination of arrogance and contempt to Aragog, then observe the response.
But theory was only theory until it t reality.
Nobody could say whether that beam of light would make Aragog feel suddenly invincible, or rely irritated for reasons it couldn't na, or nothing at all.
He needed observation. Feedback. A subject intelligent enough to reflect what it felt, and durable enough to absorb any mishap.
Regulus stepped off the battlent.
His body dropped. Wind filled his robes, the hem snapping upward.
A few ters into the fall, the Flight Spell engaged. The plunge flattened into a forward glide.
He swept over the castle rooftops like a night bird, silent, cutting across the surface of the Black Lake toward Hagrid's hut.
As the ground rose to et him, his wand tapped his chest. The Disillusionnt Charm spread across his body.
Light bent around him. Heat and magical fluctuations vanished with it.
He landed at the edge of Hagrid's pumpkin patch, his footfalls soft as cotton.
The hut's windows were dark. From inside ca the deep rumble of snoring. Regulus circled past and walked straight for the entrance to the Forbidden Forest.
The mont he crossed the tree line, the light seed to drain away.
The air hung damp and heavy, thick with the sweet rot of humus. Sowhere distant, a nocturnal creature called out, short and shrill.
He checked his bearing and headed deeper.
The path to Aragog's lair wasn't really a path. It was a corridor worn into the earth by spider legs.
The further he went, the more the ground showed patterns: shallow grooves pressed into the leaf litter by many-legged bodies passing again and again, dried mud spatters on the base of trunks, faint scratch marks in the bark.
He followed those traces. The trees grew taller, their canopies denser, until the sky vanished entirely.
The light thinned to almost nothing. He condensed a faint glow at his fingertip, just enough to see where he stepped.
Fog began to gather. With every step forward it thickened, layering like sheets of pale gauze until visibility dropped below ten ters.
The ground turned soft and wet beneath him, giving slightly with each step.
Webs appeared. A few scattered strands between the trees at first, then growing denser and larger the deeper he went.
The clicking of chelicerae reached his ears. Far off at first, sporadic, then multiplying, closing in from every direction.
He'd entered the colony's active zone. The periter.
The terrain sloped downward. The fog here was so thick it felt solid.
Through a final stretch of twisted, web-choked trees, the ground fell away.
A massive depression opened at his feet, like the crater of a teorite. Over a hundred ters across, its edges steep.
The interior had been stripped clean of trees. The ground was covered in a thick, pallid layer of accumulated silk and decomposed leaves, built up over years.
At the center sat an enormous dod nest woven from countless strands of heavy silk, squatting there like a colossal egg.
Its surface was riddled with openings. Black-haired spiders, small to mid-sized, crawled in and out in an unbroken stream.
A permanent fog hung over the depression, rising from the basin floor, laced with the chemical tang of silk secretions. Everything below was half-visible, half-imagined.
This was Aragog's kingdom.
Regulus stood on a jutting rock at the rim, looking down, and extended his magical awareness outward.
Inside the central nest, one presence burned like a dark torch. Powerful, predatory, suffused with the hunger of sothing that sat at the top of its food chain. Aragog.
Near it, a second signature, slightly weaker but still unmistakable, carrying a cold edge and the undertone of sothing that had spent its life producing young. Mosag. Aragog's mate.
He didn't linger. His body slid down the steep slope and into the depression.
The ground was a sticky mat of silk that gave under his weight. He moved through the fog, past spiders on patrol or nding webs. The largest were the size of hunting dogs. The smallest no smaller than house cats. Their compound eyes reflected empty fog, registering nothing of his presence.
Regulus walked straight to the central nest.
The interior was more spacious than it looked from outside, and far more complex. A labyrinth of grey-white silk.
He dropped the Disillusionnt Charm.
Clicking erupted from every direction, rapid and dense, laced with alarm. Every compound eye behind silk and shadow swiveled toward him.
The central clearing of the nest had a floor padded thick with a compressed, velvet-like material.
Aragog's massive body crouched there. Eight legs, each thick as a tree trunk and bristling with coarse black hair, braced against the ground.
Its two foremost legs lifted slightly. The enormous chelicerae parted halfway, exposing the barbed inner walls, dark red and glistening.
Eight simple eyes caught the dim light and threw it back as pale discs, arranged in two rows. The uppermost pair, the largest, fixed on him without blinking.
In the deeper shadow behind Aragog, a second spider stirred. Slightly smaller, its abdon heavier and more swollen. Mosag raised her front half slowly.
Her eight legs shifted with restless, scratching sounds. Her eyes locked onto Regulus with sothing sharper than caution. Open hostility.
"Wizard." Aragog's voice was low and thick, like massive stones grinding together, each syllable resonating through the nest. "You should not be here. Has no one taught you the rules? The Forbidden Forest belongs to its inhabitants after dark."
Regulus stayed where he was. No rush.
His gaze swept over Aragog, then Mosag, then the adult spiders materializing from silk and shadow around him, forming a loose semicircle. Each one was the size of a young horse, chelicerae opening and closing in deliberate, threatening clicks.
"I ca tonight to ask a favor," he said. His tone was even, carrying clearly through the open space of the nest. "An experint."
The word ask was polite. The content was anything but. Still, since Aragog seed willing to talk, talking ca first.
Besides, he was curious about Aragog. Had been for a while.
"Experint?" The uppermost pair of eyes narrowed. The chelicerae snapped wide open, every barb along the dark-red inner walls standing rigid.
One foreleg slamd down onto the silk floor. The impact sent tremors rippling through nearby strands. "On my people? You want to experint on my people?"
---
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