Chapter 417 - The Cat Doesn’t See a Cat

Chapter 417: Chapter 417 - The Cat Doesn’t See a Cat

First Sunday in March, eight in the evening, the abandoned classroom on the fourth floor.

Regulus pushed open the peeling wooden door, crossed to the window, and cracked it open.

Night air poured in, less bitter than before, carrying the freshness the castle’s stone walls breathed out after a full day of sun.

The early-month moon hung above, more than half missing, thin cloud sliding across its face, the light spreading across the classroom floor in a sheet of silver.

He hadn’t waited long against the sill before footsteps came down the corridor. Light, quick, with a skip in the rhythm.

The door swung in and Lily leaned half her body through, red hair catching the moonlight.

She spotted him and her green eyes crinkled into a grin. "Professor Regulus."

"Miss Lily." The corner of his mouth tipped up as he straightened off the wall.

She came the rest of the way in with a bundle of pure black in her arms. Knox.

The kitten was curled in the crook of her elbow, both front paws hooked over her cuff.

Lily shut the door, set Knox on the floor, drew her wand, and gave two flicks toward the heap of old desks in the corner.

Several splinters of wood stretched, warped, and fitted themselves into the shape of a coat stand, settling firmly against the wall.

She pulled off her school robe and hung it up, then looked back at him.

Regulus shed his own and hung it beside hers.

Lily glanced at them, one corner of her mouth lifting, and turned to roll up her sleeves.

Knox crouched on the floorboards, legs tucked under him, tail tip patting the wood, eyes never leaving Regulus.

Sleeves done, Lily started toward the center of the room. Her foot had barely turned before she caught the cat in the edge of her vision.

He arched his back, fur bristling, ears flattened, eyes wide as he hissed softly.

"Knox!" She dropped into a crouch and reached to smooth him down. "Why do you always..."

Knox shrank sideways, sliding out from under her hand, back still humped, and hissed at Regulus again.

Lily stayed crouched with her palm hanging in the air where the cat had been. She looked down at him, then up at Regulus.

Her most treasured black kitten. Regulus had given him to her. She’d introduced him to Petunia. She’d gone through half a dictionary picking the name, and when she practiced her Patronus the image she reached for was this cat asleep across her knees. And of all people in the world he took against the one who’d sent him.

How many times now? Every single visit, the same.

Regulus stood a few paces off, watching the puffed-up ball of black fur on the floor, face giving away nothing.

He’d chosen that cat himself. French Chartreux crossbreed, high-end pedigree, nothing like it in Britain. A Black family employee had delivered it personally to Cokeworth, basket and velvet lining included.

And now it hissed at him.

I bought you. And you hiss at me?

Fine. Nothing worth marveling over.

He looked again at Knox’s braced-for-battle posture, found it funny, and took a step forward.

The cat detonated. His back arched until it looked ready to fold over, the hiss climbed sharp and loud, claws scrabbled twice at the boards. Not one inch closer.

Lily scooped him up in a hurry, one hand under his hindquarters, the other pressing his head against her chest, murmuring at him to stop, stop.

"He isn’t like this normally." She looked up, caught between annoyance and laughter with a thread of embarrassment underneath, her voice half a mumble. "He likes everybody. He just doesn’t like you."

Regulus’s mouth twitched. He looked at the cat in her arms, then at her.

Nonsense. He doesn’t like everybody. He likes his owner, and that’s the whole list.

His right hand came up, fingertips moving slightly, and the Blackthorn wand in his inner pocket sealed itself under a film of magic so thin it barely existed.

The same method he’d used on Baruk at the funeral. Magic pressed the fluctuations flat, and with them the residue of Dark Magic clinging to the wand.

Knox’s hiss cut off mid-breath.

Half his head emerged from Lily’s arms, ears upright, swiveling left and right, deep blue eyes fixed on Regulus while the pupils widened from slits.

The thing that had set his whole body on edge was gone.

Confusion was written plainly across that small face. Same person standing there. So why was there suddenly nothing to hiss at?

The wariness stayed, though. Eyes still locked on him. Tail still stiff.

Regulus waited a moment, then reached out, light and fast, running his fingertips along the twitching tip of the tail.

The entire cat launched. All four legs fired at once, and he landed a quarter turn away, tail blown out into a bottlebrush, glaring back over his shoulder.

Regulus had already withdrawn his hand. He stood where he was, looking down at the cat, expression blank.

Lily hugged her suddenly empty arms and looked from the cat to him.

This was someone who handled everything, kept everything within his grip, spoke to anyone with the same unshakable steadiness.

And here he was, in a battle of wills with a kitten.

Her mouth curved. The laughter in her eyes was getting hard to hide.

This version of him wasn’t the usual one. The Regulus who tugged a cat’s tail, then pulled his hand back and pretended nothing had happened. She’d seen a little more of him than other people got.

They couldn’t see it. She could.

Something rose up warm and soft in her chest, and she couldn’t have named it.

She crouched, gathered Knox back in, and rubbed her chin against the tips of his ears, her mouth refusing to flatten.

The room went quiet a while. Knox kept glaring, tail frozen in midair, wariness and bafflement tangled in those blue eyes.

Regulus turned his head, letting his gaze drift off the cat, and left it alone.

Lily scratched under Knox’s chin, coaxing the bristled fur back down.

She glanced up. He’d returned to the windowsill, moonlight coming in from the side and carving out one half of his face.

This was the man who’d just terrorized her cat and was standing there like it never happened.

"You know what?" She lifted the kitten onto an old desk beside her and looked up, green eyes bright. "Thursday night, I knocked James Potter’s wand out of his hand."

His eyebrow moved. "Tell me."

Color rose in her cheeks. She’d meant to hold it in a moment longer and failed, launching into it with both hands helping the story along.

"I came out of Professor Slughorn’s office and went up the steps, and right at the turn, there they were, all three of them. Potter had his wand in Severus’s face, and Black was leaning against the wall watching..."

She stumbled over the name and shot him a look.

Regulus’s face stayed mild. He nodded for her to go on.

She pressed her lips together. "Sirius, I mean. He ambushed Severus. Disarming Charm, then Petrification."

Heat flared in her voice again, quickly buried under the momentum of the telling.

"Potter didn’t take me seriously at all. He assumed I’d come to shout at them to stop, same as every other time." Her eyes went straight to Regulus, and there was pure satisfaction in her voice. "Not this time."

She walked him through the fight: how Potter opened, how she used an Impediment Jinx to force him into a jump, how the Leg-Locker Curse came in at his feet as he landed, how the spell she’d hidden inside the flock of birds came within an inch of shearing off some of his hair.

Regulus, leaning on the sill, raised his brows at that, and his mouth went with them.

"Once he got serious he had me pinned. I couldn’t breathe." Her hands traced spell paths in the air, words tumbling faster, her voice climbing. "He was so fast. Two Disarming Charms back to back, and the second one was aimed where he knew I’d dodge. I blocked it head-on and got shoved back two steps. Before I’d got my footing the Stunning Spell was already there, and I only dodged it by throwing myself sideways, and that fall was what did it. He waited until I was down and the third Disarming Charm took my wand."

She stopped for breath and spread her palm open. The scrape from last time had faded off it.

"He flicked my wand up and left it floating there, teasing me. Told me to jump for it."

Regulus’s brow furrowed.

Winning wasn’t enough for Potter. He had to plant his heel on top of it. Making a disarmed opponent hop after her own wand was exactly the sort of thing he’d do, and he’d probably walked away thinking he was hilarious.

Arrogant. A wretch. Raised without an ounce of manners.

He looked at Lily. Not a trace of humiliation on her face, nothing wounded either. Her voice was still climbing, cheeks flushed, eyes bright. The whole thing clearly hadn’t cost her a moment’s thought.

He studied her a beat longer to make sure, and the crease in his brow smoothed away.

Amusement flickered through his eyes, and something eager entered his voice. "And then?"

She met his gaze. The concern in it hadn’t quite finished retreating.

Her heart gave a small jump. She pressed her lips together and kept the smile from getting away from her.

"He was so pleased with himself. He thought I had no wand, so I was just a toy."

She raised her left hand, fingers splayed, and made a hauling-down motion. "I didn’t go for the wand floating in the air. I went for the suit of armor in the alcove."

Her chin tipped up, her whole body dropping with the imagined pull. "The whole thing. Helmet to greaves, the lot of it, straight down with an almighty crash."

"Magical manipulation?"

"Magical manipulation!" Lily nodded hard, red hair swinging at her shoulders, eyes blazing. "The entire suit came down on him. His reflexes are real, I’ll say that. He didn’t even look up, just threw an Impediment Jinx straight over his head. But that was the whole window. He was busy with the ironmongery, my wand dropped, and I had it up and a Disarming Charm out."

Regulus’s expression softened as he smiled. "Did it land?"

"It landed." Her grin split open, her face full of the satisfaction of having done something formidable. "You should have seen Potter. He went absolutely blank."

Then she talked herself down. "Some of it was closer than it sounds. If the armor hadn’t rattled him, or if he hadn’t gone to block it, if he’d kept his attention on me at all, I’d never have got the wand back."

Her expression sobered, lips pushing out. "Straight up, face to face, I can’t beat him."

Regulus nodded, his eyes encouraging her onward.

"He’s too fast." Her tone turned serious as she took apart her own weaknesses. "I know how to steer him where I want him, but his speed doesn’t leave me room to finish anything. Half a dozen times I’d barely started something before he broke it up."

Regulus listened without interrupting.

She was thinking it through herself, dismantling the sequence, hunting for her own gaps. Last year in this same abandoned classroom, all she could say was that she couldn’t do it. Now she could list her problems one by one.

She finished, caught her breath, and looked up at him with the excitement still not faded from her face.

Regulus took in that expression and gave her a thumbs-up. "Beautifully fought."

He thought a second, then added, "Impressive."

Her eyes flared bright. Her mouth went up, then hurried back down, and lost the fight. "You think so too?"

Watching her try to be modest and fail to sit on her own delight, he let the amusement show. "Did you go and ask the mirror about it a few times after?"

"I did not!" She grabbed Knox off the desk and shoved him toward his chest.

The cat detonated in midair, scrambled back onto her shoulder, and clamped onto her collar, hissing at Regulus.

Lily looked down at the cat, then at him, and sighed. "He really does like everyone else."

Regulus glanced at the black shape clinging to her shoulder and nodded. "His taste is decent."

She blinked. Something crossed her mind, and heat spread through her face.

Her hand went to her earlobe without asking permission, tucking the loose strands back behind it, and then she lifted her chin and wrinkled her nose at him.

A while later, as if it had only occurred to her, her eyes went to his shoulder. "Where’s Baruk? Why didn’t you bring him?"

Regulus reached up and touched the spot. "Went home."

"Home?" She tilted her head. "Isn’t he your pet? What home?"

"He’s staying with the colony a while," he said easily. "He’s making friends with the trees. No successes so far."

That got a laugh out of her. Knox shifted in her arms and wound his tail around her wrist.

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