Travers's words grew sharper by the second. He twisted the facts on purpose, reducing Regulus's strength to cheap tricks and luck.
Regulus lowered his head slightly, calm and composed. He knew exactly what Travers was doing. He was trying to provoke him, push him into losing control and striking first.
If Regulus attacked first, Travers, a fifth-year "forced to defend himself," would hold the moral high ground no matter how the duel ended.
And Travers was confident. As long as he stayed focused and didn't make careless mistakes, he would never embarrass himself the way he had last time.
The surrounding chatter gradually faded. Everyone was watching Regulus, waiting for his response.
Regulus stood where he was, listening to those malicious words, feeling the cold irritation carried by the letter in his chest slowly ferment and heat up.
He looked at Alger Travers's face, full of calculation and spite, and suddenly found it ridiculous and tiresome.
Why were there always people who couldn't see reality for what it was?
The corner of his mouth slowly lifted, forming a smile so cold it was nearly sharp.
Those who knew him well froze when they saw it.
Cuthbert and Alex exchanged uneasy glances. Both of them sensed it at once. Something about Regulus's mood was off.
Even Hermes, lurking in the shadows, had his gaze stall for a brief moment.
In the corner, Snape watched closely, eyes narrowed as he studied the Regulus who looked like an entirely different person.
Regulus did not explode in anger or snap back the way Travers expected. He did not even spare a glance for the upper-years waiting eagerly for a show.
He simply took two steps forward and spoke in a flat, icy voice.
"Save your clumsy provocation, Travers.
You want me to attack first so you can claim forced self-defense and claw back that pitiful excuse for pride.
Such a childish trick, and you're still acting it out with such enthusiasm."
As he watched Travers's expression sour instantly, Regulus continued in that unsettlingly calm tone.
"Like a clown."
Three light words, yet they landed like three hard slaps across Alger Travers's face.
Then Regulus raised the wand in his hand.
"So stop wasting time."
"Draw your wand."
The common room fell into dead silence, broken only by the occasional crackle from the fireplace.
Travers's face flushed and drained in turns. The humiliation of having his scheme exposed in public tangled with the fury of being called a clown.
He had never imagined Regulus would ignore the usual rules entirely and rip his calculations open in the most brutal way possible.
"Fine!" Travers yanked out his wand, pointing it straight at Regulus, forcing a vicious look onto his face.
"If you're this arrogant, I'll teach you where the gap between a first-year and a fifth-year really lies. I'll also teach you how to respect your senior!"
The crowd automatically spread outward, clearing the space once more. Whispered voices surged like a tide.
"Tsk, Travers really is an idiot. He still thinks everyone else is one too."
"The Black kid's ruthless. He tore the mask right off."
"Fifth-year versus first-year. Even if Black beat Travers last time, wasn't that basically a sneak attack?"
"Maybe not. Did you see how he blocked that Dark spell?"
"That's different. Mulciber was a first-year too. Travers has had five proper years of training."
"This should be good."
Cuthbert clenched his fists tightly. Alex had already squeezed his eyes shut. Hermes leaned against a stone pillar not far away, his dark gaze locked on the center of the room.
Lucretius made no move to intervene. In Slytherin, a private, mutual duel like this was often tolerated as long as it didn't spiral into something irreversible.
"Start!" a thrill-seeking upper-year shouted.
Alger Travers rushed the attack, lessons from last time firmly in mind, wand already in hand.
"Stupefy!"
A blazing red bolt shot straight at Regulus's face.
Regulus flicked his wand lightly. Light flashed, and the Stunning Spell was intercepted right in front of him.
"Incendio!" Travers switched spells, a blazing serpent of fire roaring from his wand.
Regulus did not move. His wand tipped upward with a casual motion, followed by a fire-extinguishing charm.
The flames vanished into nothing, taking even the lingering heat with them.
Regulus's cool voice carried over.
"Is that all?"
He did not give Travers another chance to cast.
Regulus snapped his wand, and the Leg-Locker Curse struck with pinpoint accuracy.
Travers's body went slack. As he pitched forward, an Impedimenta slammed into his torso.
Bang!
The two spells hit in rapid succession. Travers was flipped stiffly in midair, and before he could hit the ground, another Impedimenta followed immediately.
Bang!
He flew like a torn sack of cloth, battered helplessly through the air.
The brief combo made several upper-years wince. Just watching it looked painful.
"Hiss!" A sixth-year girl sucked in a breath, hugging her shoulders. "That has to hurt."
Another boy nodded. "Compared to the pain, Travers probably feels worse inside."
A fourth-year exclaimed, "Look at Black's spells. Silent, fast, the transitions are perfect!"
Several others exchanged looks.
Could you dodge that?
What about you?
No chance.
After taking three spells in a row, Travers's mind was blank as he flew backward. He didn't even register what had happened before he hit the ground.
But it hurts everywhere.
He flew seven or eight meters. Instead of the expected impact, he sank straight into a mire of sludge.
"Reducto!" In a panic, Travers fired the curse at the ground beneath him, trying to blast his way free.
Before the spell could finish its work, an empty armchair beside him suddenly came alive.
Its wooden frame twisted, stretched, and reshaped itself. In moments, it became a massive python nearly ten meters long.
The serpent slid forward without a sound, coiling around Travers's waist and yanking him out of the sludge before tightening its grip.
"Ah!" Travers screamed in terror, his wand flailing. "Diffindo!"
The spell struck the snake, blasting away a few scales. Beneath them, flesh was clearly visible.
That was all it did.
The coils tightened instead, squeezing the air from his lungs.
"Let go! Let go of me!" Travers struggled uselessly, his face turning red.
Regulus walked closer at an unhurried pace. He looked down at the wretched figure bound tightly by the python, his expression utterly unmoved.
With an almost leisurely flick of his wand, he gave another command.
The python began to move, dragging Travers, who struggled in vain, in slow circles across the open space of the common room.
One circle.
Then another.
Like a grotesque display of a captured trophy.
"That's enough! Let him go!" A sixth-year boy friendly with Travers couldn't stand it any longer and shouted.
Regulus glanced at him. That single look choked off the rest of the sentence in the boy's throat.
Only when Travers began rolling his eyes from lack of air and humiliation did Regulus seem to lose interest.
Then he lifted his wand.
The python released him instantly, collapsing back into a broken, fabric-shredded armchair.
Alger Travers crumpled to the floor like a fish hauled out of water, coughing and gasping violently. His robes were smeared with saliva, his face streaked with tears and snot, his wand nowhere to be seen.
The common room was silent.
Everyone stared at the black-haired boy who still looked neat and untouched, as if he had merely taken a casual walk.
Using only basic spells and a single, precise, imaginative act of Transfiguration, he had toyed with a fifth-year from start to finish. The entire exchange had ended without his opponent ever brushing the edge of his robes.
Some even wondered whether, if this hadn't been a crowded common room, Black would have killed Travers outright.
The way the python moved had made it painfully clear. Travers had been seconds from suffocation.
This was no longer about winning or losing. It was a display of skill and intent, edged with something cruel.
Regulus did not spare the defeated boy another glance. He ignored the stunned, awed, and faintly fearful looks around him.
The irritation in his chest seemed to ease slightly after this one-sided game, yet a deeper, colder urgency still settled heavily in his heart.
He put away his wand and turned, walking straight toward the corridor leading to the dormitories through the heavy silence.
Cuthbert opened his mouth, then closed it without a word. Alex stood there, completely stunned.
Hermes cast one last unreadable look at Regulus's back, then glanced at the collapsed Travers before melting quietly back into the shadows.
After tonight, the name Regulus Black would likely carry a very different meaning in Slytherin.