Harry Potter: Reborn as Regulus Black

Chapter 277: Baruk, I’ll Take Care of You

Regulus said nothing. He met Aragog’s uppermost pair of compound eyes with a level gaze and did nothing at all.

Aragog held that stare, and the memory surfaced unbidden: the orange-red fire from last time.

Regulus looked away. Same tone as before. "One request. You may make it."

Aragog hesitated.

After a silence, he asked, "Can I save it for later?"

Regulus regarded him, voice flat. "You can."

Then he turned to Baruk.

Baruk was still hunched behind Aragog, body pressed low, legs tucked, chelicerae sealed. When Regulus’s gaze swept over him, his chelicerae twitched, the movement so slight it was nearly invisible.

Aragog shifted aside.

Baruk crawled out from behind him, stopped in front of Regulus, and planted all eight legs firmly on the ground. His chelicerae cracked open.

He looked only at Regulus. Not at Aragog.

Aragog’s topmost eyes stayed fixed on Regulus, but the lower pairs drifted downward, settling on Baruk. His chelicerae moved once, then stopped.

Something off about this one.

Regulus looked at Baruk. "I need to shrink you. It’ll be uncomfortable."

Baruk glanced at the spot where the Gnome had turned to ash. The wind had scattered it; only a faint residue clung to the silk.

He looked back at Regulus. One click of the chelicerae.

Regulus drew his wand.

The Transfiguration drew on principles borrowed from Human Transfiguration: compress the whole while preserving the original structure. Size reduced, proportions unchanged, organ function intact, carapace hardness the same.

Strength and speed would scale down proportionally. A palm-sized spider would have only the strength of a palm-sized spider. But venom and silk would retain their full potency.

And an Acromantula’s innate magic would erode the spell over time, requiring periodic renewal.

He tapped his wand once.

Baruk’s body began to contract. Legs drew inward, abdomen shrank, eight eyes condensed into smaller points of light.

Seconds later he was palm-sized, and all eight legs pushed off at once, launching him onto Regulus’s hand.

At this scale, there was something almost endearing about him. Fuzzy, legs curled, like a little ball of fur that had sprouted too many limbs.

Baruk sat in Regulus’s palm for a moment. Then all eight legs sprang open and he vaulted upward, landing on Regulus’s shoulder.

Tiny claws hooked into the fabric of the robe. He settled, then pinched the edge of Regulus’s collar with his chelicerae, gentle, just enough to hold.

Regulus looked up at Aragog. "I’m taking Baruk."

Aragog said nothing. His chelicerae opened and closed once. That was the answer.

Regulus Apparated.

The wind of the Forbidden Forest rushed through behind him, scattering the last trace of ash.

He landed at the forest’s edge, and the instant his feet touched ground he heard a frantic click-click-click-click from somewhere near his collar.

Baruk’s eight tiny legs were scrabbling wildly around his neckline. chelicerae snapping open and shut at speed, body curled into a tight ball, the whole spider tumbling end over end on his shoulder.

He was dry-heaving.

Regulus had never seen a spider dry-heave before. Now he had.

He stood still and waited.

After ten seconds or so the commotion subsided. Baruk’s sounds slowed. His abdomen still rose and fell, but the convulsions had stopped.

Regulus extended his right hand, palm open, and held it beside his shoulder.

Baruk rolled himself over and wobbled toward the palm, eight legs taking turns slipping, each one limp as a wet noodle.

He crawled to the center and curled up. chelicerae closed, eight eyes squeezed to slits. Still recovering.

Regulus brought his other hand over and gathered a thread of natural magic in his palm. Pale green light, small, warm, carrying the soft scent of things growing.

He held it close. The magic seeped in.

Baruk’s legs loosened, uncurling from their knot, spreading out one by one. His eyes opened, each in turn, and his chelicerae tested a tentative click.

"Feel... sick... want... to spin silk..." His voice, shrunk along with the rest of him, came out thin and piercing.

"Hold it in," Regulus said.

Baruk’s chelicerae clicked once more. Nothing came out.

Once he’d recovered, he grew restless. Eight legs shuffled back and forth across the palm, claw tips pricking just enough to itch, and then he scuttled to the end of Regulus’s fingers and leaned out, half his body hanging over the edge.

His head swiveled. Eight eyes swept in different directions. One look was all it took.

The entire spider went rigid.

Every leg snapped inward. Chelicerae locked shut. No movement at all.

Spider stillness.

Before him stretched the open ground beyond the forest’s edge. Hagrid’s hut sat in the distance, and beyond it the silhouette of Hogwarts, tower windows dotted with scattered light.

No canopy. No webs. No damp leaf-rot smell of humus underfoot.

Baruk had never left the Forbidden Forest.

A long time passed before he made a sound, thin and high. "Aragog... Father... doesn’t... let... come..."

Regulus raised him to eye level.

"You’re out now," he said. "You’re free."

Baruk’s chelicerae opened and closed. Eight eyes traced a circuit around Regulus’s face, and it was impossible to tell whether he understood or not.

Regulus set him back on his shoulder and started walking.

Baruk settled on his perch, claws hooked into the fabric, silent, all eight legs spread wide, clinging tight.

Regulus cast the Flight Spell. His body rose and drifted toward the castle.

At first Baruk stayed flat, claws dug in, body pressed as low as it could go.

Then, slowly, he straightened and craned his head over the edge to look down.

Hagrid’s hut shrank. The Black Lake caught a sliver of moonlight through a gap in the clouds and flashed once. The Forbidden Forest unrolled beneath them, its dark canopy fusing into a single unbroken sheet.

Regulus flew toward the castle at an easy pace.

The Black Lake slid past below. The Quidditch pitch stands were skeletal outlines in the dark.

Baruk grew bolder, leaning farther and farther from the shoulder until half his body hung in open air, only his two hind legs still hooked to the robe.

He raised his abdomen, shot a line of silk, and anchored it to the back of Regulus’s collar.

Then he let go.

His whole body swung out into the night.

Regulus turned his head.

Baruk had reached the apex of his arc, legs spread wide, posture open, a completely different creature from the one that had been huddled on his shoulder moments before.

Then, quietly, he climbed back up the silk, reached the collar, reeled the thread in, and settled onto the shoulder again. Claws hooked, eight eyes facing forward, perfectly well-behaved.

Calm now.

Regulus looked ahead. The corner of his mouth twitched.

He slowed deliberately, giving the spider more time to look.

After a while Baruk started craning again. He didn’t swing out this time, just lay on the shoulder and watched the ground pass beneath them, head turning left to right, right to left, eight eyes unable to keep up with everything there was to see.

Regulus’s mind was elsewhere.

Aragog forbade the colony from approaching the forest’s edge, let alone leaving it.

The reasons weren’t complicated.

The Forbidden Forest held enough prey. Food was never scarce, and the Acromantulas had no need to range far.

But beyond the tree line lay Hogwarts and the open ground surrounding it, where students and staff lived.

Dumbledore permitted Aragog’s colony to inhabit the forest on one condition: they stayed inside it.

Aragog might not know who Dumbledore was by name, but he knew wizards lived in that castle.

He knew those wizards were more powerful than he was. He knew what they would do the moment the colony showed any threat toward the young wizards inside.

So he kept them deep in the forest. No excursions, no exposure, no reason for the castle to act.

There was another layer to it.

The Basilisk.

A Basilisk lived in the Chamber of Secrets beneath Hogwarts. Years ago, Aragog had nearly been executed because of it, and Hagrid had been expelled on suspicion of opening the Chamber.

The Basilisk was the Acromantula’s natural predator, because spiders had too many eyes.

The thing Aragog feared most in the world lay directly beneath the castle. Of course he’d keep the colony away.