Regulus of Hogwarts: Lord of the Stars

At the same time, in the Wizengamor meeting hall beneath the Ministry of Magic.

The stone dome is high and wide, and magical light shines down from the walls, passing through the air that has been stagnant for hundreds of years, and landing on the circular, layered seating area.

The stone wall was adorned with portraits of the chief wizards of past generations. Some were dozing off, others were chatting with their neighbors, and a few simply turned their backs to face the wall, completely oblivious to what was happening below. A few others remained awake, gazing down at the scene with silent eyes.

In the center of the hall was a spacious circular floor paved with dark stone slabs, with the chief scribe's long table in the very center, piled high with parchment scrolls and seals.

About fifty Wissengamo members were scattered across the tiered seating area, with most of the hall occupied.

Today there is a motion; Orion Black, the representative of the Black family, submitted a procedural application ahead of schedule, with wording so concise as to be almost ambiguous.

The Black family is about to initiate a traditional procedure protected by ancient pure-blood laws, and this is hereby filed.

There was nothing wrong with the procedure, and the chief secretary could not find any reason to refuse to accept it, so it was put on today's agenda.

Everyone present was wondering what the Blake family was up to.

Orion sat in his seat, wearing a crimson Wesengamo robe with a silver "W" embroidered on his chest, his expression calm and composed, no different from whenever he sat in this position.

Eyes half-closed, mouth level, body leaning slightly back, one hand resting on the edge of the table, fingers gently clasped together.

Even though the proposal submitted today was a major move that the Black family had been preparing for several days, the expression on his face was no different from when he was discussing an amendment to the import tariff on crucibles.

Abraxas Malfoy sat in the seat next to him; the Malfoy family's seats were right next to the Black family's, and the seating arrangement hadn't changed for decades.

Her long, silver-gray hair was neatly combed, her hands were naturally folded on her knees, and her gaze swept over the faces present, with the casualness of someone attending a routine meeting.

The chief wizard's seat was empty; Dumbledore was not there.

In recent years, it has become more difficult to see Dumbledore in the general assembly hall of Wizengamot than to encounter a living troll in the corridors of Hogwarts.

The absence of the chief wizard has become a daily occurrence in Wizengamor; even the portraits of former chief wizards no longer bother to look at the empty seat.

Nobody cares whether he's there or not, at least not right now.

The chief clerk was looking down at today's agenda. The Black family's proposal was the third item on the agenda, preceded by a discussion on revising the Floo Powder quality standards and a routine report on Muggle entry and exit point management.

The discussion among Filo fans was still going on when suddenly light pierced through the dome between the stone bricks in the center of the ceiling.

A golden beam of light fell from above, passing through the stone wall, through the gaps between the portraits, and landed in front of Orion, hovering in mid-air.

The entire conference hall was illuminated by golden light. Everyone looked up, and the former chief wizards who were dozing in the portrait also woke up and peeked out from the edge of the frame to look down.

Golden light spread across the sky, and lines of gilded ancient Latin letters appeared, exactly the same as those in the sky above Diagon Alley.

The complete terms of the family revenge pact burned word by word in the air of Wizengamor, spreading outwards from Orion as the center.

The Filo fans' discussion stopped. The committee member who was halfway through his sentence still had his mouth open, but he didn't continue. All fifty or so Wizengamo members looked up.

On the tiered seating, some people stood up, some gripped the armrests, and some turned to look at Orion.

Orion sat in his seat, the golden Latin letters swirling and floating in the air before him, illuminating his entire face.

The clerk stopped writing with his quill pen, the tip hovering over the paper. A drop of ink seeped from the tip and stained the notebook.

Abraxas looked at the Latin text in the air, scanning it from beginning to end, reading through every clause, and then sat up slightly.

In the portrait, a 17th-century chief wizard, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and with a mostly white beard, who has been dead for nearly three hundred years, presses his face against the edge of the frame and squints to decipher the Latin inscriptions in the air.

"Declaratio sanguinis," he pronounced in a strange tone, then snorted and retreated into the depths of the frame: "Something no one has touched for centuries, you're really something."

Orion stood up from his seat, straightened the front of his crimson robe, and held a pre-prepared formal contract filing document in his hand.

He walked through the passageway between the steps, past the still-glowing Latin inscriptions, to the circular floor in the center of the hall, and to the chief clerk's desk, where he put down the documents.

"The Black family, in accordance with the ancient law of pure blood, has officially registered the declaratio sanguinis, a family revenge contract."

His voice was steady and carried to everyone's ears in the extremely quiet hall: "Target, the Roll family; instigator, Regulus Atallos Black, heir of the Black family."

The chief clerk looked at the document in front of him, then at Orion, then at the still glowing Latin letters in the air, his face expressionless.

He was an elderly male wizard who had been in this position for decades and had handled enough documents to fill twenty filing cabinets.

He had read the terms of the declaratio sanguinis in the documents; every Visengamo scribe had to copy the Pureblood Law from beginning to end when he took office, but that was only part of the ceremony.

He never imagined that a living person would actually walk into this conference room and place a living contract in front of him.

He looked down at the documents on the table. The parchment shimmered with faint golden patterns, the mark of the contract magic itself, which could not be faked.

After reading it, he looked up, dipped his quill pen in ink, and began to record it in the notebook.

"There's probably only one person in all of Britain who has the ability to forcibly break this level of ancient contract magic," a white-haired old member muttered from the upper right seat.

Several people's eyes simultaneously turned to the chief wizard's empty seat.

That person isn't here today.

Just then, the side door of Wizengamo was pushed open, and Barty Crouch strode in.

He was lean, tall, with straight shoulders, his hair combed back without a single stray hair, a slightly high hairline, a thin face, prominent cheekbones, and two deep nasolabial folds that stretched from the sides of his nose to the corners of his mouth.

He wore the standard dark robes of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement of the Ministry of Magic, with the Director's badge, silver scales and sword pinned to his left breast.

His gaze swept quickly across the entire hall, where the lingering golden characters remained in the air. Orion stood in the center of the hall, surrounded by documents on the scribe's desk and members of the Wizengamot with varying expressions on the tiered seating.

He walked down the steps, across the central open space, and straight up to Orion, stopping less than a meter away—too close to be impolite, but not close enough to be considered a provocation.

"Orion Black," Crouch's voice, as cold and hard as his appearance, his gaze stern and unrestrained, "what is the meaning of this filing?"

Orion turned to him, his demeanor composed: "Mr. Crouch, it's clearly written in the documents that the Black family has initiated a family revenge pact, targeting the Rolle family. The initiator is my son, Regulus Black. Procedurally, the filing with Wizengamor has been completed."

"Procedure?" Crouch took a step forward, his eyebrows furrowed, immediately adopting a confrontational stance, showing no politeness: "The Black family believes they have been offended and should file a formal complaint with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. The wizarding world has judicial procedures, courts in Wizengamor, and the enforcement powers of the Auror Office. Any dispute should be resolved through legal channels, and organized acts of force must be authorized by the Ministry of Magic."

"The power of the Declaration of Sanguinis does not derive from the authorization of the Ministry of Magic, Mr. Crouch," Orion said, waiting for him to finish, his tone unchanged. "It comes from an ancient order established by pure-blood families hundreds of years ago. This law has not been repealed by Wizengamor to this day, and it runs parallel to the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Magic, without replacing each other."

He reached for the filing document on the table, flipped to the first page, and pointed to the clause: "If I remember correctly, the Ministry of Magic's jurisdiction is not the same as the right to deny the ancient traditions of pure-blood magic. If Mr. Crouch wants to repeal this law, please go through the legislative process."

Crouch stared at Orion and asked curtly, "Are you telling me the Ministry of Magic can't handle this?"

"I'm telling you, this matter has its own rules," Orion said, glancing around at the members present, his tone slightly raised. "These rules weren't set by the Black family, nor by the Crouch family; they were established hundreds of years ago by the ancestors of all of you here."

Several representatives from long-established pure-blooded families sat up slightly and nodded solemnly.

They love to hear that.

Crouch looked at Orion's face and remained silent for a moment.

He certainly couldn't go through the legislative process; he was a pure-blood wizard and the patriarch of the Crouch family, one of the Twenty-Eight Holy Clans.

The family revenge pact is the oldest war rule between pure-blood families, and for hundreds of years no pure-blood wizard has attempted to challenge it.

Questioning it is tantamount to publicly stating in front of all pure-blood families that the rules set by your ancestors do not count in my eyes.

Crouch wouldn't openly challenge the ancient order of purebloods in the meeting hall of Wizengamor. He's tough, but he's not stupid.

So he changed his approach, no longer dwelling on the legality of the procedure. He shifted from direct confrontation to a more methodical aggression, staring into Orion's eyes, his voice hardening: "The instigator is Regulus Black, thirteen years old, an underage wizard."

He swept his gaze across all the Wizengamo members present: "Does an underage wizard have the qualifications to perform an ancient ritual of this caliber? Does he have the qualifications to wage a war of annihilation?"

"Regulus Black, heir to the Black family, is thirteen years old and, according to Black family tradition, is qualified to preside over family ceremonies independently," Orion said, already prepared. He took out another document from the inner pocket of his robe—a thin piece of parchment with his signature and the Black family's magical seal on it, a deep blue light faintly emanating from the seal. "The head of the family confirms and authorizes this document. It is here."

He handed the document to the clerk, then turned back to Crouch and added, "Contract magic itself is also a verification process. If the person casting it is not qualified, the contract magic will not be activated at all. You see, it was activated, so the qualification is established."

Crouch stared at the still-glowing magic seal, his brows furrowed deeply.

Magic itself is the judge, and that path is now blocked.