Regulus of Hogwarts: Lord of the Stars

Chapter 564 Dumbledore: Herogar, I've found a companion for the child.

In the giants' camp at night, in Herogia's stone house, the ore embedded in the walls emitted a dim yellow light, shrouding the entire stone house in a warm shadow.

Dumbledore sat in a beautiful purple velvet armchair with gold stars embroidered on the back. The armrests were comfortably curved and fit him perfectly. He had conjured the chair himself; there was no furniture of human size in the stone house.

He crossed his legs, holding a delicate white porcelain teacup. The tea was clear, Lapsang Souchong. He lowered his head and took a sip. Steam rose from the rim of the cup, dispersing into a small cloud of white mist in the dim stone room.

Herod sat on his stone chair, holding a cup carved from a single block of rock, larger than Dumbledore's upper body, filled with some dark liquid, which he sipped slowly.

The height difference between the two was several meters. Dumbledore, sitting in his purple chair, looked up at Hologa as if he were looking up from the bottom of a well. However, the two did not feel awkward because of this height difference; on the contrary, they were quite comfortable with each other.

It was an August night in Jotunheim, the temperature was below zero, and the wind was howling at the mouth of the valley.

There was no wind in the stone house, and the mineral lamps warmed the rough stone walls, giving it the feeling of being around a campfire in a cave.

The sound of armor clanging came from the doorway. Hilde stepped into the doorway from the darkness outside, her boots landing on the rammed earth, causing a slight tremor.

He was still fully armored, with his face shield closed, revealing only his eyes, and his two battle axes were slung behind his back.

He stopped a few steps away from Dumbledore, raised his left hand, clenched his fist, and slammed it against his breastplate with a low thud.

The metal collided cleanly, and after it ended, the hand hung back at the side.

"professor."

A voice came from behind the mask, deep, short, and somewhat hoarse, with a muffled metallic echo.

Dumbledore looked up at the fully armored giant in front of him. His gaze, as he sat in the chair, reached about Hilde's knees. His silver beard glowed a warm yellow in the light of the mineral lamp, and the outline of Hilde's armor was reflected in the lenses of his crescent-shaped glasses.

His eyes crinkled into a smile, a look of delight in them, and he said casually, "You've grown taller again."

Hilde looked at him for a moment through the eyes behind her visor, then took two steps back and stood back in her position to the side of the doorway without saying a word.

The axe tip lightly touched the ground before stabilizing itself. He turned to the side, blocking some of the light from behind him, casting a broad shadow on the stone house floor.

Heroga took a sip from his large stone cup, put it down, glanced at Hilde with his grey-green eyes, then looked back at his old friend across from him.

The giant remained silent longer than any human; he sat there for a long time without speaking, slowly scrutinizing Dumbledore's face.

After a long while, Herogia finally spoke, his low voice rolling out from deep within his chest. The air in the stone house trembled slightly with his voice, and even the light from the mine lamp flickered.

"Albus, it's been a long time since you've come."

Dumbledore's beard tip wobbled, and the water in the teacup stirred, a very fine ripple spreading from the cup's surface towards the center.

"Busy outside," he replied in the giant's language, speaking much faster than Hero, then sighed, with a hint of weariness in his voice: "I've been busy for the past few years."

Heroga's gaze remained fixed on his face: "You've gotten old."

Dumbledore raised an eyebrow, looked down at his hands, and noticed that the wrinkles were indeed more pronounced than they had been a few years ago.

He looked at the largely unchanged face opposite him and stroked his beard with his other hand: "You've gotten old too."

Heroga's lips twitched upwards slowly, the movement revealing the pulsation of muscles pulling at the skin, indicating he was probably smiling.

"The young man you mentioned has arrived today."

Dumbledore's blue eyes looked over: "How is he?"

"I talk more than you."

Heroga's voice reverberated in the stone house, and the mineral lamp flickered again.

Dumbledore's smile widened slightly, and Herod's voice was deeper than it had been a few years ago. The vibrations in the air felt pleasant and soothing as they traveled through him.

But talkative?

Dumbledore's eyes lit up behind his half-moon spectacles: "How so?"

Heroga paused for a moment, then spoke slowly, pausing between each word: "He cursed a lot, both groups of wizards, and even your white robes."

Dumbledore's beard twitched twice. "Uh," he said, his chin drooping slightly, the corners of his mouth curving more pronounced than before. "...This kid always has his own ideas."

One way to deal with both sides is to give Geralt the task of keeping the giants neutral. The idea is that Geralt can reason with them, explain the pros and cons, and use his clever mind to persuade Heroga.

Unexpectedly, the kid overturned both tables and even dragged his Society of the Phoenix into the fray to curse them.

A smart approach.

Heroga continued, "In over a hundred years, I've never seen a wizard curse like this; the whole room couldn't contain his words."

Dumbledore took the cup away from his lips, crossed his legs, and leaned back in his chair. His blue eyes gleamed with smugness, and he wore the kind of honest expression typical of an old man who couldn't say anything good about him but didn't want to say anything bad about him either.

"He's not entirely wrong," Dumbledore blinked. "Wizards haven't been very popular with giants for centuries."

Heroga's grey-green eyes flickered: "You're different."

Dumbledore smiled and said, "Perhaps."

Herroga was silent for a moment: "You like this young man?"

"He's like me back then," Dumbledore said, still smiling, his tone slightly wistful, "yet he's not like me back then either."

"He cursed, but wasn't angry," another silence fell, and a hint of reminiscence flashed in Heroga's eyes: "You cursed too, in your heart, but you were angry."

Dumbledore shook his head: "I curse now too, but nobody hears me."

The stone house was quiet for a moment. Dumbledore's gaze fell on a row of very old carvings on the stone wall. His blue eyes seemed to travel through time, and his tone slowed down: "When you first showed me those carvings, you hadn't even sat in this chair yet."

He glanced again at Hilde's spot by the door, a smirk playing on his lips: "You were there back then."

Herroga's gaze followed Dumbledore's, and she remained silent for a moment before saying, "You didn't have white hair back then either."

o

"Yes," Dumbledore chuckled, "that was a long time ago."

Seventy years have passed. A young wizard in his twenties, carrying the death of Ariana, the hatred of Aberforth, and the shadow left by Grindelwald, wanders the European continent.

By the time they reached Norway, they had been traveling for more than half a year. They entered the mountains of Jotunheim and encountered a young giant beside a glacial stream.

The giant was in his thirties or forties at the time, which is equivalent to seventeen or eighteen human years in the giant's lifespan. He was not yet the leader and did not sit on that stone chair.

His shoulders were narrower and he was shorter than they are now. He was wearing full armor and carrying a battle axe taller than himself. He stood on the other side of the stream, looking at the stranger.

The two young people, one from the south and the other having always lived in these mountains, couldn't communicate using the local language and relied on gestures and simple words to slowly figure out how to speak.

Beside the campfire, deep in the canyon, the wizard spoke of the outside world, of human cities and schools and wars.

The giant spoke of the heritage deep within the earth, of the memories of his ancestors, and of the names of the mountains.

The wizard talked a lot, as if he wanted to pour out all the things he had accumulated over the years that he couldn't tell anyone else to someone who wouldn't judge him.

The giant listened, sitting beside the embers of the fire, occasionally speaking a word, each one met with a response, each word brief. Two completely different civilizations exchanged fragments of each other beside the embers.

Dumbledore couldn't quite remember how long that journey took. He entered the mountains before winter and came out from the other side in spring. Herod had accompanied him through the coldest days.

He later left, returned to England, became a professor at a school, then a principal, and became the most famous name in the entire wizarding world.

He would return every few years, sit in the same spot—a rock next to the stone chair that had transformed into an increasingly ornate magical chair—and have a drink with Herogia.

Heroga's voice broke the silence: "You were quite talkative when you were young too."

Dumbledore's silver beard twitched. "I'm quite talkative these days too."

Only then did Giorgio seem to respond to something he had just said: "Your young man is different from when you were young."

o

"Of course they're different," Dumbledore said, taking a sip from his cup and narrowing his eyes with satisfaction. "He's much more interesting than I was when I was young."

Heroga was silent for a moment, then slowly shook his head.

Dumbledore looked at him, his gaze gentle: "You don't like him?"

Heroga shook his head again, neither saying he liked it nor disliked it, before finally saying after a moment, "You talk too much."

Dumbledore laughed, and his silver beard trembled.

"He found him for Hilde," Dumbledore said, his tone still relaxed but slightly more serious, tilting his cup towards the door. "Just like you and me back then, we were both young, taking advantage of our youth to go out and explore."

Heroga turned his gaze and glanced at Hilde, who was standing at the door.

"My child," his voice lowered, the low-frequency vibrations diminishing, "is still too young."

"You were young back then," Dumbledore nodded slightly, blinked, and chuckled, "and that child was even younger than I was back then."

Heroga looked at him and remained silent for a long time.

Dumbledore turned to the doorway: "Hilde, you fought him during the day, what do you think?"

Hilde stood in the shadows by the doorway, her eyes peering out from behind her visor. After a moment of silence, her voice came out muffled from inside her helmet: "He's strange."

Dumbledore waited patiently for him to continue.

"When he first arrived at the camp, he opened his magic once, at the entrance, facing me," Hilde's voice was low and slow, her words brief, with pauses in between: "The magic was hot, burning, explosive, and very aggressive; I could feel it."

Dumbledore raised an eyebrow slightly and nodded, a burst of energy characteristic of Regulus in Geralt mode.

The scorching heat that burns when willpower is mixed with magic.

Hilde paused for a moment, then continued, "The sword in his hand had something very sharp on it, extremely sharp, so sharp that it could cut through the air, but he never used that sharp part to attack during the entire fight."

He parried my axe with his sword, many times. He never used anything on the blade; he had something that could have pierced me, but he chose a fighting style that put him at a disadvantage.

Dumbledore paused in mid-air, holding his teacup, his blue eyes narrowing slightly before returning to normal.

Has this kid come up with something new again?

sword?

Heroga listened silently on the stone chair, his grey-green eyes fixed on Hilde.

"And inside that sword, the red part is the same as it was outside the camp. It's very hot and strong. Every time we clashed, we could feel a burst of power. He was holding back and didn't let go."

After he finished speaking, the stone house was quiet for a moment.

"He just likes to do that," Dumbledore said casually. "He has something he can win with, but he doesn't use it. He insists on playing a losing game against others. He does it every time."