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The first Friday following the September full moon arrived with a crisp, biting autumn chill. Down on the sprawling, manicured lawns of the Quidditch Pitch, the annual Slytherin team tryouts were held exactly as scheduled.
On this particular afternoon, the wooden stands weren't just populated by ambitious Slytherins. A smattering of students from other Houses, those who were deeply, fanatically invested in the highly competitive Hogwarts Quidditch scene, had also bundled up in their scarves to carefully scout the enemy.
Sitting high in the Gryffindor section, the wind whipping through his messy black hair, James Potter leaned forward against the wooden railing. He was practically vibrating with intense, uncharacteristically serious focus.
"I need to actively study the opponents," James muttered, his hazel eyes tracking the green robes flying below. "I need to see exactly what level of raw talent this new batch of Slytherin players is bringing to the pitch this year."
Beside him, Sirius lounged back on the wooden bench, looking completely relaxed. He honestly wasn't incredibly interested in the tactical minutiae of Quidditch; he had braved the autumn wind today purely because he knew his younger brother had officially signed up to participate.
And since both James and Sirius were highly invested in the afternoon's entertainment, Remus—who was still looking slightly pale but vastly healthier now that the agonizing full moon had passed—naturally didn't hesitate to tag along with his best friends.
Down on the pitch, Regulus gripped the polished mahogany handle of the brand-new Nimbus 1001 his father had purchased for him. He stretched his shoulders, warming up his muscles on the grass.
He had officially signed up to audition for the position of reserve Seeker. The current Slytherin Seeker was a burly fifth-year who wouldn't be graduating for another two years, but the Slytherin Captain was ruthlessly practical. He had mandated that the entire active team show up to participate in the rookie selection, desperately hoping to unearth a hidden prodigy to groom for the future.
Unlike the tryouts for positions like Keeper or Chaser, which required complex, highly coordinated teamwork and passing drills, the Seeker tryout was incredibly, brutally direct.
It was a test of pure, unadulterated reflexes. The Captain would fly high above the pitch and sequentially drop dozens of heavy, golden glass balls—roughly the size of a Golden Snitch—toward the earth. The candidates simply had to see who possessed the sheer speed to catch them before they shattered on the ground, and who could catch the most in a single dive.
What seemed like a relatively simple tracking test actually required terrifyingly great kinetic vision, raw physical strength, and absolute fearlessness.
"Your brother is up," James noted, his sharp Seeker's eyesight immediately zeroing in on Regulus. He nudged Sirius. "Be honest, mate. Just how good is Regulus's actual flying?"
"He flies pretty decently at home, but he literally didn't have any time to actively practice on a broom all summer," Sirius admitted, shaking his head. He was mentally drawing a rapid comparison between James's terrifying natural talent and his brother's. "I've also never actually seen him attempt any advanced, high-speed tactical tricks."
"Well, at the very least," Remus added with a warm, deeply amused smile, looking past the pitch toward the towering silhouette of the castle in the distance, "your brother definitely isn't afraid of lethal heights."
The three Gryffindor lions exchanged a highly knowing, wicked grin, universally recalling the legendary Astronomy Tower jump.
Down on the pitch, Regulus handsomely, effortlessly mounted his broomstick. He kicked off the soft grass with a massive burst of physical force. The enchanted Nimbus 1001 shot upward like a bullet, lifting him sharply into the air as if the polished wood were a natural, biological extension of his own body.
The icy autumn wind instantly began to howl violently in his ears. His dark hair was whipped furiously backward, and his heavy black cloak, lined with shimmering silver and emerald green, flapped loudly like a war banner in the sky.
The vast, endless blue sky. The ancient stone castle. The rolling green mountains and the sparkling, clear water of the Great Lake...
As he hovered high above the pitch, a profound sense of absolute freedom and vastness washed over him. He realized with a sudden, thrumming thrill that Quidditch wasn't just a game in this universe; it was a deeply ingrained, instinctual love permanently imprinted onto Regulus's soul.
He executed a few incredibly sharp, testing turns in the air, getting a feel for the broom's sensitive handling. He held the handle easily with one hand, executing a series of rapid, flawless ascents and descents to warm up his core, before quickly signaling the burly Slytherin team Captain, Flinn, that he was entirely ready to begin the trial.
A conspicuous, loud burst of colorful red fireworks shot from the tip of Captain Flinn's wand. Instantly, a Beater hovering near the goal hoops upended a sack, dropping the very first golden glass ball from the high altitude.
In the stands, James Potter stared intently, his face showing a level of fierce, terrifying concentration he would absolutely never display during a Transfiguration lecture.
The heavy glass ball began to plummet diagonally downwards, its terminal velocity increasing rapidly. From the distant stands, many of the spectating students could no longer even visibly track the blurring trajectory of the small golden sphere.
But high in the air, something magical happened. In Regulus's dark eyes, heavily augmented by his system-bound 'Eagle Vision' and his maxed-out physical 'Stealth' reflexes... the violent speed of the fall genuinely seemed to slow down to a crawl! Or rather, his hyper-focused gamer brain could easily, rapidly process such dynamic, high-speed visuals without lagging.
In a fraction of a second, Regulus violently banked his broom. He moved in a flawless diagonal dive, perfectly intercepting the mathematical falling path of the glass ball.
Smack. The first one, caught effortlessly in his palm.
Before he could even smoothly tuck the first ball away into his robes, the second ball was already accelerating from high above, dropping toward a completely different, highly awkward location near the spectator stands.
There was absolutely no conscious process of thought. Regulus simply felt his enhanced kinetic vision and his physical body perfectly connect. He threw his weight aggressively to the left, executing a sharp, gravity-defying drifting turn—
Smack. The second one, caught.
At this incredible display of agility, the crowd of Slytherin players watching from the grass below erupted in a massive, genuine cheer.
The physical movements were simply far too beautiful and precise to ignore. Just as a famous Muggle gamer once said: "In any RPG, you must heavily emphasize aesthetic style! Because if your combat movements look incredibly good, the underlying stats generally aren't a big problem." Based strictly on the sheer, breathtaking aesthetic appeal of his flawless dives alone, Regulus was undoubtedly already over-qualified for selection.
High above the pitch, Captain Flinn grinned wickedly and made a sharp hand gesture. The Beater instantly released the third and fourth balls simultaneously, sending them plummeting in completely opposite directions!
Regulus immediately shoved the nose of his Nimbus straight down, rocketing in a terrifying, vertical dive toward the lower ball—
Smack! The third one, caught inches from the grass!
Without losing a single ounce of momentum, he violently yanked the broom handle up, spinning on his axis to make an astonishing, near-suicidal upward corkscrew dive toward the final sphere!
Before the fourth ball could crash into the wooden struts of the goalposts, he reached out and steadily scooped it directly into his gloved hand.
The fourth one, caught!
Regulus pulled up, hovering gently in the center of the pitch, and let out a long, highly satisfied breath. Aggressively grinding those 'Stealth' and 'Climbing' skills all summer definitely brought me a massive, comprehensive improvement in my core physical fitness and raw reaction speed.
"Light, agile, and absolutely flawless! Black, that was bloody amazing! You're incredible!" Captain Flinn couldn't help himself. He rocketed over on his own broom and practically tackled Regulus into a massive, back-slapping hug mid-air. "With your raw tracking level, you're more than qualified to be a reserve. Honestly, you could easily play directly on the starting roster!"
Down on the grass, the original Slytherin Seeker looked incredibly, deeply melancholic. He could already vividly feel the crushing, impending crisis of being violently surpassed by a twelve-year-old. I'm going to have to train like an absolute madman this year just to keep my spot, he thought miserably.
Up in the stands, Remus patted a stunned James hard on the shoulder. "Well, James. It looks like you've officially got a massive rival for the Cup."
"Sirius, your brother is really, genuinely something else," Remus added, thoroughly impressed.
"This is truly just another hidden side of him. Regulus constantly, effortlessly surprises me," Sirius smiled easily, lounging back, his chest swelling with undeniable brotherly pride. He nudged his best friend. "James, the monumental task of eventually defeating Regulus on the pitch in the future is entirely up to you."
Despite the Captain's immense enthusiasm, Regulus was highly, perfectly satisfied with merely securing the official title of 'Reserve Seeker.' He actively didn't want to become a full, starting member of the team right now.
There was simply nothing he could do about it; he genuinely did not have the physical time required to participate extensively in grueling, mandatory, three-day-a-week Quidditch training sessions. He had empires to build and Death Eaters to hunt.
As a reserve player, he would maintain the glorious social status of being on the team, while retaining a massive amount of free time to scheme.
"Tell me, Black. Are you intimately familiar with the official Quidditch scoring rules?" Captain Flinn asked him seriously as they landed back on the grass.
"Yes, Captain. I am very familiar."
"Then I'll ask you one final, highly tactical question," Flinn said, crossing his burly arms. "If the opposing team's current score is 170, and our score is a miserable 10... and you, as the Seeker, have the opportunity to catch the Golden Snitch at that exact moment. Who will ultimately win the match?"
"The final score would be 170 to 160. The opposing team would still win," Regulus stated instantly, without a single second of hesitation.
"Excellent! Absolutely brilliant!" Flinn beamed, clapping his hands together happily. "You honestly would not believe how many idiot students in this House literally cannot do basic, foundational math on the fly... They all blindly assume that catching the Snitch automatically means they'll definitely win the game, and they end up throwing the match..."
Regulus suppressed a deeply arrogant smirk. Hmm. Well, my Muggle elementary school math was always pretty decent.
Soon after the tryouts, another piece of massive, highly anticipated good news officially arrived.
Headmaster Dumbledore had formally agreed to reinstate the long-defunct "Hogwarts Dueling Club," and Professor Flitwick would officially serve as their sanctioned faculty instructor and referee.
However, the day-to-day administrative operation and bracketing of the club would be entirely undertaken by Regulus Black, who, according to Dumbledore's official notice, "has already demonstrated an extremely excellent, highly unique talent for mathematical organization." The Dueling matches would aggressively utilize a completely different, highly complex competition scoring system (one that was incredibly popular in the Muggle chess and competitive gaming world: the Elo rating system). The club would start all participants with baseline estimated ratings, and dynamically update their permanent records by calculating the mathematical probability of their match results.
Terms like statistics, logarithmic algorithms, baseline variables, and bell-curve distributions were proudly plastered on the club's instruction board. They left the vast majority of the pureblood little wizards completely, utterly bewildered and deeply intimidated.
Only Professor Vector, the notoriously strict Arithmancy teacher, read the board and nodded repeatedly in absolute, fanatical approval, loudly stating in the staff room that she would definitely be aggressively recruiting Mr. Regulus Black into her advanced N.E.W.T. class next year.
"Our little Black's level of complex mathematical knowledge is indeed terrifyingly high!" the Slytherin Quidditch Captain, Flinn, boasted loudly in the common room.
For a time, the student body was highly eager to move, aggressively submitting their signed combat applications to Regulus one after another.
"Division Winners will receive the official Golden Eagle Trophy, and custom-crafted, enchanted golden belts shaped like their respective House emblems!"
Many students in the castle now intimately knew the terrifying context behind the trophy design. They knew that Slytherin's Regulus Black legally owned two massive, highly lethal golden eagles... a fact which caused the Ravenclaw students' daily gazes toward Regulus to be filled with a deep, seething jealousy and resentment that was practically about to violently spill over.
Later that week, Regulus and a few of his Slytherin companions squeezed through the damp stone entrance into the Slytherin common room.
As they stepped inside, they happened to see Rabastan Lestrange aggressively storming out of the portrait hole. His thick lips were pursed tightly, and his brutish face looked incredibly unhappy and deeply humiliated.
Meeting Rabastan's intimidatingly gloomy, highly venomous gaze in the narrow doorway, Regulus didn't shy away for a single microsecond. Instead, he stopped, straightened his posture, and smiled coldly, offering a perfectly calm, deeply arrogant sneer.
"See you on the dueling field, Lestrange."
Rabastan physically stumbled slightly, his face flushing a violent, ugly purple as he glared fiercely at the younger boy, completely unable to formulate a comeback.
His only response from Regulus was the absolute, dismissive sight of the twelve-year-old's back, as Regulus calmly walked away into the common room without ever bothering to look back.