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In the rope walking training project, the natural agility and coordination displayed by the Quidditch Chaser James were outstanding. Perhaps because she spent hours manipulating fine threads in the knitting club, Mary's performance on the swaying hemp was also exceptionally steady.
Regulus, having shared his tactical insights on balance, sat leisurely on a dusty desk to the side, casually flipping through a leather-bound book. A neat row of pungent, green bruise potions brewed by Severus rested on the wood beside him. He only needed to occasionally look up whenever a heavy thud signaled someone had fallen down again.
These Little Wizards, attempting the tightrope for the first time and crashing to the floor, provided Regulus with his daily entertainment for the end of March 1975.
"It's okay if you can't do it yet," he comforted Lily, whose eyes were red from crying after a particularly hard fall scraped her knees. "As long as you bravely tried, even if the result isn't perfect, it's still cool!"
Courage doesn't always roar in a grand manner; sometimes it is a quiet whisper in your heart at the end of an exhausting day: I will try again tomorrow.
Second training session, third training session... The Little Wizards continued to attend every grueling session, their robes dusted with chalk and sweat. Their sheer determination amazed Regulus, who prided himself on his adult maturity.
No one gave up.
This persistent practice soon yielded dividends in actual combat. Lily and Mary challenged the Duelling Club target board together. Utilizing excellent cooperation and keen reaction speed, they overpowered the very same Slytherin group who had previously mocked Mary in the corridors.
"The Black Family's talent cultivation, tsk tsk," Benny Shafiq, who was now practically Regulus's number one fan, gave a thumbs-up without reservation from the crowd. "As expected of a truly proper pure-blood noble family. The Little Wizards in their team are all so sharp, even those of Muggle origin..."
Now, Shafiq and a few older Ravenclaw friends had also submitted applications to participate in the indoor training section of the "Assassin Apprentice" program. Of course, they didn't know the official, crossover name of this training.
"You ask about my dueling results? Just average," Shafiq hid his pride, glancing at his name topping the leaderboard with a humble smile. "Once I master 'dodgeball', there's definitely still a lot of room for improvement..."
Not far from him, a younger Slytherin Little Wizard overheard the exchange and frowned in deep confusion.
Although the Black brothers were indeed sharp as knives, as pure-blood nobles, shouldn't they care about the blood status of the friends they chose? Even that Muggle-born classmate Jacob Frye, whom he despised, had a close relationship with Regulus.
What's the point of being friends with these people? Aren't they just Mudbloods?
Little Barty Crouch, born into one of the United Kingdom's oldest pure-blood wizarding families and taught to only befriend pure-blood Wizards, was genuinely puzzled. However, watching them duel, he had to admit these two older students from the House of Black were truly more dazzling than anyone else in the room.
... ...
Like all Muggle schools filled with teenagers, Hogwarts was a never-ending emotional fermentation machine.
On campus, some were happy and some were miserable. The Hog Gang side was thriving, but others were struggling.
Recently, the hulking Mulciber found that several parchment stickers would inexplicably appear on his back from time to time, bearing quite provocative calligraphy: Troll Brain or Honorary President of the Brain Rot Association.
This kind of prank possessed zero magical lethality but was deeply insulting, making him furious. Yet, it was like a haunting; there were no clues, leaving him helpless and paranoid.
But he wasn't the only target.
Many students began to suspect they were being "secretly admired" by unseen classmates, especially those who liked to doze off in History of Magic and were often distracted. Some secretly started writing diaries in the common rooms, and as they wrote, the romantic theme shifted from "He likes me, but is afraid to say it" to "The Little Princes of the Black Family are in love with me."
Some repeatedly observed the sticker patterns and ink colors, attempting to decipher a hidden code of love. A few even seriously crafted a batch of return stickers—I like you too, Let's meet and talk—but frequently slapped them onto the wrong people in the crowded corridors, causing several massive social blunders.
One afternoon, Regulus, operating in his system Stealth, saw a lonely third-year boy hiding around the corner of the tapestry corridor. The boy was carefully placing a sticker on his own back, muttering, "This way it won't seem too lonely..."
Regulus smiled softly from the shadows and casually slipped past, adding two more cheerful stickers to the boy's robes.
Soon, sticking stickers became a massive campus-wide trend. It evolved from anonymous assassin training into a form of communication layered with humor and endless creativity. Even Peeves the Poltergeist was caught off guard by Sirius and had two neon stickers slapped onto his spectral form. The Professors, naturally, noticed.
Professor McGonagall caught two Gryffindors sticking We are the Champions stickers on each other during a lecture and said seriously, "If you could put this much enthusiasm into Transfiguration, I would be very pleased." She wore a rare, thin smile and did not deduct points.
Professor Sprout simply joined the lovely trend. She crafted a batch of bright green stickers that read Mandrake Blesses You and happily stuck them on the students' earmuffs.
Headmaster Dumbledore offered a tolerant summary of this strange campus phenomenon during a routine morning assembly: "It is a vital part of growing up for young people to perceive the world in some sneaky ways."
Just like that, the little Hogwarts students unintentionally stirred the waters, successfully hiding the truth of the behind-the-scenes physical training program.
Like true assassins, perfectly invisible in plain sight.
... ...
Inspired by the Little Wizards' diligent training, Regulus had also started moving stealthily around the sprawling campus grounds.
He was constantly utilizing his system Stealth everywhere, randomly tracking unaware targets, crouching in the tall grass whistling to distract patrols, and jumping around in the Forbidden Forest treetops like a shadow. Among these excursions, sneaking deep into the woods to eavesdrop on Centaur meetings was the most interesting. In terms of speaking off the cuff and rhyming poetically about the stars, Regulus sincerely bowed down to them.
Besides practicing his spells hard on the Swedish Short-Snout dragonhide and pondering the mechanics of spell jumping, Regulus also began a dangerous new regimen.
He blindfolded himself with a thick black cloth and sparred with the massive golden eagles in an open clearing in the Forbidden Forest, training his hearing and spatial reaction speed. After all, when you need to fight with your eyes tightly shut, hearing becomes a matter of life and death.
His ultimate target was the Basilisk sleeping deep beneath Hogwarts!
After obtaining Voldemort's Parseltongue recording from the locket, Regulus had been secretly developing his combat skills because he felt his baseline abilities were insufficient for a boss raid. The Basilisk was probably hibernating down there anyway.
But now, he had finalized a series of preparations—even Hagrid's rooster army was fat, strong, and ready.
The last time Mary was attacked in the corridor, Professor Slughorn not only looked shocked, but his gaze towards Regulus had flickered with genuine suspicion for a moment. It was as if some terrible past memory had been violently awakened.
Regulus reasonably inferred that the young Tom Riddle, who claimed to be the "Heir of Slytherin," might have pulled a similar stunt at the school decades ago. And much like Dumbledore back then, Slughorn might also be naturally suspicious of a certain handsome, dark-haired Little Wizard.
Although Regulus hadn't deduced who cast the spell on Mary yet, the recurrence of intimidation similar to the past basically couldn't be separated from the school's Death Eaters in training. Avery and Mulciber's fathers were, after all, classmates of Riddle.
To achieve greatness, you need to rely on thinking, planning, organizing, and learning to seek help. But no matter what, you always have to step into the arena in the end.
As a second-year at Hogwarts, whether he could physically defeat a thousand-year-old Basilisk was one thing, but if he didn't even attempt to enter the Chamber of Secrets—
Wouldn't that be a wasted trip to this universe?
Heh heh.
Inspired by Mary's attack, he gave his upcoming battle plan a cool, dramatic name.
First of all, sorry, Little Harry!
Because his operation is officially titled—
"Regulus and the Chamber of Secrets"
... ...
Anyway, if things go south, he'll just instantly Apparate to the safety of the Astronomy Tower!
...
(Here, the Basilisk has something to say)
...