The Weasley twins and their inseparable friend, Lee Jordan, were clearly no strangers to this attempt. Their voices brimmed with so much confidence it nearly spilled over.
On the ground, the three Cleansweep Sevens seemed to hear their masters' call to charge. With a sharp whoosh, each broom shot straight into their owner's palm.
In one smooth, reckless motion, they swung their legs over the brooms. Their toes kicked hard against the grass, and three figures shot unsteadily into the sky.
The brooms wobbled violently beneath them, as if ready to throw them off at any second. But they didn't care—only hollering in warped, ecstatic cheers as the wind carried their joy.
Their laughter was infectious, yet it failed to spread to the majority of new students on the ground, who were still struggling miserably.
Most attempts ended in failure.
"Up! U—up!"
A boy's face turned red as he yelled, the broom in front of him only twitching impatiently, as though mocking the weakness of his will. A girl beside him fared no better—her broom rolled lazily half a turn before lying still in stubborn refusal.
Frustration and disorder rippled through the crowd.
Then it was Alan's turn.
He stood by the school-issued, battered Comet 140, surrounded by the chorus of strained, frustrated shouts. He didn't speak immediately. Instead, he extended his right hand, palm hovering steadily above the broom handle.
Not a tremor.
"Up."
His voice was quiet, calm, utterly without emotion.
The old Comet 140 responded as though given new life. Without hesitation, it leapt neatly into his hand. The rough texture of its weathered wood, faintly lined with tiny cracks of age, pressed clearly into his fingertips.
Step one was complete. Yet unlike the Weasley twins, Alan didn't mount right away.
He stood still.
Seconds stretched.
The surrounding noise seemed cut off from him—cheers of success, groans of failure, Charlie Weasley's calls of guidance—all muffled into background haze.
Three whole minutes passed.
During that time, Alan closed his eyes.
His heartbeat, his breathing, his magic—all aligned into a rhythm of perfect synchronization. In the depths of his Mind Palace, torrents of data churned. Wind speed. Air humidity. Atmospheric pressure. Concentration of magical particles. The broom's balance points, its materials, its flaws…
Every variable was recorded, analyzed, and hurled into furious calculation.
He wasn't sensing the wind.
He was reading it.
Every eddy, every whisper of turbulence, unfolded in his mind as a precise, data-driven fluid dynamics model.
Then, he lifted his wand.
At its tip, a faint bead of pale light quietly formed.
He flicked it in a delicate, controlled arc. The light stretched, trailing into the air as a thin, glowing ribbon.
A trajectory line.
From the ground, it rose smoothly, cutting a flawless parabola across the sky. Every curve, every point, matched exactly the "optimal aerodynamic model" he had just computed.
This wasn't art.
It was science.
Alan opened his eyes. They were clear and cold, as though he had just completed a routine lab experiment.
He mounted the old Comet 140.
Instantly, his body aligned to the model in his head. Elbows tucked at precisely 115 degrees for maximum control. Knees bent at 95 degrees, locking his center of gravity onto the broom's balance point. Back inclined at 23 degrees to minimize drag to the theoretical limit.
He was a machine assembled of flesh and bone—each movement calibrated, flawless, inevitable.
No hesitation.
No nerves.
Just a gentle push of his toes against the ground.
The reaction force traveled through his body into the broom.
It didn't wobble like the others.
It didn't lurch forward like the twins.
Instead, it lifted.
Slowly. Steadily. Gracefully.
As though a pair of invisible, gentle hands were raising him from the earth.
Alan was airborne.
Steady.
So steady it barely looked like flight at all.
His figure glided as if walking across level ground, not flying through open air.
He didn't chase the speed and thrill the twins adored.
He didn't attempt flashy tricks.
He did only one thing:
Replication.
With near-fanatical precision, he traced the golden trajectory line he had drawn. Every fraction of movement aligned with the fading glow, not a hair's breadth astray.
There were no shouts, no joy, no outward emotion.
What he displayed was something else entirely—
A beauty born of mathematics and logic.
The beauty of mechanical precision.
At some point, the entire Quidditch pitch had fallen silent.
Every struggling first-year froze, heads tilted back, gazes locked on the impossibly calm silhouette in the sky.
Even the Weasley twins and Lee Jordan, who had been playing tag in midair, forgot to cheer. They hung motionless, stunned into silence by this unprecedented, "textbook" display of flying.
Charlie Weasley's jaw nearly hit the ground.
His mouth hung open wide enough to swallow a Golden Snitch.
As Gryffindor's Quidditch captain and Seeker, he had seen countless prodigies: some bold enough to dive like lightning on their first attempt, others daring enough to perform outrageous stunts.
But never this.
Never a beginner who turned the word steady into a living embodiment.
This wasn't mere talent. It was terrifying mastery—control over every muscle, every nerve, every particle of magic output.
When Alan followed the golden line to its end and landed as silently as a shadow, Charlie finally snapped from his daze.
He strode forward and clapped a heavy hand on Alan's shoulder.
His eyes burned with a strange mix of shock, confusion, and reluctant admiration.
"Alan, I take back what I said earlier. Your flying… lacks a little fire, sure. But you are without doubt the steadiest beginner I've ever seen. Honestly—would you consider joining the team? We could use a tactical analyst, someone to apply your 'theories' to break down our opponents' formations."
Alan shook his head politely, declining the sudden offer.
"Thank you, Charlie. But for now, my interest in Quidditch is limited to… theoretical research."
~~----------------------
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