Chapter 58: Nimbus 1500
Sometimes Shawn felt wizards were like barbarians in robes.
That thought came from the painting hanging beneath the stands.
"Violent-Hand Gant Is the Winner."
It depicted a scene from the ancient German pole-guarding game known as Stichstock, and it was a famous work.
In the painting, a group of wizards held sharpened broomsticks as they surrounded a wizard with a rope tied around his waist. Behind the rope bobbed a large inflated bladder.
That wizard had to use magic with all his might to repel the attackers and protect the bladder behind him from being destroyed.
If that alone was not enough to give Shawn this impression, the detail that made him speechless was that the bladder belonged to a dragon.
Which meant that with every match, a dragon would lose its bladder.
Shawn suspected this might be an entirely fabricated boast by wizards to show off their ferocity and dominance to the magical world.
Rather like hunters who hang animal heads in their homes.
But wizards' fondness for bladders was certainly peculiar.
Beneath the northern stands hung a painting of Aingingein, once wildly popular in Ireland.
It was a theme sung again and again in Irish wizarding folk songs.
The legendary wizard Fingal the Fearless was said to have been a champion of Aingingein.
In the painting, competitors carried the dom, or ball, in rapid runs through a chain of burning barrels hoisted high on stilts.
Whoever got the dom through all the barrels the fastest without catching fire was the victor.
The ball was a sheep's bladder.
Then there was the painting beneath the western stands of a backwards-broom contest.
The players rode their broomsticks backwards and batted the bladder back and forth between hedgerows with the twiggy end of their brooms. A hit scored a point.
In that one, the ball was a pig's bladder.
Without question, those bladders were punctured and burst by the end.
Shawn was quietly grateful for today's spectators. If these traditions had been preserved, Quidditch matches might be even more "spectacular."
After all, the crowd interaction after an explosion would be guaranteed.
As the paintings beneath the stands fell away behind him, Shawn reached the broom shed.
It seemed to be protected by a special charm.
Shawn could see raindrops fall slowly along the shed roof but never splash inside.
"Madam Hooch."
Shawn approached the gray-haired witch with a hopeful look.
"Mr. Green, punctuality is indeed a good habit," Madam Hooch said. She flicked her hand, and a broom leapt into her grip. "We have quite a bit to do today. See those tall posts? That will be the focus of our training."
Shawn raised his hand in the same motion, and his broom hopped neatly into his palm. Together, they looked toward the Quidditch goalposts.
The synchronized movements made him look like a miniature Madam Hooch.
Soon the two of them were in the air, one tall and one small, drawing near the goalposts.
"Since you can hover and fly normally, why not try some quick turns?" Madam Hooch's voice was perfectly clear even in the rushing wind. She had likely used a charm.
Under her guidance, Shawn worked hard circling the posts.
Madam Hooch's requirement was simple and brutal.
"At top speed, you must never drift more than three feet from the post while turning, and you must complete turns at every angle."
It was obviously a difficult goal.
This was only Shawn's third day on a broom.
But magic never cared much for reason.
It cared about talent.
[You practiced Flying once at Proficient standard, Proficiency +10]
[You practiced Flying once at Proficient standard, Proficiency +10]
[You practiced Flying once at Expert standard, Proficiency +50]
...
Shawn heard the panel chime again and again. Under some instinctive guidance, his movements grew cleaner and cleaner.
He began to seek, without thinking, the most efficient and least taxing postures.
At the same time, his sense of the broom grew more and more vivid. He could almost perceive how every faint thread of his will-laced magic took effect within the broom.
That was the true secret to mastering a flying broomstick.
He remembered Madam Hooch's words unbidden.
Those who truly understood flying were commanding their broomsticks.
Perhaps that command was not exclusive to flying.
Perhaps it also belonged to Potions.
Shawn recalled the strange surge of magic he felt in the cauldron when using the improved ritual.
As with commanding a broom, perhaps potion-brewing also needed a wizard to guide the magic.
Even as he thought it, he discovered he had hit a bottleneck with his turns.
The problem lay beneath him. His broom was too old. Some of the embedded charms, or one of the composite charm clusters, were malfunctioning in small but important ways.
Add to that the complicated tangle of various functions, and it was hard not to think of a certain pile of legacy code a programmer might dread.
How was this broom even still running?
Magic really was too comprehensive for its own good.
"Remarkable progress," Madam Hooch said.
She naturally took Shawn's broom and guided the hovering thing toward a separate storage area.
"You plan to fly back to the Ravenclaw Tower, do you?"
Shawn looked up in surprise, then understood.
He was not the only wizard to have that idea, and the Ravenclaw Tower's height was legendary.
By association, the quality of Ravenclaws tended to plummet while climbing those stairs.
If you happened to be on the tower's spiral staircase at night, you would hear plenty of heartfelt "greetings" directed at the tower itself.
"Every year, many Ravenclaws come to the Quidditch pitch for extra practice," Madam Hooch said. "But very few ever receive flight permission."
That made Shawn nervous.
Unfortunately, Madam Hooch only hinted at how rare that permission was. It showed up perhaps once in several years.
She did not say how to obtain it.
As they left the pitch, Madam Hooch folded her arms and handed Shawn a piece of parchment.
At first glance, he silently committed it to memory.
"On Flight Permits for First-Year Hogwarts Students"
At a minimum, master ten common flying techniques.
Obtain permission from the Hogwarts Flying Instructor.
Pass the flight test.
After passing, possess a broom of at least Nimbus 1500 quality. This requirement was updated in 1990.
Shawn tucked the parchment into his bag so it lay flat against his copy of The Advanced Potions Guide.
With this information in hand, his target became clearer. But one line weighed on him.
The permit explicitly required a Nimbus 1500.
That would be difficult to manage.