Chapter 5: Cumulonimbus Game on the Quidditch Pitch
Hogwarts' Quidditch Pitch was shrouded in mist on an October morning, and the autumn sun broke through the clouds, casting dappled golden patches on the turf. Leonard gripped the handle of his Nimbus 2000, the cold sweat on his palms quietly carried away by the cool airflow of his Wings of Wind—this was his first official match as a Gryffindor Chaser, and Hermione Granger was sitting in the third row of the stands, her notebook spread open on her lap, filled with aerodynamic formulas.
"Remember," Hermione had repeatedly warned before the match, "the lift of the Wings of Wind is in a sinusoidal relationship with the broom's tail feather vibration frequency. I've adjusted your amulet's frequency to 192Hz, which perfectly matches the Nimbus 2000's optimal cruising frequency." She suddenly pulled a small bronze instrument from her bag. "This is my improved 'Wind Speed Tracker,' which can display the air turbulence index around you in real-time—"
"Miss Granger!" Captain Wood's roar came from the center of the pitch. "If you have more instruments than my players, perhaps you should join our tactical discussion!"
Hermione's ear tips reddened, but she quickly clipped the instrument to Leonard's robe hem: "If the turbulence exceeds 30%, use 'Wind Vortex' to stabilize the airflow. Remember, imagine the wind flowing from the wind patterns on your shoulder blades, just like it says in 'Advanced Quidditch Mechanics'—"
The whistle blew, and sixteen brooms simultaneously ascended. Leonard activated his Wings of Wind as he climbed, and a pale green stream of light spread from his arm to the broomstick. He clearly "felt" the direction of the airflow—southeast wind at 2.3 m/s, 67% humidity, perfect for executing Hermione's "zigzag cut-in tactic."
For the first twenty minutes, the game was a stalemate. Leonard broke through the Slytherin defense several times but was knocked off course during a pass by an opposing Chaser using an "Arm Reinforcement Charm." Hermione's Wind Speed Tracker suddenly buzzed, and she looked up to see the patterns on Leonard's amulet flickering with his movements, like a navigation star in the dark night.
"Something's wrong," she murmured, writing in her notebook: "The resonance frequency between the Wings of Wind and the broom has a 0.7 Hz deviation, and the amulet's energy consumption rate is 15% faster than expected—he's hiding his strength."
The turning point came in the third attack. Slytherin's Chaser, Chadley, suddenly used an illegal Incendio, and a fiery red tongue of flame shot directly towards the Gryffindor goal. Gasps came from the stands, and Leonard instinctively looked up. The septagram on his amulet suddenly lit up, and he heard the roar of the wind in his mind—a summons older than any spell.
"Wind Whisper Spell: Cumulonimbus."
He spoke almost unconsciously, and the pale green stream of light from his sleeve shot up into the sky like a living thing, gathering into a lead-gray cloud mass above the pitch. Hermione's pupils contracted violently. She saw Leonard's hair move without wind, and the amulet's patterns synchronized perfectly with the lightning trails in the clouds, as if someone was drawing a magic circle on the sky with starsilver.
"It's not an ordinary summoning charm!" She grabbed her binoculars. "He's reconstructing the microphysical structure of the cumulonimbus. The cloud droplet condensation rate has increased by 300%—"
When the first drop of rain fell on her notebook, Hermione finally realized the problem: Leonard's Wind Whisper Spell was not merely weather control, but the manipulation of water vapor molecules at a microscopic level. The cloud layer thickened to two kilometers within thirty seconds, and large raindrops pelted the stands, while Leonard's Nimbus 2000 was intermittently visible in the cumulonimbus, the pale green light of his amulet penetrating the rain curtain, forming an eerie halo.
"It's out of control!" Hermione suddenly stood up, the needle of the Wind Speed Tracker spinning wildly. "His emotional fluctuations are affecting the element power! Anger value—" She saw Slytherin players fall off their brooms in the rain and suddenly understood that Leonard had infused uncontrolled anger when protecting his teammates.
In the rain, Leonard finally regained his composure. He stared at the septagram on his amulet, which was almost cracking, and was shocked to realize that in his rage, he had summoned a cumulonimbus far beyond a first-year's ability. Below, Hermione was frantically waving, her quick-notes quill scrawling a huge warning in her notebook: "Emotional frequency! 185Hz! Exceeds the wind element's stable threshold!"
He closed his eyes, forcing himself to recall Hermione's explanation of "airflow stratification theory" in the library. The amulet's buzzing gradually subsided, and the cumulonimbus split open in the center, revealing the clear blue sky above. When the last drop of rain fell on the turf, Leonard saw a line of bold text added to Hermione's notebook: "The amulet has the potential for system-level element manipulation, but emotion is the biggest variable!"
The match was suspended due to weather. Leonard landed on the ground, the residual heat of his amulet spreading up his arm, almost scorching through his sleeve. Hermione rushed over, directly pulling up his sleeve. The wind patterns on his wrist now showed a turbulent direction like a storm.
"You called upon the cumulonimbus cloud mass above the Forbidden Forest." Her voice trembled, but with an excited tremor. "Radar echoes show that the cloud thickness reached the meteorological 'supercell' standard—Leonard, what you just did was equivalent to rewriting the atmospheric dynamics equation of the entire pitch with the wind element!"
Leonard tore off the Wind Speed Tracker, finding its bronze casing covered in fine ice cracks: "I heard the sound of the wind. It was telling me how to gather water vapor, as if... as if a Wind Spirit lived in the amulet."
Hermione suddenly grabbed his hand and pressed the tip of her wand against his amulet: "Don't move! I'm measuring the element frequency during emotional fluctuations—" Her wand buzzed. "185Hz when angry, 192Hz when calm, and when controlling the clouds just now, the frequency actually dropped to 178Hz—that's the frequency of the 'ancient Wind Speakers making a contract with storms' recorded in History of Magic!"
In the stands, Captain Wood was arguing fiercely with the referee, and Slytherin students were pointing at Leonard and shouting loudly. But Leonard could only hear Hermione's voice at this moment; she was speaking quickly at a speed only they could hear: "Your amulet can not only control elements but also make temporary contracts with nature, like the ancient Wizards' alliances with Trolls and Merpeople—"
"But I almost ruined the match." Leonard looked down at his amulet, one of the septagram's patterns slowly repairing itself. "Snape will use this to send me to the Ministry of Magic."
Hermione suddenly laughed, her eyes sparkling behind her glasses: "No, he'll find that your 'illegal magic' isn't even on the existing 'Prohibited magic List,' because it's older magic than Hogwarts. Leonard," she held up her notebook filled with data, "what you just did was make the wind element understand human anger—and I recorded the frequency of that resonate."
The rain stopped completely, and sunlight once again filled the pitch. Leonard looked at Hermione's rain-dampened curly hair and suddenly realized that this girl, who always carried a quick-notes quill, was transforming his uncontrolled power into solvable formulas, like weaving a chaotic storm into an ordered star map.
"Next time you get angry," Hermione said, tidying her rain-wrinkled parchment, "remember to tell me in advance. I want to see what kind of element frequency resonance occurs when you feel both anger and trust—for example, when you trust me to help you stabilize the frequency."
Leonard was stunned. The amulet vibrated gently on his chest, this time with a steady and warm frequency, like Hermione's tone of voice. He suddenly understood that he was never a lonely element controller, because by his side, there was always a girl who could translate his conversations with wind and rock into the most beautiful magic formulas this world could understand.
In the distance, the referee announced that the match would resume. Leonard remounted his broom, and the Wings of Wind shimmered with a mother-of-pearl luster in the sunlight. He looked back at the stands, where Hermione was drawing new formulas in her notebook, with a note beside them: "Trust Frequency: 190Hz, deviation from the amulet's baseline frequency less than 0.5%—this might be the key to the element contract."
When the whistle blew again, Leonard heard the wind whispering in his ear, and this time, the sound contained a warm and rational resonance from the ground, belonging to Hermione Granger.