"Remember! When you stand over your broom, your feet must be properly positioned. Keep your balance, lean forward slightly, and let your knees bend naturally."
Madam Hooch paced between the two lines of students. Anyone whose stance was off got a sharp scolding.
"Malfoy, stop holding your arms so stiffly. Relax them so you can control the broom properly!"
She walked past several times, and each time she spotted yet another mistake in Malfoy's posture.
So she had to correct him again and again.
Malfoy's face grew redder with every correction. His posture did not improve; if anything, he got even stiffer.
Ron stood nearby, snickering uncontrollably.
Dylan ignored all that and quickly mastered the correct, safe stance.
When Madam Hooch went down the line to inspect every student's posture,
Dylan passed without any trouble.
Ron, who had just been laughing at others, had his own crooked stance picked apart twice by Madam Hooch.
In fact, it was not just Malfoy and Ron getting corrected.
Aside from Dylan, everyone got a comment or two.
While Madam Hooch checked the others' flying posture,
Dylan took the chance to examine the broom in his hand.
Because brooms were not on the first-year supply list and Hogwarts provided them for lessons,
only in special cases—like kids who wanted to play Quidditch—would anyone buy their own broom this early.
So Dylan had not bought a broom of his own.
But he did have a rough idea of the prices. Low-end brooms like the school's usual Shooting Star
ran about twenty Galleons.
A Comet 140 went for around eighty Galleons,
and that already counted as mid-range.
Most mid-range brooms sat between one hundred and three hundred Galleons.
As for high-end brooms, like the Firebolt, that was still in development; the starting price would probably be five figures.
The Nimbus 2000, by comparison, only cost a little over three hundred.
With all the achievements Dylan had completed recently, he had earned quite a few Galleons.
If he wanted to buy a broom, it would be easy.
He just planned to wait until he had properly learned how to fly and then go straight for a Nimbus 2000 as his standby.
There was no need to waste money on a cheap transitional broom, especially since he did not need to be in the air that often.
If he had spare time, he would rather study Apparition.
"There really is a persistent Levitation Charm on this."
After fiddling with the broom for a bit, Dylan felt certain what enchantments had been placed on it.
A wizard could always cast the Levitation Charm again when using a broom,
but the broom itself already held a built-in levitation charm, a propulsion charm, and so on.
On top of that, Dylan could sense the presence of a balancing charm.
He had always been puzzled about something when watching the films:
how did wizards go flying around on brooms without destroying their crotch?
Didn't it dig into their backside?
But after studying the broom for a while, Dylan realized there was also a cushioning charm on it.
What looked like a plain stick of wood actually felt like an invisible cushion when you sat on it.
"As expected of a junk broom. Only a few sad little spells on it."
Dylan shook his head.
He did not feel any special rune work built into it, and the material itself was nothing special.
There was not much worth studying.
So he gave up on further inspection and swung the broom between his legs.
He settled onto the invisible cushion and waited for Madam Hooch's next instruction.
Once everyone's posture had been thoroughly corrected,
Madam Hooch finally prepared to let them try taking off for the first time.
"Listen to me carefully. When you hear the whistle, push off from the ground as hard as you can. Understand? You must use strength! Picture yourself lifting straight into the air!"
Madam Hooch wore her black referee's robes lined in green. When she walked, she did not have Snape's billowing drama, but she still cut a commanding figure.
She raised a wooden whistle.
"Now then, get ready. You only need to rise a few feet, hover for a moment, lean forward, and then come back down."
"Listen for my whistle—three, two—"
Before she could finish,
Neville, standing right next to Dylan, had already pushed off the ground with both feet and shot into the air.
"What do you think you're doing? Get back down here at once!"
Madam Hooch's sharp gaze snapped toward him.
She had thought the boy was trying to show off and be the first to take off.
But the moment she spoke, Neville only rose higher, panic written all over his face.
Dylan frowned and whipped his wand out from his belt.
"Reduct—no, wait…"
"Finite Incantatem!"
Dylan quickly cast the General Counter-Spell.
But when the spell struck the broom, nothing happened.
His brows knit together.
Was it because the broom's enchantments were inscribed into it and not cast by Neville, so he could not cancel them?
Before he could think it through, Neville was already starting to wobble wildly across the sky.
Dylan snapped his wand up again and fired off two more spells.
"Retardo Motus!"
"Arresto Momentum!"
Two spells shot out.
This time, Neville finally stopped careening all over the place; his movement slowed down.
But because Dylan had not fully mastered those spells, their effects were only average.
Still, they were enough to ease Neville's speed and keep him from coming to an abrupt halt that might send him plummeting.
Just as Dylan had that thought, Neville suddenly flipped, ending up hanging upside down from the broom.
"Huh? That wasn't me!" Dylan's eyes widened.
"Ahhhh!!" Neville shrieked.
His hands slipped from the broom, and he fell straight toward the ground.
"Impedimenta!"
As the spell left his lips, a strange, shimmering strand of magic burst from Dylan's wand tip.
Strand after strand wrapped around Neville.
In an instant, his headlong fall slowed dramatically.
"Wingardium Leviosa!"
Dylan cast again, seizing control of Neville's body and guiding him gently to the ground.
By now, Neville was completely out of it, the fear still not fully gone from his face.
His hair stuck out in all directions, blown wild by the wind.
"Merlin!" Harry gasped.
So flying class was this dangerous.
Hermione's eyes were wide as well—
but what shocked her most was how many spells Dylan had just cast.
And each one seemed to be at a very high level of proficiency.
(End of Chapter)
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