Chapter 18: A Thank-You Gift Wrapped in Silver Threads, The Mystery of Wind Spirit Rhythm (Patreon)

The autumn wind, heavy with grass clippings, gradually died down.

Around the lawn, the first-years' frozen, held breaths were finally shattered by the sound of hurried, ragged footsteps drawing near.

"Merlin's beard! What on earth just happened?!"

Her tartan robes billowing, Professor McGonagall came flying from the direction of the castle steps, her face ashen.

Close behind her, Madam Hooch, fresh from the hospital wing, clutched her whistle. Her yellow, hawk-like eyes were full of horror and disbelief.

McGonagall didn't even stop to straighten her crooked spectacles. She dashed to the middle of the lawn, caught the swaying Draconia by the arm, and looked her over frantically from head to toe. "Miss Malfoy! Where are you hurt? Your wrist? Your ankle? Your neck?!"

Draconia's lips trembled slightly as she managed to stay upright with McGonagall's support. She drew a deep breath and instinctively tried to lift her chin in her usual pride, but her wobbly knees and bloodless face betrayed the fear still gripping her.

"I… I'm fine, Professor McGonagall." Her voice was soft, hoarse with the rasp of someone who had just cheated death.

By now Madam Hooch had picked up the old Cleansweep, snapped in two, and her expression was dreadful. "The main levitation rune fractured from fatigue… This broom has been in service for at least forty years! If it hadn't been for Mr. Capet—"

She sucked in a cold breath and turned to Raven, who stood to one side, unhurriedly brushing grass from his robes. Her sharp hawk eyes were full of sincere awe and lingering dread.

"A fifty-foot vertical dive rescue… In nearly thirty years of teaching, I have never seen a first-year with such terrifying flying instinct and such fine control over magical recoil! Child, you have just saved a life, and prevented the worst disaster Hogwarts has seen since term began!"

McGonagall turned as well. On her usually stern, rigid face, a rare look of genuine emotion and awe had appeared.

She straightened her square spectacles, took a deep breath, and announced in a ringing voice that carried across the whole lawn:

"For showing extraordinary composure in the face of a sudden, dangerous accident, for near-perfect flying skill, and for the noble character to risk yourself to save a fellow student…"

McGonagall regarded Raven gravely. "Twenty points to Slytherin! Mr. Capet, this honor is well earned!"

The whole lawn erupted!

Gryffindor's Head of House had personally awarded a Slytherin first-year a full twenty points in one go!

Daphne covered her red lips with a hand, and Pansy's eyes shone with admiration. Even Harry and Hermione, over on the Gryffindor side, couldn't stop themselves from clapping hard.

But amid the uproar, something even more unexpected happened.

Draconia drew a deep breath, avoided everyone's eyes, and walked on slightly trembling little boots toward Neville Longbottom. He had just finished being bandaged up and was shrinking at the back of the line.

In the original story, Malfoy would have trampled all over Longbottom's dignity.

But now this proud, high-born pure-blood young lady simply held out the red Remembrall she had been clutching in her palm, still warm from Raven's touch.

"Take your toy, Longbottom."

Draconia turned her head away, her gray-blue eyes dodging Neville's startled gaze. Her voice was deliberately cold, yet entirely without malice, and stiff. "From now on… don't bring it outside. Not every time will someone be there to catch it out of midair."

With that, she didn't wait for Neville to say a single thank-you. She flicked her high ponytail and, under the stunned, admiring gazes of everyone present, hurried toward the castle doors with her head down.

As she passed Raven, her steps faltered for half a second, almost imperceptibly. Her white teeth worried her lower lip as though she wanted to say something, but in the end she bolted like a startled white fawn.

Raven watched her retreating back, the corners of his lips curving.

…

Night fell. In the Goshawk Eyrie suite on the second underground level, the pale green flames in the fireplace danced silently, and the cold light of the Black Lake cast ripples like water across the stone walls through the floor-to-ceiling window.

Raven had just finished his daily meditation and was about to set his ebony wand beside his pillow when a faint crack split the air above the desk.

"Pop!"

A Hogwarts house-elf appeared from nowhere and placed a long, rectangular box, carefully wrapped in silver-green silk, in the middle of the desk. It bowed and squeaked, "Mr. Capet, a young miss asked this elf to deliver this parcel before curfew." With a sharp crack, the elf vanished again.

Raven raised an eyebrow, stepped forward, and untied the silver ribbon.

The lid slid open to reveal a full set of professional tools gleaming with a cold silver light. It was the Windchaser Supreme Edition broom-care kit, the finest in all of Britain, made by a pure-blood bespoke workshop.

Inside lay a polishing cloth stitched from Antipodean Opaleye hatchling hide, two jars of premium broom-axle lubricant refined from century-old troll fat and dragon's-blood herb, and even a tiny pair of silver shears for trimming tail twigs, engraved with intricate shock-absorbing runes.

And in a fold of the velvet lining lay a small, delicate card of pure parchment, giving off the faint, cool scent of white roses.

The card had no heading and no signature, only a few lines in neat, sharp-edged flourishes in dark green ink:

"The Malfoys never owe anyone a favor."

"This is compensation for the wear on your broom from saving me today. Don't flatter yourself, and don't think for a moment that I'll be grateful. Also, my ankle is perfectly fine, and you had no need to go meddling and asking Madam Pomfrey about it!"

At the very bottom of the card sat a tiny ink blot, stabbed hard by the point of a quill, as vivid as a certain young lady puffing out her cheeks through gritted teeth.

"Still as prickly as ever."

Raven laughed softly and tucked the fragrant card between the pages of a thick ancient tome at his elbow. His fingers brushed the jar of premium care oil, worth at least thirty Galleons.

Then he put away his smile, sank his focus inward, and called up the golden screen in his mind once more:

[Current Causality Reversal Points: 2,780.]

[Host has completed an epic flight intervention. System Store (Stage Two: Ancient Runic Patterns and Intermediate Alchemy) has been automatically unlocked.]

Looking at his generous balance of nearly three thousand points, Raven didn't hesitate. His gaze quickly locked onto a target in the refreshed list:

[Ancient Enchantment: Wind Spirit Cadence (Basic)] — Price: 1,500 points. (Description: An ancient rune matrix originating in Nordic shamanism and the origins of medieval flight. Fully analyzes air resistance, pressure gradients, and the mechanics of neutralizing kinetic force and gravity. Grants the ultimate technique of inscribing 'micro airflow-adaptive circuits' onto inanimate objects.)

"Redeem Ancient Enchantment: Wind Spirit Cadence."

[Command confirmed. Deducting 1,500 Causality Reversal Points.]

[Remaining points: 1,280.]

[Injecting knowledge matrix…]

"Hmmm—"

A vast flood of information, like standing in the eye of a storm ten thousand meters up, poured into Raven's sea of consciousness in a sudden, mind-clearing rush!

The flow of wind, fluctuations in air pressure, the fusion of gravity particles and wood fibers with magic… countless ancient, arcane Runes reassembled and collapsed before his eyes.

The flying problems that modern wizards regarded as irreconcilable, the conflict between speed and stability and the centrifugal overload that could snap a rider's spine in a sharp turn, fell apart before the Wind Spirit Cadence rune matrix.

When Raven opened his eyes again, a wisp of pale cyan light, pure as a storm, drifted deep within the black of his gaze.

He strode to the desk, spread out a fresh, oversized sheet of parchment, picked up his quill, and, almost without thinking, sketched a radically revolutionary power-structure diagram for a flying broom.

A streamlined, drag-reducing tail-twig arrangement, a double-helix wind-spirit shock-absorbing circuit, and an original "kinetic-gravity negative-feedback buffer valve."

If this design were fitted to existing brooms such as the Nimbus 2000 or the Cleansweep, it wouldn't just raise a broom's speed by over twenty percent. In extreme maneuvers it could absorb fully eighty percent of the physical inertial shock on the rider's behalf!

"Tomorrow… I can have the twins try building the first batch of clip-on enchanted tail-clip prototypes."

Raven looked at the exquisite blueprint on the page, his eyes glinting with a cold, burning light.

This wasn't just an improvement to one broom.

It was the seed of a vast commercial empire, one that could someday monopolize the entire European Quidditch equipment market and move thousands upon thousands of Galleons!

[Ding. Prerequisite technology 'Wind Spirit Cadence' successfully digested and integrated. First intermediate alchemy blueprint constructed: 'Wind-Spirit Shock-Absorbing Enchantment Ring'.]

[Fusion of Potions and Alchemy has advanced. Hidden business line has secured its core productive force.]

[Causality Reversal Points +100.]

[Current total Causality Reversal Points: 1,380.]

The fireplace flames slowly deepened to a dark, ghostly green. Raven carefully put the blueprint away, blew out the candle on his desk, and closed his eyes in peace to the low murmur of the Black Lake's deep waters.

And beneath the calm surface of Hogwarts, the threads of this Slytherin puppet master had already begun to spread, silent and unseen, toward the sky and the earth.