A Hollow Crystal, the Lively Wind / Back Home, Time to Check Out a Treasure

After that, he tied the opened locket around his neck, continuously releasing magic...

Sleeping~

Chapter 550 Hollowed-out Crystal, Flowing Wind

Under what circumstances might a powerful and knowledgeable ancient alchemist die?

Harry might have given many answers to this question in the past.

But now, the only answer he can give is... these people all brought this upon themselves.

Because in the past few days, he was completely courting death.

Not long ago, Harry, believing Rowena's nonsense, excitedly went to the hollow tree to create the Wind Elemental Heart.

He originally thought that as long as he took a leisurely nap while releasing his magic, the Universal Solvent in the locket would absorb enough wind element to successfully condense an elemental heart that he could absorb.

What he didn't expect was that this nap would last for half a month, from the beginning of August to mid-August...

"Ugh... this was probably the worst sleep I've ever had. Rowena, you're something else..."

Slumped in the treetop, looking at his disheveled state, Harry shakily took out his wand, but couldn't even cast a Scourgify.

He was so tired.

Once Harry actually began crafting the Wind Elemental Heart, he realized he had been completely fooled by Rowena.

Using his own magic to guide the fusion of the Universal Solvent and the wind element, this process was no easier than drawing a transmutation circle by hand.

Natural elements are not static, lifeless things; wind, in particular, is a synonym for dynamism, or in other words, 'never still'.

They are constantly changing, and can easily escape from the Universal Solvent if not carefully controlled. To stably condense the wind elements into an absorbable elemental core, Harry must continuously output magic, controlling the Universal Solvent to absorb these unruly wind elements...

For details, please refer to the most arduous maintenance phase when a certain village prince first started learning how to make dumplings.

Harry used this micro-management-level magic for a full two weeks, day and night, rain or shine, without stopping, even while eating and drinking, he had to be vigilant and not distracted.

In the end, he stopped eating altogether, and his metabolism almost stopped altogether.

Honestly, if those people who practiced ancient elemental magic used to do something like this all the time, it wouldn't be surprising if they eventually disappeared.

However, looking at the 'gem' floating in his palm, Harry couldn't help but feel that the hardships he had endured over the past two weeks had been worthwhile.

The Wind Elemental Heart, crafted by Harry, is a regular octahedral crystal. It is almost colorless and transparent, with only a hint of pale blue, resembling the clean and ethereal Albania sky.

At this moment, the gem was slowly spinning in Harry's palm, as if it were enveloped in a layer of wind-like magic. When Harry touched it with his fingers, he could feel the sensation of being caressed by a gentle breeze.

'Your Wind Elemental Heart is more perfect than Salazar's; although it's riddled with holes, at least its shape is regular.'

Although elemental magic has been extinct, the ancients never stopped studying the elements. Wizards like Rowena, unlike modern wizards, do not regard the research and scholarship of ordinary people as something completely unrelated to magic. On the contrary, they regard much of it as their guiding ideology.

For example, regarding Plato's concept of the 'Plato solid,' Rowena firmly believed that it must be the most basic shape of the four elements.

The tetrahedron represents fire, the hexahedron represents earth, the octahedron represents wind, and the icosahedron represents water.

The reason Rowena mocked Salazar after learning the shape of the Wind Elemental Heart that Harry had created was because the Water Elemental Heart Salazar had created was not structurally stable, which is why it had that pitted and irregular gem-like shape.

But despite their animosity, Harry felt that Salazar was truly a genius.

Keep in mind that he only managed to create the Wind Elemental Heart after he had mastered the Elemental Power, while Salazar could only rely on blindly figuring it out. The difficulty was definitely much greater than Harry's.

Moreover, the Wind Elemental Heart that Harry created wasn't entirely without problems either.

"The holes in this Wind Elemental Heart seem to be missing something... Even if I was careless when I crafted it, it shouldn't be so neatly damaged."

Anyone familiar with solid geometry knows that to perfectly assemble a series of small geometric shapes into a large geometric shape, it is necessary to ensure that the faces of these small geometric shapes are connected. However, the regular octahedron in Harry's hand is a hollow structure made up of countless small regular octahedrons whose vertices are connected and finally stacked together.

Although it appears as a single entity to the naked eye, if one were to use magic to sense it meticulously, one would discover that the structure of this Wind Elemental Heart is not dense, but rather consists entirely of sparse pores.

"Anyway, this should count as a success. Let's focus on the fusion first... uh, let's eat first."

Harry was confident he would eventually figure out why the Wind Elemental Heart had so many holes, but what he needed to do now was to completely integrate the Wind Elemental Heart with himself.

But before that, he needed to replenish the energy his body had been depleted over the past few days.

He was so hungry he was dizzy; if he didn't eat soon, he was going to fall off the tree.

"Phew~" After having a hearty meal using the supplies in the ring, Harry finally regained his energy and used a spell to tidy up his disheveled state over the past few days.

After he had fully composed himself, Harry brought the crystal, which carried a gentle breeze, close to his chest and then pressed it firmly into his body.

"Hmm..."

A pang of pain shot through Harry's heart. After the Wind Elemental Heart entered his body, it seemed to come alive instantly, wanting to scatter and escape like a whirlwind. However, having had the experience of absorbing it once before, Harry was prepared. He immediately transformed his body completely into Obscurus and began to greedily chase after the scattering wind elemental!

The familiar feeling from the Chamber of Secrets returned, and the raging wind that was about to disperse gradually transformed into sky-colored magic, which was then drawn by Harry's Obscurus and slowly merged with it.

Unlike the water element that flows quietly through his blood, the wind element gives Harry a feeling of agility and etherealness. It's like a mischievous child, surrounding Harry's limbs and body, making him feel lighter and more graceful.

'The physical transformations resulting from fusing different elements will likely vary; water element is clearly more effective at amplifying magic power, while wind element will likely bring about other changes to the body. Anyway, you should try it out!'

"Okay~"

Rowena kept urging him on in his diary. The element representing the Founders of Eagle House was wind, so he was even more excited Harry at this moment.

Harry was also eager to try out the actual effects of the wind element, so he readily began to manipulate the Elemental Power, and then leaped down from the tree branch...

With a swift movement, Harry landed beneath the hollow tree like a gust of wind, the entire process taking almost a second, and he landed without a sound!

"That speed just now... was absolutely amazing!"

Harry looked back at the nearly thirty-meter-high tree canopy, then at his feet, and was overwhelmed with joy.

As expected of the wind element, which is known for its agility, he felt as if he had turned into a leaf and was flying down on the wind!

Unfortunately... if he had possessed this speed before, Voldemort wouldn't have been able to escape at all!

"Very good, the speed test is over, so how about the strength?"

On a whim, Harry conjured a wind blade, a technique often seen in fantasy novels, by scribbling it across the ground in front of him...

But the result greatly disappointed him.

"How... how can the power be so low?"

Harry frowned slightly as he looked at the shallow, almost invisible scratch on the ground.

He tried several more times and found that even when he mixed the power of Obscurus into the wind element, it would only cut a tree of normal thickness in half.

While this power surpasses that of ordinary Severing Charm, it falls far short of the Sectumsempra of the Severus Snape.

"Agile enough, but lacking in power...?"

Recalling the gaps in the Wind Elemental Heart, Harry felt that something was missing from the Elemental Heart he had created...

But he had to postpone studying these issues; having already spent so many days in Albania, he now had to go home...

Then I went to watch the Quidditch World Cup with my family!

Chapter 551 After returning home, I'll look after a baby.

"You still know how to come back?"

After a long and arduous journey, the first thing Harry faced upon returning home from Albania was a long lecture from Hermione.

"Do you know how long Mom and Dad have been worried at home? Do you know how long I've been worried? It's one thing to bravely go find Voldemort, but everyone else came back except you! If it weren't for the Quidditch World Cup, were you never planning to come home?"

Hermione, I...

"You left Dad, Mom, and me here, you left everyone here, you even spent your fourteenth birthday outside... Why didn't you just wait until you were sixteen to come back?!"

Without giving Harry a chance to speak, she grabbed him by the ear and launched into a barrage of questions. You can imagine how angry the academically gifted girl was this time.

Poor Harry could only force a smile and silently complain to himself that the rest of the family was incredibly disloyal, not a single one of them was willing to come and help him.

Harry wouldn't dare criticize the Mr. and Mrs. Granger, but Will, who specifically stayed at their house to watch the Quidditch World Cup final, actually had the nerve to hide downstairs with Dobby pretending not to see anything?

Then there's the shrunken Zouwu, which can clearly speak human language now, yet it doesn't mention a word about Harry's previous itinerary, focusing solely on playing with Crookshanks. It's certainly full of mischief.

"You bastard, I bet you've been out fooling around!"

Nagini's presence did nothing to help with the defense; instead, it successfully steered Hermione's characterization of the whole incident completely astray.

Female, amnesiac, Maledictus... After piecing these pieces of information together, Hermione really couldn't bring herself to like this giant snake that would wriggle and fawn over Harry at the drop of a hat.

Isn't this just a blatant copy of Norberta?

Moreover, this snake was even more outrageous than Norberta. Although the female Dragon had also done various inexplicable things to Harry, at least it wouldn't do it openly in front of him!

"Heaven and earth bear witness, Hermione... if I could have come back earlier, I would have returned immediately. Something really came up and I was delayed this time..."

Having finally weathered the little witch's brief respite, Harry hurriedly stepped forward with a pained expression to apologize.

Fool around...

If he actually did that, it wouldn't be a big deal if Hermione said a few words to him.

The problem is, for more than two weeks starting from his birthday, apart from Rowena, that over-aged older sister, constantly spying on him while he slept, Harry's metabolism practically stopped, let alone any entertainment.

Having spent half a month perched in the tree, by the time Harry came down, Nagini had almost forgotten his name.

So Nagini isn't being arrogant at all; she's simply become too stupid after turning into a snake. She only knows how to express affection in the most direct way and doesn't have any human-like sense of avoiding suspicion.

Hermione would be better off wary of Norberta than of her.

The female Dragon is now absolutely drooling over Harry, and who knows, one day Spiritus and, in a fit of rage, pin Harry down and take advantage of him...

"Alright, alright, it's all my fault this time. Miss Granger, I'll show you something nice, will you forgive me?"

Seeing the little witch's pouting lips, which could practically hold two bunches of grapes, Harry kept grinning relentlessly, hoping to brighten her mood.

"Pah! I'm not interested at all. Go show her yourself!"

To his surprise, Hermione rolled her eyes at him with a look of disgust and pointed at the large snake coiled in the room.

"Hey... girl, you were just being dirty-minded, weren't you? You were definitely being dirty-minded!" Harry was speechless.

Good grief, where exactly has your thinking gone off track?

Even if I wanted you to reunite with that darling after so long, did I really have to do it when all those Zouwu guys are around?!

"I'm saying... Miss Granger, Mom and Dad are still here, you can't let your thinking slip so much!"

Harry gave a helpless smile, but his hands moved slightly, summoning a gentle breeze to lift his body.

"I'm talking about something really good, are you sure you don't want to come with me to see it?"

Harry's journey back from Albania was certainly not in vain. With his previous experience controlling the water element and Rowena's guidance, he was now able to basically control the wind element.

Naturally, Harry would definitely want to create Voldemort's signature ability to fly so he could show off later.

And Harry goes even further than the Voldemort, because he can carry others with him!

"You... you really didn't use any spells? You just flew up like that?!"

Hermione stared in disbelief at Harry, who was levitating in the room with his feet off the ground, and Hermione had no idea he was casting a spell.

"Come on, I'll take you up to the sky." Harry smiled, took Hermione's hand, and manipulated a playful gust of wind to surround Hermione, lifting her up as well.

"Don't move around."

With a casual wave of his hand, the bedroom window obediently opened, and the night wind blew into the room. Hermione felt as if her body had turned into a kite, and she drifted slowly out the window with Harry, soaring higher and higher into the night sky.

"It really flew?! That's amazing!!"

Harry didn't ascend very high on his first attempt at flying with someone, but even so, the Granger family had already become a tiny dot of light in Hermione's eyes.

The lights outlined the entire skyline of London, making it difficult to distinguish which side was the sky.

The freedom of flight... this was undoubtedly a rare surprise for Hermione, who hadn't been doing well in her Flying Class.

Harry was happy to listen to her incessant shrieking in his ear, and...

Suddenly, Harry thought of some other fun things.

With a casual flick of his wrist, he instantly dispelled the wind that was binding Hermione.

"Wow!"