Chapter 256: The First Call
In the temporary dormitory Beauxbatons had arranged for the exchange-match competitors, the air was thick with the bitter, aromatic scent of potion ingredients.
On the workbench before Leonardo, a steady blue flame burned beneath each of two cauldrons.
He carefully dropped the prepared Wolfsbane aconite into the cauldron on his left, then glanced at the notes hovering beside him, where a self-writing quill faithfully recorded every step of the brewing process and each change as it occurred.
After the written examination had ended and Leonardo had received a perfect score, he'd returned straight to the dormitory and immediately begun brewing the Wolfsbane Potion, eager to put into practice several ideas that had come to him while answering the final question.
Two cauldrons stood before him. One contained a standard Wolfsbane Potion, brewed exactly according to the established recipe.
The other held Leonardo's revised version, with carefully considered adjustments to the types and quantities of several ingredients.
The brews bubbled quietly.
As the potions in the two cauldrons settled into a steady boil, each gradually developed a different colour and consistency.
Just as Leonardo was observing the changes and waiting for them to reach the final settling stage—
"Ding!"
A crisp chime rang out.
But it wasn't the system's notification sound.
Leonardo reached into his pocket and took out a notebook a little larger than the palm of his hand.
It had a soft navy-blue cover, with a clear crystal set into its centre.
At that moment, a faint green light pulsed steadily within the crystal.
"A message," Leonardo murmured, lightly tapping the crystal with his fingertip.
He opened the notebook. Though it appeared remarkably slim, the pages fluttered with a soft rustle, and there were clearly far more of them than its size should have allowed.
The pages stopped on their own at a particular spread, and the blank paper rippled like the surface of water disturbed by a pebble.
A second or two later, a face slowly emerged from the rippling page: jet-black, unruly hair, round glasses, and a pair of emerald-green almond-shaped eyes.
It was Harry.
But the image froze after only three or four seconds. Then a blurry hand suddenly covered the page, accompanied by a few sharp taps and jolts.
Another seven or eight seconds passed before a faint voice, broken and laced with static, finally came through.
"Hello... Leonardo... can you hear... me..."
Leonardo shook his head. The moment the distance increased, the problem with the "signal" became painfully obvious.
He really would have to find a way to solve the relay-station problem...
Setting the technical issue aside for the moment, Leonardo tapped the page lightly with his wand. Harry's image faded away, replaced by a neat text box with a blinking cursor as the notebook switched to text-message mode.
"Harry, use text for now. Are the questionnaires all handed out?"
This time the reply came much more quickly. Barely two or three seconds after Leonardo finished writing, Harry's slightly crooked but perfectly legible handwriting appeared beneath the message.
"OK! All handed out!"
A smiley face, sketched with a few simple strokes, appeared beneath the words.
More writing appeared almost immediately afterwards, brimming with excitement.
"I also wanted to try out this magic notebook you gave me! It can really let you talk to someone far away?! Just like a telephone?! So cool!"
A delighted, starry-eyed face followed beneath the message.
Looking at the words on the page and the little doodled expression, Leonardo couldn't help smiling.
The speed with which Harry had accepted the idea of a "magic phone," and how quickly he'd learned to use it, was pleasantly surprising.
That was exactly what they were using: the first-generation long-distance communication device Leonardo had designed and built over the past few months using alchemy.
Within the same country, it could already support near-instant text and image transmission with reasonable reliability.
Across national borders, however, image transmission suffered from severe lag and frequent freezing. Text mode performed much better, though even that was still subject to a slight delay.
The greater the distance, the more noticeable the lag became.
To achieve truly seamless magical communication, he could continue refining and upgrading the notebook itself, while also establishing magical signal relay stations. But that would be another enormous and highly complex alchemical project...
Leonardo looked at Harry's messages on the page, his thoughts already turning over the possibilities.
Even so, simply unveiling this version of the "magic phone" would be more than enough to secure victory in the Triwizard exchange match.