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If someone with a superpower lost it for some reason after a while, they would likely be willing to take risks, even at the peril of their life, to get it back.
Because, what if they succeed?
The phrase "what if" gives gamblers the hope of winning.
Rey was that gambler right now, and he was someone who had lost his superpower.
He realized his previous thinking might have been fundamentally wrong.
A person who cannot use magic, who hasn't broken through that barrier, simply cannot practice magic.
Practicing magic must be based on the prerequisite of being able to cast magic.
Asking someone who can't cast magic at all to practice casting is like climbing a tree to catch a fish—futile.
In other words, no matter how volatile the magic inside is, even if the result of releasing it is an explosion, backlash, or some other accident, you at least have to be able to release it before you can practice further.
Heh!
Now, Rey could only cast magic in moments of extreme danger.
"Extreme danger" wasn't when others were in danger, nor when he thought he was in danger, but when he was truly facing death.
"To confront a person with the danger of death and they will fight to live"—perhaps that described Rey's current state.
He remembered a movie from a long, long time ago where a wizard jumped off a cliff to learn the eagle transformation spell.
Now, he was probably not much different from that wizard!
With a sigh in his heart, he looked at the afterglow on the horizon, then at Hogwarts, imagining Helena standing at the top of Ravenclaw Tower, and his good friend Agnes.
The taste of death isn't pleasant; he had tasted it once in his previous life. He didn't expect to actively seek it out again in this one.
Fear—that was a given.
Everyone fears death; it's just the way they face it that differs.
Rey didn't agonize over it any longer. He had looked at the scenery all day. When it was time to jump, he had to jump. Besides, wasn't there that "what if" hope?
---
Standing at the edge of the cliff, steadying his mind, Rey took a deep breath, leaned his body forward, and fell.
He didn't close his eyes because he needed the danger to stimulate his body.
The horizon began to tilt, and the whole world seemed to gradually accelerate and invert. His muscles tensed, and an emotion called fear struck his heart.
Rey hadn't gone bungee jumping in his previous life. In this life, adding the heavy fall in flying class, this was only his second time falling like this.
The wind roared in his ears. The bottom of the cliff, which he couldn't see clearly, approached rapidly. His vision began to blur.
I'm going to die!
In the instant after jumping off the cliff, the "what if" hope of success in Rey's heart vanished completely. His mind went blank; he couldn't even recall the image of a dragon as he had planned beforehand.
At this moment, his life was not in his hands; it was entirely up to fate.
"I don't want to die, I'm not willing to die!"
After his mind went blank, a voice from the deepest part of his heart screamed powerlessly.
He was already in freefall. Even if he changed his mind and didn't want to die, there was nothing more he could do. In the air, Rey could only try his best to spread his arms, maximizing his body's contact area with the air to slightly reduce his falling speed.
From such a high cliff, an ordinary person jumping down would definitely be smashed into a meat patty. But Rey, being half-dragon, might leave a whole corpse—maybe.
Maybe, just maybe!
Even Rey himself didn't believe this "maybe." The words "dead for sure" occupied his entire mind.
Maintaining the posture with his arms spread, Rey gave up struggling. Having passed the initial fear, he seemed to have accepted the fate of falling to his death.
---
Hope is something that sometimes appears after despair.
Just as Rey was about to hit the bottom of the cliff, for some unknown reason, the wind suddenly picked up, and his body traced an arc in the air.
He didn't smash directly into the bottom of the cliff, didn't have the most intimate contact with the ground. Just like that, as if he suddenly possessed a glider, he glided for a long distance. Then, feeling his body dropping, he forcefully flapped his spread arms.
Every flap of his arms gave him enough power to lift his body in the air.
One lift, two lifts—Rey, realizing what was happening, was ecstatic.
He looked down, turned his head, looked at his body, looked at his flapping hands, because only at this moment did he discover that he had unknowingly turned into a flying dragon. And as this flying dragon, in his joy, he became unstable and almost lost his balance, like a fledgling just learning to fly.
This was instinct—the instinct Madam Hooch spoke of.
There was absolutely no sensation of change, no heart-wrenching pain of transformation like when he drank dragon blood a thousand years ago.
It could be said that Rey himself wasn't clear on when the change occurred during his fall.
He jumped off the cliff thinking he was dead for sure, and now he was a flying dragon soaring in the sky.
"Woo-hoo!"
Rey roared excitedly, but the sound that reached his ears was a dragon's roar.
Flying on a broomstick and soaring with your own wings are two fundamentally different concepts.
Spreading his wings, he felt like the darling of the wind, a unique existence. The sky was high, but he could go wherever he wanted; unrestrained, free and at ease.
The dragon Rey transformed into was about the same size as the Hungarian Horntail in the movies, but he was a Black Dragon.
ROAR...
Dragon roars—one, two, three—he soared into the high sky, skimmed over the lake surface, and leaped over the train carrying students back to school.
The freedom of soaring in the sky was truly a rare experience. In this moment, Rey truly experienced the joy of flying.
---
However, flying is tiring physical work, especially since this was Rey's first flight. After enjoying the sky, Rey returned to the top of the cliff.
His wings shrank back into arms, his body returned to normal, and he lay on the ground, gasping for breath.
Exhaustion was only part of it. More than that, he was excited and thrilled. Rey held his transformed hands in front of his eyes, looking excitedly at the change that brought no discomfort.
Suppressing the excitement in his heart, after resting for a while, Rey took out his wand and cast a spell on a small stone in front of him: "Wingardium Leviosa."
The Levitation Charm, the first spell he had learned.
As the incantation was spoken, combined with the wand's control, the small gravel on the ground shook and struggled for a while, successfully breaking free from gravity and floating into the air following the wand's guidance.
The process was a bit slow, it wobbled several times midway, seeming unstable. The spellcasting wasn't proficient, full of flaws, but at least it floated into the air.
"Hehe, hehe!..."
Rey laughed from the heart, and the floating stone fell to the ground with a thud.
"Success, haha!"
"Ah!..."
Rey looked up at the sky and roared loudly, using all his strength.
He was venting.
Venting the extreme tension of life and death just now; venting that the magic in his body finally acknowledged him as its master; venting that he finally possessed magic again.
Only after losing do you understand how to cherish, but this cherishing can only be truly experienced when regained.
Feeling a lot of emotions, thousands of words in his heart converged into one sentence: It's good to know magic!