days at Hogwarts

Chapter 586: Quidditch Match after One Year

Umbridge is insane, dark wizards are hiding in the dark, and the news of Voldemort's return seems true or false...

None of these affected the little wizards' weekend at the Three Broomsticks, where they had been longing for so long. Most of them ordered butterbeer, but occasionally a few naughty students managed to trick Ms. Rosmerta into giving them a few glasses of real wine, and they drank until their cheeks flushed and they lay on the table in a daze.

The other guests in the pub watched with laughter, trying to guess which house these bold and greedy little guys belonged to. Most people thought Gryffindor, while some guessed Hufflepuff.

Loren and his friends ordered a few pints of butterbeer, some juice and soda, and took some French fries and fried chicken nuggets from the bar. The food at the Three Broomsticks was a little different from that made in the Hogwarts kitchen. The taste and aroma were richer and rougher, less refined. It tasted different when dipped in ketchup and pepper salt.

Harry and Ginny ate in a reserved and polite manner. They chewed their food carefully, closed their lips tightly to avoid exposing their gums, and when drinking butterbeer they paid attention to whether their lips were stained with a circle of butter foam. Loren and Hermione could not help laughing at the sight.

Ron finally arrived after he had finished half a glass of butterbeer.

"Did you see that? There are many couples kissing under the mistletoe at the fork in the road!"

Ron sat carelessly next to Loren and Harry, then picked up a glass of untouched butterbeer and gulped it down. After a long sigh, he wiped his mouth and vividly recounted what he had just seen and heard:
"…Really? Why do we have to kiss in the street? Can't we go to Madam Puddifoot's tea shop?"

Harry and Ginny sat opposite each other, holding a glass of butterbeer, sipping in silence.

Loren smiled and threw a French fry into his mouth, chewing it crunchily. "By the way, I met Justin when I came here. They asked if the Defense Association event tomorrow night will be held as usual?"

Harry nodded slightly: "It will be held as usual. Headmaster Dumbledore has provided a batch of books and equipment that will be just what we need."

“I don’t know how many more people will come this time.”

"How are you feeling lately, has that person entered your mind again?"

"I feel fine."

"..."

Without a professor, Defense Against the Dark Arts became a self-study class. No one even took attendance, and no one cared what the students did as long as they didn't make too much noise in the classroom.

Only in the fifth and seventh grades who are about to take exams, the four deans and professors will occasionally be free to come and teach some basic Defense Against the Dark Arts knowledge.

As the new school year gradually gets on track, club activities in various subjects are restarted and the professors are busy. Professor McGonagall is busy with the Animagus teaching class, Professor Flitwick is busy with basic spell practice and advanced spell seminars, and Snape's Potions Club is also preparing to restart. Only Professor Sprout is a little free and spends all day in the greenhouse.

At seven o'clock on Sunday evening, Harry stood in the center of the auditorium, looking at his classmates who were practicing seriously below, and sighed silently in his heart.

The defense association has held two events, and as the novelty wore off, not many people came to the event on Sunday night.

Fortunately, the rest of the people were very serious. After Colin Creevey's camera was temporarily confiscated, they quickly mastered the disarming spell.

The Patil sisters shared the skills they had learned in the Charms Club with the members, and used the Shattering Charm to turn the table full of looking glasses into dust. Ginny's eyes sparkled, which was a little scary.

The performance of the lower grades was worse. For example, Colin's brother Dennis Creevey was slow in casting spells and his spells were messy. Most of the first and second graders were unable to disarm their opponents. The red light of the spell could only make their opponents' wrists shake twice.

When dealing with these people, we can only teach them from the basics, Harry thought to himself.

It’s a pity that Loren didn’t come because he couldn’t see the joke, so we can’t capture his strong men.

……

It's Friday again.

The last class in the afternoon is Charms.

The excitement of the little wizards was clearly written on their faces, and Professor Flitwick had been prepared for this. In the last class approaching the weekend, either the teaching effect was extremely good, with the students' minds being highly active, answering whatever questions were asked, drawing inferences from one instance, and thinking wildly, often with amazing ideas; or the teaching effect was extremely poor, with the students keen to follow up the conversation, and often the topic would fly off into the sky without them noticing, and nothing he said could bring their attention back.

Today it is clearly the latter.

The course content was to practice silent spells, and Professor Flitwick prepared a large number of living teaching aids.

The classroom was full of croaking frogs and cawing crows. The heavy rain outside was hitting the windows. The noisy environment made the little wizards even more excited. The whispering sounds completely drowned out Professor Flitwick's lecture. It was hard to tell whether the noise in the classroom came from the crows and frogs, or from these naughty students.

Loren lay on the table and stared at a dark crow. He tilted his head and the crow also tilted its head. He rubbed his chin with one hand and the crow scratched the feathers on its neck with its claws, which made him a little puzzled for a moment.

"Call twice?"

"quack…"

"Shut up?"

The crow obediently closed its beak, and looked at him with its black eyes rolling around, looking well-behaved and sensible.

"..."

Professor Flitwick's teaching aids didn't seem to suit him.

Loren raised his head and glanced at Professor Flitwick, who was standing on a stool. He blushed and asked the students in the front row to keep quiet. He looked like he wanted to take out his wand and cast a silencing spell on the students.

Loren reached out and touched the crow's shiny head. He simply stopped worrying about the silencing spell and lay on the table to play with the bird and listen to the rain.

"Silently...silently..."

"Quack."

Harry in the back row was staring at a frog. The frog was trying very hard, but Harry's eyes were obviously much bigger.

"Silent and silent!"

"Quack!"

Hermione glanced over her shoulder and couldn't help whispering, "Harry, you're going to crush your frog to death."

Harry looked down and saw that the frog's eyes were bulging out because he had held it so tightly. He quickly put it on the table and said, "Sorry, I was worried about Quidditch practice tonight."

"Quack! Quack!"

The frog lay on the table, puffed up its belly and cursed loudly. Although Loren couldn't understand frog language, he could hear that it was cursing very dirty.

"Silently," Harry hastily pointed his wand, and this time the spell was cast quickly and accurately.

The frog's stomach deflated, and it tried to curse twice, but found no sound, so it could only look at him reproachfully. The ugly crow next to it made a mocking sound, and the two teaching aids soon wrestled with each other, and the people around them were stunned.

Loren separated the frog and the bird, spanked them fifty times, then lifted the frog's silencing spell and asked them to go to the side to apologize to each other and have a friendly conversation.

"Quack!"

"..."

As long as we don't fight.

Loren clapped his hands and stopped intervening. He turned around and asked, "Isn't it raining heavily today? Why are we still training?"

Ron sighed weakly: "Like Dumbledore once said, power changes people. After Angelina took over the team, she became like Wood in the past. No one can guarantee that the weather will be fine during the game, so we have to train even if it rains..."

"Angelina has changed. She has forgotten the days when she cursed Captain Wood with us." Harry glanced at the rain outside the window with a melancholy expression.

"Don't worry, Harry..." Ron patted his shoulder and promised solemnly, "When I become captain, I will never let you train in the rain. I promise."

"But Angelina is the captain now."

"George and Fred have developed a new candy for skipping classes, right? Let's go find them..." Loren picked up a mealworm and fed it to the crow, stroking its feathers while saying, "You can earn some pocket money by helping to test the medicine."

"Angelina has seen safe and harmless skipping candies. The effects of the new skipping candies are not stable yet."

Hermione's eyelids twitched. "It sounds like you've already looked for them."

"Yes, during the last training session, George and Fred tried the latest fever medicine themselves. Their body temperatures didn't rise much, but they did get a few pustules on their bodies. It's been a week, and they haven't gone away yet."

"Didn't you see any pustules on their bodies?"

"They grow in places that aren't usually visible to the public."

"..."

The rainstorm showed no sign of abating. The sky was grey and heavy, thunder rumbled, and the wind grew stronger and stronger. Even from a long distance away, you could hear the crackling sound of raindrops hitting the lake.

At seven o'clock in the evening, after dinner, Harry and Ron put on several layers of waterproof and moisture-proof spells and resolutely went into the pouring rain...

Two hours later, Angelina led the soaked players back to the common room, trying not to look at their resentful eyes, pretending not to hear their complaints, and insisted that this training was not a waste of time, although there was no confidence in her tone.

Fred and George looked particularly angry. They both became bow-legged and grimaced with every step they took.

Loren heard them grumbling quietly.

"A few of mine might be broken," Fred said in a dull voice.

"Mine hasn't grown yet," George said through his teeth. "It's swollen...it seems to be growing bigger..."

Several first and second grade wizards nearby looked at each other. Their original desire to join the Quidditch team now seemed not so firm.

Loren shook his head and smiled, then unfolded the Daily Prophet in his hand and turned to the next page.

He understood Angelina's sense of urgency. Last year was the year of the Quidditch World Cup, and the young wizards were full of expectations for Quidditch. However, because of the Goblet of Fire tournament, there were no Quidditch matches at Hogwarts for the entire year. Everyone had been waiting for this game for a whole year, and the accumulated interest and enthusiasm were unimaginable.

Professor McGonagall's desire to win was shown by the fact that she exempted the Quidditch players from Transfiguration homework.

According to Harry and Ron, she had said in a private speech to the players: "...I've grown so used to seeing the Quidditch Cup sitting in my study that I don't really want to give it to Professor Snape..."

Professor Snape seemed calm and busy with other matters, but he still showed some bias. He was always proactive in borrowing the stadium for the Slytherin team. The other three deans were always one step behind him, making it difficult for the team to find a venue for training.

As the match approached, the atmosphere between Gryffindor and Slytherin became increasingly tense.

The storm lasted for more than half a month, and on the last day of October, the Slytherin and Gryffindor teams had a conflict in the corridor. When Alicia Spinnet was sent to the school hospital, her eyebrows had grown to cover her eyes and mouth.

During the subsequent mediation, Professor McGonagall suggested that those involved at the time must be put in detention. In order not to delay the team's training, Snape insisted that the accident happened when she used the Hair Growth Charm.

Looking at his calm expression and listening to his confident words, Dumbledore would have almost believed it if he had ignored the testimonies of his students.

Fourteen witnesses at the scene jointly stated that they saw Slytherin Keeper Miles Blige cast a spell on her from behind in the library.

The evidence was conclusive, Snape was furious and walked away, Miles Black was criticized, but considering the upcoming game, the confinement punishment was postponed to the off-season.

October ended with Gryffindor teasing Slytherin.

November is here.

The temperature seemed to have dropped suddenly on a sleepy night. When I woke up the next morning, the sky and the dome of the auditorium had turned a light blue-gray, with a heavy chill. The mountains around Hogwarts wore white caps. The stones on the castle's outer wall were covered with a layer of frost, as cold as frozen iron. The cold wind whistled mercilessly, cutting the students' exposed hands and cheeks.

During the break, few young wizards went to the courtyard. Instead, they walked around in the corridor, and many of them wore thick dragon skin gloves.

It was a rare good day on the day of the competition. The sky was a uniform pearly white, cold and clear, the sun was bright but not dazzling, there was almost no wind, and visibility was very good.

When Loren and Hermione walked onto the stadium's audience stands, people around them were chattering about the game, their voices louder than they were inside the room. The passion that had been brewing for a long time burst out at this moment, and the atmosphere was warm enough to dispel the cold wind around them.

In addition to the silver and green scarves and hats, every Slytherin wore a crown-shaped silver badge on his chest with a strange sentence written on it:
Weasley is our king.

Luna got a lion head hat from somewhere, the kind that could move and roar, and was as big as a real lion. When it roared, she was almost shaken, but when she heard the excited shouts of "Do it again" around her, she smiled brightly.

Rolf smiled helplessly at the two of them, holding Luna's shoulders tightly with both hands to prevent her from falling off the seat.

"Captains of both teams shake hands!"

Both teams changed their captains. Slytherin's new captain, Mr. Monty, was a burly man with thick forearms like hairy hams. When he shook hands, his muscles were knotted and bulging, and his expression was ferocious, making people worry that Angelina's fingers would be broken by him.

"Get on your brooms... and the game begins!"

Madam Hooch put the whistle in her mouth and blew it hard, and fourteen players flew into the air.

Loud singing rose from the Slytherin stands: "Weasley, that little fool, he can't block a ball... Weasley was born in a trash can, he always puts the ball into the goal... Weasley, make sure I win this game, Weasley is our king..."

Loren now knew why they wore that strange badge. Looking at the goalkeeper with a stiff expression and a pale face in front of the scoring circle, he shook his head and sighed:
"Who came up with this idea? If you really piss this guy off, Voldemort will attack you..."

(End of this chapter)