Bab 32: Hogwarts Quidditch Team, and Schools Arrive
*** Quidditch tryouts
Hooch surveyed the huge turnout for the Quidditch team trials with an analytical eye.
"All of you who aren't on your House team get out of here. Those of you who haven't had the chance, stay here, team players, get warmed up while I survey the 'new talent'." Hooch made air quotes.
Harry left with most of the other faces he recognized, he, Cedric and Cho started practising catches on their brooms with a few enchanted golf balls that Harry had brought over from the muggle world.
They ignored Draco Malfoy, who was looking down at the group from where he was practising his own dives and turns.
Meanwhile Hooch made the younger ones (around his own age, Harry corrected) to do a few laps of the field, the ones who couldn't were sent off immediately.
"What position do you want to play." Hooch barked and the students separated up.
Hooch immediately took out all of the slower players who were prospective seekers and chasers and sent them back.
She was left with 8 kids.
"TEAM PLAYERS, GET OVER HERE." Hooch hollered over.
Harry, along with the rest got over to Hooch and automatically took their positions by role.
"Newbies, join their groups as per your prospective role." Hooch commanded.
"Keepers first."
Hooch herself shot all of the goals, she zipped around, moving with the grace of a pro, and dunking in the goals, getting all 10 of her attempts in for all the newbies and most in even for the team players, only Oliver Wood managed to block 7 out of the 10 shots, automatically making him the top choice for keeper. Harry noted the Quidditch-crazed Ron Weasley did fairly well for the keeper position and noted him for the Gryffindor Quidditch team of the future, once Oliver was out.
"Beaters next."
Hooch had a frown on after the beater trials.
"By far the best beater out there was Hopkins of Hufflepuff, but the second best were Fred and George Weasley, but you two rely a lot on your twin-work, and Hopkins did quite a bit better so… the beaters are Hopkins of Hufflepuff and Melinoe of Ravenclaw. Chasers next, Wood, in the goal, Hopkins, Melinoe, I want you two bludgering it up for the prospective chasers."
All the chasers were competing for the same ball and trying to get it in the same goal, the game would end after 20 goals were scored, at which point Hooch expected there too be a few clear choices.
Angelina Johnson got the early lead, managing to steal the ball and get a surprisingly accurate shot through the left goal, which Oliver tumbled to stop but only managed to deflect onto the rim and into the goal.
After that, there were a few attempts, notably by Katie Bell and Montague, Slytherin's captain.
Finally the second goal of the game was once again a lucky shot by Angelina who flipped upside down and threw it past Oliver to gain a clear lead.
Montague aggressively got the next goal and retained possession to make another two attempts before a handy swipe by Hufflepuff's lead chaser, Pithy earned him the ball and got 1 goal to his name.
Angelina continued to dominate, getting a third and fourth goal in, while Montague pulled another one through as well. Katie got a few in as well, but at the end of the game, it had been very one-sided.
Angelina had 8 goals to her name.
Montague had 5.
Pithy had 3.
Katie had 2.
Alicia Spinnet had 1 and finally Ravenclaw's chaser Bofur had 1.
"The chasers will be Johnson of Gryffindor, Montague of Slytherin and Pithy of Hufflepuff. Seekers, get yourselves up here! There will be 10 snitches to be caught, beaters will be up there as well."
Harry's competition was Cedric, Cho, Malfoy and two opportunistic Gryffindor second years.
Harry was mildly concerned about Cedric, fairly sure he could beat Cho and positive of his superiority over Malfoy and the two second years.
It was beginning to get dark and the snitch would be hard to find so Harry vowed to catch it quickly before it went completely out of sight.
With a few quick moves, Harry was right on the tail and Cedric chose to follow him immediately while the other seekers went out looking for the snitch in other places.
Harry gritted his teeth and pushed his nimbus to its limits, keeping himself ahead of Cedric by a few metres, the snitch took a sharp dive to try and escape Harry, by this point, everyone else had seen the snitch and were speeding over to try and take the snitch.
Harry cut the power on his broom, letting gravity pull him down completely, pointing his brook downwards, grabbing the snitch and blasting upwards just as he was about to crash into paste on the pitch.
Cedric managed to beat out Harry on the next two but Harry came back with a streak of 4 in a row.
In the end the seeker competition ended up being even more one-sided that the chaser one if that was even possible, with Harry catching 5, Cedric getting 3 and Cho getting 2, disappointing all the other prospectives who were all out of their depths when dealing with the three team seekers.
"The seekers for the Hogwarts Quidditch team will be Potter of Gryffindor, the team has been selected, since you are all house team players, you will continue your normal schedule as well as 1 hour every morning. I will be sending your timings to yourselves specifically. Good luck for the competition, make Hogwarts and myself proud by winning this as well as the Triwizard competition." At this Hooch glanced at Harry specifically.
*** End of Chapter…
An: Not really! Double Chapter. :-P
*** Next week
The week passed very quickly, Harry continued to do well in most of his classes, Arcturus was still teaching defence, a subject which had been renamed to avoid Voldemort's curse to just 'Defence' as opposed to Defence against the dark arts. Curiously enough, Voldemort seemed to have tied the curse to the title, so Arcturus' innovative solution seemed to have actually managed to completely avoid the curse.
Dumbledore was kicking himself for not thinking about it sooner, for a long time, getting a good defence teacher had become nigh impossible for a long time before Arcturus.
Harry himself was looking forward to the arrival of the other two schools, the only person he had met from either was Fleur Delacour, who was part-veela and had taken part in the duelling competition, playing for France.
He was sad that the Triwizard tournament was only European countries, he would have loved to meet his Asian friends again and the Americans would also have been fun to face off against.
With a start Harry noticed the flying carriage that was descending from the sky and he could vaguely make out the packed inside which seemed to hold almost the entire sixth and seventh years of Beauxbatons as well as some of the fifth years, if Harry's squinty eyes were correct.
At the same time, a ship began rising out of the lake, which Harry noted was flying the flag of Durmstrang.
The Beauxbatons students were the first to arrive, and Harry immediately noticed the effect of Delacour's veela heritage, with perhaps a few other half or full veelas as well.
Harry's occlumency managed to stop the effect on himself but he could empathise with the veelas in the group somewhat, being famous enough to draw such looks of adoration from others himself.
As the Beauxbatons students walked through the gates of the castle, Fleur Delacour threw Harry a filthy look, apparently, she still hadn't gotten over her overwhelming defeat at the hands of the Heir Potter.
Soon enough the Durmstrang students also arrived, though they were very obviously organised in some sort of hierarchy, with some of the lanky and shorter students standing up front while at the back stood the up and coming Quidditch star Viktor Krum along with their Headmaster Karkaroff (ex-Death Eater, Harry noted) and three other coaches presumably for the Quidditch, Duelling and Chess challenges, though Harry idly wondered what role the chess coach fulfilled at their school.
McGonagall had surprisingly taken over the chess competition, apparently, she had a 'passion' for the game, and had transfigured a giant sentient chess set for her mastery in transfiguration which Harry thought to be a somewhat strange but respectable feat of magic.
Once all the Durmstrang and Beauxbatons students had trickled into the Great Hall, and were standing where the first years usually stood, though packed much closer together, Dumbledore made to welcome Hogwarts' guests.
"Please give a round of applause for the students of Beauxbatons school of magic and the Durmstrang Institute!" Dumbledore put his own hands together, somehow managing to amplify his own claps.
"Now, presenting to the student body for the first time… the goblet of fire!"
Dumbledore pulled off the tarp that was covering the large and conspicuous object that had somehow escaped Harry's notice so far (Harry suspected notice-me-not charms or author forgetfulness) to reveal a huge and majestic goblet, with a huge gold base and an intricate glass design on the cup portion, from the mouth of the goblet burst a huge blue fire which seemed to transfix all the students, Beauxbatons and Durmstrang included.
"To enter your name, all you have to do is write down your name on a piece of paper and throw it into the goblet. It will automatically enter you into a magical contract if you are chosen, a copy of said magical contract will be available upon askance if any student wishes to read it over. The basic contents are that you are required to participate in three tasks, one yule ball and one victor's ceremony. Once again, I implore you to be sure of your decision to enter the tournament, while not deadly, it can seriously injure a person so this is your last warning…" Dumbledore trailed off warningly, looking around piercingly at some of the jokers and pranksters, sticking especially long on Fred and George Weasley.
"… Other than that, Beauxbatons will be bunking with the Gryffindors and Durmstrang with the Slytherins, the male students will be spread out across the male dorms and vice versa for the females, you may now begin the feast and…welcome to Hogwarts." With that Dumbledore clapped and almost as a whole, the entire hall started eating.
Harry noticed that there was indeed more than one veela, there was Fleur and some Moreau girl who was also attracting about as much attention from duelling boys.
"Honestly, they aren't that attractive." Hermione muttered, annoyed at the lovestruck puppy expression sported by a large amount of Hogwarts' population of boys.
"They're at least partially veela, their aura would create this kind of reaction even if they were really ugly, which of course is prevented by their veela genes." Harry whispered to his best friend.
"But if they're veela, why aren't you affected?" Hermione asked, confusedly.
"Occlumency has many uses." Harry said, making his voice sound somewhat mysterious then bursting into peels of laughter, drawing a grin from Hermione as well.
"What is so funny?" Harry heard the cold voice of Fleur Delacour from his right."
"Inside joke." Harry provided.
Fleur raised an eyebrow, looking every bit the haughty princess, "Whatever, please pass the bouillabaisse."
Harry passed over the requested dish and the half-veela swept off back to her part of the table.
"What's her problem, I thought she'd love someone who could resist her allure." Hermione asked.
"I completely thrashed her at the duelling cup, she was one of the favourites to win the thing before I came and knocked her out in the third round." Harry informed Hermione.
*** End of Chapter
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