บท 328: Oleandra and Tracey Smack Some Balls Around
The Beater tryouts had devolved into some sort of tennis match. For the first twenty minutes, the remaining five participants rallied the Bludgers back and forth between them, with no discernable progress towards eliminating each other. Every so often, Crabbe and Goyle would get hit by a Bludger, but they would simply grunt and shrug off the hit.
There was no way that Oleandra and Tracey— or even Adrian Pucey, for that matter— could endure such hits like that without receiving broken bones in return, but neither did they have to— as long as they managed to dodge or hit the Bludgers back. But that was precisely the problem; Draco's goons were indefatigable, and they were built like wardrobes.
Tracey was tiring faster than Oleandra, but she was still somehow sending Bludgers back with greater strength than she was. Looking at her sideways with her Mystic Eyes, Oleandra soon understood the reason for this; Tracey was cheating by imbuing her arms with Giant's Strength, which was an application of Thursaz's magic.
"Careful!" Tracey suddenly shouted.
Crabbe and Goyle might have possessed tireless bodies, but the same did not extend to their minds; their patience was quickly running thin. Perhaps bored with the tennis match, Goyle swooped down towards Oleandra, intent on committing a foul by striking her directly with his club. This was an extremely illegal move by any definition, but since Quidditch has no real penalties for fouls, the rulebook might as well have been used as toilet paper.
Goyle brought his club down upon Oleandra with a clumsy swing, but the blow was so slow that she easily parried it and rapped him hard on the knuckles with her own club, disarming him in the process.
"Goyle, you're eliminated!" Captain Montague shouted. "We can't have a Beater just dropping his club like that!"
Notice that Montague hadn't berated Goyle for the very obvious foul he had almost committed. For the Slytherin Quidditch team, it was anything goes!
The tryouts resumed, but the two girls soon came to the conclusion that they needed to finish this as soon as possible; Tracey wasn't used to this sort of strenuous exercise, and Oleandra wasn't in the best of physical conditions herself. However, Oleandra knew of a way to quickly close the match, and it was all thanks to her Mystic Eyes allowing her to perceive magic.
The ability to see magic was not all-powerful. Even if Oleandra witnessed a Wizard performing a complex spell before her eyes, this did not mean that she could replicate it just like that; even though she could see them mobilizing the magic flowing through them in the unique way it did for each different spell. Her ability to see magic was itself a by-product of her eyes' ability to see through lies.
Even so, seeing magic was still a very handy ability to have; Oleandra could detect magic hidden in unexpected places… and she could also use her eyes to figure out the basic mechanics behind certain spells and enchantments.
For example, when it had no targets, a Bludger would emit a pulse of a similar nature to that of Homenum Revelio (the Human-presence-revealing Spell). Upon locking on to a human riding a broom that was not a referee, it would rocket towards the player, as if guided by an invisible rail. However, the Bludger would always head towards the spot the player had occupied at the moment it had locked on, meaning that it would never make predictions and aim ahead of its target in order to intercept it. In theory, a constantly moving flyer would never get hit by a Bludger, unless they moved in a straight line or a Beater manually redirected it.
Upon missing and flying past its intended target, or upon being struck hard enough, a Bludger would once again emit a human-detecting pulse, removing its latest target from the priority list, before choosing the next closest human to chase after; this prevented a player from being singled out and permanently harassed by a Bludger, which would effectively prevent them from playing the game.
Oleandra could see the invisible rails the Bludgers followed, so she always knew when and where they would be, which was very convenient for her as a Beater. The only reason why she had never adopted the same tactics back when she'd been Seeker was because the Golden Snitch was much too small and fast. Whether it be with her regular eyesight or her enhanced eyesight, she could barely catch up to the Snitch's movements, let alone calculate its trajectory.
A Bludger flew in Oleandra's direction while she was thinking; this was her chance to finish things! Time seemed to slow down as she raised her bat, gripping in it with both hands. Ordinarily, this would have made for a powerful but imprecise shot, as she would have been forced to take both hands off her broom's handle.
However, Oleandra's broom was marked with Raidhu, the Riding rune, so instability really wasn't a problem for her! Hanging onto her broom by squeezing her thighs around it really wasn't a problem, she would have been just as stable standing on it with one foot!
Oleandra struck the Bludger with all her might, redirecting it as accurately as she could. It flew past Tracey and Adrian, before ricocheting off the other Bludger and hitting Adrian in the back; the other Bludger rebounded the way it came, hitting Crabbe right in the face!
Both boys were knocked off their brooms in at the same time; Adrian hadn't expected getting struck by a Bludger that had missed him, and even if Crabbe hadn't been too dumb to think that far ahead, he wouldn't have expected getting hit by the Bludger he had literally just taken a swipe at.
Captain Montague was just as surprised; despite Oleandra and Tracey being the only ones left standing (or flying, rather), it took him a few seconds to shake it off and announce their victory.
"I've seen everything I needed to see!" he shouted, before whistling for the two girls to land.
"They cheated somehow!" Oleandra heard Draco complain as she landed. "There's no way they have the strength to hit Bludgers hard enough to throw these two off their brooms!" He pointed at Tracey. "Especially her! She must have used a rune power, Thursaz, or something!"
Crabbe simply moaned in response as he lied on the ground, while Goyle morosely looked at Oleandra, holding his right hand gingerly.
"As long as nobody finds out, anything goes," Montague said with a nasty grin, before turning to Oleandra. "That thing you did at the end… brilliant. Can you do that again, or was it just dumb luck?"
"Pure skill," Oleandra answered. "So, are we in?"
Montague nodded, so Tracey and Oleandra high-fived.
Five minutes later, upon reaching the girls' changing room, Tracey finally let out the scream she'd been holding in the entire time.
"Merlin's stinky Quidditch socks!" she gasped. "I feel like my arms are going to fall off!"
สถานะพลังงานรายสัปดาห์
-- การจัดอันดับด้วยพลัง 
-- หินพลัง