Quidditch and Chaos Magic

For some butterfly-effect reason, Harriett had no interest in broomsticks and felt only so-so about Quidditch.

This had always been a sore point for Sirius. But whether Harriett had been selected for the Quidditch team in her first year or not, the Quidditch matches still arrived as scheduled.

On the first Saturday of November, the Quidditch match arrived as scheduled.

Hogwarts Quidditch matches generally worked like this: the four houses were split into two groups, with each playing one match between Halloween and Christmas. Then, between Christmas and Easter, the groups were switched and each played another match.

After Easter came the end-of-year finals, contested by the top two teams from the previous four matches.

Matches were generally held on Saturdays.

Ted: Why are the matches on Saturdays? I think this is depriving us of our holidays! Any company that holds team-building events on weekends is no good!

In Quidditch, Gryffindor and Slytherin had always been the strong teams, usually playing three matches each year.

Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff were basically just there to make up the numbers. This year's first Quidditch match was the eye-catching clash between Gryffindor and Slytherin.

The referee was Madam Hooch, the Flying Class professor, while the commentator was Hogwarts's loudspeaker, Lee Jordan.

He was Jamaican, dark-skinned, with a head full of dreadlocks. He looked like the sort of person whose first spoken sentence had been rap—and who could run ridiculously fast.

The students' and professors' enthusiasm for Quidditch was beyond Hermione and Ted's understanding.

While Ted was still out running early that morning, students were already getting up to claim seats at the pitch.

Were they planning to skip breakfast for this? Was it really that serious? Were they buying Apple phones or something?! By a little after nine, with the match about to begin, the Quidditch pitch was already packed shoulder to shoulder—well, that was an exaggeration.

The entire school only had a little over two hundred students, and the seventh-years were away on internships and not at school.

At most, there were two hundred spectators. But for Hogwarts, it was a huge occasion.

The four houses had differently colored robes, and once they sat in the stands, the divisions were as clear as day.

Out on the pitch, the Slytherin Quidditch players were all huge, burly brutes!

It felt less like Quidditch and more like aerial rugby.

On Gryffindor's side, three of the players were girls. The captain was Oliver Wood, and the other two were the Weasley Twins.

Since there was no Harry, their Seeker was some boy Ted did not recognize.

With no Chosen One making an appearance, Professor Quirrell never cast his spell. That also meant Snape never had to break it, was never misunderstood, and Hermione never set his robes on fire.

In the end, without the haloed Chosen One, Gryffindor lost to Slytherin just as they had for the past several years.

And they lost badly. Slytherin's style of play was downright shameless, with constant malicious fouls.

They did not go easy even on the girls.

All three houses were deeply dissatisfied with the result of this Quidditch match, and everyone was cursing Slytherin for being shameless.

Then Malfoy swaggered over with his two lackeys and bragged to Harriett about Slytherin's crushing victory.

Malfoy: Oh dear, Gryffindor is so pathetic! Slytherin is just that awesome, okay? Then Jerry ambushed him with a trip that sent him sprawling face-first, and Ron planted a righteous punch right on his face! Gryffindor and Slytherin had barely left the pitch before the spectators started a second round below the stands!

The two sides once again broke into a fistfight!

But Malfoy's trio had pushed too far into enemy territory. How could that end well? In the end, Malfoy fled miserably with his two lackeys, his clothes in disarray and his body covered in dirt.

It was already lucky for the three of them that Gryffindor's little lions had not torn them apart and eaten them.

Although the crushing Quidditch defeat was a major blow to many Gryffindors, even leaving Professor McGonagall upset for several days, Ted did not care.

He continued with his life and studies.

After confirming this month's Otherworldly Knowledge, he finally leveled up again.

He was now a level 3 wizard/level 1 Mind Mage.

Although going from level 1 to level 2 had required only 1,000 experience, going from level 2 to level 3 required 1,000 + 2,000 = 3,000 experience points.

There were still 1,686 experience points left in the Experience Pool.

Ted put the 1 attribute point from leveling up into Intelligence.

He put the 1 skill point into Magic Power, bringing it to Magic Power lv4 (+1 wand).

While holding a wand, Ted's Magic Power had already reached lv5. It was a level that most adult wizards could not attain!

The sheer abundance of Magic Power within Ted even gave him the feeling that it was "inexhaustible."

Of course, that was because all the spells he knew were low-level spells with low consumption. The Magic Power he recovered offset a large part of what he expended, allowing him to cast spells for extended periods.

This also allowed him to use and practice spells more frequently, leveling them up.

The facts proved that if he focused single-mindedly on leveling spells and cast them dozens or even hundreds of times every day, reaching level 2 really was easy.

Several of Ted's spells had reached level 2, especially combat spells like "Frost Armor," "Ice Arrow," and "Shield Charm."

After all, those were about the only ones he knew.

Recently, he had been researching the Arcane spells used by Dalaran battle mages, and he had made some progress. It felt like he would soon learn his first Arcane spell.

That day, he found a strange handwritten magic book in the library.

"The Joy of Chaos"! It was a magic book written in the seventies by a Muggle—Austin Osman Spare.

Though he was a Muggle, his neighbor had been a witch, and he had been exposed to magic from childhood. Later, he even married her.

This book explained magic from a Muggle's perspective and went so far as to explore the possibility of Muggles casting spells.

Spare later became a famous occultist in the Muggle world and founded a "school of magic," the Chaos Faction.

This Chaos Faction was not the sort of Chaos represented by the Warp Four Vendors, the kind that needed righteous judgment and should be reduced straight to ashes.

What it meant was this:

The world itself was unknowable. No system of belief, whether scientific or religious, could possibly be entirely correct.

Because humans themselves were only a tiny part of this world, their limited senses and perspectives made it impossible for them to properly understand the truth of it. Or rather, humanity's understanding of the world was extraordinarily one-sided...

For example, the world looked colorful to us, but in some animals' eyes it was black and white, while in others' eyes it was ten times more dazzling.

Some animals did not even have eyes. In their Perception, the world took on another form entirely.

One cannot see the true face of Mount Lu while standing within the mountain.

The only world we could truly come to know was the idealistic one. What it emphasized was The Power of Will.

Why did gods and myths arise in the world? Because people were born afraid of chaos—of disorder.

Compared to believing that the world was chaotic and without order, with no one in charge, people preferred to believe that some mysterious force controlled everything.

Even if the master of that force was a fickle god of heaven.

But the Chaos Faction did not regard those religious idols as its gods.

The reason it was called Chaos was to emphasize that there were no rules, no organization, no laws. Everything was based on one's own will and practicality.

The Chaos Faction believed that magic was a science produced by changes in will. Magic was merely the art, or craft, of consciousness influencing matter.

Other occult traditions and related organizations believed that abusing witchcraft or magic would bring threefold retribution.

This faction believed that the phenomenon of threefold retribution was not an objective law. It only occurred because of the user's own guilt and unease.

In other words: I don't acknowledge any threefold retribution. I'll take it for free! So I can take it for free! What I believe is true!

Precisely because of this, the faction's ideas were highly active. They even came up with using Doraemon as a god, Spider-Man as a god, Ultraman as a god, and so on. These were all methods for practicing magic, and they actually worked in practice.

They would simply take out a figurine, pray to it endlessly, and treat it as their god.

In the end, such belief would become a force that, in some hidden way, guided the outcome in the direction of their prayers.

Coincidentally, psychology had a similar concept called the "Law of Attraction"—generally meaning that a person's thoughts always attracted reality consistent with them, or in other words, that one's wishes could come true.

The copy of "The Joy of Chaos" in Ted's hands was Spare's original handwritten manuscript. It explained in detail the possibilities of "will magic."

After reading it, even Ted felt dazed. Could this thing actually work? The common understanding in the magical world is: magic = Magic Power + will.

And now you're talking about will alone. Is that reliable?

After all, this world was material. If idealism alone could change reality, then when I was extremely angry, I really ought to be able to punch through a fifty-meter steel plate!

But setting magic aside, if it was Mind Power—this actually seemed like it had potential!

Thanks to reader "Tian Xing Jian YQ" for the 666 reward! Thanks~