"What... did you say?!"
Hermione was about to gasp in surprise when a tremendous commotion erupted across the pitch. Oliver Wood, Gryffindor's captain and Keeper, had just tumbled helplessly from the sky along with his broom.
Across from him, Slytherin's captain, Marcus Flint, had just handed his bat back to the Beater beside him.
Harry wasn't surprised by the result at all. Quidditch was a sport that took foul play to the extreme. Otherwise, some busybody wouldn't have gone to the trouble of compiling more than seven hundred ways to cheat.
Quidditch had two major loopholes in its rules. First, no matter how many fouls a player committed, no one could be sent off the pitch. Second, a player who left the game due to injury couldn't be replaced!
Put those two rules together, and a Quidditch match could turn into a full-scale brawl in no time. It was practically par for the course.
What Harry found hilarious, though, was that the people who made the rules would rather issue hundreds of bans against every sort of on-pitch foul than address the two underlying problems.
But it had nothing to do with Harry. He didn't play Quidditch, after all. For now, Gryffindor were the ones being screwed over by the rules.
After Oliver Wood left the game, the area in front of Gryffindor's goal became a battlefield. Slytherin's ruthless players had a field day shooting at it.
Meanwhile, the remaining six Gryffindor players could only watch helplessly... because Quidditch had another bizarre rule: when the opposing team was shooting, nobody on your team other than the Keeper could touch the ball.
Well, well. Even though the Keeper was out of the game, the rule still applied~
"Doesn't that mean Slytherin's going to win?" Hermione frowned from the stands, clearly reluctant to accept the outcome.
She didn't care much for either of the two houses, but she had just been in a brawl with Slytherin. By comparison, she still wanted Gryffindor to win.
"For Gryffindor to win, they have to catch the Golden Snitch before the score gap reaches 150 points. Otherwise, they won't just lose the match—they'll all leave the pitch injured!"
"Th-that serious?" Hermione was taken aback.
She was still too innocent to see how things stood, but Harry understood perfectly.
Slytherin's captain, Marcus, was a ruthless guy. From the start, he'd planned to use fouls to keep knocking Gryffindor players out of the game.
Slytherin's Seeker hadn't made a move at all, which showed they had no intention of ending the match that way.
A Quidditch match could end only if both captains agreed, or if someone caught the Golden Snitch. With Wood injured and out of the game, if Gryffindor's Seeker couldn't catch the Snitch, they couldn't even concede!
As for the Golden Snitch... Harry figured Gryffindor's Seeker didn't stand a chance.
From his seat in the stands, Harry could hear the Golden Snitch very clearly. It should have been circling about five meters above Gryffindor's Seeker, but the guy seemed completely unaware of it.
Harry looked up, and his guess was right. The little thing was... wait!
How could he see it?
Harry narrowed his eyes in confusion, only to realize he really could pinpoint the Golden Snitch's location. He was astonished!
He and Hermione were sitting in the front row of the stands, but they were still dozens of meters from the pitch. The Golden Snitch was only the size of a walnut, and its flight path was incredibly erratic. How could a nearsighted person like him see it so clearly?!
Could it be... another effect of having looked into the Mirror of Erised?
He might as well try.
Harry gripped his Space Ring and silently recited Clear Mirror Still Water. In an instant, everything around him became more vivid, on top of the sounds growing clearer!
He was finally sure. Ever since looking into the Mirror of Erised had strengthened his magic and mental powers, his eyes had undergone some kind of change, just like his ears!
Getting Professor Snape to help him claim the mirror had definitely been the right choice.
When he looked up, the Golden Snitch's wings seemed to beat more slowly. Even from dozens of meters away, Harry could follow its flight path more clearly.
And not far from it, a black iron ball was hurtling toward it at breakneck speed!
"Is that... a Bludger?!"
Harry's pupils shrank to pinpricks. That Bludger... seemed to be coming right at him!!
"Hermione, get behind me." Sensing trouble before it came, Harry rose alertly and shielded Hermione.
The balls used in Quidditch were all enchanted so they couldn't leave the pitch, but Harry no longer trusted the Wizarding World's so-called "common sense"!
That ball made him feel threatened. Even if he had to disrupt the entire match, he would put Hermione's and his own safety first!
Just as Harry tensed, however, a Gryffindor Beater swooped in on his broom and swung his bat, sending the Bludger flying.
"Hey, Harry, did I scare you?" one of the Weasley twins called over with a grin. Harry couldn't tell if it was Fred or George. "Quidditch can be pretty thrilling sometimes, but don't worry, Bludgers won't—"
BAM!!
Before the Weasley twin could finish speaking, another Bludger suddenly came hurtling in and slammed straight into his stomach!!
A Bludger Was Controlled by a Third Person (2/10)
"Weasley?!"
It had all happened so suddenly that even Harry hadn't had time to react!
The raging Bludger sent the Weasley flying, and finally slammed him into the stands, where he landed right in front of Harry!
"This... this is bad!"
The Bludger's strike had been vicious. When Harry came to his senses and hurried to check the Weasley's injuries, he saw blood already trickling from the boy's mouth and nose!
"George!!"
The other Weasley twin cried out in alarm. That was how Harry realized it was George who had been hurt.
"Hagrid, get him to Madam Pomfrey as fast as you can. Keep him as steady as possible on the way. Tell her George was hit in the abdomen by a Bludger and has multiple ruptured internal organs. He needs treatment immediately!!"
After quickly assessing George's injuries, Harry immediately handed him over to Hagrid, who was behind him.
He was hurt too badly. A bit of first aid on the sidelines wouldn't help at all!
"I'm on it!!" Hagrid trusted Harry completely. He scooped up George and pushed through the crowd, striding off toward the Hospital Wing.
"Harry, that Bludger... it stopped?!"
At the same time, Hermione suddenly shrieked and pointed in front of Harry. The Bludger that had flown off and then returned was hovering inexplicably in midair.
BAM!!
Another Bludger came hurtling in and slammed into the first. The two balls seemed to be working together to force their way toward Harry, but it was as if someone were holding them firmly in place. All they could do was struggle furiously.
"Someone's controlling these Bludgers! Is it... Snape?!" Beside Harry, Hermione began searching carefully with her binoculars. When she spotted the Bat Professor hidden in a corner of the stands, silently chanting a spell without taking his eyes off the scene, she was stunned.
Harry had said that after giving Snape a shot, the two of them had been "getting along famously." Why were they suddenly fighting from a distance?
"He's probably helping me."
Harry knew Snape would never hurt him, but the situation seemed a little strange.
If he remembered correctly, in the original story, when Quirrell cursed his broom, Snape had stumbled over the countercurse so badly that it had no effect.
If Hermione hadn't set fire to Snape's robes, distracting Quirrell behind him as well, Harry would probably have been thrown off his broom in the original story.
That suggested Snape's spellwork couldn't be much stronger than Quirrell's after he'd been possessed by Voldemort.
The target was a Bludger instead of a Flying Broomstick this time. How could Snape possibly hold his own against Quirrell?
So... there might be a third person controlling the Bludgers!
And they were probably helping him too!!
Once he'd figured that out, Harry slowly raised both hands. His eyes, once green, had turned a stark white!
The Obscurus erupted. Hundreds of razor-sharp wind blades burst from the invisible black mist, enveloping both Bludgers before anyone in the stands had time to react!
Screee~
The grating sound of metal scraping against metal rang across the pitch, drawing everyone's attention at once.
But all they saw was a cloud of black mist quietly dispersing. Then they stared in shock as the two solid iron Bludgers used in the match inexplicably became piles of mangled fragments, drifting down through the air!!
"Match suspended!!"
Faced with the sudden turn of events, Madam Hooch, the referee, had no choice but to blow the whistle and stop the match.
Quidditch's rules really were something else. Wood and George could be injured badly enough to leave the game, and the match wouldn't be paused. But the moment someone destroyed the two Bludgers that had hurt them, the game was stopped immediately.
"How... did the Bludgers get damaged?"
Madam Hooch fixed her sharp eyes on Harry, but she couldn't see the slightest sign of guilt on his face.
The Bludgers had been close to Harry when the incident happened, and he was widely regarded as the most troublesome student in the school. But Madam Hooch couldn't use that as evidence to penalize Harry, a spectator.
That was the incredible thing about the Obscurus: it was hidden, swift, and silent. Aside from a cloud of black mist and a gust of wind, it left no trace.
So while the spectators' eyes were fixed on the Bludgers, hardly anyone noticed that the faint "black mist" had come from Harry.
"Hermione, I want to leave. Do you want to come with me?" Harry ignored Madam Hooch's scrutinizing gaze and calmly turned to Hermione.
"Sure~" Hermione had also sensed that Harry had lost interest. She readily decided to leave with him.
Besides, the outcome of the match was already beyond doubt.
By this point, Gryffindor had lost its Keeper, a Chaser, and a Beater... The only way the house could win was if its Seeker rode a Nimbus 2000 and changed his name to Harry Potter.
"Harry, where are you going?" After leaving the pitch, Harry hurried along so quickly that Hermione could tell something was up.
"To find Professor Snape. He's probably already making his move."
Harry was certain that Snape was clever enough to have figured out what he had. The person controlling the Bludgers alongside Snape had to be watching Harry at all times too, but it definitely couldn't be Dumbledore.
If Dumbledore had stepped in himself, there was no reason he'd have left the two Bludgers hanging in midair for so long, drawing attention to them!
So the person helping Snape fight Quirrell might be him~
While everyone else stayed to watch the match, Harry and Hermione searched the castle for quite a while. At last, they found Snape in the little-used Fifth Underground Classroom, dressed in black robes and wearing his usual cold expression.
At the same time, they saw for the first time the small figure Snape had suspended from the ceiling with an unfamiliar spell. It was struggling nonstop.
"Hey, Hogwarts is complicated enough to navigate that finding you took forever." Harry approached with a smile. "Professor Snape, could you put it down first?"
The Fifth Underground Classroom at Hogwarts was also a Potions classroom, though Harry had never been there before.
He had figured Snape would take the House-elf to the castle dungeons if he caught it, so he'd searched the area on a hunch. He hadn't expected to actually find them.
Snape had also worked with him perfectly. The instant Harry unleashed the Obscurus and tore apart the Bludgers, Snape had realized he needed to act. He'd gone after the culprit—and actually caught it!
(P.S. When I looked up the rules for Quidditch in the original books, the impression I got was that if a player committed a deliberate foul, like crashing into someone, grabbing them, or attacking them with a wand, the game would be paused and a penalty awarded. But if a player was hit by a Bludger and forced to leave the game, the match wouldn't be paused. That's all~)
Dobby Really Is Pitiful (3/10)
"Granger, if you really want to learn about those ridiculous secret passages, just ask Filch. He knows the castle's layout better than anyone." Snape glanced coolly at Harry. "As for this creature... do you know how much effort it took me to get it under control? If I let it go, aren't you worried it'll escape with Apparition?"
To keep the House-elf from escaping, Snape had been on high alert. Not only had he suspended it with a special spell, he'd also kept his wand pointed at its head, watching for the slightest sign of trouble!
The small, scrawny creature, with a pair of batlike ears, stared at Harry in terror with its enormous green eyes, each as big as a tennis ball. It looked utterly miserable.
"House-elf, you know who I am, don't you?" Harry stepped closer and solemnly promised, "I swear on my name that I only want to meet you and talk. I won't hurt you! So... when Professor Snape releases you, could you please not run away right away?"
Harry was very patient with the House-elf who had helped him before.
"..." At Harry's words, the creature's panic eased a little. It stared at him for a long while, then reluctantly nodded.
"Professor, release it."
"Golden Bell Landing." Snape flicked his robes and cleanly dispelled the spell.
He was only here to help. If Harry wanted to naively trust the House-elf, that had nothing to do with him. If it ran away, he wouldn't help catch it again.
"Oof~"
Dropped headfirst from the air, the House-elf only had time to cover its head before it hit the ground.
But it only let out a faint groan, then curled up into a ball.
"Don't... please don't!!"
When Harry walked toward it, the House-elf raised its scarred hands in fear, as if it expected Harry to abuse it.
But soon, it felt something it had never felt before.
The warmth of a palm—not a cruel beating!
Before you continue