Quidditch Match Day Incident (3)

These little badgers were not merely doing business. Their eyes were always watching, and their ears were always listening. They immediately knew who had arrived in which stands, what had been said, and what the atmosphere was like. Then, that information was swiftly relayed back to Hufflepuff's inner circle through their "sales network."

This was no conspiracy. It was Hufflepuff-style survival wisdom. They did not fight or compete, but they knew everything.

The Hufflepuff stands were like a warm island, floating steadily amid the storm. The heat inside the tents, the scent of food, and the busy figures of the little badgers made the match feel like more than a competition—it felt like a festival.

The Slytherin stands were on the other side of the pitch, facing Gryffindor from afar.

It was an entirely different scene there.

The silver-and-green banners did not move in the rain, as though an invisible force had fixed them in midair. There was not a single crease in the fabric, not the slightest flutter. They looked as though they had been cast from iron. The entire Slytherin formation exuded an orderly, suffocatingly cold majesty, standing in stark contrast to the chaos around it.

There were no tents, no umbrellas, not even anyone shouting loudly.

The Slytherin students, clad in silver-and-green robes, sat neatly in the stands. Their postures were astonishingly uniform—their backs straight, their hands resting on their knees or folded before them, their gazes level and fixed ahead. No one whispered to another, no one ate, and no one waved a flag.

They were like carefully carved statues placed in their respective seats, allowing the rain to beat down upon them.

Water streamed down their hair, across their foreheads and cheeks, and into their collars. Their robes were soaked through and clung to their