The knowledge and dueling competitions had ended. Now came the Starry Sky Cup.
That was where the trouble began.
One pitch, eleven school teams.
They had to arrange practice times while ensuring each team could train in secret.
The first tournament had been held at Hogwarts.
Back then, every school still cared about appearances. Put simply, they had yet to loosen up and were still trying to be reserved.
Everyone politely yielded to one another, as though it were a gathering of gentlemen.
That was also the tournament in which Astoria had led Hogwarts to victory.
In subsequent Starry Sky Cups, they discovered that courtesy and restraint were utterly useless. Every extra bit of practice they got meant less practice for someone else.
So they stopped caring about appearances.
Once, after practicing on Beauxbatons' Quidditch pitch, those animals from Uagadou had practically plowed up the entire lawn.
The next team had spent half its practice session restoring the pitch.
That had cut its practice time in half.
The Inter-School League at Uagadou had been even worse. After practice, someone from one of the teams had actually dismantled the goal hoops.
The headmaster of Uagadou had been furious.
Only after the Department of Education and the Quidditch Committee strictly prohibited dismantling and hiding the goal hoops had the trend eased somewhat.
The previous tournament had upheld that tradition too. Apparently, a confrontation had even broken out between Durmstrang and Ilvermorny.
But when the Ilvermorny students saw their own professor standing with Durmstrang's team, united against them, they briefly wondered whether they were playing away from home.
Whenever the first two competitions ended, the Quidditch teams began acting shamelessly.
Those explosive situations were another headache for the professors.
The Beauxbatons students had overrun their practice slot, but they had gotten smarter.
They