In the end, Professor McGonagall agreed to let Harry continue training, provided that at least one member of staff stood watch nearby.
That was a little difficult. After all, Hogwarts had rather few professors and other staff at the moment. Preparing lessons and marking homework alone already kept them working very hard.
Still, all the professors took Harry's protection seriously, and they eventually found Madam Hooch to help keep an eye on him.
In fact, nothing out of the ordinary happened. Had Sir Cadogan not still been guarding the entrance, Harry would almost have forgotten about Black's intrusion.
This was the first year of changes to Hogwarts' Quidditch competition rules.
Nothing much had changed in other respects, but the method of calculating points had changed somewhat. Previously, each team's standings had been calculated using its accumulated score.
Starting this year, however, that rule had changed. It was now based on accumulated winning margins.
In other words, a team would only earn points if it won. If it lost, it received zero points. This would put an end to teams earning huge scores from exceptionally long matches and using them to climb high in the standings.
It was hard to say whether this change favored teams with strong Seekers or those with strong Chasers.
Gryffindor did not mind, though, because their Seeker and Chasers were all excellent.
Over the previous two years, Hogwarts' strongest Chaser lineup had belonged to Ravenclaw. This year, however, all the members of that starting lineup had graduated and left the team.
The strength of the new Chaser lineup remained a mystery for now. Gryffindor had actually played a practice match against Ravenclaw earlier.
But in practice matches, everyone kept all sorts of things up their sleeves, so it was impossible to tell how good the other