Chapter 24: First Snow and the First Quidditch Match (Patreon)

On the first weekend of November, a bitter wind howled across the mountains of the Scottish Highlands.

On the Quidditch pitch outside the castle, the first snow was torn into fine grains of ice by the raging gusts. It rattled against the wooden stands and the goalposts rising dozens of feet into the air.

The stands were already packed with students and professors bundled in thick scarves, and banners of gold and scarlet and of silver and green fluttered everywhere.

Slytherin versus Gryffindor, the season opener that the whole school had been waiting for.

In the upper stands of the Slytherin section, Raven wore a heavy, pure black windproof cloak with the collar turned up. He calmly watched the streaks of color crisscross the sky above the pitch.

Beside him, Draconia had shrunk almost entirely into a snow-white woolen cloak, leaving only a face reddened by the wind.

The young miss had a dark green scarf wound tightly around her neck, and her hands were tucked into a warm muff. She cheered for the Slytherin team along with the older students around her, but the wind in the stands was fierce. Without quite realizing it, she edged closer to Raven, using the steady line of his body to block the biting crosswind.

"Look at that Potter!"

Draconia lifted her chin slightly and glared through the gaps in the railing at the agile red figure high above. Her tone was full of open fault-finding and barely hidden envy. "Professor McGonagall actually made an exception and bought him the newest Nimbus 2000... He's flying so flashily. Flint is going to have the Beaters mark him for sure!"

Raven turned his gaze slightly, a faint smile touching the corner of his lips. "His posture is steady. Harry's reaction to the air currents really is sharp. I have to admit, the tail balance on the Nimbus 2000 is very well designed."

Draconia gave a little huff and turned her face away. "Even with a better broom, he can't beat us!"

On the pitch, whistles and the crack of Bludgers echoed without pause.

The Quaffle flew between the players. Slytherin, with its rough-and-tumble passing, held the lead on the scoreboard for a while. But just as the cheering of the crowd reached its peak, a tiny speck of dazzling gold suddenly streaked through the air above the center of the pitch!

The Golden Snitch had appeared!

Harry lay flat against his Nimbus 2000 and shot after it like a red bolt of lightning. But at the critical instant, just as he was about to reach out and grab the Snitch, everything went wrong!

"Hummmm—!!"

The smooth, graceful Nimbus 2000 suddenly began to convulse violently!

The tail of the broom seemed to be yanked by a huge invisible hand. It bucked and plunged at random in midair, and in its frantic spinning it even tried to hurl Harry off its back and down toward the ground!

"What's wrong with Potter's broom?!" An uproar swept the stands. Harry clung to the broom handle with both arms, his legs swinging wildly in the chaotic air, hanging on for dear life.

Over in the Gryffindor stands, Hermione was holding up a pair of binoculars and looking around in a panic.

Her gaze swept across the teachers' stand and froze on Severus Snape. The Potions professor was staring fixedly at Harry in midair, his lips moving as he muttered something rapidly under his breath.

The little witch gasped. Crouching low, she hurried along the walkway through the stands, clearly convinced that Snape was the one secretly cursing Harry.

But high in the Slytherin stands, a cold, clear light had already begun to stir deep in Raven's eyes: [Magic Circuit Analysis Vision].

On the etheric level, invisible to ordinary eyes, two entirely opposite trajectories of magic were clashing fiercely in the snowstorm.

One came from Snape. It was a steady, heavy silver counter-curse circuit with a powerful suppressing nature, straining to stabilize the runaway broom. The other, the truly lethal trajectory of a dark green malicious curse, passed over several of the stand's pillars and poured out ceaselessly from the eyes of the figure in the back row of the teachers' seats, the one wrapped in a huge purple turban!

Quirinus Quirrell was cowering in the shadows, his eyes locked on Harry in midair. His lips moved rapidly, and a cold, sinister, half-mad smile hung on his face.

"Killing with a borrowed knife, and shifting suspicion onto Snape while he's at it..." Raven understood at once.

Of course he wasn't going to rush over and set a professor's robes on fire the way Hermione would.

Raven simply drew his right hand casually out of his pocket and rested it on the cold wooden railing in front of him. His fingertips twitched, and he activated the micro-circuit of [Wind Spirit Cadence], which he had only recently mastered.

"Whoosh."

A swirl of breeze so faint it was nearly undetectable slid soundlessly along the wooden framework beneath the stands. Like a nimble wisp of down, it brushed past the rain canopy at the back of the teachers' section.

"Crack!"

A piece of canvas above Quirrell's head, already frozen stiff, gave a sharp snap under the pull of that breath of wind. A blast of cold air whipped it up, and together with a heap of icy snow it came down squarely on Quirrell's thick, ridiculous turban!

"Ah-choo!!"

Ice and snow poured down the back of his neck. Quirrell shuddered violently and, caught completely off guard, let out a loud sneeze. His line of sight tore away from the sky in an instant!

The sight line that anchored the curse was severed completely in that second.

In midair, the freed Nimbus 2000 abruptly steadied.

Harry gasped for breath and scrambled back onto his seat. Guided by pure flying instinct, he rode out the broom's remaining momentum and dove straight forward—

"Thud!"

Harry rolled twice across the grass and dropped to his knees in the mud. He coughed hard, clapped a hand over his mouth, and spat out a small golden ball that beat its wings frantically in his palm.

"He's caught the Golden Snitch! Potter's caught the Snitch! Gryffindor wins, one hundred seventy to sixty!!"

Commentator Lee Jordan's wild roar, amplified by magic, nearly lifted the roof off the whole stadium.

The crowd erupted in deafening screams and cheers, and countless gold-and-scarlet hats were flung into the sky.

The Slytherin stands, by contrast, were silent except for sighs.

Marcus Flint hurled his broomstick down in a fury, his face dark as storm clouds.

Draconia watched Harry being tossed high into the air by his Gryffindor teammates on the grass, and she slumped against the wooden railing like a deflated ball.

The young miss bit her lower lip, the tip of her delicate nose red from the cold, and muttered her complaints in a small voice. "It's luck... it was definitely just Scarhead's luck! His broom was practically about to fall out of the sky a moment ago..."

Raven glanced sideways at her. Seeing the stubborn little heiress sulking so adorably, he found it rather funny.

He fished a small tin box out of the inner pocket of his robes, pushed the lid open with his index finger, and held it out in front of Draconia.

The rich, warm scent of buttery sweetness and roasted nuts spread through the cold wind in an instant.

"Try one. Fresh, warm butterscotch toffee, just in from Honeydukes."

Raven's voice was even and gentle. "Winning and losing are part of the game. If you get so angry over one match's score that you can't eat dinner, the roast lamb chops in the Great Hall aren't going to save themselves for you."

Draconia had meant to keep up her proud, aloof face, but the moment she smelled that sweet steam, her stomach let out a faint, treacherous rumble.

The young miss's earlobes turned red in an instant.

She looked up in some confusion and met Raven's smiling, deep black eyes head-on.

After two seconds of silence, Draconia gave a little huff anyway. She reached out a slender, deerskin-gloved hand, quickly pinched up a golden piece of toffee, popped it into her mouth, and mumbled, "...At least you've got some conscience. But next time, against Hufflepuff, Slytherin won't lose again!"

The sweetness melted on her tongue and chased away the winter cold.

The wind and snow still howled over the pitch. But amid the clamor of the crowd, the two dark green figures standing side by side seemed to settle into a strange, quiet peace.