Title: Harry Potter and the Ancient God King
Author: Nopporn Wongrassamee aka The Evil Author
Summary: The new DADA teacher is something else. Harry and the gang want to know what.
Disclaimer: The characters and settings belong to whoever owns them. I'm just too lazy to look up who they are.
Part 11 – Magical Counter Measures
The month before the Griffindor/Slytherin match saw Harry run ragged. Between homework, Quiddich training, being Professor Burkle's TA, and his very own DA, all of Harry's spare time seemed to have evaporated into nothingness.
Adding to Harry's aggravation was Malfoy's constant bragging about his new Quiddich tactics. Unfortunately, Malfoy stuck to vague mouthings of superiority and didn't get into any specifics when boasting in public. Rumors spoke of the Slytherin team practicing with two or three times the normal number of balls, but Harry didn't see how that would help them in an actual game.
"Malfoy doesn't have anything," Ron scoffed one day. "He's bluffing, pulling one of those psychotic tricks that Professor Burkle was talking about the other day."
"Psychological," Hermione corrected automatically. "But really, can we take the chance that Malfoy's bluffing? What do you think, Harry? Harry?"
Harry, who had been half listening after the exhausting day he had had, let his head slip through his hands. Harry's head hit the tabletop with a solid thunk. Later, Harry would swear that he remembered everything that was going on and that he had NOT been snoring.
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The day of the match started out well enough. The weather was perfect, bright, sunny, and cloudless. Harry actually managed to get a good night's rest, mostly due to Hermione and Ron slipping something into his drink. The match even started well; the Slytherins weren't pulling any of their usual fouls.
Then Goyle – or was it Crabbe? – hit a bludger, sending three off in Katie Bell's direction.
Harry blinked. Did he just see what he thought he just saw?
It quickly became evident that he had. The air above the Quiddich stadium fast became clogged with far too many quaffles and bludgers. Immediately, the Griffindors ran into problems. When Katie snatched a quaffle, it turned into a rubber chicken. The same happened to Ron, when he blocked a goal or when one of the Beaters hit a bludger. Several times, the Griffindors got nailed by real bludgers. In the confusion, the Slytherins managed to score three times before Madame Hooch called a time out.
"Mr. Malfoy! Explain all this!" she demanded of the Slytherin captain.
"Why, Madame Hooch, is there a problem?" Malfoy asked innocently.
"Problem?" Madame Hooch said incredulously. "The problem is all these false quaffles and bludgers flying around!"
"Oh, is that all?" Malfoy said blithely. "There's no rule against it. At least," he pulled a thick tome out from under his robes, "not according to the latest edition of Rowling's Big Book of Quiddich."
"Well, Mr. Malfoy, you should have come to me for a ruling first…" Madame Hooch began.
"Oh, I did," Malfoy replied. "About a month ago. I specifically asked you about the use of spells in Quiddich. As I recall, you said that as long as we didn't cast anything directly on the balls or opposing players, we were free to use whatever spells we liked."
Madame Hooch and Harry just gaped at him.
Reluctantly, Madame Hooch decided not to penalize Slytherin or tell them to stop. But she made noises about revising the rulebooks and owling the International Quiddich commission.
In the meantime, Harry asked that the time out be extended a little longer so that he could confer with the rest of his team. Madame Hooch agreed.
"Look at this, Harry! Look at it!" Ron raged when the team got together. He held up a whoopee cushion and shook it angrily. Easily visible was a tag on the side was the logo for Weasely's Wizarding Wheezes. "I'm going to kill Fred and George!"
There were rumblings of agreement from the others.
"Okay, okay, calm down everyone," Harry said. "We can kill Fred and George later. Right now, we have to focus on beating the Slytherins."
"How do we do that?" Katie Bell asked, waving a rubber chicken. "We can't tell the real quaffle from the fakes. The Slytherins obviously don't have that problem."
"Or the bludgers," one of the beaters, Andrew Sloper, added.
"If I recall correctly, a finite incantatem spell ought to do the trick," Ginny suggested. "We just keeping hexing the fake balls until we find a real one."
"Yeah, that'll…" Harry paused, remembering the conversation between Malfoy and Madame Hooch. "No, we can't do that. If we hex a real quaffle or bludger, we'll have fouled."
"So what the hell do we do, Harry?" Ron asked. "Because the Slytherins keep hitting me with three "Quaffles" at once. I can't block all three goals at the same time."
"I guess I'll have to get the snitch as soon as possible," Harry said. "In the meantime, try and think up as many performance enhancing spells as you can."
The game continued. As it did, the score continued to creep up in the Slytherin's favor. Harry frantically scanned for the snitch. Finally he spotted one. He was about to dive toward it when the snitch did a very odd thing. It hit a bludger.
A quick look around confirmed that Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle had disappeared. There was also more than one snitch in the air. Harry suddenly recalled that Fred and George had mentioned a line of disguise charms that they had developed.
Harry did a quick count. There were four snitches that he could see. Two were behaving very much like beaters. And the third was suddenly diving for the fourth…
Harry went into a screaming dive, aiming at the fourth snitch. Snitch four weaved off to the side. Harry and snitch three, probably Malfoy, swerved to follow. The move put Harry on Malfoy's tail. As Harry's faster broom allowed him to catch up with the Malfoy snitch, something exploded between them.
Harry flew face first into a stinkbomb cloud.
He emerged from the cloud coughing and gagging. By the time he could see again, Harry saw that Malfoy was almost to the snitch. Even though it was hopeless, Harry dived towards them anyway.
The real snitch and the fake snitch were almost together when a bludger came out of nowhere and hit the fake snitch. Just before hitting, the bludger vanished, having entered the area that Malfoy's body actually occupied. The fake snitch staggered to the side, and what looked suspiciously like a pie plate trailing custard appeared arcing away from Malfoy.
Harry zoomed past Malfoy, dodged a probably fake bludger of his own, and managed to snag the snitch. Madame Hooch blew a whistle, signaling the end of the game. Jubilant, Harry turned to check out the score. His heart dropped into his belly.
The Slytherins had won, scoring 210 points to Griffindor's 170.