NOVEL FROG Brooms
Harry Potter
Harry was unsure how to feel about Tanya going to the teachers about the Wizarding Duel he had been challenged to. On the one hand, she had been looking out for him and Ron, preventing them from getting in trouble. On the other, she had made the entire thing a much bigger event than he wanted it to be. Ron, by contrast, had no issues expressing his displeasure at 'that stuck up and bossy girl' getting in the way of showing Malfoy exactly what they thought of him.
Regardless, the match had been rescheduled to the following Saturday as part of the first meeting of a dueling club that had been inactive for several years. All years were invited to attend and depending on how the first years this year behaved would determine if the first years the next year would be allowed to join or if it will be kept to older year students.
Malfoy was being annoyingly smug about the whole thing, though he was thankfully keeping his distance during the following week where Professor Flitwick announced he and Snape would be the ones running the club jointly and that the first meeting would be having several exhibition duels, including one between Harry and Malfoy, Snape and Professor McGonagall, and a secret third one. The attention on Harry after that was embarrassing, but Flitwick gave Harry a pamphlet with a couple of spells for him to practice.
Professor McGonagall was an even bigger help, pulling Harry aside after class to help Harry, in her words, not embarrass Gryffindor House by only being able to spray a few sparks at Malfoy. Her advice was to use the light spell, Lumos, to blind Malfoy before using the disarm charm, Expelliarmus, to leave Malfoy without his wand. If they didn't work, he was to spray sparks at Malfoy in a hopes that Malfoy either fell out of bounds or Harry could try disarming him again.
During the practice, McGonagall also mentioned that packages would be arriving for Tanya and him and that they were not to open them in the Great Hall, but to take the packages straight to their rooms and that their first quidditch practice would be Thursday evening at seven with Wood. Harry agreed to let Tanya know that.
When Thursday did roll around, neither Harry nor Tanya were surprised that a pair of packages landed in front of them, though the dozen owls carrying two suspiciously broom shaped packages did cause a stir around the Great Hall. Not wanting to upset Professor McGonagall and promising to explain later, the pair took their packages up to their dorm rooms and got ready for classes. Harry wanted so badly to open it and look at what he got, but Tanya calmly reminded him that even if he did, he would not get a chance to test it out until that evening regardless.
Despite the reassurances, Harry was distracted all day thinking about the package sitting on his bed or that he was going to learn how to play quidditch that night. Tanya, however, seemed perfectly able to focus on her work with no issue. She showed no glee or excitement or that anything about the day was special or unusual. When Harry tried to bring it up with her, she just told him there was no point letting the excitement get to them, that they would have a chance to open the packages in a few hours.
Those hours seemed to drag on forever to Harry until he was shoveling food into his mouth without paying attention to what he was eating so he could get back to the dorm room as quickly as possible. Ron followed close behind, wanting to see what it was as well.
Getting to the package sitting on the bed, Harry tore open the wrapping to the gasp of Ron.
"A Nimbus 2000! I've never even touched one."
Harry looked over to his friend as he continued pulling the wrapping off and admiring the beauty of the broom. "Is it good?" Harry asked.
"The best. It is what the professional quidditch teams have been using for the past few years, though I have heard they got a new model coming soon."
Harry didn't know much about brooms, but he and Ron marveled at it. It was gorgeous in Harry's opinion, a sleek, shiny, deep mahogany handle that had golden letter declaring it was a Nimbus 2000 at one end and went down to a long tail of straight twigs aligned neatly.
"You have got to give that a ride," Ron said after a while of admiring the broom.
Harry agreed and headed down to the common room where Tanya was waiting with her own Nimbus by her side surrounded by several other students asking about her broom. Seeing Harry coming down the stairs, Tanya stood up and grabbed her broom.
"Let's get down to the field and test these out before practice," Tanya said. She did not look overly excited, but Harry thought he could see a sparkle of excitement in her eyes.
"Yeah, let's go," Harry said with a smile.
—
Tanya Degurechaff
Flying with a broom was rather different than orb based flight. With an orb I would have applied vectors to my body and the strength of the vectors were completely disconnected from my orientation within three dimensional space. With a broom, vectors of force could be applied in any direction, but the strongest vectors were in the direction the broom was facing and to change the facing of the broom. For what is classified as a racing broom, this was a beneficial decision as getting from point A to point B as quickly as possible was the only concern, but for overwatch situations the lessened ability to strafe was a disadvantage.
While judging the precise difference in speed was difficult, I estimated the broom I had was able to achieve about half the speed I was able to as an aerial mage in my previous life. Despite that, the tighter area of operation of the stadium and impromptu obstacles of the stands and goals made the test flight a rather enjoyable affair. Having Harry nearby to compare myself and challenge in maneuvers certainly made the endeavor into an activity I would enjoy engaging in again.
After some time of flying around, we were called down by Oliver, who had a wooden crate under an arm. Coming down for a landing, Harry and I got ready for our lesson. Wood's wide grin and laughter showed he has a relaxed, easygoing captain. I had met several individuals that were capable and effective leaders with similar personalities, though it was a personality I often found I needed to pound out of soldiers as it often came along with a negligent work ethic that negatively impacted the abilities of those around them. I would need to take a wait and see approach on how effective Wood was as a captain.
"I see what Hooch and McGonagall were saying," Wood said when we got to the ground. "You two are naturals! Alright, I'm going to go over the rules now and we will decide which of you is the seeker and which is on reserves later after we start team practice. We will be practicing three times a week."
It had been a long time since I was in school last, particularly a school outside of an active war situation with a truncated curriculum, but if I remembered right the sports clubs in my first life typically met twice a week. Then again, with a boarding school where there was no worries about commutes, or familiar responsibility to interfere, it made sense to increase the number of meetings.
Wood opened up the crate and pulled out a red ball that was about the size of a soccer ball. "So, quidditch is pretty easy to understand, but can be a bit difficult to play. Seven players a side. The first three are called chasers." Wood indicated the ball. "This ball is the quaffle. It is the chasers' roles to get this ball through the goals. 10 points for each time the quaffle gets through. Follow me?"
I nodded as Harry repeated out loud the main points.
"The chasers throw the quaffle through the hoops trying to score. Sort of like basketball on broomsticks and with six goals is it?"
"What's basketball?"
"Muggle sport," I answered. "Similar goal of trying to get a ball through a hoop. A question, please."
"Go for it."
"You mentioned that there are seven players, but only three are chasers. Does that mean only chasers can score? And if the chasers are in an offensive role of attempting to score, does that mean the other players are defensive?"
"Bingo," Wood tossed the quaffle at me. It was a fairly light, but sturdy feeling ball. "Yes, if one of the other players does manage to toss the quaffle through a goal it is considered a technical foul with one exception. That exception is my role in the team, the keeper. My job is to fly near our goal posts and prevent the quaffle getting through. By the rules, I am a specialized chaser in that if I manage to get the quaffle through the other team's goal it does count as a goal."
"Three chasers and a keeper who play with quaffle," Harry said, confirming his knowledge out loud, a useful technique for studying. "They are the only four that can score a goal or it is a foul. What about those other balls?"
Looking into the chest, I could see three remaining balls, two identical ones chained in place that looked like black medicine balls.
"I'll show you now," Wood said handing Harry a club that looked like a shortened cricket bat. "Take this." Once Wood was in position he gave us a smile. "These are bludgers, and I'm going to show you what they do. Stand back."
After Harry and I backed up a few paces, Wood flicked the release on the restraint and the bludger went shooting off into the air before turning around and coming at Harry. With a panicked swing that surprisingly found its mark, Harry sent the ball off in another direction before it turned and came towards me. I braced myself and caught it as it was coming to hit me in the chest. My earlier thoughts of it looking like a medicine ball seemed correct. It seemed to be a heavy metal ball about the size of a cannonball wrapped in black leather. Wood gave me directions to put it back in the chest and helped me lock it back into place.
"Blimey, how'd you stop the bludger like that?" Wood asked.
"Magic," I said as I looked at the club Harry was holding. "I take it someone uses that to knock the bludgers around."
"Yes. The bludgers rocket around the field trying to knock players off their brooms. Each team has two beaters to defend their team and knock the bludgers towards the other team."
"Three chasers, one keeper, two beaters. That is six out of seven players. You already mentioned seeker earlier as the role you are trying to fill. Is that what the last little ball is for?"
"You are a sharp one," Wood told me as he pulled out the little golden ball. A tiny thing that sprouted wings and was about the size of an eye knocked out of someone's skull. "This is the golden snitch. It is the seeker's job to find and catch it, a tricky thing because of how small and fast it is, weaving through all the other players in a dash to get it first. The first seeker to catch it ends the game and scores their team 150 points, nearly always winning their team the game. I think the record was three months, they had to keep finding substitutes just so the players could get some sleep. Any questions?"
Harry shook his head. I agreed that the basics were simple enough, but that behind that was a lot more to it than met the eye. I was not one much for sports ever since I was shown to only be of averaging ability in my school days back in my first life, so long ago, but I would do my best while I was required to be on the team in the mean time.
"So, 15 goals with the quaffle equals one catching of the snitch. If I did not know better, I would almost say this was two games stitched together."
"Not this again," Wood said with a roll of his eyes. "I don't see why muggle raised kids think that."
I have Wood a look. "I said if I did not know better. I can definitely see how that is the case in an amateur level of play because the level of coordination and situational awareness would be a strain to integrate the seeker's hunt with the chasers' scoring, but at higher levels of play, the seeker and snitch becomes a bit like a hybrid of the queen and king in chess. The most powerful and valuable piece on the board, but one that can be mitigated with the other players by preventing the seeker from getting into a position to properly engage the snitch to win the game. With enough distractions from the beaters and bludgers and the chasers finding ways to effectively rack up the score, then advantage the seeker gives is entirely eliminated."
Wood was grinning at me again. "I think we are going to get along great," he said before roping me into a discussion on different tactics and plays that have been used in professional quidditch that unfortunately do not work in their school level games.
—-
Harry Potter
Harry did not understand all the talk Tanya and Oliver did after they were taught the rules to quidditch. He knew it had to do with how players were meant to be positioned during certain times or something in order help or hinder the seeker from getting the snitch. Harry thought he would be a rather bad chaser or beater if he had to keep all that in mind, but when they were done talking Oliver pulled out a bag of golf balls and said they were going to see which of them would be the better seeker with a test.
Harry came out ahead, not letting any of the ones thrown at him hit the ground, and even managing to catch a few tossed at Tanya. Tanya did very good as well, but from what Tanya said, his eyes were better than hers at following the little balls. Harry wasn't so sure and thought Tanya might have been holding back a bit, letting Harry take the lead, but it was so hard to tell for sure.
Regardless, Oliver Wood seemed excited for their chances at the quidditch cup this year, certain that it would be in Gryffindor House this time. His excitement was so great that Harry almost forgot to be worried for his duel in two days.