30 The Risky Maneuver!

"Everyone listen up. This is the first game and I would like to start the season with a win. We have trained a lot in the last few weeks and I feel we have made great progress. Our opponents today are known for their rough playing style. They would try to win at any cost and as long as a tactic is not forbidden, they would use it. So, keep your heads up and be alert.

I believe we all know that we don't need to worry about the snitch so we would focus on scoring as many points as possible. I want to create a lead so wide that all the other games would be only a formality.

Harry, as we discussed, don't catch the snitch too quickly. But, if you see us losing, just go ahead and find the damn snitch and end the match. We need at least a hundred points lead in this game and this is the worst case scenario. If everything goes according to plan, we would have a comfortable lead of almost two hundred points. This is enough for us to lock the Quidditch cup this year. So, let's go out and show them that Gryffindor has the best goddamn Quidditch team in Hogwarts", shouted Wood as he repeated the same speech for the hundredth time.

Everybody could now repeat his words verbatim. But, no one said anything as they understood why he was doing this. Wood wanted to play professional Quidditch and the first requirement to even be noticed by a scout was to win the Quidditch cup. Otherwise, you would need an almost ungodly talent to get an invitation from a professional league team.

As the small pep talk was over, everyone walked out of the locker room.

They walked inside the tunnel that lead to their exit into the stadium. As they stood there waiting for the announcement, Wood asked Harry if he was feeling nervous.

"Yes, a little bit. But I mostly feel excitement over the nervousness. It is a dream come true for me and I can't wait to finally play the game. So, I can't be sure if I would be able to follow the plan but I can assure you that I would get the snitch. The rest would be up to you", replied Harry reassuring Wood.

"Hmm, it's alright. I understand how you feel. So, don't fret over the results. Just enjoy the game for today and leave the rest to me", said Wood looking at Harry with a smile.

At this time they heard the announcement for their team and everyone got on their brooms ready to kick off.

'Thump....thump....'

Harry could feel his heartbeat getting faster and faster with every second.

As he heard the announcement, he got on his broom and kicked off into the air.

As he entered the stadium, he was hit by the huge cheer from the audience. This was something unexpected and almost caused him to lose his control over his broom. Luckily Wood saw his situation and held him in place discretely. Harry blushed a little with shame. He didn't think he would get affected by the atmosphere this much. But he couldn't help himself. It was something that anyone from his previous world would kill for.

Finally, the Slytherin team also entered and Madam Hooch blew the starting whistle.

Harry immediately flew higher and kept himself stable at the height they had decided beforehand. It was a pretty safe height since the chances of getting hit by the beaters was almost zero here.

He saw his opponent settling at the same height.

They both started looking around for the snitch as the game started down below.

Harry saw the two teams struggling to get possession of the Quaffle. Gryffindor had an advantage in terms of their keeper and beaters. Wood was arguably the best keeper in Hogwarts right now. The Weasley brothers were also the best when it came to being the Beaters. Their innate coordination and mischievous nature were perfectly suited for this role.

They would target the most unexpected players which would eventually end up destroying Slytherin's gameplay.

But Gryffindor did struggle a bit with their chasers. Angela Johnson was a gifted chaser but she still lacked experience. Alicia Spinnet was only a reserve until the previous season. So even though Alicia got to play the game she wasn't an experienced member of the main squad.

This was something that could only go away with time. Harry knew that Gryffindor would eventually create the strongest team next year. Right now, the Gryffindor was a little suppressed by the Slytherins.

At this moment, Angela Johnson scored the first goal of the season. You could see the future captain of the Gryffindor team spreading her wings slowly. The game carried on and Gryffindor was able to maintain its lead due to the efforts of Wood who didn't let many goals pass through.

Suddenly, Harry spotted a golden flash and rushed towards it. Higgs, his Slytherin opponent also saw the golden snitch at this time.

Harry dived towards it first due to his quick reaction time.

He locked on to his opponent instead of the snitch. As he saw that Higgs was about to intercept him midway, he purposefully slowed down a little bit at the end. This threw Higgs off his timing and he shot past Harry instead of colliding with him. At this time, Harry saw the bludger headed his way. He cast a strengthening charm at his Nimbus 2000 and waited for the bludger to get close enough. As the ball approached him, he quickly rotated his broom at the last second.

He slightly nudged it when it flew past and altered its direction.

A second later, it hit Higgs right in his face. Before anyone could understand what happened, Higgs fell down from his broom due to losing his consciousness.

The entire stadium stood up with worry as it could result in some serious injuries if Higgs hit the ground like this.

At this time, a shadow flew past Higgs catching him in the process. As everyone saw who it was, they were surprised again since it was Harry who saved him. No one even saw how he got there so fast.

There was a forced smile on the faces of Slytherin players. They were all thinking the same thing and couldn't decide if they should thank him or curse him. He is the one responsible for Higgs' fall and then he himself goes ahead and saves him. It put them under a dilemma as to how they should react. Moreover, even though Higgs was saved from the fall, their team still lost their seeker. So, it was almost impossible for them to win the game as they didn't have any backup seeker for now.

Gryffindor team also understood this and their morale went through the roof. They could now be bolder in their strategies and could try out a few formations they couldn't before.

After this, it was a one-sided show of Gryffindor and Slytherins could only look towards Harry praying he catches the snitch soon. But for some reason, the snitch wasn't seen for the next hour. No one could find it and Harry was also hovering above the ground looking for it.

At this point, Harry felt something. It was very slight but with his senses, he was sure it wasn't a misunderstanding. But what was weird about this was that the movement he felt right now didn't come from the grounds. Instead, he felt the movement coming from inside his robes. Harry immediately focused his soul sense inside his clothes and what he saw shocked him. There was a golden ball nestled inside his robes close to his heart. Harry didn't know what to do at this point. He understood that when he saved Higgs from the fall, at that point he might have crossed the snitch during the dive and accidentally the golden ball got stuck inside his clothes. It was similar to what happened in the original story, only that at that time the ball got stuck inside Harry's mouth instead of his clothes.

He could only smile wryly at this and started thinking what to do next. His team was winning with a huge margin and the longer the game went on, the more comfortable lead they would gather.

This is going to help them in their future games as the total score of the team is what matters in deciding the winner of Quidditch cup not the number of victories. Thus, he could either take out the snitch and end the game right now or he could wait for some time to increase his team's score.

He wasn't worried about the snitch getting away as it had retracted the wings. Harry guessed that it was considering itself caught by Harry and thus no longer tried to flee. But since the enchantments on the snitch only came into effect once it touches your skin, technically, it was still considered in play.

This gave a golden opportunity to the Gryffindor team and Harry signaled Wood to carry on with the game as planned. Seeing the smile on Harry's face, Wood understood that something happened and they would be able to get the snitch in the end. So, he decided to push forward with one of the more riskier plans. It was something he wouldn't have used originally but since he had Harry's assurance and the score they had already achieved, he could take the chances. It would be a great way for the team to hone their teamwork and get more familiar with each other.

Harry saw Wood making changes to the gameplay. It was a fascinating display of skills and courage. Originally, the chasers would dodge the other team and try to score the goal. But Wood decided to let go of the goal scoring. He now wanted to show their dominance over the game and announce the return of Gryffindor to the winning podium with a bang. So for that, he created a strategy similar to what was used in muggle soccer game. When one team has a lead on the opposite team, they would sometimes stop making attempts at the goal and only rotate the ball between their players. The opposition would have to snatch the ball from them if they wanted to score. This was a frowned upon strategy as it went against the spirit of the game but here in the wizarding world, there were no such ethical issues. Here you could display your skills to the utmost and the more you show off the more audience would like you.

As such Wood decided to take the gamble and came forward. Gryffindor no longer had a keeper. Fred and George also decided to control the bludger between themselves similarly.

So, the audiences saw a peculiar sight on the grounds where one team was running around chasing the two balls while the other team was moving the ball around between themselves. They would even take the ball to the opposition goal post but bring it back without scoring.

This was the ultimate humiliation a team can face in Quidditch where your opposition doesn't even need to score to win.

The risk with this strategy wasn't due to the score. If Gryffindor felt that the difference was reducing, they could always go back to their previous formations. The true risk came from the opposition players. As they faced such insult in front of everyone, it could actually spark a fight between the two teams. This could also escalate to the houses. Especially Slytherin and Gryffindor have been at each other's throats from the very beginning.

So, they had to carefully consider their moves as it was almost guaranteed that a war would start between the two houses after the game.

But Gryffindors were never afraid of getting into trouble.

So, considering everything, when Wood decided to take this step, it changed his life forever.

He was a great Quidditch player before, but now he was also someone who had the guts to do what needed to be done to make their team look invincible.

This game made him famous and he got many scouts' offer to join the tryouts for the professional teams.

After almost fifteen minutes of such gameplay, Harry could feel the change in the aura of the Slytherin players.

He knew if they didn't stop now, it might lead to some serious injuries due to the scuffle between players. So, he decided to end it here. He pretended to spot the snitch and did an almost vertical nose dive.

He extended his hand trying to catch the illusionary snitch.

The audience started cheering for him as they saw the amazing dive.

Many people had their hearts in their mouths due to fright looking at Harry's speed while falling.

Although you can see this kind of move in the professional leagues, it was one of the most difficult moves to pull off. It was similar to Wronski Feint but since it involved actually catching the snitch, it was a little different.

But Harry didn't want to play it safe. He knew he had full control over his broom and could pull off the Wronski feint much better than anyone. He decided to do the nose dive until the very last second and then suddenly pull up. As he did so, he took back his hand and pulled out the snitch from inside his robes. Everything happened so fast that no one could see what actually occured. Maybe, Dumbledore could see it but Harry didn't think he was going to say anything. Moreover, he didn't break any rules so even if people figured out what he did, no one could say anything.

He flew back to the team and opened his palm. There was the golden snitch lying quietly with its wings slightly fluttering in the wind.

A deafening cheer rocked the entire stadium as Gryffindor's victory was announced. Also, this day marked the day when the youngest Quidditch player in history pulled off the perfect Wronski Feint.

The Gryffindor team came together and did a collective bow before the spectators. They were very happy with the outcome and waved as the cheers kept coming.

Suddenly, Harry felt an intense mana fluctuation from the teacher's stand.

He knew what was coming next. Quirrell was trying to make him fall off the broom. At this time another fluctuation appeared that tried to counter the previous one.

'Guess Snape and Quirrell's silent struggle over me has finally begun. I wonder why it had taken them so much time' thought Harry as he braced himself.

He surrounded himself with a mana barrier.

"This should be enough to hold back Quirrell's attempts."

Although Snape was able to balance out most of it but still some strikes made through. They struck the mana barrier and Harry was jolted from the attack. He didn't expect that just the few remnants of attack would be this strong. But he was able to hold himself and raised the output of the barrier to its maximum. He also added a slight reflection charm on it as a little surprise for Quirrell.

As the next wave of attack arrived, they got stopped and some of it was reflected back to Quirrell who in turn got struck with his own spell. He was flung back and crashed into the back of his stands.

Harry saw Quirrell getting a dose of his own medicine and felt a sense of satisfaction rising from within. It was the first time he went head-on against a true dark wizard and came out the victor. Although he had Snape's help, he was still very happy. It proved how far he had come as a wizard.

'Hehe, it feels so good to kick some dark wizard ass' chuckled Harry as he kept waving at the audience.