The Tournament(2)

A hidden feature that Nick added however made sure the minimum length of a game possible was ten minutes as the snitch wouldn't appear until that time. This was to allow the other players to really enjoy the game without having to worry about it being cut short. Thanks to the way the game was played you didn't actually need any skill on a broom to win in this version of quidditch which let people like Ron with a lot of theoretical knowledge on the sport shine despite his lacking broom skills.-

It showed too as Ron playing as a beater was proving to be a menace as he zipped about the field redirecting the bludgers towards the other teams chasers. The most impressive thing though was how he was able to pull off advanced maneuvers like launching boom and even splitters. A splitter in Quidditch was a dangerous move that involved accelerating towards another player but jumping off the broom before impact causing the broom and person doing it to miss the other player before landing on the broom and continuing to play. This maneuver was most often used when a bludger was on course to hit the person who did it and they wanted to pass it off onto the opposing teams player.-

None of the adults were stupid though and only fell for this trick a single time before wising up and keeping Ron at bay. Still by the time the snitch appeared on the field in the form of a very small version of the normal one both teams had gained and lost points from scores and fouls. Daphne was clearly a better seeker than Sirius as she found the snitch first and shot after it with the old dog chasing her nearly immediately afterwards.-

'Ah so that's what he's playing at , how clever.' Nick thought as he saw what Sirius was doing. The man had apparently decided that he wasn't going after the snitch but was rather going to play interference to stop Daphne from getting it. This was a fairly popular strategy if a seeker wasn't confident in testing their skills against another seeker but tricky to pull off. The reason for that was because once the chase for the snitch started and the other team notices this set of actions the beaters start ignoring all other players on the other team and focusing on the interfering seeker.-

This caused the game to escalate into a dangerous match of trading bludgers which tends to stop the rest of both teams from scoring as the bludger start moving in dangerous unpredictable wide arcs. Despite being virtual characters the avatars only get two "lives" if the avatar gets damaged in a manner that would take them out of a game normally. This meant that each person still needed to play smart and cautious to prevent getting taken out of the game entirely. Sirius was actually doing really well despite this as he was using feints and well timed dodges to avoid the bludgers.-

The clever thing that Nick noticed was that he was using dueling movements to achieve this which was an interesting way to play. Daphne was no slouch either and kept a perilous but firm flight pattern towards the snitch that forced Sirius to limit himself lest he gets too far away from her to intercept her. It should be mentioned that all the avatars were using brooms with identical stats so equipment played little part in the gameplay. This game lasted a total of an hour before Daphne pulled a sneaky move and slipped away from Sirius enough to snatch the snitch and end the game at one hundred seventy to sixty eight.-

"Blast! We were actually almost caught up when you caught the snitch!" Sirius complained to Daphne. "Maybe you should have focused on catching the snitch instead of on me then." She said smugly. "Ugh! Rematch!" Sirius demanded like a sore loser. "Afraid I'll have to pass on that idea." Florian said and the rest of the adults agreed with him. "How am I supposed to play without a full team though?" Sirius asked in dismay.-

"You can just use the default players that are part of the game , you will even be at both an advantage and disadvantage since you can take control of any position on the team at any given time like this." Nick explained and Sirius grinned "You're the best kid!" he said with a wide grin. "You all may want to hold off on any more games though until I show you the other stuff i have set up." Nick said and the entire group looked interested.