Paragraph 4 - 32 : Do Not Ditch

Although Judith was no Quidditch fan, the last match of the year would most likely decide the winner of the House Cup, and Hufflepuff had its chances - thanks to their new Seeker Andre Gaspy - which didn't happen often. Therefore Judith sat in the stands for the Hufflepuff - Ravenclaw game on this sunny afternoon of a Saturday in June. Neither Ann, Eleanor, nor Sigismond were attending. During that school-year, the stands had been just a very wide oval ring without any special partition to separate Hufflepuff supporters from Ravenclaw supporters, or from other Houses' supporters. Therefore, everyone sat where a seat was available. Those who had come early had been able to pick carefully their spot, while the members of the public who had arrived last had not had a vast choice. As a result of this complete seating freedom and of the corresponding constraints, one could find Hufflepuffs among Ravenclaws, Ravenclaws among Hufflepuffs, but also Gryffindors and Slytherins among Hufflepuffs or Ravenclaws, or Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws among Gryffindors and Slytherins, for what was a bit of a mess. Many students, whatever their House, had a vested interest in the game's outcome, having placed bets on the winner of the game, on the winner of the House Cup, or on both. Should Ravenclaw win by a sizable margin, they would be almost sure to win the House Cup, no other House realistically having the ability to catch up with them. The same applied to Hufflepuff. Of course, there was also another scenario : Hufflepuff might win but by too short a margin to overcome Ravenclaw. Judith thought it was a paradox that the House Cup winner would be decided by a Quidditch game between Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, given that these same both teams had been awful at Quidditch. Gryffindor and Slytherin had amassed a significant portion of their House points by trashing Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw at Quidditch, and the Gryffindor versus Slytherin game had been in essence a draw, Gryffindor focusing on catching the Snitch because they had a better Seeker, while Slytherin kept scoring goals thanks to better Chasers and Beaters. Yet, technically Gryffindor had won the game by a margin of 20 points. The overview of the Hufflepuff versus Ravenclaw game was a bit different. Nobody actually knew whether the Hufflepuff's Beaters and Chasers combination was better than Ravenclaw's or the opposite, since in their previous appearances, versus Gryffindor and Slytherin, the performances of the field players had been equally dismal. As a consequence, Hufflepuff having a most promising Seeker and Ravenclaw not, the odds were in favour of Hufflepuff, who was given at five to two for the game, and at two to one for the House Cup. When the players flew onto the field, the already cheering crowd became more noisy than in the five previous games of the school-year : the stakes had never been so high, especially among those who had placed bets on the two most important Hogwarts competitions. Judith was not a regular at Quidditch games, and she felt it difficult to discern anything given the distance between the spectators and the players. She had envisioned borrowing binoculars - buying them for a single game was probably a waste of money - but obviously students who had binoculars had already planned to use them at the game. Judith proposed to share the binoculars during the game, and even offered to go early to save the seats for them, but it wasn't enough to convince the fortunate owners of the precious optical devices. Judith posited that they already shared them with their friends, and that they would find it awkward to bring a newbie in the midst of said friends. As far as Judith could see, the Hufflepuff Seeker, Andre Gaspy, who was the highest flying Hufflepuff player, was blond. She looked around in the stands. She had made the effort to arrive early, but Judith's cautious notion of 'early' was apparently not the same as Hufflepuff's zealous Quidditch fans. Thus, there was already a big chunk of the whole House seated in the stands when she reached them. She found a spot high in the stands, and thought that at least getting there late had made it easy for her to seat among the Hufflepuffs. If she had been first in the stands, she would not have known where to sit, and perhaps the next Hufflepuff supporters would have picked a spot at the opposite of hers. Around her, or to be more accurate, essentially below her, most people were Hufflepuffs, which was of course the reason why she had chosen this section of the stands, but there were also students of other Houses, including some who, over their blatantly Gryffindor or Slytherin uniform, wore merchandise in support of Hufflepuff. This puzzled Judith very much, but she somehow liked the spirit, although she guessed that these unexpected devotees were actually students who had bet heavily on a Hufflepuff win. Judith couldn't hear a thing, not even the players flying on their broomsticks, rushing mid-air, for the people in front of her were chanting, shouting, clapping, and even stomping. Judith had though a clear view on the Hufflepuff goalposts, and found it unlucky : she would have preferred seeing Hufflepuff players scoring for the House than Ravenclaw players scoring against Hufflepuff. She felt somewhat guilty for having had this thought, given that one of her best friends was a Ravenclaw. This made her ponder how divisive these Quidditch clashes and the House Cup were. The positive side of being near the Hufflepuff goalposts was that she saw a lot of action, for Ravenclaw Chasers were far more efficient than Hufflepuff Chasers. It was not her very first Quidditch game, she had attended one before : when she was in her first year, she had gone to the first Hufflepuff game of the school-year, because that is the kind of thing you do when you are eleven, have just arrived in a group, and want to fit in. You don't want to be the person who will disparage the activity that is the most popular in your group. However, she had noticed that actually very few people cared whether or not one member of their House was going to the stadium to support the House team. Judith found it fun to follow the games when the weather was nice, but you couldn't expect every promising sunny morning in Scotland to remain so during an entire game. That explained why Judith was not a frequent Quidditch watcher. But she knew for a start that players and spectators alike had to watch out for stray Bludgers. Unfortunately, Hufflepuffs Beaters were not wonderful defenders, and allowed a Ravenclaw Beater to send a Bludger at short range - hardly seven feet - to one of Hufflepuff's Chasers, who was hit in the stomach. The horizontal and upward force took him off his broomstick, and he fell to the ground. Given the height at which he had been struck, his fall took several seconds, giving enough time for every attendee to see drama coming, gasp, and watch in horror, except the Gryffindor student who was excitedly and disgracefully commenting :

A brilliant hit, great Beating here. Wait for the big crash !

Judith thought this was the first time in her life at Hogwarts she was witnessing a Ravenclaw student being so merciless. Sure, many Ravenclaws were noted for their bitter wits. But she hadn't seen till then such an aggression by a Ravenclaw. When the Chaser contacted the sand of the pitch, hands in front of him, his arms broke and he fainted when his head hit the ground. This implied that Hufflepuff was down to two Chasers, making it far too easy for Ravenclaw field players to intercept the Quaffle during the Hufflepuff rides towards their goalposts. Before losing their Chaser, the Hufflepuffs had scored four goals. They wouldn't score a single one anymore in this game. While the scorecard was remaining stuck at 40 on Hufflepuff's side, the points were increasing on the other side. Now Judith was mostly looking in one direction : the Hufflepuff goalposts, which were subjected to a permanent pressure by Ravenclaw Chasers, while the Ravenclaw Beaters were trying to deflect all the Bludgers towards the Hufflepuff Goal-keeper. Since she permanently had two tasks to perform, one, remaining on her broomstick, two, keeping the Quaffle at bay, it was more difficult than ever to succeed at both. Typically, the Goal-keeper doesn't have to worry about the Bludgers much more than any other player, except when they are a star component of the team. Currently, though, Ravenclaw Beaters were behaving as if the Hufflepuff Goal-keeper were the only remaining player opposite, and Hufflepuff Beaters had become nothing more and nothing less than bodyguards for their House's Goalkeeper, repelling the Bludgers as far away from their goalposts as possible, without even trying to hurt the Ravenclaw players with the enchanted projectiles. Judith, who had come to the Quidditch game without much expectation, since she was not fascinated by performance or deeds like winning a frivolous Quidditch game or clutching an irrelevant House Cup, was now feeling unwillingly very worried about the situation and the perspective of losing this game. She was keeping her eyes on the three goalposts she thought earlier they were not the best ones to watch. Her attention was nevertheless soon distracted. For the more seasoned Quidditch fans knew that Chasing, Beating and Goalkeeping are not everything at Quidditch, and had not forgotten to keep track of the Seekers. Therefore, when those avid amateurs spotted action on the part of said Seekers, they directed the attention of the other spectators to the search of the Golden Snitch. This didn't go unnoticed among the field players. But while the Hufflepuff ones were remaining focused on their task, the Ravenclaw Chasers had now lost track of their basic duty, and were now chasing the Seekers with their eyes instead of chasing the Quaffle with their hands. This gave a respite to the two Hufflepuff Chasers, who intercepted the Quaffle, and started moving towards the Ravenclaw goalposts with it. The Beaters, unlike the Chasers, could never afford the luxury of watching passively some extraneous action, lest teammates or themselves would end up knocked out by a Bludger, and they were now the only Ravenclaw field players actually doing something for the team, out of five possible. They were back to the usual Beater chore, the one at which they had been so successful earlier : targeting the opposite Chasers. They shouted at the Ravenclaw Chasers to resume their job, but to no avail. Ravenclaw was in the lead, but by a margin of only seventy points, meaning that, should one Seeker succeed, the one or two goals the Chasers could score in the meanwhile wouldn't hardly matter for the game and the House Cup ranking. From her part of the stands, which was packed with Hufflepuff supporters and was far from the section crowded with the Ravenclaw ones, Judith couldn't tell exactly what the latter were shouting, but she guessed it was something like :

Resume playing !

Even for Judith, it was not difficult to see where the Seeking action was taking place : it was at the same time the spot where almost all eyes were directed, and the only spot where two players were flying side by side at top speed without any regard for the goalposts. One of them was Andre Gaspy, but at that speed, the image of the players was so blurred it was impossible to see which one was the Hufflepuff Seeker, unless they would come close. Judith didn't know for sure what these ultra-fast broomsticks were, but she thought they had to be top-notch Comet 260s. The two Seekers meandered so much across the pitch that in two occasions, Judith was able to see them close up. There was something striking in the difference in flying styles. The Ravenclaw Seeker was extremely and aggressively bent over his broomstick, as if he thought that putting his head forward would make him faster, and he was sharply changing angles and directions, whereas the Hufflepuff Seeker was flying coolly, leaning forward only slightly, varying his inputs in a more progressive, rounded and elegant way. Andre Gaspy was now leading the race, and kept gaining advance at a regular rate. Comically, the Ravenclaw Seeker, who could not yet acknowledge that his posture was inefficient, was getting closer and closer to a horizontal position over his broomstick. It was obvious that only one of them stood a chance of grasping the Golden Snitch. Judith could now understand why the binoculars were such a prized possession in Quidditch games : only the people holding them could see if the Seekers were getting close to the Golden Snitch. Apparently, Andre Gaspy was, because a few binoculars users were clenching their fist, as if the moment they held most dear was coming. But this situation was lasting, so Judith didn't know any longer what to think about this chase of the Golden Snitch. And then, somebody in the stands near her moved the binoculars out of his eyesight, and without letting out any sound, put his arms in the shape of a 'V', with his fists clenched. Immediately after, the Hufflepuffs stands started emitting more noise than a rocket at take-off. It was a mixture of screams and shouting, and very quickly the screaming voices became hoarse. In the meantime, the two Hufflepuff Chasers hadn't succeeded in scoring any additional goal, but that didn't matter the least. Hufflepuff was on track for its biggest House Cup win in more than fifty years. The Hufflepuff players - at least, the six Hufflepuff players who hadn't been knocked out - had flown towards the section of the stands filled with Hufflepuff students where Judith was, to celebrate with the supporters. The Ravenclaw supporters now sat still and silent. The raucous celebration would last about fifteen minutes. At the end of this quarter of an hour, most of the Ravenclaw supporters had had enough time to digest the unappetising conclusion of this game, and had left, some with their heads down. Some others were still sitting, yet, catatonic or crying. An unexpected thing happened, below and on the left of Judith, and she didn't understand exactly why. A Ravenclaw witch had decided to get to the exit through the Hufflepuff part of the stands. She then stopped briefly next to a Hufflepuff witch who was clapping in front of the Quidditch players. The Hufflepuff witch suddenly stopped clapping, turned around to face the Ravenclaw girl, but the Ravenclaw student went on towards the exit. The interesting part took place at this moment. A Gryffindor boy was also leaving through the same Hufflepuff stands, when his wand connected with the wand of a Slytherin boy who had been sitting in the Hufflepuff corner of the stands, a bit higher. The two boys contorted with their wands in hand so as to break the light blue flash of light that was linking the wands. They succeeded when the Gryffindor student completely turned around, so that he had his back to his Slytherin counterpart. Then the Slytherin student, taking advantage in the break, left the stands, with his wand as far from the Gryffindor boy as possible. But Judith was grinning. And Hufflepuff's odds for a win at the House Cup had skyrocketed to twelve to one.