Chapter 170

"Ladies and gentlemen!" the voice of our favorite big guy, Ludo Bagman, boomed through the stadium. "Ladies and gentlemen! Welcome! Welcome to the finals of the 42nd Quidditch World Cup!"

The audience erupted into shouts and applause that flooded the stadium. Thousands of different flags flew, and the stadium was filled with the hum of national anthems being sung. An advertisement on a giant scoreboard replaced the score: zero to zero.

I didn't listen much further, but I was interested in the performance of the team mascots. For some reason, I thought the leprechauns would be the first to perform, but a hundred women ran out onto the field, and they started dancing to soft music, and the subtlest plume of magic spilled around.

"Wow! Mother Morrigan, that's some cool influence!"

Rowena?

"Nah, I'm not blocking. You're doing fine on your own. I'm just analyzing for the future."

I, on the other hand, was watching the dance and movement of some rather beautiful women. Exactly beautiful, not just pretty.

"Max, the eyes..." whispered Hermione sitting next to me.

"What 'eyes'?"

"Your eyes..."

Glancing around, I noticed how Veelas charm was having a detrimental effect on the men, literally making them insane, hypnotizing them. Many rose from their seats, tried to climb over the railing, while their ladies tried in vain to talk sense into their husbands and brothers. Hermione, too, watched this with displeasure and a kind of horror. And the veelas danced.

" And you don't care?" remarked Astoria with a smile, but then she looked me in the eye. "Oh."

"Forget it," Delphine's voice came from behind me, and Astoria nodded.

"Max," Hermione looked worried. "You're looking at the Veelas like... like..."

"Do you know the feeling when you take a bite of chicken that's just boiled? That... It makes you want to chew and chew and chew?"

"Max!"

"I'm shocked myself!" I resented, and the veelas kept dancing. "I was expecting that under the influence of the veelas' charms, I would want to do something else with them... Something different..."

Hermione blushed, and the soft laughter of Lady Greengrass could be heard behind us as she held her wand with one hand, pointing it at her paralyzed husband.

The music ceased abruptly, the audience murmured indignantly, and many began to tear off the symbols of Ireland.

"Powerful," I summed up.

"That's why they don't like the Veelas," Astoria remarked with a stern face. "Only a few can ignore their charms. A veela can easily get into your mind, make you obey her, adore and love her, fulfilling any whim. They are very dangerous. For men."

"A curious point of view," I nodded, remembering the scattered data on these creatures. "But don't they follow their own codex and participate in various sabotage and espionage activities?"

"And what's stopping the powers that be from forcing them?" replied Astoria with a smile, and Daphne once again pulled Hermione into the conversation, recalling some particularly sophisticated topic on runes.

I didn't watch the rest of the show, though the leprechauns did a pretty good job of fooling a bunch of ignorant people by throwing around hundreds of thousands of their fake gold coins.

When the national teams began to appear on the field, special attention was paid to Victor Krum, the most famous Seeker of recent years. It is understandable - not everyone is given as a schoolboy not just to play for the national team, but to bring it victories.

Throughout the game, our box had a very relaxed atmosphere. The adult wizards were whispering about something, and the topic was clearly not Quidditch. The children, on the other hand, were curious about what was happening on the field. Even Hermione was enthusiastic, paying particular attention to the work of the Irish Chasers - they worked very coherently and accurately. Yes, that's right, they "worked." One goal after another.

"Interesting."

"What is it, Max?" Astoria and Hermione spoke simultaneously, immediately looking at each other predatorily.

"Nothing much. I just can't figure out what's so hard about catching a snitch?"

"What?" the brunette wondered. "You have to find it, and it's not an easy task to chase down and catch that nimble artifact."

"Um... I hadn't gone to Quidditch before, of course," I scratched my eyebrow thoughtfully. "But here it is?"

I had initially seen the Snitch without any problem, and even when I was distracted by various interesting events, player movements, or combinations, I always immediately returned my gaze to the golden ball flying briskly across the field.

"Where?"

"There it is," I pointed my finger at the Snitch that was flying near the lower stands, but no one saw it for some reason.

"Where? I don't see it."

"Right there!" I had to use my finger to follow the Snitch's abrupt, almost instantaneous changes of direction.

"Indeed! And how long have you been, Mr. Knight," Astoria spoke with a Slytherin grin. "Observing him?"

"Since the beginning."

"Merlin himself told you to play Quidditch!"

"No way! The library won't read itself."

"And rightly so," the Lady Greengrass sitting behind us summed it up weightily. "There is no need to waste time on this completely useless activity."

The rest of the game, in which Ireland was unconditionally in the lead, we occasionally commented on particularly dangerous tricks or obvious violations by the hard-playing Bulgarians. Their team is great, as I understand it, but it is "stellar." In other words, a single player on the Bulgarian team can be vastly superior to a player in a similar position in Ireland. However, the Bulgarians have no team play, and Krum could not find the Snitch quickly. As a result, the gap is a hundred and sixty points in favor of Ireland. As a result, Krum decided that there was no point in pulling any further because his team was starting to run out of steam, and the Irish were like a wind-up - they didn't care. They played slowly, compared to the Bulgarians, but very technically and cohesively.

In the end, as in the canon, Krum caught the Snitch, but the Bulgarian team lost, losing by ten points to Ireland. An involuntary smile spread across my face.