Chapter 424: Chapter 423: Quidditch World Cup (Edited)
Fish ran around the camp in search of familiar friends.
In addition to his Hogwarts classmates, he even ran into some members of the Animagus Club and some of the residents of Hogsmeade.
Although Fish was not interested in Quidditch, it was a good experience for the cat to meet so many good friends here and also to meet many new friends from other countries.
Toby and the other Ministry of Magic officials were having a hard time keeping order because of the somewhat larger group Fish had gathered.
It's just that compared to Fish, who led a group of people rampaging through several camps, the wizards who used conspicuous magic in their own way were more troublesome, and as the sky gradually darkened, more and more wizards gradually became excited.
As night fell like a curtain over the thousands of anxiously waiting wizards, the last vestiges of camouflage disappeared: the Ministry of Magic seemed to have succumbed to the inevitable tendency to stop fighting the people and let the obvious signs of magic use surface everywhere.
However, they made a last-ditch effort to keep the Muggles and their families in charge of the camp indoors, ignoring the strange phenomena outside....
With the Ministry's commitment, countless vendors had been waiting with trays and carts, using the Apparition Charm to reach the camp, moving in and out of the crowd, selling their wares.
The Weasley twins sighed sadly, their channels had not yet opened and they had not been able to get a license to operate at the Quidditch World Cup, so they could only see the opportunity to make money but could not participate.
The others were picking through the vendors, buying their favorite souvenirs.
Fish, of course, had little interest in Quidditch souvenirs, and only bought a few special snacks, such as candy shaped like a golden Snitch.
Hermione only bought a bright green rose-shaped badge for Ireland as a way of supporting her neighbors, and a copy of the tournament instructions, while Rolf bought a small model of the Fire Saucer.
When they finished shopping, Fish said goodbye to his friends and returned to his tent.
Professor McGonagall was waiting outside the store, wearing a tall green hat decorated with shamrocks dancing in the wind, holding an Irish flag that automatically played the Irish anthem when waved, a badge just like Hermione's on her chest, and a binocular covered with knobs and dials around her neck.
"Minerva~"
?●ω●?
Fish pounced on her as usual, giving Professor McGonagall a hug, then felt awkward about the binocular dangling from his body.
"What did you buy this for?"
(??ˇ?ˇ??)
Fish said, rubbing his chest and looking at the binocular with distaste.
"This is a good thing..." said Professor McGonagall, who was clearly very excited, as she prattled on about the Omnicular's capabilities, "Image playback, slow motion, and intermittent game analysis... it has many more functions than it did four years ago!" she exclaimed.
As Hermione and Rolf listened, they too seemed a bit impressed, even if they wouldn't use it to watch Quidditch, they might use it elsewhere, in fact they had seen it before, but none of the three were interested in Quidditch, so they didn't even ask about it.
Only Fish didn't feel anything special about it at all....
"Why slow down? It's not like those flying brooms and golden Snitch are fast nya..."
(?ω?)
Fish, whose dynamic vision and reflexes were far superior to a normal person's, said unimpressively.
Professor McGonagall rolled her eyes, ignored the irritating kitten and said to Hermione and Rolf, "You can also buy them on the way to the stadium, and there will be vendors selling them in the audience seats during the competition."
At his words, a low, soft gong sounded somewhere far away in the forest, and immediately a thousand red and green lanterns lit up among the trees, illuminating the path to the field.
"It's time!" said Professor McGonagall excitedly as she held Fish's hand with one hand and Rolf with the other. "Fish, take Hermione, we must go!"
Holding hands, the four of them walked quickly into the forest along the lantern-lit path. Fish could hear thousands of people moving, shouting, laughing and singing.
This frenzied enthusiasm was contagious, and Fish, Hermione and Rolf, who had little interest in Quidditch, involuntarily joined in the atmosphere.
They walked through the forest, waving to people they knew and didn't know, and Hermione and Rolf managed to buy some Omniculars along the way, and after twenty minutes or so, they followed the crowd out of the forest.
Before Fish and the others appeared a huge stadium that they couldn't even see from outside.
"This stadium holds 100,000 spectators, and every inch of it is under a Muggle banishment spell."
Hermione read the game brochure she had purchased that contained a brief description of the stadium.
"Yes, the Ministry of Magic has worked hard for a whole year for this." Professor McGonagall shared what she had heard from the others, "Let's go inside." She headed for the nearest entrance.
"Hey there, Professor McGonagall! You must be Fish, I've heard a lot of people talking about you today."
The wizard in charge of tickets, apparently also a Hogwarts graduate, greeted her cordially before craning his neck to look at the ticket Professor McGonagall was holding.
"Second class tickets? what's that Ludo doing?!"
The wizard scolded his superior angrily as he looked at the tickets.
"I asked for it myself," Professor McGonagall explained, "I didn't want to deal with that group of pretentious, pureblooded officials while watching the match."
"Oh... so that's the case?" The wizard rubbed his nose with a smile and then pointed out the location of his seats to Professor McGonagall, "Go up to the seventh row, on the third floor, in the middle of north."
Professor McGonagall nodded to him and led Fish inside; they soon found their seats and sat next to each other.
By then there were other people sitting next to them, people they knew.
"Hello, Xenophilius."
"Oh, it's Professor McGonagall!" Xenophilius Lovegood stood up and said happily, "I didn't expect we could sit together, what luck!"
And the children waved to each other.
"Hello, Luna."
"Hello, we meet again."
Luna was still in a trance and looked very bland in front of Fish.
But still, Hermione didn't like her very much, or rather, they didn't get along at all.
Hermione couldn't understand how Luna could be convinced of so many things without proof, and Luna thought Hermione was too narrow-minded, short-sighted and closed-minded.
Fish and Rolf, on the other hand, enjoy talking to Luna, Fish just likes to listen to stories and doesn't care if they are true or not, while Rolf is interested in the magical creatures Luna talks about, like the wrinkly horned snorkack....
Because they were animals that not even his grandfather knew about.
During the day, when Rolf had been following Fish, the two had spent quite a while talking, and now that they had met again, they immediately continued the conversation.
Fish would have joined in, but Hermione seemed a little sad to be alone, so the cat hesitated and went back to sit beside her.
Hermione, who was flipping through the fringed velvet-covered game booklet, looked at Fish in surprise, "Aren't you going to listen to Luna's story?"
"I've heard it before, Fish thought it would be best to keep you company," the cat leaned in, resting his head on Hermione's shoulder and asked intimately against her cheek, "What's written in it nya booklet?"
?(?ΦωΦ?)?
"Well, it's just information about the Quidditch World Cup, nothing special."
Hearing Fish's reasoning, Hermione felt a burst of sweetness inside, the cat still didn't know how to say sweet things, which meant he was saying what he really thought....
Hermione was glad to think so.
She closed the booklet and replied, "But there's going to be a show of each team's mascot before the match, that should be fun, shouldn't it?"
"Yes," said Professor McGonagall from the side, "Every World Cup final, before the start of the match, both sides will bring some weird creatures from their own country to perform for the audience."
Her words immediately piqued the interest of the four children present, including Luna....
"Will there be wrinkly horned snorkacks? Or a Nargle?"
Hermione rolled her eyes slyly, but said nothing to correct his nonsense, because she had already done so, and the result was that neither could convince the other and Fish had to intervene.
Professor McGonagall, who knew what Luna was like, smiled and shook her head, not answering Luna's question but talking about the mascots of the countries she had seen at the World Cup.
With her storytelling skills, Professor McGonagall's narration was so entertaining that even Luna stopped stopping at the crinkly-horned snorkack and listened with great interest.
As Professor McGonagall was talking about Brazil's 1982 World Cup mascot Curupira, the thunderous voice of Ludo Bagman rang out, "Ladies and gentlemen.... welcome! Welcome to the 422nd Quidditch World Cup!"
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