The next day was the weekend, so there were no classes.
In the morning, as Kyle opened the dormitory door, he immediately saw Cedric standing there with his arm extended.
"What kind of pose is that...?" Kyle asked, puzzled, "Imitating a lucky cat?"
"What cat... Nevermind, that's not important." Cedric lowered his arm and said, "I came to get you. Did you forget that today is Quidditch tryouts? Why are you only coming out now?"
"I didn't forget, I just woke up..." Kyle rubbed his face, speaking as if it were perfectly natural.
It was rare to have a weekend with nice weather; it would be a shame not to sleep in a bit.
Cedric rubbed his forehead and said, "Tryouts are at ten, and it's already nine-thirty... How could you still be sleeping?"
"We still have half an hour, that's plenty of time."
Kyle grabbed his Nimbus 2000 and followed Cedric out of the common room. Kanna was also with them; she had been waiting outside when Cedric went to call Kyle.
The group crossed the grounds and arrived at the Quidditch pitch.
The tryouts hadn't officially started yet, but the area was already lively. Even Professor Sprout, who rarely left the greenhouses, had come and was standing in the middle of the field, talking with Madam Hooch.
Quite a few people were sitting in the stands around the pitch, some from Hufflepuff and some from other houses.
From their nervous demeanor, it wasn't hard to tell that at least half of them were there to scout for information.
But Harris, as the team captain, didn't mind and showed no intention of driving them away.
When Kyle and the others arrived, he was enthusiastically explaining the basic rules of Quidditch to some younger wizards.
"Quidditch is actually very simple. Chasers throw the Quaffle to score points, while Beaters use bats to protect their teammates from Bludgers and hit them toward opponents." Harris sat in the stands, explaining to a bespectacled boy, "But you don't need to worry about any of that. As a Seeker, Potter, your job is simply to catch the Golden Snitch as quickly as possible."
"What's the Golden Snitch...?" Harry asked curiously.
"A troublesome little thing." Harris said, "But catching it ends the game and awards your team an extra one hundred and fifty points."
"Golden... Snitch..." Harry muttered to himself. Suddenly realizing something, he looked at Harris with a dumbfounded expression, "Wait... how did you know I'm a Seeker?!"
"That's simple." Harris shook his head, "Wood has been grinning so much these past few days he can barely close his mouth, and he's been helping himself to second servings at meals. We knew something was up. And the only thing that could make him that happy would be solving the Seeker problem."
"So Wood told you?" Harry breathed a sigh of relief.
Good, at least the information hadn't leaked from his side.
"No, he had nothing to do with it." Harris shook his head again, "That kid Wood was still trying to keep it secret from me, making up nonsense about his owl having a second litter or something.
I went straight to Professor McGonagall, and she told me about you becoming Gryffindor's new Seeker."
"M-McGonagall?" Harry sat there stunned, feeling inexplicably sorry for Oliver.
He had thought he would be kept as a secret weapon to catch the other teams off guard, but in less than a day, the opposing team had gotten the information directly from the Head of Gryffindor House.
What kind of secret was that...
"Do well, Harry, you'll be great." Harris said, standing up and patting him on the shoulder with a smile, "I'm looking forward to the day we play against you."
With that, he left the stands and headed toward the center of the field, greeting Kyle and the others who were just arriving as he passed by.
"Looks like it's about to start."
Kyle sat down in a front-row seat in the stands, his Nimbus 2000 resting across his lap.
Kanna glanced at the field and asked, "How many players are they selecting this time?"
"Two, one Beater and one Chaser." Cedric replied, "Kyle is trying out for the Chaser position."
"Mm." Kyle nodded beside him.
He preferred the feeling of scoring goals over spending the whole game wrestling with Bludgers or searching for the Snitch.
Although each goal was only worth ten points, scoring enough of them could still match — or even exceed — the one hundred and fifty points earned by catching the Snitch.
At ten o'clock sharp, the tryouts began.
The Beater selection went first, with three candidates in total.
Following Harris's instructions, the three mounted their broomsticks and flew to the middle of the pitch.
Beaters were primarily tested on two things: precision and strength of their bat swing. Harris had already brought over the box containing the Bludgers.
The challenge was simple — the three candidates needed to stay on their broomsticks for as long as possible. The last one remaining would make it onto the team.
As Harris opened the box, two Bludgers shot out like cannonballs and began zooming around in the air. The candidates, gripping their bats firmly, knocked away the Bludgers that flew toward them.
Having all passed the preliminary selection, they clearly had some skill. No one would be eliminated immediately, but as time went on, the situation would change.
Everyone watched in tense silence.
Five minutes later, the first elimination occurred. It was a second-year student, the youngest of the three.
Growing impatient with the lack of decisive action, the second-year student became restless. He attempted to hit a Bludger toward his competitors but used excessive force, accidentally launching his bat along with it.
What happened next was inevitable. Within seconds, another Bludger came flying by and knocked him clean off his broomstick.
"Oh... that must have hurt."
In the stands, Harry couldn't help but wince at the sight, instinctively grabbing his own shoulder as if he'd felt the impact himself.
"That's typical for Beaters." Ron explained beside him, "George told me that in his first year on the team, his arm was broken three times by Bludgers.
Fred had it similar, except it was his leg that got broken."
Kyle, sitting nearby, overheard this and turned to Cedric with a puzzled look, "Fred and George had their arms broken by Bludgers?"
"No, never!" Cedric declared emphatically, "Other Beaters might have suffered injuries to varying degrees, but Fred and George... as far as I know, throughout an entire school year of matches, Bludgers never even grazed their clothes. In fact, they themselves are like two human Bludgers."
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