HPSU Chapter 09 (Patreon)

Harry Potter’s Point of View

The next month was very boring for me. They taught things that I had learned four or five years ago. I regretted going to school because of how boring the classes were and because there were far fewer spells and knowledge I could gain from the nonrestricted part of the library. The only good classes were magical items and knowledge and magic item creation. Magical blacksmithing was another where we were still on the basics but I knew soon it would start getting interesting.

The dueling club, flying class, and talking with my friends were the only fun parts of the school. Ron was from a magical family but it seemed they hadn’t taught him anything, it might have been from how slowly he picked things up. Hermoine was the opposite as I was quickly running out of things to teach her. It made me try to learn more than I already knew just so I could stay ahead of her but she was quickly closing the difference. She had the problem of doing everything by the book, it made her very predictable when it came to dueling.

As smart as she was, she happened to be a know-it-all and was pretty bad at teaching as well. She over-explained things that didn’t need to be explained to Ron who wouldn’t even pay attention with all the information stripped down to the basics. It made them completely incompatible with teaching at the same time. When Ron learned something he could do it with exceptional ease, almost in his sleep and even shortening the incantation or messing up the wand movements and it was still possible to fire the spell.

Hermoine had no such luck at reducing the movements or syllables of any spells she learned. It meant while Ron only had five spells, they were more useful than Hermoine’s fifty. Ron also had an insane affinity with the Accio spell and could already pull very small items to himself without the wand. In my opinion, that was by far the most important spell to learn to do wandless as you could accio your wand to you.

Still, both had finished the first year's curriculum, or at least the spells taught, and both were clamoring for more. Both joined the dueling club, as well as other members Draco and I picked out of our year to make the best of their house. 

Ron, Hermoine, Nevil, Parvati Patel, and I for Gryffindor. Draco, Dudley, Crabbe, Goyle, and Daphne Greengrass for Slytherin. Hanna Abbot and Susan Bones for Hufflepuff. Michael Corner, Sue Li, Morag Macdougal, and Lisa Turpin for Ravenclaw. Five others tried to join but they just didn’t have the same drive and only wanted in because ‘the dragon club sounds cool’. They also had to be somewhat athletic as part of our training was playing football.

Footy was quickly picked up by the other students who began playing it in their free time. The Slytherin team was too strong to make it fun though and even Draco agreed to spread out the good players. He and Dudley on the same team with either Crabbe or Goyle as the goalie was just unfair. That was until we started incorporating spells into the game.

Expelliarmus would rocket the ball as if a person kicked it from anywhere the struck the ball and the engorgio and reducio spells would make the ball harder to play. Slowly over time, more spells were added as the rules kept changing for Wizard’s Footy. Slowly it became a sport as big as quidditch, at least in the school anyway. The physical aspect of the sport made it entertaining to watch non-magically but once spells were added into the mix and the goalie was given a broom, it brought in all the magically inclined people as well.

As we were setting up an actual league it was shot down by the teachers who said ‘focus on learning magic not kicking a ball around’. They started cracking down on people playing soccer and confiscating balls which only made the sport more popular because it became taboo. They couldn’t expel anyone for doing it, only giving them detentions or taking points away at the very worst, but most people still wanted to watch.

The higher grades made it even more interesting as they were just older and more physically capable than us, they had a wider variety of spells they could use which brought the game even higher. The ministry got hold of the news and began pushing for the sport to be recognized by the wizarding community. This might have been greased through the system by the members who saw the value of having another sport as big as Quidditch.

Not only did the school stop breaking up the fields of children playing soccer, teams were made. It made the school far more interesting. Quidditch had two teams for each house, one for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year students. And another team of 5th, 6th and 7th year students. It was broken up when someone realized having a 7th-year beater go against someone five years younger than them almost always ended badly. It also lets twice as many people play, with twice as many matches to watch as well.

Soccer developed the same way with it being broken up by years but with the twist of a youth league of first years because we already proved we had enough people to make up at least two teams and it wasn’t nearly as dangerous as Quidditch. It was also team-based, not house-based. It meant the Thestrals team had a Slytherin goalie, a Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff defender, Gryffindor and Slytherin midfielders, and a Gryffindor forward. Only six members instead of the normal eleven because that’s what we had to work with.

The wizards didn’t know about the actual sport Wizard’s Footy was based on so we didn’t have any problems with the number we came up with out of necessity because of our small group of friends. It also meant a smaller field than standard football. Ron was surprisingly adept at soccer and rapidly became as good as Draco who had been playing football for years before him. He almost always had a ball on him and would try to kick it whenever he got the chance.

With all of the talk about the new sport, I decided on what to make for my magical item creation class and began to draw the designs for a magical soccer ball. Magical balls could be as big as Quidditch brooms in the future. No, not just balls, magical equipment as well. Maybe goalie gloves that absorbed kinetic energy to help stop and catch balls, cleats that would build up power and allow for stronger strikes of the ball, or a self-cleaning outfit with temperature control to keep the wearer warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

The ideas just kept coming as I made change after change to the future of the ever-evolving sport before everything solidified and it became much harder to change. I was rich, even without the money from my family I had the royalties from all the books made about me from my uncle fighting them in court… Having another source of income as the inventor of a universally loved item didn’t sound like such a bad idea.

A ball flew over my head as Snape patrolled the hallways and gave me the stink eye. My friends caught up and we ignored him. Hermione asked. “So, what do you have planned for Halloween? I gave them a sheepish look before I asked. “Do either of you know how important Halloween is for rituals?”