It had turned into a real Mexican stand-off, nobody willing to be the first to fire a spell, which turned out to be a good thing as somebody spotted what was going on and immediately ran out to intervene.
"Stop!" Madam Hooch shouted, striding out onto the field, her own wand drawn. "Enough! Put away your wands before I start docking points!"
Her sudden arrival broke the tension and the two teams reluctantly stepped back, though the urge to commit violence still lingered.
"What exactly is going on here?" the Quidditch referee demanded, glaring at the students with disappointment. The students hastily put their wands away out of guilt and shame as her gaze swept over them.
"The Slytherins claimed that they had permission to use the pitch from Professor Snape, and were trying to get us to leave," Oliver Wood hastily explained before Flint could try and spin things in his team's favor.
"Draco also called Hermione a Mudblood," Harry added, throwing the silver-blond ponce under the bus. Or broom. Carriage? However the saying went for the magical world.
Madam Hooch hissed through her teeth and leveled a disappointed glare at the Syltherins. "Is this true?"
"No! It's a lie!" Draco protested.
Raising an eyebrow at him, Madam Hooch swiped her wand through the air in a complex pattern, and muttered a spell.
"Verbum Quaerere!" she intoned, before speaking the word "Mudblood" in distaste.
A white glow began to shine from Harry and Draco's mouths a moment later and the latter gasped.
'A spell that detects if a certain word or phrase has been spoken recently? Fascinating!' Harry thought to himself as he stuck his tongue out and stared cross-eyed down at it as it glowed.
"It seems that you've lied to my face, Mr. Malfoy," Madam Hooch said angrily, dismissing the spell as she did so. "Ten points from Slytherin."
She then glared at Marcus Flint. "Mr. Wood claimed Professor Snape gave you permission to use the Quidditch Pitch? Permission he does not have the right to give?" she demanded.
The Slytherin's captain woodenly bobbed his head, reluctantly handing over a slip of parchment with the Potion Professor's signature on it.
"Five points from Slytherin for trying to use the Quidditch pitch without prior permission," Madam Hooch declared sternly as she took the parchment from Flint. "And Twenty-five points from Slytherin for truly abhorrent language!"
The Slytherins all flinched back at the back-to-back loss of House Points, and a few members of the Snake House shot annoyed looks towards Draco. Not even new brooms could excuse the loss of that many points in one sitting, it seemed.
'Or perhaps it was the loss of face that really angered them,' Harry mused. From his – admittedly brief – interactions with the House of the Cunning, the Slytherins operated on a sort of reputation system that determined one's social standing in the dungeons. Loss of points wasn't as bad as the loss of status and the censure it brought to the rest of them.
Given how poorly most other students viewed the Slytherins as a whole, anything that made life harder for them was frowned upon. That didn't stop the snide remarks and bullying, but if caught being done in the open and penalized by a teacher, it would lead to a form of shunning by the rest of the House.
'I wonder how this will affect Draco's influence?' Harry couldn't help but wonder. The Malfoys were one of the most powerful noble houses in Magical Britain and Draco had been coasting on his family's success until now. But with the incident last year with the duel, and now this? Harry genuinely wondered how many Slytherins would continue to openly support him.
In the end, the Slytherin team slunk away, shoulders hunched and heads bowed. Perhaps they'd go train elsewhere. Or maybe they'd hunker down in the dungeons and wait for the scandal to blow over.
Whatever the case, Harry found he couldn't bring himself to care as he mounted his broom and took the air, relishing in the freedom flying brought him.
He'd worry about Draco and any foolish attempts at revenge later. For now, it was time to put up with Woods' crazy training ideas.
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