As eleven o'clock approached, the stands surrounding the Quidditch pitch rapidly filled with nearly every student and teacher in Hogwarts. The stadium was enormous, so many students had brought binoculars to help follow the match properly.
Ethan immediately realised he should have brought a telescope.
Trying to distinguish Harry from several distant figures all dressed in similar colours was genuinely difficult from this height.
A wave of thunderous cheering exploded across the stadium as the two teams finally emerged from their changing rooms.
Unlike the excited crowd around him, however, Ethan found himself dealing with a completely different problem.
He was hungry.
Hungrier than he had ever been before.
The world around him slowly changed.
The students' faces blurred. Their voices faded into meaningless noise. What remained floating in the air were clusters of emotion—soft, colourful masses drifting everywhere like glowing marshmallows.
Happiness.
Excitement.
Nervousness.
Anticipation.
The entire Quidditch pitch had transformed into a feast.
Food was everywhere.
Although Ethan could normally suppress his hunger with sheer self-control, being surrounded by thousands of overwhelmingly positive emotions made restraint much harder than usual.
Dementors were greedy creatures by nature.
No wonder the Dementors in Azkaban had swarmed the Quidditch pitch during later matches. This place truly was the equivalent of a grand banquet hall for them.
"Ethan? Ethan! Harry took off!"
Ron's voice reached him faintly from the left, but when Ethan turned his head, he no longer saw Ron properly. Instead, he only saw edible happiness mixed with traces of tension and anxiety.
Ethan shook his head sharply.
The sensation felt disturbingly addictive.
So this was how blind Dementors perceived the world.
He absolutely could not lose control here.
Being "forced" into helping Quirrell attack Harry was one thing. Publicly feeding on emotions in front of the entire school was another matter entirely. If Dumbledore came after him later, Ethan could at least pretend he had been secretly casting counter-curses to protect Harry.
But if he actually started absorbing emotions in the middle of the stadium, there would be no explaining that away.
You're only a first-year. Your reputation still matters.
Quickly, Ethan pulled a sweet from his pocket and shoved it into his mouth.
The sugary taste spread through his throat instantly.
Wonderful.
Another successful day of protecting Hogwarts from himself.
By the time he swallowed the candy, his vision had mostly returned to normal.
Or rather, he simply was not starving anymore.
"Where's Harry?" he asked calmly.
"Still looking for the Snitch," Ron said anxiously while gripping the railing. "I don't think he's spotted it yet."
A furious shout suddenly erupted nearby.
"That's barbaric!"
Hermione was glaring at Marcus Flint, who had just deliberately slammed into Harry mid-air. Harry's broom swerved violently off course, though fortunately he managed to hold on.
"Foul!"
The Gryffindor section exploded with outrage.
"Throw him out! Red card!" Dean Thomas shouted from the row ahead of them.
"This isn't football, Dean," Ron said automatically without taking his eyes off the pitch. Half his body was practically hanging over the edge of the stands already. "You can't send people off in Quidditch. Also, what's a red card?"
Down below, Lee Jordan's magically amplified voice echoed across the stadium.
"So after that completely disgusting example of cheating—"
"Jordan."
Professor McGonagall's warning growl carried clearly from beside the commentary booth.
"I mean," Lee corrected quickly, "after that unfortunate and deeply offensive foul—"
"Jordan."
"Right, right. Flint nearly murdered Gryffindor's Seeker, but apparently that's perfectly acceptable, so Gryffindor receives a penalty shot."
Around that moment, Ethan finally noticed the traces of Dark Magic beginning to spread through the air.
While learning curses from Quirrell, he had also learned how to identify magical signatures. Ethan possessed an unusually sharp talent for it. Since magic was deeply connected to the soul, his strange perception allowed him to see magical trails with unnatural clarity.
And now Quirrell had begun.
Harry's broom suddenly jerked violently in mid-air.
A second later, it started bucking and twisting unpredictably.
"I don't understand what Harry's doing…" Hagrid muttered nervously while peering through binoculars. "If I didn' know better, I'd think he couldn't control the broom. But Harry can fly…"
Ethan immediately cast a three-second curse toward Harry's broom as well.
The important thing was establishing a visible magical trajectory. Otherwise Quirrell and Voldemort might suspect he was refusing to participate.
Harry's broom instantly shook even harder.
The entire crowd gasped.
Harry was now clinging desperately to the broom handle with both arms while the broom twisted beneath him like a wild animal trying to throw him off.
From the teachers' stand, Ethan saw another magical trail strike the broom.
Snape was interfering too.
"Maybe Flint damaged the broom earlier?" Seamus whispered nervously from the row ahead.
"Impossible," Hagrid growled. "Nothin' interferes with a broom except powerful Dark Magic. No student could curse a Nimbus 2000 like that."
Suddenly Hermione snatched Hagrid's binoculars from his hands.
Instead of watching Harry, however, she rapidly scanned the teachers' stand.
"What are you doing?" Ron asked.
"I knew it," Hermione gasped. "It's Snape—look!"
She shoved the binoculars into Ron's hands.
"He's muttering something! He's cursing Harry's broom!"
Then she froze.
"Ethan—what are you doing?!"
Hermione had finally noticed him.
Ethan was seated perfectly still beside them, quietly making almost identical wand movements to Snape.
"Ah," Ethan said quickly. "I'm being evil. No, wait—I'm helping Harry. Don't interrupt me. If I stop the counter-curse now, he'll fall."
He immediately switched incantations and began muttering much faster.
Hermione stared at him in shock.
"You can cast counter-curses?"
"At the moment, yes."
To her credit, Hermione chose to believe him almost instantly.
After all, someone clearly had to be resisting the curse. Otherwise Harry would have fallen already. His broom now hovered in a bizarre unstable balance—not spinning violently enough to throw him off completely, but nowhere near stable enough for him to safely climb back into position.
It genuinely looked as though two invisible wizards were fighting over control of the broomstick.
"I've got an idea!"
Hermione suddenly jumped to her feet and vanished into the crowd before Ron could stop her.
Less than two minutes later, a disturbance broke out among the teachers.
Snape appeared to be having a furious disagreement with physics.
Hermione had sneaked behind him and quietly set his robes on fire.
At almost the exact same moment, Quirrell's curse abruptly stopped.
Naturally, Ethan stopped casting as well.
Harry's broom instantly stabilised.
"He's back on!" Ron shouted excitedly.
"Neville, you can look now!"
Neville had spent most of the previous minute buried in Hagrid's enormous moleskin coat while crying hysterically.
Far above the pitch, Harry finally managed to pull himself properly onto the broom.
Then, without warning, he shot downward at terrifying speed.
The crowd screamed.
Harry continued diving toward the ground like a falling missile before suddenly jerking upright at the last possible second.
He clapped both hands over his mouth as though trying not to vomit.
Then he landed heavily on all fours.
"I caught it!"
Harry spat a tiny golden ball from his mouth.
"The Golden Snitch has been caught!" Madam Hooch announced loudly. "Gryffindor wins!"
The Gryffindor stands exploded.
At the exact same moment, a familiar notification appeared in Ethan's mind.
[Ding! Favourability +100]
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