Dawn Rivera

The Quidditch World Cup

Clutching our purchases, Mr Weasley in the lead, we all hurry into the wood, following the lantern-lit trail. We can hear the sounds of thousands of people moving around us, shouts and laughter, snatches of singing. The atmosphere of feverish excitement is highly infectious; I can't stop grinning. We walk through the wood for twenty minutes, talking and joking loudly, until at last we emerge on the other side, and find ourselves in the shadow of a gigantic stadium. Though I can only see a fraction of the immense gold surrounding the pitch, I can tell that ten cathedrals would fit comfortably inside it.

"Seats a hundred thousand," says Mr Weasley, spotting the awestruck look on Harry's and Danny's faces. "Ministry task force of five hundred have been working on it all year. Muggle-Repelling Charms on every inch of it. Every time Muggles have got anywhere near here all year, they've suddenly remembered urgent appointments and had to dash away again...Bless them," he adds fondly, leading the way towards the nearest entrance, which is already surrounded by a swarm of shouting witches and wizards.

"Prime seats!" says the Ministry witch at the entrance, when she checks our tickets. "Top Box! Straight upstairs, Arthur, and as high as you can go."

The stairs into the stadium are carpeted in rich purple. We clamber upwards with the rest of the crowd, which slowly filters away through doors into the stands to our left and right. Mr Weasley's party keep climbing, and at last we reach the top of the staircase, and find ourselves in a small box, set at the highest point of the stadium and situated exactly halfway between the golden goalposts. About twenty purple-and-gilt chairs stand in two rows here, and I, filing into the front seats with the Weasleys, look down upon a scene like of which I never could have imagined.

A hundred thousand witches and wizards are taking their places in the seats which rise in levels around the long oval pitch. Everything is suffused in a mysterious golden light which seems to come from the stadium itself. The pitch looks smooth as velvet from our lofty position. At either end of the pitch stands three goal hoops, fifty feet high; right opposite us, almost at my eye level, is a gigantic blackboard. Gold writing keeps dashing across it as though an invisible giant's hand is scrawling upon it and then wiping it off again; watching it, I see that it is flashing advertisements across the pitch.

The Bluebottle: A Broom for All the Family - safe, reliable and with In-built Anti-Burglar Buzzer...Mrs Skower's All-Purpose Magical Mess-Remover: No Pain, No Stain!...Gladrags Wizardwear - London, Paris, Hogsmeade...

Hermione and I start skimming eagerly through our velvet-covered, tasselled programmes.

"'A display from the team mascots will precede the match'," I read aloud.

"Oh, that's always worth watching," says Mr Weasley. "National teams bring creatures from their native land, you know, to put on a bit of a show."

The box fills gradually around us over the next half hour. Mr Weasley keeps shaking hands with people who are obviously very important wizards. Percy jumps to his feet so often he looks as though he is trying to sit on a hedgehog. When Cornelius Fudge, the Minister for Magic himself, arrives, Percy bows so low that his glasses fall off and shatter. Highly embarrassed, he repairs them with his wand, and thereafter remains in his seat, throwing jealous looks at Harry and Danny, whom Cornelius Fudge has greeted like old friends. They have met before, and Fudge shakes Harry and Danny's hands in fatherly fashion, asks how they are, and introduces them to the wizards on either side of him.

"This is Dathaniel Rivera. And this is Harry Potter, you know," he loudly tells the Bulgarian Minister, who is wearing splendid robes of black velvet trimmed with gold, and doesn't seem to understand a word of English. "Harry Potter...oh, come now, you know who he is...they boy who survived You-Know-Who...you do know who he is -"