The Sallow Saga (Volume 3) A Hogwarts Legacy Fanfiction

Chapter 10. Lestrange

It never failed to impress Sebastian just how quickly news travelled around the magical community. By the time Saturday came around, hordes of spectators had gathered in and around the Quidditch grounds of Hogwarts to watch the array of contestants limbering up. Cassy and Beanie had entered multiple meetings and discussions with the faculty staff at Hogwarts, and store owners in Hogsmeade; to promote the event. Sirona had even promoted a happy hour for those who placed a bet on the winners of each race.
Professor Kogawa had successfully managed to talk Professor Black into allowing Hogwarts to accommodate many of the competitions, on the premise that it would amend for the series of mistakes he'd inadvertently been part of in the previous year. As such, the quidditch pitch had been altered and was no longer oval but spanned across the outer grounds of Hogwarts. Podiums towered across the Black Lake; the spires; and curved around the Forbidden Forest, before joining the traditionally decorated podiums at the old quidditch pitch; so that spectators could cheer on the competitors as they raced by. Getting caught up in the excitement of the game's organisation, Professor Ronen, the Charms teacher; had also created a delightful presentation board which incorporated black and white imagery of each of the competitors. He'd used photos of each contestant that had been published in the Daily Prophet as a reference point and had successfully charmed one of his old cameras to levitate and follow each race, so that those in the stadium were not left staring at a patch of ground for too long.

Suffice it to say, the atmosphere on the day of the mounted championship races was rife with excitement and anticipation. His team serving as a secret unit of security members, Sebastian had assigned each member to a specific area of the race to ensure nothing would go on without due notice. Ominis and Garreth had joined forces to monitor activities around the quidditch pitch.
With Garreth's unnerving skill as a potion's master, he had disguised them both as regular pundits, having both consumed his self-proclaimed 'unique Polyjuice potion recipe'. After Ominis had rather taken to the role of Isabella Grone, the week before, questions had surfaced around how Garreth had known the potion would work on correcting their friend's vision. Garreth had merely shrugged the barrage of questions away.
"A master of the arts, rarely reveals his secrets!" He'd coyly smirked, when Sebastian approached him one morning, persistently asking him.
"He reveals them, if the result is so transformative, that it could benefit so many disabled children from their fanatical family's pureblood fixations!" Sebastian had encouraged.
In response, Garreth had folded his arms in thought, simply 'hm'd' in agreement with such a premise and continued with his day – leaving Sebastian shaking his head with sheer perplexed disbelief.

In his guise as Isabella Grone, Ominis observed each of the attendees who graciously accepted a program from him. All seemed to be in order thus far. He glanced along the queue of pundits and spotted Garreth's disguised form of Tom Berkhead – a name suggested by a rather frustrated Sebastian one evening; after another potion experimentation had set the cellar's ablaze with a pungent smell of stale eggs and honey.
Cassy and Ominis had been forced to hastily intervene in the explosive argument that has ensued between Sebastian and Garreth, resulting in Ominis having to explain Sebastian's early loss of his parents to Garreth, to avoid a rift arising between the two hot-headed members of the Gilded Perch. In turn, Cassy had successfully subdued a frantic Sebastian enough, to illicit an apology from him to Garreth, for having threatened to obliviate all traces of the potion master's knowledge of the Gilded Perch if he so much as attempted such a feat again! The two had since developed an unprecedented bond of kinship from there on, although Sebastian had taken to calling him Tom Berkhead the Fool, whenever something went bang in the lower cellars of the perch.

As he watched Garreth's excitable bowler hat bobbing in and out of the crowd, Ominis began to suspect that Weasley had thrown himself in to the role of Tom Berkhead the Bookie a little too well. Beyond all comprehension, it appeared he was doing a roaring trade. Even if he did seem to be harassing many of the more upper-class members of the crowds for larger donations.