Harry Potter 04 - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Thousands of flags waved, adding their discordant national anthems to the racket. The huge blackboard opposite them was wiped clear of its last message ( Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans – a Risk with Every Mouthful! ) and now showed BULGARIA: ZERO, IRELAND: ZERO.
    ‘And now, without further ado, allow me to introduce … the Bulgarian Team Mascots!’
    The right-hand side of the stands, which was a solid block of scarlet, roared its approval.
    ‘I wonder what they’ve brought?’ said Mr Weasley, leaning forwards in his seat. ‘Aaah!’ He suddenly whipped off his glasses and polished them hurriedly on his robes. ‘ Veela!’
    ‘What are Veel–?’
    But a hundred Veela were now gliding out onto the pitch, and Harry’s question was answered for him. Veela were women … the most beautiful women Harry had ever seen … except that they weren’t – they couldn’t be – human. This puzzled Harry for a moment, while he tried to guess what exactly they could be; what could make their skin shine moon-bright like that, or their white-gold hair fan out behind them without wind … but then the music started, and Harry stopped worrying about them not being human – in fact, he stopped worrying about anything at all.
    The Veela had started to dance, and Harry’s mind had gone completely and blissfully blank. All that mattered in the world was that he kept watching the Veela, because if they stopped dancing, terrible things would happen …
    And as the Veela danced faster and faster, wild, half-formed thoughts started chasing through Harry’s dazed mind. He wanted to do something very impressive, right now. Jumping from the box into the stadium seemed a good idea … but would it be good enough?
    ‘Harry, what are you doing?’ said Hermione’s voice from a long way off.
    The music stopped. Harry blinked. He was standing up, and one of his legs was resting on the wall of the box. Next to him, Ron was frozen in an attitude that looked as though he was about to dive from a springboard.
    Angry yells were filling the stadium. The crowd didn’t want the Veela to go. Harry was with them; he would, of course, be supporting Bulgaria, and he wondered vaguely why he had a large green shamrock pinned to his chest. Ron, meanwhile, was absent-mindedly shredding the shamrocks on his hat. Mr Weasley, smiling slightly, leant over to Ron and tugged the hat out of his hands.
    ‘You’ll be wanting that,’ he said, ‘once Ireland have had their say.’
    ‘Huh?’ said Ron, staring open-mouthed at the Veela, who had now lined up along one side of the pitch.
    Hermione made a loud tutting noise. She reached up and pulled Harry back into his seat. ‘Honestly!’ she said.
    ‘And now,’ roared Ludo Bagman’s voice, ‘kindly put your wands in the air … for the Irish National Team Mascots!’
    Next moment, what seemed to be a great green-and-gold comet had come zooming into the stadium. It did one circuit of the stadium, then split into two smaller comets, each hurtling towards the goalposts. A rainbow arced suddenly across the pitch, connecting the two balls of light. The crowd ‘oooohed’ and ‘aaaaahed’, as though at a firework display. Now the rainbow faded and the balls of light reunited and merged; they had formed a great shimmering shamrock, which rose up into the sky and began to soar over the stands. Something like golden rain seemed to be falling from it –
    ‘Excellent!’ yelled Ron, as the shamrock soared over their heads, and heavy gold coins rained from it, bouncing off their heads and seats. Squinting up at the shamrock, Harry realised that it was actually composed of thousands of tiny little bearded men with red waistcoats, each carrying a minute lamp of gold or green.
    ‘Leprechauns!’ said Mr Weasley, over the tumultuous applause of the crowd, many of whom were still fighting and rummaging around under their chairs to retrieve the gold.
    ‘There you go,’ Ron yelled happily, stuffing a fistful of gold coins into Harry’s hand. ‘For the Omnioculars! Now you’ve got to buy me a Christmas present, ha!’
    The great shamrock dissolved, the leprechauns drifted down onto the pitch on the opposite side from the Veela, and settled themselves cross-legged to watch the match.
    ‘And now, ladies and gentlemen, kindly welcome – the Bulgarian National Quidditch Team! I give you – Dimitrov!’
    A scarlet-clad figure on a broomstick, moving so fast it was blurred, shot out onto the pitch from an