With Halloween now past, the first Quidditch match of the new term was steadily approaching.
On Wednesday morning, the arrival of a flock of owls caused an absolute sensation throughout the Great Hall.
Judging by the long, slender packages clutched in their talons, the items these owls were carrying had to be...
Broomsticks!
There were a full seven of these packages! A grand total of forty-two owls had been mobilized just to deliver these seven broomsticks.
The arrival of the owls sent all the students dining in the Great Hall into a frenzy.
That was a full seven broomsticks! It meant a complete gear overhaul for an entire House team!
They couldn't wait to find out which House team was wealthy enough to spend such a massive amount of money to replace the broomsticks for their entire squad.
What they wanted to know even more was the exact model of these broomsticks.
Were they Nimbus 2000s? Or 2001s?
Or, was it at all possible that they were the newly released Firebolts?
Uh, considering the price of a Firebolt...
To want to outfit an entire team with Firebolts, one could only say this guy was absolutely dreaming.
Under the expectant gazes of the students, the forty-two owls headed straight for the Gryffindor table, and deafening cheers immediately erupted from the Gryffindor long table.
Above the little lions, the owls released their talons, and the seven packages plummeted straight toward the long table below.
The four Weasley brothers, along with Harry and his roommates, scrambled to catch the packages dropped by the owls.
Even so, the falling packages still knocked over many cups and goblets on the table, leaving the plates in a total mess.
Many little lions were splashed with milky-white liquid from the overturned cups—meaning milk, of course—but the excited little lions had no time to care about that.
"Look! Harry! There's a card here!" Ron held up the package in his hands. A tiny card was attached to the outside of the package, bearing a short sentence written in very messy handwriting.
"These seven broomsticks are all for you!" Ron's eyes widened in astonishment.
Harry's expression was equally surprised.
Even though the card was unsigned, Harry instantly guessed who had sent them to him.
The last time he and Sirius had talked about Quidditch, Sirius heard that his old broomstick had been destroyed in a match and had promised to give him a new one.
Originally, Harry had thought Sirius might wait until Christmas to give him the new broomstick as a Christmas present.
As it turned out, Sirius had delivered the broomstick to him before the first Quidditch match of the term even began.
What surprised Harry even more was that Sirius had actually covered the broomsticks for their entire House team.
For fear of blowing his cover, Sirius hadn't written much else on the card, only specifying that the broomsticks were entirely at Harry's disposal.
Harry obviously couldn't ride that many broomsticks by himself, so the remaining six were naturally meant for his teammates to use.
Under the expectant gazes of the little lions, Harry tore open the package in his hands, and a beautiful, gleaming broomstick was revealed to everyone.
When the broomstick's model was exposed to the crowd, a collective sharp intake of breath echoed around them; in that moment, the Earth's greenhouse effect intensified just a little bit more.
Firebolt!
Crafted from fine ash wood, treated with a diamond-hard polish, presenting a beautifully streamlined and exquisite broom handle...
Birch twigs hand-picked and pruned to aerodynamic perfection, offering unmatched balance and pinpoint precision...
Capable of accelerating to 150 miles per hour within ten seconds, the dream broomstick of any Quidditch player—the Firebolt!
The twin brothers, serving as the team's Beaters, stared until their eyes practically went cross-eyed.
Don't be fooled by how wealthy they were now; if they were asked to spend nearly a year's net profit of Weasley Industries to buy a single Firebolt, the brothers would absolutely be unwilling to part with the money.
Currently, they were using their custom-made Feidian broomsticks.
Even though the Feidian had already launched its seventh-generation model thanks to the joint efforts of the Fuchouzhe.
Its current design was no longer the conventional cylindrical missile shape of the second-generation Feidian.
The Feidian's profile had flattened, and its streamlined appearance had become even more sleek.
It would be far more fitting to call this thing a hypersonic weapon.
Its name was also no longer the slightly mocking "Feidian", but rather "Leiting".
The high-altitude, high-speed performance of the Leiting far surpassed that of the Firebolt—provided, of course, that its engine was turned on.
However, ever since Kyle turned on the engine's afterburner during a Quidditch match and used the shockwave generated by the sonic boom to blast all the neighboring Slytherin players off their brooms, Madam Hooch had banned the use of the Leiting's engine afterburner.
Ahem, to be precise, Madam Hooch had banned the engines for the entire series of broomsticks, from generation one through seven.
Yes, you heard that right—the entire engine was banned.
Not only was the afterburner unusable, but the engine itself wasn't even allowed to be turned on.
Without the engine's assistance, the Leiting's flight performance only slightly edged out the Nimbus 2001.
Compared to the Firebolt, it still fell somewhat short.
Coupled with its exorbitant manufacturing cost, this thing was something only a filthy rich guy like Kyle could afford to use.
The twin brothers were only using the third-generation Feidian, and without the engine's assistance, its performance was only on par with the Nimbus 1800 that had hit the market five or six years ago.
Now, with a package sitting in front of the two brothers that had a 98% chance of containing a Firebolt, they'd have to be ghosts not to be excited.
After getting Harry's permission, the brothers, hearts pounding with excitement, tore open the package in front of them with trembling hands.
What a pity, though; the package they opened this time did not contain a Firebolt, but a Nimbus 2001.
A tiny hint of disappointment flashed through the brothers' hearts, but it was quickly replaced by wild ecstasy.
After all, a Firebolt wasn't something just anyone could afford to use.
There were a full seven packages right in front of them. That Firebolt was undoubtedly meant for Harry to use, and as for the rest...
Other than being used by the rest of their Quidditch team, could there possibly be any other explanation?
Impossible.
This meant that their Gryffindor Quidditch team was trading in their shotguns for cannons!
"Harry... this..." Ron started to stutter, "Is it too late for me to join the Quidditch team now?"
Over at the neighboring Hufflepuff table, Cedric stretched his neck, constantly peering over, eager to know what was going on at Gryffindor.
"Brother Kyle, look, Nimbus broomsticks..." Zacharias, Kyle's number one lackey on the team, spoke with a heavy hint in his voice.
Kyle slammed his palm onto the dining table, producing a loud bang.
The startled little lions all turned their heads to look.
Only to see Kyle slam his hand heavily onto their Hufflepuff table again. "Buy them! We can buy them all!"
Radiating absolute wealth, the Little Demon King planted one foot onto his stool. "I announce! Our Hufflepuff is also going to undergo a new round of gear upgrades!"
"I'm going to place the orders right after this!"
Seeing the neatly arranged six Nimbus 2001s on the neighboring table, the envious and jealous little badgers all broke into cheers.
Aside from Kyle and Cedric—one using a Leiting and the other using a third-generation Feidian—the rest of the players on their Hufflepuff team were all using mere Nimbus 1600s.
It wasn't that Kyle didn't want to get them new gear; it was just that the Hufflepuffs' Quidditch talent and skills were incredibly average.
If it weren't for relying on massive amounts of hellish training to artificially stack up their Quidditch skills, they would still be that pushover team that had only won a handful of championships over the past eighty-odd years.
As for the Feidian series of broomsticks, their steering and braking capabilities were all designed to complement their supersonic flight.
This was far too bizarre for the little badgers, making them exceptionally difficult to control.
Only naturally gifted players like Kyle and Cedric could manage to handle them.
Forcing the others to use the Feidian series broomsticks might end up making their performance even worse than if they went back to using those antiquated Comets or Cleansweeps.
Kyle also wanted to issue everyone a Nimbus 2001, but the little badgers were incredibly stubborn and refused to accept his sponsorship.
Their main reason was not wanting Kyle to spend his money, even though they all knew the Little Demon King was so wealthy that money was practically all he had left.
In the end, Kyle had to settle for the next best thing: having each of them pitch in a little bit of their own money, and then he would provide them with a little subsidy. Ultimately, everyone was outfitted with a Nimbus 1600.
Now that Gryffindor and Slytherin were fully upgrading to Nimbus 2001s, if Kyle—their sugar daddy—shelled out the cash to set everyone up with a Nimbus 2001, the little badgers would have no reason to refuse anymore.
Hearing Kyle's declaration, both Draco Malfoy and Professor Flitwick wore expressions of utter wincing exasperation.
Looking at Hufflepuff's current stance, they were about to kick off the prelude to a new round of Quidditch team arms races.
Gryffindor had already completed their gear upgrade under the sponsorship of an unknown mega-tycoon.
And Hufflepuff also had Kyle Dumbledore as a massive financial backer providing monetary support.
The heavy burden of upgrading Slytherin and Ravenclaw's gear naturally fell onto the shoulders of those two.
The one wincing the hardest among them was Draco Malfoy.
Previously, their Slytherin team had relied on the performance gap between the Nimbus 2001 and the Nimbus 1600 just to be able to stand toe-to-toe with Gryffindor.
And the prerequisite for standing toe-to-toe was still that the twin brothers didn't use their Monstrous Strength during the match.
Now that Gryffindor had uniformly upgraded to Nimbus 2001s, the equipment gap between them and the little lions no longer existed.
They already couldn't win back when they had better gear; now it would be even more impossible to win.
Could it be that he had to outfit everyone with a Firebolt?
But the price of a single Firebolt was enough to buy five Nimbus 2001s.
He had just bought seven Nimbus 2001s last year; calculating it this way, did he have to shell out the equivalent of thirty-five Nimbus 2001s all over again?
Added together, that was a total of forty-two Nimbuses, enough to arm six Quidditch teams.
Which damn capitalist's fortune could withstand being squandered like this?
Even if his Malfoy family possessed a sprawling estate and massive wealth, there was no way they could compare financially to the combined wealth of Dumbledore, Grindelwald, and August!
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