Rewinding the clock by three minutes to the Quidditch pitch.
The Gryffindor and Slytherin teams were locked in a bitter standoff. Ron glared at Draco Malfoy, feeling a hot rush of anger buzzing in his ears.
Just moments ago, Malfoy had smugly announced his new position as the Slytherin Seeker. However, his personal talent was not the issue. The real problem was exactly how he had secured the spot. Lucius Malfoy had generously "donated" seven of the absolute latest, state of the art broomsticks to the entire Slytherin Quidditch team.
How was that remotely fair? Could a person truly buy their way into anything just by having deep pockets?
"Rather impressive, aren't they?" Malfoy sneered, hoisting his sleek new broom onto his shoulder. "You know, Weasley, you will never even touch the handle of a broom like this in your entire life. I imagine your family could save up their sickles for a whole decade and still not afford a single twig off the tail."
A chorus of nasty, echoing laughter erupted from the Slytherin side.
"Is buying your way onto a Quidditch team really something to be proud of?" Hermione retorted sharply. "Malfoy, if your father had not opened his vault, you would not have made the team in a million years. The Gryffindors got in on pure talent."
Malfoy's smug grin faltered. His face twisted into an ugly, venomous sneer.
"No one asked for your opinion, you filthy little Mudblood."
Mudblood.
That single, vile word acted like a spark in a powder keg, instantly detonating the tension on the pitch.
"What did you just call her!?"
Ron furiously whipped his wand out, pointing the tip squarely at Malfoy's chest. Around him, the rest of the Gryffindor team moved forward, their expressions hardening into pure fury.
Malfoy simply threw his head back and laughed.
"Oh, put that away, Weasley. You probably cannot even cast a simple Hover Charm," he taunted, taking a step forward with malicious delight. "What, do you want to duel? I heard your precious wand snapped in half. Did you fish that pathetic piece of driftwood out of a rubbish bin?"
Ron's face cycled rapidly from bright red, to stark white, and finally to a dangerous shade of mottled purple.
He gripped his wand so tightly his knuckles turned white. His mind went entirely blank, completely hijacked by overwhelming rage. Finally, he reached his breaking point. Or rather, he shattered right through it.
"MALFOY!!"
Ron unleashed a raw, throat-tearing roar, slashing his wand violently in Malfoy's general direction.
BOOM!
Harry did not even hear what incantation Ron had screamed. He only heard a deafening, thunderous explosion followed by an impossibly bright, blinding flash of light.
The brilliant shockwave instantly swallowed Ron, Malfoy, and the entire cluster of Slytherin players standing behind him.
When the harsh light finally faded, Harry blinked away the purple spots dancing in his vision. The sight before him was completely unbelievable.
"Blegh!"
"Cough! Cough!"
"Ugh... bleeegh!"
Draco Malfoy, Captain Marcus Flint, and every single member of the Slytherin Quidditch team were doubled over, their faces completely drained of color. They were violently dry-heaving onto the grass. A second later, massive, slimy green slugs began pouring out of their mouths, hitting the ground with sickening, wet smacks.
Ron, however, was not faring much better.
The wand he held was utterly destroyed, reduced to a smoking, charred handle. He was on his knees, using one hand to prop himself up while clamping the other tightly over his mouth. His complexion looked even greener than Malfoy's.
"Blegh!"
Unable to hold it back any longer, Ron pulled his hand away and gagged, dropping an equally massive, slightly blood-streaked slug onto the grass.
Clearly, the Slug-Vomiting Charm had severely backfired, and Ron was suffering the exact same fate as his targets. In fact, his condition looked marginally worse.
Harry and Hermione gasped in horror and immediately rushed forward to support Ron by his shoulders.
The Weasley twins stood frozen, staring at the chaotic scene in absolute disbelief. Had their goofy, accident-prone little brother genuinely just wiped out the entire Slytherin Quidditch team with a single curse?
"Merlin's beard," Fred whispered. The twins exchanged a bewildered look before sprinting to Ron's side.
"Finite Incantatem!" Fred shouted, jabbing his wand at his brother. A spark of light hit Ron, but the boy only continued to heave, spitting out yet another fat slug.
"Bloody hell," George cursed, drawing his own wand to try the exact same spell, to no avail.
It was precisely at this moment that Maurise, an innocent bystander drawn by the explosion, casually strolled onto the scene.
Total anarchy reigned on the pitch. The grass was covered in a writhing carpet of giant slugs. The entire Slytherin team and Ron were engaged in a symphony of violent vomiting, and the charred remnants of a wand lay smoking at Ron's feet.
Oh my, Maurise thought, raising an eyebrow. It seems I missed the main event.
He quickly stepped up to Harry. "What exactly happened here?"
Harry rapidly summarized the confrontation, speaking as fast as he could.
Maurise nodded in understanding. He walked straight up to Ron, drew his wand, and smoothly slashed it through the air. "Finite Incantatem!"
Before Fred could even voice a warning that the spell was useless, a brilliant, pure white light burst from Maurise's wand and enveloped Ron.
Unlike the twins' botched attempts, the effect was instantaneous. Ron took a huge, shuddering gasp of air, looking like a man who had just broken the surface of a deep pool. The violent heaving stopped completely.
"Cough, cough... Thank you, Maurise," Ron rasped, his voice sounding like sandpaper. A tiny fraction of color began to return to his cheeks.
"Hey... how did you manage that?" George asked, staring at Maurise with wide eyes.
Maurise smoothly slid his wand back into his sleeve and offered a perfectly casual smile. "You two are still far too green, gentlemen."
Fred and George exchanged another look and simultaneously shrugged. Fair enough. They had already witnessed Maurise's terrifying proficiency with Charms; they really should not have been surprised.
A few feet away, Malfoy was still coughing up slime. He glared fiercely at Ron, his words muffled around a mouthful of slug. "Weasley... reverse the curse right now... or I am telling Professor Snape... you are finished!"
The moment the threat left his lips, another massive slug plopped onto his shoes.
Ron, finally able to stand upright with Harry's help, glared back.
"Is running to a teacher all you know how to do?" Ron shouted, his voice cracking slightly. "Go ahead! Tell Snape! I will be waiting!"
He turned to Maurise, wiping slime from his chin. "Leave them be, Maurise. They completely deserve it. We all heard what he called Hermione."
Maurise simply shrugged. "Suit yourself."
He was just passing by to assist a friend. He had zero interest in acting as a magical medic for Draco Malfoy.
Under the garbled, frantic instructions of Marcus Flint, the Slytherin team embarrassingly propped each other up and stumbled off the pitch, leaving a trail of slime in their wake.
Once they were completely out of sight, the Gryffindors erupted into a chaotic chorus of suppressed laughter and wild cheers.
"Brilliant job, Ron!" Oliver Wood cheered, slapping the younger boy heavily on the back.
Hermione's initial relief, however, was quickly overshadowed by intense anxiety. She stared nervously in the direction the Slytherins had fled, chewing on her lower lip. "Wait. What if Malfoy actually does go straight to Snape? What will happen to Ron?"
"Oh, relax, Hermione," Fred waved his hand dismissively, a wicked gleam in his eye. "They are completely bluffing. Nothing will happen. Just think about it. How on earth are they going to explain this to Snape? 'Please sir, our entire, fully-grown Quidditch team was utterly annihilated by a second-year wielding a piece of burning driftwood, and now we cannot stop puking up garden pests.' The Slytherins are far too proud to admit to something that humiliating."
A wave of low, agreeing chuckles rippled through the Gryffindor team.
Ron reached down and gingerly picked up the blackened, tiny stub of his wand.
"Speaking of which," Maurise noted, eyeing the charred wood with deep, genuine curiosity. "Ron, how exactly did you pull that off?"
The sheer destructive power of that Slug-Vomiting Charm was entirely abnormal. It had somehow mutated into a devastating area-of-effect blast that completely fried the wand channeling it.
Ron looked down at the ruined stick. It was, after all, the temporary wand Maurise had kindly lent him.
"I... I honestly do not know," Ron admitted sheepishly, his ears turning red. "I was not thinking about anything. I was just so incredibly angry... and I am fairly certain I completely mispronounced the incantation."
He mispronounced the incantation? Maurise stared at the boy, his academic curiosity instantly skyrocketing. He suddenly wished he had been there to witness the exact magical mechanics of that glorious, chaotic explosion.