The Complete Idiot's Guide to the World of Harry Potter (21 page)

Wizards like a good game as much as anyone, but if
you
had the ability to fly on a broomstick or get advice from your chess pieces, would you settle for ordinary soccer or regular chess? Balderdash! You’d use your magical powers to devise sports and games that match—and challenge— your abilities. This chapter explores the best wizarding games, including the greatest wizarding sport on earth: Quidditch.

Quidditch has been played in the magical world for over 800 years and is wildly popular, both to play as a pick-up sport in the backyard and to watch. Like the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) that governs British football (soccer), the International Association of Quidditch governs the sport and sponsors a World Cup match roughly every two years.

According to
Quidditch Through the Ages
by J.K. Rowling (writing as Kennilworthy Whisp)
,
the term
Quidditch
comes from the field in which the first game was played— Queerditch Marsh—in the eleventh century. However, others have postulated that the name comes from a combination of the names of the three balls used in the game:
Qu
affle, Blu
d
ger, and Golden Sn
itch.

Quidditch has been called a combination of polo, basketball, and British football (soccer). Like basketball, a ball is thrown back and forth among players as they aim, ultimately, to put the ball through a hoop, and points are earned by getting the ball through a hoop. However, three such hoops exist on each end of the field, and they’re fifty feet in the air. Like polo, players ride on something instead of running with their own feet, but in Quidditch, that “something” is a broom.

But Quidditch is most like British football. Like soccer, Quidditch is played on a grassy pitch. A bright-red ball the size of a soccer ball (called a Quaffle) is passed among players called Chasers, and is eventually thrown through a goalpost (also called a hoop) for 10 points. (In soccer, the ball goes through the goal posts for 1 point.) Each team has three Chasers, and their only job is to control the Quaffle and score with it. (Note that, by definition, a
chaser
is a person who hunts or pursues, just as Chasers pursue control of the Quaffle.)

Also like soccer, each team has one Keeper, who is nearly identical to a goaltender. (Note that the definition of
keeper
is a guardian or protector; in Quidditch, the Keeper protects the goal so that the opposing team cannot score.) Finally, like soccer’s quadrennial World Cup, Quidditch national teams gather every few years for World Cup competition.

Unique aspects of Quidditch that are unlike soccer (and unlike any other Muggle sport) are as follows:

Perhaps one of the greatest differences between soccer and Quidditch is that, in Quidditch, boys and girls play together on teams. Girls, in fact, often make excellent seekers, given their smaller size.

Quidditch fans can cheer for national squads, such as Irish International, during the World Cup, and can support house teams at Hogwarts, where each house is trying to win the annual Inter-House Quidditch Cup.

Players who excel at Hogwarts or on the national squad can join the professional ranks after finishing their studies at Hogwarts. Three professional Quidditch teams have ties to popular football (that is, soccer) teams and to British Muggle towns:

West Ham United Football Club also garners fierce loyalty, both in the Muggle world and the wizarding world. Surprised that wizards cheer for Muggle soccer players? Keep in mind that many Hogwarts students lived as and among Muggles for their first eleven years, before being invited to Hogwarts.

Wizard chess follows the same rules as everyday chess, and every piece has the same name and guidelines about moving around the board. In both Muggle and wizard versions, putting the king into checkmate wins the game.

However, as with many seemingly static objects, in the wizarding world, wizard chess pieces talk, move, and have their own personalities.

Chess sets likely do a brisk business in the wizarding world, because the most unusual hallmark of wizard chess is that the pieces beat up on each other when they take another piece. Instead of the player removing the taken piece (as happens in Muggle chess), the prevailing chess piece whacks the piece that was taken. But the pieces do mend back together. So chess sets take quite a beating, but a well-worn set offers the benefit of pieces being on friendly terms with the owner of the set.