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Quidditch is a fictional sport invented by author J. K. Rowling for her fantasy book series Harry Potter. It is a dangerous but popular sport played by witches and wizards riding flying broomsticks. Matches are played on a large oval pitch with three ring-shaped goals of different heights on each side, between two opposing teams of seven players each: three Chasers, two Beaters, the Keeper, and the Seeker. There are three different balls: the Quaffle, the two Bludgers, and the Golden Snitch.
The Chasers
and the Keeper respectively score with and defend the goals against the
Quaffle; the two Beaters bat the Bludgers away from their teammates and
towards their opponents; and the Seeker locates and catches the Golden Snitch,
whose capture simultaneously wins the Seeker's team 150 points and ends
the game. The team with the most points at the end wins.
Harry Potter plays as
Seeker for his house team at Hogwarts. Regional and international
Quidditch competitions are mentioned throughout the series. Aspects of
the sport's history are revealed in Quidditch Through the Ages,
published by J. K. Rowling in 2001 to benefit Comic Relief.
More information: Wizarding World
A real-life version of the game has been created, in which the players use brooms, but run instead of flying.
Rowling came up with the sport in a Manchester hotel room after a row with her then-boyfriend. She explained: I had been pondering the things that hold a society together, cause it to congregate and signify its particular character and knew I needed a sport.
Rowling claims that the word Quidditch
is not derived from any particular etymological root, but was the
result of filling five pages of a notebook with different words
beginning with Q.
The final Quidditch scene in the books appears in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Rowling experienced fiendish glee writing this scene, which features memorable commentary by Luna Lovegood.
In 2014 Rowling started publishing a series of match reports from the Quidditch World Cup on Pottermore, culminating in a short story about the final featuring the return of Harry, Ron, Hermione and their friends as adults. This generated interest from several media outlets, as it was the first new writing about the Harry Potter characters since the end of the series in 2007.
Quidditch is introduced in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone,
and is a regularly recurring feature throughout the first six books. It
is depicted as being played by both professionals as in tournaments
like the Quidditch World Cup and amateurs.
A major motif of five of the Harry Potter books is the competition among the four Hogwarts houses for the Quidditch Cup each school year; in particular, the rivalry between Gryffindor and Slytherin.
Quidditch matches are played over an oval-shaped pitch, with a scoring area at each end consisting of three hooped goal posts, each at a different height. Each team is made up of seven players, consisting of three Chasers, two Beaters, one Keeper and one Seeker. The job of the Chasers is to keep possession of the scarlet Quaffle, a leather ball passed between players.
They must
attempt to score goals worth 10 points by throwing it through one of the
opponents' three hoops. These hoops are defended by the opposing team's
Keeper, who ideally tries to block their goals. Meanwhile, players of
both teams are attacked indiscriminately by the two Bludgers. These are
round, jet-black balls made of iron that fly around violently trying to
knock players off their brooms. It is the Beaters' job to defend their
teammates from the Bludgers; they carry short wooden clubs, which they
use to knock the Bludgers away from their teammates and/or toward the
opposing team.
Finally, the role of the Seeker is to catch the Golden Snitch. This is a small golden ball the approximate size of a walnut. The winged Snitch
is enchanted to hover, dart, and fly around the pitch, avoiding capture
while remaining within the boundaries of the playing area.
More information: Harry Potter Fandom
Catching the Snitch ends the game
and scores the successful Seeker's team 150 points. As the team with
the most points wins, this often guarantees victory for the successful
Seeker's team. A notable exception is when Bulgaria Seeker Viktor Krum catches the Snitch for Bulgaria during the World Cup Final in Goblet of Fire, while his team are still 160 points behind Ireland their opponents, thus making his own team lose by only 10 points.
Magical flying broomsticks are one of the forms of transportation for wizards and witches, as well as being used for playing Quidditch.
The three most prominent broomsticks in the books are the Nimbus 2000, Nimbus 2001, and the Firebolt, both of which have been produced as merchandise by Warner Bros.
The Nimbus is introduced as one of the best broomsticks in the wizarding world. Harry receives a Nimbus 2000 in Philosopher's Stone so that he can play for Gryffindor house.
Lucius Malfoy buys a full set of the more advanced Nimbus 2001s for the Slytherin team as a bribe, so they would choose his son Draco as Seeker the following year.
The Firebolt later supersedes the Nimbus as the fastest and one of the most expensive racing brooms in existence. Harry receives a Firebolt model from his godfather, Sirius Black, after his Nimbus 2000 is destroyed during a Quidditch match in Prisoner of Azkaban.
In Goblet of Fire, Harry uses his Firebolt to escape the Hungarian Horntail, a dragon, during the Triwizard Tournament.
In the real world, the word Quidditch, long predating Harry Potter, occurs in some English placenames, and seems to come from Anglo-Saxon cwǣð-dīc = mud-ditch.
A street in Lower Cambourne, Cambridgeshire, England is named Quidditch Lane, supposedly after a type of nearby dry ditch called a Quidditch. Fans have been known to visit the area.
In November 2014, a plaque appeared outside the entrance of Bristol Children's Hospital attesting that the famous hooped sculptures which stand in front of the paediatric institution are, in fact, not a 15 m interactive installation inaugurated in 2001, but instead the goalposts used in the 1998 Quidditch World Cup.
In 2017, Quidditch was defined by Oxford Dictionaries, following the inclusion of Muggle in the Third (2003) Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford Dictionaries associate editor Charlotte Buxton explained that Quidditch had gained recognition beyond the books, pointing to its existence as a real-life sport.
More information: Sportsmatik
In 2007 the United States Quidditch Association, back then named the Intercollegiate Quidditch Association or (I.Q.A), was founded to regulate quidditch in the United States and abroad, a very popular sport amongst college students.
Since 2005, many American schools, such as UC Berkeley, have added Quidditch
to their list of team sports. The sport has since then spread across
more than 25 countries and includes multiple international tournaments,
including a World Cup.
In 2012, the International Quidditch Association held the IQA World Cup, then named the IQA Summer Games, as the torch was passing through Oxford, UK for the Summer Olympics.
Gameplay is based on the description in the books, films, and game adaptations, though the sport has been adapted to suit real-world constraints. Quidditch is still evolving to suit safe play for the members of the teams, male and female. Apart from joining teams registered with their national governing body, individuals are also able to become an official certified referee to officiate tournaments and games throughout the year as teams compete to take part in various national and international tournaments. As the oldest national governing body, USQ has hosted a grand total of ten US Quidditch Cups as of 2017.
In the United Kingdom, the Quidditch Premier League is played between 10 teams, split between the North and South divisions. In 2017, West Midlands Revolution won the QPL.
He missed Hogwarts so much
...the mail arriving by owl, eating banquets in the Great Hall,
it was like having a constant stomachache.
He missed the castle, with its secret passageways
and ghosts, his classes…
...the mail arriving by owl, eating banquets in the Great Hall,
sleeping
in his four-poster bed in the tower dormitory, visiting the gamekeeper,
Hagrid, in his cabin next to the Forbidden Forest in the grounds, and
especially, Quidditch,
the most popular sport in the wizarding world.
J. K. Rowling
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