The Complete Idiot's Guide to the World of Harry Potter Page 10

  Balls and Players

  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:• The Golden Snitch: The Golden Snitch is a bright-gold ball, roughly the size of a walnut, that flies with fluttering silver wings. Catching the Golden Snitch, which is terribly difficult given its size and speed, earns a team 150 points and automatically ends the game. Snitch, by definition, means to steal something small; the Seeker must steal the Golden Snitch in order to win the game. Note that, in early forms of the game, a Golden Snidget, a tiny bird, was used in the game until the practice was outlawed. The name of this ball is thus based on the bird’s name.

  • Seeker: One Seeker per team spends the entire game seeking out (that is, searching for) the Golden Snitch. Seekers are the smallest, fastest players on the team.

  • Bludgers: Bludgers are small, black, heavy balls, a little smaller than the Quaffle, that aim themselves at players and try to knock them off their brooms. (Beaters can also aim Bludgers at certain players.) A similar word, bludgeon, refers to a short club with a thick, heavy or loaded end; Bludgers in Quidditch are thick, heavy, loaded balls that are batted away with thick, heavy, wooden bats.

  • Beaters: Two Beaters per team carry heavy bats and try to protect the other players on the team by batting away Bludgers when they come near (or, more accurately, trying to bat Bludgers away from their own players and toward opposing players). In hunting terminology, a beater is a person who drives game out from under cover. And the flat bats Beaters use are reminiscent of bats used in cricket, a British game much like American baseball.

  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.

  Cheering for Your Favorite Team

  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:• Chudley Cannons: The town of Chudleigh is located near Devon, England. In Australia, the Oakleigh Cannons is a perennial powerhouse football (soccer) team.

  • Wimbourne Wasps: A town called Wimborne is in Dorset County, as are Wimborne Minster and Wimborne St. Giles. The London Wasps is a popular rugby team (a game similar to American football, but with a larger ball and without helmets and all the padding).

  • Puddlemere United: Puddletown also lies in Dorset County, about twenty miles from the town of Mere. The team likely gets its name from a merging of these two towns. In addition, Britain’s most popular football (soccer) team is Manchester United.

  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.

  Chess, Wizard-Style

  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.

  In addition, the chess pieces offer advice, give opinions on what they believe to be bad moves, and try to talk their way out of being sacrificed for the good of the game. It’s like having a bunch of loud-mouthed cowards shouting out their advice on the game.

  Dueling with Wands

  Dueling with wands is not much like dueling with swords or pistols. It involves standing face to face with another wizard, wands out, and seeing who can bark out the fastest, most effective, most disarming (and, if necessary, most pain-inducing) spell, charm, hex, or curse. (See Chapter 12 for a list of blistering curses that will have your opponent crying “uncle” in no time.)

  Wizards would no more parry with wands as nonwizards would fence with plastic spoons, because a wand’s strength is in its ability to deliver spells, not in the actual strength of the wood. Wands can and do break, a condition that either renders the wand useless or causes spells to backfire. So you’ll hear no clinking of wands during a wizard duel, just lots of spells being yelled among younger wizards (older wizards who have mastered nonverbal spells will utter no sounds at all), with the one who strikes first—and hardest—winning the battle.

  MAGIC TALE

  In Eragon and Eldest, the first two books in the Inheritance fantasy series by Christopher Paolini, dueling practice plays a large role both in the lives of dragon riders (who are much like Hogwarts students in that they must learn all the rules of the use of magic) and among elves (themselves very magical). Both riders and elves practice swordplay by applying a spell to the sword blade that blunts and dulls it. In this way, two swordsmen can practice as if in a real battle, but without causing any harm to the opponent.can practice as if in a real battle, but without causing any harm to the opponent.

  But wizard duels do share some similarities with the more traditional forms of dueling. Like medieval duels and those conducted regularly between roughly 1500 to the mid-1900s, wizard duels may begin with a formal bow by both contestants, who must pay careful attention, during the duel, to their techniques in gripping and using their wands. Likewise, in both fencing and shooting practice, much time is spent perfecting technique.

  But rarely is dueling about niceties. Although dueling with wands is a sport, it can also be a personal war, just as with sword and pistol duels. In this way, although young wizards compete in a Dueling Club at Hogwarts (started by Professor Gilderoy Lockhart), if the two wizards in the duel have a personal grudge, the match will soon turn ugly. Compare a fencing match, which is played with blunt-ended rapiers, to a true sword duel, such as those in The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia, and you see few niceties or emphasis on technique—just Lord Ara
gorn or High King Peter slicing off an opponent’s head.

  The difference between dueling for sport and dueling for real is as striking as the difference between a professional boxing match and a street brawl: people often get killed in the latter. Think of the quick-draw pistol duels in the Old West, where the idea was to kill the other shooter with the first shot, not to rack up points so that your team wins the dueling match.

  In this way, true wizard duels—that is, those played not for sport but those that are a fight for life and death—are intense battles. Dark Wizards strike fast and hard, giving their opponents little time to duck and cover, deflect the curse, or yell a countercurse. And Dark Wizards in a duel do not hesitate to use the Unforgivable Curses (see Chapter 12), which lead to torture, death, or complete control by the Dark Wizard so that his opponent must do his bidding.

  MAGIC TALE

  The Ministry of Magic is intensely anti-dueling, as have been most government agencies through the ages. Governments ban dueling because the practice flouts the law by searching for justice in a duel rather than in a court of law. Historically, Muggle duels nearly always began with an offense, whether real or perceived. The offender was then not channeled through the legal system but instead challenged to a duel by the offended, who chose the rules: fight to first blood; fight to serious wounding; or fight to death. West Side Story depicts a modern-day duel, as Bernardo and Riff fight each other, ostensibly to serious wounding, over perceived offenses. Unfortunately, they end up fighting to the death.

  Like duels with swords, wizard duels require the assignment of a second, a trusted representative assigned by each dueler, who assures that the contest is a fair fight.

  Gobstones

  Gobstones is a game played often by wizard children that’s similar to marbles. However, because few people are expert in marble-playing anymore, here’s the lowdown on the nonwizard version:1. You first draw a small-ish circle on the ground, as well as a larger circle a few feet outside the first.

  2. All players agree on how many 5?8-inch marbles to put in the circle and, standing behind the larger circle, players throw that number of marbles into the smaller circle.

  3. Taking turns, each player throws, tosses, rolls, or barely flicks a 3?4-inch shooter (also called a taw or boss; a large marble) into the circle, with the goal of hitting the smaller marbles that are in the circle hard enough to knock them out of the circle.

  4. As with chess, if you knock a marble out of the circle, you get to keep it. If you’re playing “keepsies,” you get to keep the marble indefinitely. If you’re playing “fair,” you give back all captured marbles at the end of the game.

  5. If your shooter stays in the small circle, your turn is over. If the shooter comes out of the small circle, you get to take another turn.

  KING’S ENGLISH

  In Britain, gob means to spit; thus, gobstones are spitting stones. The word is borrowed from a Scottish Gaelic word that means beak or mouth (the area from which spit originates). Shut your gob is the British version of shut up, and gobsmacked or gobstruck refers to being astonished.

  1. The player with the most marbles at the end of the game wins.

  If you’ve ever played bocce, the two games are almost identical, except that bocce is like marbles on steroids; the balls used are much larger.

  Gobstones, then, is a wizard version of marbles, in which the player whose marble is knocked out of the circle not only loses the marble, but also gets shot with a nasty liquid by the marbles that remain in the circle.

  Exploding Snap

  Snap is a common children’s card game, played by two or more players. The entire deck of cards is dealt, but players do not look at their cards; instead, each player turns a card face up on a pile in the center of the table. When a player turns up a card of the same color and value (such as two red fives or two black kings), the first player to yell “snap” gets all the cards in the pile. The first player to hold all the cards in the deck wins the game.

  Turning this simple children’s game on its ear, wizards play Exploding Snap. Admittedly, the wizard version is initially easier to play than regular Snap, because the dealer doesn’t have to shuffle; wizards use self-shuffling cards. But after the cards are dealt, Exploding Snap has an entirely different personality than Snap, because the cards might explode at any moment. Naturally, the possibility of exploding cards creates a more strategic game than regular Snap.

  Another use for exploding cards is to build a house of cards, which, what with the occasional destruction wrought by explosion, is akin to building a house of cards on an active fault line or during a category-five hurricane.

  Trading Cards

  More of a collectible than a game, trading cards with moving pictures of famous wizards come in packages with Chocolate Frogs. Wizard kids collect and trade the famous wizard cards, either among friends or through common-room notice boards, in the same way that Muggle children collect an Alex Rodriguez or Derek Jeter baseball cards. The most popular cards include:

  Chapter 1 shares the accomplishments of these famous wizards, witches, sorceresses, Druids, alchemists, and astronomers.

  Chocolate Frogs are both challenging (they tend to jump away) and healthy (staving off the effects of dementors—see Chapter 15); they are considered excellent holiday and get-well gifts.

  As with sports stars, the wizards on trading cards tend to value the tribute to them. When Albus Dumbledore faces losing his many titles and privileges within the wizarding community, as well as facing the possibility of a jail sentence in Azkaban, he jokes that they can take away anything, but not his place on Chocolate Frog cards!

  Part 3

  Magical Places

  This part gives you details on London’s wizard gathering spot—Diagon Alley—including the background on stores, bars, the hospital, and other locations. Then, you travel to Hogwarts School and Hogsmeade, England’s only all-wizard town, and sample what the headmaster and shop owners offer there. Finally, you take a quick flight around the globe to visit two additional wizarding schools.

  Chapter 7

  Where the Witches Go in London

  In This Chapter • Visiting Diagon Alley: wizard central

  • Avoiding Knockturn Alley and its Dark Wizards

  • Finding the Ministry of Magic in London

  • Making a trip to the wizard hospital

  London is a city of nearly 8 million Muggles, but it’s also the place for wizards to mingle, shop, take care of Ministry business, and cure what ails them. Although carefully hidden, the magical sections of London are, indeed, wizard hotspots. Come on in, and enjoy the wizarding sights and sounds of London!

  Diagon Alley

  Diagon Alley, deep in the heart of London, has to be one of the most creative destinations ever invented. Located off Charing Cross Road— which is, arguably, the best street for bookstores (both new and used) in the entire world, the alley is accessible only to wizards and to Muggles who are there with their wizard children. The alley travels “diagonally” from Charing Cross (hence, the name), and can be reached on foot, by vehicle, or through any of the wizard means of transportation (see Chapter 5). If arriving on foot, visitors must first enter the Leaky Cauldron, and proceed through that pub to the alley.

  Gateway to the Alley: The Leaky Cauldron

  It is not surprising that J.K. Rowling would use a pub as a gateway to the magical world within London. After all, Great Britain is teeming with pubs—in fact, Edinburgh, Scotland, has more pubs per square mile than any other city in Europe. And Limerick, Ireland, boasts a place called the Cauldron Pub.

  The Leaky Cauldron, unlike its Muggle counterparts throughout Great Britain, is a wizard-only gathering place (it’s both a pub and an inn; the inn faces Charing Cross Road). It isn’t much to look at—small and shabby—but it’s the entrance to one of the coolest wizard shopping centers on the planet, if you know how to get through the brick wall behind the pub. Tap the bricks with your wand and they slide back, revea
ling a street of shops and window-shopping wizards.

  KING’S ENGLISH

  English pubs (which are short for "public houses”) can be the equivalent of American bars, or they can also be inns, offering both a bar and hotellike rooms for the night. Rooms at pubs may have individual baths (as do most hotels in the United States) or may share a bath with one or even several other guests. An inn may or may not have a bar that serves alcoholic beverages, but it always offers meals. A hotel or private hotel generally will not have a bar on the premises, although it will usually serve breakfast. And, finally, a brewpub is a pub in which beer is brewed onsite.

  Cauldron Shop

  Just inside the entrance to Diagon Alley, the first store is a cauldron shop that sells—you guessed it—cauldrons of all sizes and materials. Some even have magical spells put on them to make the stirring process easier. Cauldrons, which are bulbous pots, usually with a collapsible handle, are used to brew potions by boiling herbs, pieces of magical animals, and other objects.

  Cauldrons have been used since the dawn of time. The witches in Macbeth are, perhaps, the most well-known witch-users of cauldrons, but cauldrons have been in existence for millennia as simple cookpots. From the Latin caldarium, for “hot bath,” cauldrons were staples of kitchens. The Celts may have been the first to use cauldrons to makes stews and soups, hammering them from silver. Later, cast copper and bronze were used, and finally, cast iron was introduced. Rowling names all but cast iron as materials, and she also mentions pewter (required at Hogwarts) and gold, which were, perhaps, used in some areas of the world, where those metals were prolific.