Harry Potter Post #1: Quidditch

Hopefully you have had time to read the Harry Potter books (or watch the movies), or at least freshen up on them. I will be doing a continuing series that involves problems that I see in the story of “the boy who lived.” This post is a long one, so don’t start reading unless you have time.

The issue that this post covers is the problem I have with the famous wizarding sport of quidditch. I believe that quidditch is at least mentioned in all seven books and plays a key role in events in a few books. To the wizarding world of Harry Potter, quidditch is the world’s version of soccer (speaking of soccer did you guys see the great draw the United States got for the 2010 World Cup?). Kids grow up riding around on broomsticks trying to become the next great quidditch player. I actually like the idea of bring a little wizarding culture into the books through the playing of a sport. Many people can relate to watching or playing sports. However, I believe the structure of quidditch is odd if not unsustainable if you sit down and think about it.

The general idea of quidditch is actually quite fascinating. Like most sports there is a field that is divided into two halves. At the end of each half are goal posts, three to be exact, with hoops on the end of them. The object of quidditch is for the “chasers” to get the “quaffle” (ball) through the opponent’s goal (10 points). The goals are defended by a keeper who tries to stop the other team from scoring. To make things interesting, there are two balls called “bludgers” that travel around trying to knock people off their brooms. Teams have two players called “beaters” that use their bats to knock the bludgers away from their own players toward the other team. If we left the game here I think I would enjoy it a lot more; however we are leaving out the most important position in quidditch, the “seeker”. It is the job of the seeker to catch a tiny ball with wings called the “golden snitch” (worth 150 points). Once the snitch is caught the game is immediately over.

For me, I have a difficultly linking the seeker’s role in quidditch with the rest of the game. Outside of the seeker and golden snitch, quidditch is essentially a magical variety of soccer, hockey, or basketball. Teams go back and forth attacking and defending, scoring and fouling. Even the beaters are considered defenders or protectors of their team from attacks from the other team. In the end the only thing missing would be how the game ends. Instead of doing something simple, like having a timing device, Rowling decides to end the game when the snitch is caught. A few things we learn from this are that the team that catches the snitch does not necessarily win and that quidditch games have variable lengths due to player performance. Both, I think in this case, are bad things. I’ll first deal with the changing game lengths…

The first issue is that the game has variable lengths due to player performance. Someone is probably thinking, “But Dave, baseball and cricket do this and there is nothing wrong with them?” Couple of points on that question. Have any of you sat through a five hour baseball game? Especially if it is a multiple extra inning game? You are conflicted on whether to leave, go to the bathroom (and possibly miss the winning run), go get something to eat (and have your eyeballs fall out over the price of a mushy hotdog but if the game goes any longer you’ll starve to death), or jump off the bleachers, killing yourself (and ending the pain of watching the game anymore). I agree; however, nine people trying to get three outs is different from one seeker getting one magical, flying, super-fast, tiny, golden snitch. Outs happen in baseball, even when good teams play bad ones. Catching the snitch, according to the books, doesn’t always happen until hours, days, weeks, or even months later. So whose bright idea was it to give eleven to seventeen year olds the power to end a game? A game, played during the school year, which could take days….weeks…… months to finish? The rules state that the captains of both teams can agree to postpone the events and pick them up later. I can just see a Hufflepuff seeker unconscious on the ground (no subs in quidditch) and having Malfoy think, “Hey, I don’t want to go to defense against the dark arts next week, so why am I trying to catch the snitch?” The teacher meeting the next day would involve changing the quidditch rules to have an ending at a reasonable time so kids had to be in class. Either that or no more quidditch at Hogwarts; they would have to take up soccer like the poor muggles.

The second issue involves catching the snitch and ending the game.

Knowing that you can end the game and score 150 points for your team is great incentive to have a really good seeker. Intelligence, however, is apparently not a required trait for seekers. Who on earth catches the snitch when their team is down by at least 150 points? This happened twice in the Harry Potter books. First was the Quidditch World Cup with Victor Krum getting the snitch but Bulgaria losing the game to Ireland. Evidence shows that he wanted to end the game on his terms. Excuse me, was winning the championship not one of your terms? You would have come in second place whether you lost by ten points or ten million points. You can just hear Krum saying, “No, I don’t want to win. I want to lose in a close match but show off my superior talent.” Second time was in book six when Ginny caught the snitch against Hufflepuff but still lost the game. What? You couldn’t wait to see if your team scores in the next two minutes to see if you can tie? The book says she ended the misery of a bad game. You lost by ten points; what, you couldn’t decide to end your misery a little earlier before the other team scored a few extra times? The only logical explanation I can come up with is that goal differential (the score difference between the winning team and losing team) or goal total (the total team score regardless of wins and losses) count in quidditch. I don’t think either applies to the Quidditch World Cup situation as they are in the final game of a playoff rather than a league. Both theories could work in the case of a Hogwarts school quidditch matches but I don’t think so.

Having a goal differential or goal total based system in a sport with variable endings is a bad idea. A very bad idea. This would lead to the greatest “running-up-the-score” anyone has ever seen. Think about it. If the quidditch cup is given to the one who scores the most, wouldn’t you want to wait to get the most points possible before ending the game? If you are scoring at will on the other team, why would you end it by getting the snitch when you can sit there and rack up hundreds, even thousands of points? Can you imagine Slytherin, in order to win the cup, playing quidditch for days and days scoring points upon points against some hapless team? “The score is now 1,940 for Slytherin and 120 for Hufflepuff. Even if you add a time limit you would still have teams crushing poor teams as much as possible. Now, you can have it as a tie breaking system, but allowing a goal differential or goal total based system to determine the overall winner is not plausible (nor intelligent) for quidditch.

Another minor issue I have with quidditch is the scoring system. Is there any reason for having a score worth ten points and catching the snitch worth 150 points when you could easily make them one point for a score and fifteen for catching the snitch? Is there a way to get less than ten points in quidditch? No, there isn’t. My guess is Rowling wanted to spice up her game so people wouldn’t compare it to soccer so much. There is a non-canonized attempt to justify the 150 points as it is symbolic of 150 galleons awarded to the first team who caught a bird unleashed during an early quidditch match. Whatever. Just have one point for a score and fifteen for catching the snitch.

I think the simplest way to fix quidditch would be to eliminate the rule that catching the snitch ends the game. You can still have everything the same, even the snitch, just don’t end the game when the golden snitch is caught. I would recommend a timing device of some sort, maybe a random clock that will end sometime between 5 minutes and 5 hours. That would force players to work as if every second is their last. The chaser’s points would be very important as the snitch might not get caught during the match.

In conclusion I think quidditch is great, yet flawed. It is a passing theme in Harry Potter but I seem to get caught in thought about the actual viability of quidditch whenever it comes up. Has anyone else had this difficulty? Hopefully I am not the only one to think of this. When I was doing research for this post I noticed several sites and blogs that talked about the inaccuracies of quidditch. I want to know what you think. Leave me a comment regardless of what you think about quidditch in Harry Potter. Just say something like, “Dave, you’re crazy” and that would be fine by me.

Next time I deal with problems in Harry Potter we will be talking about time. Specifically I’ll be discussing painful time events that happen throughout Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Note that there are some differences between the book and the movie. I will talk about the positives and negatives of each.

Thanks for reading.