From Hogwarts to Strixhaven.

Chapter 53 Slytherin Quidditch Training Begins
Quidditch is a rather irrational sport.

Ivy understood the sport when he first read about it as a child in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

While playing on a broomstick is certainly cool, that's not why Ivy likes Quidditch.

The rules of Quidditch are simple to say. The oval-shaped field is divided into two teams, each team occupies a half of the field, and there are goals for the two teams at the tip of the oval.

There are three goals in total, each at a different height. As long as you throw the Quaffle into the goal, you will score, 10 points each time.

That’s all there is to the stadium setup.

Quidditch is a ball sport after all, so the ball is also indispensable in Quidditch.

In addition to the Quaffle mentioned above, there are two other balls used in Quidditch - the Golden Snitch and the Bludger.

In a Quidditch match, there are two Bludgers, both of which are iron balls with a diameter of about 6 inches, or 15 centimeters, slightly smaller than a football, and are magically cast to automatically track players riding on brooms. They will fly restlessly in the air, constantly trying to interfere with the players' movements and trying to knock them off their brooms.

The last one is the Golden Snitch, which can be regarded as the most important part of Quidditch. Because only when the Golden Snitch is caught in the game, it means the end of a game, otherwise a Quidditch game may last for several months.

It is a metal sphere painted gold, about the size of a walnut, with a pair of silver wings that can fly in the air nimbly. Although for magic, wings are not needed to achieve floating and flying, the Golden Snitch was originally intended to replace a magical creature called the Golden Snidget, so it was equipped with silver wings with symbolic meaning.

At the same time, in order to distinguish the first player who touched the Golden Snitch, each Golden Snitch was enchanted so that it could remember the skin of the first person who touched it. To ensure this, a new Golden Snitch was used for each Quidditch game, and they had never been touched by anyone's skin before they were launched, not even by the craftsmen who made them, because the craftsmen wore gloves when they worked.

To distinguish it from the Bludger and the Snitch, the Quaffle is a red-painted leather ball similar in size to a soccer ball, but since it is used in flying sports, it is also enchanted. Although it cannot fly automatically like the first two balls, a "grasping spell" is cast on the Quaffle to make it easy for players riding broomsticks to catch it. In addition, a "slowing fall spell" is attached to the Quaffle to ensure that it will not fall to the ground quickly after being thrown out by careless players, so that the game can proceed smoothly without multiple restarts.

At this point, the Quidditch pitch and ball have been introduced. Next is the position and responsibilities of each player.

A Quidditch team on the field consists of seven people in total. There is a Keeper who is responsible for guarding the three hoops, a Seeker who is responsible for catching the Golden Snitch and ending the game, two Beaters who are responsible for holding the bat to deal with the two Bludgers, and three Seekers who are responsible for fighting for the Quaffle and scoring goals.

Everyone on the team must do their job and concentrate on their goal. In other words, they must not touch the ball other than the one they are targeting. Well, now that you have read this, you must have thoroughly understood the rules of Quidditch, right? Then quickly ride on your flying broom and have an exciting Quidditch game with your friends!

What? No place? Just find an empty space and use magic to create three circles as the ball frame!

What? No partners? Tell the truth, are you really a student of Hogwarts? Don't they like to act in groups? Use the four houses to classify, and you will always find a partner!
What? No broomstick? Are you really a wizard? A cheap broomstick can be used to play Quidditch? Are you a Muggle? Come on, all that talk is in vain.
Ivy closed the "Easy Start, Quidditch Quick Guide" and sighed silently in his heart.

That's a pretty crude rule.

Apart from the basic introduction, this quick manual does not even list the items for fouls. Compared with all Muggle sports, Quidditch, the sport loved by wizards, is too "free".

The Department of Magical Games and Sports lists seven hundred different Quidditch fouls, but the details of these fouls have never been made public to the wizarding world (the Department believes that the list "might provide some inspiration" to wizards who read it).

That is to say, the referee is very important in a Quidditch game. He can almost single-handedly influence the progress of the game, because no one knows clearly what a real foul is. Even the players in the game are the same.

Not only that, there is only one rule about magic in Quidditch, no wands are allowed. More precisely, "no wands are used against the opposing team." In other words, if you want, you can even cast a levitation spell on everyone to reduce the weight in the hope that the brooms will have more power; or cast a protective spell on the players to prevent the opponent's bludger attack.

For Ivy, this rule simply did not limit his ability to cast spells. After all, in most cases, he could cast spells without relying on his wand. And now that he had the "Gaze Spell", he could prepare the 2nd level spell "Human Immobilization" in his two eyes in advance, and just by looking at each other, he could make the opponent's players fall off their brooms stiffly. Or the 1st level "Suggestion" was also good, making two players of the opponent team turn against each other instantly. If it was a goalkeeper, wouldn't that be equivalent to countless opportunities to score an empty goal?
Even without using any magic, Ivy still has countless tactics to easily win because compared to football, basketball and other popular sports in the Muggle world, wizards' Quidditch is too simple.

One of the most important points is holding the ball.

As the main goal of attacking and scoring, Quidditch does not stipulate the time for the chaser to hold the ball. Basketball must hit the ground once every three steps, and football cannot even run if it is not kicked out with the foot first.

In Quidditch, which uses flying brooms to move in the air, there is no regulation on how long the chaser can hold the ball. This means that as long as your broom is good enough, you can even fly the Quaffle on the field forever!
In fact, this is exactly the case. In the 1994 Quidditch World Cup, the Irish team, whose members were all equipped with Firebolts, won a complete victory thanks to the advantage of their flying brooms. Even if Viktor Krum finally caught the Golden Snitch, he was unable to reverse the situation because before he found the Golden Snitch, the Irish team already had an advantage of more than points.

(End of this chapter)