Philosopher's Stone/ Sorcerer's Stone
Quidditch - Chapter 11
Chapter Summary:
Chapter starts out at the beginning of November, when the weather turned very cold. Hagrid defrosts broomsticks on the Quidditch field every morning. The Quidditch season had begun and
Harry is getting ready for his first match: Gryffindor vs. Slytherin. Oliver Wood had been keeping
Harry a secret until now.
Harry thinks he is lucky now that Hermione is his friend – she lent him Quidditch Through the Ages.
Harry learns there are 700 ways of committing a Quidditch foul and that all of them happened during a World Cup match in 1473, Seekers are usually the smallest and fastest players, most serious Quidditch accidents happen to Seekers, and that a couple people have died playing Quidditch.
Hermione is a little more relaxed about breaking rules. The day before the match, Hermione conjures up the blue flame in a jam jar. They are standing around it when
Snape sees them and they try to hide it as they think it’s probably against the rules. He sees them, comes over, and takes Quidditch from the Ages claiming that library books cannot be brought outside.
Harry notices he is limping.
Snape takes five points from Gryffindor.
Later, in the common room, Hermione is checking the boys’ homework when
Harry decides he wants to go get the book back. He goes to the staffroom and knocks a couple times, but no one answers. He opens the door and finds
Snape and Filch together.
Snape, holding up his robes while Filch bandaged his “bloody and mangled” leg.
Snape says, “Blasted thing. How are you supposed to keep your eyes on all three heads at once?”
Snape saw
Harry and
Harry asked for his book back, but
Snape yells at him to get out.
Harry runs back to the common room and tells Ron and Hermione what he saw and that he thinks
Snape let the troll in on Halloween. Hermione tells them she doesn’t think
Snape would do that, but they dismiss her.
Harry has trouble sleeping and can’t eat the next morning because he is so nervous about the Quidditch match. The students all pile into the stands and had binoculars to see better. Ron, Hermione, Neville, Seamus, and Dean are all in the top row and had painted a banner on a sheet Scabbers had ruined that said, “Potter for President.” Dean (good at drawing) made a lion underneath and Hermione did a charm to make it flash different colors.
Harry and the team are in the locker room. Oliver gives the same speech he’s given in years past.
Harry follows Fred and George onto the field to cheers. Madam Hooch starts the game.
Harry notes that Marcus Flint looks like he has some troll blood in him. Everybody goes up in the air. Lee Jordan commentates, makes comments about Angelina, gets in trouble. As the game continues, Hagrid shows up. He says he was watching from his hut, but wanted to be in the crowd. Wood told
Harry to stay out of the way until he saw the Snitch so he wouldn’t get hurt.
Harry sees something gold, but it is just a Weasley wristwatch. The two seekers both see the Snitch and go for it.
Harry is faster, but is blocked by Marcus Flint. A foul is called and Gryffindor gets a free shot and scores. As the game continues,
Harry realizes he can no longer control his broom. It started carrying him higher and higher and was “jerking and twitching.”
Hagrid sees that something is wrong and thinks
Harry might have lost control, but says it isn’t possible. Everyone else starts to notice
Harry as well.
Harry is dangling by one hand. Seamus thinks maybe something happened to the broom when Flint knocked it, but Hagrid says it’s not possible – “Can’t nothing interfere with a broomstick except powerful Dark magic.” Hermione grabs the binoculars and finds
Snape, shows Ron who sees him looking directly at
Harry and muttering under his breath. Hermione says that
Snape is jinxing the broom and hurries away.
Everyone is watching
Harry. The Weasleys fly up to get him, but
Harry’s broom keeps jumping away. Marcus Flint scores five times, but no one notices. As Hermione races to get to
Snape, she knocks Professor Quirrell headfirst into the row in front. She pulls out her wand, whispers “a few, well-chosen words,” and bright blue flames shoot from her wand to
Snape’s robes. It took thirty seconds for
Snape to realize what was happening, then he yelped, Hermione scooped the fire into a jar, and
Snape never knew what happened.
Harry regains control of the broom, Neville stops crying into Hagrid’s jacket, and then
Harry speeds toward the ground, looks like he is about to get sick, but actually ended up catching the Snitch in his mouth! Gryffindor wins the match, 170-60.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione all go to Hagrid’s hut for tea. Ron tells
Harry that he and Hermione saw
Snape cursing the broomstick, but Hagrid tells them it’s rubbish. The trio decide to tell Hagrid what they know.
Harry says that
Snape tried to get past Fluffy, the three-headed dog. Hagrid drops his teapot in surprise and wants to know what they know about the dog. We find out the dog is guarding something for
Dumbledore.
Hagrid again says it is rubbish to think that
Snape would do something like that. Hermione seems to have changed her mind after seeing
Snape has apparently tried to kill
Harry. Hermione says she knows a jinx when she sees one and that you have to keep eye contact. Hagrid comes quickly to
Snape’s defense and says that they are meddling in things that don’t concern them. He tells them to forget the dog and what it’s guarding – that it’s just between
Dumbledore and Nicolas Flamel.
Interesting Movements/Actions:
Hermione makes her jam jar fire a couple times – once out in the grounds with Ron and
Harry and once to set fire to
Snape’s robes at the Quidditch game.
Hermione’s proficiency with charms – it is mentioned a few times how she performs “tricky little charms”: jam jar fire twice, and the flashing letters on the Potter for President sign.
Hermione takes one look at
Snape and automatically knows he is jinxing
Harry’s broom – how would she know something like that? Later in the chapter she says, “I know a jinx when I see one, Hagrid, I’ve read all about them!” - can we really believe that just from reading something she would automatically be able to to identify a jinx?
Hermione states that one needs to keep eye contact for a jinx, but there is a great length of time between when Professor Quirrell gets knocked over and when
Harry regains control of his broom:
"she didn't even stop to say sorry as she knocked Professor Quirrell headfirst into the row in front. Reaching
Snape, she crouched down, pulled out her wand, and whispered a few, well-chosen words. . . . It took perhaps thirty seconds for
Snape to realize that he was on fire."
After that quote, it says
Harry was suddenly able to regain control of his broom. Now we all assumed that the reason he was able to regain control was because Prof. Quirrell got knocked down. However, if he was knocked down and then more than thirty seconds later
Snape gets distracted, what happened during that length of time? Shouldn't
Harry have regained control after Quirrell was knocked over? Does this mean
Snape was not necessarily trying to save
Harry??
We find out that nothing can interfere with a broom except Dark magic
Hagrid gives up information about where he got Fluffy, that Fluffy is hiding something, and that Professor
Dumbledore and Nicolas Flamel are involved.
Snape is getting help from Filch in the teachers’ lounge with his leg cut, so we can assume that he really did go down to make sure the Stone was still in place and not for some other reason as he wouldn’t be so brazen to be where other professors might just walk in.
Fred and George Weasley are wearing wristwatches. Is it said somewhere that wristwatches don’t work in Hogwarts? I thought I had read this someplace. Perhaps they are not for telling time, but for something else . . .
Characters:
Hagrid
Harry
Oliver Wood – Captain of Gryffindor team
Hermione
Ron
Mention of the mountain troll in passing description
Snape
Filch
Three-headed dog mentioned (Fluffy)
Dumbledore mentioned
Neville
Seamus Finnigan
Dean (the West Ham fan)
Scabbers mentioned because of ruined sheets
Angelina Johnson – Gryffindor Chaser
Fred Weasley – Gryffindor Beater
George Weasley – Gryffindor Beater
Madam Hooch (referee)
Marcus Flint – Slytherin Captain and Chaser
Professor McGonagall
Lee Jordan
Alicia Spinnet – Gryffindor Chaser (was a reserve last year)
Katie Bell – Gryffindor Chaser
Adrian Pucey – Slytherin Chaser
Bletchley (keeper for Slytherin)
Terence Higgs (Slytherin Seeker)
Professor Quirrell
Mention of “Greek chappie” from whom Hagrid bought Fluffy
Nicolas Flamel mentioned by Hagrid
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