PS10: Halloween

> "*Harry then did something that was both very brave and very stupid...*"
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(EXPLANATION NEEDED IN INTERESTING FACTS AND NOTES & EXCEPTIONAL CHARACTER MOMENTS)

Harry receives a Nimbus 2000, learns the rules of Quidditch and begins to practice. On Halloween, Hermione masters levitation in Charms but the remarks of a jealous Ron sends her in tears to the girls' bathroom, where she is trapped with a troll. Harry, Ron and Flick run to her rescue and defeat the troll. Hermione tells a lie to keep them out of trouble, and the four become friends.

## Calendar and Dates

The chapter begins on the morning of Friday, September 13th. The broomstick arrives a week later, which we'll estimate as Thursday, September 19th. Then we jump to Halloween to finish the chapter.

## Interesting Facts and Notes

Halloween marks a turning point in the story and in the lives of Harry, Ron, Flick and Hermione, as the four of them become friends.

**... Harry, Ron and Flick thought that meeting the three-headed dog had been an excellent adventure, and they were quite keen to have another one.**

Although Sirius will berate Harry several years later for not wanting to take risks, telling him that the danger would have been what made it fun for his father, we see here that Harry has plenty of that kind of adventurous spirit at this point in his life. In the coming years, Harry will start to realise the burden that has been placed upon him and will gain a wisdom and even maturity which his father never had.

**Neither Neville nor Hermione showed the slightest interest in what lay underneath the dog and the trapdoor. All Neville cared about was never going near the dog again.**

Is this evidence of cowardice on Neville's part? TQ is intentionally leading us to think so. We see him stumble on his way up to be sorted and then rush away with the Hat still on his head. We hear him explain how he was thought by his family to be too non-magical to even attend Hogwarts. We see him searching high and low for Trevor and hear him described as the "toadless boy" on the train. TQ will spend the next few books acquainting us with the nuanced depths of his endearing character with the use of small moments like these, but often they are designed to make us believe that he is merely a bumbler, a bit of comic relief. There is much more to Neville than meets the eye, however. The first big step in Neville's evolution is coming in chapter seventeen.

**Hermione was now refusing to speak to Harry, Ron and Flick, but she was such a bossy know-it-all that they saw this as an added bonus.**

Since we see the saga through Harry's eyes, on the surface it seems as if Hermione abruptly changes to become more likeable, but this really isn't the case. Hermione's character doesn't really change all that much over the years - witness her constant chiding in book five, for example - but Harry, Ron and Flick learn to accept her for who she is and even to appreciate her warnings.

**As the owls flooded into the Great Hall as usual, everyone's attention was caught at once by a long, thin package carried by six large screech owls.**

In fact, this method of giving the Nimbus to Harry doesn't make sense, given the contents of the accompanying note; as mentioned in the text, it was an extremely conspicuous way of delivering the broomstick.

**Harry ripped open the letter first, which was lucky, because it said:**

***DO NOT OPEN THE PARCEL AT THE TABLE:***

It would have made more sense to send the note first, and hand the broomstick to Harry in private.

***It contains your new Nimbus Two Thousand, but I don't want everybody knowing you've got a broomstick or they'll all want one.***

Since the whole point of this gift is that Harry will be playing for Gryffindor in front of the whole school before the year is out, it's hard to imagine how one could avoid having everybody find out that Harry had a broomstick despite the first-year "no broomstick" rule.

***Oliver Wood will meet you tonight on the Quidditch pitch at seven o'clock for your first training session.***

The upcoming training sessions is the first time that the game is described fully for the reader, since Hagrid didn't try to explain the rules during the trip to Diagon Alley (PS5) and Ron and Flick's discussion of the game on the Hogwarts Express was only lightly summarised (PS6).

***Professor M. McGonagall***

So McGonagall herself bought Harry this broom? How often do heads of houses buy expensive brooms for their students, I wonder? On the other hand, it may be part of her job to see to it that the house team is outfitted, so there may very well be a budget to cover this. After all, Wood immediately informed McGonagall that Harry would need a broom when she pointed him out as a good candidate for Seeker. Surely he wasn't insisting that his head of house buy an expensive present for one of her students (although with Wood, you never can tell when it comes to Quidditch). He must have known that there were ways for McGonagall to make this happen.

**"It's not any old broomstick," he said, "it's a Nimbus Two Thousand. What did you say you've got at home, Malfoy, a Comet Two Sixty?" Ron grinned at Harry. "Comets look flashy, but they're not in the same league as the Nimbus."**

So next year, when Draco joins the Slytherin team, he will make sure that his team has brooms which can beat this one.

**Sleek and shiny, with a mahogany handle, it had a long tail of neat, straight twigs and *Nimbus Two Thousand* written in gold near the top.**

Notice that a Nimbus Two Thousand's handle is made out of a type of wand wood. In fact, James Potter's first wand was made of mahogany.

**"Now, Quidditch is easy enough to understand, even if it's not too easy to play."**

In fact, a Quidditch match might be considered to be three separate games that happen to be played at once, where each of the three types of balls constitutes a separate thread of play.

**"There are seven players on each side. Three of them are called Chasers."**

That ism three of the seven players on a single side are Chasers.

**... as Wood took out a bright red ball about the size of a football. "This ball's called the Quaffle," said Wood.**

In other words, a Quaffle is a round ball about the size of a football, with a diameter of 12 inches. It's a charmed object, but the enchantments are less obvious than those on the Snitch and the Bludgers.

**"The Chasers throw the Quaffle to each other and try and get it through one of the hoops to score a goal. Ten points every time the Quaffle goes through one of the hoops. Follow me?"
"The Chasers throw the Quaffle and put it through the hoops to score," Harry recited. "So - that's sort of like basketball on broomsticks with six hoops, isn't it?"**

In fact, it's a bit more complicated than that once the two teams' Keepers are taken into consideration, but Harry is essentially correct.

**"What's basketball?" said Wood curiously.**

Wood's question suggests that he comes from a wizarding family, and that he doesn't take Muggle Studies. However, it seems odd that Wood would have never heard of basketball, given that he pulls a bag of Muggle gold balls out of his pocket in a few minutes.

**"Now, there's another player on each side who's called the Keeper - I'm Keeper for Gryffindor. I have to fly around the hoops and stop the other team from scoring."**

In fact, the thread of play concerning the Quaffle is something like a cross between basketball and football, given the role of the Keeper. The Chasers and Keepers are concerned almost exclusively with the Quaffle, taking an interest in the Bludgers only to avoid being hit by them, and having nothing to do with the Snitch (see below).

**He handed Harry a small club, a bit like a short baseball bat.**

A Beater's Bat is a magical object, but since the enchantments on it are concerned with making it strong enough to stand up to the punishment of working with the Bludgers, the effects of the magic are less obvious than those no the balls used in the game.

**"These two are the Bludgers."
He showed Harry two identical balls, jet black and slightly smaller than the red Quaffle.**

A Bludger is a round ball about two inches smaller around than a Quaffle, but made of iron rather than coloured leather.

**"The Bludgers rocket around, trying to knock players off their brooms. That's why you have two Beaters on each team - the Weasley twins are ours - it's their job to protect their side from the Bludgers and try and knock them toward the other team."**

The Bludgers may carry an enchantment to keep them within the boundaries of the pitch, but the nature of the enchantments that they definitely carry may make this unnecessary.

**"Three Chasers try and score with the Quaffle; the Keeper guards the goal posts; the Beaters keep the Bludgers away from their team," Harry reeled off.**

Essentially, the Chasers and Keepers are following one thread of the game, concerned chiefly with the Quaffle, while the Beaters are following another thread of action, concerned chiefly with the Bludgers. The Quaffle-portion of the game is like an airborne-cross between basketball and football, while the Beater-portion of the game is more of a high-stakes version of dodgeball.

**"Er - have the Bludgers ever killed anyone?"
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"Never at Hogwarts. We've had a couple of broken jaws but nothing worse than that..."**

Oh, just wait. In the next few years of play, Harry will sustain quite an impressive range of Quidditch injuries, including a smashed arm and a cracked skull from a Bludger blow to the head.

**"Don't worry, the Weasleys are more than a match for the Bludgers - I mean, they're like a pair of human Bludgers themselves."**

Interesting, since at this point the twins have only been on the team for one year and are a mere 13 years old. They must be amazingly good.

**Wood reached into the crate and took out the fourth and last ball... it was tiny, about the size of a large walnut. It was bright gold and had little fluttering silver wings.**

**"*This*," said Wood, "is the Golden Snitch, and it's the most important ball of the lot. It's very hard to catch because it's so fast and difficult to see. It's the Seeker's job to catch it."**

The Snitch is bewitched to stay within the boundaries of the pitch and to evade capture as long as possible. However, as we shall see in various Quidditch practices and matches, this last enchantment is not simply the reverse of that on a Bludger; the Snitch does not simply avoid all the players on the field.

**"... whichever Seeker catches the Snitch wins his team an extra hundred and fifty points, so they nearly always win.**

Some have argued that the game is so skewed toward the team which catches the Snitch that it's essentially unplayable. However, each Quidditch match must be seen as part of the larger Quidditch season. Standings depend not on number of wins and losses but on total accumulated points, as we see in the *Daily Prophet'*s box scores and in the competition for house points at Hogwarts. Each goal adds vital points to the total for the team, even if that team fails to win a particular match.

**That's why Seekers get fouled so much."**

Naturally, since it makes more sense to let the opposing team have a chance at a ten-point penalty shot than the 150-point Snitch capture.

**"A game of Quidditch only ends when the Snitch is caught, so it can go on for ages - I think the record is three months.**

This is, of course, utterly ridiculous. If those two Seekers couldn't catch the Snitch in that much time, they must have been appalling indeed - remember, a modern Snitch is bewitched to stay within the confines of the pitch. The score after weeks of play would be so high that the capture of the Snitch would have little effect on the outside, and the point totals would push the two teams so far above the other teams in the league in accumulated points that they would automatically take first and second place that season, even though with such poor Seekers they wouldn't deserve it at all. However, it makes for a good throw-away bit of humour.

**they had to keep bringing on substitutes so the players could get some sleep."**

The rules of Quidditch state that "in the case of *injury*, no substitution of players will take place." In the case mentioned by Wood, the substitution was taking place because of the length of the match, not because of injuries, so the no-substitution rule does not seem to apply.

The whole question of substitute players bears exploration. TQ leaves a lot of details unexplained about this aspect of Quidditch. When Malfoy was injured in book three, for example, Slytherin was allowed to postpone a match. When Harry was in the hospital wing at the end of this book, however, Gryffindor had to play without him... and without a substitute Seeker, apparently, which is very strange. Could it be that there are only seven players on any house team? It seems so, but there must be substitutes, even at Hogwarts, since Alicia Spinnet started out as a Gryffindor reserve player the previous year. When Harry captained the team in book six, he pulled in other players to replace Ron and even himself when necessary.

**He pulled a bag of golf balls out of his pocket...**

Here come the golf balls we mentioned earlier, even though Wood had no idea what basketball was. Okay, so maybe Wood didn't know what these Muggle balls were really for either.

**"That Quidditch Cup'll have our name on it this year," said Wood happily as hey trudged back up to the castle. "I wouldn't be surprised if you turn out better than Charlie Weasley, and he could have played for England if he hadn't gone off chasing dragons."**

Charlie left the team only a couple of months before this, which explains why Wood was so eager for a new Seeker. These lines bring up the entire problem of "last year's team" again. If Charlie was so good, and if the team included Wood and the Weasley twins (almost human bludgers, Wood says about them), why was the previous year's team so atrocious?

**they woke to the delicious smell of baking pumpkin wafting through the corridors.**

Baked, we learn in book four, by house-elves in the kitchens, which are far, far below Harry as he awakens in his dormitory. His bedroom is located at the top of Gryffindor tower which rises above the common room located on the seventh floor. Even if the tower is only a few stories tall, the kitchens, which are in the basement of the castle, are about a quarter of a mile away and separated by thick stone walls and floors. Either the pies are extremely aromatic or the smell is being magically wafted about the castle. After all, the startlingly pungent smell of the mountain troll that the trio are about to encounter doesn't carry anywhere near this far.

**... Professor Flitwick announces in Charms that he thought they were ready to start making objects fly...**

Although Flitwick is a good sport about being tossed around by mis-aimed Summoning Charms and Banishing Charms, and dealing with the consequences of misdirected and botched charms generally, it's easy to see why he took the first-years through two months of mastering the basics before starting them on this charm. The choice of feathers as test objects is also very wise, since they can't hurt anyone if they're sent off course.

**... something they had all been dying to try since they'd seen him make Neville's toad zoom around the classroom.**

Apparently Neville is in the habit of carrying Trevor around with him during the school day rather than leaving him in Gryffindor Tower.

Levitating an object isn't really making it fly, however. Flitwick may have been able to make Trevor zoom around, but according to *Quidditch Through the Ages*, levitation is normally a matter of hovering rather than zooming. Perhaps Flitwick had actually been demonstrating a Summoning or Banishing Charm, not Levitation. At any rate, it's interesting that the first charm the students are assigned is levitation. It must be a fairly simple effect to achieve.

**Professor Flitwick put the class into pairs to practice.**

Why into pairs? What is the second person supposed to be doing? Why doesn't Flitwick just get enough feathers for everyone to practice at once? Maybe the second person is supposed to critique each other on things like wand movement and pronunciation. That's what Hermione was doing with Ron, certainly, but if that was the assignment it seems a bit nasty of him to hold it against her.

**"Now, don't forget that nice wrist movement we've been practicing!" squeaked Professor Flitwick, perched on top of his pile of books as usual. "Swish and flick, remember, swish and flick. And saying the magic words properly is very important, too**

The first years are trying to learn the very basic components of magic here, and we're learning them right along with them. The wand motion is critical, as is the pronunciation of the spell words. As students gain N.E.W.T.-level proficiency, five years later, they begin to practice non-verbal spell casting and even begin to do magic without using wands at all.

**Hermione didn't turn up for the next class...**

Almost unheard of, this. We know how deeply Hermione's feelings are hurt. She is never one to cut classes for any reason. Exhausted from using a Time-Turner, she fell asleep and missed a Charms class in her third year. On that occasion she worried terribly and went to apologise to Flitwick. Other than that, Hermione only misses classes under the most dire circumstances. In her second year, calamity befalls her twice. She misses a month of school while waiting for the effects of the Polyjuice Potion disaster to wear off, but she keeps up with her studies in the Hospital Wing. Later that year she misses a few weeks after being Petrified by the basilisk.

**Harry then did something that was both very brave and very stupid**

This phrase should be the motto on Harry's coat of arms. He spends half of his time doing things which are both very brave and, at least by conventional wisdom, very stupid.

**Hermione had sunk to the floor in fright**

Although Hermione quickly gains confidence and nerve through experiences with Harry, Ron and Flick, she still exhibits a tendency to freeze under pressure at the end of this book when she faces the Devil's Snare.

'*"**Locomotor mortis!*****" yelled Flick. The troll's legs snapped together and it fell flat on its face, with a thud that made the whole room tremble.**

[EXPLANATION - something about this being a good indication of the magical prowess we are going to see from Flick, as trolls are incredibly thick skinned and are very hard to cast spells on]

**Quirrell took one look at the troll, let out a faint whimper, and sat quickly down on a toilet, clutching his heart.**

This is all an act, along with the stuttering, designed to convince those around him that he's harmless and ineffectual. We see later that he handles trolls with ease.

**Snape gave Harry a swift, piercing look. Harry looked at the floor.**

Harry's got good instincts (even if they are mostly due to embarrassment and nerves); if Snape is trying Legilimency on Harry at this point, Harry has just made Snape's task more difficult by avoiding eye contact.

**"Well, I still say you were lucky, but not many first years could have taken on a full-grown mountain troll. You each win Gryffindor five points...**

Five points each for defeating a mountain troll and saving the life of a fellow student? McGonagall is harsh indeed! It isn't many chapters later that she takes away ten times that amount of points just for being out of bed after curfew. It's a wonder that Gryffindor ever wins the House Cup at this rate.

**But from that moment on, Hermione Granger became their friend. There are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them.**

This is a fine bit of character development. If you read the exchanges leading up to it, each of the children comes to this point in their own way, very naturally.

## Exceptional Character Moments

* Hermione, who throughout her first weeks at Hogwarts had not managed to make any friends, according to Ron.
* Hermione, pretending that she had gone looking for the troll to help the boys and Flick out of trouble.
* [SOMETHING ABOUT Flick SHOWING HOW POWERFUL SHE WILL BECOME BY MANAGING TO SUCCESSFULLY CAST A SPELL ON A MOUNTAIN TROLL, WHICH ARE CREATURES THAT ARE HEAVILY RESISTANT TO MAGIC]

## Memorable Lines

> "*Hermione was no refusing to speak to Harry, Ron and Flick, but she was such a bossy know-it-all that they saw this as an added bonus.*"
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> "*Harry then did something that was both very brave and very stupid.*"
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> "*Harry, Ron and Flick tried to look as though this story wasn't new to them.*"
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> "*Hermione was the last person to do anything against the rules, and here she was, pretending she had, to get them out of trouble. It was as if Snape had started handing out sweets.*"
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> "*There are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them.*"
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