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Foreword

QUIDDITCH THROUGH THE AGES is one of the warts school library Madam Pince, our librarian, tells enerally h compliularly will relish Mr Whisp’s book, as do those of us interested in wider wizarding history As we have developed the game of Quidditch, so it has developed us; Quidditch unites witches and wizards froether to share moments of exhilaration, triumph and (for those who support the Chudley Cannons) despair

It ith some difficulty, I must own, that I persuaded Madaht be copied for wider consumption Indeed, when I told her it was to be les, she was rendered temporarily speechless and neither moved nor blinked for several h to ask whether I had taken leave of my senses I was pleased to reassure her on that point and went on to explain why I had taken this unprecedented decision

Muggle readers will need no introduction to the work of Comic Relief, so I now repeat my explanation to Madam Pince for the benefit of witches and wizards who have purchased this book Coht poverty, injustice and disaster Widespread ae quantities of money (380 million dollars since they started in 1985 — over thirty-fourthis book — and I would advise you to buy it, because if you read it too long without handing over money you will find yourself the object of a Thief’s Curse — you too will be contributing to this ical mission

I would be deceiving my readers if I said that this explanationover a library book to Muggles She suggested several alternatives, such as telling the people from Comic Relief that the library had burned down, or si instructions When I told her that on the whole I preferred reed to hand over the book, though at the point when it cao of it, her nerve failed her and I was forced to prise her fingers individually from the spine

Although I have removed the usual library-book spells froone Madam Pince has been known to add unusual jinxes to the books in her care I myself doodled absent-uration last year and nextme fiercely around the head Please be careful how you treat this book Do not rip out the pages Do not drop it in the bath I cannot promise that Madam Pince will not swoop down on you, wherever you are, and demand a heavy fine

All that re Coles not to try Quidditch at home; it is, of course, an entirely fictional sport and nobody really plays it May I also take this opportunity to wish Puddlemere United the best of luck next season

Chapter One

The Evolution of the Flying Broomstick

No spell yet devised enables wizards to fly unaided in hued creatures ht, but they arc a rarity The witch or wizard who finds hiured into a bata bat’s brain, they are sure to forget where they want to go the ht Levitation is co five feet froround They wanted more They wanted to fly like birds, but without the inconvenience of growing feathers

We are so accusto household in Britain owns at least one flying broomstick that we rarely stop to ask ourselves why Why should the hually allowed as atransport? Why did we in the West not adopt the carpet so beloved of our Eastern brethren? Why didn’t we choose to produce flying barrels, flying ar bathtubs — why brooms?

Shrewd enough to see that their Muggle neighbours would seek to exploit their powers if they knew their full extent, witches and wizards kept the before the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy caht in their houses, it would necessarily be so easy to hide The broomstick was ideal for this purpose; it required no explanation, no excuse if found by Muggles, it was easily portable and inexpensive Nevertheless, the first broo purposes had their drawbacks

Records show that witches and wizards in Europe were using flying broomsticks as early as AD 962 A German illuminatedfrom their brooms with looks of exquisite discomfort on their faces Guthrie Lochrin, a Scottish wizard writing in 1107, spoke of the ‘splinter-filled buttocks and bulging piles’ he suffered after a short broom ride from Montrose to Arbroath

A medieval brooives us an insight into Lochrin’s disco A) A thick knotty handle of unvarnished ash, with hazel twigs bound crudely to one end, it is neither comfortable nor aerodynamic The charms placed upon it arc similarly basic: it will only o up, down and stop

As wizarding families in those days made their own brooms, there was enor of the transport available to them By the twelfth century, however, wizards had learned to barter services, so that a skilled hbour ht make better than himself Once broomsticks became more comfortable, they were flown for pleasure rather thanfrom point A to point B