Week 10 - Favorite Quidditch Memories!

[Matilde Rayne]

For our final forum discussion, we'd like to hear everyone's favorite Quidditch memory! You could write about your experience playing or watching HOL Quidditch or real life/Muggle Quidditch, or you can make up something about your HOL character - it's up to you!

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As for my own experience... I started playing Quidditch in my first year, so over the years I've accumulated many fond memories, most relating to the people I've gotten to know. I have no idea how I can rank those memories (<333 for all of those people instead), so I'm going to focus on something more concrete, which was my first official match!

I didn't get to play in a match my first year (apparently I missed the match I was meant to play in, oops... but I wasn't really match-ready anyway), so I was determined to spend the summer getting up to speed. The next year, I was picked to play as a chaser in the season opener against Slytherin - and I remember that match VERY clearly, haha. I won the All Chasers question at the start of the match, which was a huge confidence boost, and then went on to score four goals! It was the most amazing feeling knowing that all the practice I'd put in leading up to that match had paid off!

[Bull J. Johnson]

Mine I don't remember the year, but I loved having a avenger style SQT (summer quidditch team) and getting the nickname Blade. In fact that is still the name I go by and love having people call me. In fact I much prefer that to BJ now. Maybe I should go with that name in chat from now on. Also thanks for this activity hope we get to do it soon again.

[Prof. Tarma Amelia Black]

Blocking Seven.

When I first read the question, that immediately popped up, and then that memory was flooded by all kinds of memories of HQT and the Spiffies.

As for Seven -- he inspired a special sort of terror which hasn't been surpassed by anyone since.

[Joey Stark]

Mine's my first Quidditch practice.

I'm very new to quidditch, far from a strong player and my familiarity with the questions and typing speed are waaaay off my (literally incredible) teammates, that and knowing everyone would be able to see when I messed up made me really really nervous.

When I actually started playing though, it didn't matter a whole lot that I was not...great, everyone was super nice and really put me at ease. My favourite moment was actually answering something first and the messages of 'nice one Joey!!' etc that were thrown my way. The encouragement made me ridiculously happy! I think I babbled my way through a dozen of 'thank you!s after practice. (This is basically me gushing over the awesomeness of all of RQT )

[Maxim Trevelyan]

Same as with Joey, my favorite moment so far is my first Quidditch practice, which was also my tryout for the team. Most, if not all, Spiffies were there and had no qualms about terrorizing me how Marcie and Lilly will torture me, how many points I'll have to reach, etc.

But, luckily for me, everything turned out just fine and I got accepted into the team! So, by far, this is my favorite Quidditch moment. That and all the shenanigan we get up to during practices

[Kim Alting]

I don't have much Quidditch experience yet. But I watched a couple of games last year and really enjoyed that!

[Darcey Goode]

I actually submitted one of my quidditch memories (with a sketch) for the last task for HOL Life.

Ironic though it is, one of my best memories from my time at HOL is being persistently attacked by bludgers in quidditch. I remember (vaguely) that I won MVP several times, I remember that I scored lots of goals, I remember that much as I wasn't keen on it I made a decent keeper ... but the thing I remember most is those bludgers. I was the person of choice to attack, which meant I mattered. The opponents were scared of me. And that's kind of fun.

[Will Lestrange]

Quidditch has a very steep learning curve for new players: possibly steeper than anything else I've seen anywhere in this fandom. If you've just recently made your House team for the first time, chances are you're not familiar with most of the questions in the corpus; even if you know the answer independently, you probably have to think for a few seconds before you begin typing. While that's perfectly okay in "tryout" situations, it tends not to work in games - or even in practices - when three or four others will likely type the answer before you.

Therefore, although I made SQT within my first week in HOL based on my typing speed knowledge of trivia from other Quidditch formats, I was usually outclassed like crazy in practices. Coming in second-to-last in team botting sessions would be a minor miracle as everyone else seemed to know what I was trying to memorize.

Then one September day, I stumbled into practice and saw everyone playing a slightly different game: instead of questions, there was a string of random letters. I saw teammates trying to type that string of letters, with varying degrees of success. Then a string of words came and the same thing happened. By Question 4 I knew how to play the game and realized: this was my chance to shine! I typed that string of letters before everyone else... and then the next one. I wasn't quite as lucky on the words (the Quidditch answers were more familiar to everyone else) but by the end of the round, I had somehow actually found myself at the top of the heap. When normally I struggled to avoid the bottom of the barrel, I had actually beaten everyone - even Cody - in a botting-related activity.

Everyone was shocked: the practice moved to a typeracer competition where I was always in the top three, usually around or above 100 wpm (despite typeracer being EXTREMELY unforgiving for typos) and even won a round there as well!

That was the moment I realized I could actually be decent at this whole "Quidditch" thing; not just at logic puzzles.

[Hermione Brontë]

I'm not part of the Quidditch team (yet, I'd love to but when I have more time and practise!) so I will choose the first time I practised it in here. I was completely afraid, because I don't really remember that much from the books but I ended up enjoying it really really much! That day I played a lot... and it really was something I didn't expect before I tried it.