How much of a Harry Potter fan are you? Think you have what it takes to be a Quidditch hero? We have Annenberg resembling the Hogwarts Dining Hall, why don’t we have a Quidditch Pitch to go with it? Good news. Muggle Quidditch has come to Harvard.

Quidditch is the fastest growing college sport in world, and Stacy Rush, a visiting undergraduate student from Toronto, is doing her part to continue its growth at Harvard. Founded in 2005 by a Middlebury student, Muggle Quidditch, as it has been dubbed, made a breakthrough with last year’s fifteen-school tournament. Colleges such as Middllebury and Vassar, who faced each other for last year’s Quidditch crown, already have competitive teams that have been featured on the evening news and in international magazines for their adaptation of the sport originally conceived by J.K. Rowling in her Harry Potter books. Yes – like the Hogwarts version, it is played on broomsticks, though regrettably the technology is not quite up to par with magic, and these brooms do not fly. While it may seem that without the element of flight, Quidditch loses its immediate appeal, the founders of the sport have worked to keep it as close as possible to the magical version—there is even a student whose sole post during the game is to run around and act like the snitch—the golden ball that must be captured by the seeker to win the game. Other than the seeker role made infamous by Harry Potter himself, other players are responsible for the making up the field positions of beater, chaser, and keeper, and the rules are similar to the regulations laid out in the popular series of books—only without magic, everyone must play into a bit of adolescent make-believe.

This year’s Quidditch World Cup will be held at Middlebury College on October 25. If you think that you have what it takes to be a keeper or seeker, the first ever meeting of the Harvard College Quidditch team is this Thursday, 8:30-9:30 at Harvard Hillel, Rabb Hall.