Chapter 2: The Handbook

Molly wasn't very happy when Arthur turned up hours after dinnertime. But she served him his cold meat and potatoes all the same, then went off into the living room to read Witch Weekly.

Arthur wasn't really interested in his tea, so he nibbled half-heartedly at a bit of pork whilst reading the little booklet that came with the shiny metal disk. Its front cover was more or less identical to that of the case. On the back there was some quite interesting writing about Electronic Arts' fellytone number and a stamped number. Arthur turned the handbook over, opened it, and started to read.

It began with some warnings and precautions. Arthur read them with interest. He didn't think he had a projection television, he wasn't epileptic and he would try to follow the guidelines given. He turned over the page. There was a long table of contents, and after that several pages about installation. It seemed to make things quite clear.

Arthur read on to find the controls section. The table was captioned: 'Before you can dominate the air like the Bulgarian national team …' Arthur crossed out 'dominate' with his quill, thought for a while, and replaced it with 'fall out of'. He read the 'general gameplay' controls. Apart from something about attacking Bludgers, the moves seemed quite realistic. Arthur decided that he was going to be getting to know his keyboard very well.

The next section was headed 'Introduction'. It seemed a bit late for one, but Arthur read it anyway. It welcomed him to the magical world of Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup and told him that Quidditch was an incredibly exciting, high-speed, broomstick-based game that had been enjoyed by witches and wizards alike since its eleventh-century beginnings on Queerditch Marsh in England. Well, who would have thought that?

The next paragraph described Quidditch as a cross between the non-magical sports of football and basketball, with the speed and manoeuvring skills of ice hockey – whatever that was. It went on to say that it contained all the excitement, teamwork and flair of those games, but it was played on flying broomsticks.

The paragraph after that was even worse. It told Arthur that he could learn the rules and the skills necessary to play at Hogwarts, collect Quidditch cards and go to this year's World Cup if he was any good. This seemed very odd, as the Hogwarts teams weren't exactly brilliant, Quidditch cards seemed a bit babyish and there wasn't a World Cup this year.

The following paragraph was quite good, and included a nice pun. 'Top-flight magical sport'. Arthur chuckled, and choked on his potato. He read on: Game Features. Wasn't that what the last paragraph was about?

It told him to learn the basics of Quidditch with Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy, Cedric Diggory or Cho Chang. Arthur knew Harry, of course, and Cedric had been the boy who You-Know-Who had killed when he'd come back. Draco Malfoy was Lucius' son, and there might just have been a Chang on the Tutshill Tornadoes. It was a weird choice of people. Then he was instructed to take on Slytherin, Gryffindor, Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff for a chance to win the Hogwarts Quidditch Cup, and to play an Exhibition Match. This meant a friendly. Apparently he could also by broomsticks with Quidditch Cards, play in the Quidditch World Cup with the best Quidditch teams and in the best stadiums, and master electrifying Special Moves. Arthur felt a thrill of excitement. He was going to be able to try out the Wronski Feint for the first time in thirty years. There were then a couple of Internetty addresses and a complicated list of controls.

The next section was entitled 'Quidditch for Beginners'. Arthur had half a mind to skip it, but read anyway. It was a brief overview for people who hadn't read Quidditch Through The Ages. Arthur had learnt the basic rules of Quidditch before he'd been able to read at all, let alone get through a whacking great textbook. He'd seen the book in passing in some Muggle bookshops. There were a lot of them in a very small space, as if for Muggles the book was smaller: perhaps less than one hundred pages. Dumbledore had released it to Muggles, but even he wouldn't want them to read the whole lot.

Arthur read about the pitch. The description was correct, although the picture next to it wasn't. There was also a bit about pitches being made of ice and water, which Arthur presumed had just been made up by the writer. Then he scanned the section about the balls: this was correct too, if somewhat over-summarised, and the pictures were terrible. The final part of the section was about the players, and again correct writing was backed up by terrible images. The players were wearing huge amounts of armour and robes that were open at the front and so short they looked like waistcoasts. Their broomsticks had some kind of footholds attached, for some reason, and the picture of the Seeker showed her – Arthur thought it was a woman, although he couldn't be sure – wearing goggles. What were they for? Exploding Bludgers hadn't been around for hundreds of years. The players were also sitting a long way back on their brooms, and Arthur wondered how they were meant to control them. In real life, the further forward you were, the better steering you had.

Arthur only skimmed the rest of the handbook: it was getting boring and was mainly concerned with telling him what to do after he'd started the game. He learned that to unlock the World Cup he first had to win at Hogwarts, and discovered that the levels of difficultly were named after broomsticks, namely those that had been the best available a decade ago. There were a lot of lists of names, and some sort of help page, followed by a copyright notice. Arthur wondered if he was a character related to Harry Potter, and thus copyright Warner Bros. He hoped not.

Arthur finished his meal, picked up the disk, and went through to the garage to install the game.