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In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, during the Quidditch Match against Ravenclaw, Cho Chang:

decided to mark him [Harry] rather than search for the Snitch herself...All right then, if she wanted to tail him, she'd have to take the consequences. He dived again, and Cho, thinking he'd seen the Snitch, tried to follow; Harry pulled out of the dive very sharply; she hurtled downward.....

While Harry may not have known the name of the tactic, his move in his third year is almost certainly a Wronski Feint, yet, after Harry sees Krumm perform the same maneuver for the same reason (a diversionary tactic) a year later in the Quidditch World Cup, Harry thinks to himself that he is:

itching to get back on his own Firebolt and try out the Wronski Feint.....Somehow Oliver Wood had never managed to convey with all his wriggling diagrams what the move was supposed to look like

Why do Harry and Wood not recognize that he, Harry, had already successfully executed the maneuver?

The Feint appears to be a fake play to the Snitch, a sudden dive and then pull up out of the dive to draw the other Seeker's attention and direction. At the very least, of course, there are differences between a third-year player's ability vs a national team level Seeker, but Harry should have at least recognized something along the lines of "oh! I've done that, not as well or cleanly". It just seems odd that the Feint is portrayed as a move that Harry was completed confused by until he witnessed it, when he had in fact, already performed at least a close approximation of one.

NKCampbell
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    The real question is how hard is it to just explain "fly toward the ground, pull up at the last second, hope the other seeker crashes." That makes Wood look pretty terrible as a team captain. – Alarion Oct 24 '17 at 20:22
  • @Alarion - I'm assuming it's harder with broomsticks – Valorum Oct 24 '17 at 22:50

1 Answers1

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Harry didn't do a Wronski Feint, he just did a normal feint.

My feeling is that the key element of the famed Wronkski Feint is that it's basically a game of chicken with your opponent (and the ground). You pretend to have seen the snitch, you hurtle groundwards and, if you're lucky, your opponent will misjudge the pull-out and slam into the floor. Even if they don't hit the ground, pulling out early puts them at a very severe speed advantage and gives you breathing room to spot the snitch while they re-orient themselves.

Wronski Feint

The Seeker hurtles towards the ground pretending to have seen the Snitch far below, but pulls out of the dive just before hitting the pitch. Intended to make the opposing Seeker copy him and crash. Named after the Polish Seeker Josef Wronski.

Quidditch Through the Ages

By comparison, Harry tries a feint against Cho in HP3 (diving, then rising again sharply) but never in a way that puts himself or Cho in danger. There's a great big difference between doing a fake-out move at a few hundred feet up and throwing yourself groundwards at hundreds of miles per hour, finishing up a few feet off the ground.

He dived again, and Cho, thinking he’d seen the Snitch, tried to follow. Harry pulled out of the dive very sharply, she hurtled downwards; he rose fast as a bullet once more, and then saw it, for the third time: the Snitch was glittering way above the pitch at the Ravenclaw end.

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Valorum
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    right, but, the next sentences in that paragraph indicate essentially the same effect, through a combination of the dive and the capabilities of the Firebolt vs Cho's broom, she's as good as grounded as Harry rockets towards the Snitch – NKCampbell Oct 24 '17 at 14:25
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    @NKCampbell - Winning himself a height advantage because of her misjudgement doesn't make what he did a Wronski Feint. – Valorum Oct 24 '17 at 14:26
  • Nice - excellent pull from Quidditch Through the Ages – NKCampbell Oct 24 '17 at 14:47
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    Awesome answer! Clears it up since Harry wasn't trying to put Cho in the ground but just evade her, love the Quidditch Through the Ages reference. – the_SJC Oct 24 '17 at 16:11
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    I still don't get why Harry was so flabbergasted, and how Oliver failed to explain what that was. It seems risky and requires some temerity, reflexes, and dexterity, but the whole thingy looks quite straightforward from a theoretical point of view. – Clement C. Oct 24 '17 at 17:27
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    If Harry wants a name for what he did, I hear "Wonky Faint" isn't taken! :P – Obsidia Oct 24 '17 at 17:58
  • @DarrenRinger - The films are a different level of canon. Stuff happens in them that doesn't happen in the books and vice-versa – Valorum Oct 24 '17 at 20:16
  • @Bellatrix beats me to it. – sampathsris Oct 25 '17 at 04:03
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    Something that might make the difference between the two moves more apparent is the intent behind them. Especially in sports, just because you're doing roughly the same thing doesn't make it the same move. When Harry performs his move in the match against Ravenclaw, his intent is 'simple misdirection', presumably in order to make his opponent tire herself out or give him a chance to shake her off. When performing a Wronski Feint the intent is expressly to try to make your opponent crash, presumably so you can look for the snitch unhindered while the opponent recovers. – Cronax Oct 25 '17 at 08:36
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    It seems like Rowling was implying there was more to the move than she described. If Wood was using "all his wriggling diagrams" to show what the move was supposed to look like, there must have been more to it than "dive and pull out of it just in time for the other seeker to hit the ground." Now, I doubt that Rowling had any other details in mind, but wanted to convey that there was more to Quidditch than what you get at face value. – Cosmic Oct 25 '17 at 13:53
  • Maybe Wood was just bad at explaining Quidditch moves? – zwol Oct 25 '17 at 17:29