"And here come the Slytherin team, led by captain Flint. He's made some changes in the line-up and seems to be going for size rather than skill -"
-- Lee Jordan (PA15)
Marcus Flint was a Slytherin, Chaser and captain of the Slytherin Quidditch team for Harry’s first three years at Hogwarts.
Harry thought he looked like he had troll blood. He wasn’t beyond a bit of cheating to win a match (PS11, CS7, CS10, PA13, PA15). Flint made Draco Malfoy the new Seeker when Lucius Malfoy donated new Nimbus 2001 broomsticks to the Slytherin team (CS7).
Skills
Skilled Quidditch player - Lee Jordan describes him as "flying like an eagle" (PS11).
Other canon notes and references
- Flint, along with Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle, attempted to sabotage Harry in his Quidditch match against Ravenclaw by pretending to be Dementors (PA13).
- His underhand tactics seem to be notorious, as Harry noticed that Madam Hooch directed her request for a "nice fair game" particularly at him (PS11).
- The fouls we see him commit include colliding with Harry on purpose (and almost knocking him off his broom) when he had seen the Snitch (PS11), and crashing into Angelina after she had scored and trying to claim he hadn't seen her (which Fred retaliated to by throwing his Beater's bat into the back of Flint's head) (PA15). When everyone was distracted by Harry's jinxed broomstick, he took advantage by "seizing the Quaffle and scoring five times without anyone noticing" (PS11).
- He tried very hard to protest the outcome of that match, still "howling" twenty minutes after the end that Harry had nearly swallowed the Snitch, not caught it (PS11).
Commentary
Etymology
"Marcus" - from Latin Marcus, Roman name related to Mars, Roman god of war.
"Flint" - a type of stone that strikes a spark.
Both names seem to be puns concerning Flint's rivalry with Gryffindor Oliver Wood (stone strikes a fire, burns the wood).
The name is also reminiscent of Captain Flint, a legendary fictional pirate.
Notes
Played in the Chamber of Secrets movie by Jamie Yeates (IMDB). Yeates wore large, crooked and obviously false teeth to make Flint look more trollish, as Harry described him in the books.
Lexicon lists of:
"Flint"
An honest-to-goodness error in the books has come to be called a "flint," after Marcus Flint, the Slytherin Quidditch captain who JKR inadvertently included in one book too many, making him an "eighth year" student. The term was coined by one of the members of the Harry Potter for Grown Ups list. Remarkably few genuine flints exist, considering the vast scope of the story.
Q: In the first book you said Slytherin house Quidditch captain was sixth year Marcus Flint. If there are only seven years of Hogwarts, why is he in the third book?
Rowling: He had to do a year again! :-) (Sch1)
Though Rowling said this was because Flint repeated a year, the error was corrected in later editions of the first book by making Flint a fifth-year rather than a sixth-year.
Pensieve (Comments)
Tags: cheating Gryffindor-Slytherin rivalry large rivalry ugly violence violent Quidditch match