#my harry potter meta
It seems that Mrs. Hooch is the usual referee for all Hogwarts Quidditch games. You’d think putting a Head of House as referee for a game would be against the rules since they could interfere by favoring one team over the other, even if the teams are none of the Head’s own house. There must have been a good reason for Dumbledore to interfere in the Hufflepuff/Grynffindor match.
I think the broom hexing from Harry’s first game, and the refereeing in his next game are directly related, as one being the consequence of the other, and that Harry was just a proxy between 2 competing Dark Lord servants, Quirrell and Snape (in appearances only).
Gryffindor vs Slytherin
Quirrell hexes the broom, from an earlier order from Voldemort, or on his own initiative to impress his master. Voldemort couldn’t have possessed Quirrell at that moment since Harry didn’t feel scar pain. Snape, which status to the Dark Lord still read as “Double agent working at Hogwarts to spy on Dumbledore”, is supposed to be in the confidence of Dumbledore in order to learn his secrets. Quirrell hexes the broom to trigger a reaction from Snape. If Snape saves Harry it shows that Snape wants to keep Dumbledore confidence by saving his protégé, remaining in Dumbledore’s confidence and everybody else’s. If Snape doesn’t intervene it means Snape really wants Harry dead, since everyone would know that Snape is good in dark arts and would have been able to save Harry.
Gryffindor vs Hufflepuff
Snape refereeing means that he will be away from the school for a while that day, which would give plenty of time to Quirrell to go test the trapdoor and try to get in the maze, undisturbed by his rival, considering that the maze was a setup to trap Quirrell!Mort and pull Voldemort out of Quirrell’s head and save him while catching Vapormort at the same time. If Hermione can trap animagus Rita in an enchanted glass jar that prevent any means of escape, I’m confident that Dumbledore could easily come up with some enchanted glass jar in which to trap Vapormort.
Snape refereeing would also show the whole school that Dumbledore is “doing something” by setting up a referee no one would want to cross in order to prevent further broom hexing and who’s also knowledgeable in the dark arts used in that sort of hexing.
This is how Quirrell!mort interprets Snape refereeing, which shows he didn’t know that the main motive would have been to encourage him to go into the maze with Snape out of the way. Quirrell!mort also goes further in his wrong interpretation of the hexing episode by telling Harry that the teachers thought that Snape was trying to stop Gryffindor from winning. We can suppose that the teachers were playing dumb in front of Quirrell by pretending that Snape is the baddie. Which completely makes no sense, since Snape was refereeing the next game. You don’t put the bad guy in charge of the game when he was he one hexing a player in the previous. But Quirrell!Mort never seemed to have caught that contradiction, which might have given him a hint that there was a major conspiracy against him at school.
When Harry catches the Snitch early, Snape seems to be pretty pissed off about it by spitting on the ground, again not because Gryffindor won, but because he was counting on a good long Quidditch game to give more free time to Quirrell!Mort to check out the maze and hopefully make it through, therefore he’ll have to continue to play the baddie with Quirrell and pretend he also want to steal the stone.
