With the books finished and the movie madness set to simmer after the adaptations of the final two novels, the next logical step for Harry Potter fans is obviously to play Quidditch -- more precisely, Muggle Quidditch.

Quidditch, a game played on broomsticks high above the ground in the Potter series, has caught on at college campuses -- albeit it without the flying. Alex Benepe and Xander Manshel, two juniors at Middlebury College in Vermont, wrote the Intercollegiate Quidditch Rules and Guidebook their freshmen year.

"We just started it as a fun and creative thing to do. We had no idea it would take off like this," Benepe wrote in an e-mail.

More than 100 colleges and universities, including Penn State, have joined the Intercollegiate Quidditch Association roster (IQA).

Matt Gardner, (junior-immunology and infectious disease) is a member of The Three Broomsticks, a Penn State Harry Potter club, and is the group's Quidditch match coordinator. Gardner said Penn State's version of the game is still a work in progress. Although it has played some Quidditch matches, Penn State has not established any official Quidditch games that follow the Middlebury guidelines.

"What we can do really all depends on the amount of people we get to play," he said, adding the game's rules change depending on the amount of players who show up for each match.

Despite the ragtag organization, Gardner has ambitious plans for the sport. He'd eventually like to start a yearly tournament and implement some new rules once the activity becomes more popular.

"As for now, when a person gets hit by a bludger [a heavy ball] they are supposed to sit down for three seconds," he said. "What would be ideal is if we could get a lot more people to play and when someone gets hit, they get subbed out."

Apparently, Gardner's troubles aren't unusual. The IQA's Intercollegiate Quidditch Guidebook offers advice to potential team coordinators.

"Sometimes on the first day you literally need to walk around dorms and drag people out of bed," the guidebook reads. "The fact is, Quidditch is something that has to be seen to be believed, because it sounds pretty silly on paper."

Although Quidditch may not be popular at Penn State, at Middlebury, it's an established club that draws a crowd.

Benepe credits the popularity of his school's club to media coverage and to other schools starting their own clubs.

"The next obvious thing was to have these teams compete against each other. Plus its really cool to see Quidditch players in school colors," Benepe wrote.

During Middlebury's spring break, students from the school went on a college tour to bring their version of the game to other campuses in the Northeast, including Amherst College, Princeton University and Columbia University.

Both Middlebury's and Penn State's adaptations try to stay as true to the book as possible, prohibiting the ability to fly, of course.

The 39-page Intercollegiate Quidditch Guidebook goes into strenuous detail about the game's rules, detailing everything from broomsticks to penalty zones, but for now Penn State's rules are relatively easy to follow.

"Chasers run up and down the field carrying a dodgeball in one hand -- two hands is considered traveling," Gardner said. "The beaters use these awesome bats that we made out of foam and hit smaller rubber balls."

With hula-hoops for goalposts and a makeshift game of monkey in the middle for the seeker, this game has a lot of things going on, just like J.K. Rowling's magical sport.

Middlebury is currently first on the IQA roster, but hot on their heels is Vassar College.

Perhaps a testament to Middlebury's status as the sport's American originators, Lucy Weaver, a freshman at Vassar, heard about her own school's team through friends at the Vermont college.

"I'd actually heard we had a team from some friends who go to Middlebury, but I had the hardest time finding the organization until a campus e-mail went out about the sport," Weaver said.

Vassar's team, the "Butterbeer Brewers," a playful spin off of Vassar's sports teams the "Brewers," only practices when it has an upcoming game. Weaver said the team began after Woodrow Travers, a Vassar upperclassman who was good friends with Benepe in high school, organized a group to play.

Although second on the IQA, Vassar doesn't have too much of a commitment to the sport because so far it has only played Middlebury.

"Hopefully at next fall's intercollegiate world cup there will be more teams," Weaver said.

As for Penn State, Gardner sees a magical future for Quidditch on campus.

"Once we have the rules down pat and the interest in the books has faded, it may turn into just a Quidditch club," he said.