Summary
The book begins in the village of Little Hangleton, with a story about an old, spooky mansion atop a hill. The story takes place fifty years prior to the main narrative of the book and centers around the mysterious deaths of the Riddle family. The Riddles are a wealthy family who are disliked by their neighbors, but mostly keep to themselves. One day, their maid finds Mr. and Mrs. Riddle and their son Tom dead in the drawing room. Everyone in Little Hangleton, including the police, suspect that the murderer is their groundskeeper, a man named Frank, because he is the only person with full access to the house. But the medical examiner's unprecedented report sets Frank free; according to the medical examiner, other than being dead, the Riddles were all in perfect health. He finds no sign of poison, trauma, illness, or anything remotely resembling an explanation of their simultaneous deaths.
So, Frank returns to his caretaker's cottage on the Riddle's estate. The new owner of the property never occupies it, claiming only to keep it for tax purposes; however, he keeps Frank on the payroll for maintenance purposes. Frank lives on the estate for fifty years, occasionally enduring harassment from locals, who still think he is a murderer. Local kids often break into the grounds and cause mischief, so when Frank sees a light on in the Riddle house, he assumes that local kids are the culprits. Instead, as he creeps up to the second floor, he hears the hushed voices of grown men. They sound sinister. One is called Wormtail. Wormtail sounds anxious and fearful. The other, clearly in charge, is called Lord Voldemort. Voldemort freely discusses how he recently murdered a woman and plans, soon, to murder again. His next victim is a boy named Harry Potter.
Determined to inform police about what he's heard, Frank turns to sneak out of the house. But when he turns, he is faced with an enormous snake. Terrified, he is sure that the snake will kill him, but oddly enough, it passes him by without so much as a second glance. It seems to be following the strange hisses of Lord Voldemort. Then Frank overhears Voldemort tell Wormtail that his snake, called Nagini, has informed him that there is a "Muggle" man standing out in the hallway, eavesdropping on their conversation. Voldemort tells Frank to join him and Wormtail in the room. Frank defiantly tells Voldemort that he will inform the police of what he heard. Voldemort assures Frank that he will do no such thing and with a flick of his wand, kills him with a powerful curse. As Frank falls to the ground, dead, Rowling writes, "two hundred miles away, the boy called Harry Potter woke with a start" (6), thus beginning the story of the Goblet of Fire.
Rowling devotes Chapter Two, "The Scar," to the expository work of filling readers in on the world of Harry Potter up to this point in the series, introducing Harry's best friends, Ron and Hermione, and the fact that they all attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Rowling also reminds readers about Harry's godfather, Sirius Black, who was introduced in book three; before Black, Harry had no magical family members in whom he could confide.
As soon as Voldemort kills Frank in Chapter One, Harry's lightning-shaped scar, (which he got as a baby, when Voldemort attempted to kill him), starts to burn. Previously, Harry's scar only burned when Voldemort was close by. Harry is concerned that his burning scar indicates that Voldemort has somehow regained his power. He decides to write a letter to his godfather, Sirius, asking whether curse scars sometimes twinge, even years after they form. So, Harry writes his letter and sends it off with his pet snowy owl, Hedwig.
Harry writes his godfather from Number 4 Privet Drive, the home of the Dursleys, his only living family. Aunt Petunia (his late mother's sister), Uncle Vernon, and their son Dudley revel in making Harry's life miserable during his summers away from Hogwarts. The Dursleys are all Muggles—non-magical people—and bristle at the slightest mention of magic. Harry goes down to breakfast the morning after writing Sirius a letter and, much to his uncle's displeasure, a letter arrives for Harry from the Weasleys, Ron's large magical family. The letter is written by Ron's mother, Molly, and addressed to the Dursleys. She asks their permission to take Harry to the Quidditch World Cup and host Harry at their home in the countryside for the remainder of the summer.
Vernon is embarrassed by the letter. The postman brings it up to their door, personally, because he thinks it is so funny that someone would put so many stamps on a single envelope (because the Weasleys don't understand Muggle mail). Vernon debates whether he should let Harry go to the Cup. On the one hand, if Harry goes, it will unburden the Dursleys of him for the rest of the summer. On the other hand, Vernon hates contributing to Harry's happiness in any way. In the end, Vernon decides to let Harry go for fear of some kind of magical retaliation if he doesn't. As soon as Harry enters his bedroom, he finds a small, hyperactive owl bearing a letter from his friend Ron. The letter tells Harry that the Weasleys will pick him up from Privet Drive at 5 o'clock the following day.
All throughout the next day, the Dursleys nervously survey their street, anxiously awaiting the Weasleys' arrival. Five o'clock comes and goes, and Harry, himself, grows a bit nervous. None of them have any idea how the Weasleys plan on transporting themselves to Privet Drive. They have had cars in the past; Arthur, Ron's dad, enchanted his last car to be able to fly, and fly it did, until Harry and Ron flew it straight into a magical willow tree. Finally, a loud crash comes from the Dursleys' fireplace. The Weasleys have traveled in by Floo powder, a magical substance that allows wizards to appear in other people's fireplaces.
Unfortunately, the Dursleys' fireplace is plugged. So, much to the horror of the Dursleys (who are already sufficiently horrified by the Weasleys' presence and method of travel), Molly blows a hole in Dursleys' wall through which she and her family can climb through to the living room. Ron's older twin brothers, Fred and George, run upstairs to grab Harry's trunk. Arthur tries to make conversation with the Dursleys, but they are too stunned to speak. Then, one by one, the Weasleys and Harry vanish back to the Weasleys' house using Floo powder. Arthur goes last so he can fix the Dursleys' living room with magic. He also has to reverse an engorgement charm on Dudley's tongue. Fred and George, always pranksters, intentionally drop some bewitched candies on the floor before they leave, hoping Dudley will eat them. He does, and they make his tongue grow to the size of a python. Harry absconds in the midst of the chaos, happy to be free of the Dursleys for the foreseeable future.
When Arthur arrives back at the burrow, he's furious at Fred and George for dropping their trick candy on the ground for Dudley to find and eat. When Molly overhears Arthur scolding the twins, she starts screaming at them. Molly is fed up with Fred and George's pranks, especially after she finds order forms for dozens of prank magical items they've invented and plan to sell at Hogwarts. Both boys did poorly on their exams last year, and Molly is worried that they will have limited prospects by the time they leave school. But all Fred and George want to do is open a wizarding joke shop, called Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, and they don't need great exam scores for that.
Harry also meets Ron's oldest brothers, Bill and Charlie, neither of whom he's ever met before despite having heard a lot about them. Charlie works with wild dragons in Romania, and Bill procures treasure for Gringotts bank. While Fred and George are being scolded, Harry, Ron, and Hermione steal away upstairs with Ron's little sister Ginny, and they catch each other up on their summer escapades. Ron's older brother Percy, a recent Hogwarts graduate and stickler for rules, pokes his head out to complain about the noise they're making. Percy is working on a report for his boss at the Ministry of Magic, Barty Crouch. Molly cooks dinner furiously, still frustrated at her twin sons. But by the time the food is on the table, tensions seem to have simmered down. Everyone heads to bed, bellies full, excited to wake up and head to the Quidditch World Cup the following morning.
The following morning, Arthur and Molly wake the kids up bright and early. Most of them are still half-asleep. Molly finds more of Fred and George's prank toffee and throws it all away. Percy, Bill, and Charlie are able to sleep in because they can Apparate to the Cup. Apparition is when a wizard can teleport from one place to another at will, but it requires a special permit and years of practice. The rest of the kids must rely on something called a "portkey." A portkey is a magical object that initiates teleportation for the person who holds it. They are left in a public place and usually take the form of a commonplace items so that non-magical people aren't tempted to pick them up. The portkey that Harry, Hermione, and the Weasleys use takes the form of an old boot on a woodsy hill in Devon, England, a short walk from the Weasleys' burrow. At the portkey, they meet Cedric Diggory, a classmate of theirs at Hogwarts, and his father, Amos, who also works at the Ministry of Magic. Cedric is rather shy, but his father, Amos, is very proud of him and his Quidditch abilities. Amos brags about how Cedric beat Harry and the Gryffindors in Quidditch the previous year, and Cedric can only cringe in embarrassment. After the short, awkward conversation, the Weasleys and the Diggorys grab a hold of the portkey and transport to the World Cup.
The campgrounds outside the World Cup stadium are absolutely packed with witches and wizards. Bulgaria and Ireland face off for this year's Cup, and Ireland is the favorite to win; however, the crowd is abuzz over a talented young seeker on the Bulgarian team by the name of Viktor Krum who is only eighteen years old. In order to hide themselves from wandering Muggles, the magical crowd sets up tents. Though they may look like normal, cramped tents from the outside, the interiors are fully furnished homes. After entering the campground and setting up camp, Ludo Bagman wanders over to the Weasleys' tent. Ludo is the head of the Ministry's Department of Magical Games and Sports. He's the one who procured the tickets for the Weasleys in the first place.
Instead of doing his job, Bagman is walking around the campsite collecting bets on the match. Mr. Weasley places a small bet, one Galleon, that Ireland will win. Fred and George place all their savings—around thirty-seven Galleons—on Ireland winning the match, but Viktor Krum catches the Snitch. Mr. Weasley asks Ludo Bagman about a woman named Bertha Jorkins who works for the Department of Magical Games and Sports and has been missing for several weeks. Arthur suggests sending someone out to look for her. Bagman dismisses Arthur's concern, assuring him that Bertha has a terrible memory and sense of direction, and that she is simply lost and will show up at the office any day now. However, the reader will remember that Bertha Jorkins is the name of the woman Voldemort admits to having murdered in Chapter One.
As Bagman lounges with the Weasleys drinking tea, Barty Crouch Sr., head of the Ministry's Department of International Magical Cooperation (and Percy's boss) shows up to their tent in a huff. He's looking for Bagman, who ought to be helping with the chaotic task of organizing such a large gathering of witches and wizards. Crouch briefly discusses a Ministry business matter with Arthur and then extracts Bagman to go and conference with the Bulgarian Ministry. The Cup is about to start, and Harry, Hermione, and the Weasleys get ready to take their seats.
Harry, Hermione, and the Weasleys take their places in the top skybox; they are the first spectators to arrive there. A house-elf named Winky holds a seat for her master, Barty Crouch. Harry makes conversation with Winky, who knows his friend Dobby, also a house-elf. Harry helped Dobby gain his freedom from the Malfoy family in The Chamber of Secrets. Then the skybox starts to fill up. Ludo Bagman, who also will be the announcer of the event, shows up. Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic, arrives. The Malfoys, a rich, legacy Slytherin family arrive as guests of Fudge. Their son, Draco, is Harry's school rival. Mr. Weasley and Mr. Malfoy exchange a few tense words before the match begins.
The first order of business for the World Cup is opening ceremonies, performed by each team's respective mascots. Bulgaria's mascots arrive first. They are Veela. Rowling writes, "Veela were women . . . the most beautiful women Harry had ever seen . . . except that they weren’t—they couldn’t be—human" (41). Veela resemble sirens in that their dancing (as opposed to singing, with sirens), fills their audience with an overwhelming desire to approach them and impress them. The Irish mascots follow—a small army of leprechauns flying around the field, showering the crowd with gold coins. When the crowd is sufficiently hyped, the teams file onto the field.
What follows is Quidditch at a level Harry has never witnessed before. The players are so much faster than his peers at Hogwarts, and as the score gap widens between Ireland and Bulgaria (with Ireland leading) the play becomes increasingly brutal. The match is relatively short, and Fred and George's prediction is spot-on; Viktor Krum catches the Snitch, but Ireland's lead is such that the points he earns by catching it are not sufficient to win the game. Ireland wins, and Fred and George stand to collect a nice sum of money from Ludo Bagman before they all head back to their campsites.
Analysis
With Goblet of Fire, Rowling departs from her previously established method of starting a Harry Potter installment. The second and third books begin immediately in the mode of exposition, focused on explaining who Harry is and contextualizing him within the broader magical world. Goblet of Fire is different because its first chapter focuses on Lord Voldemort's origins rather than on Harry's, thus marking a new phase in Harry's battle against the forces of evil. Previously, Voldemort has been too weak to operate as an independent character, always requiring a human host like Professor Quirrell or Ginny Weasley to carry out his dastardly plans. But now, after fifty years, Voldemort returns to his childhood home, kills his Muggle groundskeeper, and plots a terrorist attack on the Quidditch World Cup.
These first chapters are, however, full of exposition and world-building (and re-building). When describing the death of the Riddles, Rowling purposefully omits magic as the cause, instead portraying the case as puzzling as it would seem to non-magical people. She writes, "The police had never read an odder report. A team of doctors had examined the bodies and had concluded that none of the Riddles had been poisoned, stabbed, shot, strangled, suffocated, or (as far as they could tell) harmed at all. In fact (the report continued, in a tone of unmistakable bewilderment), the Riddles all appeared to be in perfect health—apart from the fact that they were all dead" (2). Of course, Frank could not be convicted when no cause of death is found, and he continues to live on the Riddle estate, totally unaware that the former inhabitants were wizards. When Frank creeps up on Lord Voldemort and Peter Pettigrew (or "Wormtail"), Rowling maintains the close-third perspective on Frank, a non-magical person with no context to the magical world or wizarding terminology. As Frank eavesdrops, Rowling writes, "Frank stopped trying to clear out his ear. He had distinctly heard the words 'Ministry of Magic,' 'wizards,' and 'Muggles.' Plainly, each of these expressions meant something secret, and Frank could think of only two sorts of people who would speak in code: spies and criminals" (3). By separating the magical and non-magical worlds through this use of free-indirect discourse, Rowling demonstrates how a "Muggle" or non-magical person would react when confronting magic.
Furthermore, Rowling's world-building demonstrates how the magical community manages to hide itself in plain sight, thus contributing to this sense that magic is everywhere, right under the noses of unsuspecting Muggles. A prime example of this notion lies in the fact that portkeys, magical objects used to transport wizards from one place to another via teleportation, are often made to look like commonplace objects like "an old newspaper, an empty drinks can, and a punctured football" (30). This theme that "magic is everywhere," if only Muggles knew where to look for it, contributes to the culture of immersive fandom around the series. Arthur's fascination and sympathy for Muggles contributes to the sense that some witches and wizards are invested in the cause of preserving Muggle lives and bridging the magical and non-magical communities.
Rowling demonstrates the clear connection between Voldemort and Harry when, at the end of Chapter One, Voldemort unleashes a killing curse on the groundskeeper, and Harry's lightning-shaped scar burns on his forehead. It is previously established in the series that Harry's scar is from when Voldemort tried to kill him when he was still an infant. Now, the scar reacts when Voldemort is close by or when he unleashes a certain magnitude of power (like a killing curse). Rowling establishes dramatic irony in these first chapters by showing Voldemort and Wormtail discussing the murder of Bertha Jorkins in Little Hangleton. Later, when Arthur and Percy discuss the disappearance of Bertha Jorkins from the Ministry's Department of Magical Games and Sports, they both indicate that Ludo Bagman is perhaps being negligent by choosing not to send another Ministry agent to go looking for her. Later, when they meet Ludo at the Cup, Arthur asks him about Jorkins and Ludo assures him that she simply has a poor memory and bad sense of direction. However, the readers know for a fact that she has been killed by Voldemort. Ludo's lack of concern flags him as a possible co-conspirator with Voldemort; however, his characterization as a boyish, happy-go-lucky fan of Quidditch softens any suspicion around him and leaves the reader open to the possibility that he simply doesn't think Jorkins is any danger.
Rowling leaves plenty of additional clues and foreshadowing in these first chapters to indicate future action and intrigue. For example, in Chapter One, Voldemort refers to his "faithful servant at Hogwarts" (5) without any further elaboration. Snape is a usual suspect for Death Eater-related activity at Hogwarts, but without a name, readers can only speculate; this omission contributes to a sense of tension in the book, because the reader isn't certain who, on Hogwarts' faculty, can and cannot be trusted. Another instance of foreshadowing occurs when Bagman, Crouch, and Arthur and Percy Weasley reference some kind of event occurring at Hogwarts in the upcoming school year. Bagman seems eager to share the information with the students, but Crouch manages to usher him along before he lets anything slip. So, by the end of these first eight chapters, the reader knows that some grand event organized by the Department of Magical Games and Sports is happening at Hogwarts, that Voldemort has a mole planted in Hogwarts' faculty, and that Bertha Jorkins, who is presumed merely lost on assignment, is actually dead at the hands of Voldemort himself.
