Summary
After the Goblet of Fire produces Harry's name as the fourth champion, a tense and confused silence falls over the Great Hall. Sharp whispers echo from the faculty table, and then Dumbledore finally calls Harry up from the Gryffindor table. Harry is highly confused. He didn't, after all, submit his own name to the Goblet. Entering the competition was a nice fantasy, but not something he seriously considered. Now all eyes are on him. When he enters the small chamber where the other three champions are standing, he feels exceptionally small and unprepared. Since there are normally only three wizards in the Triwizard Tournament, as suggested by the name, none of the other champions realize why Harry is there right away. Then, Ludo Bagman bursts into the room, excited to explain the unprecedented events to the other champions.
Fleur is particularly upset by this new bit of information. Shortly after Bagman enters, a small crowd of faculty follows. Dumbledore, Snape, McGonagall, Madam Maxime, Karkaroff, and Bartemius Crouch. Dumbledore calmly asks Harry if he put his name in the Goblet, and Harry assures him that he did not, nor did he ask an older student to put his name in for him. Snape is convinced that Harry entered his own name for attention. Karkaroff and Madame Maxime are upset that Hogwarts has two champions and their schools only have one. McGonagall believes Harry could not have breached the age line and trusts Dumbledore's judgment in believing Harry did not ask an older student to submit his name. Moody enters the room and shares his theory that someone must have entered Harry's name as part of a plot to harm him. He alludes to Karkaroff's past as a dark wizard. Crouch confirms that since the Goblet produced Harry's name, he is entered in a magical contract and must compete.
Once they settle the matter of Harry competing, Crouch reads off the rules, which are simple. The champions must not seek or accept help in their tasks. They are not informed of the tasks ahead of time. They are all exempt from final exams due to the taxing nature of the competition. Once they are dismissed, Harry and Cedric walk off towards their common rooms together. Cedric good-naturedly asks Harry how he managed to enter his name, but Harry insists that he didn't enter it. Cedric remains winkingly skeptical. Harry looks forward to discussing the matter with Ron and Hermione, who he thinks surely will believe him. When he enters the Gryffindor common room, he is bombarded with fanfare. His housemates wrap him in a Gryffindor banner and fill him with food and butterbeer. Harry is uncomfortable with the celebration but unable to escape his peers' enthusiasm. He cannot find Ron and Hermione, but once he manages to break free from the common room, he finds Ron sitting on his bed, a strange, strained smile on his face. Ron congratulates Harry, coldly. Harry realizes that Ron thinks he entered his own name and quickly insists that he has no idea how his name got in the Goblet. Ron doesn't believe him and is angry that Harry excluded him from his plan to enter his name. Ron wants very badly to compete in the tournament and feels betrayed that Harry would enter without telling him how to enter, too. Ron closes the curtain around his four-poster bed and shuns Harry for the rest of the night.
The morning after being named champion, Harry wakes up to find Ron already gone for breakfast. Harry weighs his options regarding breakfast; he really doesn't want to hang around the Gryffindor common room to be fawned over by his housemates for something he doesn't even want, which is to compete in the tournament. He also doesn't want to go down to the Great Hall, where he is afraid of all the unwanted attention, some positive, but mostly negative, that he would receive from his peers. Hermione, solving all of his problems, greets him at the entrance of the common room with a stack of toast and suggests that they take a walk around the grounds. Harry gladly accepts this alternative. Hermione entirely believes Harry didn't put his name in the Goblet, but also believes Moody's theory that whoever did enter his name is trying to hurt him. She insists that Harry write a letter to Sirius updating him on what is happening at Hogwarts.
Harry finds in the course of attending his lessons that the only people rooting for him in the entire school are fellow Gryffindors—every other house shuns him, feeling that he entered himself into the competition as a cheap way of increasing his fame and lobbying for even more attention than he usually has. Unfortunately for Harry, it seems that his best friend in the world, Ron, also believes this. During a double potions lessons, Harry finds all the Slytherins wearing badges that urge fellow students to support Diggory, claiming he is the "real" Hogwarts champion, and that "Potter Stinks" (120). When Malfoy calls Hermione a Mudblood, Harry draws his wand and he and Malfoy cast curses on each other simultaneously. Harry's curse ricochets and hits Malfoy's friend in the face, causing him to break out in boils. Malfoy's curse misses Harry and hits Hermione, causing her front teeth to grow at a rapid rate. Both students rush off to the hospital wing.
Later in potions class, much to Snape's displeasure, Harry is pulled out of class for a press appearance for The Daily Prophet. All the champions assemble for a photo op and short interview with Rita Skeeter. Skeeter singles Harry out for a private interview in a broom closet. She interviews him and uses her "Quick-Quotes Quill" to take notes. The quill sensationalizes and plainly makes things up, misquoting Harry and misrepresenting his mannerisms. He grows increasingly frustrated with Skeeter until Dumbledore finally finds him in the closet and ends the interview, drawing Harry out for photos.
After the wand-weighing and photo op, Harry returns to the Gryffindor common room where Ron, still acting coldly towards him, turns his attention to a letter on his bed from Sirius Black. Sirius explains in the letter than he cannot say everything he wants to say in writing and that he needs to speak to Harry face-to-face. Sirius asks if Harry can be available to speak privately by the fire in Gryffindor Tower on the morning of the 22nd of November.
After Skeeter's article is published in The Daily Prophet, Harry's life at Hogwarts becomes even more difficult as his peers ridicule him for things he didn't even say. Skeeter's article portrays Harry as arrogant and pity-seeking, writing that he said, "Yes, sometimes at night I still cry about them, I’m not ashamed to admit it. . . . I know nothing will hurt me during the tournament, because they’re watching over me" (127)—"they" being his parents, who died when he was just an infant. Harry feels frustrated and utterly misrepresented. The article reinforces Ron's theory that Harry entered the competition to garner more attention for himself. Harry seizes upon the opportunity to get away from campus and visit Hogsmeade with Hermione, but much to Hermione's annoyance he insists on wearing his invisibility cloak to avoid the attention of his peers.
While they are sitting at a table in the Three Broomsticks bar in Hogsmeade, Mad-Eye Moody spots Harry, despite the fact that he is hidden beneath his invisibility cloak. Mad-Eye's glass eye is able to see through cloaks. Moody and Hagrid walk over to where Hermione appears to be sitting alone and greets both her and Harry. Hagrid whispers to Harry to meet him at his cottage at midnight, tells him to wear his invisibility cloak, and without any further explanation, saunters off with Moody. Harry doesn't understand why Hagrid would want him to come to his cottage so late, and he's concerned that the meeting will make him late for his meeting with Sirius, but he figures it must be important if Hagrid is asking him.
Later that night, Harry steals away to Hagrid's house where he finds that Hagrid is meeting Madame Maxime. Hagrid beckons Harry to follow them down a path along the perimeter of the Forbidden Forest into a small clearing concealed by trees. There are flames and commotion erupting from the clearing, and then Harry realizes what he is seeing—four dragons are being rassled by dragon handlers, one of whom is Ron's brother, Charlie. Charlie admonishes Hagrid for bringing Maxime, who will obviously tell Fleur about the first challenge. The reason Hagrid wants Harry to see the dragons is so that he'll be better prepared to face the first challenge, and despite having few concrete details, he knows that he definitely has to get past the dragon and not necessarily defeat it in combat. Of the four dragons, the fiercest is the Hungarian Horntail, who, as its name suggests, has a cluster of spikes on the end of its tail.
Harry rushes back to the Gryffindor common room to make his meeting with Sirius. Luckily, he finds the room clear of any stragglers, and around one o'clock, Sirius's head appears in the fireplace, much like Amos Diggory's head appeared in the Weasley's fireplace early on in the book. Sirius looks healthier and cleaner cut than the last time Harry saw him. His time in the southern hemisphere has served him well. Harry vents to Sirius about everything that is going on, about how everyone at Hogwarts hates him, and how Ron isn't speaking to him. Sirius listens to Harry and assures him that everything will be alright, but warns him to be on the lookout for anyone acting suspiciously, especially Durmstrang's headmaster, Karkaroff, who Sirius tells Harry is a former Death-Eater. Karkaroff was imprisoned in Azkaban at the same time as Sirius and was released because he made a deal with the Ministry; Karkaroff gave the names of several other Death-Eaters in exchange for his own freedom. Sirius seriously doubts that Karkaroff is reformed, as he claims to be. Harry's chat with Sirius is cut short just as Sirius is about to tell him a simple spell to get past a dragon, because Harry hears footsteps coming down to the common room. It turns out to be Ron, who asks Harry who he is talking to. Harry retorts that it's none of Ron's business and the two trade jabs until they both shut themselves inside their four-poster beds and go to sleep.
The morning after his chat with Sirius, Harry fills Hermione in on everything his godfather told him the night before about Karkaroff. Hermione is much more concerned with the immediate threat he's facing, which is a dragon. Together they pore over books about dragons in the library, hoping to figure out what Sirius meant when he said that Harry could use a simple spell to get past it, but they find nothing. One morning before class, Harry spots Cedric in the hallway. Harry decides that he has to tell Cedric about the dragons, since he would be the only champion left unaware (assuming Maxime and Karkaroff tell their champions). When Harry tells Cedric that the first challenge involves dragons, Cedric doesn't understand why he's sharing information; Harry simply figures that it's the fair thing to do. Mad-Eye Moody, overhearing their conversation, asks Harry to join him in his office. He commends Harry for doing the right thing and telling Cedric about the dragons. Moody then gives Harry a big hint on how to bypass the dragons, telling him to play to his strengths and make sure he has what he needs. Moody alludes to somehow using his Firebolt flying broom to fly past the dragon.
After meeting with Moody, Harry realizes that he needs to master the summoning spell that he's been struggling with in Flitwick's charms class. He recruits Hermione to help because she has, of course, already mastered the spell. Together, they practice in empty classrooms and the Gryffindor common room until Harry gets a hang of the spell. His plan is to summon his broom from the Tournament field, but he has lingering doubts about whether he'll be able to summon his broom from so far away.
On the morning of the challenge, Harry's nerves almost overwhelm him. When he reaches the champions' tent, he's reassured to see that his competitors are just as nervous as he is, though they show it in different ways. Cedric is practically green, Fleur can't stop pacing, and Viktor is grimacing even deeper than usual. Ludo Bagman joins them in the tent with a small sack containing the breeds of dragon they could possibly face. Each challenger picks from the sack. Harry, picking last, is stuck with the most dangerous dragon, the Hungarian Horntail. He is also assigned to go out last. He listens as each of his challengers, one-by-one, bypass the dragon and capture the golden egg from under it. He cannot see their methods from his place in the champions' tent; he only knows that they all succeed. When his turn comes, he marches out onto the field and successfully summons his broom.
Once he's on the broom, his nerves melt away. He is as comfortable as if he were playing Quidditch. He zooms over the dragon, feints and jukes, eventually luring the dragon away from its stash of eggs. Harry flies low to the ground, scoops up the golden egg, and flies to safety. The judges give him high marks (except for Karkaroff, who gives him a four out of ten) and he finishes the first event tied for first place with Viktor Krum. Ron and Hermione greet Harry by the champions' tent. Ron and Harry make up after weeks of not talking to each other. Ron realizes that whoever entered Harry's name into the competition might really wish to hurt him. After they reconcile, the two are back to being the best of friends, and Harry is relieved.
Ron and Harry merrily make their way back to the Gryffindor common room, where they are greeted with whoops and applause for Harry's impressive performance in the tournament. After some pressing from his peers, Harry opens up the golden egg that he captured from the first challenge which, according to Ludo, contains a clue to the next challenge. However, when he opens up the egg, it simply screeches a high pitched, unbearable screech that causes everyone in the common room to cover their ears. The egg itself is completely hollow. Seamus Finnigan suggests that maybe he has to face a banshee in the next challenge.
As Harry and Ron head down to dinner after a full day of classes, Hermione intercepts them and urges them to follow her out of the Hall towards an undisclosed location. They oblige, and she takes them to a part of the castle neither of them has been to before. They reach a painting of a bowl of fruit, Hermione tickles the pear which turns into a door handle, and opens the painting into a vast kitchen full of house-elves, working away at dinner for the students. The first elf to greet them is none other than Dobby, who Harry met in his second year at Hogwarts. Harry helped free Dobby from the Malfoys, and since then Dobby has been trying to find paying work. He had no luck until recently, upon visiting Dumbledore. Now, he and Winky, Crouch's former house-elf, work in Hogwarts' kitchen. Dobby accepts a wage and one day off a month. Winky, still beside herself with grief, refuses to accept payment for her work. All of the other house-elves shudder when Dobby discusses the benefits of freedom and wages. Hermione leaves the kitchen more determined than ever to encourage the elves to seek their own freedom and fair wages.
At the end of a transfiguration class, Professor McGonagall makes an announcement. She tells her students, including Harry and Ron, who she just finished scolding for playing with trick wands, about the Yule Ball, which is a traditional dance to accompany the Triwizard Tournament. The news of a school dance is especially alarming to Harry, as he learns that the champions and their dance partners have to open the evening with a dance. Harry insists to McGonagall that he doesn't dance, but McGonagall tells him he has no choice. So, Harry and Ron begin to fret over who they will take to the Yule Ball. After some time, Harry works up the courage to ask Cho Chang, but he waits too long, and by the time he asks, she's already going with Cedric Diggory. The same night that Harry is rejected by Cho, Ron blurts out an invitation to Fleur Delacour, who worldlessly rejects him with nothing more than an expression of disgust.
Meanwhile, Hermione has a date to the dance but refuses to tell Ron with who she's going because Ron is so rude to her about it. Ron asks Hermione to go to the dance with either him or Harry, refusing to believe that she actually has a date, but she assures him that she does. Before Ron manages to offend Hermione enough for her to storm out of the common room, Hermione encourages Harry to start looking for clues about what the next challenge will be. The hint lies somewhere in that screeching, golden egg, but Harry rests on his laurels and pushes the task further and further into the future. Finally, with the Yule Ball rapidly approaching, Harry asks Parvati Patil to go to the ball with him. She says yes, and Harry then asks her best friend, Lavender Brown, if she would go with Ron. Lavender already has a date, but Parvati says that she'll ask her twin sister Padma if she would go with Ron. It seems, finally, that the boys have dates to the dance.
Sirius responds to Harry's most recent letter with congratulations and a few words of caution. Harry has successfully made it through the first task, but two more dangerous tasks remain, and Sirius warns him against complacency. Harry comments to Ron and Hermione that Sirius almost sounds as paranoid as Mad-Eye Moody, but Hermione agrees that he shouldn't wait much longer to start figuring out what secrets the golden egg hides.
Christmas morning comes, and Harry is startled awake by Dobby standing over his bed holding a present of hand-knit socks. Harry unceremoniously gives Dobby a ratty old pair of socks from his trunk, clearly not having prepared for Dobby to give him a gift. Ron gives Dobby the hand-knit sweater that his mom sent him, and Dobby leaves the dormitories overjoyed. When evening comes, the boys dress in their fancy-dress robes. Ron tries his best to remove the frilly lace from his, but ends up fraying the seams. He and Harry meet up with the Patil twins, and Harry and Parvati split off to where the other champion couples are waiting to enter the Great Hall. Harry is shocked to find Hermione on the arm of Viktor Krum, looking quite radiant in her gown. Ron is beside himself. Throughout the course of the night, Ron's temper flares and he accuses Hermione of "fraternizing with the enemy" (170).
Hermione, when she isn't fighting with Ron, seems to have a delightful time with Viktor, who apparently had been working up the courage to talk to her in the library for weeks. Harry and Ron both prove to be disappointing dance partners to the Patil twins. They wander off into the grounds, where they overhear Snape and Karkaroff murmuring about the Tournament, but Snape spots them before they hear anything of note. Percy attends the Yule Ball in Crouch's stead, citing overwork and stress at home.
On their way back to Gryffindor common room, Cedric stops Harry in the hall and indicates that he wants a private word, so Ron continues towards the common room. Cedric tells Harry to take the golden egg into the bathtub with him in order to figure out the next clue. Cedric gives Harry the password to the prefect bathroom, which has a nice private tub he can use. When Harry enters the Gryffindor common room, Ron and Hermione are yelling at each other from across the room. Hermione expresses that if Ron doesn't like seeing her with another guy at the dance, he should ask her first next time and stop treating her as a last resort. Harry agrees, but given that he and Ron just mended their friendship, decides to keep his thoughts to himself.
Analysis
One aspect of the series that remains consistently inconsistent is the wizarding public's opinion of Harry Potter. In book one, he is a beloved hero, a prodigal son to the wizarding world, loved for his claim to fame: bringing the terrible Dark Lord to his knees and eliminating him as a constant threat to innocent witches and wizards everywhere. In the second book, Harry is demonized by his classmates for the suspicion that he is the heir of Slytherin and is using the Chamber of Secrets to hurt his fellow classmates. In the third book, it's not so much Harry's reputation that is called into question as it is that of his godfather, Sirius Black, whose face is plastered throughout the wizarding world as a fugitive after he escapes Azkaban prison, where he serves a sentence for the alleged murder of thirteen people in a public square. Both sensational claims—that Harry is the heir to Slytherin and that Sirius murdered all those people—turn out to be totally false; Rowling has therefore nurtured a consistent skepticism towards public opinion and mainstream media, in this case, The Daily Prophet newspaper. In The Goblet of Fire, Rowling's levels her most explicit critique of sensational reporting with the character Rita Skeeter, who revels in salacious stories and unfounded gossip.
Skeeter is introduced early in the book; she first aims her quill at Arthur Weasley's reputation, writing about how he bungled the Ministry's response to the Death Eater attacks at the Quidditch World Cup. She misquotes her subjects, misrepresents events, and frequently insults the people about whom she writes. Skeeter makes her way to Hogwarts before the start of the Triwizard Tournament so that she can write short profiles on the champions and report on the event, but at the wand-weighing ceremony, Skeeter singles Harry out and interviews him privately in a broom closet. Rowling describes Skeeter's "Quick-Quote Quill" as being "long and acid-green," (123) a description that prepares the reader for Skeeter's writing to have a corrosive, malicious effect on those about whom she writes. Immediately, Rowling demonstrates the disparity between what is actually said and what Skeeter's quill records. When she says, "my name is Rita Skeeter, Daily Prophet reporter," her quill instead scribbles, autonomously, the words, "attractive blonde Rita Skeeter, forty-three, whose savage quill has punctured many inflated reputations—" (123). When Dumbledore finally finds Harry and Rita in the closet and puts a stop to the interview, he references a recent article Skeeter wrote that includes a description of Dumbledore as "an obsolete dingbat" (124). Skeeter defends her article, insisting that she merely meant to relate that some of Dumbledore's ideas are a tad outdated.
The effect of Skeeter's interview with Harry is immediate and wholly negative. She fabricates every quote and portrays Harry as an arrogant boy, overwhelmed with lingering grief over his parents. Despite the fact that Harry does still live with grief over the death of his parents, Skeeter entirely mischaracterizes his grief; Harry doesn't talk about his parents at all to her, but still, she quotes him as saying, "I suppose I get my strength from my parents. I know they’d be very proud of me if they could see me now. . . . Yes, sometimes at night I still cry about them, I’m not ashamed to admit it. . . . I know nothing will hurt me during the tournament, because they’re watching over me. . . ." (127). Harry's grief about his parents relates to lingering question marks about the circumstances of their deaths, in addition to the fact that he never really got to know them at all, but Rita portrays it as something Harry cries about every night simply to add to her inaccurate portrait of him as a young, self-involved celebrity. Students at Hogwarts, already upset with Harry for allegedly entering his name in the Goblet of Fire, start quoting the article back to him as a form of torment. Skeeter's work serves to demonstrate the volatility of public opinion and how it can be used to manipulate circumstances and assassinate character. Skeeter's influence becomes increasingly apparent as the novel progresses, and the ways in which she manipulates the truth will continue to have increasingly consequential effects on the plot.
Another overarching theme of The Goblet of Fire, coming-of-age and maturity, manifests in the increasing complexity of Ron and Hermione's relationship, which is most explicitly demonstrated by the events of the Yule Ball. Ron fawns over Viktor Krum from the moment he arrives at Hogwarts, and even before he arrives at Hogwarts during the Quidditch World Cup. However, when Hermione shows up to the Yule Ball with Viktor, Ron cannot hide his jealousy. He suddenly hates Viktor and accuses Hermione of "fraternizing with the enemy" (170). Hermione is quick to point that Ron is the one with a Viktor Krum action figure in his room. By the end of the chapter, Ron and Hermione are shouting at each other from across the Gryffindor common room about their relationship. Hermione tells Ron that if he doesn't like seeing her with someone else, “next time there’s a ball, ask me before someone else does, and not as a last resort!” (175). Over the course of the chapter, Ron begins to see Hermione as not just a friend, but a possible romantic partner. A running gag throughout the chapter is Ron noticing that Hermione is, in fact, "a girl." But Hermione doesn't find this revelation funny. Though she seems to return Ron's affection, especially as the series goes on, Ron's treatment of Hermione during and approaching the Yule Ball underscores the generally dismissive attitudes both Ron and Harry exhibit towards Hermione.
