Summary
On the morning of Boxing Day, Harry and Ron share what they overheard Hagrid say to Maxime with Hermione. Hermione is not at all surprised to hear that Hagrid is half-giant, and her reaction to giants is very different from Ron's, who warned Harry that as a race, giants are known to be extremely violent and brutal. Hermione suggests that giants cannot all be bad and blames this general perception on bigotry. Ron obviously disagrees but decides not to fight about it, because he and Hermione have just reconciled after their most recent fight. So, the three of them go to Care of Magical Creatures class together but are surprised to find a substitute teacher waiting for them instead of Hagrid. The substitute, Professor Grubbly-Plank, refuses to answer questions about Hagrid's whereabouts, but Malfoy gladly obliges. He shows Harry an article written by Rita Skeeter titled "Dumbledore's Giant Mistake," about how Hagrid is a half-giant. The article also accuses Hagrid of endangering his students' lives, being unqualified to teach, and illegally breeding Blast-Ended Skrewts.
Hagrid remains in hiding for over a week, and no matter how long they bang at his cabin door, Harry, Ron, and Hermione cannot draw him out. The three of them take a day trip to Hogsmeade, despite Hermione's suggestion that Harry spend the day with his golden egg. Harry, hoping to run into Hagrid in the village, banks on the fact that he still has five weeks to figure out the clue. While they sit at the Three Broomsticks, sipping butterbeer, Ludo Bagman rushes over to Harry to try and offer some assistance for the next challenge. Harry declines, feeling that it would be unfair, and Ludo leaves the bar, followed by a group of disgruntled-looking goblins. After Ludo leaves, Rita Skeeter walks in with her photographer, gossiping about how Ludo Bagman is being followed around Hogsmeade by a small group of angry-looking goblins. Harry, Ron, and Hermione agree that it is strange that Bagman isn't at the Ministry right now, especially at this busy time.
After Skeeter sits down, Harry shouts at her from across the bar, confronting her about her takedown article about Hagrid. Skeeter offers Harry a counter-interview, which he swiftly turns down. Hermione joins in, criticizing Skeeter's journalistic practices. Skeeter shuts Hermione down, insulting her curly hair in the process. Hermione is so incensed by the interaction that she marches Harry and Ron down to Hagrid's cabin and bangs on his door again, this time explicitly insisting that they don't care if he's half-giant and that he must open up. To her surprise, Dumbledore answers the door and invites them in for tea. Hagrid sits at his dinner table, crying. Dumbledore is there for the same reason they are: to convince Hagrid to come back to work and assure him that Skeeter's article doesn't change the way anyone feels about him. In the end, Hagrid is convinced to return to work. He tells Harry how much it would mean to him if he wins the tournament, which gives Harry a pang of guilt for procrastinating and convinces him, once and for all, to try Cedric's bathtub method for cracking the secret of the golden egg.
Harry waits until the middle of the night to take his golden egg to the prefects' bathroom, per Cedric's suggestion. He travels carefully under his invisibility cloak, with his heavy, golden egg under one arm, and his Marauder's Map in his other hand, just as an extra precaution. The Marauder's Map was a gift from Fred and George, a live map of Hogwarts and the ground which shows moving icons of everyone in the castle, so the user knows whenever someone is approaching. Harry makes it to the prefect bathroom without any issues and finds a luxurious, marble room lighted by a candle chandelier. The bathtub is the size of a small pool and includes several knobs and faucets for different types of bubbles, foams, and perfume solutions. Harry has some fun filling the tub with a combination of bubbles and foams and eventually climbs in with his egg.
For a while, he doesn't understand what to do. He opens the egg, but it still screeches, same as before. Then, nearly scaring Harry out of his wits, the ghost, Moaning Myrtle, appears and suggests that he open the egg underwater. Harry, embarassed, asks Myrtle how long she's been there; she assures him that she averted her eyes while he undressed. (Harry isn't convinced of this, because ever since he met Myrtle in his second year at Hogwarts, she's had a massive crush on him). He tries her suggestion, though, and it works. With the egg open underwater, he is able to dip his head under with it and hear a song being sung by a chorus of voices. The song itself is the clue. He surmises that the challenge will involve recovering something or someone that he will "sorely miss" from merpeople in the Hogwarts lake.
Harry makes his way back to the Gryffindor common room but notices on the Marauder's Map that Bartemius Crouch is pacing around Snape's office. His curiosity takes over and he diverts to Snape's dungeon office, but on his way down the stairs, the golden egg, slippery from the bath, falls out of his hands and bangs down the stairs, falling open at the bottom and releasing its deafening screech. Harry is stuck in the trick step, still concealed by the cloak but unable to move. Filch immediately thinks that Peeves, the poltergeist, is to blame. He concocts a theory that Peeves stole the egg from a champion which, he thinks, will be certain grounds for Dumbledore to finally banish him from the castle. Snape is next to rush onto the scene. He doesn't care about catching Peeves; he is more interested in catching the person who was just rooting around his office.
Finally, Mad-Eye Moody walks onto the staircase. He sees Harry with his magical eye and puts together what has happened. He makes thinly veiled accusations that Snape has it out for Harry and that Snape might be, himself, a former Death Eater. Moody picks up the Marauder's Map, which Snape immediately recognizes, and comes to the conclusion that the egg belongs to Harry, the Map belongs to Harry, and therefore Harry is nearby, hiding under his cloak. Moody nonetheless manages to clear the hallway of Snape and Filch, finally helping Harry out of the trick step. He asks Harry about the Map, and Harry tells him what it does and who he saw in Snape's office earlier. Moody is entranced by this information and asks Harry if he can borrow the map. Harry obliges, feeling that he owes Moody a favor, and rushes off to the safety of the Gryffindor quarters.
The next morning, Harry wastes no time filling Ron and Hermione in on the events of the previous night. Ron is convinced that Snape entered Harry into the tournament, while Hermione is more suspicious of Crouch appearing in Snape's office. Both of them have their own personal biases for suspecting one over the other—Ron, like Harry, simply hates Snape, and Hermione distrusts Crouch because of how he treats Winky, his former house-elf. Harry sends Sirius a letter filling him in on the events of the previous night, and Sirius responds by quickly asking him to send the dates of the next Hogsmeade trip.
The three friends set feverishly to the task of figuring out how Harry is going to survive for an hour underwater, but none of the books they check out from the library, even from the restricted section of the library, give them any clues, hexes, or potions that might help Harry in his next task. As the task closes in, Harry begins to resign himself to the idea that he simply doesn't stand a chance. The night before the second challenge, he takes his invisibility cloak into the library after hours and stays up all night reading about anything that might help him. The next thing he knows, Dobby is shaking him awake telling him that the next challenge starts in ten minutes. Before Harry runs to the tournament field, Dobby hands him a clump of Gillyweed, telling him that if he eats the weed right before entering the lake, that it will allow him to breathe underwater for an hour.
And just like that, Dobby solves all of Harry's immediate problems. He rushes down the field where Percy scolds him for being late. Ludo Bagman starts announcing to the huge crowd that is gathered to spectate, and the event kicks off. Harry eats the Gillyweed and wades into the water. At first, nothing happens, but then suddenly he cannot breathe. His neck sprouts gills, and he realizes that the only way for him to get oxygen is by plunging into the lake. His hands and feet become webbed, and for the time being, he is an aquatic creature. He swims deeper and deeper into the lake, unsure whether he's going in the right direction, when Moaning Myrtle appears before him, giggling. She points him towards the merpeople. After swimming for what feels like many miles, Harry hears the merpeople's song and sees an enormous statue of a merperson. On the bottom of the statue, appearing to be unconscious, Ron, Hermione, Cho Chang, and a little girl are bound and tied. Harry assumes that the little girl is related to Fleur. He cuts Ron free, but when he starts to cut Hermione free as well, the merpeople rush him, pushing him away from her and instructing him to take his hostage and leave.
Harry doesn't know what to do. He cannot bring himself to leave his friends underwater. Then, Cedric swims over and frees Cho. He tells Harry to take Ron and leave, since the others are on their way. Viktor Krum swims up as a half-transfigured shark and Harry helps him cut Hermione loose. Fleur still hasn't showed up, so Harry cuts her sister loose, threatening the merpeople with his wand so that they back off. He struggles to bring Ron and Fleur's sister to the surface, but they eventually make it. Harry finishes well over the time limit, behind Cedric and Krum. Fleur never made it to the statue, having been overcome by Grindylows. Harry scores a 45/50 because the judges determine that his heroic acts deserve high marks, despite the extra time it takes him. Cedric scores a 47, Krum a 40, and Fleur a 25. Now, Cedric and Harry are tied for first place.
Sirius sends Harry a letter with a specific meeting location in Hogsmeade Village, off the beaten track. But before they can go to Hogsmeade, they have a double potions class with Professor Snape. This is the first lesson with Snape that Harry has had since he dropped the golden egg down the stairwell near Snape's dungeon. As they enter the potions class, Malfoy and his Slytherin friends laugh over a magazine article published by Rita Skeeter titled, "Harry Potter's Secret Heartache." They give Harry and Hermione the article to read, which claims that Harry and Hermione were exclusively dating until Viktor Krum arrived at Hogwarts. The article claims that Hermione is attracted to fame and suggests that she may even be using love potions to attract Harry and Krum. Ron and Harry's initial reaction is to be outraged, but Hermione finds the whole thing rather funny and pathetic. She does wonder, however, how Rita Skeeter knows some of the private details that she includes in the article. For example, Krum actually did invite Hermione to Bulgaria over the summer, and he did, in fact, tell her that he's never felt this way about a girl before. Hermione says that when he told her these things, they were completely alone.
Before they can discuss the matter further, Snape lurks over to their workspace and snatches the article out of their hands; he then proceeds to read it aloud to the class. Snape threatens Harry with truth potion, saying that if he ever breaks into his private stores again, he will slip him a dose and interrogate him, despite the fact that the potion is illegal. Karkaroff interrupts the class, appearing distressed, and demands Snape's attention. He shows Snape something on his forearm and says, “Do you see? It’s never been this clear, never since—” (209), but Snape cuts him off, obviously uncomfortable with talking to Karkaroff in front of students.
The next day, Harry, Ron, and Hermione meet Sirius with a bag full of food on the outskirts of Hogsmeade. Sirius, an Animagus, can transform into a black dog at will, and when they meet him, he is in his dog form. He leads them to a dark cave further away from the village, where he has set up a camp with Buckbeak, the Hippogriff. Sirius turns back into a man and discusses recent events with Harry, Ron, and Hermione as he digs into the chicken they brought him from the dining hall. Sirius is highly intrigued by the fact that Crouch fired Winky. He tells the kids all about Barty Crouch's history in the Ministry of Magic. Before Cornelius Fudge, Crouch was a favorite prospect for Minister. At the height of Voldemort's power and after his downfall, Crouch took a hard line against Death Eaters, often sending them to Azkaban without trial and authorizing Aurors to kill them on sight. During his justice rampage, Crouch's own son, Barty Crouch Jr., is found with a group of Death Eaters. Jr. is allowed a trial, but in the end is swiftly sent to the Dementors, where Sirius claims he died after a year of imprisonment.
Sirius doesn't quite understand why Crouch forfeited his seat at the World Cup, or why he isn't present at Triwizard events. He doesn't trust Ludo Bagman, nor does he trust Snape or Karkaroff; at this point, there are no sure conclusions. Sirius tells Harry that he will be close by, staying around Hogsmeade with Buckbeak. Harry hates that Sirius is putting himself at so much risk for his sake, but promises that he will send him owls with any new information that comes up.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione visit the Hogwarts kitchen in order to give Dobby his gifts (they bought him many pairs of socks in Hogsmeade) and procure some extra food to send to Sirius and Buckbeak. Dobby is ecstatic about his socks and the elves and he more than obliges their request for food. Winky, however, is in a bad state. She sits in front of the fireplace and pounds butterbeer; the kids hardly recognize her because she's let her clothes turn black from dirt. Dobby explains that Winky refuses to accept the fact that Crouch is no longer her master. Harry takes this opportunity to question Winky about Crouch. Winky panics when she hears that Crouch has fallen ill, but Hermione reassures her that his illness is unconfirmed. Then Winky blubbers on about how she keeps her master's deepest, darkest secrets, but she refuses to elaborate on what those secrets are. Near the end of the conversation, Hermione gets the three of them pushed out of the kitchen by trying to convince the elves to seek their own freedom.
Hermione is still dealing with the fallout from Skeeter's article about how she broke Harry's heart; the following morning she receives a deluge of hate mail, including one envelope full of undiluted Bubotuber pus, which causes her to break out in painful boils. Hermione becomes increasingly mystified by how exactly Skeeter is able to listen in on private conversations. She must be using some sort of magic, but she is banned from Hogwarts' grounds, so it must be advanced magic.
At the start of the summer term, Ludo Bagman gathers the champions in Hogwarts' Quidditch field, which has been converted to a labyrinth. Bagman explains that the final challenge will be simply to capture the Triwizard Cup in the center of the maze. Of course, there will be many magical creatures, curses, and various other obstacles between the champions and the center of the maze. Bagman dismisses the champions, but Krum asks Harry if they can have a word in private. Krum and Harry walk to the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Harry has no idea what Krum wants to talk to him about, but figures it is something serious. But once they are out of earshot of the others, Krum asks Harry about the nature of his relationship with Hermione. Harry assures Krum that he and Hermione are strictly friends and that they have never been more than friends. Krum is skeptical, but eventually accepts Harry's assurance.
As they walk around the edge of the forest, Harry hears something large rustling in the trees and bushes. Suddenly, Bartemius Crouch Sr. emerges from the forest looking extremely ill and ragged. His clothes are frayed, he looks unwashed, and he's babbling to himself. Harry manages to momentarily snap Crouch out of his daze, and when he does, Crouch begs to speak to Dumbledore. He warns that Voldemort is back in power and vaguely mentions his own son, and a grave mistake he made. Harry asks Viktor to stay with Crouch while Harry sprints off to the castle to find Dumbledore. Dumbledore returns to the woods with Harry and finds Krum stunned on the ground and Crouch nowhere to be found. Hagrid and Moody run out shortly after, and Karkaroff after them. Dumbledore sends Moody to find Crouch. Karkaroff accuses Dumbledore of collusion and blames him for Krum being stunned. Hagrid slams Karkaroff into a tree, but Dumbledore quickly puts a stop to that and sends Hagrid back to the castle to escort Harry to the Gryffindor common room.
Harry enters Dumbledore's office and takes a seat. Dumbledore tells Harry to wait there while he surveys the grounds where Mr. Crouch was found with Fudge and Moody. When Harry is left alone in the office, he notices a mysterious silver light emanating from a half-open cabinet across the room. He goes to inspect it, and inside the cabinet he finds a large, stone bowl with runic carvings around the rim. Inside the bowl, an ethereal semi-liquid swirls around. Harry peers into the substance and begins to see a scene, as though looking down on it through a skylight, of a courtroom. When he leans closer to the substance, he suddenly feels himself uprooted from the room and falling slowly through a thick blackness until he lands in a chair in the courtroom next to a slightly younger Dumbledore.
Harry realizes, when Dumbledore fails to acknowledge him, that he has found himself in some sort of memory or flashback. A few minutes in, a young Karkaroff is marched into the courthouse by Dementors and strapped to the chair in the center of the room. Crouch presides over the case. Karkaroff offers the names of several Death Eaters in exchange for his freedom from Azkaban. He promises that he is reformed and full of remorse for his former affiliations. A younger Mad-Eye Moody, seated next to Dumbledore, expresses his skepticism to Dumbledore under his breath. The first few names Karkaroff gives are either already apprehended or dead. Then, Karkaroff gives a few names that the Ministry wizards seem highly interested in.
The courtroom scene dissolves into a new courtroom scene. This one feels much more lighthearted, except for Crouch, who is his usual stoic self. A young, fit Ludo Bagman is ushered into the courtroom and led to the center chair; he, however, is not strapped to it. At this time, Bagman still plays for the English national Quidditch team, and it seems that the jury members are all rooting for him. He stands accused of feeding classified information to a Death Eater, but he claims he had no idea that the person he was talking to, who happened to work for the Ministry, was affiliated with Voldemort. In fact, given his contact's Ministry position, Bagman thought he was helping the Ministry. Bagman is unanimously acquitted.
The scene dissolves into a third, dismal court scene. It is the hearing of Barty Crouch Jr., over which Barty Crouch senior presides. Jr. stands accused of torturing the Longbottoms, both Aurors, alongside the Lestranges. Barty Crouch Jr. begs and pleads with his father, insisting that he had nothing to do with it, but they are all nonetheless sentenced to a lifetime in Azkaban prison. Mrs. Crouch faints when Mr. Crouch hands down the verdict.
Dumbledore nudges Harry out of the memory bowl, which he explains is called a "Pensieve." It is a place where Dumbledore can deposit his excess memories so that he can go back and analyze them more closely, as a third-party observer. Harry asks Dumbledore a series of questions about what he saw in the Pensieve, and Dumbledore answers them to the best of his ability. Neville's parents were Aurors, Dark-wizard hunters for the Ministry, and they were tortured into insanity by the Lestrange couple. He cannot confirm whether Barty Crouch Jr. was actually involved. One of the names Karkaroff mentions in the memory is Snape, and Dumbledore admits that Snape is a former Death Eater, but he pledged his allegiance to Dumbledore prior to Voldemort's downfall and turned spy. Finally, Harry tells Dumbledore about his scar. Dumbledore theorizes that the scar hurts Harry when Voldemort is closeby or when he experiences a powerful surge of hatred. Dumbledore explains that Harry and Voldemort are forever bound by his scar, that failed killing curse from nearly fifteen years ago. Dumbledore asks Harry to keep the information about Neville's parents to himself and dismisses him from the office.
Analysis
In these latter chapters of the book, Rowling continues to develop major themes like salacious journalism through the use of Rita Skeeter, bigotry in the magical world, memory, and the notion of forgiveness and second chances, especially as the reader learns more about the pasts of some of the seemingly innocuous Ministry wizards like Bagman and Crouch. Rowling also makes use of plot devices common to the mystery genre like foreshadowing and red herrings. One clear plot device that Rowling employs in Chapter 26, "The Second Task," is that of deus ex machina, which translated from Latin means "God from the machine." The phrase is used to describe an event in a plot that, by pure coincidence, or an "act of God" or machination of some divine intervention, resolves a seemingly unresolvable problem or removes a seemingly insurmountable obstacle.
In the case of The Goblet of Fire, Rowling deploys deus ex machina on the morning of the second task of the Triwizard Tournament; Harry, after weeks of poring over books about sea creatures, sea excursions, hexes, potions, and magical devices, finds absolutely nothing that will help him survive for an hour underwater. All the alternatives that Ron and Hermione come up with are too advanced and dangerous for his level of magic. The night before the task, Harry stays up all night to no effect. However, when he wakes up in the morning, Dobby is standing beside him with the perfect solution in his hands: Gillyweed. Because of Dobby's procurement of Gillyweed, Harry is able to breathe underwater and complete the task. This stands out as deus ex machina especially because Dobby is such a random character to have found the solution. It would seem less like an act of God had Hermione presented Harry with a solution, because she had been helping him research the task for weeks. Though there are clues that suggest someone must have broken into Snape's office and stolen the Gillyweed, that is yet unconfirmed, and Dobby fails to reveal his source to Harry.
When a critic points out a deus ex machina in a work of fiction, it is often regarded as a negative criticism, because some believe it indicates a poorly-thought-out plot which relies too heavily on an unlikely coincidence to solve a dilemma. Of course, coincidence, as in reality, has its place in fiction. But when the coincidence seems all too convenient to the resolution of a plot thread, readers and critics may feel cheated, as if all of the suspense they felt was for nothing.
Rowling expands on the previously established theme of bigotry in the magical world by including a disparaging article by Rita Skeeter, exposing Hagrid's half-giant genealogy. When the article about Hagrid is released, Ron explains to Harry, who wasn't raised in the magical world, that the general perception of giants is that they're dangerous and violent. Hermione, however, feels differently. When Ron brings up the subject with her, she says, "honestly, all this hysteria about giants. They can’t all be horrible. . . . It’s the same sort of prejudice that people have toward werewolves. . . . It’s just bigotry, isn’t it?” (175). Ron has a less open mind about it, but Hermione's stance further aligns with her character's development as someone concerned with social justice issues in the wizarding world i.e. her advocacy for house-elves. Her comparison of giants with werewolves should strike a relevant chord with Harry and Ron given that one of their favorite professors and most important allies, Lupin, is, himself, a werewolf. However, Rowling fails to completely delineate the nuances of race and species in her universe; for example, it's revealed that Fleur's grandmother is a Veela, but the portrayal of Veelas at the Quidditch Cup suggests that they are considered "less than human" and their citizenship status is unclear. Elves, for example, cannot carry wands. It seems that many of the privileges of citizenship in the wizarding world are limited to humans, but if participation in wizarding society is not limited to humans, then a lot of questions arise about what is and is not, as Hermione says, bigotry. Perhaps it would take Rowling an entirely separate book to delineate the nuances of identity politics in her wizarding universe, but it seems that Hermione's side plot of establishing an elf advocacy organization is an attempt to reconcile a small fraction of these inconsistencies.
