Summary
After the World Cup concludes, Harry, Hermione, and the Weasleys return to their campsite. The Ireland fans rejoice in their team's victory, and the whole camp sounds like a giant party. Eventually, they all go to sleep, still buzzing with excitement. Then, in the middle of the night, Arthur Weasley shakes the kids awake. The sounds of screaming and mayhem leak into their tent from the outside. Arthur urges Harry, Ron, and Hermione to get outside as quickly as possible. Upon exiting the tent, Harry sees a legion of wizards wearing hoods and masks over their faces. Above them, kept aloft with dark magic, floats a family of Muggles. Harry recognizes Mr. Roberts, the manager of the campsite, and guesses that the other figures are Mrs. Roberts and their two children. The cloaked and hooded wizards spin and flip the Muggles in the air, laughing as they do it.
All of the Ministry wizards set off towards the cloaked and hooded wizards in an attempt to save the Roberts family and get to the bottom of this terrorization. Meanwhile, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Fred, George, and Ginny run in the opposite direction towards the woods. Along the way, Harry realizes that his wand isn't in his pocket and that he must have dropped it near the tent. There's no time to search for it, so they keep going. They reach a point deep in the woods where they feel relatively safe and out of reach of the violence until they hear rustling nearby. Someone in the woods casts a spell with the incantation, "MORSMORDRe," and shoots a spectral green skull into the sky, with a serpent slithering into its mouth.
In a few short moments, they are surrounded by Ministry wizards. The Ministry wizards start hurling Stupefy spells in their direction until Arthur Weasley shows up and stops them, recognizing Ron in the clearing. Barty Crouch and Amos Diggory begin interrogating Harry, Ron, and Hermione, insisting that one of them must have produced the "Dark Mark." The spectral green skull is the calling card of Voldemort, but it hasn't been seen since Voldemort lost his powers fifteen years prior, while trying to kill Harry. None of the other Ministry wizards seem to buy into the idea that children could have produced the mark, so Amos Diggory proceeds into the woods, looking for a culprit. In the woods he finds Winky, cowering by a tree, clutching a wand in her hand. The wand turns out to be Harry's.
Diggory then starts interrogating the terrified house-elf, blaming her for producing the mark. He seizes Harry's wand and casts a spell to determine the last spell performed with the wand, and it is, indeed, the spell to produce the mark. Crouch berates Winky and ultimately sets her free, or releases her from his service, much to Winky's horror. Hermione, recognizing that house-elves are victims of slavery, is horrified by the whole display of cruelty and begins to question how the tradition of wizards keeping house-elves still endures. According to Ron's eldest brothers, as soon as the Dark Mark appeared in the sky, the hooded and cloaked figures disappeared. Bill thinks that they are Death Eaters, the name for Voldemort's followers, and that they disappeared because they are terrified of Voldemort. When Voldemort disappeared all those years ago, many Death Eaters disavowed their ties to his movement and publicly renounced his works, and Bill thinks that the remaining Death Eaters, those who are not in prison, fear that if Voldemort returns, they will be punished for their disloyalty.
Harry, Hermione, and the Weasleys arrive safely back to The Burrow, and Molly is beyond relieved to have them back. The morning paper, the Daily Prophet, already has a scathing report about the chaos at the World Cup, portraying the Ministry of Magic as incompetent and negligent, unable to apprehend a single suspect in the terror that took place the night before. Even though they are supposed to be on holiday, Arthur and Percy immediately report to the office after breakfast. All week long, Arthur and Percy return home after extremely long workdays, exhausted from the neverending barrage of angry citizen letters and unfavorable media coverage. Most of the scathing articles are written by a reporter named Rita Skeeter, who seems to have a reputation for salacious stories. One story she's managed to catch wind of is that Bertha Jorkins of the Department of Magical Games and Sports has been missing for weeks, and her boss, Ludo Bagman (despite urging from Barty Crouch and Arthur Weasley) has not bothered to send anyone from the Ministry to go look for her.
Meanwhile, the kids are getting ready to return to Hogwarts. Ginny tapes together her hand-me-down textbooks, Fred and George write new order forms for their clandestine prank shop, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione pack their trunks with all the supplies Molly bought them from Diagon Alley. Harry confides in Ron and Hermione about his scar hurting a few nights prior. He tells them that he sent a letter to Sirius with Hedwig, but that she has not returned yet. Hermione urges Harry to reach out to Dumbledore while Ron seems to think that Harry's scar hurting might not be a huge deal. Harry reminds them both of Professor Trelawney's prophecy from last year, that the Dark Lord would return. Harry believes that his scar hurting might indicate that the prophecy has come true.
On the morning of their departure to Hogwarts, Arthur orders three Muggle taxis to take Harry, Hermione, and the Weasley children to King's Cross Station, where they board the Hogwarts Express on the hidden platform Nine and Three-Quarters. Molly, Bill, and Charlie join them to see them off and help them onto the train. Before they board the train, Charlie hints at perhaps visiting Hogwarts at some point during the year. Bill also says he "might even get time off to come and watch a bit of it" (65) and Molly alludes to some mysterious event, saying, "It’s going to be very exciting — mind you, I’m very glad they’ve changed the rules" (66). None of them will tell any of the kids what they're actually talking about, deeming it "classified" information and assuring them that they will find out soon enough.
Arthur isn't able to join them at King's Cross because he's called into the office early in the morning by Amos Diggory. Arthur has to vouch for an old wizard named Mad-Eye Moody who attracted the attention of his Muggle neighbors when he thought a Dark wizard was breaking into his house. Arthur has to make sure that Mad-Eye isn't charged with an improper use of magic infraction.
Once on the train, Harry, Ron, and Hermione find themselves a quiet compartment. At one point, they overhear Malfoy telling his cronies Crabbe and Goyle about how his parents almost sent him to Durmstrang instead of Hogwarts. Hermione explains that Durmstrang is another wizarding school, but that it has a very bad reputation for promoting the Dark Arts rather than teaching its students how to defend against them. Throughout the ride, they are visited by their friends, mostly fellow Gryffindors. Finally, Draco and his friends stop by to ridicule Ron about his second-hand dress robes, sending Ron into a sour mood for the rest of the ride. Draco also brags about knowing what the secret event is that the older Weasleys were referring to. The train pulls into the Hogsmeade station, cold raining pouring hard on the platform. Harry, Ron, and Hermione say hello to Hagrid, who is rounding up first-years to be escorted to the castle by boat. They then board a horse and buggy and make their way to the castle.
Once all the returning students are seated in the Great Hall, the sorting begins. Hagrid brings the first-year students into the Hall, and all of them are soaking wet from the boat ride to the castle in the pouring rain, and one-by-one the new students are sorted into their respective houses. The houses are Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Slytherin. Each house is associated with a different predominant trait. Gryffindor is associated with bravery, Ravenclaw with intelligence, Hufflepuff with diligence, and Slytherin with ambition. Once the sorting is complete, the feast commences. Hermione doesn't participate in the festivities after learning that the Hogwarts kitchens are run by house-elves.
In the middle of the feast, a grizzled, scarred wizard with a wooden leg and a glass eye limps up to the faculty table and takes a seat near Dumbledore. Dumbledore introduces him as Mad-Eye Moody, the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. After introducing Mad-Eye, Dumbledore tells the students that the inter-house cup will not take place this year because Hogwarts is hosting the first Triwizard Tournament in hundreds of years. The tournament was a long-standing tradition between three of Europe's most prominent wizarding schools—Hogwarts, Durmstrang, and Beauxbatons. Each school puts forth a champion to compete in three dangerous wizarding tasks. Dumbledore explains that due to a high number of casualties in past competitions, the rules have been changed so that only students seventeen years and over can nominate themselves for the competition. Fred and George are determined to find a way to enter their names, and Ron is convinced that he too will be able to enter. Harry isn't as excited as the Weasleys, but he likes the idea of winning the tournament and impressing Cho Chang.
On their first day back to classes, Harry, Ron, and Hermione begin with Herbology. Professor Sprout teaches them to extract valuable Bubotuber pus from Bubotubers, which helps with the treatment of acne. None of the students are pleased with the smelly, dirty task of pus-extraction. After Herbology, Harry, Ron, and Hermione attend Care of Magical Creatures where Hagrid has rounded up hundreds of Blast-Ended Skrewts, which Rowling describes as "deformed, shell-less lobsters, horribly pale and slimy-looking, with legs sticking out in very odd places and no visible heads" (79). They are named "Blast-Ended" because they randomly explode at the tail, propelling them forward and burning whichever unlucky person happens to be handling them at the time. During Divination class, Professor Trelawney resumes her tradition of predicting peril for Harry. Their first unit of the year is Astrology, and Trelawney assigns them a great deal of homework charting their own astrological makeup.
After classes end, Malfoy confronts Ron in the Great Hall about a Daily Prophet article written about Arthur Weasley (although the reporter gets his name wrong, calling him Arnold Weasley instead). Rita Skeeter, the same reporter mentioned earlier in the novel as reveling in salacious (if not factual) content, writes a story about Arthur's intervention in the antics of Mad-Eye Moody, who apparently cast several loud, noticeable spells in his yard, thus attracting the attention of nearby Muggles. Arthur is portrayed as an incompetent, bumbling bureaucrat. Malfoy finishes his public humiliation of Ron by calling Mrs. Weasley "porky." Harry hurls back an insult about Malfoy's mom. As Harry turns his back, Malfoy reaches for his wand, but before he can cast a spell, Moody bursts into the room and turns Malfoy into a ferret. Moody proceeds then to bounce the ferret off the floor and up into the air until Professor McGonagall arrives, realizes the ferret is in fact a student, and turns it back into Malfoy. She urgently explains to Moody that under no circumstances are students to be transfigured as a form of punishment. Despite McGonagall's horror at the scene, all the Gryffindors seem pretty pleased with Moody's style of discipline.
The day finally arrives for Harry, Ron, and Hermione to attend Mad-Eye Moody's much-anticipated Defense Against the Dark Arts class. He walks into the room and tells the students to put away their books—they won't be needing them for today's lesson. He tells them that Professor Lupin, their previous-year Dark Arts professor, gave him an overview of their progress in the curriculum. They have mostly dealt with magical creatures. Moody tells them that, for his part, he will be teaching them how to identify and defend against curses and dangerous spells. Their first lesson is an overview of the "Unforgivable Curses," of which there are three. The Imperius curse puts the cursed witch or wizard under the complete control of its caster. During Voldemort's reign, many innocent witches and wizards were forced to do evil deeds under the influence of the Imperius curse. Moody demonstrates the curse on a spider.
Then there is the Cruciatus curse, which Neville shares with the class. Moody explains that the Cruciatus curse is a torture curse, meant to inflict unbearable pain on its target. Moody enlargens a spider and then performs the Cruciatus curse on it until Hermione, noticing Neville's anguish, begs him to stop. The final Unforgivable Curse is Avada Kedavra, the killing curse. Moody explains that there is no counter curse for Avada Kedavra, and only one wizard in history is known to have survived being hit by it. That would be Harry Potter. Harry blushes, not enjoying the extra attention dose of attention. Moody then casts the killing curse on the spider, which instantly kills it without leaving a mark. Harry recoils at seeing the curse performed, knowing that it is the same curse that killed both of his parents.
After class, they find Neville in the hallway, noticeably more flustered than usual. Moody approaches them and asks Neville into his office for a cup of tea. He apologizes for the harshness of the demonstration, but insists that it is important that they see the seriousness of the curses. Harry, Ron, and Hermione return to the common room where Hermione presents a project she's been working on to Harry and Ron. She's formed an organization called S.P.E.W. or Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare. Her goal is to campaign in favor of freeing house-elves from bondage and giving them rights to wages and wands. As she is in the process of recruiting Harry and Ron, Harry's owl, Hedwig, flies up to the window with a letter from Sirius. Harry lets her in, relieved that she's found her way home after weeks of being abroad. However, Harry is frustrated by Sirius's letter, which says very little except that Harry's scar burning is the most recent of a string of suspicious rumors that Sirius has heard about the possible return of Lord Voldemort. Sirius says that he will be flying north as soon as possible. This upsets Harry, who feels now like if Sirius is caught on his way north, it is all his fault for writing him about his scar.
As the term progresses, Harry, Ron, and Hermione realize, along with their classmates, that their workload as fifth years is considerably heavier than all their previous years. McGonagall explains that this is because their O.W.Ls are approaching. These are standardized tests for the wizarding world that determine one's job prospects following graduation. Moody's Defense Against the Dark Arts class is also increasing in intensity; in a recent lesson, Mad-Eye casts the Imperius curse on every student in the class to show them what the curse feels like and see if they are able to resist it. The only student in the class who resists it is Harry.
Hedwig returns with a letter from Sirius. Sirius commends Harry for trying to keep him away, but assures Harry that he is already in England and is well-hidden. He writes that if Harry's scar burns again, he should notify Dumbledore immediately. He also suggests that Harry use an owl other than Hedwig when he communicates with him, because Hedwig is a rather conspicuous bird, especially in England where snowy owls are not a native species.
At the beginning of October, a notice is posted at Hogwarts reminding everyone of the imminent arrival of Durmstrang and Beauxbatons at the end of the month, reigniting the anticipation of the tournament. The castle is made spotless and professors feverishly remind students of proper etiquette, anxious in case they somehow embarrass or poorly represent Hogwarts to their "rival" schools. There is a definite scent of competition in the air. When the evening finally does arrive, all of Hogwarts' students assemble outside to greet their peers. Beauxbatons' pupils arrive in an ornate, flying horse-drawn carriage. The first to disembark the carriage is Madame Maxime, the Headmistress of the school. She, like Hagrid, appears to be a half-giantess. Her pupils are shivering; they seem to be ill-prepared for the weather conditions in their delicate, silken (but stylish) robes. Maxime and Dumbledore greet each other warmly, and then she leads her students inside the castle to warm up.
Shortly after the arrival of Beauxbatons, a massive, black pirate ship emerges from the lake surrounding Hogwarts. The ship carries the Headmaster of Durmstrang, Karkaroff, along with a handful of his students. Rowling describes Karkaroff as having a "fruity, unctuous voice," and short, white hair with a curling goatee (99). He sports a fur coat and has a slightly sinister presence. Among his Durmstrang students is the Quidditch champion, Viktor Krum.
The parties from Durmstrang and Beauxbatons are ushered into the Great Hall for a welcoming feast. The Beauxbatons students take their seats at the Ravenclaw table while the Durmstrang boys feel most at home among Slytherins. In the course of the feast, Ron is starstruck not only by Viktor Krum, but by a surpassingly beautiful student from Beauxbatons who asks him to pass the platter of bouillabaisse. In the middle of the feast, Ludo Bagman and Bartemius Crouch Sr. take two empty seats at the faculty table. Hermione supposes they are there to participate in the judging and overseeing of the tournament. At the end of the feast, Dumbledore presents the Goblet of Fire, the vessel into which potential champions will submit their names to be chosen by the Goblet, an impartial judge of character and potential. Dumbledore creates a magical age boundary around the Goblet, which remains in a public space accessible by all eligible students to submit their names. They have twenty-four hours to enter their names before champions are chosen.
Fred and George attempt to enter their names after taking an aging potion, but their potion doesn't fool Dumbledore's boundary, and they end up being thrown from the Goblet and sprouting long white beards. The aging potion has to be reversed by Madam Pomfrey. All of the Durmstrang boys and Beauxbaton students enter their names into the Goblet knowing that, if they are chosen to compete, the Triwizard Tournament is a binding magical contract, and that they must compete until the end of the tournament. There is a second feast on the evening that champions are announced, but everyone is far more interested in the Goblet of Fire than in the delicious food on their plates. After the feast ends, Dumbledore ceremoniously approaches the Goblet as it prepares to shoot out three names from its flames. The first name is of Durmstrang's champion; naturally, it is Viktor Krum. Beauxbatons' champion is a girl named Fleur Delacour, the same girl Ron thought was a Veela when she asked him to pass the bouillabaisse. Hogwarts's champion is Cedric Diggory, a popular Hufflepuff Quidditch player and prefect. As Dumbledore wraps up the evening with some words of encouragement, the Hall grows silent again. It appears that the Goblet of Fire is preparing to produce a fourth name. A slip of parchment shoots out from its rim and Dumbledore snatches it out of the air and reads the name on it: Harry Potter.
Analysis
In Chapters Nine through Sixteen, several of the seeds Rowling plants in the first chapters of the novel begin to germinate. All of the secrecy surrounding the Triwizard Tournament finally pays off when Dumbledore makes the announcement at the feast, but an overarching intention behind the circumstances of the beginning of the novel emerges clearly as the tournament approaches, and that is Rowling's intention to expand her wizarding universe. In Chapter Seven, when Harry sees students from other wizarding schools at the World Cup, Rowling notes "the amazement he felt at hearing about other Wizarding schools. He supposed, now that he saw representatives of so many nationalities in the campsite, that he had been stupid never to realize that Hogwarts couldn’t be the only one" (34). This may seem, in the moment, like a throwaway observation, but Harry's realization that the wizarding world is bigger than just Hogwarts and England is actually central to the plot of the book. The Quidditch World Cup thus serves as a precursor to the introduction of Durmstrang and Beauxbatons to Hogwarts for the Triwizard Tournament.
Rowling uses sport to expand her universe because sport is inextricably tied to national and regional interests. What better way to establish that the wizarding world is truly a global enterprise than to gather wizards from all over the world to enthusiastically show their teams' colors? The World Cup also serves the narrative that Lord Voldemort is a threat to the entire wizarding world, thus putting his role as a villain into perspective for the reader. In previous books, the threat of Voldemort may seem limited to Hogwarts and his personal vendetta against Harry Potter, but in book four, it becomes clear that wizards from every corner of the world fear Voldemort's resurgence. He waits for the Quidditch World Cup to make his return known so that witches and wizards can spread the news of his return across the globe. So, making the World Cup a target for the Dark Mark is a strategic move for Rowling and Voldemort. For Rowling, it demonstrates the continuity and unity of the wizarding community, and for Voldemort, it provides him with the widest and furthest-reaching audience. By the time Durmstrang and Beauxbatons arrive at Hogwarts, the amount of potential lore and world-building elements for the Harry Potter universe is already multiplied several times over, and the reader can imagine each of these schools as having histories and traditions as rich as Hogwarts's.
Another theme that emerges in these chapters is the problematic tradition of wealthy wizarding families keeping house-elves as slave labor. Hermione perks up to this issue when she meets Barty Crouch's elf, Winky, at the World Cup and witnesses the mistreatment of Winky at the hands of her owner and other Ministry officials. Readers learn by Chapter Fourteen that all the extra time Hermione has been spending in the library this term was devoted to researching Elf-related history and politics. Hermione creates an organization called S.P.E.W., or Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare. She states to Harry and Ron that the short-term goals of S.P.E.W. are to "secure house-elves fair wages and working conditions," while the long-term goals include "changing the law about non-wand use, and trying to get an elf into the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, because they’re shockingly underrepresented" (90-91). Hermione's efforts go largely unheeded by her friends and peers, who insist that house-elves prefer to be subjugated. Hermione's cause becomes even more urgent when she learns that Hogwarts keeps hundreds of house-elves to run its kitchens and maintenance.
With this theme of emancipation, Rowling addresses some of the ill-defined ethics of her universe. However, Hermione's efforts to address the cruel enslavement of house-elves fall short of defining the ethics and politics of enfranchisement of the various magical "creatures" in Rowling's wizarding world, many of whom lack human rights and privileges. Rowling introduces a house-elf named Dobby in book two, and Dobby is a central character and a being clearly endowed with a human-like level of consciousness, self-awareness, and sense of identity. The only thing that seems to separate Dobby and other house-elves, goblins, trolls, Veelas, leprechauns, and any number of other magical beings is that they are not called humans. By focusing on the plight of house-elves, Rowling also draws attention to (while failing to address) the countless other races of magical beings that are regarded as lesser, or used as ornamentation for human witches and wizards. A perfect example occurs during the Quidditch World Cup, when the mascots for Ireland and Bulgaria are, respectively, leprechauns and Veelas. These beings, clearly anthropomorphic and containing self-awareness, intelligence, language, etc. are also seemingly owned by the teams they represent and used as a conscripted cheer squad. Furthermore, while Rowling seems to compare the plight of house-elves to institutions of human slavery in the real world, her representation is reductive and it problematizes most of her characters, many of whom—including sympathetic characters like the Weasleys and Hagrid—are wholly unreceptive to Hermione's cause. They all propose variations of the sentiment that elves "like being enslaved."
