History Literature / HarryPotterAndTheGobletofFire

* SweetsOfTemptation: Dudley is forced to go on a diet when his school runs out of uniforms that fit him. When the Weasleys arrive at the Dursley house to pick up Harry for the summer, Fred and George "accidentally" drop several candies in brightly colored wrappers on the floor, and Dudley picks one up and eats it. It turns out to be a magical prank candy of their own creation called a Ton-Tongue Toffee that makes his tongue turn purple and swell to four feet long. Mr. Weasley angrily calls them out for this because he knows they did it on purpose, knowing Dudley wouldn't be able to resist it because he was dieting.

* AbnormalDentalGrowth: During their fight, Malfoy uses ''Densaugeo'', a hex that makes the victim's front teeth grow rapidly, on Harry, but accidentally hit Hermione instead, which she had no problem undoing.

** This book marks the debut of an organization Hermione founds that is called the "Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare", but [[EmbarrassingInitials that abbreviates to SPEW]]. Ron is more than happy to refer to it by its initials, much to Hermione's chagrin.
** When the trio talks about the goblins at one point, Ron mockingly asks Hermione whether she would start an organization called "Society for the Protection of Ugly Goblins" (or S.P.U.G. for short). Hermione is not amused.

** When Harry reads Rita's article about the Champions of the Triwizard Tournament, he notes that the names of Fleur and Viktor were misspelled.
* AccidentalPassenger: Played with. When Harry and Cedric touch the Triwizard cup, they find themselves unexpectedly transported to a graveyard. [[spoiler: This is especially tragic for Cedric, who is casually murdered by Voldemort.]]

** Arthur Weasley is clearly annoyed at Fred and George slipping Dudley one of the Ton-Tongue Toffees, but seems to want to keep it from their mother, showing he didn't think it was that bad (the fact that they slipped Dudley the toffee to get back at him for bullying Harry might have been the reason why Arthur didn't think it was so bad).

** Neville also joins in the laughter when the twins manage to sneak him a Canary Cream that causes him to sprout feathers. It helps that the feathers shed quickly and the spell is harmless.

* AlasPoorVillain: Harry is horrified to find out that [[spoiler:Bartemius Crouch, Jr.]] was subjected to a Dementor's Kiss.

* AlcoholInducedIdiocy: Arthur theorizes this is why the Death Eaters pulled their stunt at the Quidditch World Cup. He thinks they all got drunk during the post-game victory celebration and decided to have a bit of fun (and rub it in the faces of the Wizarding community that they were still out there and free even after Voldemort's fall).

** When using Polyjuice Potion, one assumes any physical deformities that might be on the person they are impersonating. [[spoiler:Barty Crouch, Jr. loses an eye and one of his legs, and takes on many scars, while using Polyjuice Potion to impersonate Mad-Eye Moody.]]
* ArcVillain: [[spoiler:Barty Crouch, Jr.]], though it's subverted because [[spoiler:his master, the series-wide main villain Voldemort, makes his triumphant return in the end]].

* AsleepInClass: Harry is bored to sleep by Professor Trelawney's lecture about the effects that Mars is supposedly going to have on them. He has a [[spoiler:vision of Voldemort directing Peter Pettigrew to kill Barty Crouch, Sr]]. He is woken to find Professor Trelawney convinced that he is having some sort of prophetic vision, blissfully unaware that while she's right that he did have a vision, it has nothing to do with Divination, but rather [[spoiler:being connected to Voldemort's soul as a Horcrux]].

** [[spoiler:Barty Crouch, Sr. is found in the woods insane and begging to speak to Dumbledore but then vanishes and is revealed to have been killed.]]
** Tom Riddle, Sr. and his parents were seen by the residents of Little Hangleton as elitist snobs (an impression that was confirmed in ''[[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheHalfBloodPrince Half-Blood Prince]]''), but they certainly didn't deserve to die at the hands of a burgeoning Dark wizard.

* BadassTeacher: Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody. [[spoiler:The imposter acts the part extremely well, and the real one would have been one, too, if he'd been able to do the job.]]

** Barty Crouch, Sr. defends Winky when Amos Diggory catches her with Harry's wand in the woods, and accuses her of summoning the Dark Mark. He points out by accusing Winky, Amos is accusing Crouch by proxy, since house-elves wouldn't know the Dark Mark unless a human taught them. [[spoiler:Then he fires Winky because it was her idea for Crouch, Jr. to be allowed to attend under an Invisibility Cloak, and she lost track of him due her fear of heights, allowing him to get free long enough to grab Harry's wand.]]
** [[spoiler:Barty Crouch, Jr., after showing Neville the Cruciatus Curse, invites him to his office for a cup of tea, praises him for Herbology, and lends him a book on Mediterranean water plants. It's all a ruse to smuggle information about the second Triwizard task into Harry's dorm, so that Harry won't drown.]]

* BatmanGambit: [[spoiler:Barty Crouch, Jr.]] tries several to give Harry the solution to the second Triwizard task covertly:

* BigBrotherInstinct: When Harry emerges from the lake after the second task, Percy frantically races into the water to help Ron (ignoring his protests). Also an example of HiddenDepths.

* BiggerOnTheInside: The tents that Arthur borrowed for the World Cup are this, and it's implied most of the others seen are as well.
** Moody's trunk is also revealed to be large enough to keep [[spoiler: the real Mad-Eye]] prisoner in for almost an entire academic year.

* BlatantLies: In order to make Hagrid look bad to Rita Skeeter, Malfoy claims that in addition to being attacked by Buckbeak, Crabbe got a bad bite from a Flobberworm, which mainly eats lettuce, ''has no teeth'', and has an X (boring) classification [[http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Flobberworm from the Ministry for Magic.]]
* BloodMagic: Voldemort needs an enemy's blood to take corporeal form again. It could be any enemy, really, but he picks Harry. He does so because he can finally remove the protection of Lily's love that prevented him from killing Harry and defeated him twice, and he thinks only the blood of his greatest enemy can make him come back even more powerful than he was when he had fallen. [[spoiler:Terrible mistake -- as it turns out, it also tethered Harry to life as long as Voldemort lived and thus helped to ensure his own downfall.]]

** Averted by [[spoiler:Barty Crouch, Jr]]. Not only does he [[spoiler:masquerade as Moody for nearly ten months and fool Dumbledore, Moody's oldest friend]], but every aspect of his plan goes off without a hitch ... until ''Voldemort'' screws it up by not [[VillainBall immediately killing Harry]], as [[spoiler:Crouch]] had [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim assumed he would]].

** The organizers of the Triwizard Tournament have a good reason for only allowing of-age students to participate. It ensures that the selected champions will have the necessary magical knowledge to complete the highly dangerous tasks. Their reasoning is proven sound when Cedric and Fleur can use the Bubble-Head Charm to breathe underwater in the second task, whereas Harry has to use Gillyweed stolen from Snape's potion supply (given to him by Dobby, no less) because he doesn't know about that spell. Conversely, Fred and George are rightly angered that Cedric, who is in the same year as them and has had the same exact education (though his school scores were almost certainly better), is allowed to put his name in the Goblet of Fire when they aren't just because his seventeenth birthday happened to fall before the entry deadline and theirs didn't.
** Harry is mildly annoyed when Hagrid, Moody ''and'' Sirius tell him off for going to talk with Krum near the Forbidden Forest, where Crouch appeared and disappeared, and someone Stunned Viktor. Mainly, he's insulted on Krum's behalf because both Sirius and Hagrid suspect that Krum was trying to sabotage Harry before the Third Task. He points out that Krum just wanted to clarify if Harry and Hermione were an item, and that if Krum wanted to attack him then the other guy would have done so already. Not to mention that the person that attacked Krum and kidnapped Crouch waited until Harry was gone, meaning Harry wasn't the target. Hermione, despite liking Krum, also admits that the adults have a right to be concerned. She says that they don't know who put Harry into the tournament, and if the mysterious person wants him dead, then they will take the best possible opportunity.

* CannotKeepASecret: The Triwizard competitors are supposed to be kept in the dark about their upcoming tasks, so of course Hagrid invites Harry and Madame Maxime to see the dragons being prepared for the first task. He later almost lets slip that Harry had prior knowledge of the dragons.

* ChekhovsGun: The series [[ChekhovsGun/HarryPotter has its own page.]] [[spoiler:Barty Crouch, Jr.]] even tries planting one -- [[spoiler:the book about magical water plants he gives Neville]] -- nearly five months before Harry needs it. This backfires when Harry, [[GenreBlindness not knowing he's in a book]], has no reason to remember it.

** The entire plot of the book turns out to be a scheme by [[spoiler:Barty Crouch Jr.]] to deliver Harry Potter to a certain place at a certain time via Portkey. Left unanswered is why [[spoiler:Crouch Jr.]] couldn't have just kidnapped Harry, or turned any old object in his office into a Portkey and arranged for Harry to pick it up. (Dumbledore does this in the next book when he has to get Harry and the Weasleys out of Hogwarts and later the Ministry in a hurry.)

* CoolTeacher: Moody is gruff and demands a lot from the students, but he endears himself to Harry and several of the others for being upfront with them about the dangers of the Dark Arts and what they need to do to prepare themselves, putting bullies like Malfoy in their place, and showing kindness to students like Neville when they need it. [[spoiler:Subverted, however, with TheReveal about who Moody ''really'' is.]]

* CovertPervert: Several characters are implied or stated to be a bit less innocent than they seem at first glance.

* DrunkOnMilk: After Mr. Crouch sacks her, Winky has taken to [[DrowningMySorrows drowning her sorrows]] with Butterbeer, which is weak enough to be available to teenagers but is apparently [[AlienCatnip much stronger for House Elves.]]

* DudleyDoRightStopsToHelp: Harry nearly ruins his chances of winning the second task by trying to rescue everyone trapped in the lake, because he didn't realize they weren't really in danger. As Ron points out, everyone in charge has been going to great lengths to ensure that no one dies during this iteration of the tournament, so it was obvious they wouldn't just leave the hostages underwater if the champions didn't get there in time. Fortunately, Dumbledore finds this commitment to saving people as a sign of high moral fiber, and Harry gets full marks, despite finishing well after the time limit.

** The only sensible thing Fudge does in the whole book is question Percy about the letters he's receiving from Crouch, Sr. since it's odd that Crouch, [[{{Workaholic}} a man known for never missing a day of work]], has suddenly taken ill for months [[spoiler:due to Voldemort placing him under the Imperius Curse]].

*** Both she and her husband are mentioned earlier by Sirius when he talks about a gang of Slytherin students who formed Snape's social circle when he was a student at Hogwarts, though they aren't mentioned by their first names. (Nor does he acknowledge that he and Bellatrix are first cousins, given their mutual antipathy.)

** This is also the first time that Dumbledore mentions having a brother.

* EmbarrassinglyDresslikeOutfit: Wizards traditionally wear robes (think priest robes) and under normal circumstances this is not seen as unmanly. However in the [[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheGobletOfFire fourth book]] there's going to be a dance and they need ''dress robes'', or robes for formal occasions. Most of them look OK, but poor Ron--constrained by poverty and forced to get something second-hand--gets "something that looked to Harry like a long, maroon velvet dress. It had a moldy-looking lace frill at the collar and matching lace cuffs."

** [[spoiler:Crouch Jr. in disguise]] actually extols a lot of EvilVirtues. He hates traitors, and feels that the Death Eaters who escaped Azkaban are the worst and should not have been forgiven for deploying the Imperius defence so easily. When Snape displays his hatred and obsession for Harry Potter, [[spoiler:Crouch Jr.]] is the ''only'' person in the entire series that notes that it's wrong and unhealthy for someone to harbour that many negative feelings towards a teenage boy. You can feel it's NotAnAct with the disgust dripping off [[spoiler:Crouch Jr.'s disguised]] face as he tells off Snape. Finally, he also agrees with Hermione that Rita Skeeter is a legitimate threat to someone's peace of mind. [[spoiler:As Moody, he had used the magic eye to scout if she was spying on the second task and told Hermione honestly that he didn't see the lady. Unfortunately, both of them forgot to try the other solution: the Marauder's Map.]]

** Despite being a little slow on the uptake about the situation with the Dark Mark, Bagman immediately protests that Crouch's elf Winky could not have summoned it when he appears in the middle of the investigation. He says that an elf couldn't have done powerful Dark Magic unless she had a wand and the incantation. While she did have the wand, Hermione and the kids come to Winky's defence; they said the voice who uttered the incantation was a deep male voice, not a squeaky female one. [[spoiler:Winky confiscated the wand from Crouch Jr. in her attempt to get him away from the Death Eater chaos.]]
** Dumbledore tells Hagrid not to assault Karkaroff when Hagrid has the Durmstrang headmaster pinned to a tree for insulting him (Dumbledore). He looks more concerned for Karkaroff's wellbeing than the fact that the man spat at his feet and accused him of sabotaging Viktor Krum to gain an advantage in the tournament.

* EvilCannotComprehendGood: While Voldemort is later shown to play this trope straight, his main agent in this book does ''not''. As he tells Harry, "Decent people are so easy to manipulate." Although [[spoiler:Barty Crouch, Jr.]] does have a moment. He assumes that Harry will ask everyone for Tournament help, but Harry sticks with just his closest friends. This forces the agent to play XanatosSpeedChess.
* EvilGloating: Draco Malfoy gloats to Harry about Voldemort coming back and killing Muggles, Muggle-born wizards, and their sympathisers ... that is, [[ShutUpHannibal until he, Crabbe, and Goyle get their butts handed to them by the main trio and the Weasley twins]].
* EvilMentor: [[spoiler:Barty Crouch, Jr.]] is this for Harry and his classmates more generally.

** When Voldemort conjures a [[spoiler:new hand to replace the one Wormtail sacrificed as part of the spell to restore him to his body]], he says "May your loyalty never waver again, Wormtail." Wormtail unthinkingly replies "No, my Lord, never," not thinking that this might be magic on Voldemort's part. [[spoiler:''Deathly Hallows'' makes it clear that's exactly what it was, as the hand murders Wormtail when he gets CuriousQualmsOfConscience and attempts -- however half-heartedly -- to defy Voldemort's commands a second time.]]
** [[spoiler:Ludo Bagman's goblin debtors hit him with this. Ludo bet that Harry would win the Tournament outright, but the goblins insist that Harry drew with Cedric because they both took the Cup. Ludo couldn't pay, so he ran for his life.]]

* FictionIsntFair: Rita Skeeter spends the book printing outright lies about Harry and his friends. Dumbledore does ban her from the school grounds, but Harry isn't presented with any legal way of stopping the articles themselves, even when Hermione is injured by someone posting her undiluted Bubotuber pus or getting abusive Howlers at breakfast. If nothing else, Skeeter should be getting in trouble for the simple fact that both Harry and Hermione are very much underage.

* FlatEarthAtheist: In a world where magic is commonplace to the point of saturation, the magical art of Divination is regarded in-universe by many as a bunch of hooey.

** Harry uses ''Accio'' to summon his broom during the first task; he didn't think to use it just to summon the dragon egg he was trying to get or summoning the broom to fly over the maze in the third task. In fact, the fact that ''none'' of the champions thinks to summon the egg directly to them suggests that they forget it should be possible, or that the egg had been enchanted to prevent exactly that; watching four people walk into an arena and have their eggs zip into their hands, one after another, isn't very entertaining. In either case, it goes unexplained why they don't try it.

* GoodShapeshiftingEvilShapeshifting: [[spoiler:Rita Skeeter is a sneaky, underhanded tabloid journalist who just happens to be another unlicensed Animagus, this one with the form of a beetle -- allowing her a gift for spying on people ... up until Hermione figures out the truth and traps her in a jar.]]

* HandingOverTheCrapSack: Mrs Weasley gives Hermione an Easter egg which is much smaller than everyone else's, when she believes what the journalist Rita Skeeter cruelly writes about Hermione being Harry's girlfriend. Fortunately, she later becomes warmer towards Hermione when Harry emphasizes that she is not his girlfriend.

* HeartIsWhereTheHomeIs: The Ron-Hermione-Viktor LoveTriangle is Britain vs. Bulgaria. Viktor appeals to Hermione because he's more mature and more decisive (and romantic) in his courting of her. Meanwhile, Ron has just realized he's attracted to Hermione but is too immature to see her as anything else than a consolation prize after being rejected by Fleur, a Frenchwoman. Viktor is not a bad person, though, and remains in contact with Hermione after the end of the story[[note]]WordOfGod says Viktor attended their wedding, to Ron's chagrin.[[/note]], but later books make it clear that she's more attracted to Ron. It's not until ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows'' that Ron grows up enough to be the kind of man that Hermione can get into a serious relationship with.

** Molly Weasley criticizes Amos Diggory for believing stuff written by Rita Skeeter in the ''Daily Prophet'' about Harry, yet she at the same time buys into trash Rita writes about Harry and Hermione in ''Witch Weekly'' and holds a small grudge against Hermione until she's set straight by Harry.

* IHaveNoSon: Barty Crouch, Sr. spoke very highly of his son's accomplishments around the office, until Crouch Jr. went astray, joined the Death Eaters, and was caught with the Lestranges for torturing the Longbottoms. At the kangaroo court, Crouch Sr. rather viciously disowns Crouch Jr. as the latter begs for his life and tries to fight the Dementors.
* INeedYouStronger: This is the reason for [[spoiler:Barty Crouch Jr.]]'s assistance to Harry in the Triwizard challenges. See GambitRoulette.
* IRejectYourReality: Fudge stubbornly refuses to believe Harry's claims that Voldemort has been resurrected, thinking that he and Dumbledore are trying to destabilize 13 years worth of hard work for the Ministry.
* IShouldHaveBeenBetter: In a poignant moment, when he has a clear run at the Triwizard Cup, Cedric tells Harry that it was brave and noble of him to try to save all the hostages during the second task and rescue Gabrielle when Fleur didn't show up. He lambasts himself for not doing that.
* ImaginaryLoveTriangle: Rita Skeeter invents a Harry-Hermione-Krum triangle out of whole cloth, to the annoyance of everyone involved.[[note]]To be fair, Harry and Hermione are [[TrueCompanions close enough]], and at a confusing enough age, where one could get the impression they are more than friends. However, there's no excusing Skeeter's casting Hermione as someone out to link herself with the most famous wizard whose eye she can successfully catch.[[/note]]

* ImprobablyPredictable: Immediately after he wakes up from his dream about Voldemort, Harry predicts how Ron and Hermione will react to the news. When he tells them, they both react almost exactly as he thought they would: Ron is confused, while Hermione encourages Harry to consult every authority figure and book he can.
* InevitableTournament: A straight example. A super-dangerous and challenging tournament takes place at Hogwarts, and despite being three years too young, Harry finds himself forced into

-->'''Barty Crouch, Sr.:''' You have now come very close to accusing the two people in this clearing who are least likely to conjure that Mark!

* JabbaTableManners: One of the Durmstrang students gets scolded by Karkaroff for slopping food on his robes.

** Moody is less mean than Crouch, which Sirius also describes -- he only has one known Death Eater casualty because he made a point to bring most of them in alive -- but he is also tough in his approach to them. He says that "filth" like Karkaroff deserve the Dementors after they caused a reign of terror, and they can't just evade the consequences because they decide to turn traitor; whereas the question of if ''anyone'' deserves the Dementors is morally ambiguous, he is right that Death Eaters shouldn't just [[KarmaHoudini escape consequences of murdering and torturing innocent people]]. He also believes that Bagman was "dim" [[spoiler:and not truly malevolent in passing on information to Rookwood]], which ended up being true. [[spoiler:A lot of this is actually coming from Barty Crouch, Jr., who had his own reasons for despising these people, but it's safe to say these things are probably also true of the real Moody's thoughts.]]

* KangarooCourt: The trials in the PensieveFlashback are stacked against the defendants. Sirius says he didn't even get that much. However, Ludo Bagman managed to get off, largely because he was a popular Quidditch player, making him [[InvertedTrope acquitted]] [[ConvictedByPublicOpinion by public opinion]]. We also find out later that [[spoiler:the Lestranges and, to a lesser extent, Barty Crouch, Jr. ''did'' deserve to be thrown in jail]].
* KarmaHoudiniWarranty: Alas, for [[spoiler:Karkaroff. He was a remorseless Death Eater who got a reduced sentence in Azkaban for ratting out on his fellow genocidal wizards. Then he becomes headmaster of a prestigious school, without facing any consequences for his Death Eater activities. Cue his Dark Mark getting clearer, and his worries about Voldemort executing him for being a traitor. It's revealed that he runs away after feeling the Mark return, and Voldemort tracks him down and kills him. He does, however, live about a ''year'' after Voldemort's resurrection, said to be much longer than average for ex-Death Eaters]].

** Snape gets another crucial moment. When Harry is trying to get into Dumbledore's office [[spoiler:due to Barty Crouch Sr. appearing and raving, demanding to see the professor]], Snape delays him and dismisses his claims as rubbish. As Harry points out, those few minutes cost them the time to [[spoiler:save Crouch]] and he knows Snape did it just to bait him. In an ironic twist, it is also lucky that Snape appeared when he did, since Harry was already leaving to look for Dumbledore in the staff room and would have wasted even more time had Snape not called him back, even if it was to mock him.

* LockedOutOfTheLoop: Retroactive one with Snape after the revelations of ''Deathly Hallows''. [[spoiler: Judging from Snape's reaction to Sirius' presence in the Hospital Wing, Dumbledore did ''not'' reveal the truth that Wormtail, not Sirius, helped Voldemort kill Lily in the interim since the last book. It's probably justified, as the entire incident demonstrated to Dumbledore that Snape lost all emotional control and objectivity; he ''couldn't'' be trusted with that information at the time. Now with the Second War's opening salvos, it's time to reveal the truth.]]

** In Chapter 10, Mr. Weasley finds that Rita Skeeter mentioned him in an article about the Death Eater attacks at the Quidditch World Cup and spoke negatively of him by saying that he appeared to have covered something up after bodies were rumoured to have been found after Mr. Weasley said that nobody had been injured. Bill says that Rita Skeeter, who makes everyone look bad, says that if his father ''didn't'' say anything, she would have written that it was bad that there had been no comment.

** Early on, Percy mentions that Barty Crouch Sr. has taken an interest in Bertha Jorkins' disappearance. Bertha used to work in Crouch's Department, so Percy thinks Crouch was fond of her and is thus worried about his former subordinate. [[spoiler: While it's not explicitly stated, the implication from the later reveals was that Crouch was actually concerned about Bertha because she knew about Barty Crouch Jr.'s secret survival (albeit buried under the memory modification he'd forced upon her years earlier). With Bertha MIA, the implication's Crouch was worried about that information being compromised and discovered -- which is indeed what happened when Wormtail and Voldemort got a hold of her in Albania.]]

* NaiveNewcomer: Harry had learned much about the wizarding world in the previous three years, but he has a moment of this when he asks Ron "So what?" that Hagrid is half-giant. (He does recognise almost immediately from Ron's reaction that it's a piece of SeriousBusiness in the wizarding world he's clueless about.) Never having heard of wizards' antipathy to giants before, it doesn't occur to him that others would scorn Hagrid because of his heritage.

** Viktor Krum takes a bludger to the face during the Quidditch World Cup which probably broke his nose.

** Sirius gives us the defining quote about this here: "If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals." When it comes to Barty Crouch Sr.'s poor treatment of Winky, his swift dismissal of her for getting caught with Harry's wand establishes that he is not a very good person, none of them realizing that [[spoiler:Crouch Sr. was trying to keep secret the fact that he'd broken his own son out of Azkaban and then used the Imperius Curse to keep him under house arrest for the last decade]]. Then Sirius and Dumbledore's Pensieve tell us just what kind of tyrant Crouch Sr. was when he ran the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.

** Mr Weasley and Amos Diggory work hard to get Mad-Eye Moody out of trouble after the incident with his dustbins. It turns out that [[spoiler:this was actually Mad-Eye Moody being captured by Barty Crouch Jr, who takes over his identity]]. This sets in motion a chain of events that leads to [[spoiler:the return of Voldemort and the death of Amos's son Cedric]], and in a few years time, [[spoiler:the death of Arthur's son Fred]]. All of this could have been avoided if they'd just let Moody get arrested.

** [[spoiler:Mrs. Crouch taking her son's place in Azkaban, to give him a chance to live while she was dying,]] ended up doing much more harm than good in the long run.
** [[spoiler:Winky also gets her moment. She would be the ParentalSubstitute to Barty Crouch, Jr. where she would tell his father to give him rewards for good behaviour. It was her idea to let Crouch Jr. attend the Quidditch World Cup in the Top Box, under an Invisibility Cloak. Winky also volunteered to keep the seat and lie that it was for Crouch Sr., even though she's scared of heights. Due to her covering her eyes, she fails to notice Crouch Jr. stealing Harry's wand. This later leads to her getting fired, since Crouch Sr. realizes that if Winky was holding Harry's wand, and the wand cast the Dark Mark, then Crouch Jr. must have used the wand to summon the Mark.]]

* NotAnAct: Mad-Eye Moody is famously averse to Death Eaters who avoided prison, as his job is to arrest them and his face is covered in scars from those who resisted. [[spoiler:The Moody Harry meets during his fourth year is Barty Crouch, Jr., one of those Death Eaters who ''did'' go to prison (and is trying to revive Voldemort),]] and understandably hates those who claimed they'd been mind-controlled to avoid punishment, hence his punishing Draco by turning him into a ferret and passive-aggressive attitude towards Karkaroff (the son of a "reformed" Death Eater and one who sold out the others to save his skin, respectively).
* NotCheatingUnlessYouGetCaught: Moody mentions explicitly that cheating is a traditional part of the tournament and Dumbledore is a case of HonourBeforeReason in this regard. Harry even goes out on a limb to help Cedric when it turns out that Cedric is the one person who hasn't had any done in his favour.
* NotSoAboveItAll: Hermione's usual response to most of Harry and Ron's more lowbrow jokes is mild disapprovement. However, at the Quidditch World Cup, the Trio hear an elderly wizard named Archie complain about possibly wearing pants, saying that he likes "a healthy breeze round my privates". This gives Hermione such a serious case of giggling that she has to leave the area temporarily.

** Minerva [=McGonagall=] has this a couple of points. First, she is the last person who would let Harry get a book from the Restricted Section because those are for advanced students, and she's a stickler for the rules. Before the second task, she gives Harry at least one permission note so he can browse the Restricted Section to find a spell to breathe underwater, showing how much she cares about his safety. Second, she's normally full of AngerBornOfWorry when hearing of Harry's dangerous antics or being stern with him if a ReasonableAuthorityFigure. After she, Dumbledore, and Snape rescue him from [[spoiler:Barty Crouch Jr.]], she's TryingNotToCry and very gentle with Harry after seeing he's been injured and traumatized. She then argues with Dumbledore when he overrides taking Harry to the hospital wing and is relieved when he ends up going after learning the truth. Much later, the only time we see her at a RageBreakingPoint is when Cornelius Fudge [[spoiler:idiotically brings a Dementor into the school, leading to Barty Crouch Jr.'s soul being removed]] and she shouts at him for excusing the loss as him only being a lunatic who murdered his father and a child.
* OpenMouthInsertFoot: When Harry informs the Ministry officials the wand Winky was caught with is his, Amos Diggory immediately accuses him of casting the Dark Mark. Arthur asks Diggory if he seriously thinks ''Harry Potter'' would ever cast the symbol of Lord Voldemort and his followers. Diggory immediately realizes how stupid the idea is and becomes quite embarrassed.

* OutOfCharacterAlert: [[spoiler:Crouch Jr. (fake Moody)]] seems to make sure nothing overt or subtle happens to give away his role. It is when [[spoiler:he takes Harry away from Dumbledore's presence after Harry's return from the graveyard, something the real one would never do]], that Dumbledore recognizes he must be an imposter.

** Dumbledore towards Harry when saving him from [[spoiler:the false Moody (Barty Crouch, Jr.)]] near the end of the book. Just as the latter is about to kill Harry, Dumbledore blows the door off its hinges breaking into the office to take him down, and even Harry finds his cold fury to be frightening, privately noting that he finally understands why Dumbledore is the only wizard Voldemort ever feared.

* PartingWordsRegret: Molly Weasley gets this when the twins have a close call with the Death Eaters.

* PlayingTheFamilyCard: There's a Pensieve Flashback to several trials conducted by the Ministry for Magic. In one of them, one of the villains says "I am your son". To which his father, one of the judges, says [[IHaveNoSon he has no son]].

* PresentDayPast: At the beginning of the book, Harry, in writing a letter to Sirius, makes a remark about Dudley and his Platform/PlayStation in the middle of August 1994. Even in Japan, the console was not released until that December. Though, given that the Dursley family is well-to-do and spoils their son dreadfully, Vernon might have pulled some strings to get one early. [[WritersCannotDoMath Or JK fucked up with numbers again]], or she simply didn't know or care when the first [=PlayStation=] was actually released.

** This is Mad-Eye Moody's philosophy, summed up in the CatchPhrase "Constant vigilance!" [[spoiler:However, Pettigrew and Crouch Jr. were still able to catch him off guard, stun him into his trunk, and Crouch Jr. able to take his place.]]

* RealLifeWritesThePlot: Natalie [=McDonald=] was a girl with leukaemia in Real Life, who wrote Rowling a fan letter on her deathbed. When she died, Rowling added her into Gryffindor.

* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: He may be called Mad-Eye, but Professor Moody ends up being quite reasonable. Moody praises the students for being honorable, noble, and hard-working while testing their defense against curses and telling them that they need to know how the world works. Consider how he treats Karkaroff and Snape versus how he treats Bagman: the former two were Death Eaters, while Bagman was accused of being one. Moody brought in Karkaroff personally and was annoyed that he was getting a reduced sentence, and he treats Snape with disdainful hostility. In contrast, he's pretty civil with Bagman in the present when the latter is a government official. [[spoiler:Crouch Jr. as fake Moody revealed these feelings were NotAnAct; he does hate Karkaroff and Snape for defecting, and knew that Bagman was an idiot.]] Moody admitted at Bagman's trial that he thinks that the kid (at the time) was an idiot and not truly malevolent when talking to Rookwood and inadvertently being part of a spy ring; the way that Bagman describes it, Rookwood led him on believing that he would get the kid a job at the Ministry and Bagman had no idea the man was a Death Eater.

** Midway through the book, Harry witnesses Bartemius Crouch [[spoiler:sneaking out of Snape's office]] on the Marauder's Map. The PowerTrio spend the rest of the book wondering why an ill rule-abider from the Ministry would do such a reckless thing. [[spoiler:We later find out that it was Barty Crouch, ''Jr.'', stealing Polyjuice ingredients. Though Polyjuice does not fool the Marauder's Map, it also can't distinguish two people using the same name.]]
** We learn about midway through the book that Voldemort has a spy at Hogwarts. A little while later, Harry learns that Snape was accused of being a Death Eater after Voldemort's fall. Is Snape Voldemort's eyes and ears in the school? [[spoiler:No. But he ''was'' a Death Eater.]]
*** The other plausible candidate for Voldemort's spy is [[spoiler:the aforementioned Karkaroff, who is stated much earlier than Snape to be a Death Eater]] and this possibility is kept up almost to the very end of the story. Who else besides him and Snape could reasonably have the required abilities and the motive of working for Voldemort and trying to kill Harry? The real answer is [[spoiler:Barty Crouch, Jr., who faked his death with Barty, Sr.'s, help years ago and has been impersonating Mad-Eye Moody for the whole book. This reveal is further disguised by Barty, Jr., playing innocent when on trial with three other Death Eaters as seen in one of Dumbledore's memories when, in fact, he's one of Voldemort's most loyal followers]].
* ReducedToRatburgers: Sirius mentions, upon meeting the trio in a cave outside Hogsmeade, about having to eat rats and other stuff while on the run from the Ministry (and he can't steal too much food from Hogsmeade, as that'll only attract undue attention). At least it could be said that being in dog form while doing so would make it more bearable, but he still chomps on the food the kids bring him when they meet. Harry then makes sure to have owls bring extra food to him regularly for the rest of the school year, and Ron remarks on Sirius' diet upon catching a whiff of Elf-made dinner at Hogwarts after they return.

* TheReveal: The villain who put Harry's name in the Goblet of Fire, putting him in a deadly, rewarding tournament, says, "It was I who did that." [[spoiler:This comes from the mouth of Mad-Eye Moody, Harry's new mentor during the year, who also reveals that he's actually a long-thought-dead servant of the Dark Lord who magically kidnapped and impersonated Mad-Eye as part of a plan to kill Harry and restore the Dark Lord to power.]]
* RewatchBonus: When rereading the book, all of Mad-Eye Moody's actions take on a new meaning with knowledge that [[spoiler:he's actually Barty Crouch, Jr]]. For example, why is Moody so startled by the Marauder's Map, and why does he confiscate it from Harry? Because [[spoiler:Crouch, Jr.]] realizes that Polyjuice does not fool the map, and it nearly revealed and still could reveal who he really is (and ''would'' reveal who he is if Harry got a look at it at that moment).
* RiddleForTheAges: Several characters admit that they don't know if [[spoiler:Barty Crouch, Jr. was guilty of helping the Lestranges torture the Longbottoms, even though he is later established as a Death Eater, with a place in the circle. Sirius says he isn't certain that Crouch Jr. was guilty, since he could have easily been in the wrong place at the wrong time like Winky was when she was caught with Harry's wand after Crouch Jr. conjured the Dark Mark. Dumbledore mentions that Frank and Alice's testimony was shaky, as the Cruciatus Curse broke their minds and Neville was only a baby. One note is that despite him proclaiming his innocence at the trial, much like other Death Eaters who avoided jail time, Voldemort calls Crouch Jr. his most faithful servant, and it's not very likely that Crouch, Jr. would have called someone he never met "my master". There is also a possibility he ''was'' a Death Eater, but not actually an eager or even proper participant in the cause or the crime, considering his [[FreudianExcuse motivations]] and [[JustAKid age]]. Of course, if he wasn't already firmly a Death Eater before he went to Azkaban, he must've been easily converted while he was doing his time, with the Lestranges' combined fanaticism and the Dementors' despairing influence, and tried to seek out Voldemort as soon as he was smuggled out and nursed back to health. Being under the Imperius Curse for a decade probably didn't do wonders for his sanity. On the other hand, Crouch Jr. claims that he only comforted Neville in his Moody disguise to manipulate him, and he calmly showed Neville the curse that traumatized his parents. Dumbledore doesn't ask Crouch Jr. if he was involved while questioning him, but then his higher priority is figuring out how Crouch had ''broken out of Azkaban and impersonated Moody'']]. Ultimately, the truth is ambiguous.
* RiddlingSphinx: Harry encounters a sphinx in the hedge maze and must answer a riddle to pass by it safely.

** At one point, Harry and Ron speculate that Rita Skeeter is bugging them: i.e. using electronic surveillance devices. Hermione irritably points out that she can't be doing that, since electronics don't work near Hogwarts. Hermione later discovers that she's literally [[{{Pun}} bugging]] them -- [[spoiler:she's a beetle Animagus who uses her animal form to get near people she wants to spy on]].
** Dumbledore describes a room full of a magnificent selection of chamber pots that he stumbled into after taking a wrong turn on the way to the toilet, and laments that he never could find it again, speculating that it might require the seeker to have an exceptionally full bladder. [[spoiler:The Room of Requirement may be easier to get into than that, but it still would presumably only show chamber pots in particular to someone who needed them at that moment.]]
** In an inversion, Fudge insists that Crouch Jr. must be a lunatic because he is raving about having brought Voldemort back to life. Hence, there is no loss with his testimony. [=McGonagall=] and Dumbledore lay into him: Harry is telling the truth about seeing Voldemort back in power, and that the plan was coldly calculated, going off without a hitch. Furthermore, as [=McGonagall=] points out, someone who is legally insane couldn't get Crouch Sr. murdered with his body transfigured into a bone and buried at the Hogwarts grounds. The same goes for Cedric dying in the middle of the tournament with the clear signs of Avada Kedavra given that his body is intact. Signs indicate that the Dark Lord is back.

* RuleOfSymbolism: WordOfGod has confirmed that the challenges of the Triwizard Tournament were chosen to represent the four classical elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water, with the Maze representing Earth, the lake Water, and the dragons Air and Fire (there would have been two different tasks for each element, but it was decided that combining them both with the dragons was more straightforward).

* RunOrDie: Despite the ''Priori Incantatem'' effect holding off Voldemort's Killing Curse, Harry's only chance to survive is to break off the engagement and use the Portkey to return to Hogwarts.

* ShamefulStrip: A PG-rated version -- during the Death Eaters' torture of the Roberts family, one of the Death Eaters flips Mrs. Roberts upside-down, causing her nightdress to fall down and forcing her to try and cover herself as the mob laughs at her.

* ShippingTorpedo: Ron vehemently tries to torpedo Hermione/Viktor Krum, although at this point he CannotSpitItOut as to the real reason why.

* SmorgasbordTest: Hagrid creates a hybrid species by mating manticores and fire-crabs, which he names Blast-Ended Skrewts. During his Care of Magical Creatures class, he has the students try feeding them ant eggs, frog livers, and grass snakes to see what they like. Harry privately wonders if the exercise is pointless since the Skrewts don't seem to have mouths. Somehow, the Skrewts grow to massive sizes, despite not eating anything they're fed.

** Amos Diggory to Cedric. Unusually more embarrassing than supportive, despite Amos' obvious pride, since he boasts of how Cedric beat Harry before Harry's face, and it was much less proper victory than he seems to think it was.

* StatingTheSimpleSolution: Wormtail in the very first chapter suggests that Voldemort could [[spoiler:use another wizard's blood and resurrect himself early, without needing to capture Harry]]. Voldemort refuses out of {{pride}} and because he thinks that [[spoiler:Wormtail, when capturing another wizard, would take the opportunity to flee]].
* StealthPun: When Hermione asks if the Hogwarts house-elves are paid and given things like holidays and pensions, Nearly Headless Nick laughs so hard his head falls off his shoulders. As in, he literally "laughed his head off".

* SuddenlyShouting: Toward the very end of the book, Harry wakes up to hear [=McGonagall=] literally ''screaming'' in rage about what just happened [[spoiler:to Barty Crouch, Jr]].

* SuperDrowningSkills: Invoked; Harry goes OhCrap on realizing that the second task will take place in the lake. He was never given swimming lessons since the Dursleys hoped he would drown if he ever got in a body of water that deep, though he can manage the Prefects' bath. Then Harry figures out another problem: no human can stay underwater for an hour unless they have assistance, so he needs to find a breathing spell or strategy to stay alive. Myrtle breaks into sobs because she's sensitive about the fact that she's dead, and the library is ''too'' big for him to find the spell that he needs, even with [=McGonagall=] giving him access to the Restricted Section. Dobby saves his bacon by nipping Gillyweed for him the day of the task, which gives him gills and fins. Fortunately, the trope ends up subverted; Harry actually does well when the Gillyweed wears off, getting himself, Ron and Gabrielle to the surface with just a lot of water in his ears.
* SweetsOfTemptation: Dudley is forced to go on a diet when his school runs out of uniforms that fit him. When the Weasleys arrive at the Dursley house to pick up Harry for the summer, Fred and George "accidentally" drop several candies in brightly colored wrappers on the floor, and Dudley picks one up and eats it. It turns out to be a magical prank candy called a Ton-Tongue Toffee that makes his tongue turn purple and swell to four feet long. Mr. Weasley angrily calls them out for this because he knows they did it on purpose, knowing Dudley wouldn't be able to resist it because he was dieting.

* ThirdPersonPerson: Inverted: after being unmasked, [[spoiler:Barty Crouch Jr.]] tells [[spoiler:his]] story under the influence of Veritaserum. Dumbledore administers the potion, and [[spoiler:Crouch]] mentions him multiple times by his name.

* TournamentArc: The Triwizard Tournament, a competition between three wizards from three schools -- which somehow becomes four wizards when Harry Potter's name is selected as a second Hogwarts contestant. The tournament forms the backbone of the plot.
* TransformationConventions: {{Invoked}} by Barty Jr. while disguised as Alastor Moody. In retaliation for Lucius Malfoy weaseling his way out of Azkaban by claiming he was under the Imperius Curse, Barty turns his son Draco (a whiny, slimy bastard on his own) into a white ferret. Ferrets are associated with being slippery. Also, both Lucius and Draco's hair is very light blonde.

* UnicornsPreferVirgins: After Hagrid is [[OldShame too ashamed to show his face]] after being exposed as a half-giant, the substitute assigned to teach his class brings a unicorn to the class and warns the students that it will only let the girls touch it. Hagrid later one-ups her by getting some unicorn ''foals'' that the whole class can pet and examine, explaining that they only grow hostile to men in adulthood. [[invoked]]
* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: [[spoiler:Rita Skeeter smearing Harry in the ''Daily Prophet'' -- especially on the day of the final Task. This ends up backfiring and biting ''everybody'' in the ass, as Fudge seizes on this (both in his final scene and the beginning of the next book) as the foundation for his own smear campaign to discredit Harry and Dumbledore's warnings that Voldemort's returned.]]

* VillainBall: There were a million better things that could have been turned into a port-key that Harry would have touched instead of a trophy to a contest Harry was unlikely to survive and couldn't enter in the first place.

* WalkOfShame: After Harry's name unexpectedly comes out of the Goblet of Fire, he has to walk past the entire school; not to applause, but to a buzz of everyone talking at once, assuming he cheated, as he is underage.

** "It was I who did that," is the line with which TheMole reveals the truth to Harry.

* WhatTheHellHero: Harry and Ron immediately like Moody when he Transfigures Malfoy into a ferret, as punishment for trying to hex Harry in the back. (For context, Draco was insulting Mrs. Weasley but took offence when Harry used the same tactic by insulting Mrs. Malfoy.) Draco also has no comeback, only then muttering his father will have it out for Moody; the Auror isn't fazed, telling Draco that he would like a word with Mr. Malfoy about his Death Eater activities. [=McGonagall=] and Hermione then provide the reality check: turning a student into an animal and bouncing them in the air repeatedly is equivalent to ''torture''. [=McGonagall=] has to point out that Hogwarts has standard punishments like detention or talking with the transgressor's head of House. Hermione also notes that Moody could have hurt Malfoy badly, though she also takes the time to remind Draco about being a "twitchy ferret".

* WhiteMansBurden: {{Deconstructed|Trope}}. Hermione's house-elf liberation subplot is, in-universe, portrayed as a bad thing, and practically everyone calls her on it. Aside from the inherent {{hypocri|te}}sy of launching a campaign for house-elves' freedom without so much as ''asking'' for their help, she also bases her view of house-elf needs on Dobby -- an individual whose views on freedom, payment, and clothing are best described as 'radically liberal.' And she completely misses the point about why any house-elves are unhappy -- their working conditions, not the work itself or lack of pay. (Even Dobby recounts that, when given employment, he bargained his salary ''down'', feeling he'd been offered too much.)

* WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds: [[spoiler:Bartemius Crouch, Jr., whose [[FreudianExcuse lack of affection from his father sent him down a path of murderous evil]].]]
* TheWorfEffect: Mad-Eye Moody has a reputation of being one of the toughest Aurors, whose mere presence puts [[spoiler:ex-Death Eaters]] Snape and Karkaroff on guard. [[spoiler:The fact that Crouch Jr. and Pettigrew were able to take him down, though he put up such a huge fight that the Ministry came to investigate, shows how dangerous Crouch Jr. was.]]

* XanatosSpeedChess: [[spoiler:Barty Crouch, Jr.]] has to change his plans when Harry doesn't ask Neville for help.

* YouFool: [=McGonagall=] to Fudge when the latter refuses to acknowledge Voldemort's hand in [[spoiler:Cedric and Barty Crouch, Sr.'s deaths]].