Headscratchers / Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire The Triwizard Tournament

Let's see, the emergency procedures are — wait a minute, we don't HAVE emergency procedures!!!

• Okay, why the hell didn't Dumbledore pull Harry — no, not Harry, everybody — from the 3rd task? There were some seriously fishy things happening — the significance of which not fully realized at that point, of course, but enough to make an administrator wary enough, don't you think? Harry was having strong visions of his nemesis, visions which Dumbledore obviously found suspect. Disappearances were happening the way they did when the 1st war began over two decades ago. And they still didn't know who had put Harry's name in the Goblet. To paraphrase McGonagall's quote from the 4th film, the hell with the Tournament, and the rules! What would have happened if they halted the 3rd task, really? An unstoppable force would reach in to push them into the hedge? Can you imagine how an institution like Hogwarts would react under a potential bomb threat? If it were the Muggle world, somebody would've sued the school's ass after that little incident, just sayin'.
  • The problem, unfortunately, was that the other schools and judges have a say in the matter. If Dumbledore raised his opinion, the others might think he was just trying to bring about a win for his school (after all, his two champions are in first place). If he pulled Harry only, then supposedly not competing resulted in the loss of magic (due to the magical contract), which would be worse if nothing ended up happening. Plus, he had reasons to think Voldemort wanted Harry dead, not alive and taken to him. So Dumbledore reasoned that if anything happened, Harry would throw up red sparks and be rescued if his life was in danger. Now, why he didn't ask Harry to do this the instant he got into trouble is another matter.
  • "What would have happened if they halted the 3rd task, really? An unstoppable force would reach in to push them into the hedge?" Actually, that's not unreasonable, considering how they make a big deal about the champions being under a "binding magical contract."
  • It doesn't recall the book saying that if they broke the contract, Harry would lose his magic. Wasn't it only stated that he was bound by the magical contract to compete? Even so, why did none of the wizards and witches there ever think that if the Goblet was acting in an unusual fashion to simply use some magic to check what was wrong with the cup and then reverse the effects so that Harry wouldn't even be in the Tournament? With the headmaster/mistress of the other schools complaining that Hogwarts had two competitors, you'd think one of them would come up with the idea to try override the magic of the Goblet. Also, considering one of the wizards there is Dumbledore, it's doubtful any spell that Crouch Jr. could come up with would be something that would stump even Dumbledore.
  • Simpler explanation: Dumbledore wasn't expecting it, but as soon as he knew what had happened, he saw the ultimate possibility of it. Not forethought, not Roulette, just making the best of it - and immediately seeing potential for good.
  • Breaking binding magical contracts actually has consequences, this being, you know, the magical world.
  • Using a binding magical contract with no escape clauses and grave consequences for violation in a juvenile competition is asinine. Sorry, but in this mad world of Rowling's "elaborate conspiracy theories" are the only things that make sense.
  • The Wizarding World has some strange morals and the Goblet was made centuries ago, so it doesn't seem so strange about it. Also, both Karkaroff and Maxime have every interest in forcing Harry out of the tournament, so if the "binding magical contract" was just an invention by Dumbledore (though this raises the question of how he could possibly risk this, considering he had no way of knowing that Crouch Sr was under the control of Voldemort and would support this), why wouldn't they expose him? After all, the tournament had written rules, so such a lie would be uncovered in fairly short order. And yes, this makes more sense than an absurd conspiracy theory of Dumbledore risking his best chance against Voldemort, to ... resurrect Voldemort.
  • But how can it be a binding magical contract when Harry never signed it? In real life no sane court would ever force you to uphold a contract just because another person had signed your name. Just because the Goblet was confunded into thinking Harry had made the commitment doesn't make it any more valid, in fact it makes it invalid. And, as someone said above, an unbreakable contract for what was supposed to be a friendly competition for juveniles is really stupid. What would happen if Cedric caught spattergroit? Would they force him to compete even if he's dying of disease?
  • Wait, "a friendly competition for juveniles"? Seriously? It wasn't for juveniles at all; you had to be 17+ to enter (the wizarding age of majority) which explains the Age Line. It was meant to be friendly, in a sense. The excitement around the Triwizard Tournament was explicitly attributed (by various people in the book) to the fact that it was the first Tournament in over 200 years after they stopped holding them because it was extremely dangerous and too many of the participants died. Everyone was warned that the new one would hopefully not result in casualties but there was no guarantee; if you wanted to participate you had to be absolutely sure since quitting was not possible. As for Harry: the Goblet was Confunded by Barty Jr. into thinking that Harry was a valid participant. Everyone seemed pretty vague about the consequences of breaking the contract, so it's possible that no one was entirely sure what they were. And so what about what a "sane court" would do? (Maybe if Harry called the cops on the Goblet, Cedric would still be alive...) The laws of magic have been shown to be rather ridiculous at times, but if one thing's for certain it's that trying to break them is a BAAAD idea. If something like an Unbreakable Vow can exist where breaking it, whatever that could be interpreted to entail, results in death, then trying to break a magical contract that forces you to participate in a contest (so that no matter how many others die you can't chicken out) with no idea of what the consequences of breaking it could be... yeah, maybe not worth the risk.
  • The question is...why? Nothing actually did happen to Harry during the tournament, so by the third task everyone but 'Moody' had let their guard down as the promised attacks on Harry had not shown up, and in fact Harry was doing rather well. Which results in Fridge Brilliance at the end.
  • Because nobody had promised any attacks, but Harry was still coerced into participating. If nothing happened during the first two tasks, it means that whatever the intention was behind putting his name into the Goblet, they would have to act on it in the third task.
  • The Tournament seems to have originate centuries ago, when people were much more tough and badass than today, someone at 17 was already an adult by far (in the 1600s probably married and with children already), you really can't extrapolate today's standards to that time. Nowadays we're... well, pussies.
  • Doesn't someone say that the Goblet of Fire has gone out and won't reignite until the next tournament? Karkaroff and Madam Maxime demand to be allowed a second champion for their schools each, but they're told the magic won't work again. So maybe the binding magical contract is tied to the Goblet itself and they can't reverse it because the Goblet has gone out - so that means Harry is magically bound to compete?
  • And Dumbledore may have been thinking of the end game. If Harry is to challenge Voldemort, competing in this tournament could be a good way to test him or train him. Harry has dealt with dangerous dark creatures beforehand - far more than a normal fourteen-year-old - so Dumbledore might not have tried terribly hard to remove him from the tournament to encourage a challenge for him. They've removed as many fatality risks as possible (dragon trainers on hand for the First Task, merpeople ready to save victims for the Second, and teachers acting as guards for the Third) so Dumbledore sees a chance to test Harry's abilities while also figuring out who/what they're dealing with.
  • And not to be blunt, but the risks are much lower for wizards in this universe and it's not as applicable to our world. Most injuries can be healed instantly after all, whereas in real life a broken bone can give you problems for life if not properly treated. This tournament is happening with a very efficient nurse nearby, and as many procedures as possible to prevent fatalities.

Cutting The Knot - We mean, Summoning The Egg.

• In the first task, Harry summons his broom to get past the dragon. Why didn't he just summon the egg instead?
  • This is a common question. The most likely answers are either he didn't think of that or he assumed the egg would be charmed against it.
  • Also, didn't the rules state that he had to get past the dragon? Simply summoning the egg would probably count as breaking the rules.
  • Even if he couldn't summon the egg for whatever reason, it might have helped to also summon his invisibility cloak.
  • It's unlikely Invisibility would have helped him much against the dragon with its other senses. Plus he wouldn't want to advertise that he had an invisibility cloak in the first place.
  • Harry's Invisibility Cloak is immune to Accio.
  • The summoning charm seems to make the object move towards the caster, but if the dragon was sitting on top of the eggs, the egg wouldn't have been able to move until the dragon was lured away.
  • That seems likely. In the fifth book, Lucius tries to summon the prophecy orb from Harry and yet Harry manages to barely keep hold of it.
  • If Accio would work on the egg, everyone would have done it. Not much of a challenge, nor is it especially entertaining.
  • Maybe everyone thought that "Accio Golden Egg" would be warded against and no one thought to try it.
  • And everyone only knows that their task is to get past the dragon. They don't know about the egg until literally the day of the task. So their preparation had all been for the dragon and not the egg.
  • The dragon is also literally protecting her eggs for the whole task. Harry's objective is to get her away from the eggs so he can sneak in. If any of them tried a summoning charm, the dragon would likely block the egg from leaving her nest and become even more aggressive now that she knows the wizard is after her eggs.

Triwizard scoring tomfoolery.

• Harry and Krum tie for first on the First Task, and Cedric wins the Second, with Harry behind him and Krum behind Harry. This should level out to Harry being in first overall in the tournament by the Third Task, with Krum and Cedric tying in second. Since Fleur failed the Second Task it's understandable her placement overall would take a death plunge by the Third Task. Instead, we get Cedric nosing past Krum and tying with Harry, when by all accounts he did the worst overall in the First Task; taking longest to secure his egg (Fleur is listed as facing the Dragon in the book for 10 minutes, Cedric for 15, Harry was specifically mentioned as getting his quickest, and its doubtful Krum has a drawn out encounter with his dragon) and then taking a major injury (getting part of his face burnt? Fleur just got a near Wardrobe Malfunction which she was able to fix on her own) to boot. The Tournament already suffers from Golden Snitch syndrome in the Third Task, but now the Second Task’s points seem to outweigh the First Task’s. This tournament is madness!
  • Besides, that's the way British degree weightings work. All the years count towards your final degree class, but your first year counts as least important (so long as you pass), second (and/or third) year more important, and the final year is gut-clenchingly important. So, the variable weighting isn't madness - just British.
  • The judges (except Karkaroff, of course) probably considered Krum harming the dragon and its eggs as grounds for removing points from his total, while Cedric's impressive use of magic compensated for the longer time he needed to get the egg or the injury. Incidentally, Cedric could still have finished last in the First task. He had 38 points, so Fleur could have finished above him (but in third) with 39.
  • Its actually said in the books that Krum lost a few points because a few of its eggs were harmed.
  • Your score in the first and second tasks is whatever the judges give you, which is ostensibly for how well you did your magic, though as we see it's a little tempered by favouritism. The amount of time they took to get the egg is an aspect of impressiveness, but doesn't have very much relevance by itself.
  • Sounds like a really flawed scoring system that would allow for blatant bias and cases of YMMV. Which is the worst possibly scoring system they could use, especially given how biased the judges were, being the directors of the participants' schools.
    • It's flawed and blatantly biased, but most things in the wizarding world are. Cheating is rampant in Quidditch, the House Cup is a joke when teachers can give or take points on a whim, laws are selectively enforced, people are convicted and sentenced to long stretches of torture-by-Dementor on circumstantial evidence (or, in Hagrid's case, no evidence at all). If anything, it's surprising the Third Task is a relatively objective judgment when almost everything in the wizarding world is subjective.
• The first and second tasks are just to work out what order you enter the maze, because you win by just reaching the cup first.

BOOO!!!! WHERE'S OUR EXCITING TOURNAMENT?!?!?

• After the second task, the chieftainess of the merpeople needs to tell Dumbledore exactly what happened in the lake before the judges can decide how many points to give out. If nobody was able to see what was happening in the lake during the task, what the hell did everyone in the stands do for 1-2 hours? Just sit around and stare blankly at some murky water?
  • Come to think of it, pretty much the same thing applies to the third task. If nobody outside the maze can see Krum getting Imperius'd and then stunning Fleur and putting the Cruciatus curse on Cedric or the Triwizard Portcupkey whisking Harry and Cedric off somewhere, this seems to imply that nobody can see anything going on inside the maze... so what the hell did everyone do in the stands for 1-2 hours? Just sit around and stare blankly at some shrubs?
  • Two theories: There could have been some kind of form of entertainment, like a song or a comedy show to entertain people who were waiting. Or maybe they could have just seen the bangs and the monsters on the outside and got talking to other people nearby. "Whoa Fred, did you just see that giant Spider?!"
  • Someone brought this up with a friend of theirs and he theorized some sort of magic Jumbotron. But then again, if this was possible, they wouldn't have needed the Merchieftainess's explanation about what happened underwater.
  • Why do people sit and watch the finish line of a marathon? 99.99% of the competition is taking place well out of view. They want to be there when someone wins.
  • Except that watching people merely running for several hours is boring. Now, people struggling through the giant maze of death is the whole different story. There's no reason why everybody wouldn't want to see what's happening inside.
  • Why do people sit and watch the finish line of a marathon? Because the other 99.99% of it is on TV.
  • Furthermore, even if you use the marathon comparison to try and explain why a bunch of wizard adolescents don't want to see an exciting display of magical skill, how do you justify the fact that the judges also cannot see what's happening inside the lake/maze? The audience of a marathon may only watch the finish line, but the officials have to watch the whole thing.
  • Seconded. If, for example, Krum, had actually been a bad person, and had been smart enough to use Stunning plus Obliviate, or Stunning plus 'throwing them to the monsters' instead of Unforgivables, how would anyone have caught it? Or, interesting question, do we know such things aren't allowed? Maybe the maze wasn't supposed to be 'a maze with dangerous creatures in it', maybe it was supposed to be 'a wizard duel through a maze with dangerous creatures in it'? (Although presumably the Unforgivables would still be illegal.) And Harry and Cedric (and maybe the others too) just missed the memo.

BOOOO!!! We wanted to see some ACTION!!!!

• Sure, the crowd of spectators probably enjoyed watching the dragons in the first task. And then, in the second and third tasks, a thrilled audience watched... the surface of the lake, and the outside of a hedge? The whole tournament was set up like it was a grand spectacle, but nobody could see what was happening in these two events - not even the judges. We had magic binoculars and some kind of giant magic scoreboard introduced in the earlier World Cup sequence, but there's nothing like that here. The Ministry sure went to some trouble importing a Sphinx that almost nobody got to see.
  • Well, the purpose of the tournament is a contest of magical skill, not a theatrical production. They set up seats and people came because they were interested. There are plenty of occasions in real life, like state visits and important trials, when people hang around outside a building all day just because of who's in there, even though they're not going to see anything except maybe a glimpse of somebody they think they recognize being escorted out to their car. Even news channels do it: "We're taking you live now to a video feed of one of our reporters standing in front of an iron fence, which we assure you is the one around City Hall, so she can tell us that she doesn't know any more about than we do and has nothing to say. But when she does, we'll be the first to report it!"
  • Except that during such real life occasions there may be tons of technical or legal obstacles to witnessing the juicy parts, or it may be that nobody knows when exactly the interesting event will happen. The third task was different. All the interesting stuff was happening right there, behind the bushes, and they obviously had means to observe them if they wanted to. Except, of course, that they couldn't, because then Crouch's plan wouldn't work.
  • Doesn't the same apply for real-life stuff. Like Tour De France? Since isn't a large chunk of the race is behind trees and plants while the watchers are waiting at the start/finish line?
  • Yes, and to a vivid non-sport fan, that is confounding to no end, why would anyone want to watch that. But at least people who stage races and marathons have the excuse that it's technically difficult to provide a live feed from every car or runner, pod racing-style. These people, having magic, have no such excuse. And even barring the audience, what about the judges? "The judges will be patrolling outside the maze looking for your sparks"... waaaaa? Why the hell weren't the judges looking after the participants? It's kinda their job.
  • Maybe there's a magic spell of some sort that lets them watch the contestants. Kinda like a Pensieve, or a magical camera.
  • In that case they would've seen all the bullshit that was going on in the labyrinth and stopped it, or at least they would've known that Harry was kidnapped, and arrested Moody immediately.
  • Well for the second task, they were only going to be there for an hour. That was the time limit, but there was nothing saying that someone wouldn't come back early. And if one might be remembering it wrong, but didn't all the tasks happen on weekdays? If so, it's basically a day off school, and the students will be sitting with their friends and talking - with the task as an excuse to do so.

For a flaming goblet, this thing sure is confusing.

• What if someone decided to try and get around the age line by, say, putting a slip of paper on the end of a stick? Or levitating it? Or really anything that didn't involve physically stepping over the line?
  • It's entirely possible that this did happen, however the Goblet deemed them not worthy to compete. It's never made clear how the Goblet of Fire judges the candidates, but assuming entering without standing right over it would give you a few negative points. It's entirely possible if there were any other candidates for the fourth school Harry was entered in, he wouldn't have had his name pop out either. After all, the Goblet probably judged him as cowardly by having someone else enter his name.
  • Why would the goblet care if you aren't standing over it? If you don't put it in yourself or use another way of getting it in, it's only because of the Age Line, and if the goblet is going to judge people for breaking the rules and entering when they're not supposed to, then why bother with the Age Line at all and not just trust that the goblet wouldn't pick underage students once they were forbidden to enter?
  • There's nothing saying the Goblet was even aware of the Age Line. If one were picking people for a contest of skill and bravery, and some entrants appeared afraid to even approach someone, they'd be right out.
  • They really could have avoided a huge array of potential cheats by having the Sorting Hat do the Goblet's job. But then there'd be no plot.
  • The Sorting Hat being a Hogwarts artifact wouldn't make it neutral enough.
  • Problem with that is that the Goblet of Fire is considered an "Impartial Judge" because it has no connections or bias toward any school. The Sorting Hat may be seen as biased toward Hogwarts, especially if Hogwarts champion was winning. The other headmasters would claim the hat chose bad competitors from their schools.
  • Another problem is that the Sorting Hat was purpose-created by the Founders of Hogwarts, who are basically treated as saints by the wizards of the present day. There's a decent chance using it for anything else would be considered sacrilege - and IIRC the Tournament started way after their day, so they couldn't exactly sign off on such a use.

Harry Potter and the [Crazy Cheating] Contract Of Vagueness

• What exactly are the consequences of breaking the tournament's "binding magical contract"? We're told repeatedly that there is a contract that compels the school champions to compete, but we're never told what exactly makes it so compelling.
  • Presumably death. Of course, that might be a bit much, but then it's your fault if you suddenly chicken out. Although suppose you wouldn't be breaking the contract if you just walked into the challenge, said you give up, and walked out.
  • Fanon likes to think that the main consequence is the loss of your magic. There is, however, no confirmation of this beyond speculation. Ultimately for Harry, the consequences could be significant enough that he'd have no chance against Voldemort should he survive quitting the tournament.
  • Not necessarily, except the school you represent loses face.
  • That can't be it. Harry was trying like hell to get out of it and all of the teachers were on his side. They would have been more than happy to just say "Ooops" and let Cedric represent Hogwarts alone. There must be some sort of severe consequence to justify the adults' actions.
  • Yeah, the biggest problem with the idea of the binding magical contract is that any punishment severe enough to actually force compliance is pretty much guaranteed to be Disproportionate Retribution for the heinous crime of getting cold feet about a school tournament (that kills people), and any punishment not severe enough to be disproportionate is so weak that it can't compel anyone to do anything.
  • Do we know for sure that there are 'any' consequences? Remember, there had not been a Triwizard Tournament in ages, and at least parts of the rules were rewritten in order to make things a little less deadly. Which is why the guy who helped rewriting them (on the British end, presumably) was in attendance to explain them: Barty Crouch, Sr., Head of the Department for International Magical Cooperation. Who also happened to be under the influence of the Imperius Curse the whole time. He could have exaggerated the consequences of withdrawing from the Tournament when deliberating with the headmasters... or completely made them up, for all we know.
  • The contract seems to be entered with the Goblet of Fire. If you remember, after they work out that someone confunded the goblet into thinking there was another school, Madam Maxime and Karkaroff demand to be given another round where they can each have a second champion. But Moody (Crouch Jr) says that the Goblet has gone out and can't reignite until the start of the next tournament. So if that prevents them from entering more champions, it also prevents them from removing any too.

Crazy Cheating Contracts - We're Not Done Complaining!

• Apparently, having his name put into the Goblet of Fire by someone else enters Harry into a "binding magical contract" to complete the tournament. Wait a minute — if you can enter someone into a magical contract against their will, there must be MANY easier ways to get him to show up at a certain place at a certain time so you can off him. Likewise, the Triwizard Cup is used as a Portkey to trap Harry, but if ANY item can be turned into a Portkey, wouldn't it have been easier to use, say, one of Harry's schoolbooks? Also, where did Mrs. Crouch keep the gallons of Polyjuice Potion she would've needed to continuously impersonate her son in Azkaban? Or was she brewing up a new batch every day in her jail cell even while she was suicidally depressed?
  • The whole point of entering Harry into the Tournament was to whisk him away with little need for investigation, granting Voldemort more time to gather his forces unhindered and undetected. Having Harry vanish in the middle of a monster-infested maze, where it could be assumed that he was eaten or something, would be less suspicious than him simply vanishing from school grounds, and easier than luring him into more dangerous areas near the school, with the added bonus of having easier suspects to frame for his involvement in the Tournament in the first place (like, say, Karkaroff.) As for Mrs. Crouch, it was implied that she was of a very frail countenance, which was only exacerbated by her son's conviction, and being in an energy-sucking place such as Azkaban probably didn't help. In all likelihood, she took just enough to switch places with her son, and after that, she was locked away in a cell with blind Dementors who really don't care whose energy they're consuming, so long as they're getting nourishment.
  • If Crouch Jr. had timed the disappearance between Halloween and the first challenge, then he would have made Harry disappear at his lowest possible moment, when everyone in the school except for Hermione had turned against him because they thought he had cheated his way into the tournament. Even Ron wasn't speaking to Harry at this point. So you have an ostracized teenage wizard facing the immense stress and pressure of fighting for his life in an unknown challenge...if he up and went missing in that time period, it would look as though he'd chickened out and run away, especially if Crouch Jr. makes sure to pack some of his things and make his broomstick disappear. Yes, Dumbledore may suspect foul play, but he'd have no way of proving it. It's the exact situation as arises in Voldemort's actual plot, only it relies less on rigging every event in this contest and making Harry disappear on contact with the victory cup.
  • That may have worked on the dementors, but she'd still need at least one dose of Polyjuice potion for when she died, as Crouch said she was buried in his form and a human would have had to have seen the body once she died.
  • It's likely Mrs. Crouch died very soon after she was put in Azkaban. Sirius said that the Crouches were allowed a "deathbed visit", which we must presume was when they made the swap, so it couldn't have been too long after the swap that Mrs.-Crouch-as-Crouch,-Jr. died. If Mrs. Crouch died after, say, just two days, she'd only have to take 48 sips of Polyjuice Potion.
  • Actually high quality polyjuice potion can last up to twelve hours making it even more plausible.
  • Wait a minute, didn't Sirius say that "Crouch Jr." lasted a year or so?
  • Yeah, a year after he was put in Azkaban, not a year after the deathbed visit.
  • Make Harry's bed sheets a portkey to be activated at 3:00 AM on the date of Voldemort's choosing. There, an almost foolproof plan that doesn't involve the most complicated plan known to man but still achieves the goal of no one knowing what happened or even discovering he's gone until several hours later. Hell, why not make it on a Saturday so no one gets suspicious until he starts missing classes two days later.
  • His dormmates and other student friends would still wonder why Harry never showed up for breakfast, couldn't be found anywhere in the school, didn't show up for ANY meals, etc. Especially with the fact that he's pretty famous already. Having him randomly disappear during the night at Hogwarts would mean that Ron, Neville, Seamus, and Dean would notice it, as well as anyone else he normally sits next to at breakfast. Even doing it at the Dursleys would have the complications of a Death Eater managing to get into Privet Drive without doing magic (to set off Ministry alarms prematurely), and Voldemort still might face the same problem with the wands connecting if he did the same "duel me, Harry" thing he does in the book when they're in the graveyard. Maybe it's been mentioned on the Headscratchers page that Voldemort wanted to have the dramatic entrance of being able to use the Portkey to arrive back at Hogwarts with Harry's body, and if he used the Portkey in the "steal him from the Dursleys" situation, he would end up at their house and be revealed to the Muggles and possibly Ms. Figg (who would be a second witness to Voldemort's return).
  • Yes, but if he had grabbed him out of his Hogwarts dorm at 3 in the morning chances are nobody would have noticed him gone for several hours, giving him more time to play games. Grabbing him from the tournament ensured that people were going to notice something wrong very quickly. Granted, the crowds might have assumed it was part of the show, but Dumbledore and the Ministry would have known that the champions shouldn't have disappeared. If he wanted to make a big show, he could have just arranged a second portkey to take him into the Great Hall or something after he killed Harry.
  • You presuppose that creating a portkey would go unnoticed. That is most likely not so. It's a powerful spell, Hogwarts must be full of magic detectors (they do have to keep tabs on several hundred adolescent trigger-happy wizards there), not to mention Dumbledore, and since portkeys require Ministery authorisation, they also should have some means of monitoring them. All in all, Crouch would have to create the portkey immediately before handing it Harry and then deal with intervention from Aurors and/or D. Not the most convenient and discreet way. The way it turned out, Crouch got himself an excuse to create a legit portkey (remember, he volunteered to take the Cup to the maze, and it's more or less agreed on, that the Cup was supposed to teleport the champion back to the judges. So who would get to charm it? Exactly, Crouch. He just added a detour).
  • Dumbledore didn't notice when Crouch Jr. created the Portkey out of the Goblet in the first place. He confessed to doing so under Veritaserum; not that he altered a Portkey enchantment, but that he made it a Portkey in the first place.
  • Right. Hogwarts is full of magic detectors. That's why while Draco and Harry were busy trying to murder each other in the bathroom in book 6, with everything up to and including the Unforgivables, nobody showed up until after Myrtle started screaming the alarm, and even then it was only the guy who'd been following Draco around the whole time anyway.
  • It was explained in OoTP that Voldemort didn't intend for anyone to know he was back even by the end of that book (a year later). Given how Deathly Hallows went down, he probably never intended for anyone to know he was back; he would just keep the Minister of Magic Imperiused. Unfortunately, Harry's permanent disappearance would have caused a stir and at least Dumbledore would have started looking for him. Instead, Voldemort could kill him and send him back to Hogwarts, and the investigation would be minimal due to how dangerous the Triwizard Tournament supposedly was. If people bought it, Voldemort not only comes back, but he gains Harry's blood protection, kills the person destined to kill him, and remains unhunted.
  • Then why does the Goblet return Harry outside the maze instead of inside? How was that supposed to fit in with the whole ruse? That Harry, with his last dying breath, grabbed the goblet, which he didn't even know was a portkey?
  • 1) If DD put the first Portus himself, this means that Crouch Jr. wasn't supposed to do it, meaning he didn't need an excuse to create one, meaning he didn't need to wait an entire year (you'll say that he needed DD to put those wards-bypassing enchantments on it and ask why the hell would DD make it possible for the Goblet to go out of Hogwarts just to teleport a person from the maze). 2) In that case Crouch Jr. would've certainly warned V that the Goblet was still portkey...ified, and he would've made sure that Harry doesn't grab it immediately or Accio it later. He didn't, meaning he didn't know, meaning Crouch Jr. didn't know either, meaning the first Portus was put in secret. DD had no reason to do that unless he knew beforehand what was supposed to happen.
  • 1) Not if the protection prevented a portkey from functioning in the first place. 2) If the tournament included a portkey that was supposed to return the champion to the entrance, then Voldemort would certainly have known it. That's probably an explanation for the elaborate plan in the first place.
  • Dumbledore didn't make the Goblet a Portkey in the first place. Fake Moody says that he was the one that did it when they questioned him under Veritaserum.
  • 1) Fair enough, although the question remains, why would DD remove the wards enough for the Portkey to reach outside of Hogwarts. If you say he didn't have a choice and the wards only had an on/off switch, then a) it's stupid, impractical and unsafe and b) in that case he wouldn't have used the portkey at all - just have the winner levitated out of the labyrinth or something. 2) Uhm, yeah, that's one point. V knew that the return portkey was supposed to be there, but if he knew it was still actually in the Cup, he would've destroyed the Cup right after Harry arrived to the cemetery. He didn't, meaning..., well, see above.
  • 1) A portkey would be fastest way to return the champion in front of the maze and wouldn't be in any way risky, considering that only Dumbledore and Moody would be handling it (and as has been discussed elsewhere, the evidence clearly shows that he didn't know who he really was). 2) Voldemort may well have intended to use the Cup himself. Also, he had no need to destroy the cup, as Harry was and he had rather more pressing matters to occupy him (for example, the whole resurrection thing) anyway. Also, why all the drama about stopping Harry after he escaped if he didn't know about the cup?
  • 1) What was the rush? No, the portkey wouldn't be risky - removing the wards from the school would be, especially when your arch-enemy is on the move and there could be an enemy agent inside the school. 2) *Sigh* use it how?! Send the body back? Then it would return him back to the labyrinth or it makes no sense. Go to Hogwarts to kill DD? Simply makes no sense. But fine, remove the Cup, whatever. "...no need to..." *Sigh* It's like there's some rule that no one is aware of, that forbids the characters to plan their actions in advance and use precautions, even if it would take them one second to use. Like, he spends a year on that plan, he stakes everything he has on it, and if the kid escapes, he's screwed. He also plans to release the kid and have that stupid fight with him. And you're telling that he'd just leave a means to escape lie there? Barely Ssensible. "...why all the drama..." What drama? He's yelling at his men to stop the kid, because, well, he's running away. That's normal, especially when everything has gone to hell, you don't understand what's going on, and don't know what to expect next. And yet he doesn't mention the Cup at all. Because he doesn't know about it.
  • People seem to be assuming that DD was the one who made the Cup a Portkey. Yes, we know DD can make Portkeys to Hogwarts, and we must assume no one else can, but people forget the Cup is very old. What if the Cup is part of the inherent magic of the Twiwiz, and permanent exceptions for it in the wards of all three schools were installed when the Triwiz was created? It activates during the last task of the Triwizard, period, to take contestants from the inside of the task to a designated winner's circle. DD has nothing to do with it, he didn't make it, and he can't stop it. Barty Jr. just managed to somehow hack an extra destination into it. (We don't know how he did that, but Barty clearly knows more about the rules of Triwiz than other people, probably even more than DD.)
  • Dumbledore didn't make the Goblet a Portkey. Fake Moody did, as he stated when they questioned him under Veritaserum.
  • Still stuck on the fact that Harry could be entered against his will. Even leaving aside the implications of what one could do with that ability, what the hell kind of rule is it that you have to fight in a possibly lethal competition even if you didn't put yourself in for it? That's just all kinds of fucked up, having to live in a world where a contract can be signed on your behalf. Does this mean Harry could have signed a contract on Malfoy's behalf giving the entire Malfoy fortune to the Weasleys? And what would have happened if Harry refused to compete? Could he have just scratched on each event so he could walk away alive?
  • Finally, even if Dumbledore was an evil manipulator, what possible benefit would he have from sending Harry to certain death? Voldemort could just as easily not have bothered with a duel.
  • You know what? Let's take a second and deal with this whole "signing someone up for a Magically-Binding Contract against their will" deal head-on. If you can do that, why wouldn't Voldy enter Dumbledore into a Magically-Binding Contract to jump off a cliff and go splat?
  • How is Voldemort supposed to get Dumbledore to sign one? Go up to him and say "Here, sign this completely unfair contract that will kill you"?
  • That's the whole point. Harry didn't sign anything to get entered into the Triwizard Tournament. Someone hit the Goblet with a Confundus Curse and put his name in for him. So there exists a method for entering someone into a Magically-Binding Contract without their knowledge or consent, which is never mentioned before or since, despite there being no end of nefarious purposes for such a thing.
  • The practical answer to that is that the Goblet is a unique ancient artifact, and nobody can replicate such magic anymore, just as no one can replicate the Hallows (and the wizards who made it didn't realise they held the keys to world domination because, despite (or due to) their tremendous skill, they were idiots). No problem here - the problem is that no one in their right mind would ever use something like that for a juvenile tournament, and there's absolutely no reason why they would want to, except if DD explicitly needed Harry to participate.
  • Possibly it has to be the person's own signature, not just their name written down by somebody else. Harry would have signed his name on the homework he turned in, so the one who slipped his name into the Goblet could've used the signature from any of those assignments.
  • The same idea here, but in this case all they had to do to nail the culprit was check the signature on the sign-in parchment against all the assignments Harry had submitted, starting, of course, from the most recent ones and the DADA ones (because DADA teacher is the obvious suspect as a newcomer and, well, the DADA teacher). Hell, seeing how parchment is rather expensive, it would stand to reason that they would remove the writings after each test and reuse the sheets, so they would only need to check the most recent ones.
  • The Goblet of Fire is very old and mysterious. The Magical Contract was probably an ancient art that can't be used today for one reason or another. Also we don't know what would have happened to Harry. It's probably that contracts that would end in death can't be done by proxy and the Triwizard Tournament isn't an instant death sentence and the Cup was made in times where such contests were seen differently. As for the insane Triwizard Plan, it probably was insane. Vodly was being dramatic and addicted to complexity at the moment and Wormtail even tried to point out other ways of doing things. However, even if it was a mad plan it still worked. Oh and as for the Cup taking Harry out of the maze, there's still that liking that the DD made an original Portkey idea. Yes Crouch confessed but maybe he didn't know about the original Portkey enchantment. DD planned a dramatic surprise end to the Tournament.

Water, the wizard's greatest foe!

• How is it that Harry had any problem with finding a way to not drown during the second task? No, seriously, how is that possible? Drowning is a very common cause of death, and certainly a charm to prevent it would have come up at some point in his magical education. Probably it would even come up during his studies of Medieval witches and wizards, since one of the most common tests to see if someone was a witch at the time was to throw them into a river and see if they drowned or not. The Bubble-Head charm used by Fleur and Cedric is clearly not obscure magic since everyone is using it during the very next book, and both of them came up with the idea to use it at that. How on Earth did Hermione never even hear of this spell before, or find anything out about it before the task? How did Harry, for that matter? Why would the subject of surviving a lack of breathable air never appear in any wizarding book, yet the very charm for doing so be so easy to come by for anyone not Harry?
  • Knowing Hermione, it's possible she rejected it as too unreliable (notice that in the film it's implied that Fleur's bubble was popped by a Grindylow) and wanted to find something for Harry that was less likely to fail if he was confronted while underwater.
  • Maybe she just didn't know the bubble-head charm? Yeah, she's clever, but that doesn't mean she knows of every spell in existence.
  • Just because everyone knows it by the next book doesn't mean everyone knows it now. Spells which aren't in the textbooks appear to go in and out of fashion, and it's possible that the students in general aren't aware of it until they saw people using it during the Triwizard. That said, it indeed doesn't make sense for Hogwarts not to teach basic safety spells. But it doesn't, as we see Harry lament in book seven that he knows almost no first aid spells, and the minor one he does know he learned from Tonks, not Hogwarts. So students not knowing how to survive underwater fits entirely in canon, it's just completely stupid in the context of an actual school of magic.
  • Further to the above, and Lupin saying to Harry in "Half Blood Prince" that spells go in and out of fashion in Hogwarts: it makes total sense that everyone knows the Bubble Head charm in the next book but only two students do in this book, because everyone in the school saw it used in this book and said "Wow, I've got to learn how to do that!". And remember that Lupin says that about "Levicorpus", a silent spell invented by Snape which, given the incantation isn't spoken when its used and was only written in a potion book, basically must have spread by word of mouth, and spread so far and fast that it was being used against Snape by his enemies.
  • And aren't Cedric and Fleur seventh years, whereas Harry and Hermione are fourth years? Perhaps the bubble head charm is something that can only legally be taught to the older classes (maybe they even have to test it by going underwater?) - and so Hermione just doesn't know about it.

Outwitting the Age Line

• Dumbledore put an age line around the Goblet of Fire to prevent anyone too young from crossing to put their name in. Did no one remember that they could just magically levitate the paper into the cup, a thing they learn in their first year?
  • Because there's no way that old senile duffer Dumbledore would remember to charm the cup against such sort of things, would he?
  • And let's not forget that one of the first things Dumbledore asks Harry after his name comes out of the goblet is "Did you ask an older student to put your name into the goblet?" This seems to imply, if not state outright, that all it would have taken for Harry, Ron, Fred and George, or anyone who wanted to be in the tournament to get their name in would be to just have a seventh-year student drop it in for them, thereby completely negating the purpose of the age line.
  • Why would a seven-year student want to compromise themselves by breaking a rule and help a potential competitor?
  • Maybe a 7th year student who didn't want to compete? Pretty sure there were plenty of those.
  • Seven-year drops a first-year's name in the Goblet. The Goblet chooses this first-year. Teachers wring the seventh-year name out of the first-year (teachers are very good in this even when they can't read your mind). The seventh-year is in shit. Clear this way?
  • The seventh year could easily still do it, never expecting a first year to be chosen as the champion for the entire school. Honestly, the way it's described in the book, the goblet chooses the best candidate that entered, and it's only because Harry was entered into a fourth school alone that he was chosen. Still, what's the worst the teacher/headmaster could do for entering a student and getting caught? Lose house points and detention? It's not like they're going to expel them, especially since there wasn't exactly a rule forbidding it.
  • Ri-i-i-i-ight. What the worst could possibly befall a student who drew a freshman into a contest that had been cancelled because people died in it and had only been reinstated on the condition that underages shall not enter it? Who basically embarrassed his Headmaster in front of the foreign colleagues, since D was in charge of the Tournament and the Age line in particular? Because we all know how lenient the Hogwarts teachers were, right? It's not like McGonagall fined her own House 150 points when her students were merely caught outside their dorm at night.
  • She punished them for something explicitly against the rules. A guilty student might have lost House points, or given detentions, or had a letter sent home (and a Howler sent back). But expulsion is pretty much out. Dumbledore, for all his faults, would not put someone out on their ear for making him look bad.
  • You missed the part about underage wizards dying in the Tournament in the past, didn't you? Well, it's kind of the main point. Imagine you help some kid into the Tournament and the kid gets killed. Good luck living with yourself. Even if the worst doesn't happen, let's face it, explicit rule or not, you're bound for some reprimand, most likely severe. What sensible student would risk it?
  • That depends on how cynical the seventh year in question is. If the student is a Slytherin or anyone that would think the first year would have to be Too Stupid To Live to pay you to enter the tournament, he/she probably wouldn't feel remorse at all. Yeah, he or she might get in trouble if the first year dies, but again, the seventh year didn't kill them, only put them into a dangerous situation at their discretion with minimal chance of being chosen by the goblet.
  • Well, that's your answer. It would take a cynical bastard (read, Slytherin) to pull off a trick like that. Can you imagine Ron, Fred, or George colloborating with that kind of people (not to mention their constant lack of funds)? As for the others, well, somebody might've tried it, they weren't chosen, and it wasn't mentioned in the book 'cause nobody cares.
  • Slytherins wouldn't be the only ones to do that. For example, if Fred and George had been a few months older, then pretty sure they would have put Harry, Ron, and Hermione's names in the cup if any of them asked.
  • It may sound stupid, but in defense of the "Don't automatically paint Slytherins as evil" argument, one would highly doubt a "cynical Slytherin", as you put it, would just put a underclassman in the Goblet of Fire just for kicks. Slytherins are AMBITIOUS. "What's in it for me?" would be their reasoning, and the trouble it would cause would make it unworthy.
  • It might point out that the Slytherin in question has every reason to comply with the request if he wants the student in question to get killed. The Tournament is, basically, legalized murder; if you've got someone you wouldn't mind seeing get mulched, toss their name in when they're not otherwise ready to compete at this level, step back, and laugh an evil laugh. Frig, this pretty much is the reason "Moody" entered Harry's name.
  • There's the interpretation that it wouldn't be enough just to have a seventh year drop your name in, but also for them to bamboozle the Goblet to accept an underage student in the first place. You wouldn't just bamboozle it and then tip off an underage student, because then they surely blab to their friends and the rumour spreads like wildfire that the Goblet's security has been compromised and the whole enterprise falls apart. Also, Fred and George probably wouldn't have helped underage students to do it, if only because their efforts were entirely centered on ensuring that they themselves were put forward as contenders, so they wouldn't have wanted to waste their opportunity.
  • Is there anyone else who remembers that it is said in the books that no one have died in the tournament in many centuries? You’re talking like the Goblet of Fire is the Hunger Games or Battle Royale. It was clear that, even when the tournament does have high risks, it’s still safe enough for the magical world standards and certain safety measures are taken to minimize possible deaths. That’s why everyone is so shocked by Cedric’s death: it was unexpected. On the other hand, if the line is there to prevent students under 17 from crossing, there’s no practical way to avoid someone introducing a name of some youngster, unless you prevent every single student from crossing the line, in which case no one can.
  • The tournament was stopped centuries ago because too many people died and it was explicitly mentioned that because of this risk, only students of legal age can enter. Any death would have been a shock anyway, even if the tournament is highly dangerous on the regular.

Age Limit

• Something else occurred to me about the Goblet of Fire. The entire purpose of the Goblet of Fire is to select the best possible contestants for the Triwizard Tournament. If the Goblet is in fact capable of picking the best possible students for the tournament (rather than just picking them at random), then no age line should be necessary. If the underage students haven't learned enough magic to safely compete in the tournament (the stated reason for the age requirement), then the Goblet should overlook them in favor of an older, more qualified student. If an underage student is selected, well then, clearly they're good enough, otherwise the Goblet wouldn't have picked them, would it?
  • Cedric was only a sixth year, and yet he was deemed to know enough magic to compete. Say Fred or George had successfully managed to enter and were chosen. They were the same year as Cedric and so had gotten the same education as he had, and yet they were still several months underage. Highly doubt a first year would have been chosen, but an underage fifth or sixth year might have been, and while that wouldn't prove much of a problem on the lack of knowledge front, people might freak out that they were underage, since one of the conditions for bringing it back was to prevent that kind of thing from happening.
  • Partially justified: a restriction on entries to of-age wizards and witches was one of the conditions for restarting the tournament, due to the concerns and complaints over the high mortality rate. If the Goblet can truly be as omniscient in its choosing (which it might be, unless bewitched), then this wouldn't be a problem; but when has such a thing ever stopped politicians on making age restrictions to harmful activities, regardless of the competence/responsibility of the underaged, due to public pressure?
  • It might also be legal. As has been pointed out, the Goblet enters you into a magically binding contract which wizarding law, possibly put into place only since the tournament was canceled, says you aren't allowed to enter until you're of age. If, however, someone with a clear disregard for the law like Crouch enters someone not of age, and they're chosen... nothing to be done about it.
  • The Age Line could have been nothing more than a security blanket for the parents of students. Dumbledore knew the Goblet wouldn't pick a first year, but that wouldn't stop a first year's parents from freaking out at the idea that their child might be chosen. So he goes "See? There's an age line. Nothing to worry about."
  • "Wheh, thank you, Professor, now my mind is at ease. Just to be absolutely sure, what will stop some 7-year old from putting my little Timmy's name into the Goblet?" ... ... ... "You know Professor, I have an idea. Why don't you appoint a staff member to supervise the Goblet and ensure that only eligible students put their names in and that everyone only puts their own name in?" ... ... ... "Now that I think of it, why don't you just have the students submit their applications to the Heads of their House who would then put them into the Goblet?" ... ... ... "You're making it so Voldemort's agent could secretly put Harry Potter's name into the Goblet and the plot could happen, aren't you?"
  • It's suspectable that the age restriction is simple. Rather than being about competence, it is about the student being an adult. That is, being of an age that he or she is mentally and legally qualified to make a decision to risk life and limb.

Older student

• Going back to an earlier point, one of the first things Dumbledore asks Harry after his name comes out of the goblet is "Did you ask an older student to put your name into the goblet?" Does that mean that this would have worked? What's to keep a seventh year Slytherin from putting the name of everyone he or she doesn't like into the Goblet, in hopes of having them harmed or killed in the dangerous tri—wizard tournament?
  • Absolutely nothing. Which brings us to another point. The French and the Evil school headmasters were positevly outraged that a breach of rules like that could happen. But did they not know in advance that the "defence" was a complete joke? How could they, upon hearing about that "age line" bullshift, not immediately jump to the painfully obvious question about what would stop an adult from putting another' name into the Goblet?
  • One is still waiting to read someone giving a possible practical solution to this matter. “OK, we put a magical line here and only humans over 17 can pass it, now all seventh-grade students that want to participate can write your name and put it in the goblet.” “Oh wait, but what if one of the 17 year old student put the name of some first-year student?” “Fine, then only adults over 18 can put the names.” “Wait, but then how are the seventh-year students going to participate?”
  • At your service. Every applicant writes their name on a piece of paper and then, please pay attention, because this is very complex, gives that piece of paper to the head of their House. Who then checks the pieces for added invisible writing or whatnot. Then they gather together, double-check all the names and place them into the Goblet. Which is kept under DD's personal watch at all times and handled by him alone.
  • And wasn't it supposed to be anonymous?
  • Why would it be, and, seeing how students put their names into the Goblet in plain view of the entire school, obviously not.
  • But part of the idea was also that you could nominate a third party, not everyone has to put their own name on it if they wanted to nominate another person.
  • No, pretty sure everyone was supposed to only nominate themselves. Why would it be otherwise? If that third party is of age, they'll be able to nominate themselves. If they're underage, they shouldn't participate.
  • The goblet was designed to only choose the student who was most likely to succeed in the tournament. The only reason Harry was chosen was because it was Confunded to think that there were four school with nominees, instead of three. Harry's name was the only name entered under this non-existent fourth school - thus, by default, he was deemed by the goblet the most competent. Dumbledore asking whether Harry had asked that of an older student was just him trying to narrow down the possible causes of what had happened.
  • It also begs the question, if a spell can be used to prevent underage students entering the tournament, why not also use a spell to prevent someone putting a name other than their own into the goblet?
  • Two different things entirely. We can't assume that such a spell exists. Besides, the paper with his name on it probably came from a homework assignment of Harry's—written by his own hand. The fact that he didn't want to compete is something the designers of the goblet probably never considered.

Harry Potter and the Egregious Misnomer

• Wouldn't it have made more sense to call the book/movie "Harry Potter and the Triwizard Tournament"? It gets like five minutes of screentime, and probably only mentioned for ten minutes in all of the book's/film's total dialogue.
  • J. K. Rowling's answer: "I changed my mind twice on what [the title] was. The working title had got out — "Harry Potter and the Doomspell Tournament." Then I changed "Doomspell" to "Triwizard Tournament." Then I was teetering between "Goblet of Fire" and "Triwizard Tournament." In the end, I preferred "Goblet of Fire" because it's got that kind of "cup of destiny" feel about it, which is the theme of the book."

There's No Shame In Not Trying, Harry

• Why is Harry even making an effort with Triwizard Tournament? Why not just show up and twiddle your thumbs for the next couple of hours? What's the Goblet of Fire going to do, yell at him? Fleur probably could have tried harder on the second task, but the Magical Cup of Child Endangerment didn't hurt her. So why isn't Dumbledore just having Harry show up and screw around for an hour or so, or work on school work in the corner or something while the ones who are of age do the tasks? That seems like the safest thing to do.
  • Given how hard Dumbledore tried to get Harry out of the tournament (read: not at all), and the previous years' shenanigans, it's not like student safety is actually one of Dumbledore's main concerns.
  • Because it's impossible that in the magical world a magically binding contract would punish those who break it...
  • Of course not. But using a magically binding contract with no escape clauses for a juvenile competition is asinine, unless you have a vested interest that a certain competitior cannot leave the competition.
  • One theory is that DD actually intended to drag Harry into the tournament to intensify his training, Hagrid, McGonagall and Snape played along, Harry was too dumb and too well groomed to even consider questioning His Infallible Eminence, and Ron, Hermie, Maxim, Karkaroff, other champions... Why didn’t any of them suggested this painfully obvious option? DD must've cast a Massive Confundus spell on the entire castle or something. So yeah, not a perfect explanation, but unlike canon, it makes at least some sense.
  • OP, the purpose of editing is not to be redundant, and this is the third time you have mentioned this theory on this page alone...
  • THE ONLY ASININE THING HERE IS THIS THEORY! THE CUP AND TOURNAMENT RULES ARE OLDER THAN DD! Why do you think he could change anything in the magical contract that was written up for the first Triwizard Tournament which had probably taken place before anyone in the history of the books was even born? He couldn't even alter the cup so that it had an age restriction of its own, the age restriction was separate altogether because no one could tamper with the cup. IN FACT, the only reason Harry was able to be put in under another school was because those who made the cup thought it was possible that other schools might eventually also want to enter. The only reason DD didn’t do anything was because there were no loopholes to exploit, and since he had no ability to change that Harry was in the Triwizard Tournament, he simply did the honorable thing and expected Harry to follow suit.
  • There's no problem with the Goblet's contract being inescapable, although it'd still be nice to hear how exactly it was formulated, because "participating" is a rather vague term. There are problems with the idea of using an item that forces people into inescapable contracts with dire violation consequences, without their knowledge or consent, in a juvenile competition. Not to be redundant, but that is asinine, and no one in their right mind would ever do anything like that, unless they had a vested interest in preventing the participants from leaving.
  • The problem is that we don't really hear what the actual terms of being chosen for the Tournament are, aside from it being a binding magical contract (which presumably means it's unbreakable). It's probable that the rules state that each Champion has to give each task a shot. They won't get punished for messing up, but they have to at least try to win.
  • Well, we know that failure to complete a task does not result in loss of magic or anything else, because Fleur failed to complete the second task and she's fine. So at minimum even a failed attempt counts as an attempt. The solution is thus obvious; come in last place. So, fire a couple weaksauce spells at the dragon from the far end of the arena and give up, turn around as soon as mermen wave their spears at you, and step six feet into the maze and fire up red sparks. Shazoom.
  • Then again, isn't Harry rather prideful? Isn't it possible that he is driven, consciously or other, to give his bloody best to prove himself to the school.
  • No. Harry may be many things but he's not prideful or an attention whore. He's clearly uncomfortable with the situation and announces more than once that he doesn't seek glory. No, if there was something driving him, it was the helpful adults with their nice little motivational speeches about "how you should do your best, and nobody will think bad about you". Which were, of course, completely accidental and sincere.
  • The rest of Gryffindor was counting on him to do them proud, too. Considering they're the people he lives with for most of every year, letting them down by not even making a token effort would've invited a lot of bitterness from his Housemates between then and graduation.
  • Then they are idiots for not realising he was coerced into participation and going along with it would mean playing into the hands of the mastermind behind the coercion. In that case they do not deserve his concerns. Of course, since Harry apparently never realised it himself, there could be truth in this version.
  • One could disagree with the concept that Harry isn't prideful and slightly arrogant. As Hermione correctly points out in the second task he does have a Saving People Thing as she puts it; it should have been obvious (as it was to the reader) that Dumbledore and the Ministry of Magic wasn't genuinely going to drown four children just for a couple of points and a cup. Also remember that the Sorting Hat wanted to put him in Slytherin - the House where Pride is something they have in abundance. It’s that thirst to prove himself that the Hat mentioned that has driven him to be this way.
  • Actually, Gryffindor is the prideful house, not Slytherin. Besides, Harry going after the other kids in the Second Challenge was his compulsive need to help/save everybody, not pride. A kid who tries to get himself killed in the name of helping others as hard as Harry is hardly prideful.
  • This headscratcher is kind of Déjà vu-esque, it has been asked before, and the answer has been the same; No, Dumbledore is not an evil monster who wants Harry (or any other students) harm and no, we don’t know what the cost of not participating in the Tournament is, but it is implied that it is very high. And magic works with will, not just with actions, in a similar way how the Aveda Kadabra does not work if you really don’t want to kill someone. It’s possible that if you try to trick the Goblet and present yourself on the tasks making your smallest effort, the Goblet is still going to detect that you are not fulfilling your part of the contract. Whether Harry is prideful or not, it doesn’t matter, he’s a teenage boy, and the book does make it clear he does begin enjoying the attention once he starts winning.
  • Harry is prideful, he's not arrogant, he doesn't want attention, but he does have pride. His self-esteem issues, few ambitions and shunning of fame mean he doesn't think himself as being all that important or special, and doesn't want to be more important or special, but he likes who he is. He breaks rules but genuinely thinks himself moral otherwise, believing in fair play, being against causing excessive harm, tries to avoid over indulgence, is fiercely loyal, will get angry if any of these parts of his character are attacked or libeled and become disheartened at perceived failures in these areas (unless he's really angry).
  • In fact, there is another famous franchise that takes the time to spell out how pride and arrogance are not synonyms in at least one of its entries. Granted, it does this because they sadly are seen together so often. But anyway, while the headmaster does not want Potter to die, in the back of his mind he really believes the Potter child dying would not be for the greater good. It's only after this book that he decides the war is winnable with Potter's death. But at this time there is a conflict between Dumbledore's duty as an educator and his duty as a resistance fighter. Him letting Harry Potter risk life and limb in a contest he didn't actually want Harry Potter taking part in is a symptom of that conflict. (It would be awful if something happened to him, but with war on the horizon it might be worse if something didn't, missing the simpler times, with sisters, brothers and lovers)
• Harry does not want to let the others down. He also is not someone who quits just because something is hard or he shouldn't be doing it. Because he was told he had to participate, Harry gave it his all. There was also the Conflict Ball between him and Ron, which probably helped to prove himself especially to Ron. As for the second task, Harry had a choice of three people—his two best friends and the girl he had a major crush on.

Why bother with the tournament at all?

• Ok, Voldemort wanted Harry to touch the trophy to have him teleported... then why not hand it over to him in an easier way? Like having fake Moody give Harry a pencil or a coin or whatever the hell else he wanted for a Portkey? Seriously, why would Voldemort go out of his way to put up such a stupidly complicated plan?
  • This has been debated to death. Here are some of the most commonly suggested solutions:
  • They were planning to send Harry's body back to the maze with the Portkey. No one would find it suspicious that Harry was killed during the Triwizard Tournament and Voldemort's return would certainly not be suspected.
  • Creating a Portkey on Hogwarts grounds requires some sort of authorization which fake Moody didn't have. This theory is based on the fact that the film shows Harry and Cedric land outside the maze when they Portkey back to Hogwarts, something the crowd didn't seem surprised by. The assumption is that the Triwizard Cup was already a Portkey and was intended to transport the champion out of the maze, but fake Moody added an extra destination in between.
  • Harry had to be Portkeyed away in a manner which could not be traced back to fake Moody. Barty Crouch, Jr. is a valuable follower, after all. He could continue to pose as Moody and become an indispensable double agent, assuming the Order of the Phoenix is still reformed.
  • "They were planning to send Harry's body back to the maze with the Portkey" - in that case the Portkey would've brought him back inside the maze, not outside, so no. "Harry had to be Portkeyed away in a manner which could not be traced back to fake Moody." - Crouch volunteered to take the Triwizard Cup into the maze, which means no one else could've created the Portkey and he knew it, so no. "The Triwizard Cup was already a Portkey and fake Moody added an extra destination in between." - in that case Crouch would've known that the Triwizard Cup was still a Portkey, in which case he would've certainly warned V, who would've certainly taken measures to prevent Harry from grabbing the Cup immediately or Accioing it later, so no. So where does this leave us? Crouch needed a legitimate excuse to create the Portkey, yet he didn't know about the return one. Ergo the Ministery could only register the act of Portkey creation, but not the destination. There's only one possibility: by the time Crouch charmed it, the Triwizard Cup had already been rigged with a return Portkey, put in "sleeper mode". Which means, of course, that DD was in on the plan for some time and went along with it.
  • It also doesn't jive with the fact that fake Moody confessed under Veritaserum that he made the Triwizard Cup into a Portkey, not that he altered an existing Portkey enchantment.
  • Or more simply, Voldemort knew that the Cup was a portkey and simply didn't need to intervene when Harry first arrived. This is in fact confirmed by Voldemort's effort to prevent Harry from reaching the Portkey to escape. Of course, suppose that an Evil! Manipulative! Dumbledore (but also extremely stupid) is more interesting to some...
  • What do you mean "didn't need to intervene?" What was there to "intervene" in, except destroying or otherwise removing the Cup, which would've taken him about 5 seconds? And what effort are you talking about? If he knew what it was he would've accioed it himself or at least shouted to Death Eaters to get it. He didn't, meaning he didn't know.
  • See above. Harry was secured quickly, so there was no need to destroy the cup at this point. And summoning the cup while Harry is running to get it is obviously not the best way to prevent him from getting his hands on it.
  • Harry had a few minutes alone with the Cup. More than enough time to grab it, if only not leave it lying around. And V planned to release him and have that stupid fight, meaning the "secured quickly" argument is invalid. "...is obviously not the best way..." Why not? At least it's better than doing nothing at all.
  • Voldemort needed Harry in the Tournament because there was NO OTHER way Harry's "Death" could be seen as an 'accident'. Remember, Dumbledore at the school is watching over Harry, so it would look suspicious if Harry disappeared and came back dead if he picked up a quill or something from Moody's desk. Also DD didn't know how many times people need to say "the real Moody would never have removed you from my sight."
  • *Sigh* Right, Harry was under DD's constant and vigilant eye, unlike, naturally, when he was in that dangerous labyrinth, during the final stage of the Tournament in which his participation was orchestrated by an unknown party, so whatever their intention was, this would be their last chance to achieve it... Nah, why would DD want to keep an eye on him THERE? How many times do people need to say... - as many as they feel like it. It won't change the fact that there was a concealed return portkey in the Cup, meaning he had to know.
  • Why would Dumbledore have to know, considering that it was Moody who carried in the cup?
  • Because it was concealed. The only reason DD would do it is if he knew it would be needed.
  • Has it occurred to you that Crouch might not have been able to tell Voldemort that he couldn't completely override the original portkey? It might have been too risky to call him and risk being caught. Crouch said "My lord, I'm sure that I can replace the destination on the portkey" and only realized (or didn't realize at all) that the original one stayed on, then Voldy didn't realize that it was a risk. Besides, he's an arrogant prick. No need for evil Dumbledore at all.
  • But in that case the "original Portkey" would have to be put by someone other than Crouch, and why would that be? Crouch carried the Cup into the maze, obviously he was supposed to turn it into a Portkey. Because the only reason why he would need to wait the whole year instead of making a random item a Portkey to shove into Harry's hands that seeing is that the spell is detectable, and he needed a legitimate excuse to cast it. Next, the "arrogant prick" is a lame argument, please don't stoop to it. Finally, no, it's not claiming that DD was evil - that would imply he was a character rather than a puppet that helplessly obeys even the most asinine commands of its puppeteers.
  • Why does the fact that Crouch Jr brought the Cup into the maze mean nobody could have turned it into a Portkey beforehand? Given the scale of the tournament, everything was planned out probably months if not years before the formal announcement, so the organizers would've had plenty of time before the Third Task to turn the Cup into a Portkey that would teleport the Champion that touches it first to the outside of the maze. Dumbledore might not have even been the one who turned the Cup into a Portkey the first time; the Ministry could've just instructed him to temporarily peel back a layer of Hogwarts's protections to allow the Triwizard Cup Portkey to work for the Third Task. It's possible that the plan was to turn the Cup into a Portkey to the maze entrance after it had been placed in the center of the maze, but that a miscommunication resulted in that happening before the Cup was in place. Since wizards can move objects by simply levitating them, Crouch Jr. never discovered the Cup was already a Portkey. He may have intended to turn the Cup into a Portkey to the graveyard, then cast extra spells that would silently neutralize further attempts to make the Cup a Portkey. Instead, he used the Portkey creation spell on the Triwizard Cup when the Cup had already been turned into a Portkey, causing the Cup to transport Harry and Cedric to the graveyard the first time it was touched, then Harry to the front of the maze the second time.
  • Considering Voldemort strongly hints at his intention to feed Harry's corpse to Nagini after he's killed the boy, the presumption that he'd planned to send Harry's body back seems unjustified.
  • Someone on YouTube has theorized that Voldemort planned to Polyjuice one of his followers to look like Harry and send him back to Hogwarts with the Portkey in order to gather intel for his return, while feeding the real Harry to Nagini like he'd planned to.
  • Here's another theory; Harry was to be killed but not sent back. That way he'd only be missing, and for the next few months, Dumbledore and co are busy searching for him and trying to find out what happened - diverting their attention and allowing Voldemort to pull off whatever plan he's got next (sneaking into the Department of Mysteries to hear the prophecy perhaps?) There might be more value in Dumbledore thinking Harry is missing as opposed to knowing he's dead.
  • Does anyone actually think Voldy is not arrogant? He would not have been silent about having killed Harry, the boy who led to his downfall because he couldn't kill him as a baby. This whole plot was to kill Harry once and for all and gloat about it to the Wizarding world, not have Harry die and hide this fact or his return. That aspect only happened when Harry survived and Fudge refused to accept the truth and spread rumors about Harry and Dumbledore's sanity. In that environment, he knew hiding in the shadows was the best way to rebuild his power.

ALL of Quidditch is canceled so THREE students can compete!

• Forget the complex plot to trap Harry, Death Eaters, Aurors, the fact that nobody asks how Cedric died when Harry returns, until the next book (when he's just a social outcast rather than the subject of an investigation). And imagine for a moment that a major football school cancels football for the entire year so that three people (who may or may not play football) can compete in something completely unrelated. Chess, let's say. Quidditch is even bigger to Hogwarts than non-magical sports are; what school has four teams in the same sport? Even if the Tri-Wizard tournament involved...say...most of the student body, cancelling Quidditch would still seem odd. When only three Wizards compete, it's downright perplexing.
  • Well the easiest explanation is that any student competing in the Triwizard Tournament (say, the star seekers of Gryffindor and Hufflepuff) will be too busy preparing for and competing in the tasks to keep up with Quidditch as well, which puts their teams at an unfair disadvantage. Add to that the fact the Quidditch pitch spends a large part of the year turning into a maze, and it works out easier to just cancel Quidditch instead of trying to work out solutions on top of extensive Triwizard planning.
  • There's only supposed to be one Hogwarts student in the Triwizard Tournament, who is there voluntarily, so worrying about an 'unfair advantage' is a bit dubious. By that logic no one should be allow to quit a team. Teams have players come and go all the time, and anyone who got in this time was supposed to be sixth or seventh year and thus already leaving soon anyway!
  • But you want to know what is unfair? Causing a student who is trying to make enough of a reputation to attract interest from the professional Quidditch teams, like Oliver Wood, to entirely skip out his last year at playing for a school team, the time when recruiters come by. (Oliver had actually graduated the previous year, but that was pure chance.) And notice the Triwizard was secret so recruiters couldn't have predicted it and just recruited a year in advance. No, if you want to be a professional Quidditch player and you were in the class of 95, you were just screwed.
  • Assuming the only way any one get hired as a professional Quidditch player is being seen playing at Hogwarts? That seems unlikely considering the 20 odd professional teams compared to four school ones.
  • And considering the grand total of a few panicked days that Harry spent on the tasks, it seems like doing Triwizard and Quidditch wouldn't have interfered with each other anyway.
  • Likewise, the Ministry of Magic and the Headmaster were running the Triwizard Tournament. The Quidditch matches basically ran themselves, and certainly weren't any sort of large time sink on Dumbledore's part.
  • And the fact they were using the Quidditch pitch is just stupid. They have an entire year to set up another stadium next to it. Or run an abbreviated match schedule so that the Quidditch season ends a month early, freeing up the hedge maze for the third task.
  • Can they grow a hedge so quickly though? Because it seems to take Hagrid months to grow his shed sized pumpkins back in Chamber of Secrets, it took almost the whole year to grow the Mandrakes to de-petrify the Basilisk victims, and Professor Sprout is constantly getting her students to help grow the magical plants in the Greenhouse. Seems that, whilst magic would help, it would still take an uncomfortably long time to grow that maze. Plus given how Harry points out that all noise seemed to vanish within it, there are probably all sorts of incantations that have been cast which would also take time.
  • Well, then guess it's lucky Quiddich is played in the air so it doesn't really matter what is on the ground.
  • Honestly - as if the students from the other two wizarding schools wouldn't want to play a few games against the Hogwarts teams!
  • The Doylist answer, of course, is that JK Rowling had gotten tired of trying to wedge Quidditch into the plot and would take any excuse to not have to do so for a book.
    • Even from that standpoint, canceling the Quidditch season altogether seems like an overkill. Instead, Rowling could have easily drastically cut the Quidditch descriptions by a Hand Wave that because of the Triwizard tournament at least our main characters paid much less attention to Quidditch than at any other year. And after Harry's and Cedric's nominations, the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff teams found reserve Seekers for the matches that Harry and Cedric couldn't play in due to their Triwizard obligations.

Triwizard Champions don't take exams?

• So, uh, what was going to happen to Cedric's N.E.W.T.s?
  • He was actually a sixth year with an early birthday, and if he was a seventh year one would imagine he would've taken them over the summer.

So Much Trouble for a Little Headstart?

• Why did Crouch Jr. need to help Harry through the first two tasks? He repeatedly put his cover at risk if not blew it completely, and for what? The...peculiar nature of the Tournament meant that for all his successes Harry only got some time ahead of his competitors, and it hardly mattered, since, apparently, in the third task Crouch could just remove all the obstacles from his way (he probably only left a few so it didn't look suspiciously easy). Hell, his hint in the first task had driven Harry to master Accio, which allowed him to escape the cemetery!
  • Because his plan depends on Harry reaching the final alive. Without Accio Harry would have been killed or mortally wounded. Without Gillyweed Harry would have drowned in the attempt. Bam! Voldemort remains a disembodied spirit.
  • No, he wouldn't. If he had no way to deal with the dragon or underwater, then he simply wouldn't have tried. He would've gone before the judges and said: "Sorry, I've researched as hard as I could, and I still have no idea how to do it, which shouldn't surprise anyone, since this shit is two years ahead of my level. So you might just as well give me all zeroes, and be done with it." And it would not have mattered in the slightest, because he would still have to take part in the third task - he just would've entered the last, which, if you think of it, would actually favor Crouch's plan, since he'd have more time to dispose of the other champions and remove the obstacles.
  • A binding magical contract that requires Champions to compete and prevents them from backing out would be pretty useless if it could be bypassed by a Champion simply not trying. It's established many times that magic detects and is affected by intent, so it's possible the Goblet can tell when Champions aren't putting in a serious effort to win and would consider not even trying as breaking the contract.

So you can Accio the Triwizard Cup, eh?

• Well, that would have made the maze quite a bit easier if anyone had thought of it. You'd think they would put some sort of protections on that.
  • Unless, of course, there was a protection, but it conviniently dissipated after they teleported to the cemetery, which means that somebody had to arrange it in advance.
  • Maybe you couldn't use Accio inside the maze?
  • Or, alternatively, imagine you could and trying to do that would end up with the cup embedded in one of the hedges so deep that none of the champions would be able to find it. Aren't you now glad that they didn't try to do it?
  • The spider may have caught it as well.
  • Always wondered why Harry didn't Accio his broom and fly over the maze, like he did in the first task.

Triwizard Renewal

• So the Triwizard Tournament was so dangerous... It was cancelled in 1793 because it had a high mortality rate. They bring it back, and make no changes to keep it safe. Bam. Keep the same cup that forces people to participate even if they didn't want to. Bring out live Dragons! Let’s throw a maze full of man-eating monsters while we are at it! This goes beyond the usual wizarding world negligence since they knew the thing was dangerous and were okay with not doing it for 2 centuries! To give a Muggle equivalent: When the modern Olympic games were created, some adjustments were made to get with the time period.
  • The only thing we know about the previous tournaments was that one of them involved a cockatrice. If that thing still has the same powers in the HP universe, it can kill you just by looking at you. By contrast the first task is just one dragon, in a stadium surrounded by professional dragon tamers who are likely ready to stun the thing if it does on the rampage. And the chain it's wearing likely had an Unbreakable charm put on it. Ignore the film that had the chain snap easily so there could be a bigger battle. As for the third task, they're counting on their students to know a standard Stunning Spell.
  • Also keep in mind they did add an age minimum and the second of the three tasks involved no combat at all.
  • IMO, there was no way Dumbledore would have allowed anyone to die in the tournament. He would have been able to intervene with the dragon and the grindylows, and it was already established that he wouldn't let anyone drown. Also, Moody was probably in charge of making sure nobody died in the maze, as Dumbledore trusted him completely.
  • Didn't even need to do anything about grindylows, the mermaids would have done that. It was already established that they had chased off the giant squid and accompanied the child holding too many hostages while running out of time to breathe to the surface. Putting the skrewt and spider in the maze seemed to be the only excessively dangerous things.

Talking The Monster To Death

• Would it be possible to use parseltongue to get pass the dragon to either bargain with it and/or control it? Since Parseltongue works on the basilisk (which is a mythological monster that's part snake part rooster) it stands to reason it would work on serpentine dragons as well like the Chinese fireball.
  • Just because something looks like a snake doesn't mean it IS a snake. A glass lizard has no legs and yet it's not a snake. A fire-breathing winged beast many times larger than any snake would be even farther removed from them. In addition, parseltongue can only go so far. Word of God for why Harry didn't try reasoning with the basilisk in the Chamber is because it was too intent on eating him and likely wouldn't have taken an opposite order. Same thing with mother dragons, they don't give up their eggs easily.
  • *Sigh* You cannot justify dismissing a viable solution to a desperate situation on the sole basis that it might not work, especially when it would cost so little. You'd think the "Word" would've known that. Answering the original question, probably, if the contestant was willing to use an ability strongly associated with dark magi? and V in particular, in front of the whole school and the media. Obviously, Harry wouldn't be willing to do that.
  • It's not a viable solution, though. Parseltongue is the ability to speak with snakes....that's it. Not the ability to speak with things that are snake-like, not the ability to speak with things that are reptilian, not the ability to speak with things that may perhaps be cold blooded, but the ability to speak with, and only with, snakes. It allows the user to speak with the basilisk because in the Harry Potter universe, the basilisk is a kind of giant, magical snake.
  • And Harry would know this in such specific and restricting details... where from, exactly?
  • Parseltongue isn't just the ability to speak to snakes, it's also the ability to understand them. Given that Harry never understands any of the dragons he encounters throughout the books, it's safe to assume that dragons don't speak it.
  • The viable solution is not something that is guaranteed to work, but something that might work. Harry didn't get the manual for Parseltongue, meaning he couldn't have known for sure what it can and cannot do, and neither can you, by the way. As usual, it's not about whether or not it would've worked - it's about Harry being an unimaginative moron and not even considering it.
  • But he does know for sure what Parseltongue can and cannot do: Parseltongue is the ability to speak to snakes....THAT'S IT. Calling Harry an unimaginative moron for not trying to use his power to speak to snakes to try and speak to something that is objectively not a snake would be like calling someone with the power to speak only to dogs a moron because he doesn't try to use that power to speak to whales.
  • Again, did that power come with a manual? Or did the spirit of Slytherin manifest itself to give him a brief tutorial? Or did he, god forbid, do some research into it or seek an advice from some experts or test it on actual dragons? Nope. Your "that's it" is ungrounded - he knows that it can be used on snakes and that's it. He doesn't know that it cannot be used on dragons. Answering to the above, the amount of dragons he encounters throughout the books by that point is one, and it was a baby, so not decisive at all. And your analogy is flawed - a fox would be a more fitting example, that is not the same thing as those he'd already used it on, but something similar enough to at least try it.
  • Dumbledore himself told Harry that Parseltongue is the ability to speak with snakes. Now tell us something, if someone told you "You have the power to talk to snakes," would you automatically assume you can also speak to any other animal simply because they didn't specify that you couldn't? Furthermore, you think that a dragon is as similar to a snake as a fox is to a dog? Really? That's asinine. The only similarities between a snakes and dragons are that snakes are reptiles and dragons are reptilian. That's about the same level of similarity between dogs and whales (they're both mammals.)
  • No, one wouldn't automatically assume that, but if someone really needed to talk to another animal, they would try anyway with the hope that they can, and that the person who told this about snakes simply didn't bother to mention the rest or was wrong. Also you argue so hard that it shouldn't work, that one might get an impression we're talking about some lengthy, costly, intricate project, whereas we're in fact talking about uttering several words. Even if it doesn't work, what does he lose by trying? Nothing. So who cares what DD said, or if a dragon is close enough to a snake or not? When you're desperate, you're grasping for straws. Hell, what was using his broomstick if not that, since there was no reason to expect the dragoness to leave the eggs and chase him? It was a gamble. So would've using Parseltongue been, except much safer. It wouldn't even be botherable, since that small stupidity is overshadowed by the huge stupidity of participating in the Tournament at all, but this kind of flawed logic is used all the time. People argue hard that such and such solution is unlikely to work, when it costs so little that all their arguments (even if otherwise valid) are negated by the simple fact that any normal person would acknowledge them and then try it anyway on the off-chance that it might still work.
  • WHY would it work? DRAGONS ARE NOT SNAKES. Parseltongue is the ability to speak to snakes. Period. Not "things that kind of look like snakes," not "things that have scales," not "cold blooded animals," snakes. That's it. You don't need a manual to work that out. And as for what he could lose by trying it...precious time. This is assuming he would even thing it was worth doing, which he wouldn't because it is blatantly obvious that trying to communicate in snake language with something that is not a snake is a stupid idea. Just because something could theoretically be true by a giant stretch of the imagination doesn't make it viable. Wild Mass Guessing is not the same as a plot hole.
  • So-o, rather than waste time (all the whooping five seconds of it) on a solution that he had no idea if it would work, but that at least could, in theory work, because, again, you've pulled that "period" out of thin aether and there's no explicit indication that Parseltongue only works on snakes, he instead wasted it on a solution that he had no idea if it would work AND had no justification why it was supposed to work, since there was absolutely no guarantee that the dragoness would abandon her eggs and chase him rather than just spit fire at him or simply ignore him.
  • Mythologically speaking, the basilisk is known as "The king of snakes." Dragons may be serpentine, but basilisks are explicitly snake-kin.
  • Another thing to consider about why Harry didn't use parseltongue on the dragon (other than the fact that he knew it wouldn't work) is the fact that parseltongue is viewed by the vast majority of wizarding society as a sure sign of being a dark wizard. Trying to speak to the dragon in parseltongue in front of all those people would be the wizard equivalent of a muggle trying to win a competition by revealing his swastika tattoo, throwing his right arm in the air, and screaming "SIEG HEIL!" Regardless of whether or not it worked, you wouldn't leave that competition with a whole lot of fans.
  • While agreeing that this is a genuine concern, everybody already knew he was a Parselmouth and besides, he would've subdued a dragon. Which is the most awesome way of solving the problem short of killing the dragon with your bare hands. Whereas he solved it by flying around for a couple minutes. yay. Also, there was no need to guess if it would work or not, because it would be very easy to test - just put on the cloak, go to the "kennel" and try to communicate with the dragons. Done.
  • The fact that it would have been awesome to subdue the dragon by simply speaking to it would have just made it worse for Harry, though. A vast majority of the wizard population already see Parseltongue as a sign of a dark wizard (if not dark magic in and of itself). Using "dark magic" to subdue something as powerful as a dragon by simply speaking to it would not only confirm the paranoid belief so much of the community has in the next book that Harry is potentially a dark wizard, but make them believe that he is an especially powerful dark wizard.
    • Now that to think of it further, it's not even a genuine concern. If Parseltongue had worked, then Harry wouldn't have needed to publicly take control of the dragon. He could've approached them in the kennels and asked/commanded to let him win without too much trouble.
  • Control it? No, it's not a magical ability to become a king of dragons, nor even a king of serpents. It just allows the parselmouth to speak to snakes and understand them. And it doesn't work on dragons, because Harry had this ability in his first year when he had contact with a dragon (Norbert, for those who don't remember) and he couldn't understand it. Because the "understanding" part is automatic, it means that since he could not understand a dragon (again, Norbert) he could not use it to speak to a dragon. And don't even dare counter it with "but it was before his second year so it wasn't planned"; though we don't see the snake speaking, Harry did use parseltongue in the first book before even being in Hogwarts (and subconsciously too, since he thought he was speaking English at the time) so clearly parseltongue was not supposed to work on dragons.
  • Why would they do that when they have a much better counter in the fact that Norbert was just a hatchling, so Harry's inability to communicate with it doesn't prove anything any more than an adult's inability to communicate with a newborn human baby. And no, Parseltongue is very clearly a tool of control, as demostrated by both Harry on the cobra at the duel club and Riddle on Basie.
  • As we see with the basilisk, Parseltongue is partly unconscious for Harry. He could hear the snake speaking. If he could have spoken to the dragon, he would have heard it speaking during their fight or when they were herded in the woods.
  • That is a genuine concern, thank you. However, this is not decisive either. Yes, he does hear Basie complaining about being hungry, because it is talking to itself at that moment. But during their fight it doesn't say anything. Neither does the cobra in the Dueling Club. So no, if someone is not saying anything to you right now, it doesn't mean they cannot or you cannot understand them. And again, Harry doesn't get even a hint of an idea like: "Shit, I cannot hear them saying anything like a heard the Basilisk. Does it mean Parseltongue doesn't work on dragons? Maybe if I try to get closer or address them directly..." etc.
  • This discussion was kind of pointless. Dragons are not snakes, nor even similar to snakes, they have limps for starters, they're closer (at least as depicted in the movies) to a dinosaur. So, again, the example of the dog-whale (as both are mammals) was a perfect analogy.
    • *Sigh*. Imagine you found a gun, while previously never having seen one. It has a manual with it, designating it as an "anti-infantry weapon", and some advises about how to use it against humans. You become proficient with it and even happen to fire it at someone and learn that it's indeed very effective. And then you encounter a hostile dog. And instead of pulling the gun out and firing away you think: "Shit! The manual said "anti-infantry weapon. Obviously it won't work on dogs! No reason to even try!" Except Harry had the luxurious opportunity to test whether Parseltongue works in safe environment without any hurry, so this argument is even less legit.
    • Not exactly the right analogy. A gun would work with absolutely any kind of life form, is not hard to figure that out; it consist in a projectile expel by a machine that causes damage to a physical body. The right analogy will be more like having a Java script and knowing that it works in computer and assuming it will also work on a fridge or expecting that your microwave would take radio signals and would allow to communicate with radio users, as they are both machines.
    • You have an advantage of knowing how those devices actually work. Harry didn't. He never researched it or tried it on another animal, be it serpent-like or otherwise. He was akin to a savage who knows as much as "squeeze here and that end does boom, and enemy falls". Why wouldn't he, desperate as he was, try to "communicate via the microwave"? Again, the solution he ended up with was just as unreliable, if not moreso, for he had no idea if the dragoness wouldn't just ignore him. Also, funny how you mentioned the microwave when its very invention reportedly owns to the fact that a certain device turned out to have properties far beyond its original purpose, don't you think?
    • Except that Harry also has the advantage of knowing how this "device" actually work. He already knows that is for speaking with snakes. Dragons are not snakes, are not even similar to snakes, so he already know that Parseltong won't work with them, and no, he's not like some sort of tribal savage beating a microwave that has never seen before, he knows as much of magic as we know about microwaves and is already in the fourth year of studies of the subject, is not dumb, on the contrary he is confirm in-universe to have very good grades and a certain fascination for magic, is not a nerd like Hermione but is not Goyle either, clearly studies and do his homework so he has a well verse knowledge of magic and how it works, and also of the difference between magical creatures as is not only one of the subjects, is one of his favorites.
    • **Sigh** Only knowing that it works on snakes in no way equals knowing that it only works on snakes. Harry never researched Parseltongue in particular, he has no idea how it works or why, so yes, in respect to it he's akin to a savage. OTOH, testing it on an actual dragon was absolutely within his capacity, and he was in no condition to dismiss even a far-fetched idea. "He has a well-versed knowledge of magic and how it works" - uhuh, which is why two years later he will cast a spell he doesn't know the effect of on another person twice in a row, "and also of the difference between magical creatures" - source? "as is not only one of the subjects, is one of his favorites" - uhuh, which is why two years later he will ditch it like the useless waste of time that it is.
    • And here we go again: "Only knowing that it works on snakes in no way equals knowing that it only works on snakes." Yes it does, again, as said before just because you have a dog whistle doesn't mean it works on whales. "OTOH, testing it on an actual dragon was absolutely within his capacity, and he was in no condition to dismiss even a far-fetched idea." He has no access to dragons even assuming he believes such a bizarre idea that snakes and dragons use the same language to communicate even when they are very different animals having in common only to be part of the same class, and during the contest itself he seem to be more worried in escaping the bursts of fire throw at him that testing fringe theories. ""He has a well-versed knowledge of magic and how it works" - uhuh, which is why two years later he will cast a spell he doesn't know the effect of on another person twice in a row, " Being "well-versed" doesn't mean being expert, every human being will make mistakes at some point especially during adolescence but for a teen with high school level equivalent of magical knowledge having a couple of mistakes in seven years is pretty impressive. ""and also of the difference between magical creatures" - source? " it is said in the books that Harry has very good grades, that would include Care of Magical Creatures. ""as is not only one of the subjects, is one of his favorites" - uhuh, which is why two years later he will ditch it like the useless waste of time that it is." That's beside the point, assuming is true that Harry shares the OP's hate for the subject in the future, the point is that is one of his favorites for the moment the Goblet of Fire happens.
    • And again, if the OP already made his mind, then this is not a headscratcher really because no possible answer can be given as the OP is not really asking something and doesn't really want an answer, but it doesn't matter, we can keep the debate.
    • In one of the interventions that was erased what would be guessed is the OP says that he/she is ready to insist as far as someone place a valid "counterargument". Are headscratchers the place for argumentation? Headscratchers are a place where someone presents an honest question or doubt about a work expecting other tropers to try to answer it or give an explanation. If you have to be argumentative about your headscratcher is not really a headscratcher to begin with.
  • There's a very simple explanation why Harry didn't use Parseltongue: He had already decided how he was going to face the dragon. He had his mind set on summoning his broom and using his skill as a Seeker to get the egg. Once a person sets their mind on something, they're unlikely to consider other options.
  • He "decided" on it literally a day before the challenge, when Crouch!Moody spoonfed him the idea. Before that he had no plan whatsoever.
  • The Chinese long is derived from crocodiles. Now you could make the argument that since wyrms and longs are so different but the fireball is expected to behave just like the European dragons that the fireball is really a long mimic but Harry Potter is obviously sampling from the time even the wyrms based have become more lizard/dinosaur like than snake like.
  • This is ridiculous. The dragons aren't snakes. They're not even snakelike. They don't even vaguely look like snakes aside from being scaly and reptilian. Their roaring doesn't sound remotely like a snake's hissing. Saying that parseltongue - the ability to talk to snakes - lets you talk to dragons is like saying that if you can talk to cats, you can talk to bears because they're both carnivorous mammals. Do you think parseltongue also works on lizards? Turtles? Crocodiles? If it did, it would be described as the ability to talk to reptiles. But it's not. We certainly don't get any information on dragon phylogenetics; we don't know how dragons are related to other reptiles, but they're definitely not snakes.
  • Plus, just because some people subscribe to the twisted logic of dragons qualifying as snakes doesn’t mean Harry has to or is going to. And it’s established that Parseltongue comes so naturally to Harry that he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. Instead, he just hears snakes talking and then responds to them in what he thinks is plain old English. Since he doesn’t mention hearing the dragon speaking English at any point, we have to assume that it doesn’t speak the same language snakes do. And beyond that, this is all Rowling’s book series. If she wanted to give the impression that dragons could speak Parseltongue, she’d just write it as, “Harry realized the dragon could speak Parseltongue because some reader arbitrarily decided it should be able to. He tried talking it into letting him take the egg. It didn’t work. Plan B: Accio Firebolt!” You can’t genuinely complain about a fictional creature from someone else’s book series not acting in the way you think it should, and expect people to take you seriously.
  • Why was this even a Headscratcher in the first place? What's getting from this is that the originator of this entry is incapable of accessing the many reiterations of "dragons are not snakes", or thinking their flawed premise through for a few seconds.

The Bathroom

• So the deal with the golden egg is that it will speak in Triton language above water and English underwater, right? So what's the big deal with listening to it in the particular bathroom, to which only one of four contestants has authorized access? Cedric seems to make it an important point. Wouldn't it work even if Harry put it in a filled sink and put his head next to it? Privacy wouldn't matter, since he already asked basically all Gryffindor for ideas, he'd just have to tell people something to the line of "Hey, I think I know what to do, don't enter the bathroom for the next half an hour or so?"
  • Wasn't there some sort of mermaid painting hanging in the prefects' bathroom, that gave Harry the idea about the task? Maybe good ole' Cedric thought he wouldn't understand the clue. Or, figuring from watching the film that Cedric was just trying to pay Harry back for giving him the warning about the dragons in the first task. "Hey, buddy, thanks for that sweet tip earlier. As my thanks, feel free to go spoil yourself in the pimped-out bathtub in the prefects' washroom while you mull over the second task."
  • Cedric took his egg there because Crouch!Moody told him to. Cedric told Harry to repay the dragon favor and because that's where he figured it out. The mermaid window is how they both figured it out.

The Goblet

• So the Goblet of Fire constitutes a binding magical contract, even though it can apparently be jinxed by the Confundus charm into accepting someone from a fourth school that doesn't exist, which should be impossible under the terms of said contract, and that person can also be entered into the contract without their consent, something which is illegal in real life. So why didn't any of the professors just try re-Confundoing the Goblet to think that Harry hadn't been chosen, thereby taking his name off the contract?
  • DD says that the Goblet has very conveniently extinguished and will not reignite until the next Tournament. Of course, it is not a regular event, so it shouldn't be a problem, but maybe the Goblet only ignites by itself every few years, and they had to time the Tournament accordingly. Which only exacerbates the sheer insanity and contrivance of the idea of using the damn thing. Unless, of course, and it's a crazy idea, some of the Tournament initiators wanted that peculiar property forcing a student to participate even if they were otherwise not eligible. Wonder who that might be...
  • Still being confounded as to how they were supposed to disqualify cheaters with that crazy thing in charge. Shoot them on the spot? Or how about people who suddenly need a leave? "I'm sorry, Viktor, yes, it's very sad, that your grandma fell gravely ill. No, you cannot go and take care of her, this glorified piece of dinnerware forbids it!"
  • On the subject of cheaters, the Goblet itself might be able to disqualify them automatically. If the contract says something like, "All ye who enter into this tournament agree to exercise honesty and fair play during the entirety of the three trials it consists of. Failure to abide by the terms of this contract will result in immediate expulsion from the tournament, as well as any such and such punishments that shall be administered by school professors/officials/the-powers-that-be," or something along those lines.
  • Well, why doesn't Harry use this then? Cheat, get expulsed, everyone would understand. Although one's more interested in the rules for legitimately excusing people from it. There have to be some. It's not some gladiatory games, like The Running Man or The Hunger Games, or Mortal Kombat.
  • For the same reason why he can't simply not participate: because it's a binding contract. No one knows who binds it or with what, but it's apparently something. If he cheats, there's a punishment. If he doesn't perform, there's a punishment. The fact that no one even brings up the possibility of him facing this punishment instead would indicate it might be something beyond even the Ministry's control, or else is something Barty Crouch is just falsifying to everyone because he's Imperiused. Did that ever occur to anyone here? And as for excusing people, it's possible the judges and school officials could just postpone the events. Victor's dear grandma surely couldn't be so sick that he wouldn't be able to spare a single day to perform in each task.
  • Well, that is the main debacle - who and with what and why no-one bothers to ask. Remember, we are not talking just about a participant getting cold feet. Insane as an idea of forced participation is, one could maybe understand it in general as tradition, and prestige, and Wizarding World being stuck in Dark Ages in terms of sensibilities.
  • They're not exactly still stuck in the Dark Ages - in addition to the Age Line, the Goblet was mentioned to have only chosen the best and most well-suited of all potential contestants for the tournament. The ONLY reason Harry was chosen was because he was the only contestant entered under the fake school that didn't exist, which in turn only happened because Barty was able to charm the Goblet to think there were four schools, which was a factor the school hadn't foreseen. Thus, even if a student wanted that badly to play a prank on someone, especially one of the younger years, the Goblet wouldn't have accepted them unless they were the only name entered for one school, and the charm that could potentially do that is mentioned to be too advanced to be cast by a student.
  • All that is true. But one could not see how any of it would explain or justify the need to force the contestants to participate. On the contrary, if it's assumed that only the best-suited (which, assuming, usually includes "eager") contestant would be chosen, what's the point of forcing them?
  • In classic myth and folklore "eagerness" never has nothing to do with heroic tasks. The idea that people has to be willing into partake of a contest is a modern concept, in the old days Heroes were expected to participate in tasks established by more powerful magical forces (like the gods) whether they wanted or not, like Hercules' 12 tasks. On that note, Rowling's rules about the bindingness of the Goblet is perfectly in tone with classic mythology.
  • And who's the one that lays down the rules once the incident has happened? Barty Crouch Sr. As in the man currently under the Imperius Curse, who is a puppet for the plan to succeed. So if there was a loophole that could get Harry out of the tournament, he's been compelled not to bring it up. But it is pretty clear Crouch Sr. knows this is wrong. His general demeanor during this scene does give the impression that he is, at some level, already actively trying to fight off the curse.

Check out this maze, then forget about it

• The champions are brought down to see the maze as it's growing, long before the third task. Would they not come down again and try to memorise it before the third task begins?

Even if they were told not to go near it again (which they weren't), Maxime and Karkaroff were willing to help their champions cheat and probably would have snuck them down there.

• But even if you do memorize the maze, you still have to account for the magical creatures and other obstacles, probably placed at the last minute. Also, it's a magical maze, so perhaps it doesn't stay the same.

The Goblet Contract

• What if someone who was entered unwillingly into the tournament refuses (such as Harry tried to do)? Do they get put under an Imperius Curse equivalent to force them? Are they injured or discomforted in some way until they agree to compete? Does the Goblet somehow know which student is which and connects the magic by name? This seems to be the case since Crouch, Jr. entered Harry's name yet it is Harry who must compete, not the person who entered the name. Harry is even asked if he had an older student put his name in for him, so it seems like this was a major safety issue. What if some older students had entered all the first and second year Hogwarts students as a joke and one of them was selected? They might've been killed.
  • It probably works like an Unbreakable Vow.
  • Perhaps the magic of the Goblet would be able to determine if such a prank was pulled. Dumbledore just asks Harry if that's what he did to make sure he's explored every possibility.

Only one to save

• When Harry tries to save multiple hostages, the merfolk screech "Only one!" as he has already cut Ron free. Had Harry gone to save Hermione or Cho first, what exactly would have happened? It would have been very confusing for Krum or Cedric to arrive only to have nobody to save because Harry saved the wrong person.
  • Harry didn't go for Hermione or Cho first because he figured out that they were for Krum and Cedric to rescue, and went for Ron first. The only reason Harry went to try and rescue Hermione next was because Krum hadn't shown up, and he worried he might not.

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