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Three schools, four champions.
"Dark and difficult times lie ahead. Soon we must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy."
Albus Dumbledore

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is the fourth book in the Harry Potter series. Published July 8, 2000, this was the first book in the series to be heralded in with release parties as "Pottermania" took hold.

Following the events of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Voldemort now has a loyal follower by his side and is making plans to become stronger and regain his body. Meanwhile, before school starts, Harry and the Weasleys attend the Quidditch World Cup. At school, Hogwarts is hosting the Triwizard Tournament against two other schools of magic in Europe, and Harry discovers that he has been selected to compete, even though he is below the age restriction and, contrary to popular belief among his peers, did not apply as a candidate. He begins to fear that he's a pawn in someone else's plan and, simultaneously, becomes slowly more aware of the rising spectre of Voldemort…

This book was a turning point in the series in several ways.

  • It's the first book even to mention that there is a wizarding world outside of Great Britain, much less international magical politics. The scale of the story opens up in proportion to the plot.
  • It's the first Doorstopper; twice as long as the books that preceded it.
  • It's the point at which Cerebus Syndrome sets in. Voldemort returns to power due to Harry and his compatriots' failure to capture Wormtail at the end of Prisoner of Azkaban, and a significant supporting character ends up becoming a Sacrificial Lion... the first of many.
  • Finally, as stated above, it's the first book in the series that arrived after Pottermania had gripped the world, making its release a major event in the year's entertainment calendar.

Followed by Harry's fifth year at Hogwarts, in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It was adapted into a film in 2005.


Tropes exclusive to this book or at least especially prominent:

    open/close all folders 

    A - B 

  • Abnormal Dental Growth: During their fight, Malfoy uses Densaugeo, a hex that makes the victim's front teeth grow rapidly, on Harry, but accidentally hit Hermione instead, which she had no problem undoing.
  • Absurd Cause Name:
    • This book marks the debut of an organization Hermione founds that is called the "Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare", but that abbreviates to SPEW. Ron is more than happy to refer to it by its initials, much to Hermione's chagrin.
    • When the trio talks about the goblins at one point, Ron mockingly asks Hermione whether she would start an organization called "Society for the Protection of Ugly Goblins" (or S.P.U.G. for short). Hermione is not amused.
      Hermione: Ha, ha, ha. Goblins don't need protection. [...] Well, they're quite capable of dealing with wizards. They're very clever. They're not like house-elves, who never stick up for themselves.
  • Accidental Misnaming:
    • Crouch can't seem to remember that Percy's last name is "Weasley" and not "Weatherby", despite being on first name basis with Arthur and how much Percy takes the opportunity to say how great Mr. Crouch is. Fred and George have a lot of fun with this.
    • Skeeter writes an article where she criticizes Arthur and calls him Arnold. Malfoy brings up this to mock Ron: "Imagine them not even getting his name right, Weasley. It’s almost as though he's a complete nonentity, isn't it?"
    • When Harry reads Rita's article about the Champions of the Triwizard Tournament, he notes that the names of Fleur and Viktor were misspelled.
  • Accidental Passenger: Played with. When Harry and Cedric touch the Triwizard cup, they find themselves unexpectedly transported to a graveyard. This is especially tragic for Cedric, who is casually murdered by Voldemort.
  • Actually Pretty Funny:
    • Arthur Weasley is clearly annoyed at Fred and George slipping Dudley one of the Ton-Tongue Toffees, but seems to want to keep it from their mother, showing he didn't think it was that bad (the fact that they slipped Dudley the toffee to get back at him for bullying Harry might have been the reason why Arthur didn’t think it was so bad).
    • During the World Cup final, the Veela accidentally affect the referee mid-game. He starts flexing in front of them. While Bagman says that can't be happening with the ref, he sounds amused by the sheer audacity. The ref isn't as amused when a med wizard snaps him out of it, ordering the ladies off the field.
    • On the last day of summer and a few days after the World Cup panic, Molly catches Fred and George secretly working over a piece of parchment and asks whether they're creating another joke shop order form. Fred, calling back to her earlier Parting-Words Regret, asks how she would feel if the twins died in a Hogwarts Express train-wreck and the last thing they ever heard from her was an unfounded accusation. Everyone laughs at this, including Percy and Molly.
    • When Fred and George try to bypass the Goblet of Fire's Age Line by using an Ageing Potion, it doesn't work. The protective enchantment kicks the two of them out and makes them grow long, white beards. They find it just as funny as Dumbledore and the rest of the students watching do.
    • Hermione at one point mispronounces Wronski Feint as "Wonky Feint". Harry has to clench his teeth to avoid laughing.
    • Neville also joins in the laughter when the twins manage to sneak him a Canary Cream that causes him to sprout feathers. It helps that the feathers shed quickly and the spell is harmless.
  • Agony Beam: This book introduces the Cruciatus Curse, a spell with the sole purpose of causing terrible pain to its recipient.
  • Agony of the Feet: While trying to get past the stone gargoyle to Dumbledore's office and guessing several failed passwords, Harry just kicks it, causing him to hop up and down in pain.
  • Alas, Poor Villain: Harry is horrified to find out that Bartemius Crouch, Jr. was subjected to a Dementor's Kiss.
  • Alcohol Hic: Winky talks with one when she's drunk on Butterbeer.
  • Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Arthur theorizes this is why the Death Eaters pulled their stunt at the Quidditch World Cup. He thinks they all got drunk during the post-game victory celebration and decided to have a bit of fun (and rub it in the faces of the Wizarding community that they were still out there and free even after Voldemort's fall).
  • Amusingly Awful Aim: Professor Flitwick provides his students with several cushions to practise the Banishing Charm on, as bulkier objects are likely to hurt someone by accident. Unfortunately, Neville's aim is so shoddy he keeps Banishing non-cushions across the room, including Flitwick himself.
  • An Arm and a Leg:
    • Wormtail's contribution to the resurrection solution for Voldemort is his own flesh, which he contributes from his right hand.
    • When using Polyjuice Potion, one assumes any physical deformities that might be on the person they are impersonating. Barty Crouch, Jr. loses an eye and one of his legs, and takes on many scars, while using Polyjuice Potion to impersonate Mad-Eye Moody.
  • Arc Villain: Barty Crouch, Jr., though it's subverted because his master, the series-wide main villain Voldemort, makes his triumphant return in the end.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: During the first Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson our heroes take from not-Moody, he says this as part of his speech about preparedness:
    "...You need to be prepared. You need to be alert and watchful. You need to put that away, Miss Brown, when I'm talking."
    Lavender jumped and blushed. She had been showing Parvati her completed horoscope under the desk.
  • Artistic Licence Medicine: After a magical mishap enlarges her front teeth, Hermione allows Madam Pomfrey to shrink them a little further than to their original size, so she won't have to get braces. Teeth don't need braces because they're too large, but because they're positioned wrongly (usually tilted too far forward), so shrinking them shouldn't avert or correct an orthodontic issue.
  • Ascended Extra: Many characters! Ron mentioned his two oldest brothers, Bill and Charlie, frequently in the first three books, but it's here Harry finally gets to meet them. Cedric Diggory had a few sentences of mention in Prisoner of Azkaban, but was pretty much a new character, which makes his death particularly harsh. Pansy Parkinson is a more prominent bully in this book (more so than Crabbe and Goyle, who are typically just Malfoy's personal Laugh Track), and Cornelius Fudge gets a bigger role, mainly towards the end, as the page quotation implies. Parvati Patil, who was mainly a background character beforehand, is Harry's date to the Yule Ball. Her twin sister, Padma, whose existence was acknowledged during the Sorting Ceremony in the first book but otherwise never appeared, is introduced and named, and Cho Chang officially becomes Harry's present Love Interest (it was just slightly implied beforehand).
  • Asleep in Class: Harry is bored to sleep by Professor Trelawney's lecture about the effects that Mars is supposedly going to have on them. He has a vision of Voldemort directing Peter Pettigrew to kill Barty Crouch, Sr. He is woken to find Professor Trelawney convinced that he is having some sort of prophetic vision, blissfully unaware that while she's right that he did have a vision, it has nothing to do with Divination, but rather being connected to Voldemort's soul as a Horcrux.
  • Asshole Victim:
    • Barty Crouch, Sr. is found in the woods insane and begging to speak to Dumbledore but then vanishes and is revealed to have been killed.
    • Tom Riddle, Sr. and his parents were seen by the residents of Little Hangleton as elitist snobs (an impression that was confirmed in Half-Blood Prince), but they certainly didn't deserve to die at the hands of a burgeoning Dark wizard.
  • As You Know: When Snape accuses Harry of stealing potion ingredients, the text reminds the reader of the purpose of Polyjuice Potion, which becomes significant near the end of the book. This reminder is missing in the film, which would make the film harder to understand for somebody who had not seen Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
  • Attack Backfire: Harry is nervous enough about having to face a dragon in the first Triwizard task, but the prospect of drawing the Hungarian Horntail drives him to look up spells to neutralise its attacks. He dismisses some in order to defy this trope: giving it "pepper breath", for example, might only make its fire stronger, and giving it a "horn tongue" would just add another sharp weapon at the opposite end of its body to its namesake feature.
  • "Awkward Silence" Entrance: When Mad-Eye Moody arrives late to Hogwarts. He arrives in the middle of the welcome feast, and when he enters the Great Hall, everyone falls silent.
  • Backup from Otherworld: Spectres of Voldemort's most recent victims (including Harry's parents) emerge from his wand and block him from pursuing Harry just long enough for Harry to escape.
  • Badass Teacher: Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody. The imposter acts the part extremely well, and the real one would have been one, too, if he'd been able to do the job.
  • The Bad Guy Wins: Voldemort's plan to resurrect himself using Harry's blood goes off almost perfectly, aside from Harry escaping.
  • Bags of Letters: People Rita Skeeter attacks in her Daily Prophet articles, such as Hagrid, Hermione, and Harry, tend to receive large amounts of hate mail.
  • Bait the Dog:
    • Barty Crouch, Sr. defends Winky when Amos Diggory catches her with Harry's wand in the woods, and accuses her of summoning the Dark Mark. He points out by accusing Winky, Amos is accusing Crouch by proxy, since house-elves wouldn't know the Dark Mark unless a human taught them. Then he fires Winky because it was her idea for Crouch, Jr. to be allowed to attend under an Invisibility Cloak, and she lost track of him due her fear of heights, allowing him to get free long enough to grab Harry's wand.
    • Barty Crouch, Jr., after showing Neville the Cruciatus Curse, invites him to his office for a cup of tea, praises him for Herbology, and lends him a book on Mediterranean water plants. It's all a ruse to smuggle information about the second Triwizard task into Harry's dorm, so that Harry won't drown.
  • Basilisk and Cockatrice: A brief mention is made of a cockatrice getting loose from the last Triwizard Tournament, which is why the thing hasn't been held for centuries. Not much is established beyond that, in this verse, a cockatrice is a different creature from a basilisk, since the creature seen two books ago would be far too dangerous to bring into a competition — a nuance that some translations failed to pick up on.
  • Baths Are Fun: Everything about the description of the bath in the prefects' bathroom sounds like it would be amazing magical fun. It has taps that run water of all different colours, as well as taps that provide "pink and blue bubbles the size of footballs," ice-white foam apparently thick enough to support one's weight, and heavily perfumed purple clouds. It is also massive, but takes hardly any time to fill. Unfortunately, Harry can't enjoy it properly because (A) he's concerned about figuring out the clue in his Triwizard Tournament golden egg and (B) Moaning Myrtle joins him, and he gets a nasty shock from her pervertedly watching him before she helps him to figure out the clue.
  • Batman Gambit: Barty Crouch, Jr. tries several to give Harry the solution to the second Triwizard task covertly:
    • In front of Harry, he hands Neville a book on magical plants containing the answer (to use Gillyweed), assuming that Harry is so desperate to succeed in the task that he'll ask everyone for help, including Neville, who could have told him the answer instantly. However, it doesn't work because Harry's "streak of pride and independence" meant he only asked Hermione and Ron to help him.
    • He gives Cedric advice on how to open the egg, knowing that Cedric will tell Harry, in repayment for helping him with the first task.
    • He deliberately stages a conversation about Gillyweed near Dobby, knowing the house-elf will immediately rush off to get some for Harry to use.
  • Beam-O-War: A rare effect (their two wands have the same core from the same specimen of phoenix) makes Harry's and Voldemort's wands connect and results in an anime-style beam-of-war battle. At the time of writing this, Harry and Voldemort supply the page image for the trope.
  • Beast in the Maze: During the third task of the Triwizard Tournament, the champions have to enter a magical maze with several dangerous beasts in it, including a Giant Spider, a Riddling Sphinx, and a Blast-Ended Skrewt.
  • "Begone" Bribe: When Hermione starts the Society for the Promotion of Elvish Welfare (S.P.E.W.) and starts waving around a collecting tin, some people pay her for membership in the hope that if they do so, it'll get her to leave them alone and shut up. It doesn't work; she only becomes more vocal.
  • Berserk Button: Once again, Hagrid's is insulting Dumbledore. When Karkaroff accuses him of sabotaging Krum and spits on the ground at his feet, Hagrid responds by grabbing him and slamming him against a tree.
  • Big Brother Instinct: When Harry emerges from the lake after the second task, Percy frantically races into the water to help Ron (ignoring his protests). Also an example of Hidden Depths.
  • Big Fancy House: In the Backstory, the Riddle House was this. Since the Riddles' murder, it's fallen into disrepair and disrepute.
  • Bigger on the Inside: The tents that Arthur borrowed for the World Cup are this, and it's implied most of the others seen are as well.
    • Moody's trunk is also revealed to be large enough to keep the real Mad-Eye prisoner in for almost an entire academic year.
  • Bittersweet 17: The legal threshold for wizards' adulthood is at seventeen years (compared to eighteen for the real/Muggle UK), as shown in this book. Dumbledore creates an 'Age Line' around the Goblet to keep students younger than seventeen from entering themselves.
  • Blackmail: Throughout the book, Fred and George have whispered discussions, with the line "if we put that in writing, it's blackmail", causing Hermione to wonder what they are up to. At the end, they reveal that they were blackmailing Ludo Bagman, who had paid them the winnings of a bet using leprechaun gold, which vanishes after a few hours. Bagman's secret is that he placed a very big bet with the goblins on Harry winning the Triwizard Tournament; and the goblins say that he drew with Diggory, so he lost the bet.
  • Blasting It Out of Their Hands: In addition to the Expelliarmus spell, Arthur Weasley does this to Uncle Vernon, when the latter starts throwing porcelain figurines at him.
  • Blatant Lies: In order to make Hagrid look bad to Rita Skeeter, Malfoy claims that in addition to being attacked by Buckbeak, Crabbe got a bad bite from a Flobberworm, which mainly eats lettuce, has no teeth, and has an X (boring) classification from the Ministry for Magic.
  • Blood Magic: Voldemort needs an enemy's blood to take corporeal form again. It could be any enemy, really, but he picks Harry. He does so because he can finally remove the protection of Lily's love that prevented him from killing Harry and defeated him twice, and he thinks only the blood of his greatest enemy can make him come back even more powerful than he was when he had fallen. Terrible mistake — as it turns out, it also tethered Harry to life as long as Voldemort lived and thus helped to ensure his own downfall.
  • Blue-and-Orange Morality: Hermione finds this out the hard way about house-elves. For humans, working without pay for terrible owners is slavery and would have been called such in British history. House-elves don't view their lot as slavery. Many of them, like the Hogwarts house elves and Winky, like having owners and working, no matter how good or bad their master is, and losing their job means that they lose their purposes in life. Dobby is one exception, and even he prefers the status of freedom to being free; anything would be better for him than continuing to serve Lucius Malfoy, but the job is better than pure freedom.
  • Bond Villain Stupidity:
    • Near the end of the story, Harry has been disarmed, gagged, and tied securely to a gravestone. Rather than simply killing Harry after using his blood to regain his body, Voldemort not only has Wormtail cut him loose and give him back his wand, but insists on fighting him in a one-to-one duel and forbids interference from any of his Death Eaters, for no other reason than to prove, once and for all, that he is the stronger of the two. The final result of this is that Harry manages to escape Voldemort's attempt on his life, once again through luck, and warn everyone of Voldemort's resurrection. It was reasonable of Voldemort to assume that Harry was no longer protected by love, but he was unaware of the twin cores. However, Voldemort does use Harry's escape to his advantage in Order of the Phoenix.
    • Averted by Barty Crouch, Jr. Not only does he masquerade as Moody for nearly ten months and fool Dumbledore, Moody's oldest friend, but every aspect of his plan goes off without a hitch ... until Voldemort screws it up by not immediately killing Harry, as Crouch had assumed he would.
  • Boring, but Practical: While the three older Triwizard contestants use a variety of complex spells to distract or subdue their respective dragons in the first task, Harry uses the comparatively simple Summoning Charm to retrieve his Firebolt and manoeuvre around his dragon. He winds up being the quickest to collect his golden egg and only incurs one, easily healed, cut.
  • Both Sides Have a Point:
    • The organizers of the Triwizard Tournament have a good reason for only allowing of-age students to participate. It ensures that the selected champions will have the necessary magical knowledge to complete the highly dangerous tasks. Their reasoning is proven sound when Cedric and Fleur can use the Bubble-Head Charm to breathe underwater in the second task, whereas Harry has to use Gillyweed stolen from Snape's potion supply (given to him by Dobby, no less) because he doesn't know about that spell. Conversely, Fred and George are rightly angered that Cedric, who is in the same year as them and has had the same exact education (though his school scores were almost certainly better), is allowed to put his name in the Goblet of Fire when they aren't just because his seventeenth birthday happened to fall before the entry deadline and theirs didn't.
    • Harry is mildly annoyed when Hagrid, Moody and Sirius tell him off for going to talk with Krum near the Forbidden Forest, where Crouch appeared and disappeared, and someone Stunned Viktor. Mainly, he's insulted on Krum's behalf because both Sirius and Hagrid suspect that Krum was trying to sabotage Harry before the Third Task. He points out that Krum just wanted to clarify if Harry and Hermione were an item, and that if Krum wanted to attack him then the other guy would have done so already. Not to mention that the person that attacked Krum and kidnapped Crouch waited until Harry was gone, meaning Harry wasn't the target. Hermione, despite liking Krum, also admits that the adults have a right to be concerned. She says that they don't know who put Harry into the tournament, and if the mysterious person wants him dead, then they will take the best possible opportunity.
  • Brainwashed:
    • Averted in Harry's case. Notice that Harry's Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher is eager to ensure that he can resist the Imperius Curse. This is important in two ways. First, it rules out that Barty Crouch Jr. using it on Harry in his plans for the book. Secondly, it means the reader can rest easy for the rest of the series: Harry is not and will never be under mind control.
    • At some point between the Quidditch World Cup and the Triwizard Tournament, Voldemort and Wormtail manage to put Barty Crouch Sr. under the Imperius Curse and free his son from the same curse. Crouch Sr. spends much of his time looking ill and reaffirming that Harry must compete, while not acting out of the ordinary. He starts to resist, however, so Voldemort makes him fake being ill.
  • Brick Joke: The day classes resume, it is mentioned that a girl named Eloise Midgen tried to curse her pimples off and had to have her nose put on again. Later, when the main trio are discussing Yule Ball date possibilities, Eloise is mentioned again. Ron says he won't go with her, because her nose is slightly off centre. Mentioned again at the Yule Ball, only to confirm that her nose is perfectly fine!
    • And mentioned again in Book 5, wherein Hermione alludes to a curse she has crafted whose effect will be to "make Eloise Midgeon's acne look like a couple of cute freckles."
  • Broken Pedestal: Played with. Viktor Krum's not revealed as different, let alone in a negative way, but rather Ron gets angry about him dating Hermione. By the end, however, Ron works up the nerve to ask for his autograph. Krum obliges.
  • Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie: Cedric's ghost asks Harry to take his body back to his parents.
  • The Butler Did It: Subverted. Frank Bryce, the Riddles' gardener and only suspect in their killing, was uninvolved.

    C - E 
  • Calling Card: The Dark Mark, a spell the Death Eaters cast over the scene of a murder.
  • Cannot Keep a Secret: The Triwizard competitors are supposed to be kept in the dark about their upcoming tasks, so of course Hagrid invites Harry and Madame Maxime to see the dragons being prepared for the first task. He later almost lets slip that Harry had prior knowledge of the dragons.
  • Capture and Replicate: Barty Crouch Jr. captures Mad-Eye Moody and uses Polyjuice Potion to imitate him for the entire school year. His father also arranged for him and his mother to do this to smuggle him out of Azkaban.
  • Cassandra Truth: Harry didn't enter himself for the Tournament. For the first few weeks after the fact, Dumbledore, Hagrid, McGonagall, Sirius, Hermione, and Moody (who did enter him and isn't actually Moody) are the only people who believe him. Most of his fellow Gryffindors (save Ron and Hermione, albeit for different reasons) are enthusiastic about it, while the other Hogwarts students are cold towards him (the Hufflepuffs because his entry stole the spotlight from Cedric, the Slytherins because they hate him regardless, and the Ravenclaws because they think he's being a Glory Hound).
  • Cavalry of the Dead: The "shades" of Voldemort's victims give Harry a vital few seconds during his escape.
  • Censor Steam: Voldemort is presumably nude when he emerges from the cauldron in a cloud of steam, as he commands Wormtail to put his robe on.
  • Censor Suds: The prefect bath is loaded with suds and bubbles, which come in handy when Moaning Myrtle decides to drop in on Harry. Myrtle lampshades this, saying "nearly all the bubbles had gone" when Cedric was in the bath. Despite this, Harry is embarrassed enough to cover up his groin with his hands on reflex, and later wraps himself with a Modesty Towel and gets into the water with it so he can think about the egg with Myrtle without worrying about his modesty.
  • Cheaters Never Prosper: Averted — as per Moody, "Cheating is a valuable part of the Triwizard Tournament and always has been." Harry and his competitors all get help by means that wasn't explicitly authorised, but Fleur and Krum, who end up in the bottom two positions (Cedric's death notwithstanding), aren't penalised for such.
  • Chekhov's Gun: The series has its own page. Barty Crouch, Jr. even tries planting one — the book about magical water plants he gives Neville — nearly five months before Harry needs it. This backfires when Harry, not knowing he's in a book, has no reason to remember it.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: Hermione informs us that Parvati Patil has a twin sister in Ravenclaw, when previously there had only been mention of "a pair of twin girls" with the last name Patil in the first book — several chapters before Padma becomes Ron's date for the Yule Ball.
  • Chew-Out Fake-Out: Moody overhears Harry warning Cedric that the First Task is dragons, and asks to talk with Mr. Potter. Harry braces himself because he's not supposed to know anything about the First Task...and Moody praises him for being a decent and fair competitor. He says that generally it's every witch or wizard competitor for themselves in the Triwizard Tournament, and cheating is a long-time tradition. In fact, Moody wanted to make sure Harry had a strategy for getting past the dragons. Of course, we learn that Moody had an especially good reason to make sure Harry survived: so he could make it to the graveyard for Voldemort's resurrection with the Third Task.
  • Child Prodigy: Viktor Krum has been playing Quidditch long enough to be well-known as an international star, but he's only eighteen and hasn't left school yet.
  • Chimney Entry: An accidental example — Arthur Weasley has the Dursleys' fireplace connected to the Floo Network temporarily...only to discover the Dursleys have had it blocked up. He, Ron, Fred, and George end up piling into each other before he resorts to blasting their way out. He assures the Dursleys he can fix it, of course.
  • Christmas Carolers: As part of the Yule Ball, the Hogwarts suits of armour are enchanted to sing Christmas carols, but they only seem to know half of the words. Peeves the Poltergeist takes to hiding in them and making up his own versions to fill the gaps.
  • Compact Infiltrator: Rita Skeeter is revealed to be a beetle animagus, explaining how she was able to sneak around Hogwarts and report on such intrusive stories all year. On the flip side, once Hermione figured it out, she managed to trap Rita in a jar and blackmail her into stopping.
  • Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: Voldemort never stops giving shit to Wormtail, regarding him with loathing, disgust, and total contempt, and more or less abusing him verbally and physically in every single scene they share in Goblet of Fire. Voldemort hates the fact that the instrument for his return to power is more or less a last resort for a guy who spent the last twelve years a rat. In the graveyard speech he gives Wormtail a backhanded compliment while giving the unnamed and absent "agent at Hogwarts" the Employee of the Year award.
  • Completely Unnecessary Translator: The Bulgarian Minister for Magic deliberately pretends not to speak English when around Fudge at the Quidditch World Cup to troll him.
    "Vell, ve fought bravely," said a gloomy voice behind Harry. He looked around; it was the Bulgarian Minister for Magic.
    "You can speak English!" said Fudge, sounding outraged. "And you've been letting me mime everything all day!"
    "Vell, it vos very funny," said the Bulgarian Minister, shrugging.
  • Complexity Addiction:
    • The entire plot of the book turns out to be a scheme by Barty Crouch, Jr. to deliver Harry Potter to a certain place at a certain time via Portkey. Left unanswered is why Crouch Jr. couldn't have just kidnapped Harry, or turned any old object in his office into a Portkey and arranged for Harry to pick it up. (Dumbledore does this in the next book when he has to get Harry and the Weasleys out of Hogwarts and later the Ministry in a hurry.)
    • On a far smaller scale, Fred and George whip up an Ageing Potion to cross over Dumbledore's Age Line, when they could have just asked a seventh-year to drop their names in the goblet. Assuming that Dumbledore didn't anticipate someone might try that.
  • Contrived Clumsiness: Fred sneaks Dudley a Ton-Tongue Toffee by pretending to have them spill out of his pocket.
  • Contrived Coincidence:
    • If Bertha Jorkins had not been on holiday in Albania and gone to the same inn as Wormtail at exactly the same time, it is unlikely that Voldemort would have learned about the Triwizard Tournament or Moody's appointment at Hogwarts, the two key facets of information that his master plan is formed from.
    • If Barty Crouch Jr. hadn't been named after his dad, or if the Marauder's Map could distinguish between two people who share the same name, he would have been caught much earlier and Voldemort's scheme would've been ruined.
  • Convicted by Public Opinion: Frank Bryce in the opening chapter, with the rest of Little Hangleton remaining convinced he killed the Riddles in spite of the police letting him off due to a lack of evidence that they had been murdered in the first place.
  • Cool and Unusual Punishment: Moody catches Draco Malfoy about to hex Harry in the back and responds by transfiguring him into a ferret and bouncing him around. Also partially because Lucius had the means to avoid Azkaban that Crouch Jr. didn't.
  • Cool Teacher: Moody is gruff and demands a lot from the students, but he endears himself to Harry and several of the others for being upfront with them about the dangers of the Dark Arts and what they need to do to prepare themselves, putting bullies like Malfoy in their place, and showing kindness to students like Neville when they need it. Subverted, however, with The Reveal about who Moody really is...
  • *Cough* Snark *Cough*: Ron accuses Hermione of only liking Cedric because he's Mr. Fanservice. When Hermione claims she doesn't like people just because of their looks, he gives a false cough that sounds oddly like "Gilderoy Lockhart".
  • Covert Pervert: Several characters are implied or stated to be a bit less innocent than they seem at first glance.
    • Moaning Myrtle "sometimes" sneaks into the prefects' bathroom to watch them bathing. Harry finds out when he borrows the bath to decipher a clue that's only audible underwater.
    • In a throwaway line, Moody is said to track some passing girls with his magic eye. The real Moody would probably never do this. But Barty Crouch Jr., who's only in his early thirties, would.
    • Dumbledore reveals his brother got in trouble for "improper charms with a goat". In Deathly Hallows, we find out that Aberforth's Patronus is a goat, which makes this even more disturbing, considering that one's Patronus can take the form of somebody one loves.
  • Crazy-Prepared: Dumbledore announces that he has placed an age restriction on the Goblet of Fire, to prevent students under seventeen from entering. Fred and George Weasley try to enter their names anyway, thinking they can outsmart one of the most powerful wizards of all time by using an Ageing Potion. They soon learn better. Unfortunately, the Goblet still isn't immune to the Confundus Charm.
  • Creepy Long Fingers: Voldemort's long, creepy fingers, once he finally regains human form, are part of his overwhelming invokedUncanny Valley grossness.
  • Cruel to Be Kind: A somewhat downplayed example, but to get his attention to tell him about the dragons, Harry uses a spell to break Cedric's bookbag, which happens to be brand-new.
  • Cultural Rebel: Dobby has become this since Harry liberated him from his cruel former masters. Downplayed, though, as he still prefers work to laissez-faire 'freedom'.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle:
    • The Quidditch World Cup has the Irish Chasers scoring seventeen goals between them, completely outclassing Bulgaria's, who score only one. It turns into a Curb Stomp Cushion when the game ends with Ireland on top 170–160, Bulgaria only having scored that much because Krum caught the Snitch and ended the game.
    • Charlie mentions that the English and Scottish national teams lost by wide margins in the qualifying rounds (England were crushed 390–10 by Transylvania).
  • Cuteness Proximity: Parvati and Lavender go into "transports of delight" during Hagrid's lesson on unicorn foals. Not even Pansy Parkinson is immune either, despite trying to appear otherwise.
  • Cut-and-Paste Note: Hermione receives a threatening one from an irate and gullible subscriber to Witch Weekly who believed Rita Skeeter's Malicious Slander portraying Hermione as The Vamp.
  • Dances and Balls: The Yule Ball is a Christmas dance which the students of Hogwarts and their guests from Durmstrang and Beauxbatons attend. Since Harry is in a life-or-death competition with them while his friends are stuck in a life-or-death love triangle, the dance provides much comedic tension and teenage angst.
  • Darker and Edgier: Though J. K. Rowling had been progressively doing this with each new installment since the beginning, this book made the series take a huge leap in this trope, taking the previous novel's dark tone up to eleven. Notably, it's the first to feature an out-and-out bad ending, with Cedric being murdered and Voldemort getting a new body. It's also the one where the franchise begins to show serious Black-and-Grey Morality, as Rowling begins unveiling the dark side of the Ministry for Magic.
  • Defiant to the End: Subverted by Frank Bryce, though not for lack of trying. When Nagini and Wormtail bust him, right when he's about to go to call the police, he faces Voldemort with courage and dignity. Then he demands to see Voldemort face to face, goes Oh, Crap!, and screams at what he sees before Voldemort kills him. When Harry later sees what Frank saw, he tries to scream but can't due to the gag in his mouth.
  • Description in the Mirror: At the beginning of the second chapter, we get this after Harry wakes from his accidental Dream Spying on Voldemort:
    Harry ran his fingers over the scar again. It was still painful. He turned on the lamp beside him, scrambled out of bed, crossed the room, opened his wardrobe, and peered into the mirror on the inside of the door. A skinny boy of fourteen looked back at him, his bright green eyes puzzled under his untidy black hair. He examined the lightning-bolt scar of his reflection more closely. It looked normal, but it was still stinging.
  • Diabolus ex Machina: Concerned for his personal safety after the debacle at the Tournament, Cornelius Fudge decides he needs extra protection while interrogating a tied-up Crouch Jr., who is hopped on Veritaserum. Not unreasonable, but rather than bringing in an Auror, a security wizard, or someone like Percy, who is also seen to be a gifted wizard, he summons a Dementor, which eats Barty Crouch Jr.'s soul as soon as it sees him. This renders him unable to give testimony and no way for anyone to prove Voldemort's return conclusively, leading to the parting of the ways. Rather, when Dumbledore and McGonagall point out how myopic this was, Fudge goes Never My Fault and claims Crouch Jr. was a raging lunatic who only believed he was serving Voldemort, and Harry's testimony is "unreliable" because he believes Rita Skeeter's portrayal of him as an attention-seeker.
  • Diet Episode: At the start of the book, the Dursleys have had to put Dudley on a diet, as Dudley had come home from Smeltings for the summer with a note saying that the school's uniform supplier no longer provides pants in the obese Dudley's size. Dudley is not happy that he can no longer eat his favourite foodstuffs, so he tries to sneak donuts and eat his parents' share of the diet fruits. Unfortunately, Aunt Petunia decides that to accommodate Dudley, everyone else needs to participate, including Harry (who absolutely does not need such a thing). Thankfully, his friends send him enough snacks to keep him from starving.
  • Disapproving Look: Harry gets this from Fleur as he tries to clean his wand in the Weighing of the Wands.
  • Disguised in Drag: A quick gag at the beginning has an old wizard named Archie doing this by accident. He was told he couldn't wear the usual (gender-neutral) robes at the World Cup for masquerade reasons, so he picked up a nice nightdress in a Muggle shop. When other wizards try to explain that it's women's clothing, he doesn't believe them, and likes the breeze he gets.
  • Dissonant Serenity: During the Death Eater riot at the Quidditch World Cup, Draco Malfoy is shown calmly watching the violence through a gap in the trees.
  • Distressed Dude: Harry gets kidnapped in the climax.
  • Do Not Go Gentle: When faced with a choice of dying and hiding behind a gravestone or staring down Voldemort and trying one last Hail Mary, Harry thinks of his parents who also did not go gently, and rises to try one final attempt because if he is about to die, it will be on his feet.
  • Do Wrong, Right: Moody is the epitome of this, which was in character for the real person.
    • Moody is not fond of the Unforgivable Curses; he finds them distasteful to use on a human being. But if you are going to use it, he reassures Hermione when she questions him putting the Imperius Curse on students that he got permission from Dumbledore to show them how it feels. Though he does "dismiss" her from class for asking if he would endanger a student for the sake of a lesson. As we see, at least in a classroom setting the worst he does is make students sing embarrassing songs.
    • He also tells Harry how to find a loophole to get past the dragons and hints on how to use his broom.
  • The Dragon: Barty Crouch Jr., particularly in the movie adaptation.
  • Dream Intro: Our story begins with a man checking on what's going on upstairs, only to be confronted by Wormtail, then Voldemort. Turns out it was a nightmare Harry was having. A psychic nightmare, as that was actually happening.
  • Dream Spying: Harry begins doing this unintentionally — he witnesses Voldemort killing Frank Bryce, then "overhears" a conversation he has with Wormtail.
  • Drunk on Milk: After Mr. Crouch sacks her, Winky has taken to drowning her sorrows with Butterbeer, which is weak enough to be available to teenagers but is apparently much stronger for House Elves.
  • Dub-Induced Plot Hole:
    • When Hermione mentions that the 1792 Triwizard Tournament was cancelled because of a cockatrice breaking free and injuring the judges, the Dutch and Italian editions translate "cockatrice" as "basilisk." This should be impossible, since The Chamber of Secrets established that breeding basilisks has been illegal since medieval times, and they certainly don't want to use one of the most deadly creatures ever in a school tournament. Its gaze alone would have killed the entire audience.
    • A lesser one in the American version: Harry tries to guess the password to Dumbledore's office by using the last password, "Sherbet Lemon." This left some American readers scratching their heads, as earlier books had Americanized the word into the more recognizable "Lemon Drop," making them wonder if Harry was misremembering the password. Subsequent reprints would fix this.
  • Dub Species Change: To keep the pun, the Hungarian translation changes the guineafowl that are being transformed into guinea pigs during the Transfiguration class into seahorses.
  • Dude, Not Funny!: Invoked.
    • Arthur yells at Fred and George for baiting Dudley with cursed toffee, knowing that he was on a diet. Even though Harry defends the twins, Arthur is angry that they not only used magic on a Muggle, but used reckless magic, period.
    • Moody demonstrates the Imperius Curse to Harry's class by performing it on a spider and making it tap-dance. All the students find this funny, until Moody notices and asks them if they'd find it amusing if he put the curse on one of them, which he later does to all of them to test their resistance.
    • After Harry and Ron make up, they spend most of their first subsequent Divination lesson laughing through Trelawney's latest prediction of Harry's impending death. She calls them out on it.
    • Hermione frowns at Ron when they see Krum jumping into the lake, and he says hopefully that Krum may have to face the giant squid.
  • Dudley Do-Right Stops to Help: Harry nearly ruins his chances of winning the second task by trying to rescue everyone trapped in the lake, because he didn't realize they weren't really in danger. As Ron points out, everyone in charge has been going to great lengths to ensure that no one dies during this iteration of the tournament, so it was obvious they wouldn't just leave the hostages underwater if the champions didn't get there in time. Fortunately, Dumbledore finds this commitment to saving people as a sign of high moral fiber, and Harry gets full marks, despite finishing well after the time limit.
  • Due to the Dead:
    • Voldemort tells Wormtail that he plans to feed Harry's body to Nagini.
    • Voldemort averts this as he needs Wormtail to open his father's grave for a piece of him, as part of the resurrection ritual.
    • Cedric's shade asks Harry to retrieve his corpse, and Harry does.
  • Dumbass Has a Point:
    • This isn't Ron's best book, due to his jealousy towards his best friends, but he does aptly point out a few things: Hermione's first attempts to liberate the house-elves are insulting the elves more than empowering them, that her name for her organization has a terrible acronym, and that he and his friends can handle learning about the First Wizarding War. Also, when talking about Percy's loyalty to Crouch, Hermione insists that Percy wouldn't give his family to the Dementors, but Ron darkly says that Percy would toss his family aside if they got in the way of his ambition. He ends up being proven right in the next two books.
    • Bagman is right that Fred and George are too young to gamble, though not for the reasons he states. It's that they gambled their savings, and that he repaid them in leprechaun gold.
    • The only sensible thing Fudge does in the whole book is question Percy about the letters he's receiving from Crouch, Sr. since it's odd that Crouch, a man known for never missing a day of work, has suddenly taken ill for months due to Voldemort placing him under the Imperius Curse.
  • Dungeon Bypass: During the third task, Harry blasts a shortcut through the hedge maze when he hears one of the others being tortured. It takes a curse plus a bit of fighting to get through. He doesn't repeat it due to the effort.
  • Early-Bird Cameo:
    • During a trip into Dumbledore's Pensieve, Harry sees the trial of Barty Crouch Jr. and the Lestranges, being especially struck by the fanatic and, at this point, unnamed Mrs. Lestrange. Bellatrix is an important villain in the later books.
      • Both she and her husband are mentioned earlier by Sirius when he talks about a gang of Slytherin students who formed Snape's social circle when he was a student at Hogwarts, though they aren't mentioned by their first names. (Nor does he acknowledge that he and Bellatrix are first cousins, given their mutual antipathy.)
    • Many Death Eaters who become more prominent in the next book, such as Antonin Dolohov and Augustus Rookwood, are first mentioned in the Pensieve scene. We also first hear about Travers, who becomes more prominent in the final novel.
    • A much more minor one, but Cedric's father says that a family called the Lovegoods have been at the World Cup for a week. Luna is a key supporting character in the last three books and her father, Xenophilius, is introduced in the very last one.
    • This is also the first time that Dumbledore mentions having a brother.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: This book marks the first instance of Harry receiving visions of what Voldemort is up to. However, unlike the future installments, Harry's visions have him serve as an outside viewer of sorts, seeing everything as though he were in the room with them. Starting with The Order of the Phoenix, however, his visions plant him directly in Voldemort's head, seeing through Voldemort's eyes. The narration even tends to say that Harry is the one doing and saying the things Voldemort is doing and saying while in said visions.note 
  • Embarrassingly Dresslike Outfit: Wizards traditionally wear robes (think priest robes) and under normal circumstances this is not seen as unmanly. However in the fourth book there's going to be a dance and they need dress robes, or robes for formal occasions. Most of them look OK, but poor Ron—constrained by poverty and forced to get something second-hand—gets "something that looked to Harry like a long, maroon velvet dress. It had a moldy-looking lace frill at the collar and matching lace cuffs."
    Harry, Ron, Seamus, Dean, and Neville changed into their dress robes up in their dormitory, all of them looking very self-conscious, but none as much as Ron, who surveyed himself in the long mirror in the corner with an appalled look on his face. There was just no getting around the fact that his robes looked more like a dress than anything else. In a desperate attempt to make them look more manly, he used a Severing Charm on the ruff and cuffs. It worked fairly well; at least he was now lace-free, although he hadn't done a very neat job, and the edges still looked depressingly frayed as the boys set off downstairs.
  • The End of the Beginning: The last chapter is titled "The Beginning".
  • Epic Fail: Some Jerkass students make badges that switch between Support Cedric Diggory and Potter Stinks. The Creevy brothers try bewitching them to say Support Harry Potter but end up up just getting them to say Potter REALLY Stinks.
  • Et Tu, Brute?: When Harry is heading back to the dorm after being forced into the Triwizard Tournament he wonders to himself whether anyone other than Ron and Hermione will believe his assertions that he really didn't put his name into the Goblet of Fire. When Ron consequently not only refuses to believe Harry and also becomes very resentful and bitter towards him, Harry can't believe it, and it leads to a major falling-out between them that lasts until after the first task.
  • "Eureka!" Moment: Ron and Harry speculating as to how Rita Skeeter could possibly have observed all the events she reports on leads to them suggesting that she's "bugging" them — Hermione shoots this down because Muggle electronics would fail around Hogwarts, but the use of the word "bug" causes her to recall a certain beetle that kept appearing, and she runs off to confirm her theory. She's right: Skeeter is an unregistered Animagus and has been spying on them with her beetle form.
  • Even Evil Has Standards:
    • Crouch Jr. in disguise actually extols a lot of Evil Virtues. He hates traitors, and feels that the Death Eaters who escaped Azkaban are the worst and should not have been forgiven for deploying the Imperius defence so easily. When Snape displays his hatred and obsession for Harry Potter, Crouch Jr. is the only person in the entire series that notes that it's wrong and unhealthy for someone to harbour that many negative feelings towards a teenage boy. You can feel it's Not an Act with the disgust dripping off Crouch Jr.'s disguised face as he tells off Snape. Finally, he also agrees with Hermione that Rita Skeeter is a legitimate threat to someone's peace of mind. As Moody, he had used the magic eye to scout if she was spying on the second task and told Hermione honestly that he didn't see the lady. Unfortunately, both of them forgot to try the other solution: the Marauder's Map.
    • Voldemort and a good portion of the Death Eaters are mad that Karkaroff sold them out in exchange for a reduced sentence in Azkaban. Voldemort lets the others return after making an example of Avery, while warning them that their loyalty must never waver again. Karkaroff won't ever get that chance. It's unclear if he was the "one that was too cowardly to come" or the "one who I believe has left me forever". Either way, Karkaroff flees into the night when he feels the Dark Mark burning.
  • Everyone Has Standards:
    • Dudley's school Smeltings gives its students knobbled sticks as part of an unofficial tradition where they hit each other with them when the teachers aren't looking, but apparently doesn't tolerate outright bullying, as seen by the accusations on his report card.
    • Despite being a little slow on the uptake about the situation with the Dark Mark, Bagman immediately protests that Crouch's elf Winky could not have summoned it when he appears in the middle of the investigation. He says that an elf couldn't have done powerful Dark Magic unless she had a wand and the incantation. While she did have the wand, Hermione and the kids come to Winky's defense; they said the voice who uttered the incantation was a deep male voice, not a squeaky female one. Winky confiscated the wand from Crouch Jr. in her attempt to get him away from the Death Eater chaos.
    • Dumbledore tells Hagrid not to assault Karkaroff when Hagrid has the Durmstang headmaster pinned to a tree for insulting him (Dumbledore). He looks more concerned for Karkaroff's well-being than the fact that the man spat at his feet and accused him of sabotaging Viktor to gain an advantage in the tournament.
    • Dumbledore doesn't approve of using the Dementors as Azkaban guards, as he tells Moody, who thinks otherwise.
    • As tough as Moody was on Death Eaters back in the day, he refused to stoop down to their level by exercising Crouch's permission for the Aurors to use Unforgivable Curses and always tried to bring them in alive to stand trial.
    • Hermione had developed a low opinion of Barty Crouch Sr. after seeing him mistreat Winky. She becomes horrified, however, on hearing Crouch's son was also arrested and initially asks if Crouch tried to get his son acquitted.
    • Crouch is well-known among his Ministry peers for being a Workaholic who almost never stops working, but even he thinks Percy Weasley takes work way too seriously.
    • Harry gets insulted on Krum's behalf when both Hagrid and Sirius say when talking to Harry that it was dumb to walk with Viktor him near the Forbidden Forest. He points out that Krum is not a saboteur and always competes fairly, and he just wanted to talk about Hermione. Hagrid dismisses him by saying that everyone competing in the tournament has an ulterior motive, including his crush Madame Maxime.
    • McGonagall has seen a lot of things this past year, including one of her underage students facing a dragon and nearly drowning, while keeping her composure. What makes her absolutely lose it? When Fudge brings a Dementor onto school grounds, in defiance of Dumbledore's dislike for Dementors and the fact that they nearly de-souled Harry a year before. She at first says that it's dangerous to have them around children, and is furious when the Dementor performs its kiss on Crouch Jr. before she could stop the monster. Fudge then tries to stop McGonagall from telling Dumbledore, and she tells him to shove it for his stupidity.
  • Everyone Looks Sexier if French: The Beauxbatons students. Proving that this trope can cross gender boundaries, the Patil twins have fun with a pair of boys from Beauxbatons at the Yule Ball after Ron and Harry lose interest.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: While Voldemort is later shown to play this trope straight, his main agent in this book does not. As he tells Harry, "Decent people are so easy to manipulate." Although Barty Crouch, Jr. does have a moment. He assumes that Harry will ask everyone for Tournament help, but Harry sticks with just his closest friends. This forces the agent to play Xanatos Speed Chess.
  • Evil Gloating: Draco Malfoy gloats to Harry about Voldemort coming back and killing Muggles, Muggle-born wizards, and their sympathizers ... that is, until he, Crabbe, and Goyle get their butts handed to them by the main trio and the Weasley twins.
  • Evil Mentor: Barty Crouch, Jr. is this for Harry and his classmates more generally.
  • Evil Plan: Once again, Voldemort hatches a scheme to recover from his destruction pre-series. It involves dragging Harry into an isolated location and using his blood in a potion.
  • Evil Versus Evil: A joke example happens when Harry asks Uncle Vernon if he can go to the Quidditch World Cup. Vernon has to stop and think about it, and Harry suspects it's because two of his fundamental instincts regarding Harry have suddenly come into conflict: Does he say no for the sole reason that he hates Harry and wants him to be miserable, or does he say yes because it would get Harry out of his hair two entire weeks early?
  • Exact Words:
    • Rita Skeeter approaches Harry after the first task and asks to have "a quick word". Harry responds: "Yeah, you can have a word. Goodbye."
    • Voldemort promises to reward Wormtail by allowing him to perform a special task that many of his followers "would give their right hands to perform". The task? To give his right hand, by cutting it off, for Voldemort's resurrection.
    • When Voldemort conjures a new hand to replace the one Wormtail sacrificed as part of the spell to restore him to his body, he says "May your loyalty never waver again, Wormtail." Wormtail unthinkingly replies "No, my lord, never," not thinking that this may actually be magic on Voldemort's part. Deathly Hallows makes it clear that's exactly what it was, as the hand murders Wormtail when he attempts — however half-heartedly — to defy Voldemort's commands a second time.

    F - I 
  • Failed a Spot Check: Play for drama after Harry asks Dumbledore if the final Pensieve flashback was discussing Neville's parents. A surprised Dumbledore asks if Neville's never told his friends about why he's been brought up by his Grandmother. Harry confirms he hasn't, then realizes that despite knowing Neville for nearly 4 years, he'd never really noticed this or thought to ask Neville about it.
  • False Reassurance: Both played straight and subverted. Wormtail can't help but notice Voldemort's choice of words when he says that "[Wormtail's] part will come at the very end" and promises him that he "will have the honour of being just as useful as Bertha Jorkins" (the woman Voldemort previously tortured for information and then killed). He immediately reads this as a euphemism for Wormtail dying as part of Voldemort's master plan and says as much, but Voldemort (truthfully) reassures him that isn't it at all. However, Voldemort saying that Wormtail's reward will be to perform a task that "many of [his] followers would give their right hands to perform" is very much an instance of this trope.
  • Female Gaze: Moaning Myrtle gets an eyeful of Cedric during his time trying to figure out the nature of the second task.
    Myrtle: It took Cedric ages to figure that out! Nearly ALL the bubbles had gone!
  • Fiction Isn't Fair: Rita Skeeter spends the book printing outright lies about Harry and his friends. Dumbledore does ban her from the school grounds, but Harry isn't presented with any legal way of stopping the articles themselves, even when Hermione is injured by someone posting her undiluted Bubotuber pus or getting abusive Howlers at breakfast. If nothing else, Skeeter should be getting in trouble for the simple fact that both Harry and Hermione are very much underage.
  • Final Boss Preview: Towards the end of the story, Voldemort gets fully revived due to a ritual by Pettigrew and faces off against Harry, who was too weak to fight him directly at this point in the series and only survived thanks to the ghosts of Voldemort's victims intervening.
  • Fire/Water Juxtaposition: The first challenge in the Triwizard Tournament requires the competitors to face off against a fire-breathing dragon for each of them. The second challenge requires them to swim to the bottom of the Black Lake and rescue one hostage each.
  • First-Name Basis:
    • Unlike the last book, Sirius Black's surname is only mentioned once, when he transforms back into a human from his Animagus form in front of Molly, who had still thought he was a villain. This may be an indication of how close he and Harry have grown over the summer despite only being in contact through writing.
    • At the Yule Ball, Severus Snape and Igor Karkaroff address each other by their first names, which lets Harry know they have a history.
  • Fixing the Game: The Weasley twins' subplot is driven by Ludo Bagman's welching.
  • Flat-Earth Atheist: In a world where magic is commonplace to the point of saturation, the magical art of Divination is regarded in-universe by many as a bunch of hooey.
  • Flipping the Bird: It's implied the pissed-off Leperchauns do this as part of their mascot formation to the Veela during the World Cup.
  • Football Hooligans: The Irish party hard after their win at the Quidditch World Cup, which accidentally becomes a very convenient cover for the riot the Death Eaters cause on the same night.
  • Forced Transformation: Moody briefly transfigures Malfoy into a ferret, as punishment for attacking Harry from behind.
  • Foreshadowing: Has its own page.
  • Forgot About His Powers: The Accio spell could have been used more;
    • Harry uses Accio to summon his broom during the first task; he didn't think of just using it to summon the dragon egg he was trying to get or summoning the broom to fly over the maze in the third task. In fact, the fact that none of the champions thinks to summon the egg directly to them suggests that they forget it should be possible, or that the egg had been enchanted to prevent exactly that; watching four people walk into an arena and have their eggs zip into their hands, one after another, isn't very entertaining. In either case, it goes unexplained why they don't try it.
    • Harry gets his leg stuck in a trick step while wearing the Invisibility Cloak and can't reach the egg that's rolled away but doesn't think to Summon it.
  • French Jerk: The Beauxbatons students evince mostly disappointment and displeasure with Hogwarts' accommodations. Fleur is the worst example until Harry saves her sister Gabrielle in the second task.
  • Funetik Aksent: The Bulgarian characters have their dialogue written with "v"s instead of "w"s, and the French characters have their "th"s replaced with "z"s.
  • Fun with Acronyms: Hermione starts the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare.
    • It could have been worse: Stop the Outrageous Abuse of Our Fellow Magical Creatures and Campaign for a Change in Their Legal Status. It wouldn't fit on the badge, so she repurposed it as the organisation's mission statement.
    • At one point, Ron sarcastically comments that Hermione might have changed the name of S.P.E.W. to the House-Elf Liberation Front (she doesn't). He later also jokes that she can start up S.P.U.G.: Society for the Protection of Ugly Goblins.
  • Gambit Roulette: The whole Triwizard Tournament is hijacked by the scattered remnants of Voldemort's followers for the sole purpose of kidnapping Harry Potter by having him touch a Portkey that will take him to their supervillain lair. Their overly elaborate Evil Plan hinges not only on manipulating the titular Goblet of Fire to draw Harry's name — which itself draws immediate suspicion since it violates myriad Triwizard rules — but also on Harry's winning (and indeed, surviving) a dangerous, multi-stage tournament that culminates in an obstacle course through a large maze. There must have been a simpler way to get to Harry. It should be noted, though, that had Voldemort not been so arrogant as to want to fight Harry, the plan would have worked perfectly: Harry would have simply vanished, and no one except for the Death Eaters would have had any idea what happened.
  • The Gambling Addict: Bagman's Establishing Character Moment is talking Arthur into a bet on the World Cup outcome.
  • Gang of Bullies:
  • Ghost Reunion Ending: Harry's duel with Voldemort causes the spirits of Voldemort's victims, including Cedric Diggory and his parents, to appear. They then help Harry in the climactic duel.
  • Golden Snitch: The winner of the Triwizard Tournament is determined by who wins the last of the three events. The only purpose of the previous two is to determine the order in which the champions enter the final event's maze. It works, though, as Harry and Cedric, who enter together (being tied for first), also reach the Cup first and take it together.
  • Good Is Not Soft: Hermione delights in capturing and holding Rita Skeeter to ransom; she blackmails them even further in Order of the Phoenix.
  • Good Shapeshifting, Evil Shapeshifting: Rita Skeeter is a sneaky, underhanded tabloid journalist who just happens to be another unlicensed animagus, this one with the form of a beetle - allowing her a gift for spying on people... up until Hermione figures out the truth and traps her in a jar.
  • Graceful in Their Element: Viktor is graceful on a broomstick but duck-footed on land.
  • Gravity Screw: One of the obstacles Harry meets in the maze is a strange mist that acts as a local "inverse gravity" zone. It gives Harry the terrifying impression he's a second away from falling into the sky. Once he finds the nerve to take a step, the illusion breaks.
  • Green-Eyed Monster: Ron shows this for both his best friends. First, he gets jealous over Harry being entered in the Triwizard Tournament. Then, he gets jealous that Viktor Krum shows interest in Hermione.
  • Gut Punch: Cedric's death is this for both the book and the series.
  • Handing Over the Crap Sack: Mrs Weasley gives Hermione an Easter egg which is much smaller than everyone else's, when she believes what the journalist Rita Skeeter cruelly writes about Hermione being Harry's girlfriend. Fortunately, she later becomes warmer towards Hermione when Harry emphasizes that she is not his girlfriend.
    Hermione looked sadly at her tiny egg.
  • Hate Sink: Rita Skeeter is a shameless tabloid journalist who prints outright lies about Harry and outs Hagrid as half-giant.
  • Have You Told Anyone Else?: When Frank Bryce stumbles upon Voldemort and Wormtail in the Riddle house, he claims other people know he is there and will come looking for him. Voldemort knows instantly that Bryce is lying.
  • Head-Turning Beauty: Fleur Delacour is a normal example; the full-blooded Veela are the most extreme.
  • Heart Is Where the Home Is: The Ron-Hermione-Viktor Love Triangle is Britain vs. Bulgaria. Viktor appeals to Hermione because he's more mature and more decisive (and romantic) in his courting of her. Meanwhile, Ron has just realized he's attracted to Hermione but is too immature to see her as anything else than a consolation prize after being rejected by Fleur, a Frenchwoman. Viktor is not a bad person, though, and remains in contact with Hermione after the end of the storynote , but later books make it clear that she's more attracted to Ron. It's not until Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows that Ron grows up enough to be the kind of man that Hermione can get into a serious relationship with.
  • Hedge Maze: The setting of the third challenge is a magical hedge maze filled with monsters to force the four contestants to fight their way through and find the prize of the tournament, the Triwizard Cup.
  • Hero Antagonist: Cedric is a downplayed example, as he is Harry's rival both in the Triwizard Tournament and in winning Cho's affections.
  • Heroes Gone Fishing: While wondering what his teachers do during the holidays, Harry briefly imagines Dumbledore getting a tan on a beach somewhere, while still wearing his robe and hat.
  • He Who Fights Monsters:
    • Barty Crouch Sr. used to head the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, whose job is to police the wizarding world and stop the use of Unforgivable Curses. During the war against Voldemort, he authorized the Aurors to use the Unforgivable Curses and gave them leeway to kill rather than capture suspects.
    • Averted by Mad-Eye Moody; Sirius notes that although he was a tough and uncompromising Auror, Moody never sank to the level of the Death Eaters and attempted to bring in his quarry alive whenever possible. That said, Moody believes firmly that "filth" like Karkaroff deserves Azkaban.
  • Hiding Your Heritage:
    • This book reveals that the reason Hagrid is much larger than an average person is because he's half-giant (human father, giant mother). Because of the Fantastic Racism against the creatures in the wizarding world at large, he keeps it a secret and shuts himself in his cabin when Rita Skeeter outs him in an article. Hermione suspected it, whereas Ron believed Hagrid's size was a result of a faulty Engorgement Charm that couldn't be reversed and Malfoy thought Hagrid had overdosed on Skele-Gro when he was a boy.
    • Madame Maxime is half-giant and tries to keep it under wraps due to half-giants being persecuted. She is offended when Hagrid asks about her ancestry, claiming she just has big bones.
  • High-School Dance: The Yule Ball. A bit classier and more formal than most examples, but it still counts (to the point that many fanfic writers tend to treat it like Wizarding Homecoming/Prom than a Triwizard Tournament-only event, so they can put their characters in elaborately-described dresses and have a Dance of Romance). In a more realistic touch, neither Harry nor Ron gets the nerve to ask their respective preferred partners (Cho, who'd agreed to go with Cedric, and Hermione, with Krum) until it's too late, and Harry especially sees it as more of a chore to get through than anything else. Of course, much of that may have been due to the fact that, as a champion, he would be in the spotlight for the start of it along with the other champions. Also, as both champion and famous Harry Potter, he gets several girls asking him to the dance almost as soon as it's announced, though he's socially awkward enough he keeps turning them down, and apparently the message spreads and his unprovoked invitations dry up.
  • Hope Spot: Dumbledore invokes this in-universe with the cruel irony of the Death Eaters' attack on Frank and Alice Longbottom. The attack on them came just after Voldemort's fall and just when everyone thought they were finally safe and the nightmare was over. That, combined with the Longbottoms' popularity, produced a wave of fury throughout Wizarding Britian such as Dumbledore had never seen before.
  • Horned Humanoid: At the Quiddith World Cup, Mr. Weasley briefly says hello to Gilbert Wimple, a Ministry member of the Council on Experimental Charms who acquired horns.
  • Hurt Foot Hop: After he tries to enter the Headmaster's office without knowing the password, Harry kicks a wall out of frustration and hops on his other foot in pain.
  • Hypocrite:
    • Draco Malfoy takes great delight in insulting Ron's mother, but apparently can't take Harry insulting his own mother in return.
    • Molly Weasley criticizes Amos Diggory for believing stuff written by Rita Skeeter in the Daily Prophet about Harry, yet she at the same time buys into trash Rita writes about Harry and Hermione in Witch Weekly and holds a small grudge against Hermione until she's set straight by Harry.
  • Hypocritical Humour:
  • I Feel Guilty; You Take It:
    • Harry offers the Triwizard Cup to Cedric Diggory, because (1) his entrance in the Tournament was unfair and (2) Cedric scored the most recent point in their continued 'game' of helping each other.
    • Cedric offers the Triwizard Cup to Harry despite reaching it first, since he saved him twice in the maze, first from an imperiused Viktor Krum, then from the Acromantula just beforehand.
    • Harry offers the prize money from the Tournament to Cedric's parents, who turn it down. He then tries to give it to Molly Weasley, who also refuses, before he finally gives it to Fred and George Weasley as founding capital for their joke shop.
  • I Gave My Word: While Harry is still struggling to get a Yule Ball date, Ron suggests to Ginny that she go with him. Ginny tells them she can't because she already said yes to Neville and is clearly miserable about having to give up a chance to go with Harry.
  • I Have No Son!: Barty Crouch, Sr. spoke very highly of his son's accomplishments around the office, until Crouch Jr. went astray, joined the Death Eaters, and was caught with the Lestranges for torturing the Longbottoms. At the kangaroo court, Crouch Sr. rather viciously disowns Crouch Jr. as the latter begs for his life and tries to fight the Dementors.
  • I Need You Stronger: This is the reason for Barty Crouch Jr.'s assistance to Harry in the Triwizard challenges. See Gambit Roulette.
  • I Reject Your Reality: Fudge stubbornly refuses to believe Harry's claims that Voldemort has been resurrected, thinking that he and Dumbledore are trying to destabilize 13 years worth of hard work for the Ministry.
  • I Should Have Been Better: In a poignant moment, when he has a clear run at the Triwizard Cup, Cedric tells Harry that it was brave and noble of him to try to save all the hostages during the second task and rescue Gabrielle when Fleur didn't show up. He lambasts himself for not doing that.
  • Imaginary Love Triangle: Rita Skeeter invents a Harry-Hermione-Krum triangle out of whole cloth, to the annoyance of everyone involved.note 
  • Imagine Spot:
    • When told about splinching, Harry briefly imagines a pair of legs and an eyeball lying abandoned on Privet Drive.
    • When told that he is to open the Yule Ball's dancing, Harry has one of himself in a top hat and tails with a girl dressed in a salmon-coloured dress like the ones Aunt Petunia wears to Uncle Vernon's parties.
  • Implausible Deniability: Fudge denies to himself and the public that Voldemort has not returned, just to reassure himself he won't have to see the Ministry crumble after after thirteen years of maintaining the peace. Guess what happens in the next book.
  • Improbably Predictable: Immediately after he wakes up from his dream about Voldemort, Harry predicts how Ron and Hermione will react to the news. When he tells them, they both react almost exactly as he thought they would: Ron is confused, while Hermione encourages Harry to consult every authority figure and book he can.
  • Inevitable Tournament: A straight example. A super-dangerous and challenging tournament takes place at Hogwarts, and despite being three years too young, Harry finds himself forced into
  • Innocently Insensitive: Barty Crouch Sr. and Arthur Weasley tear Amos Diggory a new one for implying that Harry Potter conjured the Calling Card of the wizard who killed his parents and has wanted him dead his whole life. Diggory himself quickly realizes how idiotic his line of thinking was and becomes quite embarrassed at the fact that he actually said it. He then gets this again when he accuses Winky, and Crouch Sr. points out that Amos is accusing him by default, when Crouch's words and deeds show his fervent hatred of the Dark Arts and Death Eaters.
    Barty Crouch, Sr.: You have now come very close to accusing the two people in this clearing who are least likely to conjure that Mark!
  • Instantly Proven Wrong: When Fred and George Weasley make a wager with Ludo Bagman and add one of their trick wands that turns into a rubber chicken. Percy starts to tell them off, saying Ludo wouldn't be interested in their jokes, but Ludo thinks it's hilarious and pays them five Galleons for it.
  • Interrupted Bath: Moaning Myrtle ends up interrupting Harry as he's bathing in the prefects' bathroom to solve the golden egg riddle, causing him to have a Naked Freak-Out and gather all the bath's bubbles around him and making her close her eyes while he puts on a Modesty Towel to finish the bath. Myrtle also tells him she's been in the bathroom many times as The Peeping Tom, but he's the first she actually talked to. He's hardly pleased about having that honour.
  • Interspecies Romance:
    • Hagrid has been (presumably under Dumbledore's approval, considering at least one of them ends up in the last challenge) secretly breeding Manticore-Fire Crab hybrids called "Blast-Ended Skrewts". The actual creation of magical crossbreeds is forbidden in the Potterverse, specifically because it has the potential to create such highly dangerous creatures.note  The Skrewts are mentioned as being so aggressive that they eventually wipe themselves out save for a lone survivor.
    • Human variants appear with Fleur Delacour and her sister, whose (presumably) human-wizard grandfather married a Veela, and Hagrid, who had a wizard father and giantess mother. Madame Maxime is also half-giant.
  • In the Back: Malfoy's attempt to jinx Harry while his back is turned is what sets off the Amazing Bouncing Ferret scene.
  • It's the Principle of the Thing: Moody reveals that the Triwizard Tournament doesn't really determine which school has the best wizard, but who skirts the rules best to get an advantage. Dumbledore is the only head who believes in the rules, hence why he's not helping Harry or Cedric out the way that Madame Maxime or Karkaroff are. Indeed, Bagman isn't surprised that the competitors are more than ready to face dragons.

    J - M 
  • Jabba Table Manners: One of the Durmstrang students gets scolded by Karkaroff for slopping food on his robes.
  • Jealous Romantic Witness: Harry has to watch his crush Cho dance with Cedric and Ron has to watch his crush Hermione dance with Viktor.
  • Jerkass: Rita Skeeter. Intrepid Reporter nothing, she seems to live not to tell the truth, but to humiliate people! Case in point: Hermione just for criticising her, and Hagrid due to him confessing he's half-giant in a place where she is deliberately eavesdropping.
  • Jerkass Has a Point:
    • Malfoy is right that it's a bad idea to keep Blast-Ended Skrewts around. Hermione admits this in a private moment. They do absolutely nothing of any use to anyone, they're exceptionally dangerous, their very existence is illegal as their creation requires breaking the Ban on Experimental Breeding, and caring for them is a complete waste of class time because they do not exist in the wild (though learning to care for a brand-new creature could be useful practical experience for the budding magizoologist, all that means is the Skrewts should be assigned to a NEWT-level class, not a bunch of fourth-years).
    • The organisers of the Triwizard Tournament also have this in mind, as only allowing of-age students to participate ensures that they'll have the necessary magical know-how to overcome a lot of their obstacles, such as Cedric and Fleur being able to use charms that give them air-bubbles, whereas Harry requires Gillyweed stolen from Snape's potion supply.
    • When Hermione tells Rita off for spreading innuendo about "anyone… even Ludo Bagman," Rita retorts, "I know things about Ludo Bagman that would make your hair curl." She reported on Bagman's trial for helping the Death Eaters after Voldemort's fall.
    • Barty Crouch Sr. was a tough Hanging Judge, and not even merciful enough to presume innocence. As Sirius grudgingly admits, however, during the First Wizarding War, a tough force like him was inevitable when Voldemort was spreading his reign of terror. The Death Eaters were murdering Muggle-borns and Muggles alike, causing chaos and ruining lives. Crouch Sr.'s methods at least brought in results and reduced the collateral damage that would have otherwise ensued, although he did end up throwing some innocent people in Azkaban along the way (like Sirius himself). It also turns out that the charges against the Lestranges and Crouch Jr. were justified, as Bellatrix in the next book gleefully refers to torturing Neville's parents, and they totally deserved Azkaban.
    • Moody is less mean than Crouch, which Sirius also describes — he only has one known Death Eater casualty because he made a point to bring most of them in alive — but he is also tough in his approach to them. He says that "filth" like Karkaroff deserve the Dementors after they caused a reign of terror, and they can't just evade the consequences because they decide to turn traitor; whereas the question of if anyone deserves the Dementors is morally ambiguous, he is right that Death Eaters shouldn't just escape consequences of murdering and torturing innocent people. He also believes that Bagman was "dim" and not truly malevolent in passing on information to Rookwood, which ended up being true. A lot of this is actually coming from Barty Crouch, Jr., who had his own reasons for despising these people, but it's safe to say these things are probably also true of the real Moody's thoughts.
    • The only reason Bagman investigated Bertha Jorkins' disappearance after six months was because Rita Skeeter reported on it. The same Rita who humiliates people to pay for her manicures and robes.
  • Just Between You and Me: A lot of this, both from Voldemort and Moody/Crouch at the end of the book.
  • Kaizo Trap: The Giant Spider at the very end of the third task, meant to blindside champions who are focused on the Triwizard Cup ahead. It is only thanks to Harry's yell that poor Cedric survives his encounter with it.
  • Kangaroo Court: The trials in the Pensieve Flashback are stacked against the defendants. Sirius says he didn't even get that much. However, Ludo Bagman managed to get off, largely because he was a popular Quidditch player, making him acquitted by public opinion. We also find out later that the Lestranges and, to a lesser extent, Barty Crouch, Jr. did deserve to be thrown in jail.
  • Karma Houdini Warranty: Alas, for Karkaroff. He was a remorseless Death Eater who got a reduced sentence in Azkaban for ratting out on his fellow genocidal wizards. Then he becomes headmaster of a prestigious school, without facing any consequences for his Death Eater activities. Cue his Dark Mark getting clearer, and his worries about Voldemort executing him for being a traitor. It's revealed that he runs away after feeling the Mark return, and Voldemort tracks him down and kills him. He does, however, live about a year after Voldemort's resurrection, said to be much longer than average for ex-Death Eaters.
  • Kick the Dog:
    • Snape in the exchange of spells outside the Potions dungeon after Hermione is hit with a spell that enlarges her already noticeable buck teeth to a cartoonish size (and Goyle's nose having done the same). Snape tells Goyle to go to the hospital wing, and then turns his attention to Hermione when Ron points out that she's been hit with a spell, too. Snape says, "I see no difference." Hermione runs off crying. Naturally, Harry and Ron proceed to unleash a heap of verbal abuse at him. In the aftermath, however, Hermione turns that to her advantage, because she runs off to have her teeth magically fixed by Madam Pomfrey, and she lets her "carry on a bit", shrinking them to a size smaller than the original one (before the spell hit her). Thus she fixes the problem of her teeth permanently and gets a very beautiful smile.
    • Snape gets another crucial moment. When Harry is trying to get into Dumbledore's office due to Barty Crouch Sr. appearing and raving, demanding to see the professor, Snape delays him and dismisses his claims as rubbish. As Harry points out, those few minutes cost them the time to save Crouch and he knows Snape did it just to bait him. In an ironic twist, it is also lucky that Snape appeared when he did, since Harry was already leaving to look for Dumbledore in the staff room and would have wasted even more time had Snape not called him back, even if it was to mock him.
  • Kneel Before Zod: At the book's climax, Voldemort insists that he and Harry bow to each other before their duel, as is customary. When Harry does not comply, Voldemort uses the Imperius Curse to force him to do so, but he doesn't get far before Harry shakes off the curse.
  • Knight's Armour Hideout: Played with. Peeves the poltergeist enters suits of armour not to hide, but to replace the carols they had been bewitched to sing with rude versions.
  • Knight Templar: Barty Crouch Sr. staunchly opposed Voldemort and the Dark Arts, but in his effort to fight them, he stooped to progressively lower levels, to the point that he became no different.
  • Ladykiller in Love: Viktor Krum, who's surrounded by female admirers for his first few months at Hogwarts, asks Hermione to the Yule Ball because she's the one girl who wasn't throwing herself at his feet.
  • Land, Sea, Sky: The three tasks of the Triwizard Tournament, in reverse order.
  • Laugh of Love: As the Yule Ball draws nearer, a lot of girls in Hogwarts are prone to giggling when they're around Harry.
  • The Law of Conservation of Detail: Still played straight in this book despite being longer than the last three combined. The plot is just that complex, and if it's not part of the plot now, it's bound to come up later, such as, say, the entire first chapter.
  • Limb-Sensation Fascination: After Pettigrew cuts off his hand at the end, Voldemort conjures a new, silver one for him. He stares at it in disbelief, then experiments with motion and crushing a twig between his fingertips.
  • Literal Metaphor: When talking to Pettigrew in the opening chapter, Voldemort says that he will give Pettigrew a task that many of Voldemort's followers "would give their right hand to perform." The task? Give Voldemort his right hand.
  • Literary Allusion Title: The Harry Potter Lexicon speculates that the title of the chapter "The Madness of Mr. Crouch" is a reference to The Madness of King George, especially since King George III is reputed to have mistaken a tree for the King of Prussia, whereas Crouch Sr. mistakes a tree for Percy Weasley.
  • Locked Out of the Loop: Retroactive one with Snape after the revelations of Deathly Hallows. Judging from Snape's reaction to Sirius' presence in the Hospital Wing, Dumbledore did not reveal the truth that Wormtail, not Sirius, helped Voldemort kill Lily in the interim since the last book. It's probably justified, as the entire incident demonstrated to Dumbledore that Snape lost all emotional control and objectivity; he couldn't be trusted with that information at the time. Now with the Second War's opening salvos, it's time to reveal the truth.
  • Loophole Abuse: Moody / Barty Crouch Jr. helps Harry realize this can help him win the first task. He can only bring his wand, but the rules don't ban him from using his wand to summon another tool ... such as his Firebolt for flying around the dragon. Indeed, the judges allow it since Harry is the fastest to get his egg.
  • Loose Floorboard Hiding Spot: Harry stashes sweets under a loose floorboard under his bed when Aunt Petunia forces the whole family to adhere to Dudley's new diet.
  • Loose Lips: Bertha Jorkins gives Hagrid a run for his money on blabbing secrets. Hagrid at least has enough sense to realise at times that he shouldn't have blabbed; she doesn't.
  • Magical Counterfeiting: Leprechaun gold disappears after a few hours. And Bagman paid Fred and George in leprechaun gold, so they try blackmailing him.
  • Magically-Binding Contract: Submitting one's own name to the Goblet of Fire. Even if someone entered your name against your will and without your knowledge, if it chooses you to compete, you are expected to compete.note 
  • Magic Cauldron: Wormtail uses a cauldron for the spell that restores his master Voldemort to full size and strength.
  • Magic Compass: The Point Me spell causes the caster's wand to point north briefly.
  • Magic Fire: The titular Goblet of Fire contains blue flames, which turn bright red when a champion is chosen.
  • Magic Harms Technology: Discussed by Hermione, who finds out from her Muggle Studies class that electricity tends to go haywire around Hogwarts because there's too much magic in the air.
  • Malicious Slander: A lot.
    • Most of the people of Little Hangleton remain convinced that Frank Bryce murdered the Riddle family, as he was the only one who had access to their house.
    • Rita Skeeter paints Harry as a maudlin attention-seeker who still cries about his parents, and he has to endure weeks of taunts over it. By the end of the book, she's moved on to calling him "disturbed and possibly dangerous".
    • Hermione is accused of two-timing Krum and Harry (the latter of whom has no romantic interest in her at all). Pansy Parkinson suggests she's drugging them with Love Potion.
    • Though Hagrid's teaching does leave something to be desired, Malfoy and company paint him as an outright bully whom everyone hates.
  • Mama Bear:
    • After they save him from Barty Crouch Jr., Professor McGonagall sympathetically tries to help Harry to the hospital wing, seeing how shaken he is. She also gets righteously furious at Fudge for allowing a Dementor into the school, near children again, and for storming into the hospital wing when Harry's trying to recover from his rough night. She also defends Harry when Fudge accuses him of making wild accusations and points out that a "lunatic" couldn't have caused Cedric Diggory and Crouch Sr.'s deaths.
    • Surprisingly, Winky is this. When she sees the Stunned body of her ward "Master Barty," she tries to rouse him and accuses Dumbledore of killing him. As Crouch Jr. confesses under truth serum, she begs him not to tell any more for fear of getting his father into trouble. She convinced Crouch Sr. to let his son attend the World Cup, and she volunteered to keep an eye on Crouch Jr. in the top box, despite her fear of heights. When he tried to charge out at the Death Eater rioters at the World Cup, she forcibly dragged him away, took the wand that he'd stolen from Harry, and insisted that "I was seeing no one" when Amos Diggory questioned her. With all this, it's no surprise that she falls completely apart when Crouch Sr. fires her for letting his son grab a wand, since it meant she could no longer protect either of the Crouches.
    • Deliberately exploited in the first Triwizard task: Charlie Weasley tells Hagrid they specifically chose female dragons to ensure they'd protect the golden egg when placed within their own nest ferociously.
  • The Maze: The third task of the Triwizard Tournament involves the Champions having to find their way through a maze, and overcome various magical obstacles.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • Beauxbatons means "beautiful wands" and that school's crest shows two crossed wands, whereas Durmstrang is a Spoonerism of "Sturm (und) Drang", "storm and stress", a German cultural movement.
    • Ludo Bagman, who starts as a shifty character and whom we later learn is actually a bagman. "Ludo" also means "I play" in Latin (and is the name of the British variant of Pachisi); Ludo is the head of Magical Games and Sports. A "bagman" is also someone involved in the collection of dirty money and Ludo turns out to have been cheating his gamblers, in order to pay off his debt to the goblins. Ludomania is the clinical term for compulsive gambling.
    • Rita Skeeter is an annoying, bloodsucking parasite who thrives on human misery ... and so are mosquitoes, also called skeeters.
  • Mermanity Ensues: A special plant called Gillyweed can give its consumer fins and gills, allowing them to survive underwater. Harry is given it by Neville (in the movie) and Dobby (in the book) so he could use it in the Triwizard Tournament. Viktor Krum uses a spell that gives him a shark head, while Cedric and Fleur use standard Bubble Charms instead.
  • Micro Dieting: Dudley is forced to go on a diet like this, which Aunt Petunia decides the whole family will follow. Breakfast consists of her cutting a single grapefruit into fourths and passing one quarter to each member of the family. Harry is given the smallest quarter. Dudley greedily steals Uncle Vernon's grapefruit quarter.
  • Misplaced Accent: Bulgarian characters (Viktor Krum and the Minister) speak in Vampire Vords, which doesn't match how most Bulgarians speak English in real life (usually W is pronounced normally, while Th is approximated to T/D instead of S/Z). This might imply that they have gotten something of a German accent from their Durmstrang education.
  • Mistaken for Racist: While the Weasleys are picking up Harry from the Dursleys, Fred and George decide to have some fun by planting a toffee in the living room for Dudley to eat. They had created that and other toffees to cause people's tongues to grow as long as four feet when they eat one. Arthur chastises them for using magic to mistreat a Muggle for their amusement. Fred and George protest that they gave it to him "because he's a great bullying git", not because he's a Muggle.
  • The Mole: Voldemort, the Dark wizard who killed Harry's parents, has a spy inside Hogwarts attempting to meddle with the Triwizard Tournament and kill Harry.
  • Mood Whiplash: As said in the description, the series gets dark after this book. It starts with Cedric's death and goes downhill from there.
  • More Hero than Thou: An inverted version, where the sacrifice is to allow the other to triumph.
  • Morton's Fork:
    • Harry invokes a non-villainous example when he asks Uncle Vernon for permission to let him go to the Quidditch World Cup. Vernon is adamant that he can't, until Harry points out he's writing a letter to Sirius, his godfather (who the Dursleys still believe to be a murderous psychopath). Vernon realizes if he stops Harry going to the Quidditch World Cup, Harry will write and tell Sirius, who'll think he's being mistreated; if he stops Harry writing to Sirius, Sirius will notice and think Harry is being mistreated anyway. He's forced to Take a Third Option and allow Harry to go. The third option also qualifies, as the narration put it:
      Allowing Harry to go would make Harry happy, something Uncle Vernon had struggled against for thirteen years. On the other hand, allowing Harry to disappear to the Weasleys' for the rest of the summer would get rid of him two weeks earlier than anyone could have hoped, and Uncle Vernon hated having Harry in the house.
    • In Chapter 10, Mr. Weasley finds that Rita Skeeter mentioned him in an article about the Death Eater attacks at the Quidditch World Cup and spoke negatively of him by saying that he appeared to have covered something up after bodies were rumoured to have been found after Mr. Weasley said that nobody had been injured. Bill says that Rita Skeeter, who makes everyone look bad, says that if his father didn't say anything, she would have written that it was bad that there had been no comment.
  • Motive Misidentification:
    • Zig-Zagging Trope. Throughout the story, everyone thinks someone put Harry's name in the Goblet of Fire in an attempt to get him killed and Make It Look Like an Accident. In the end it is revealed that his name was entered in the hope that he would win, touch the Triwizard Cup, and restore Voldemort to life. The plan was then to kill Harry and send his corpse back, playing it off as if an inexperienced fourteen-year-old died in a Tournament accident.
    • Early on, Percy mentions that Barty Crouch Sr. has taken an interest in Bertha Jorkins' disappearance. Bertha used to work in Crouch's Department, so Percy thinks Crouch was fond of her and is thus worried about his former subordinate. While it's not explicitly stated, the implication from the later reveals was that Crouch was actually concerned about Bertha because she knew about Barty Crouch Jr.'s secret survival (albeit buried under the memory modification he'd forced upon her years earlier). With Bertha MIA, the implication's Crouch was worried about that information being compromised and discovered — which is indeed what happened when Wormtail and Voldemort got a hold of her in Albania.
  • Mundane Solution:
    • The Goblet of Fire is an incredibly powerful magical artifact, and it should be nearly impossible to trick it into selecting two champions from the same school. How, then, did the culprit manage to get Harry into the Triwizard Tournament? By entering Harry's name under a fourth school, meaning the Goblet would pick him by default as he would be the only candidate from that school.
    • You have a golden egg with hinges, and every time you open it, a wailing sound comes out. That's your hint for the second task. Harry does try experimenting with magic, but nothing seems to work aboveground. Myrtle of all beings provides the solution: put it in water. When Harry does so and dives under, the screeching turns into melodic singing. It tells him several things in verse: the second task will be in the lake, that mermaids will be involved, and they will take something that he values.
  • Naïve Newcomer: Harry had learned much about the wizarding world in the previous three years, but he has a moment of this when he asks Ron "So what?" that Hagrid is half-giant. (He does recognise almost immediately from Ron's reaction that it's a piece of Serious Business in the wizarding world he's clueless about.) Never having heard of wizards' antipathy to giants before, it doesn't occur to him that others would scorn Hagrid because of his heritage.

    N - Q 
  • Narm: In-universe, Harry thinks that Professor Moody must find the whole scenario where Harry is caught out of bed trying to figure out the second clue (an otherwise dramatic and intense moment) to be quite silly, since his eye can see Harry's awkwardly-positioned body, with his leg caught in a fake stair, through the Invisibility Cloak.
  • Narrative Profanity Filter:
    • At one point, the synchronised leprechaun swarm makes "a very rude sign indeed" at the Veela.
    • During the riot at the World Cup, Ron tells Malfoy "to do something that Harry knew he would never have dared say in front of Mrs. Weasley".
    • After the "I see no difference" incident, Harry and Ron unload a torrent of abuse at Snape. The narrative notes that the echoes of the stone corridor make it difficult for him to hear exactly what they're calling him, but he gets the gist of it.
    • Sirius lets out "a vehement exclamation" when Harry describes Wormtail cutting him with a dagger.
  • Nasal Trauma:
    • It's mentioned that a student named Eloise Midgeon tried to curse her bad acne off her face. Exactly how this went isn't revealed, but she apparently ended up having to have her nose reattached (and it was left permanently off-centre as a result).
    • Viktor Krum takes a bludger to the face during the Quidditch World Cup which probably broke his nose.
  • Neutral in Name Only: Three of the judges at the Triwizard Tournament are the participating schools' headmasters, who are supposed to adjudicate the scores neutrally. Hogwarts' Albus Dumbledore and Beauxbatons' Olympe Maxime do so, but Durmstrang's Igor Karkaroff blatantly favours his own school's entrant Viktor Krum, to the annoyance of pretty much everyone else present. Ludo Bagman also shows blatant favouritism, due to placing a large bet on Harry to win in a bid to pay off his debts.
  • New Ability Addiction: Percy has just passed his Apparition exam (analogous to getting his driving licence) and keeps Apparating down the stairs just because he can. This annoys Fred and George, but by the fifth book they're doing exactly the same (and annoying Ron), albeit because "time is Galleons" rather than to show off.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Harry loaning Moody the Marauder's Map as thanks for getting him out of trouble with Snape and Filch gives the disguised-as-Moody Crouch Jr. a means to track and eventually kill his father before Crouch Sr. can inform Dumbledore about Voldemort's survival and his son's deception.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
    • Voldemort's plan is to kill Harry after he is resurrected and then build up his army in secret so he can easily take over the wizarding world. However, thanks to his Bond Villain Stupidity he doesn't actually kill Harry immediately and instead forces him into a duel so he can prove himself the better wizard. This gives Harry the opportunity to escape and tell Dumbledore, the last person Voldemort wanted to know about his return, what happened. Thus, Dumbledore is now aware Voldemort is back and begins making preparations to fight him.
    • Barty Crouch Jr (disguised as Moody) teaches Harry how to throw off the Imperius Curse. This later helps Harry when Voldemort tries it on him.
    • Voldemort tells his Death Eaters that he has gone further than anybody along the path that leads to immortality. When Harry escapes, he recounts these words to Dumbledore. Dumbledore is clever enough to guess what this could mean. Voldemort created several Soul Jars to keep himself alive.
    • Voldemort uses Harry's blood in the resurrection ceremony, even though he could have used any wizard's blood provided that he was their enemy. Although it enables Voldemort to touch Harry, it has other consequences.
  • Nice to the Waiter:
    • Sirius gives us the defining quote about this here: "If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals." When it comes to Barty Crouch Sr.'s poor treatment of Winky, his swift dismissal of her for getting caught with Harry's wand establishes that he is not a very good person, none of them realizing that Crouch Sr. was trying to keep secret the fact that he'd broken his own son out of Azkaban and then used the Imperius Curse to keep him under house arrest for the last decade. Then Sirius and Dumbledore's Pensieve tell us just what kind of tyrant Crouch Sr. was when he ran the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.
    • Hermione attempts this with the house-elves of Hogwarts. She means well, but she ends up insulting them.
  • No Fair Cheating: Any student who tries taking an Aging Potion and then throwing their name into the Goblet of Fire will immediately be punished by sprouting a long white beard, as Fred and George find out the hard way.
  • No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:
    • Mr Weasley and Amos Diggory work hard to get Mad-Eye Moody out of trouble after the incident with his dustbins. It turns out that this was actually Mad-Eye Moody being captured by Barty Crouch Jr, who takes over his identity. This sets in motion a chain of events that leads to the return of Voldemort and the death of Amos's son Cedric, and in a few years time, the death of Arthur's son Fred. All of this could have been avoided if they'd just let Moody get arrested.
    • Harry, when going to the Triwizard Cup in the third task, must decide whether to save Cedric Diggory from something in the maze, or go for the cup. He ultimately decides to save Diggory, and then insists that they take the Cup together when Cedric wanted to let Harry take it by himself. Harry really should have left Cedric Diggory behind, for Cedric's own good.
    • Cedric would not have died and Voldemort would have not have returned had Wormtail not escaped in the previous book — which only happened because Harry, who meant to give Cruel Mercy, spared his life.
    • Mrs. Crouch taking her son's place in Azkaban, to give him a chance to live while she was dying, ended up doing much more harm than good in the long run.
    • Winky also gets her moment. She would be the Parental Substitute to Barty Crouch, Jr. where she would tell his father to give him rewards for good behaviour. It was her idea to let Crouch Jr. attend the Quidditch World Cup in the Top Box, under an Invisibility Cloak. Winky also volunteered to keep the seat and lie that it was for Crouch Sr., even though she's scared of heights. Due to her covering her eyes, she fails to notice Crouch Jr. stealing Harry's wand. This later leads to her getting fired, since Crouch Sr. realizes that if Winky was holding Harry's wand, and the wand cast the Dark Mark, then Crouch Jr. must have used the wand to summon the Mark.
  • No-Harm Requirement: Krum gets penalised for defying this in the first task of the Triwizard Tournament: to retrieve a golden egg that's been placed among a nesting dragon mother's clutch. Krum distracts his dragon by casting a spell that impairs her vision, and gets docked points because in the process, his dragon crushes half the real eggs while stumbling around in pain. Ironically, Sirius was going to suggest the same strategy to Harry, and is glad Harry went for the broom instead.
  • "No Peeking!" Request: When Harry is taking a bath in the prefects' bathroom, he's shocked and embarrassed when Moaning Murtle suddenly makes her presence known, and that she habitually haunts to the bathroom to spy on boys. While he trusts on all the bubbles and suds to preserve his modesty while inside the water, when he has to get out of the water, he demands her to close her eyes and not peek and she (seemingly) obeys, to his relief and he goes out to get a Modesty Towel.
  • Not an Act: Mad-Eye Moody is famously averse to Death Eaters who avoided prison, as his job is to arrest them and his face is covered in scars from those who resisted. The Moody Harry meets during his fourth year is Barty Crouch, Jr., one of those Death Eaters who did go to prison (and is trying to revive Voldemort), and understandably hates those who claimed they'd been mind-controlled to avoid punishment, hence his punishing Draco by turning him into a ferret and passive-aggressive attitude towards Karkaroff (the son of a "reformed" Death Eater and one who sold out the others to save his skin, respectively).
  • Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught: Moody mentions explicitly that cheating is a traditional part of the tournament and Dumbledore is a case of Honour Before Reason in this regard. Harry even goes out on a limb to help Cedric when it turns out that Cedric is the one person who hasn't had any done in his favour.
  • Not So Above It All: Hermione's usual response to most of Harry and Ron's more lowbrow jokes is mild disapprovement. However, at the Quidditch World Cup, the Trio hear an elderly wizard named Archie complain about possibly wearing pants, saying that he likes "a healthy breeze round my privates". This gives Hermione such a serious case of giggling that she has to leave the area temporarily.
  • Nothing Is Scarier: Harry's trek through the hedge maze is rather unnerving because of how few obstacles he runs into. Crouch Jr. is making sure that he has a relatively clear path to the Triwizard Cup.
  • Not Just a Tournament: Double Subverted. Everyone thinks the tournament is a ruse to kill Harry during the contest. In fact, it is rigged for him to win — so he can be captured at the moment of victory and killed elsewhere.
  • Not Me This Time: Harry's trio did steal Polyjuice Potion ingredients from Snape two books before, and he suspects them again, but they're not the ones doing it this time.
  • Not Proven: Frank Bryce was innocent of killing the Riddles, but the main reason he went free is that the police couldn't figure out how or why they dropped dead overnight with no sign of a struggle. (The reason is that Tom Marvolo "Lord Voldemort" Riddle killed them with the Killing Curse.)
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: The Bulgarian Minister for Magic pretends to not understand English because he thinks Fudge miming everything in front of him is funny.
    Bulgarian Minister: Well, we fought bravely.
    Fudge: You can speak English? And you've been letting me mime everything all day?
    Bulgarian Minister: Well, it was very funny.
  • Obstructive Code of Conduct: Professor Snape accuses Harry Potter of theft and wants to prosecute, but the use of Veritaserum on students is "regrettably forbidden".
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Somehow, Mrs. Crouch kept up the pretense of being her son, for nearly a year, while dying, taking Polyjuice Potion, and being trapped with the Dementors. It was for the wrong reasons, but a person has to be impressed.
  • Oh, Crap!: In hindsight, this is (actually Barty Crouch Jr.'s) reaction upon seeing the Marauder's Map, since it is not fooled by Polyjuice Potion and can identify him for who he really is. Indeed, Harry had seen his name on the Map, but had assumed it was his father because the Map doesn't distinguish between people who share names.
  • Once Done, Never Forgotten:
    • Moody says outright that he never has forgiven a Death Eater for walking free. He brings up Snape and Karkaroff's own misdeeds when the men challenge his questioning. Fudge himself disbelieves Snape when the latter shows off his glowing Dark Mark for this reason. Sirius and Ron admit that the guy has a point; you can't just engage in genocide against innocent people and expect that everyone will accept you back into society. It wasn't Moody, but Crouch Jr. saying it, but the sentiment Crouch Jr. felt was real.
    • Karkaroff says this about Moody when the latter suggests that someone entered Harry into the Goblet of Fire to get him killed; the man is paranoid to a fault and has millions of stories where he lashed out at gifts or seemingly innocent pranks. Moody reminds Karkaroff that the headmaster has his own sordid backstory; Dumbledore intervenes and cuts off "Alastor" before Harry can find out, but Sirius later reveals that Karkaroff was a Death Eater who sold out his fellow mooks to get a reduced sentence in Azkaban.
    • After Professor Moody transfigures Malfoy into a ferret and bounces him around, several characters mock him about the incident throughout the rest of the book, much to his anger and embarrassment.
  • One Dialogue, Two Conversations: Happens briefly on Halloween. When Harry is back outside Gryffindor Tower after his Triwizard selection, he says "Balderdash", that being the password for entry at the time. The Fat Lady's visiting friend Violet insists it isn't — she had just told the Fat Lady about Harry's selection — but the latter corrects her calmly.
  • One-Hit Kill: Although it appeared in the first book, this one gives a name to the flash of green light that Harry kept remembering. It's revealed to be the Killing Curse, Avada Kedavra. (This series has its own "Chekhov's Gun" page for a good reason.)
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: Until Dumbledore calls him "Alastor", it doesn't occur to Harry that "Mad-Eye" isn't Moody's first name.
  • Only Sane Man: Wormtail to Voldemort and Barty Crouch Jr. If only Voldemort had listened to Wormtail's suggestion that they use another wizard's blood in the resurrection ceremony...
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
    • Snape has resented not being allowed to teach Defence Against the Dark Arts since he became a professor at Hogwarts. Consequently, he's been openly acrimonious towards at least the last three people who did, all for different reasons, but not Moody. Maybe he suspected the famed ex-Auror would needle him about his Death Eater past. He was as unaware as anybody of the truth, that the man he thought was Moody was a faithful Death Eater impersonating him.
    • Hermione is extremely studious and loves taking exams. When she gets her "Eureka!" Moment about how Rita Skeeter has gotten unauthorised access to Hogwarts on the last day of finals, she runs to the library before the start of their exam. Ron lampshades that she must hate Rita a lot. Fortunately, she arrives well in time before exams start.
    • Minerva McGonagall has this a couple of points. First, she is the last person who would let Harry get a book from the Restricted Section because those are for advanced students, and she's a stickler for the rules. Before the second task, she gives Harry at least one permission note so he can browse the Restricted Section to find a spell to breathe underwater, showing how much she cares about his safety. Second, she's normally full of Anger Born of Worry when hearing of Harry's dangerous antics or being stern with him if a Reasonable Authority Figure. After she, Dumbledore, and Snape rescue him from Barty Crouch Jr., she's Trying Not to Cry and very gentle with Harry after seeing he's been injured and traumatized. She then argues with Dumbledore when he overrides taking Harry to the hospital wing and is relieved when he ends up going after learning the truth. Much later, the only time we see her at a Rage Breaking Point is when Cornelius Fudge idiotically brings a Dementor into the school, leading to Barty Crouch Jr.'s soul being removed and she shouts at him for excusing the loss as him only being a lunatic who murdered his father and a child.
  • Open Mouth, Insert Foot: When Harry informs the Ministry officials the wand Winky was caught with is his, Amos Diggory immediately accuses him of casting the Dark Mark. Arthur asks Diggory if he seriously thinks Harry Potter would ever cast the symbol of Lord Voldemort and his followers. Diggory immediately realizes how stupid the idea is and becomes quite embarrassed.
  • Our Mermaids Are Different:
    • The ones living in Hogwarts lake are horribly ugly and scary.
    • A more attractive mermaid taunts Harry from a portrait in the perfects' bathroom. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them confirms the attractive type also exist.
  • Our Nymphs Are Different: Fleur mentions that wood nymphs are used as part of Beauxbatons' Christmas decorations and sing to the students.
  • Out-of-Character Alert: Crouch Jr. (fake Moody) seems to make sure nothing overt or subtle happens to give away his role. It is when he takes Harry away from Dumbledore's presence after Harry's return from the graveyard, something the real one would never do, that Dumbledore recognizes he must be an imposter.
  • Outscare the Enemy: A group of Death Eaters runs amok at the Quidditch World Cup as the Ministry tries in vain to control them. The riot only ends once an unknown person (Barty Crouch Jr.) conjures Voldemort's symbol, from which the Death Eaters immediately retreat. They're more afraid of how Voldemort will punish them for their having renounced him when he lost his power than they are of the Ministry.
  • Oxygenated Underwater Bubbles: A rare non-video game example with the Bubble-Head Charm.
  • Paparazzi: Rita Skeeter is this trope. Illegal eavesdropping? Revealing private accords? Hateful and libellous words against a minor who merely insulted her? She does this and worse.
  • Papa Wolf:
    • Dumbledore towards Harry when saving him from the false Moody (Barty Crouch, Jr.) near the end of the book. Just as the latter is about to kill Harry, Dumbledore blows the door off its hinges breaking into the office to take him down, and even Harry finds his cold fury to be frightening, privately noting that he finally understands why Dumbledore is the only wizard Voldemort ever feared.
    • Sirius gets this at several points. He stays near Hogsmeade in his dog form and lives off rats for a month just to be relatively near Harry and able to meet up with him on their trips to Hogsmeade. Later, after Voldemort returns and nearly murders Harry, Sirius is shown to be very shaken and stays in the hospital wing with Harry for the night in his dog form.
  • Parental Neglect: Barty Crouch Sr. has this for his son for presumably most if not all of his life. This has dire consequences for him.
  • Parting-Words Regret: Molly Weasley gets this when the twins have a close call with the Death Eaters.
  • The Password Is Always "Swordfish": When Harry tries to get into Dumbledore's office, he realizes that he doesn't know the password. He remembers that it used to be "Sherbet lemon", so he tries that, then other sweets, and eventually out of anger even "Cockroach Cluster", which turns out to be correct.
    Harry: Cockroach Cluster? I was only joking!
  • Pay Evil unto Evil: Invoked; Moody at Karkaroff's trial was grumpy about how he might get a shorter prison sentence due to knowing information, after it took months to catch him. He says to just hear the information and toss him back to the Dementors. This actually makes Dumbledore argue with Moody that no one deserves the Dementors.
  • Pensieve Flashback: The invokedTrope Namer. This book is the first time they're used, at least directly (as Harry notes, the same concept previously drove the diary flashback in Chamber of Secrets).
  • Perception Filter: It's mentioned that if a Muggle went to Hogwarts, they'd see it as a ruined castle covered in warning signs.
  • Perfumigation: Whatever substance Hagrid calls "eau de cologne", he puts enough of it on, when going out to impress Madame Maxime, that Hermione is left choking for breath. After seeing her reaction, he washes it off.
  • Pet the Dog:
    • In the middle of his angry rant towards Amos Diggory for accusing Harry Potter and his elf Winky, and shortly before he fires Winky, Barty Crouch Sr. tells off Amos because every wizard and witch knows the boy's history of Voldemort killing his parents and trying to kill Harry. It's the only decent moment that Crouch has.
    • One moment that Karkaroff has is that he gets mad on Viktor's behalf when Viktor mutters that Mr. Crouch attacked him. It was the wrong Crouch; Crouch Jr., while disguised as Moody, Stunned Krum and then killed his father before Transfiguring the body. He gets enraged at the thought that someone hurt his student. Though part of it is that Viktor is the Durmstrang poster boy for fame and fortune, you can tell he is legitimately concerned that Viktor was Stunned from behind.
  • Platonic Kissing: At the end of the book, Hermione kisses Harry on the cheek in farewell.
  • Playing the Family Card: There's a Pensieve Flashback to several trials conducted by the Ministry for Magic. In one of them, one of the villains says "I am your son". To which his father, one of the judges, says he has no son.
  • Possession Burnout: The reborn Voldemort notes that although his spectral form could possess other creatures, doing so shortened their lifespans (presumably why he had Quirrell drink unicorn blood).
  • Present-Day Past: At the beginning of the book, Harry, in writing a letter to Sirius, makes a remark about Dudley and his PlayStation in the middle of August 1994. Even in Japan, the console was not released until that December. Though, given that the Dursley family is well-to-do and spoils their son dreadfully, Vernon might have pulled some strings to get one early. Or JK fucked up with numbers again, or she simply didn't know or care when the first PlayStation was actually released.
  • Pronouncing My Name for You: Hermione pronounces her name correctly for Viktor Krum, a foreign student, as he's unfamiliar with it.note 
  • Properly Paranoid:
    • This is Mad-Eye Moody's philosophy, summed up in the Catchphrase "Constant vigilance!" However, Pettigrew and Crouch Jr. were still able to catch him off guard, stun him into his trunk, and Crouch Jr. able to take his place.
    • Harry guesses that Voldemort might be behind his entry into the Triwizard Tournament as a means to cause his death. He's correct: Barty Crouch Jr., a faithful Death Eater, entered his name.
  • The Quarterback: Non-gridiron football version with Cedric Diggory, the Hufflepuff Quidditch captain and Seeker in the third book. He's handsome, kind, courageous enough to volunteer for the Triwizard Tournament (and skilled enough to become the Hogwarts champion), a good enough sportsman that he tries to get a rematch after Dementors invade the field and knock Harry out, and eventually, a Sacrificial Lion. By contrast, all the other Quidditch captains we see in the series are Slytherins (who embody Unnecessary Roughness and cheat as if their lives depend on it) or Gryffindors (Oliver Wood, for whom Quidditch is Serious Business to the point that he doesn't care that the Firebolt that Sirius gifted to Harry might be cursed if it gets them the Quidditch Cup; Angelina Johnson, who is functionally a milder Distaff Counterpart to Wood; and Harry himself).
    Dumbledore: Cedric Diggory was, as you all know, exceptionally hard-working, infinitely fair-minded, and most importantly, a fierce, fierce friend.

    R - S 
  • "Ray of Hope" Ending: Cedric Diggory is killed in cold blood by Peter Pettigrew, and Lord Voldemort is given a new body of his own to begin a second wave of terror against magical Britain. Fudge refuses to listen to Harry and Dumbledore when they tell him about Voldemort's return and Harry is shell-shocked from the incident. However, Dumbledore is already making preparations to fight against Voldemort and Hagrid assures Harry that whatever may come, they'll be ready for it.
  • Real Life Writes the Plot: Natalie McDonald was a girl with leukaemia in Real Life, who wrote Rowling a fan letter on her deathbed. When she died, Rowling added her into Gryffindor.
  • Real Men Wear Pink: Both Charlie Weasley and Hagrid knit garments for themselves, something that is so normal for the wizarding world, Harry, or both that the only comment on it is the fact that they are knitting.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: He may be called Mad-Eye, but Professor Moody ends up being quite reasonable. Moody praises the students for being honorable, noble, and hard-working while testing their defense against curses and telling them that they need to know how the world works. Consider how he treats Karkaroff and Snape versus how he treats Bagman: the former two were Death Eaters, while Bagman was accused of being one. Moody brought in Karkaroff personally and was annoyed that he was getting a reduced sentence, and he treats Snape with disdainful hostility. In contrast, he's pretty civil with Bagman in the present when the latter is a government official. Crouch Jr. as fake Moody revealed these feelings were Not an Act; he does hate Karkaroff and Snape for defecting, and knew that Bagman was an idiot. Moody admitted at Bagman's trial that he thinks that the kid (at the time) was an idiot and not truly malevolent when talking to Rookwood and inadvertently being part of a spy ring; the way that Bagman describes it, Rookwood led him on believing that he would get the kid a job at the Ministry and Bagman had no idea the man was a Death Eater.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Dumbledore gives one to Fudge in the penultimate chapter, which is quoted at the top of this page. He even implies that Fudge and Voldemort are little different in the excerpt and points out precisely the Minister's Fatal Flaw that will cause a vital year to be lost in stopping the Dark Lord's progress.
  • Red Herring:
    • Igor Karkaroff spends all his page time acting as suspiciously as possible. For readers who know it would never be someone so obvious, Ludo Bagman is made a feasible suspect due to appearing in shady situations and repeatedly trying to help Harry with advice for the tasks despite it being against the rules. In the end, he had nothing to do with the main conflict; he just wanted Harry to win to pay off goblin loan sharks due to gambling debts.
    • Midway through the book, Harry witnesses Bartemius Crouch sneaking out of Snape's office on the Marauder's Map. The Power Trio spend the rest of the book wondering why an ill rule-abider from the Ministry would do such a reckless thing. We later find out that it was Barty Crouch, Jr., stealing Polyjuice ingredients. Though Polyjuice does not fool the Marauder's Map, it also can't distinguish two people using the same name.
    • We learn about midway through the book that Voldemort has a spy at Hogwarts. A little while later, Harry learns that Snape was accused of being a Death Eater after Voldemort's fall. Is Snape Voldemort's eyes and ears in the school? No. But he was a Death Eater.
      • The other plausible candidate for Voldemort's spy is the aforementioned Karkaroff, who is stated much earlier than Snape to be a Death Eater and this possibility is kept up almost to the very end of the story. Who else besides him and Snape could reasonably have the required abilities and the motive of working for Voldemort and trying to kill Harry? The real answer is Barty Crouch, Jr., who faked his death with Barty, Sr.'s, help years ago and has been impersonating Mad-Eye Moody for the whole book. This reveal is further disguised by Barty, Jr., playing innocent when on trial with three other Death Eaters as seen in one of Dumbledore's memories when, in fact, he's one of Voldemort's most loyal followers.
  • Reduced to Ratburgers: Sirius mentions, upon meeting the trio in a cave outside Hogsmeade, about having to eat rats and other stuff while on the run from the Ministry (and he can't steal too much food from Hogsmeade, as that'll only attract undue attention). At least it could be said that being in dog form while doing so would make it more bearable, but he still chomps on the food the kids bring him when they meet. Harry then makes sure to have owls bring extra food to him regularly for the rest of the school year, and Ron remarks on Sirius' diet upon catching a whiff of Elf-made dinner at Hogwarts after they return.
    Ron: Poor old Snuffles. He must really like you, Harry... imagine having to live off rats.
  • Reluctant Gift: Filch refuses to give Harry's Triwizard egg to Moody because it is "evidence of Peeves' treachery", but in the end he has to give it up.
  • The Reveal: The villain who put Harry's name in the Goblet of Fire, putting him in a deadly, rewarding tournament, says, "It was I who did that." This comes from the mouth of Mad-Eye Moody, Harry's new mentor during the year, who also reveals that he's actually a long-thought-dead servant of the Dark Lord who magically kidnapped and impersonated Mad-Eye as part of a plan to kill Harry and restore the Dark Lord to power.
  • Rewatch Bonus: When rereading the book, all of Mad-Eye Moody's actions take on a new meaning with knowledge that he's actually Barty Crouch, Jr. For example, why is Moody so startled by the Marauder's Map, and why does he confiscate it from Harry? Because Crouch, Jr. realizes that Polyjuice does not fool the map, and it nearly revealed and still could reveal who he really is (and would reveal who he is if Harry got a look at it at that moment).
  • Riddle for the Ages: Several characters admit that they don't know if Barty Crouch, Jr. was guilty of helping the Lestranges torture the Longbottoms, even though he is later established as a Death Eater, with a place in the circle. Sirius says he isn't certain that Crouch Jr. was guilty, since he could have easily been in the wrong place at the wrong time like Winky was when she was caught with Harry's wand after Crouch Jr. conjured the Dark Mark. Dumbledore mentions that Frank and Alice's testimony was shaky, as the Cruciatus Curse broke their minds and Neville was only a baby. One note is that despite him proclaiming his innocence at the trial, much like other Death Eaters who avoided jail time, Voldemort calls Crouch Jr. his most faithful servant, and it's not very likely that Crouch, Jr. would have called someone he never met "my master". There is also a possibility he was a Death Eater, but not actually an eager or even proper participant in the cause or the crime, considering his motivations and age. Of course, if he wasn't already firmly a Death Eater before he went to Azkaban, he must've been easily converted while he was doing his time, with the Lestranges' combined fanaticism and the Dementors' despairing influence, and tried to seek out Voldemort as soon as he was smuggled out and nursed back to health. Being under the Imperius Curse for a decade probably didn't do wonders for his sanity. On the other hand, Crouch Jr. claims that he only comforted Neville in his Moody disguise to manipulate him, and he calmly showed Neville the curse that traumatized his parents. Dumbledore doesn't ask Crouch Jr. if he was involved while questioning him, but then his higher priority is figuring out how Crouch had broken out of Azkaban and impersonated Moody. Ultimately, the truth is ambiguous.
  • Riddling Sphinx: Harry encounters a sphinx in the hedge maze and must answer a riddle to pass by it safely.
  • Right for the Wrong Reasons:
    • The jury that acquitted Ludo Bagman. He really wasn't a (conscious) Death Eater, but it's clear he only got off because he was a popular Quidditch player.
    • At one point, Harry and Ron speculate that Rita Skeeter is bugging them: i.e. using electronic surveillance devices. Hermione irritably points out that she can't be doing that, since electronics don't work near Hogwarts. Hermione later discovers that she's literally bugging them — she's a beetle Animagus who uses her animal form to get near people she wants to spy on.
    • Dumbledore describes a room full of a magnificent selection of chamber pots that he stumbled into after taking a wrong turn on the way to the toilet, and laments that he never could find it again, speculating that it might require the seeker to have an exceptionally full bladder. The Room of Requirement may be easier to get into than that, but it still would presumably only show chamber pots in particular to someone who needed them at that moment.
    • In an inversion, Fudge insists that Crouch Jr. must be a lunatic because he is raving about having brought Voldemort back to life. Hence, there is no loss with his testimony. McGonagall and Dumbledore lay into him: Harry is telling the truth about seeing Voldemort back in power, and that the plan was coldly calculated, going off without a hitch. Furthermore, as McGonagall points out, someone who is legally insane couldn't get Crouch Sr. murdered with his body transfigured into a bone and buried at the Hogwarts grounds. The same goes for Cedric dying in the middle of the tournament with the clear signs of Avada Kedavra given that his body is intact. Signs indicate that the Dark Lord is back.
  • Rule of Three:
    • The Triwizard Tournament is a competition between three wizards from three schools (though this is later subverted when Harry is chosen as an unprecedented fourth contestant), with three rounds.
    • There are three Unforgivable Curses.
  • Rule of Symbolism: Word of God has confirmed that the challenges of the Triwizard Tournament were chosen to represent the four classical elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water, with the Maze representing Earth, the lake Water, and the dragons Air and Fire (there would have been two different tasks for each element, but it was decided that combining them both with the dragons was more straightforward).
  • Running Gag: Blast-Ended Skrewts are introduced here and become a joke for the rest of the series.
  • Run or Die: Despite the Priori Incantatem effect holding off Voldemort's Killing Curse, Harry's only chance to survive is to break off the engagement and use the Portkey to return to Hogwarts.
  • Sadist Teacher:
    • Snape continues the role from the previous books, but really reaches his peak in this book, not even trying to hide his favouritism for his Slytherin students or his bias against the students from the other houses. This is most notable when he not only lets Malfoy off scot-free for hitting Hermione with a hex that enlarges her front teeth drastically, but then tells her he "sees no difference" between her newly enlarged teeth and how they look normally, causing her to run off crying, then has the nerve to take fifty points from Gryffindor and give Harry and Ron detention when they get angry over this.
    • Moody or more accurately Crouch Jr. briefly becomes this to Malfoy when he turns Malfoy into a ferret, until McGonagall shows up and rebukes him for using a Cool and Unusual Punishment.
  • Salem Is Witch Country: There is a throwaway mention of a group of American witches attending the Quidditch World Cup final. Their campsite has a sign reading "Salem Witches' Institute".
  • Secret Secret-Keeper: While using Dumbledore's Pensieve, Harry discovers the reason Neville lives with his grandmother is because his parents were tortured into insanity by the Lestranges and Barty Crouch Jr., and hospitalized as a result. Dumbledore asks Harry not to tell anyone, including Neville, what he saw so that Neville can tell people himself when he's ready.
  • Secret Snack Stash: Harry starts keeping a stash of food hidden under his bedroom floorboard sent by Sirius, Hagrid, Hermione, and Ron after Aunt Petunia imposes a family-wide diet for Dudley's benefit.
  • Seeks Another's Resurrection: Two of Voldemort's old followers put together a plan to revive the Dark Lord fully, albeit for different motives. One of them (Wormtail) was a turncoat who had been hiding for years and simply ran out of options after being discovered by the people he had betrayed, while the other (Barty Crouch Jr.) was a true believer in Voldemort's cause.
  • Self-Made Orphan:
    • We learn that Voldemort murdered his father and grandparents as soon as he discovered they were Muggles and not the wizards he imagined they were, and that his father abandoned him and his mother while she was pregnant.
    • At the end, we learn that Barty Crouch Jr. murdered his father, then transfigured his body into a bone and buried it in Hagrid's garden. Barty makes much of how both he and Voldemort had very disappointing fathers and the pleasure of killing those fathers. He also seems to regard Voldemort as a father substitute.
  • Series Continuity Error: A dub induced one in the US release: When Harry tries to get into Dumbledore's office, he starts by trying the same password he learned in Chamber of Secrets, "sherbet lemon". However, the US release of that book had actually Americanized it into "lemon drop". Later US printings of Goblet were changed to be consistent with US Chamber.
  • Shameful Strip: A PG-rated version — during the Death Eaters' torture of the Roberts family, one of the Death Eaters flips Mrs. Roberts upside-down, causing her nightdress to fall down and forcing her to try and cover herself as the mob laughs at her.
  • She Cleans Up Nicely: For the Yule Ball, Hermione styles her hair with liberal amounts of Sleekeazy's Hair Potion and wears a set of beautiful, floaty, periwinkle-blue dress robes. She looks so gorgeous that Harry doesn't even recognize her at first.
  • She Is All Grown Up: Again, Hermione at the Yule Ball.
  • Shipping Torpedo: Ron vehemently tries to torpedo Hermione/Viktor Krum, although at this point he Cannot Spit It Out as to the real reason why.
  • Ship Sinking: Harry/Hermione takes an early hit. Harry finds the idea of him being in a love triangle with her and Krum bewildering, and is rather annoyed that he has to keep telling people they're not together.
  • Shout-Out:
    • While waiting for the Weasleys to pick Harry up, Petunia is described as peering out the window as though there had been news of an escaped rhinoceros.
    • To Monty Python. Harry gains entrance to Dumbledore's office by trying various passwords, all of which are different kinds of sweet; the one that actually works, Cockroach Cluster, is a flavour used in the "Whizzo Assortment" sketch. Lampshaded in that Harry is amazed that it works and insists that he was kidding, which suggests that Harry is in the Muggle world a Monty Python fan. Cockroach Clusters are also shown to be a type of sweet in the Harry Potter universe, including in the previous book, though not a popular one.
    • During the Yule Ball chapter, the Beauxbations carriage is described to look like "a giant frosted pumpkin", like the carriage in Cinderella.
  • Shout-Out to Shakespeare: The Weird Sisters provide live entertainment for the Yule Ball.
  • Singing in the Shower: When Harry opens his egg to reveal the clue for the second task of the Triwizard Tournament, there's a screechy wailing and George says that it sounds like Percy singing, saying that Harry may have to attack him while he's in the shower. This would imply that Percy sings, albeit poorly.
  • Siren Song: Shortly before Harry undertakes the Second Trial of the Triwizard Tournament, he's suggested to take a shower in the Prefects' Bathroom with the golden dragon egg he retrieved in the First Trial. When he opens it while holding it underwater, he can hear a beautiful siren voice singing to him what he has to do to clear the upcoming Trial's objective. If the egg is opened outside the water, a very deafening scream is heard instead, suggesting that the sirens' words are only intelligible to humans underwater.
  • Skewed Priorities: Skeeter cares very little about the real possibility of Hagrid illegally breeding magical creatures for his class, giving it little more than a cursory nod in her article on him — instead focusing on his half-giant heritage.
  • Smorgasbord Test: Hagrid creates a hybrid species by mating manticores and fire-crabs, which he names Blast-Ended Skrewts. During his Care of Magical Creatures class, he has the students try feeding them ant eggs, frog livers, and grass snakes to see what they like. Harry privately wonders if the exercise is pointless since the Skrewts don't seem to have mouths. Somehow, the Skrewts grow to massive sizes, despite not eating anything they're fed.
  • So Proud of You:
    • Amos Diggory to Cedric. Unusually more embarrassing than supportive, despite Amos' obvious pride, since he boasts of how Cedric beat Harry before Harry's face, and it was much less proper victory than he seems to think it was.
    • Dumbledore to Harry after he returns from his ordeal in the graveyard.
      Dumbledore: You have shown bravery beyond anything I could have expected of you tonight, Harry. You have shown bravery equal to those who died fighting Voldemort at the height of his powers. You have shouldered a grown wizard's burden and found yourself equal to it — and you have now given us all we have a right to expect.
  • Spit Take: Just before the third task, this is Hermione's reaction to the morning newspaper, which features another defamatory Skeeter story about Harry.
  • Spotting the Thread: Dumbledore realises that Moody is not the real Moody when the latter removes Harry from his sight, where as the real deal would make sure Harry stayed put since being around Dumbledore is the safest place possible.
  • Spy Speak: Subverted Trope. A Muggle who accidentally eavesdrops on Pettigrew and Voldemort believes that terms such as "Quidditch", "Muggles", and "Ministry for Magic" are code names used by gangsters or spies, but these are just normal wizarding words.
  • Staging the Eavesdrop: It's revealed that The Mole staged a loud conversation with Professor McGonagall (who had no idea of the mole's intentions) about the properties of Gillyweed so that Dobby would overhear and quickly give some to Harry so he could complete the second task in the Triwizard Tournament.
  • Stating the Simple Solution: Wormtail in the very first chapter suggests that Voldemort could use another wizard's blood and resurrect himself early, without needing to capture Harry. Voldemort refuses out of pride and because he thinks that Wormtail, when capturing another wizard, would take the opportunity to flee.
  • Stealth Pun: When Hermione asks if the Hogwarts house-elves are paid and given things like holidays and pensions, Nearly Headless Nick laughs so hard his head falls off his shoulders. As in, he literally "laughed his head off".
  • Straw Character: Hermione, after seeing a house-elf fired apparently for the crime of being terrified, decides that house-elves are "uneducated and brainwashed" slaves and need to be liberated. Then she meets other, non-fired house-elves and they're quite satisfied with their way of life, claiming that virtue is its own reward. Hermione comes out looking foolish more than heroic.
  • Suddenly Shouting: Toward the very end of the book, Harry wakes up to hear McGonagall literally screaming in rage about what just happened to Barty Crouch, Jr.
  • Summon to Hand: Harry learns the Summoning Charm, which he uses to summon his broom during the first task.
  • Super Drowning Skills: Invoked; Harry goes Oh, Crap! on realizing that the second task will take place in the lake. He was never given swimming lessons since the Dursleys hoped he would drown if he ever got in a body of water that deep, though he can manage the Prefects' bath. Then Harry figures out another problem: no human can stay underwater for an hour unless they have assistance, so he needs to find a breathing spell or strategy to stay alive. Myrtle breaks into sobs because she's sensitive about the fact that she's dead, and the library is too big for him to find the spell that he needs, even with McGonagall giving him access to the Restricted Section. Dobby saves his bacon by nipping Gillyweed for him the day of the task, which gives him gills and fins. Fortunately, the trope ends up subverted; Harry actually does well when the Gillyweed wears off, getting himself, Ron and Gabrielle to the surface with just a lot of water in his ears.
  • Sweets of Temptation: Dudley is forced to go on a diet when his school runs out of uniforms that fit him. When the Weasleys arrive at the Dursley house to pick up Harry for the summer, Fred and George "accidentally" drop several candies in brightly colored wrappers on the floor, and Dudley picks one up and eats it. It turns out to be a magical prank candy called a Ton-Tongue Toffee that makes his tongue turn purple and swell to four feet long. Mr. Weasley angrily calls them out for this because he knows they did it on purpose, knowing Dudley wouldn't be able to resist it because he was dieting.
    T - Z 
  • Tabloid Melodrama: As if being entered into a dangerous tournament against his will wasn't enough, Harry also spends the whole year dealing with Rita Skeeter printing outrageous lies about him and his friends.
  • Talk About That Thing: Used by Hermione as an excuse to get her, Harry, and Ron out of the room before Mrs. Weasley blows up at Fred and George.
    Hermione: Why don't you show Harry where he's sleeping, Ron?
    Ron: He knows where he's sleeping. In my room, he slept there last—
    Hermione: We can all go.
    Ron: (catching on) Oh. Right.
  • Talk to the Fist:
    • Malfoy's boasting speech to Harry at the end of the novel gets interrupted by Harry, Hermione, Ron, Fred, and George blasting off a variety of curses and jinxes simultaneously. The effect is compared to a box of firecrackers going off inside the Hogwarts Express.
    • When Karkaroff accuses Dumbledore of sabotaging Krum and spits on the ground at his feet, Hagrid responds by grabbing him and slamming him against a tree.
  • Tantrum Throwing: Upon discovering that Fred and George have engorged Dudley's tongue, Uncle Vernon begins throwing things at the Weasleys and Harry, who flee the house via Floo powder.
  • Taunting the Transformed: When Malfoy attacks Harry while his back is turned, Professor Moody catches him in the act and transforms Malfoy into a ferret - and then humiliates him by repeatedly bouncing up and down.
  • Teachers Out of School: After his scar hurts — which hadn't happened since Voldemort himself was at Hogwarts — Harry considers writing to Dumbledore, only to realize he has no idea where any of his teachers go during the holidays. He gets an amusing mental image of Dumbledore relaxing on a beach somewhere, still in a full archetypal wizard outfit.
  • Technicolor Fire: The Goblet of Fire lights up with blue-white fire at the beginning of each tournament. When it's about to release the name of an accepted contestant, the fire turns bright red.
  • Tell Him I'm Not Speaking to Him: This happens between Harry and Ron, with Hermione in the middle.
  • Tempting Fate: Bagman thinks there's no chance Krum will catch the Golden Snitch in the World Cup final and yet Ireland will win, which Fred and George bet him forty-two Galleons, fifteen Sickles, and three Knuts will happen. This is exactly what happens one chapter later.
  • That Was the Reward: Discussed. Igor Karkakoff dismisses the conspiracy theory of the paranoid "Mad-Eye" Moody, citing an incident where Moody smashed a birthday present because he believed it was a disguised basilisk egg, only to find that it was actually just a clock.
  • There Should Be a Law: When Harry reaches Cho to ask her to the ball:
    Giggling should be made illegal, Harry thought furiously, as all the girls around Cho began doing it.
  • Third-Person Person: Inverted: after being unmasked, Barty Crouch Jr. tells his story under the influence of Veritaserum. Dumbledore administers the potion, and Crouch mentions him multiple times by his name.
  • Took a Level in Badass:
    • This is the point in the series where Harry seriously starts to improve as a spellcaster. In book one, Harry is never seen casting a single spell successfully. In book two, he performs a spell here and there, but nothing particularly noteworthy. It takes him most of book three just to master one spell, which, though admittedly difficult to learn, is an extremely situational charm. In this book, he learns a whole arsenal of jinxes, hexes, and curses to survive the final trial, including the Stunning Spell, Stupefy, his most powerful battle spell.
    • On the other hand, the spell he uses against Voldemort most successfully is Expelliarmus, which he and his classmates learned in the second book.
  • Tournament Arc: The Triwizard Tournament, a competition between three wizards from three schools — which somehow becomes four wizards when Harry Potter's name is selected as a second Hogwarts contestant. The tournament forms the backbone of the plot.
  • Treacherous Advisor: Crouch!Moody, a Tournament Arc example.
  • Trial Balloon Question: This comes up when Ron says they better not keep turning down girls or they'll be stuck with Eloise Midgeon for the duration of the Yule Ball. Hermione calls him out for this because Eloise is a perfectly Nice Girl. It wasn't her fault that she had a lot of acne which has since cleared up. When Ron notes her nose is off-centre due to her trying to curse acne off and Madam Pomfrey having to reattach said nose, Hermione asks him sarcastically if he'd rather go to the Yule Ball with a pretty girl but was downright horrible; he gives a Blunt "Yes" and she storms off. When Ron remembers that Hermione is a potential date, she turns him and Harry down because she got asked on a date already, and said yes. It's not until Ron and Hermione are fighting after the Yule Ball that Hermione shouts that she wanted Ron to ask her, but he didn't consider her at all and she is not anyone's last resort for a date. Harry has a moment when he realizes that Hermione wasn't talking about Eloise Midgeon or any general Hogwarts girl, but herself, and wondered how he and Ron could have missed that.
  • Twisted Eucharist: The ritual Lord Voldemort uses for his 'resurrection' requires literal flesh from his most faithful servant, blood from an enemy, and a bone from his deceased father.
  • Ultra Super Death Gore Fest Chainsawer 3000: Mega Mutilation Part Three, a game played by Dudley.
  • Understatement:
    • Immediately after Fleur is announced as Beauxbatons' Triwizard contestant, Hermione says those of her schoolmates who weren't chosen are "disappointed". Harry lampshades it in his inner monologue, as he can see two other girls break down crying.
    • Here is Harry's reaction to Rita Skeeter painting him as "disturbed and possibly dangerous":
      Harry: Gone off me a bit, hasn't she?
  • Ungrateful Bastard: It's unknown if Mrs. Crouch knew for certain that her son was actually involved with Death Eaters or believed in his innocence, but she gives up what would have been a peaceful death to take his place in Azkaban so he has a chance to live. And how did he respond? By conspiring to return to Voldemort as soon as possible, undermining her husband's work in fighting the Dark Lord, and squandering her sacrifice. Crouch Jr. also shows no emotion while under Veritaserum that she gave him a second chance to redeem himself and live.
  • Unicorns Prefer Virgins: After Hagrid is too ashamed to show his face after being exposed as a half-giant, the substitute assigned to teach his class brings a unicorn to the class and warns the students that it will only let the girls touch it. Hagrid later one-ups her by getting some unicorn foals that the whole class can pet and examine, explaining that they only grow hostile to men in adulthood. invoked
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Rita Skeeter smearing Harry in the Daily Prophet — especially on the day of the final Task. This ends up backfiring and biting everybody in the ass, as Fudge seizes on this (both in his final scene and the beginning of the next book) as the foundation for his own smear campaign to discredit Harry and Dumbledore's warnings that Voldemort's returned.
  • Unscaled Merfolk: Viktor becomes half shark for the undersea challenge. It's later revealed that he messed up the transfiguration, and apparently one of the teachers had to put him back to normal.
  • Villain Ball: There were a million better things that could have been turned into a port-key that Harry would have touched instead of a trophy to a contest Harry was unlikely to survive and couldn't enter in the first place.
  • Villain Has a Point:
    • Fake Moody calls out Snape for having an unhealthy obsession with getting Harry into trouble. It says something that the "most faithful Death Eater" can see through the Blatant Lies of an adult determined to catch a teenage boy out of bed "for his safety".
    • Bellatrix Lestrange, while the Dementors escort her away, says that even if they throw her and her husband in prison, Voldemort will rise. She's right.
  • Wait for Your Date: Hermione Granger shows up at the Yule Ball looking fabulous with her normally frizzy and unkempt hair beautiful, coiffed, and well-behaved. Hermione herself explains that she only did it for a special occasion because all the preparation, even with the magical assistance of Sleekeazy's, takes too much time.
  • Walk of Shame: After Harry's name unexpectedly comes out of the Goblet of Fire, he has to walk past the entire school; not to applause, but to a buzz of everyone talking at once, assuming he cheated, as he is underage.
  • Weight Loss Salad: Dudley is forced to go on a diet because he's gotten so fat that his school doesn't stock uniforms big enough to fit him. To make him feel better, Aunt Petunia makes everyone else in the house follow the diet too—even Harry, who is so thin that dieting would probably do him more harm than good. For breakfast, she serves everyone a quarter of grapefruit, with Harry's portion being much smaller than Dudley's. Dudley steals Uncle Vernon's grapefruit when he gets up to get the mail.
  • Wham Line:
    • "Harry Potter": Said by Dumbledore, in relation to Harry being chosen by the Goblet of Fire as the fourth contestant. After this line is uttered, things really start to fall apart for Harry. Before this, it seemed he was just going to experience a somewhat ordinary school year while rooting for Cedric at the Triwizard Tournament. After this, he is forced to compete unwillingly in a dangerous tournament, temporarily loses his best friend Ron because the latter is jealous of him, and hints are dropped that someone inside the school is planning to use the tournament to kill Harry.
    • "Kill the spare." Before this, the series has been whimsical fantasy for the most part, with thrilling moments. Once this line drops, everything changes, and shit gets real.
    • "It was I who did that," is the line with which The Mole reveals the truth to Harry.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: Ludo Bagman exits stage left, pursued by goblins, and vanishes utterly from the series. This may be a Disproportionate Retribution that happens offscreen.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: Harry and Ron immediately like Moody when he Transfigures Malfoy into a ferret, as punishment for trying to hex Harry in the back. (For context, Draco was insulting Mrs. Weasley but took offence when Harry used the same tactic by insulting Mrs. Malfoy.) Draco also has no comeback, only then muttering his father will have it out for Moody; the Auror isn't fazed, telling Draco that he would like a word with Mr. Malfoy about his Death Eater activities. McGonagall and Hermione then provide the reality check: turning a student into an animal and bouncing them in the air repeatedly is equivalent to torture. McGonagall has to point out that Hogwarts has standard punishments like detention or talking with the transgressor's head of House. Hermione also notes that Moody could have hurt Malfoy badly, though she also takes the time to remind Draco about being a "twitchy ferret".
  • What You Are in the Dark:
    • Harry realizes that whereas he, Fleur, and Krum are given early warning about the first Triwizard task,note  Cedric isn't. Not telling Cedric would earn him a higher spot, but it wouldn't be fair, so he stages an opportunity to warn Cedric quickly and without his friends nearby. Fake Moody even lampshades how noble Harry can be.
    • Cedric has a chance to take the Triwizard Cup alone. Harry, with an injured leg from their brief team-up against an Acromantula, is in no state to race for the trophy. Cedric refuses, because Harry saved him from the spider and from a cursed Krum. No one else is watching them, except perhaps for patrolling teachers, and no one would know that Cedric had an easy lead. After they go back and forth about who saved whom, Harry decides they should take it at the same time.
  • White Man's Burden: Deconstructed. Hermione's house-elf liberation subplot is, in-universe, portrayed as a bad thing, and practically everyone calls her on it. Aside from the inherent hypocrisy of launching a campaign for house-elves' freedom without so much as asking for their help, she also bases her view of house-elf needs on Dobby — an individual whose views on freedom, payment, and clothing are best described as 'radically liberal.' And she completely misses the point about why any house-elves are unhappy — their working conditions, not the work itself or lack of pay. (Even Dobby recounts that, when given employment, he bargained his salary down, feeling he'd been offered too much.)
  • Why Don't You Marry It?: Percy just won't stop gushing about Barty Crouch Sr. Ron's waiting for them to announce their engagement.
  • Wise Old Folk Façade: Played with. One of Voldemort's Death Eaters, Barty Crouch Junior, disguises himself as Alastor Moody via the Polyjuice Potion, so that he could lure Harry to Voldemort, who needed Harry's blood to gain a new physical body. In order to accomplish his mission without raising suspicion, he pushes his impersonation of Alastor, who is known in the wizarding world as an experienced retired Auror, to the point of teaching Harry how to fight the Unforgivable Curses, and gives him advice how to compete in the Triwizard Tournament.
  • Witch Hunt: The trials, or lack thereof for Sirius, of suspected Death Eaters at the Ministry.
  • With Great Power Comes Great Opposition: Harry and Ron fall out when Harry is made to participate in the Triwizard Tournament. Ron, who for three years has seen Harry be wealthier, more skilled and famous than himself, thinks Harry signed up of his own free will (Harry, meanwhile, is very much annoyed at the fame he gets for having survived Voldemort's attack and had no intention of signing up for a challenge intended for older students). They make up after the first task, when Ron realizes that Harry would never have willingly signed up for such a dangerous activity.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Bartemius Crouch, Jr., whose lack of affection from his father sent him down a path of murderous evil.
  • The Worf Effect: Mad-Eye Moody has a reputation of being one of the toughest Aurors, whose mere presence puts ex-Death Eaters Snape and Karkaroff on guard. The fact that Crouch Jr. and Pettigrew were able to take him down, though he put up such a huge fight that the Ministry came to investigate, shows how dangerous Crouch Jr. was.
  • Wronski Feint: The invokedTrope Namer. In the Quidditch World Cup, Viktor Krum pretends to spot the Snitch and dives towards the ground with Ireland's Seeker in hot pursuit, only for Krum to pull out of the dive at the last second and leave the opposing player to crash into the ground. Harry consults the magical binoculars he bought, which identify the tactic by name (the Wronski Feint) and let him watch a replay of the move.
  • Xanatos Speed Chess: Barty Crouch, Jr. has to change his plans when Harry doesn't ask Neville for help.
  • You Are Worth Hell: Deconstructed. We find out that Mrs. Crouch was dying, but rather than live out her days in the comfort of her home, she bargained with Mr. Crouch to willingly take her son's place in Azkaban and use Polyjuice Potion to pose as him. Hagrid himself says that the Dementors trap you in your own thoughts and with your worst memories; Sirius says that he only remained sane by knowing that he was innocent, and it was an angry thought they couldn't take away (plus he had the advantage of his Animagus form, which the Dementors can't detect). Crouch Jr. showed no remorse for her sacrifice, and tried using it as an opportunity to return to Voldemort. It's unclear if the torment in Azkaban messed with his mind or if he was always that ungrateful.
  • You Fool!: McGonagall to Fudge when the latter refuses to acknowledge Voldemort's hand in Cedric and Barty Crouch, Sr.'s deaths.
  • You're Insane!: Harry's response to Barty Crouch Jr.'s Motive Rant.
  • Your Mom: Malfoy insults Ron's mother and Harry responds by insulting Malfoy's mother:
    "Oh yeah, you were staying with them this summer, weren't you, Potter?" sneered Malfoy. "So tell me, is his mother really that porky, or is it just the picture?"
    "You know your mother, Malfoy?" said Harry — both he and Hermione had grabbed the back of Ron's robes to stop him from launching himself at Malfoy — "that expression she's got, like she's got dung under her nose? Has she always looked like that, or was it just because you were with her?"
    Malfoy's pale face went slightly pink. "Don’t you dare insult my mother, Potter."
  • Zombie Advocate: Hermione becomes indignant at how wizards treat the servant race known as house-elves and starts an organisation preaching freedom for these elves called S.P.E.W. Hermione's incessant campaigning repels everyone from joining her group, especially since the house-elves want to act like servants and don't want the freedom Hermione is pushing.

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