Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Chapter 9)
STATS
Title: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Series: Harry Potter (Book 4)
Author(s): JK Rowling
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy (Urban)
First Printing: 2000
Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books
SPOILER WARNING
Heavy spoilers will be provided for the entire Harry Potter franchise. Heavy spoilers will also be provided for the entirety of both Fourth Wing and Iron Flame (but not Onyx Storm, which has not yet been released at the time of this post). I will be confining the Fourth Wing and Iron Flame spoilers to the sections where I analyze the plot of Fourth Wing and compare it to Goblet of Fire. All spoilers shall otherwise be unmarked and can pop up at any time.
STORY
Harry and the others go to bed after the Quidditch World Cup. They are awakened by screams and chaos: a group of drunken former Death Eaters tearing up the camp and tormenting the Muggles who own the campsite. Harry, Ron, and Hermione flee into the woods. They had a series of brief encounters with Draco Malfoy, some girls from Beauxbatons, Winky, and some veela before they find a quiet place to wait for Mr. Weasley to fetch them. Harry discovers that his wand is missing.
It is at this point that Barty Crouch Jr. (at this point unidentified) casts the Dark Mark near where Harry and the others are. Ministry wizards Apparate in to try to catch the culprit. They ultimately find Harry’s wand, which they confirm cast the Dark Mark, and Winky. Mr. Crouch desperately search the bushes, with the reason given that he’s looking for someone to blame aside from his house-elf, and ultimately tries to cover up the situation by dismissing Winky from his service. Hermione is enraged by how Winky was treated.
Mr. Weasley brings Harry, ,Ron, and Hermione to the tent, where the other Weasleys have regroups. The ensuing discussion provides exposition about the Death Eaters and the Dark Mark. A question is then posed: only a Death Eater could cast the Dark Mark, so if the other Death Eaters were scared away by it, who cast it and why?
The chapter ends with Harry pondering the potential connection between his dream and the conjuring of the Dark Mark.
ANALYSIS
Harry Potter books prior to Goblet of Fire have always had things happening prior to the start of Hogwarts, but this is arguably the first time that they have taken a genuinely dark turn so early in the story. It’s one thing to worry about Voldemort’s return. It’s quite another to see his followers actively intruding upon a period of tranquility and happiness.
Establishment
In addition to establishing the Death Eaters, the Dark Mark, and the Prior Incantato spell, this chapter gives an audience a taste of just how dark and terrible the reign of Lord Voldemort can be. There is palpable terror and confusion. The fact that Harry is an audience surrogate, and thus doesn’t fully understand the implications of these events at face value, helps to ease the audience into this darker tone.
Also, Hermione’s outrage over the treatment of Winky is going to lead to the creation of SPEW. While this is mainly used to characterize Hermione, it will lead to the reintroduction of Dobby and to his contributions to the story, as well as providing an avenue for Winky to drive forward the mystery around Barty Crouch Sr.
Payoff
Structurally, the events of Chapter 9 come at a great time. The past seven chapters of the book have been fairly slow, drip-feeding us exposition - and more exposition still needs to be fed to the audience before Harry arrives at Hogwarts. Using an action scene (such that it is) to ramp up the tension was a great way to hook the audience in and ensure that our attention didn’t begin to wander, while also serving as a memorable platform to present additional bits of crucial exposition to us.
Mysteries
The Dark Mark
This chapter sets up a new mystery: who conjured the Dark Mark, and why?
This is a question that will not get explored until the end of the book, when Barty Crouch Jr. is revealed and explains his actions. However, at least the question is directly posed. The eventual answer will be rewarding, rather than feeling like it’s parasitizing the events of Chapter 9.
Barty Crouch Sr.
While the mystery around Barty Crouch Sr. hasn’t started yet, his behavior upon Winky being discovered at the site of the Dark Mark being cast is important for his characterization. His effort to ensure his son is not discovered will also pay off later.
Voldemort’s Plans
The events of Chapter 9 ultimately have nothing to do with Voldemort’s plans. Those of you who have only seen the film may be surprised by this. However, it will be made clear down the line that Voldemort’s plan to act after the World Cup was specifically to liberate Barty Crouch Jr. and plant him in Hogwarts in the disguise of Mad-Eye Moody. The Death Eater attack was performed on their own initiative, and Barty Crouch Jr. was acting on his own initiative when he cast the Dark Mark to scare them off.
Regardless, Harry’s mind is now fixed upon the mystery of Voldemort’s plans. The story will be engaging with this more directly going forward.
COMPARISON TO FOURTH WING (Chapter 7)
At this point in the story, Yarros also decides to toy with the idea of something darker and mysterious happening in the background. However, she chooses to immediately kill the narrative potential of that moment.
What Yarros Did
To recap: Violet is collecting poisonous berries from the river below Basgiath in the dead of night, when “almost two dozen” rebel children, including Xaden, convene on the riverbank below the tree that she’s currently harvesting berries from. Violet considers reporting them, given that the gathering violates the Codex, but decides to ignore the Codex when she realizes that Xaden is trying to counsel and organize help for the first-year rebel children. The conversation drifts to the rebel children wanting to kill Violet, which Xaden shuts down. After the meeting breaks up, Violet tries to leave, only for Xaden to catch her. There’s sexual tension, and then Xaden tells Violet he’ll let her go and see if she tries to report him, saying that he’ll owe her a favor if she doesn’t.
What Went Wrong
In isolation, this chapter isn’t problematic. The issue is the broader context.
While dissecting how the twist of Xaden being an inntinnsic parasitizes past developments, I commented upon how the effort to evoke Chapter 7 of Fourth Wing neither added context nor answered a mystery. This chapter does have the potential to support Xaden being an inntinnsic or to set up the twist of the rebel children running weapons to help Poromiel fight the venin. The problem is that Yarros goes out of her way to tell the audience that there is nothing deeper to the rebel children meeting up like this.
Yarros starts Violet off on the assumption that the rebel children are indeed something seditious, only for Violet to realize that this is little more than a study group. Violet - the self-insert Mary Sue, the “rational woman” who will later be chosen by her dragon for her “intelligence”, for whom the universe warps to validate every irrational leap in logic that she makes - decided that there was nothing deeper to this meeting. There are no questions to explore. There is nothing lacking context. And because, by this point, it is already becoming clear that Violet can never be wrong, the audience has no reason to question this further.
What’s more, the main focus on this chapter was to fuel the Romance subplot. The focus is first upon Xaden - how this Bad Boy Love Interest cares about the other cadets from his province, how he is also so dark and brooding and harsh because he will leave people to die if they won’t help themselves - and then upon whether he will kill Violet. The possibility of anything deeper is only brought up at the beginning, before Violet dismisses it.
Yarros does toy with an idea of something deeper. One of the first-years complains about how Battle Brief is feeding them bad information.
“It’s not that I can’t keep up, but the information …” She shrugs.
To which Xaden responds:
“You learn what they teach you,” Xaden says to the first-year, his voice taking a hard edge. “Keep what you know but recite whatever they tell you to.”
My brow furrows. What the hell does he mean by that? Battle Brief is one of the classes taught by scribes to keep the quadrant up-to-date on all nonclassified troop movements and battle lines. The only things we’re asked to recite are recent events and general knowledge of what’s going on near the front lines.
“Anyone else?” Xaden ask. “You’d better ask now. We don’t have all night.”
It hits me then - other than being gathered in a group of more, there’s nothing wrong with what they’re doing here.
Violet is briefly confused by what Xaden and this unnamed rebel child are talking about … for all of a paragraph. Then she simply forgets about it for the rest of the scene and, indeed, the rest of the book, until the big twist comes. This isn’t a mystery. It’s a character lampshading something unusual before carrying on with her evening.
Imagine if Chapter 9 of Goblet of Fire definitely established the Winky was the one to cast the Dark Mark. All the Ministry wizards believed it, and more importantly, Harry and his friends all believed it. They then went back to the camp and told everyone that a house-elf cast the Dark Mark. The fact that only a Death Eater could cast it either isn’t brought up or is dismissed by the fact the house-elves can do magic that wizards can’t. Harry then doesn’t draw any connection between the events of that night and his dream about Voldemort. The only question we are left with is whether Draco Malfoy’s father was among the Death Eaters wrecking the camp. This isn’t actually given more focus than it gets in the original version of the story, merely left as something Harry and the others guessed on their own but can’t prove.
That would be pretty boring anticlimactic, wouldn’t it? Can anyone honestly say they’d want to dig deeper into the question of who cast the Dark Mark at that point?
What Yarros Could Have Done
The way that Yarros could have fixed this is actually quite simple: she could have put more focus on the objection that one rebel child has to reciting the wrong information in Battle Brief.
As far as the rebel children know, they are alone here. It’s not clear exactly when Xaden becomes aware of Violet’s presence in the tree, but none of the others know. They should all feel comfortable speaking freely. They have no reason to beat around the bush. The rebel child has every reason to come right out and say, “They keep feeding us lies in Battle Brief, and I can’t keep reciting those lies just because they tell me to.” This could lead to Violet overhearing the discussion about how the rebel children need to keep the truth to themselves, perhaps even with some reference to the venin or to helping Poromiel thrown in for good measure.
This would create a question that Violet would need to answer. To her, everything being discussed would be utter nonsense. It would contradict everything she knows and has been brought up to believe. At a minimum, this could make her curious about why are the rebel children so firmly believe that Battle Brief is sharing false information. This is a potent question that she could engage with more as the story progresses, such as in the scene much later when she notices a discrepancy between the reports she brings to Markham and what he actually shares in Battle Brief.
In short, by putting more focus on this moment, it would create a mystery that the later twist could answer.
The one potential issue with this is that Xaden would probably shut the discussion down if he knew Violet was listening in - but that’s easy to fix. Xaden could simply notice Violet after that part of the discussion is complete. Alternatively, given that Violet already has enough information to get them all killed anyway (since the gathering violates the Codex in and of itself), Xaden could let the discussion play out, hoping that Violet would overhear something that would make her doubt her allegiance and ally herself with the rebel children. That would certainly make his situation easier. After all, he can’t simply kill her. The end of Fourth Wing will establish that he has already fallen in love with her at this point, while Chapter 36 of Iron Flame will insist that his deal with General Sorrengail protects Violet. He could even dangle the mystery in front of Violet during their sexual tension moment, telling her that she'll never know the full truth if she reports the gathering. This last would come with the added bonus of giving more relevance to all the sexual tension in the back half of the book. Xaden wouldn’t just be the Bad Boy Love Interest who forces himself ever deeper into Violet’s life due to external circumstances; he would be the Man of Mystery whom Violet chooses to engage with as she delves deeper into the mystery.
BACK TO SCHOOL
On November 15th, we finally make our return to Hogwarts, diving into Chapters 10 through 15 of Goblet of Fire. These chapters reveal the Triwizard Tournament to Harry to begin the buildup to the start of the Tournament. On the Fourth Wing side of things, we will be exploring Chapters 8 through 9, wherein Violet learns more about dragons and tackles her sparring tests.
After a glimpse into the more shadowy aspects of their stories, both books return the main characters to daily life. However, amidst this normalcy, Goblet of Fire doesn’t get complacent. There are more important elements and characters that need to be established to ensure that the later payoffs can still happen on schedule. I don’t think that Fourth Wing is necessarily flawed for not doing the same. After all, we’re only covering two chapters, both of which are relatively tightly focused. Still, I do see a couple of opportunities that Yarros could have taken to fortify her later twists.
I hope to see you all in two weeks. Have a very good day.
