Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Chapter Notes

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Chapter 9: The Dark Mark

• “Harry saw himself in robes that had his name on the back, and imagined the sensation of hearing a hundred-thousand-strong crowd roar, as Ludo Bagman’s voice echoed throughout the stadium, ‘I give you … Potter!’” – I have seen quite a few posts who had wondered about Harry’s career choice as an Auror, and many who think he should have become a Professor, especially after he had taught Dumbledore’s Army Defence Against the Dark Arts. And while I like the idea of Harry returning to Hogwarts, I also like the idea of him as a professional Quidditch player. Harry loves Quidditch and he is a natural talent. His wish to become an Auror is influenced by the fact that he grew up during a war, that he had to learn to defend himself in order to survive. And he is good at it, he has to be, because his life depends on it. But becoming an Auror, to me, feels like Harry in some way never got past the feeling of being at a war. There is no peace in it, no quiet. And I always wonder how Harry’s life would have been if his parents would be still alive, if Voldemort never existed. Book 4 marks the last time Harry is truly innocent, and his wish to become a famous Quidditch player reflects that. He never has that dream again.

• “Harry squinted at them … they didn’t seem to have faces … then he realised that their heads were hooded and their faces masked.” – Both Voldemort and his followers try to dehumanise themselves – in their actions of course but also their appearance. Voldemort looks like the monster he is, and no longer like a human being. With each Horcrux he became less human and I always wondered if his physical appearance reflected that and was caused by creating so many Horcruxes. His followers wear hoods and masks – of course during the World Cup to remain anonymous. But there is a significance in not showing their faces – not because they are ashamed or afraid, but to take away their identity, to make them more of a thing and less of a being.

• It is also mentioned several times that the crowd who abuses the Muggles is large, and that more and more people join them. It is important to remember that Voldemort’s followers weren’t an extremist minority. And maybe not all of the people participating in that crowd were Death Eaters back in the day – but a lot tolerate what they are doing and even join them. Not everyone is a Nazi, but everyday racism still exists.

• So Hermione uses “Lumos”, even though they are technically still in their holidays, meaning she is not allowed to use magic and… nothing happens. And sure, it is during an emergency, but so was Harry a year later, when he fought of Dementors and almost got kicked out of school.

• “Ron told Malfoy to do something that Harry knew he would never have dared say in front of Mrs Weasley.” – I recently read that J.K. Rowling’s editor advised her not to use swear words, and that she said it was a shame, because Ron is the kind of person who absolutely does swear. Though in a way I like the way she writes around it, leaving it entirely to the reader’s imagination what exactly Ron said here.

• And here we have Malfoy, utterly relaxed when everyone around him is terrified, because he is convinced nothing bad will happen to him, nobody would hurt him, because he is a Malfoy after all. And that his parents choose the right side, the side of power, the side of the oppressors, and that he will always be in control and power. And that is why I love book 6 Draco so much, because it shows what happens to him once his privileges and his power is taken away from him.

• Malfoy also says that the Death Eaters can spot a Mudblood, but the question is: How? What exactly would give Hermione away? And we know from history that people believed certain signs would give away if someone is Jewish or queer, and now I wonder if the pureblood fanatics had a collection of stereotypes assigned to Muggleborns as well. Would it have been their names that they couldn’t connect to any of the old wizarding families? A lack of magical talent they sure believed Muggleborns would have? How?

• Also sexual assault seems to be common among Death Eaters – the people in the crowd expose Mrs Robert’s underwear and Draco threatens to do the same to Hermione.

• Harry loses his wand, and of course he isn’t allowed to use magic anyway, but he still feels vulnerable without it. The loss of one’s wand will of course play a bigger role in book 7 (along with the concept of ownership of a wand), and how essentially it is to your identity as a wizard or witch.

• “Winky the house-elf was fighting her way out of a clump of bushes nearby. She was moving in a most peculiar fashion, apparently with great difficulty; it was as though someone invisible was trying to hold her back.” – Going back there is so much hidden in plain sight in this book. Someone invisible does indeed tries to hold Winky back. Mad Eye Moody wasn’t paranoid, he was indeed attacked. And later Barty Crouch Jun. disguised as Moody basically tells everyone how he tricked the Goblet to accept Harry as a fourth champion, but nobody believes a paranoid old man anyway. And this quite different to how mystery was written in the previous books, where we thought something meant one thing but turns out it was another thing. Here we are told the truth, we are meant to believe our first impressions, but we are so used to second-guessing that we oversee the most obvious.

• We know that Harry, because he was raised by Muggles, doesn’t know anything about the Wizarding World upon entering it. He knows as much as the reader of the books knows, and this allows Rowling to use other characters to explain this world to us (and Harry). But very often this exposition character is Hermione, which is interesting, because Hermione was raised by Muggles as well, and you would expect a pureblood wizard like Ron to explain his world. And yet among the three it is only Hermione who recognizes the Dark Mark, or who knows that you can’t apparate into Hogwarts and so on. Because she has read every single information she could find about this new world she would belong to. And this is the reason why the story could be told neither by Hermione or Ron: they both know too much.

• “No non-human creature is permitted to carry or use a wand.” – The way this law is formulated really makes it sound like a wand is a weapon – which of course it can be. But it is interesting that house-elves don’t need a wand – they have magic of their own. Which makes me wonder if other magical beings have their own magic as well? And if the law that forbids them to carry a wand is there to protect wizards & witches, because if House-Elves have already powerful magic on their own, imagine what they could do with a wand.

• Amos Diggory isn’t earning any sympathy points here either. We learn that he works at Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, and it is obvious from the way he talks to Winky (always addressing her as “elf”, never with her name) that he thinks himself above those creatures. Despite the fact that house-elves are powerful, that they are intelligent, that they have feelings and a personality. All the things Hermione notice immediately (Winky is the first house elf she ever met), which is why she is so appalled of how they are treated and that they are kept as slaves.

• “‘I don’t get it,’ said Ron, frowning. ‘I mean … it’s still only a shape in the sky …’” – Nothing has meaning until we give it meaning. And obviously those meanings can change – the swastika was a religious symbol before it was abused by the Nazis (and today the symbol is actually forbidden in Germany – you are not allowed to show it in any kind of way). Sometimes slurs can be reclaimed by those who were insulted. Symbols and names can have a power of their own – and people were so terrified by Voldemort that they didn’t dare to call him by his name, even years later (and even his followers only call him the Dark Lord, never Voldemort). Harry and the others who call Voldemort by his name refuse to give him this kind of power – until he uses it against them by putting a spell on his name in book 7.