Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Chapter Notes

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire 

Chapter 19: The Hungarian Horntail

• “‘Miss him?’ said Harry. ‘I don’t miss him …’ But this was a downright lie. Harry liked Hermione very much, but she just wasn’t the same as Ron. There was much less laughter, and a lot more hanging around in the library when Hermione was your best friend.” – There is a difference between the last year, where Ron and Harry didn’t talk to Hermione for weeks, first because of the Firebolt, then Scabbers. Because why Harry had felt bad about it, he didn’t miss Hermione the way he now misses Ron. And while Hermione had been pretty much on her own when Harry and Ron didn’t talk to her, Ron easily finds new company, hanging out with Seamus and Dean or his brothers. Something I really love about this book is that once Ron and Harry make up you see how strong the bond between Harry, Ron and Hermione is, how much Ron and Hermione support Harry during the tournament, but also how much Harry trusts his friends.

• “‘I’m –’ For a second, Harry tried to say ‘fine’ – but he couldn’t do it. Before he could stop himself, he was talking more than he’d talked in days – about how no one believed he hadn’t entered the Tournament of his own free will, how Rita Skeeter had lied about him in the Daily Prophet, how he couldn’t walk down a corridor without being sneered at – and about Ron, Ron not believing him, Ron’s jealousy …” – No matter how – let’s say unbalanced – Harry and Sirius’s relationship is (and I’m gonna talk more about once we get to book 5), I’m very glad Harry had – even for a short time – something like a parent. Someone he can talk to, someone he can tell about his fears and worries. This is something he can’t do with a teacher for various reasons, and it is also different than talking to Ron and Hermione about it, because Sirius is an adult, Sirius feels responsible for Harry, because this is what parents do. And Harry already worries about burdening people with his problems, in the way he at times refuses to tell his friends or Sirius or Dumbledore everything because he doesn’t want them to worry about him. Because growing up with the Dursleys taught him that nobody cares about him, but now he has people who do, and Harry doesn’t know how to handle it. It’s a good thing he feels like he can tell Sirius everything.

• Again, in the conversation with Sirius we have a lot of foretelling, characters guessing things that actually happened. Sirius says that it is possible Moody was in fact attacked and that they used his paranoia to cover it up and make it look like a false alarm. Harry wonders what the chances are Bertha Jorkins walked into Voldemort in Albania when this is exactly what happened. A lot of the later plot reveals have been hidden in previous chapters, and yet by the end if the book you are still shocked (at least the first time you read the book) when the entire evil plan is revealed. But bits of it haven been hidden in plain sight all along.