Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Chapter Thirty-One:
The Third Task

"On three, right?"

Synopsis by William Silvester
Notes and links by Michele L. Worley

U.S. hardcover edition: pages 605 - 635
U.K. hardcover edition: pages 526 - 551
U.K. paperback edition: pages 657 - 688
Timeframe: xx - 24 June, 1995 [Y15]

In which Harry tells Ron and Hermione about the visit to Dumbledore's office, Harry practices for the third task, Skeeter writes another article about Harry, and Hermione finally figures out how Rita gets her information. Mrs. Weasley and Bill arrive to watch Harry in the Tournament, the four champions enter the maze, monsters are met, Fleur screams, and Krum apparently attacks Cedric. Harry meets a sphinx and solves a riddle, only to be attacked by a huge spider. Harry and Cedric agree to grasp the Cup at the same time, tying for the win.

Interesting facts and notes about the text of this chapter:

As with GF20 and GF26, this chapter begins with Harry's final preparation for the third task. Unlike the soothing pattern established by the other two chapters, of course, "The Third Task" does not end happily in a flurry of scoring and congratulations, but ends simultaneously with the task itself, as Harry and Cedric take the Triwizard Cup together.

Notice that this chapter is a rich source of information about a number of spells, curses, and jinxes used in Defence Against the Dark Arts, as HRH study them while helping Harry prepare.

Harry soon mastered the Impediment Curse, a spell to slow down and obstruct attackers; the Reductor Curse, which would enable him to blast solid objects out of his way...

He was still having trouble with the Shield Charm, though.

HARRY POTTER
"DISTURBED AND DANGEROUS"

...nobody would be able to see...not even Moody...

"Haven't seen this place for five years."

• Percy has been out of Hogwarts at this point for a year.
• In (WBD), JKR said that Charlie was two years older than Percy, and that Bill was two years older than Charlie. If Bill here is implying that he graduated five years prior to the events of GF31, those dates fit together.

However, that information conflicts with information elsewhere about the relative ages of the Weasleys, in particular with how long Charlie has been out of Hogwarts. If Charlie were only two years older than Percy, he would still have been at Hogwarts during Harry's first year, and Gryffindor would not have needed a new Seeker!

It might be possible to reconcile this conflict with a cunning enough argument, if either Charlie's or Percy's birthday turns out to be near the cutoff date between school years, such that they wound up three years apart in school but are closer to two years apart in age. That would require facts not currently in evidence, however. One fact we do have in evidence is JKR's statement in (WBD) that she's not good at maths - made immediately before providing the information about Bill's, Charlie's, and Percy's relative ages.

See the page on the Weasley family for more on this topic.

"Rita Skeeter goes out of her way to cause trouble, Amos!" Mrs. Weasley said angrily. "I would have thought you'd know that, working at the Ministry!"

"Couldn't remember all the goblin rebels' names, so I invented a few...they're all called stuff like Bodrod the Bearded and Urg the Unclean; it wasn't hard."

"Hello, Hermione," said Mrs. Weasley, much more stiffly than usual.

Madame Maxime was concentrating on her plate, and Harry thought her eyes looked red. Hagrid kept glancing along the table at her.

The development of the relationship between these two is interesting. When she first arrived at Hogwarts, Maxime appeared simply to have been using Hagrid to gather information on her champion's behalf, judging from Maxime's behaviour prior to the First Task. But now the tables have turned, and it seems that Maxime has developed enough genuine feeling for Hagrid to be upset by her estrangement from him, particularly since it is based on the false belief that she betrayed him.

Harry didn't know why, but the lack of obstacles was unnerving him. Surely he should have met something by now?

He was still hesitating when a scream shattered the silence.
"Fleur?" Harry yelled.

"Crucio!"

Why not simply have Krum Stun Cedric instead? That would have been quiet, unless Cedric saw his attacker at the wrong moment.

"Can I hear the riddle?"

First think of the person who lives in disguise,
Who deals in secrets and tells naught but lies.

Next, tell me what's always the last thing to mend,
The middle of middle and end of the end?

The answer to this clue is 'the letter d' - the last letter of 'mend', and the two middle letters of 'middle'.

And finally give me the sound often heard
During the search for a hard-to-find word.

Now string them together, and answer me this,
Which creature would you be unwilling to kiss?

Characters introduced in this chapter:

• Delacour, Madame (Fleur's mother)

• Diggory, Mrs. (Cedric's mother)

• Krum, Mr. (Viktor's father)

• Krum, Mrs. (Viktor's mother)

Characters returning in this chapter:

• Bagman, Ludo

• Crabbe, Vincent

• Crouch, Bartemius (junior) (as Moody, Alastor "Mad-Eye"; also mentioned in his own right)

• Delacour, Fleur

• Delacour, Gabrielle

• Diggory, Amos

• Diggory, Cedric

• Dumbledore, Albus

• Flitwick, Professor

• Fudge, Cornelius

• Goyle, Gregory

• Granger, Hermione

• Hagrid, Rubeus

• Karkaroff, Igor

• Krum, Viktor

• Longbottom, Neville

• Malfoy, Draco

• Maxime, Madame

• McGonagall, Professor

• Potter, Harry

• Violet (the Fat Lady's friend)

• Weasley, Bill

• Weasley, Fred

• Weasley, George

• Weasley, Ginny

• Weasley, Molly

• Weasley, Ron

Characters mentioned in this chapter:

• anonymous member of the Dark Force Defense League (quoted in Daily Prophet article)

• Binns, Professor

• Black, Sirius (also via owl post)

• Sir Cadogan

• the Dursleys

• Fat Lady, the

• Lestrange, Bellatrix (one of Bartemius Crouch junior's companions)

• Lestrange, Rabastan (one of Bartemius Crouch junior's companions)

• Lestrange, Rodolphus (one of Bartemius Crouch junior's companions)

• Longbottom, Alice (Neville's mother)

• Longbottom, Frank (Neville's father)

• Ogg

• Pringle, Apollyon

• Skeeter, Rita

• Snape, Severus

• Voldemort (as 'You-Know-Who')

• Weasley, Arthur

• Weasley, Charlie

• Winky

Settings and locations:

• Gryffindor common room

• Gryffindor fourth-year boys' dormitory

• Transfiguration classroom

• Great Hall

• chamber off the Great Hall

• Quidditch pitch - Triwizard maze

Exceptional character moments:

• Hermione, telling Harry curtly not to worry about the fact that she and Ron are concentrating on helping him prepare for the Third Task rather than studying for their end-of-year exams. That girl has got her priorities in order, after all.

• Hermione and Ron, both trying and failing to protect Harry from seeing Rita Skeeter's latest article.

• Draco Malfoy, giving Rita Skeeter an exclusive interview revealing Harry's status as a Parselmouth - which is later thrown in Harry's face by Fudge - then taunting Harry about Rita's insinuations about Harry's sanity.

• Harry's matter-of-fact acceptance that he has no family worth the name - as far as the Dursleys are concerned, at any rate.

• Cedric, of course. After defending Harry in front of his father earlier, he makes the supreme gesture - he refuses to take the Cup, "walking away from the sort of glory Hufflepuff House hadn't had in centuries". And, sadly, just as the reader begins to see that Cedric is an exceptionally fine person...

• Harry rises above his first impulse to accept Cedric's offer, and makes a noble gesture himself: tying for the Cup rather than an outright victory for either champion. A beautiful gesture of inter-House unity, only to be so savagely turned against both boys within a few minutes (a character-revealing moment for Voldemort, that).

Spells:

• anti-gravity mist

• Crucio

• Expecto Patronum

• Expelliarmus, a.k.a. Disarming Spell

• Impedimenta, a.k.a. Impediment Curse

• Imperio (used on Krum, as revealed later)

• Jelly-Legs Jinx

• Lumos

• Point Me

• Reducto, a.k.a. the Reductor Curse

• Riddikulus

• Shield Charm

• Sonorus

• Stupefy

• wand sparks

Links and Resources:

• Bestiary

  • acromantulas

  • Blast-Ended Skrewts

  • boggarts

  • dementors

  • sphinxes

• essays

  • The Battle of the Department of Mysteries

  • Voldemort's Agents, Malfoy's Cronies, and Hagrid's Chums: Friendship in Harry Potter

  • Why Change the Triwizard Cup into a Portkey?

• Parseltongue

• Portkey

• Triwizard Tournament - the Third Task

Memorable lines:

• ...he imagined how it must feel to have parents still living, but unable to recognize you. He often got sympathy from strangers for being an orphan, but as he listened to Neville's snores, he thought that Neville deserved it more than he did.

• "Yeah...we've helped each other out, haven't we? We both got here. Let's just take it together."

Strictly British:

• none

Timelines/Calendar:

See Timeline: The Third Task.