Goblet of Fire, Chapter 6: Well THIS Portkey is Awkward…
Before we jump into our nifty convo on Goblet of Fire, Chapter 6, some news from the trenches:
1) You have one more week to enter The Last Muggle Goblet of Fire Contest and win your very own Harry Potter Halloween costume. Did Pottermore sort you into the wrong house and now you have to completely replace all your Hogwarts gear? Now is the time!
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And now, back to the task at hand: the painfully awkward meeting at the Quidditch World Cup portkey (I won’t be listing the portkey location here, since it’s a question for our contest, but at least now you know what chapter you can find it in. Don’t say I never did anything for you.)
At first blush (or first read), the rendezvous at the porkey doesn’t seem so bad. Harry, Hermione, and a select group of Weasleys convene with Amos and Cedric Diggory to zip safely off to the Quidditch pitch.
The awkward part isn’t that they have to all clutch an old boot (that’s just kind of disgusting).
The awkward part is that Cedric is going to win Harry’s girl…and then DIE.
(((awkward turtle)))
To full appreciate the cringe-worthiness of this moment, you have to recognize how cool Cedric is when compared to Harry Potter. Yes, yes, Harry’s “the boy who lived” and he has a wicked scar to prove it. But Cedric’s embodies the confidence that only comes from having successfully navigated puberty and six years of wizard school. He’s a clear choice for the Hogwarts Champion and it’s little wonder Cho Chang falls for him. I mean, he doesn’t even stumble when the portkey reaches its destination. He lands squarely on his feet while the other young wizards tumble to the ground in an embarrassing wizard heap. Don’t tell me Harry didn’t reflect on that months later when he saw Cedric and Cho waltz around the Yule Ball.
Seems like such a delightful way to travel...
“But wait,” you say. “Harry doesn’t know Cho is going to fall for Cedric, or Cedric is going to become his rival Hogwarts Champion, or even what a Hogwarts Champion is, or that his personal actions are going to inadvertently lead to Cedric’s untimely demise, which will ultimately plunge him into a deep depression in which he will wallos for his entire fifth year, all while dealing with Cho’s guilty affections for him and Dead Cedric, and the entire wizarding world’s distrust of his claim that Voldemort has returned.”
To you, I say “That was a very long run-on sentence.”
No, it’s true. Harry has no idea his portkey mate will share a second portkey TO HIS DOOM! [insert dramatic music here] If Trelawney’s class taught us anything, Potter has the divination skills of a pet rock. But looking back, the moment is super awkward not for Harry – for the reader! Harry’s discomfort only goes so far as falling on his wizarding bottom when the portkey comes to an abrupt stop.
As a second-time reader, it’s impossible not to look at this first portkey and think “Why hello there, foreshadowing. Fancy meeting you here.” One portkey will eventually lead to another. We know where this is going.
And it’s not good.
Haha, I agree “It’s true” … sometimes you just need “a very long run-on sentence.”
Yes, Cedric was very cool, being admirably even-tempered — while his dad was being so proud of him that Mr. Diggory couldn’t see how he was being inconsiderate of Harry at the same time.
Having just finished my own reread of GoF, I’ve been reminded of just how much of a jerk Amos Diggory is. He rivals Ron in insensitivity.
I think Amos means well.. He’s certainly impressed by Harry Potter. He’s just so truly proud of his son. Parents sometimes have a tendency to gloat about their offspring without realizing how it looks to everyone else. For Amos to tell Cedric that he gets the chance to beat Harry Potter, he is actually praising Harry, too (in a very roundabout way).
Yes. That was along the same lines as I was thinking with parental pride, it also works as a backhanded compliment, too.
I’ll be the first to admit I didn’t fully appreciate the portkey foreshadowing. I did, however, cut Amos a bit of slack the second time around, thinking he might as well enjoy his son’s achievements while he still can! Maybe part of Cedric’s legacy will be teaching Pops some humility.
Wonder what Mrs. Diggory is like?
(Jess, I have to admit I’m a little disappointed and surprised neither of us ended up in Hufflepuff. That sorting hat sure is a tricky one…)
How about we just sneak into the Hufflepuff common room when no one’s looking. I’m sure we can trick on of the Puffs into giving us the password.
It could be argued that Rowling is foreshadowing how they return from the graveyard as well. Harry lands on his rear, while cedric lands confidentally… just like you said, but later, harr lands alive, while cedric is, well dead. Im probably reading too far into this…
For some reason, I hadn’t realized how awkward that was. I remembered that the Weasleys had Portkey-ed with the Diggorys, but for some reason, I hadn’t really thought about how Harry takes another Portkey with Cedric later… I tend to notice lots of things about the Harry Potter world, but I like your posts because sometimes you write about something I hadn’t noticed.
*hopes the next re-reading post will be sometime soon*
You can definitely tell how much time J.K. spent outlining this series simply by the foreshadowing. In many cases (especially with the early books), seemingly mundane things that come up in the first few chapters are massive hints to what we’ll see in the later chapters. Of course, figuring out what those hints are is another thing entirely.
So true!
I think the hardest part about the reread of meeting Cedric is you do get to meet this great guy. At that moment there is no reason for his family or the reader to think he doesn’t have great things ahead of him. He is all around this good guy. He is the first innocent we meet taken by the wizard war. His death is sudden, no one we knew had died yet. The he lands in the grave yard and is gone, no fight, no chance, no reason but he was there. To me that is what stands out in rereading Harry and Cedric’s meeting at the first port key.
“…no reason but he was there.” This reminds me of the argument either Harry or Dumbledore used later, in urging the students to resist Voldemort (it was either during the first meeting of the DA, or the end-of-year feast in GoF). The facts of Cedric’s death demonstrate the true evil of Voldemort’s intent. Wasn’t Cedric a pure-blood anyway?
Cedric was a “pure-blood”.
Yes, Rowling does a really good job at creating a likable character with seemingly few flaws (at least any that we are privy to), so the death stings. She’s careful not to kill off anyone we’ve known for a long time – that’s too harsh for this early in the series – but manages to connect us with this new character through his personality and interactions with Harry.
I took a writing class once, and one thing that really stood out to me was a general rule: Never “kill” a child. To me that meant “anyone who is underage.” True, Cedric being legitimately selected by the Goblet of Fire, was “of age” by wizarding standards, but it still hit hard to me.