The Goblet of Fire Read online

  HARRY

  POTTER

  and the Goblet of Fire

  J.K. ROWLING

  All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher

  This digital edition first published by Pottermore Limited in 2012

  First published in print in Great Britain in 2000 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  Copyright © J.K. Rowling 2000

  Cover illustrations by Claire Melinsky copyright © J.K. Rowling 2010

  Harry Potter characters, names and related indicia are trademarks of and © Warner Bros. Ent.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-78110-010-3

  www.pottermore.com

  by J.K. Rowling

  The unique online experience built around the Harry Potter books. Share and participate in the stories, showcase your own Potter-related creativity and discover even more about the world of Harry Potter from the author herself.

  Visit pottermore.com

  To Peter Rowling,

  in memory of Mr Ridley

  and to Susan Sladden,

  who helped Harry out of his cupboard

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  The Riddle House

  TWO

  The Scar

  THREE

  The Invitation

  FOUR

  Back to The Burrow

  FIVE

  Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes

  SIX

  The Portkey

  SEVEN

  Bagman and Crouch

  EIGHT

  The Quidditch World Cup

  NINE

  The Dark Mark

  TEN

  Mayhem at the Ministry

  ELEVEN

  Aboard the Hogwarts Express

  TWELVE

  The Triwizard Tournament

  THIRTEEN

  Mad-Eye Moody

  FOURTEEN

  The Unforgivable Curses

  FIFTEEN

  Beauxbatons and Durmstrang

  SIXTEEN

  The Goblet of Fire

  SEVENTEEN

  The Four Champions

  EIGHTEEN

  The Weighing of the Wands

  NINETEEN

  The Hungarian Horntail

  TWENTY

  The First Task

  TWENTY-ONE

  The House-Elf Liberation Front

  TWENTY-TWO

  The Unexpected Task

  TWENTY-THREE

  The Yule Ball

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Rita Skeeter’s Scoop

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The Egg and the Eye

  TWENTY-SIX

  The Second Task

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Padfoot Returns

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The Madness of Mr Crouch

  TWENTY-NINE

  The Dream

  THIRTY

  The Pensieve

  THIRTY-ONE

  The Third Task

  THIRTY-TWO

  Flesh, Blood and Bone

  THIRTY-THREE

  The Death Eaters

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Priori Incantatem

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Veritaserum

  THIRTY-SIX

  The Parting of the Ways

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  The Beginning

  — CHAPTER ONE —

  The Riddle House

  The villagers of Little Hangleton still called it ‘the Riddle House’, even though it had been many years since the Riddle family had lived there. It stood on a hill overlooking the village, some of its windows boarded, tiles missing from its roof, and ivy spreading unchecked over its face. Once a fine-looking manor, and easily the largest and grandest building for miles around, the Riddle House was now damp, derelict and unoccupied.

  The Little Hangletons all agreed that the old house was ‘creepy’. Half a century ago, something strange and horrible had happened there, something that the older inhabitants of the village still liked to discuss when topics for gossip were scarce. The story had been picked over so many times, and had been embroidered in so many places, that nobody was quite sure what the truth was any more. Every version of the tale, however, started in the same place: fifty years before, at daybreak on a fine summer’s morning, when the Riddle House had still been well kept and impressive, and a maid had entered the drawing room to find all three Riddles dead.

  The maid had run screaming down the hill into the village, and roused as many people as she could.

  ‘Lying there with their eyes wide open! Cold as ice! Still in their dinner things!’

  The police were summoned, and the whole of Little Hangleton had seethed with shocked curiosity and ill-disguised excitement. Nobody wasted their breath pretending to feel very sad about the Riddles, for they had been most unpopular. Elderly Mr and Mrs Riddle had been rich, snobbish and rude, and their grown-up son, Tom, had been even more so. All the villagers cared about was the identity of their murderer – plainly, three apparently healthy people did not all drop dead of natural causes on the same night.

  The Hanged Man, the village pub, did a roaring trade that night; the whole village had turned out to discuss the murders. They were rewarded for leaving their firesides when the Riddles’ cook arrived dramatically in their midst, and announced to the suddenly silent pub that a man called Frank Bryce had just been arrested.

  ‘Frank!’ cried several people. ‘Never!’

  Frank Bryce was the Riddles’ gardener. He lived alone in a run-down cottage in the Riddle House grounds. Frank had come back from the war with a very stiff leg and a great dislike of crowds and loud noises, and had been working for the Riddles ever since.

  There was a rush to buy the cook drinks, and hear more details.

  ‘Always thought he was odd,’ she told the eagerly listening villagers, after her fourth sherry. ‘Unfriendly, like. I’m sure if I’ve offered him a cuppa once, I’ve offered it a hundred times. Never wanted to mix, he didn’t.’

  ‘Ah, now,’ said a woman at the bar, ‘he had a hard war, Frank, he likes the quiet life. That’s no reason to –’

  ‘Who else had a key to the back door, then?’ barked the cook. ‘There’s been a spare key hanging in the gardener’s cottage far back as I can remember! Nobody forced the door last night! No broken windows! All Frank had to do was creep up to the big house while we was all sleeping …’

  The villagers exchanged dark looks.

  ‘I always thought he had a nasty look about him, right enough,’ grunted a man at the bar.

  ‘War turned him funny, if you ask me,’ said the landlord.

  ‘Told you I wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of Frank, didn’t I, Dot?’ said an excited woman in the corner.

  ‘Horrible temper,’ said Dot, nodding fervently, ‘I remember, when he was a kid …’

  By the following morning, hardly anyone in Little Hangleton doubted that Frank Bryce had killed the Riddles.

  But over in the neighbouring town of Great Hangleton, in the dark and dingy police station, Frank was stubbornly repeating, again and again, that he was innocent, and that the only person he had seen near the house on the day of the Riddles’ deaths had been a teenage boy, a stranger, dark-haired and pale. Nobody else in the village had seen any such boy, and the police were quite sure that Frank had invented him.

  Then, just when things were looking very serious for Frank, the report on the Riddles’ bodies came back and changed everything.

  The police had never read an odder report. A team