Current Events > Goblet of Fire never made much sense to me (spoilers)

(+) Yeah! (+)

UnholyMudcrab posted...

No, it's a ward specific to Harry, because of his mother's sacrifice.

Right, but it would have been nice to get some clarification that it somehow also hides his presence or otherwise protects him even if hes outside Hogwarts. The question was why cant they take him from the Dursleys?

Dark_Arbron posted...

That last part I concede. It wasnt exactly made clear why Harry had no choice but to compete so the consequences for not doing so could indeed be fatal.

But still, I dont see why the Ministry cant adjudicate this under extraordinary circumstances. Or at the very least suspend the tournament while they investigate. My point is I cant accept the idea that the Goblet is some kind of ultimate authority that the government itself has no authority to overrule.

For some reason you think the ministry is reasonable. Wizard society is all kinds of ass backwards.

Dark_Arbron posted...

That last part I concede. It wasnt exactly made clear why Harry had no choice but to compete so the consequences for not doing so could indeed be fatal.

But still, I dont see why the Ministry cant adjudicate this under extraordinary circumstances. Or at the very least suspend the tournament while they investigate. My point is I cant accept the idea that the Goblet is some kind of ultimate authority that the government itself has no authority to overrule.

My brother, it is a centuries old magical artifact that placed four children into a binding magical contract. Fucking with it is maybe not the best idea. There'd be no suspending the tournament because that would violate the contract.

You're also putting a lot of faith in a government whose most consistent and prominent trait is hideous incompetence.

Dark_Arbron posted...

Right, but it would have been nice to get some clarification that it somehow also hides his presence or otherwise protects him even if hes outside Hogwarts. The question was why cant they take him from the Dursleys?

That question is literally answered by the books. Someone explains it in either 6 or 7, the entire reason Harry had to live with the Dursleys despite them being wildly abusive instead of living under protection somewhere in wizard society with fame and fortune is because of BS old school "Magic does wacky convenient shit because fuck you" style magic where his mom dying to protect him means that he gets special magic protections that are magically enforced by magic as long as he's a child living with a relative (aka Petunia) because F A M I L Y.

Also because Dumbledore thought that him being abused was better than him becoming spoiled and arrogant but you know whatever.

Also, he does get jumped by the Death Eaters the day those protections run out.

KajeI posted...

That question is literally answered by the books. Someone explains it in either 6 or 7, the entire reason Harry had to live with the Dursleys despite them being wildly abusive instead of living under protection somewhere in wizard society with fame and fortune is because of BS old school "Magic does wacky convenient shit because fuck you" style magic where his mom dying to protect him means that he gets special magic protections that are magically enforced by magic as long as he's a child living with a relative (aka Petunia) because F A M I L Y.

Also because Dumbledore thought that him being abused was better than him becoming spoiled and arrogant but you know whatever.

Fair. I havent actually read the last couple of books but I figured if people were asking the question then it didnt have a known answer.

Dark_Arbron posted...

Fair. I havent actually read the last couple of books but I figured if people were asking the question then it didnt have a known answer.

I've learned from watching CE talk about Harry Potter that most of the questions people have actually are answered or at least addressed somewhere in the books and people either didn't read them or just forgot.

Vs plan made sense but thr movie was horrendous. Cheese factor galore

Dark_Arbron posted...

Those should be easy to circumvent for a sufficiently powerful wizard. Cedric Diggory was taken out in one shot by the death curse, and I dont believe he was over that age at the time.

Also if you have protection wards available why age restrict them? Unless theyre rolled in with the trace put on young wizards until the age you mentioned but that raises more questions.

There are always spells in fantasy in which restrictions make them more powerful. A ward that only works until you're of age is strong but comes with the side effects of being temporary so therefore feasible and difficult or impossible to break.

The more downsides to a spell the stronger it can be.

I think the killing curse is probably the strongest without much weakness, if any, I think.

I will say that there is a lot of 'shit writing' in this series such as a mother's love being the reason Harry survived but I amounted it to a YA series so it gets a pass because its always usually corny or something.

dameon_reaper posted...

I think the killing curse is probably the strongest without much weakness, if any, I think.

It's that strong because you can only cast it if you truly have 0 regard for the target's life whatsoever. Most people aren't capable of that, so they can't cast it even if they want to because "righteous fury" isn't enough. It's a case of the restriction being in the cast instead of the effects.

KajeI posted...

It's that strong because you can only cast it if you truly have 0 regard for the target's life whatsoever. Most people aren't capable of that, so they can't cast it even if they want to because "righteous fury" isn't enough. It's a case of the restriction being in the cast instead of the effects.

So it does come with restrictions after all. Good to know.

Just_a_loser posted...

I guess so.

To elaborate more. Harry's blood was needed in order for Voldemort to bypass the bloodmagic that had protected Harry as a baby and in his first year. His mom gave her life to protect Harry from Voldemort and meant that Voldemort could never hurt him.

So they had to find a way to get Harry's blood so that Voldemort would have that same protection inside him to bypass it.

Yes, Voldemort could have returned earlier if he didn't care about that protection. And he could have had the Moody impostor kill Harry at any point throughout the year. But Voldemort had something to prove and forbade any of his followers from killing Harry when he needed to do it himself to prove his strength and triumph over the one who was his downfall.

I would strongly urge anyone to actually pick up the books and give them a try. They actually are quite wonderful reads. Things make much more sense when everything isn't jammed into a 2 hour flick and you lose a lot of the lore and context.

No one could have killed Harry. He had plot armor. If someone else would have tried to kill him they would have failed.

I used to like the books but given comments by Rowling meanings of parts of the books changed and it's just hard to enjoy now

It makes perfect sense. As far as I'm aware Voldemort had an inside man who was posing as Moody and the tournament offered the chance to not only kill Harry Potter, but specifically transport him to Voldemort's location (to revive him and gain protection from his mother's "curse") while, if all went well, not revealing that Voldemort had in fact returned.

Barty was the defense against the dark arts teacher at Hogwarts at the time, he was either involved in or created many of the security mechanisms, so him finding a way to rig it makes perfect sense.

They just seized an opportunity. They did fuck up the killing Harry Potter part, but then they got lucky (or already knew it would happen) that the government of the wizarding world is just as corrupt and stupid as most governments and refused to believe he returned.

Also keep in mind that Voldemort believes Harry Potter is the one destined to destroy him. He literally based the vast majority of his decisions on this self fulfilling prophecy.

dameon_reaper posted...

So it does come with restrictions after all. Good to know.

Same reason the other 2 unforgivables work the way they do. Crucio scales directly off how much you want to see them feel pain specifically, not harm them in general. You can still cast it without being a sadist or whatever, but it's not gonna do much.

I forget what the thing for Imperius is. It might not have one other than just generic "ya gotta be good at evil wizard magic" with "mind control bad" being the reason it's one of the 3 unforgivables. It's also the only one that can be no-selled by pure willpower. I guess maybe its limitation is that it's total control but only if they're not strong enough to shake it off.

I actually likd it when I was young and thought it was one of the top 7 books in the series. But there's actually a much bigger problem when you think about it:

How the fuck did grizzled super wizard mad eye moody lose a fight to fucking Wormtail? A wormtail holding baby voldemort no less. It's more ridiculous than the whole "wait until the end of the year to turn the cup into a portkey" instead of just literally turning anything into a port key at any time to take harry to voldy. Supposedly the magic that prevents hogwarts was lifted around the triwizard cup and that's why barty crouch Jr was able to turn that into a port key to whisk Harry away to Voldemort

My big question/problem was, what the fuck was fetus/baby voldemort?

Like, the whole point of the horcrux was, if your body was destroyed, you wouldn't die because a part of your soul was attached to an object. But like... the bit that was still in your body should have still passed on, or whatever.

Given the way Horcruxes were later stated to work, it always bothered me that a random "voldemort spirit" was just randomly haunting the world, until he randomly incarnated himself into a baby just in time for a blood ritual. For my money, "resurrecting" yourself should cost you a horcrux. You put aside a piece of your soul, you use it to revive. Easy.

To say nothing of the can of worms we nearly had with Riddle's diary in book 2. Assuming he succeeded... what, we were gonna have TWO voldemorts running around? Potentially EIGHT, if things had gone exceptionally poorly?

I dunno, Rowling's necromancy was easily the most half-baked of her already very soft magic system.

Revisited posted...

I actually likd it when I was young and thought it was one of the top 7 books in the series. But there's actually a much bigger problem when you think about it:

How the fuck did grizzled super wizard mad eye moody lose a fight to fucking Wormtail? A wormtail holding baby voldemort no less. It's more ridiculous than the whole "wait until the end of the year to turn the cup into a portkey" instead of just literally turning anything into a port key at any time to take harry to voldy. Supposedly the magic that prevents hogwarts was lifted around the triwizard cup and that's why barty crouch Jr was able to turn that into a port key to whisk Harry away to Voldemort

Id assume the same way any badass could lose and that would be by a sneak attack.

SAlYAN posted...

Given the way Horcruxes were later stated to work, it always bothered me that a random "voldemort spirit" was just randomly haunting the world, until he randomly incarnated himself into a baby just in time for a blood ritual.

It wasn't random, Wormtail found him and helped to create a rudimentary body for him to possess. The book never uses the word for it, but it's very reminiscent of a homonculus.

And horcruxes are just a lich's phylactery. They anchor you to the world.

Moody being the inside man actually made me dislike the book, but I think it was the best book next to PoA and Chamber of Secrets

Revisited posted...

thought it was one of the top 7 books in the series.

Talk about "damning it with faint praise."

pegusus123456 posted...

It wasn't random, Wormtail found him and helped to create a rudimentary body for him to possess. The book never uses the word for it, but it's very reminiscent of a homonculus.

And horcruxes are just a lich's phylactery. They anchor you to the world.

Yeah the horcrux thing is one of the few introductions that actually makes a lot of sense.

It was already explained that breaking your soul in half was a bad idea (let alone even more) and like ghosts, it wasn't really what you'd call living, you just weren't dead. In a form no one would want to be in. That is the price you pay

Heck its introduction, foreshadowing and explanation worked out so well for the narrative of the books that she actually tried to do it again in the next book with the deathly hallows, with disastrous and super lame results.

What was the point of him drinking unicorn blood?

ROBANN_88 posted...

What was the point of him drinking unicorn blood?

It just helped him out a bit. It was also one of the ingredients in the potion that kept up his weird little baby body.

However, it permanently cursed him, since it is a sin to kill a unicorn (more so than even a mockingbird) hence why he keeps losing in duels against 10 year olds and 12 year olds, and why he keeps fumbling when it comes to Harry worse than Dr Claw and inspector gadget.

It just curses you to a "half-life" and Tommy's already pretty fucked up, so the blood probably didn't have a downside.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/8/835eab2d.jpg

FortuneCookie posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/8/835eab2d.jpg

Most of that is inaccurate, though? Harry was super open about the "how" voldemort came back, was super willing to name death eaters/witnesses, Krum and Fleur remembered being cursed, Snape had plenty of Veritasium (and used it to interrogate Crouch Jr like 20 seconds later), and Harry tried declining the prize money.

Like, even as a "this is how it looks on the outside" joke, it doesn't work

SAlYAN posted...

Like, even as a "this is how it looks on the outside" joke, it doesn't work

It's what got me to actually see the series, ya spoilsport.

:p