Goblet of Fire: Page 131
Terrible security plans, the forgotten stunned guy, and the deeply weird mechanics of Amos Diggory's brain
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From the beginning, page 131 of Goblet of Fire is action-packed. The trio has just heard someone shout “MORSMORDRE,” then seen the Dark Mark cast into the sky, then had a bunch of stunning spells shot at them by what seems, basically, to amount to a hastily deputized militia. As the page starts, the trio is being interrogated by Mr. Crouch, head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation.
Obviously, it’s the wizarding world, so it’s not a perfect parallel. Still, though, this is the Quidditch World Cup. It’s the wizarding equivalent of the Super Bowl. The fact that the trio is apprehended and interrogated by Mr. Crouch, rather than some random security officer who calls in a higher-up once things have been secured, is downright strange. It might seem like it makes sense within the context of the books, because Rowling has set it up that way: high-ranking government officials do a lot more hands-on work in the series than they do in the real world. But still, it’s bizarre. It’s as if someone rushed the field during the Super Bowl, and instead of being tackled by a stadium security guard, they were chased down a group of random mid-level government bureaucrats who had been at the game as fans but jumped into action when there was a security threat, all commanded by the Secretary of Commerce.
There’s also the broader question of law enforcement in the wizarding world, which is a separate — but related — issue. There are no police at the World Cup? Sure, there are lots of government officials there, but they’re there as fans. Rather than setting up a team of agents from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement to perform even the most basic security tasks, maybe with some aurors on patrol in case things got particularly bad, the security plan for the Quidditch World Cup seems to be: “If anything goes wrong, hope that the random governmental people in attendance, along with their sons if they’re old enough, wake up and rush to stop the threat.” The group that comes upon the trio in the forest is described as “Ministry wizards,” but it’s far from a police squad: among them are Amos Diggory, who’s just a random guy who manages magical animals, and Mr. Weasley, who is — just being honest — basically just a governmental subway enthusiast.
This lack of anything resembling law-enforcement tactics continues in the next paragraph. Besides Mr. Crouch, the entire group of wizards that has arrived instantly sees that they’ve just found a group of kids, and instantly moves on without a second thought. Now they’re just staring around in the dark wondering what to do, and Mr. Crouch, of course, has temporarily lost his mind and doesn’t have remotely the capability to command them. So, lacking any kind of command structure or law enforcement best-practices, they just start thinking out loud about what to do next. They almost remind me of the worst basketball referees I’ve ever seen. This was at one of my sister’s JV basketball games. There were two referees: one sounded exactly like Cee Lo Green, and the other had the hair of Miley Cyrus but the voice of George Costanza. They practiced this interesting school of officiating, where whenever anything happened, they would sort of open a dialogue with the crowd about how they should handle it:
Parent 1: “They won the jump, so give us the ball this time!”
Referee: “Maybe, maybe. What else could we do?”
Coach: “Stay with the original call.”
Parent 2: “No, no, call what you saw. It looked like you were going to change it.”
Player (this actually happened): “It’s true.”
Now this is happening with law enforcement. Not even run-of-the-mill law enforcement: it’s an investigation of the sudden unexplained reappearance of Voldemort’s sign, what amounts to a symbol that terrorized the Wizarding community for more than a decade. And the investigators — the random group of people who showed up — are basically just standing there, saying to themselves, “huh…so what now?”
One unnamed witch, wearing a woolen dressing gown — or, according to the Ministry’s official security plan, a “law enforcement uniform” — suggests that whoever cast the mark will have disapparated, but Amos Diggory disagrees. The stunning spells the group cast, he points out, went right through the trees: there’s a good chance the real caster was stunned where he stood.
Now, this isn’t the worst idea in the world on Amos’ part. But it’s worth pointing out that the group didn’t apparate to the scene, all land on the same side of the trio, and all send stunning spells the same direction. Rather, they landed in a circle, surrounding the group, and all sent stunning spells at them from different directions at once towards the center of the circle. So, even if some of the spells did go into the trees where the incantation came from, there’s a giant question unanswered: of the 20 or so stunning spells cast, doesn’t it make sense — isn’t it actually quite probable — that one crossed the circle, didn’t hit anything in the middle, and just stunned the witch or wizard directly opposite the person who cast it? In other words, while all this is going on, some random ministry person — some mid-level bureaucrat who monitors family broomstick regulations for the Department of Magical Transportation, or something — might be lying there, stunned and completely forgotten.
“Hold on,” the witch in the woolen dressing gown might shout as everyone left afterwards. “People, wait...has anyone seen Morris?”
Of course, the inept attempt at law enforcement only continues. Mr. Diggory gets a little theatrical: he squares his shoulders, raises his wand, and marches across the clearing, as if he’s a swordsman in a Shakespearian play, off to investigate the mysterious appearance of a mark that literally represents death. What does the rest of the group do? Do they call for backup? Do they form a perimeter to prevent a surprise attack? Do they follow him into the woods, providing tailing reinforcements? Do they fan out and start searching the surrounding area?
No. Here’s what they do: nothing. They just sort of stand around watching. They don’t even send one other person in with him, such that, for instance, if Mr. Diggory went into the woods and found a guy passed-out drunk who had owed him money for twenty years and had once hit on his wife, he could just come out and shout “found him! This guy did it! He’s the guilty one!”
The group, in fact, is almost aggressive about not going into the woods with Mr. Diggory. Maybe this is because — now I’m repeating myself — they’re literally just random people who happen to work for the government, who don’t have any experience bringing in potentially violent criminals. It would be sort of like calling the Department of Agriculture and requesting that your call be put through to the Sustainable Corn Bureau, then telling the staff that they’d been reassigned, effective immediately, to murder investigations.
It might go even beyond that, though: this group really just doesn’t want to take any action. “Amos, be careful!” say a few of the wizards. For one, that’s a strange way to put it — “said a few of them” — as if a few guys broke into song simultaneously and delivered an urgent a capella rendition of “Amos, be careful!” But for another, they say that — then do nothing. Maybe Mr. Diggory owes them money.
From the darkness of the woods, Mr. Diggory shouts out: “Yes! We got them! There’s someone here! Unconscious! It’s — but — blimey...”
I have a few questions.
For one, it should be obvious from as soon as Mr. Diggory first gets there that the unconscious thing is a house-elf. They’re about three feet tall, have giant pointy ears and enormous noses and arms and legs about the thickness of chopsticks, and wear pillowcases or tea towels. It’s not like Mr. Diggory is slowly approaching, thinking to himself: “Okay, there’s someone...it looks like a person, so no surprise there...hey, wait a minute! I thought that was an ordinary wizard robe, but it’s actually a tea towel!” The other possibility is that he’s so shocked by what he’s seeing that he starts furiously attempting to rationalize it: “I see a tea towel and tiny arms and legs, so it could be either a house-elf or a really wizened old lady dressed like she’s from Ancient Rome...now I’m seeing a pointy nose. Maybe it’s a goblin in a Halloween costume.”
Then suddenly, he realizes, all at once, not just that it’s a house-elf, but that it’s Mr. Crouch’s house-elf. How does Mr. Diggory know Mr. Crouch’s house-elf well enough to recognize her on sight? There’s more than one house-elf, after all, and a casual observer seems unlikely to notice the distinctions between them unless they’re looking for them. Earlier, at the Quidditch World Cup, even Harry mistakes Winky for Dobby. It’s not like Winky comes to work with Mr. Diggory: she’s a house-elf, not a Ministry elf (rim shot). Mr. Crouch and Mr. Diggory don’t even work in the same department. The one connection they do have, on the other hand, is that Mr. Diggory has presumably been working on importing the animals for the Triwizard Tournament, and in that capacity, he’ll certainly have had to deal with Mr. Crouch.
So maybe Mr. Crouch and Mr. Diggory started meeting for a nightly firewhisky in Mr. Crouch’s living room after a hard day at work, and Winky came by to attend to them. But this doesn’t really make sense either, of course, because as we later learn, Mr. Crouch’s house is harboring a felon who is presumed dead, and the one time we know of that anyone from the Ministry comes to the house, it’s Bertha Jorkins, and she figures the whole thing out and quite literally sets in motion the chain of events that allows Voldemort to come back. So it’s probably safe to say that Mr. Crouch hasn’t been inviting people over. All of this means that either A) what Mr. Crouch’s house-elf looks like is somehow common knowledge, or B) only Mr. Diggory knows what she looks like, because he has some sort of mysterious connection with Mr. Crouch that has led to him spending a lot of time with Mr. Crouch’s house-elf. Or, of course, C) it’s a passing detail that you’re not supposed to worry about and that really doesn’t matter, but when you’re doing a deep dive on every page in the Harry Potter series, you’ll take whatever you’re given.
Mr. Diggory emerges from the woods carrying Winky in his arms. I do have to wonder how he managed to pick Winky up without so much as stepping on Barty Crouch Jr.’s arm. Crouch Jr. and Winky were magically bound together. Even if you accept that the magic holding them together stopped working when Winky was stunned, they would have collapsed directly next to each other, maybe even in contact with one another. Then Mr. Diggory marched into the woods theatrically and probably stumbled around in the dark for a second, saw Winky, and managed to pick her up without disturbing the unconscious invisible man next to her. He didn’t even notice the man-shaped dent in the ground. Well, maybe he did, and again had to rationalize: “Hmm, there’s a depression on the ground exactly the shape a fully-grown man would make if he collapsed after getting hit with a stunning spell...probably something geological.”
As the page ends, we see Mr. Crouch’s shock at seeing Winky, although, of course, first-time readers don’t yet know that he has far more to be shocked about than we realize. He’s basically realizing that the entire fragile scheme he’s constructed could come crashing down at any moment, even though it will turn out that he can’t bring himself to do anything about it. Presumably, though, the rest of the ministry wizards on the scene are ready to get out of the woods and go back to bed. The danger has passed; they’ll disapparate, and soon the woods will be empty again.
Except for one person, one person who nobody else noticed. The witch in the woolen dressing gown.
“People, wait!” she’ll shout. “Has anyone seen Morris?”
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