[HPforGrownups] portkey conundrum

[Dave Hardenbrook]

No: HPFGUIDX 6314

At 02:19 PM 11/30/00 +0000, naama_gat at hotmail.com wrote:
>There is a point that is very puzzling to me in the Goblet of Fire
>plot, and its to do with
>the trophy cup being made into a portkey by the fake Mad Eye Moody:
>Harry being manipulated into the contest, being secretly helped by
>Moody - all this is to
>make Harry the winner of the triwizard contest, thereby making him
>the first to touch the
>trophy cup, thereby whisking him away to Voldemort. My question is
>this - why couldn't
>Moody turn any object into a portkey and then give it to Harry to
>touch? why was the whole
>long and involved process of the contest necessary? Is there a point
>in the story that I've
>missed?

I've wondered this too, and I came up with a theory:
We know that Hogwarts is enchanted to disallow transport by
apparation or floo powder, so creating portkeys is probably
impossible too.  However, a special dispensation was made for the
Triwizard Cup because they wanted a quick way to get the winner out
of the maze.  Crouch couldn't make a portkey from scratch, but he
could "reprogram" the Cup-portkey to take Harry to V instead of
to outside the maze.  So how did Harry get back to Hogwarts?  Perhaps
a portkey destination cannot be erased once it has been "programmed" in,
so the best Crouch could do was insert V's graveyard into the portkey's
"message queue", but it was still enchanted to bring Harry back to
outside the maze when he touched it a second time.



                                                 -- Dave