Watching tasks 2 and 3 (wasRe: Dumbledore the teacher)

[Hannah]

No: HPFGUIDX 126174


Eggplant wrote:
> If I were JKR's editor for GoF I would suggest Voldemort say 
something
> like this to his death eaters in the graveyard:
> 
> "There is a powerful spell preventing port keys from working at
> Hogwarts but during the Tri Wizard Tournament people would be
> arriving from all over the world so I knew the spell would have to 
be
> temporarily removed, if not in the castle itself at least on the
> grounds. It also amused me to have Harry Potter whisked away to his
> doom at the very instant he thinks he's going to attain his 
greatest
> triumph. And I did it right under Dumbledore's nose with the entire
> world watching, people can now see with their own eyes which one of
> us is more powerful."
> 
> Now I just need to just figure out why anybody would want to watch
> the second and third tasks. Staring at a hedge and the unruffled
> surface of a lake lacks a certain visual appeal.

Hannah:  
Good explanation for the portkey business, Eggplant!  Now for why 
anyone wanted to watch the  second and third tasks...

Maybe they could see parts of what was going on, through the magical 
equivalent of television - some kind of projection of under the 
lake/ the maze.  That would make sense.  But then how come no one 
seemed to know anything that had happened during either task?

Perhaps the magical equivalent of the camera only focuses on one 
place at a time.  With four champions all off in different places, 
it can't show everything.  So it moves around.  So when Harry was 
trying to save all the other captives, the camera was busy showing 
Fleur's desperate battle with the Grindylows, etc.

In the maze, maybe they *did* see Cedric and Harry take the cup 
together - I don't think there's any canon evidence to say that the 
audience hadn't seen that moment.  If the cup was intended to be a 
portkey out of the maze, then no one would have thought anything odd 
when Harry and Cedric disappeared, until they didn't reappear in the 
appointed place.  Or maybe Crouch!Moody had hoodwinked the system 
just as he did the goblet, either not to be able to focus on the 
cup, or to show a false image. 

That's the best that I can come up with.

Hannah