Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Chapters 6–10

“Unobtrusive things, obviously, so Muggles don’t go picking them up and playing with them...stuff they’ll just think is litter....”

Mr. Weasley was shaking hands with a ruddy-faced wizard with a scrubby brown beard, who was holding a moldy-looking old boot in his other hand.

“Yes, but you didn’t fall off, did you?” roared Amos genially, slapping his son on his back.

“You’re not the first one who’s had trouble with money,” said Mr. Roberts, scrutinizing Mr. Weasley closely.

“A map of the campsite for you,” Mr. Roberts said placidly to Mr. Weasley.

Halfway up the field stood an extravagant confection of striped silk like a miniature palace, with several live peacocks tethered at the entrance.

Some, with furtive looks around them, conjured fires with their wands; others were striking matches with dubious looks on their faces, as though sure this couldn’t work.

The tents here had not been bedecked with plant life, but each and every one of them had the same poster attached to it, a poster of a very surly face with heavy black eyebrows. The picture was, of course, moving, but all it did was blink and scowl.

Behind him, a group of haggard-looking Ministry wizards rushed past, pointing at the distant evidence of some sort of a magical fire that was sending violet sparks twenty feet into the air.

“You don’t think it might be time to send someone to look for her?” Mr. Weasley suggested tentatively as Percy handed Bagman his tea.

Barty Crouch was a stiff, upright, elderly man, dressed in an impeccably crisp suit and tie.

If I’ve told him once I’ve told him a hundred times: Carpets are defined as a Muggle Artifact by the Registry of Proscribed Charmable Objects, but will he listen?

A sense of excitement rose like a palpable cloud over the campsite as the afternoon wore on.

By dusk, the still summer air itself seemed to be quivering with anticipation, and as darkness spread like a curtain over the thousands of waiting wizards, the last vestiges of pretense disappeared: The Ministry seemed to have bowed to the inevitable and stopped fighting the signs of blatant magic now breaking out everywhere.

Everything was suffused with a mysterious golden light, which seemed to come from the stadium itself.

He is getting up to all sorts of high jinks, sir, what is unbecoming to a house-elf.

Lucius has just given a very generous contribution to St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, Arthur.

Draco shot Harry, Ron, and Hermione one contemptuous look, then settled himself between his mother and father.

“Leprechauns!” said Mr. Weasley over the tumultuous applause of the crowd, many of whom were still fighting and rummaging around under their chairs to retrieve the gold.

Viktor Krum was thin, dark, and sallow-skinned, with a large curved nose and thick black eyebrows.

“Fool!” moaned Mr. Weasley. “Krum was feinting!”

Mostafa seemed to come to himself; Harry, watching through the Omnioculars again, saw that he looked exceptionally embarrassed and had started shouting at the veela, who had stopped dancing and were looking mutinous.

It did: The Bulgarian Beaters, Volkov and Vulchanov, landed on either side of Mostafa and began arguing furiously with him, gesticulating toward the leprechauns, who had now gleefully formed the words “HEE, HEE, HEE.”

His team members were around him, shaking their heads and looking dejected; a short way away, the Irish players were dancing gleefully in a shower of gold descending from their mascots.

"Don't tell your mother you’ve been gambling,” Mr. Weasley implored Fred and George as they all made their way slowly down the purple-carpeted stairs.

Raucous singing was borne toward them on the night air as they retraced their steps along the lantern-lit path, and leprechauns kept shooting over their heads, cackling and waving their lanterns.

Dark figures were blundering through the trees; children were crying; anxious shouts and panicked voices were reverberating around them in the cold night air.

A huddle of teenagers in pajamas was arguing vociferously a little way along the path.

They passed a group of goblins who were cackling over a sack of gold that they had undoubtedly won betting on the match, and who seemed quite unperturbed by the trouble at the campsite.

He no longer looked buoyant and rosy-faced; there was no more spring in his step. He looked very white and strained.

“There was someone behind the trees...they shouted words—an incantation—”

“No!” shrieked Winky, prostrating herself at Mr. Crouch’s feet.

Bill was sitting at the small kitchen table, holding a bedsheet to his arm, which was bleeding profusely.

Last week she was saying we’re wasting our time quibbling about cauldron thickness, when we should be stamping out vampires!

A Ministry official emerged some time after the appearance of the Dark Mark alleging that nobody had been hurt, but refusing to give any more information. Whether this statement will be enough to quash the rumors that several bodies were removed from the woods an hour later, remains to be seen.

Hermione’s terrified look vanished as she let out a derisive snort.
“Oh Harry, you aren’t going to pay attention to anything that old fraud says?”

Charlie was darning a fireproof balaclava.

Rita Skeeter’s been ferreting around all week, looking for more Ministry mess-ups to report.

The rain sounded even louder at the top of the house, accompanied by loud whistlings and moans from the wind, not to mention sporadic howls from the ghoul who lived in the attic.

In some trepidation, Harry opened the last parcel on his camp bed.