Who Really Put Harry Potter's Name In The Goblet Of Fire - And Why

Throughout his time at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry Potter — played on-screen by Daniel Radcliffe — yearns for a peaceful, uneventful school year free of any murder plots, massive wizard duels, or other life-changing things. This literally never works out for him. In his first year at Hogwarts, Harry is attacked by one of his teachers — who happens to be housing the Dark Lord Voldemort's face (and soul) on the back of his head. Second year? He's attacked by a haunted diary and a giant basilisk. At the end of his third year, Harry meets both his godfather Sirius Black (Gary Oldman) and the man who betrayed Harry's parents to Voldemort, Peter Pettigrew (Timothy Spall). So what about his fourth year?

In both the book and film of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," which chronicles Harry's fourth year as a Gryffindor student, he and his best friends Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) get "exciting" news. During their school year, the Triwizard Tournament, which brings three wizarding schools together to compete for a ton of gold and a huge trophy, will take place at Hogwarts. Naturally, nothing about this goes as planned; despite being too young to even enter, Harry is chosen as a fourth champion and forced to compete. So how does this happen, and why did someone put his name in the Goblet in the first place? 

In both the book and movie, we don't learn that much about the history of the Goblet of Fire; yes, the Triwizard Tournament has been held before, but it's not clear whether or not the Goblet was always used to choose its champions in previous tournaments. In any case, it's a magical object that serves as an "impartial judge" to help pick the best champions to compete, and once the Goblet makes its choice, the flame goes out. (It's said that it won't light up until the "next" Triwizard Tournament, but based on what happens during Harry's time in the game, the competition is never held again.) The Goblet has an Age Line placed around its base by Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) that prevents students under 17 from entering (in the wizarding world, 17 is when you come of age). 

As for the Triwizard Tournament, it consists of three very dangerous tasks completed by the champions — four champions, in this case — throughout the school year. Alongside fellow Hogwarts champion Cedric Diggory (Robert Pattinson), Durmstrang champion and Quidditch player Viktor Krum (Stanislav Yanevski), and Beauxbatons champion Fleur Delacour (Clémence Poésy), Harry faces down a dragon and has to find a golden egg, goes underwater in Hogwarts' Great Lake to retrieve hostages from the merpeople inside, and makes his way through a maze filled with dangerous creatures like a sphinx and plenty of Blast-Ended Skrewts.

For most of "Goblet of Fire," one enormous and obvious question looms: who the heck put Harry's name into the Goblet in the first place? The object is enchanted so that you can only enter your own name, and Harry is too young to compete anyway. So how did this all even work?

The answer requires a lot of context. When Harry and Cedric reach the end of the maze together (injured but otherwise fine), they decide to claim the Triwizard Cup together and clinch the victory for Hogwarts. What they don't know is that the Cup has been tampered with and is a Portkey, a form of magical transport, which whisks them to a faraway graveyard. There, Harry comes face to face with Peter Pettigrew, who kills Cedric with a quick curse and uses Harry's blood to resurrect Voldemort (played his full corporeal form by Ralph Fiennes). Voldemort tries to kill Harry, but Harry's wand acts of his own accord and fights the Dark Lord off using specters of those he's killed — including Harry's own parents — giving Harry time to grab Cedric's body and the Cup and return to Hogwarts.

At first, Harry thinks that his Defense Against the Dark Arts professor Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody (Brendan Gleeson) is behind the trap involving the Goblet and the Cup — largely because, in the book, Mad-Eye just openly confesses. There's more to the story, though. The real Mad-Eye has been imprisoned all year, and Voldemort's loyal Death Eater, Barty Crouch Jr. (David Tennant), has been using Polyjuice Potion to impersonate him the whole time, get Harry into the tournament, get him to the graveyard, use his blood to revive Voldemort, and kill him. 

Based on the fact that the Triwizard Tournament at Hogwarts ends with Harry crawling out of the maze holding his fellow champion's dead body, it seems reasonable to assume that, after that particular tournament, the entire thing was canceled for good. (Maybe it wasn't, though; a rogue cockatrice, a creature that's part rooster and part lizard, attacked the champions so badly during the 1792 tournament that it was canceled for multiple centuries and then returned in 1994, the year it was canonically held at Hogwarts.) 

So what happened to the Goblet of Fire after that? Frankly, nobody knows for sure. The Triwizard Tournament isn't revived during the timeline of the original "Harry Potter" books, nor do we learn about any new iterations in the stage show "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" (which, at this point, is the closest thing to a sequel we're likely to get). It's a vital object in "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," though; it's important enough to title the installment, after all.