Hermione is linked to Harry romantically. Setting up the later reaction from Mrs Weasley. I imagine her going "ooooh" and doing a happy dance when she reads that story.

Krum has started showing up in the library. And he looks surly when looking at Harry and Hermione. This is of course because of the Prophet article.

Moody's hip flask shows up again. I like how his excuse is perfectly consistent with his character. Much kudos to Crouch Jr. He really is very competent.

Karkaroff: red herring. It is really quite well done. When we are informed that he was a death eater, Moody's hostility suddenly makes sense -- we get the illusion of seeing it all make sense and an enigma resolved, but it is all false confirmation.

But we are told he is not popular among the people in Azkaban, and that he named names, both of which are very important clues in retrospect.

Sirius even brings up the attack on Moody with a twist: someone tried to stop him ``because their job would be a lot more difficult with him around''. I love this sort of thing. He is so tantalisingly close to the truth. And yet he has managed to bring to the fore again one of the main clues without revealing the truth. I like it. Add the fact that Crouch Jr's job depends on having Moody around so that he can make more polyjuice potion.

Sirius even mentions Bertha Jorkins as a possible source for Voldemort concerning the tournament. And he suggests that Karkaroff might be a red herring. In fine, he touches on all the major plot points, but it is all buried in the excitement of the first task.


Another major plot moment is the scene with Harry and Moody in Moody's office. He tells us he has disabled his dark detectors and the trunk is introduced.

Moody giving Harry advice again makes him seem like a good guy because we assume the baddies are trying to simply have Harry killed. This plot line is quite well done.

The summoning charm preparation is justified as Harry uses it to battle the dragon.

Baggins helping him is also a plot point (but of that side plot I am not such a fan of). He also refers to gambling as soon as Harry's won (shortening the odds). Not to mention giving him a 10. I assume he put money on Harry to win.


Trelawny spot on in unintended ways again. Her comments that "death is approaching" somehow manage to say directly that Harry is the one who is going to die, and we know death IS approaching.


And I like her writing when she produces something like this:

``Just then, Neville caused a slight diversion by turning into a large canary''.

There is too little of that in this book.