Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley enter their fourth year at Hogwarts school. The film opens in a graveyard attached to an old country house; the gardener Frank Bryce awakes in his cottage to see a light on in the house. He investigates to find Lord Voldemort and Peter Pettigrew discussing plans with an unidentified man; Voldemort kills Bryce. Harry awakes at The Burrow before departing with the Weasley family and Hermione for the Quidditch World Cup. After the introduction to the game, there is a temporal jump to that evening, when the camp is attacked by Death Eaters, who disperse when the Dark Mark is shot into the air by an unknown man.
Harry, Ron and Hermione arrive at Hogwarts, where they find that it will be hosting the Triwizard Tournament, a legendary event in which one wizard each from two rival schools and Hogwarts compete in three dangerous tasks. Dumbledore reveals the Goblet of Fire, a magical cup into which potential champions must drop a piece of parchment with their name on it; the goblet acts as an impartial judge to select candidates. The goblet reveals its results by shooting the relevant pieces of parchment into the air: Cedric Diggory from Hogwarts, Viktor Krum from Durmstrang and Fleur Delacour from Beauxbatons. The goblet then unexpectedly announces a fourth champion, Harry, although he did not enter his name and is in any case under the age limit set by the Ministry of Magic. Although Harry insists that he did not enter his name, his selection invites jealousy and suspicion from his fellow students, including a breakdown of friendship with Ron, which lasts until after the first task. Dumbledore asks the new Defence against the Dark Arts professor, Alastor Moody, to keep an eye on Harry. Moody is an eccentric and paranoid man with a magical eye, who drinks only from a hip flask for fear of poison.
In the first Triwizard task, the four champions each battle a dragon to retrieve a golden egg. Harry casts a summoning charm to bring his broom into the arena, and attempts to dodge the dragon in the air. The dragon, however, breaks free of its chains and chases Harry through the Hogwarts grounds, eventually running into a stone bridge and falling dead. Harry retrieves the egg, which is said to contain a clue about the second task. When Harry opens it, though, only a horrible screeching is heard. Cedric Diggory, the other Hogwarts champion, advises Harry to open the egg underwater. Harry does so in the prefects' bathroom and hears the clue clearly; it informs him that the merpeople will take something of Harry's and that he must retrieve it from the lake in the Hogwarts grounds. Having eaten gillyweed, a magical plant which enables him to breathe underwater, Harry follows a mermaid to where the merpeople have chained Ron, Hermione, Cho Chang, and Gabrielle Delacour to a rock with thousands of merpeople guarding them. When Harry arrives in the village of the merpeople, they do not attack Harry but they do give him a hard time by threatening Harry with their spears. Cedric retrieves Cho; Victor, the Durmstrang champion, takes Hermione. As Fleur was attacked by Grindylows and had to withdraw from the task, Harry rescues both Ron and her sister. On the way back to the surface, however, Harry is attacked by a herd of Grindylows who viciously attack Harry and attempt to drown him but Harry escapes by using his wand. Although this causes Harry to finish outside the time limit of one hour, his courage is rewarded with high marks.
A traditional part of the Triwizard tournament is the Yule Ball, to which students are encouraged to invite partners of the opposite sex. There follow scenes in which Harry and Ron attempt to get partners for the ball. Harry is especially concerned since, as one of the champions, he is expected to open the dance. He eventually asks Cho when they bump into each other in the Owlery; however, she declines. She has already accepted an offer from Cedric Diggory. Ron desperately asks Hermione, who also declines — at the opening of the Yule Ball scene, it is revealed that Viktor Krum had invited her. Eventually, Harry asks Parvati Patil, who accepts; her sister Padma partners Ron. Although Hermione greatly enjoys the ball, Harry and Ron do not; Ron, who is particularly jealous of Krum, accuses Hermione of "fraternizing with the enemy," leading to a serious row between the two characters.
For the third task, the Triwizard cup is placed inside a large maze whose magical hedges are capable of attacking the champions as they attempt to reach it: the first champion to touch the cup will be declared the winner. Along the way, Harry is attacked by the magical hedges but manages to escape before he is crushed. Having saved each other several times throughout the tournament, Harry and Cedric reach the cup together and decide to claim a draw, both touching the cup at the same time. The cup, which is actually a portkey, transports the two to a graveyard, where Pettigrew appears with a form of Voldemort. Upon command, Wormtail kills Cedric and traps Harry against an enchanted tombstone. Wormtail performs complicated magic, taking blood from Harry's arm and other ingredients to return Voldemort to a corporeal body. After explaining how he lost his powers to Harry, Voldemort duels Harry. Thanks to a rare magical effect, Harry is able to escape by summoning the cup, which takes him back to Hogwarts. Moody takes Harry to his office, but he suddenly starts to change his appearance as he has run out of Polyjuice Potion. The Moody who has been at Hogwarts all year is revealed an escaped Death Eater who has been impersonating the real Alastor Moody. This impostor has been working to help Harry win the Triwizard tournament and hence reach the cup first; Harry was not supposed to survive or return. As the false Moody is about to kill Harry, Dumbledore, Snape, and McGonagall burst in the room and stun him. The impostor rapidly returns to his own appearance; he is Barty Crouch Jr, the mysterious man in Harry's dream at the beginning. The film closes as the foreign schools depart after Dumbledore exhorts them to stand together against Voldemort.
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