In all other cases except the Triwizard cup, portkeys only go one way at one specific time. Touching them again does not activate them to return to their place of origin. Also, when Harry grabs the cup a second time, it does not return him to the middle of the maze. It takes him to the entrance of the maze, in front of everyone.
Therefore, when Crouch Jr. (as Moody) bewitched the cup, he planned to have it take anyone who touched it first to the graveyard, then to the front of the maze.The cup was probably supposed to be a portkey to take the winner to the front of the maze anyway, so they wouldn’t have to try to fight their way out again.
Voldemort obviously planned to kill Harry. He had to. That was the whole point; to kill Harry in front of all his Death Eaters, all the ones who had deserted him and doubted his power to return.
There’s the possibility that he wanted to send Harry’s body back, either to divert suspicion somehow or to intentionally flout his victory in Dumbledore’s face. Except Voldemort had promised his precious Nagini several times she could eat Harry, and it seemed like a promise Voldemort was going to keep.
So who was meant to take that return trip?
Voldemort could use it as a ticket into Hogwarts for a surprise attack, but he’s freshly reborn, his Death Eaters are 13 years out of practice, and there’s a flock of powerful wizards there for the Triwizard. That would be an idiotic move.
Or what if Harry—or someone who looked like him—had returned to Hogwarts as if nothing had happened in that maze? As the victor of the Triwizard Tournament AND the Boy Who Lived, Harry would be able to go anywhere and do anything. Everyone trusts him.
Two words: POLYJUICE POTION.
There was one Death Eater already waiting at Hogwarts who had very carefully been spending a whole year getting to know Harry, watching his every movement: Barty Crouch Jr.
So here was Voldemort’s complete plan: Use Barty Crouch Jr. to infiltrate Hogwarts as Moody. He gets to know Harry and sets him up to be selected for and eventually to win the Triwizard Tournament. He makes sure Harry touches the cup first. Harry is then transported to the graveyard where Voldemort is waiting. Voldemort uses Harry to rise, calls his Death Eaters to him, and then humiliates and kills the Boy Who Lived in front of them.
Then Voldemort strips Harry’s body, takes his hair, and transforms into him (or else has one of his DE’s do this—but really, who would he pick? Lucius is an idiot, Bellatrix is still in jail, and he believes Snape has deserted him). He then takes the cup and goes to Hogwarts as Harry. Later that night, Moody disappears, and Crouch takes Voldemort’s place as Harry Potter. Then, when the moment is right, Voldemort-Harry or Crouch-Harry will assassinate Dumbledore (incidentally gaining the power of the Elder Wand, though he wouldn’t know it), stage a coup of Hogwarts, and take over the wizarding world.
Heck, he/they might not even drop their disguise as Harry. The wizarding world has faced Voldemort as an enemy before, but if their savior Harry Potter suddenly turned out to be just as powerful a Dark Lord as He Who Must Not Be Named? It would be a far scarier prospect than simply dealing with Voldemort’s return.
It solves the problem of why Voldemort went to such lengths to get Harry through the Triwizard, when there were far easier ways to capture him: Voldemort didn’t just need Harry’s blood; he needed Harry as the world’s hero.
And all that time in Hogwarts would give Voldemort time to search for a relic of Godric Gryffindor, the one founder he never made a horcrux from.
Of course, none of this could have worked because Voldemort could never in a million years fool Ron or Hermione or Dumbledore, not even for a minute. But there’s Voldemort’s greatest weakness again—he doesn’t understand love.
The latest class of NASA astronauts, recruited in 2013 and already in training, will also be candidates for the first trip to Mars, and for the first time in NASA history, 50 percent of them are female.
The class of is made up of eight recruits in total – Josh Cassada, Victor Glover, Tyler Hague, Christina Hammock, Nicole Aunapu Mann, Anne McClain, Jessica Meir, and Andrew Morgan – selected from a pool of around 6,100 applicants. That’s a fierce 0.0013 percent success rate.
The application process alone took 18 months of rigorous medical and psychological testing, and the recruits are now going through two years of training before they’ll officially join NASA’s 46 currently active astronauts.
But what’s really cool is that they’re the first class to be candidates for the mission to Mars. “If we go to Mars, we’ll be representing our entire species in a place we’ve never been before. To me it’s the highest thing a human being can achieve,” McClain told Ginny Graves in an exclusive interview for Glamour magazine at the end of last year.
That training, as you can imagine, is pretty intense, with the candidates learning how to fly T-38 supersonic jets, practicing walking around underwater in spacesuit that weigh 181 kg (400 pounds), and surviving what’s called the vomit comet, which simulates weightlessness through freefall.
They’re also being taught a whole bunch of general survival skills that might help them cope with the myriad things that could go wrong on the Red Planet.
If you ever feel like archaeological mysteries are impossible to solve without positing aliens, just remember that archaeologists ONLY JUST NOW realised that wet sand is easier to drag stuff along on than dry sand… and that this probably means Egyptian images showing people pouring water from vases in front of stone blocks as they were pulled are probably actually depicting the way those stones were pulled, not some religious ritual of “blessing the rocks”.
FYI in academia, “probably had religious significance” means “I haven’t got a clue what this is for”.
People who aren’t academics, but who have knowledge of things like spinning fibre, knitting, carving, smithing, building, hairdressing etc, keep on astounding academia by having insights into stuff they thought was a mystery.
I sincerely believe that by 7th year Ravenclaws would just tell the door to their common room to fuck off and it would open for them
Q “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” A “You shouldn’t shove either up your arse.” “…Technically, yes.”
Imagine it, a poor First Year is waiting outside the common room, they can’t answer the riddle in a way to appease the eagle and must wait until someone else to answer it for them. It’s getting late, they’re starting to resign themselves to having to spend the night here.
Suddenly, their saviour comes! It’s a seventh year! Back from a night finishing off their Araithmancy essay in the Library. They look angry, but our poor little first year squares their shoulders, waiting to see what will happen, and hope that they’ll keep the door open for them.
The Seventh Year bangs the handle against the wall, and a slightly disgruntled voice asks the question again: “What is the truth?”
The Student Replies, “The Truth is that I am so fucking sick of all these mother fucking questions about stupid fucking topics like this you bloody fuck-witted bastard. Who in the name of Merlin’s saggy left testicle gives a fucking damn about all this shit anyway? I’ve been working my arse off in the library for the last seven hours now let me the fuck in or, truthfully, I’ll blast my way in and take you with me.”
The eagle knocker tutts, but allows the student entry anyway, and our little first year enters, eyes wide and in shock. They watch the seventh year go up to their bedroom, awe all over their face at their new hero. They did, indeed, learn something that day by waiting for someone to arrive, they learnt that swearing has a magic all of it’s fucking own, and that sometimes it is big and clever to use it.
