Chapter One: The Riddle House
In chapter one of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Tom Riddle murders his parents, Wormtail has regrets, and Frank Bryce is a goddamn hero.
(Please be advised that this is a reread and I will be discussing book and movie spoilers.)
The first three books in Harry Potter have a lot of commonality to them. There’s a routine we’ve established: open with the horrible Dursley’s, escape the horrible Dursley’s to Hogwarts, have wacky Hogwarts adventures, close with the horrible Dursley’s. And then we get to Goblet of Fire.
“The villagers of Little Hangleton still called it ‘the Riddle House’ even though it had been many years since the Riddle family had lived there.”
“Fifty years before, at daybreak on a fine summer’s morning, when the Riddle house had still been well kept and impressive, a maid had entered the drawing room to find all three Riddles dead.”
I’m not going to front, even though Harry Potter himself is my favorite Harry Potter character, I LOVE when the books open with a random chapter like this. Add to that Riddle backstory and I am SOLD.
We get told the story from our unseen narrator from the Muggle point of view of a wizard murder, which I find fascinating. How would you solve a wizard murder as a Muggle? Are all unsolved mysteries wizard violence? Is Jack the Ripper a wizard crime?!
No one particularly cares that the Riddles were murdered because they sound like horrible assholes, but stick a pin in that one, we’ll come back to it book six.
The real travesty of this chapter, and perhaps this book, is the raw deal deal the Muggle Frank Bryce gets. The poor guy wasted his youth in a war getting injured and likely PTSD, comes back to be framed for a triple homicide, and spends the next fifty years being a pariah for something he didn’t do. No one believes him about the “young boy” he saw around the mansion the day of the murders, and then when he very bravely confronts Voldemort and Wormtail, worried about a boy being harmed that he’s never even heard of, he gets murdered. It’s honestly a tragic plotline, and I’m very sad the movie screwed up this chapter so very badly.
But let’s back up a bit. Wormtail’s gone crawling back (probably quite literally) to Voldemort as he’s got very little other choice, and he’s trying to talk our little snake baby into targeting someone besides Harry Potter for whatever mysterious evil plot he’s up to. I imagine most of their conversations up to this point have been a reenactment of Pinky and the Brain:
Wormtail being incompetent while Voldemort seethes with irritation.
It’s here I want to chat about Wormtail a little. It’s always been interesting to me that while the fandom loves talking their hatred of Umbridge, the villainy of Voldemort, the delicious destructiveness of Bellatrix, and the slimy snobbery of Lucius, we rarely discuss Wormtail. Why? I find him fascinating. What caused him to betray his closest friends? He clearly regrets going back to Voldemort already. He’s trying to save Harry. He feels guilt over Bertha Jorkins. Why is he the way he is? Why doesn’t the fandom hate him as loudly as they hate others? Is it that he’s boring, or pitiable? Give me your thoughts on Wormtail!
But let’s end this chapter with pouring one out for Frank Bryce, a true Gryffindor at heart.
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Do you like the divergence of opening Goblet of Fire in a non Dursley way?
Why does no one believe Frank about the young boy?
Why does Wormtail go back to Voldemort?
Why doesn’t the fandom discuss Wormtail more?
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