At the beginning of Goblet of Fire, when everyone was getting ready to leave for the Quidditch World Cup, it was said that you had to be at the Portkey at a specific time in order for it to work... they were even counting down if I'm not mistaken. So how is it then, that later on in the story, Cedric and Harry pick up the cup at the end of the Triwizard Tournament, and are transported immediately to the graveyard and Voldemort? Does this mean that someone knew the exact moment they were going to reach the cup? How is this possible?

This has really been bothering me, if I've missed something sorry

good question. but the trophey wasn't a portkey at first. i guess since it was voldemort's doing, it's probably some other kind of portkey with slight alterations. like, they specified the person needed to touch it in order to activate it. something like that, lol! oh well, that's what i think

I've thought about this for a long time, but could never come up with an answer to the question. Doomed_renascence has a good point.

Perhaps portkeys can be like, set, to have a longer or shorter window of time where they can be used...
For example, the Quidditch World Cup was a massive logistical operation, and everything had to be timed right, arrivals and so on, so the portkey's time could have been set for just then, so they could move on and....yeah...
Or, possibly, as everyone had to be touching it at the exact same time, the way it was worked was that they all touched the portkey just before it was activated, and held on, like so no-one was left behind...ohhh, I'm full of theories, me!!

I have a question...
If Moody (Barty Crouch Jr.) can set the trophey into portkey, and he had to do many things like giving clues of second task to Cedric, stop other contestant from reaching the trophey first (among other things...) to make sure Harry get to the trophey first, why didn't he take a simpler way by turning any object to portkey and send Harry to Voldy straight away?

i thought these a spell I read somewhere that can change any object to portkey...*checking* yep! it's called 'Portus'...

good point! that's a good question. i honestly have no idea why he didn't just turn some random thing into a portkey... though i suppose it would be far easier for him to turn the cup into one, because it would take longer for people to find out about harry's disappearance. and it also couldn't be as easily traced back to him...

Yeah, I think it needed to be more subtle...the other thing is, did the date of the last task have any actual significance? *I can't find my copy of GoF*, because that might have had something to do with it....and getting everyone organized and stuff...

The last task was on 24th June, months after the second task (which was in February, I think...)

Why is it important to get everyone organized though...the more people involve, the more people will realize immediately of Harry's disapperance....

I couldn't think of any reason right now....do you think it's another slip from JKR?

Hiya. When I read GoF, my assumption was that Portkeys couldn't be made going into or out of Hogwarts without the headmaster's approval (as I can't see the point of prohibitting Apparating if whole groups are allowed to port in and out of the castle and grounds by way of Portkeys), and that Dumbledore did give permission for the Triwizard Cup to be a portkey, which was supposed to take the first person who touched it from the hidden center of the maze to the winner's circle on the lawn in full view of the stands. I also assumed that Barty Crouch basically highjacked the Portkey by putting a second Portus spell on it to take the winner to the graveyard instead.

Of course, why J.K. Rowling doesn't just take a sentence or two to explain all this I don't know. But my theory does explain a few things, like how anyone was going to know when there was a winner when they couldn't see into the maze, and why the Cup was able to take Harry from the graveyard back to Hogwarts. And why Barty Crouch wasn't able to just call Harry into his office and hand him a book he had turned into a Portkey.

When Portkeys have a certain time, I think that means something like "you have six hours to touch the Portkey, then it won't work anymore". So when they're counting down, maybe it actually means that if you don't get to it in time, it won't be activated.

I don't think Portkeys are sensitive to touch because why would pseudo-Moody go through all that trouble of eliminating people? And if it WAS sensitive to touch, then they wouldn't have been so surprised to see Cedric. Also, the whole point of Portkeys as disgusting Muggle objects in the Muggle world (during the QWC) was so that Muggles didn't touch it.

And Portkeys might not be able to get IN Hogwarts, you could probably get OUT with a Portkey. And if you can have an illegal unregistered Animagus[sp?], then I guess you can have an illegal Portkey. Portkeys have to be registered because Fudge said something about that near the end of the book when Dumbledore turned a wizard head or something into a Portkey. It's Voldemort we're talking about - of course he'd do something illegal. You can't just turn anything into a Portkey because you don't know where's Harry going to go. It'd look suspicious if Barty Crouch Jr. was following Harry the whole way while he was in there. If Harry reached the trophy, it'd take longer for everyone else to realize he was gone. Students would probably think it took them to a winner's circle or something.

I don't think the trophy was originally planned to be a Portkey in the tournament. So I don't think there was an intended winner's circle either. The contestants didn't know about it. And I vaguely remember surprised reactions from the professors.

what i don't get is how the cup became a portkey back to hogwarts...at the world cup, old portkeys were thrown out, not turned into portkeys back to the original locations...so either one of the death eaters did it (really don't think so) or those weird priori incantatem ghost things did it (also unlikley)...so?

I think it was one of the Death Eaters, this seems to me the most likely version. It could be true because also at the final scene, at the third task of the Triwizard Tournament, the cup was also turned into portkey by a Death Eater. Just my thoughts.

but which deather eater would be willing to help the enemy right in front of voldemort?

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