Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (warning spoilers)

I missed last week due the the Holidays, but I want to continue my series about literary elements in Harry Potter. I have been focused on the element of foreshadowing and there sure was a lot of it in Harry Potter 4. There were two subplots that J.K. Rowling kept dropping hints about. The first element was Mad-Eye Moody's impostor replacement by Barty Crouch Jr. From the beginning there were subtle hints that Moody had been replaced. When Barty was finally revealed and detailed what he had done the hints and clues became evident.

The second subplot with foreshadowing and clues was the Rita Skeeter (Skeeter, sound uniquely insect like, no?) All along there were these fairly subtle references to beetles, and so when Hermione smugly revealed that she had Rita in the bag (or jar) and told us how she had put together the clues, I personally thought that I had solved it right along with her.

Another of my favorite examples of foreshadowing and dropping clues was during the scene when Bary Crouch Jr. has Harry in the Defense Against the Dark Arts office and Snape appears in his foe glass. J.K. Rowling is just too good to have done that incidentally. The foe glass, whether it was Moody's or Barty's is definitely showing Barty's foes as he had explained to Harry earlier. Well, Snape shows up in the foe glass. There is some argument on Goodreads as to whether Snape is actually good or not and whether people actually thought he was good. Personally, I wish that I had noted this a little earlier. Reading through it again, I am convinced that this is meant as a clue that Snape is a foe to Voldemort's biggest supporter. Constantly through the books J.K. Rowling has left us clues that Snape was in fact to be trusted. Dumbledore is virtually never wrong and never on anything big. Dumbledore's continued support of Snape is the biggest clue that Snape is, if not good, at least loyal. But this little clue is another piece of evidence that Snape is good.

Finally, during the confrontation with Voldemort and then Dumbledore's analysis of what happened, we see that rather than making himself more invulnerable, Voldemort has made himself more vulnerable, only later do we realize that he is more vulnerable to Harry specifically. By using Harry's blood to rebuild his body he has in fact overcome the protection provided by Lily when she died, but also strenghtened the connection between Harry and himself making it possible for Harry to read his mind regularly through the rest of the books.