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The Map of Hogwarts and Surrounding Areas: journeys around the grounds in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
This section shows the likely routes around the grounds which the characters take in specific scenes, separated up by book.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone The first years cross the lake to the castle Malfoy takes Neville's Remembrall during broom-training Snape goes to meet Quirrel in the woods Detention with Hagrid in the Forbidden Forest
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets The descent of the flying Ford Anglia Harry and Ron follow the spiders into the Forest
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban The Hippogriff paddock To the Shrieking Shack, via Hogsmeade To the Shrieking Shack, doubled in time
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Hagrid, Maxime and Harry visit the Dragons The Trio visit Sirius in his cave The Second Task Barty Snr is found in the woods The Third Task
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Hagrid takes his students to see the Thestrals Snape's worst memory Hagrid takes Harry and Hermione to visit Grawp The gang find Thestrals to ride to the Ministry
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Harry and Tonks walk from the station to Hogwarts Katie Bell touches the cursed necklace Dumbledore and Harry fly from Hogsmeade to the Astronomy Tower Snape and the Death Eaters flee the castle
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Hagrid and Grawp cross the Forest Harry goes to Voldemort in the Forest
'Bong-sewer,' said Hagrid, beaming at her, and holding out a hand to help her down the golden steps. Madame Maxime closed the door behind her, Hagrid offered her his arm, and they set off around the edge of the paddock containing Madame Maxime's giant winged horses, with Harry, totally bewildered, running to keep up with them. [GoF ch. #19; p. 285]
And still they walked, Harry getting more and more irritated as he jogged along in their wake, checking his watch every now and then. Hagrid had some harebrained scheme in hand, which might make him miss Sirius. If they didn't get there soon, he was going to turn around, go straight back to the castle and leave Hagrid to enjoy his moonlit stroll with Madame Maxime ... But then -- when they had walked so far around the perimeter of the Forest that the castle and the lake were out of sight -- Harry heard something. Men were shouting up ahead ... then came a deafening, ear-splitting roar ... Hagrid led Madame Maxime around a clump of trees and came to a halt. Harry hurried up alongside them -- for a split second, he thought he was seeing bonfires and men darting around them -- and then his mouth fell open. Dragons. Four fully grown, enormous, vicious-looking dragons were rearing onto their hind legs inside an enclosure fenced with thick planks of wood, [GoF ch. #19; p. 285]
Harry sped up, skirting the edge of the Forest; [cut] when, without warning, he ran into something very solid. [cut] [cut] it was Karkaroff. [cut] he crept back under the cover of the trees, and started to edge forwards towards the place where the dragons were. Very slowly and very carefully, Harry got to his feet and set off again, as fast as he could without making too much noise, hurrying through the darkness back towards Hogwarts. He had no doubt whatsoever what Karkaroff was up to. He had sneaked off his ship to try and find out what the first task was going to be. He might even have spotted Hagrid and Madame Maxime heading off around the Forest together -- they were hardly difficult to spot at a distance ... and now all Karkaroff had to do was follow the sound of voices [cut] Harry reached the castle, slipped in through the front doors and began to climb the marble stairs; [GoF ch. #19; p. 289/290]
Harry (white dots) walks down from the main doors (0) to Hagrid's cabin (1) in the dark. Harry and Hagrid then go to Beauxbatons' giant caravan (2), collect Madame Maxime and walk with her around the edge of the paddock (3) containing the giant flying horses (shown to scale). They then stroll around a belling curve of Forest edge until they reach a point (4) where both the castle and the lake are cut off from view. Almost immedately after that they round a clump of trees (5) and find themselves facing a paddock containing dragons (6). Almost certainly this is a reinforced version of the paddock where they met the Hippogriffs, which was also reached by starting from Hagrid's cabin and walking around a curve in the edge of the Forest.
Harry then sets off at speed back to the main doors of the castle, but round about (4) he collides with Karkaroff (gold dots) who has walked down from the Durmstrang ship (7), probably following the carriage track for much of the way as it lay on his route.
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Bagman gave Harry's shoulder a quick squeeze, and returned to the judges' table; he pointed his wand at his throat as he had done at the World Cup, said 'Sonorus!' and his voice boomed out across the dark water towards the stands. [GoF ch. #26; p. 428]
The whistle echoed shrilly in the cold, still air; the stands erupted with cheers and applause; without looking to see what the other champions were doing, Harry pulled off his shoes and socks, pulled the handful of Gillyweed out of his pocket, stuffed it into his mouth, and waded out into the lake. [GoF ch. #26; p. 428]
The lake was so cold he felt the skin on his legs searing as though this was fire, not icy water. His sodden robes weighed him down as he walked in deeper; now the water was over his knees, and his rapidly numbing feet were slipping over silt and flat, slimy stones. [GoF ch. #26; p. 428]
Silence pressed upon his ears as he soared over a strange, dark, foggy landscape. He could only see ten feet around him, so that as he sped through the water new scenes seemed to loom suddenly out of the oncoming darkness: forests of rippling, tangled black weed, wide plains of mud littered with dull, glimmering stones. He swam deeper and deeper, out towards the middle of the lake, his eyes wide, staring through the eerily grey-lit water around him to the shadow beyond, where the water became opaque. Small fish flickered past him like silver darts. Once or twice he thought he saw something larger moving ahead of him, but when he got nearer, he discovered it to be nothing but a large, blackened log, or a dense clump of weed. There was no sign of any of the other champions, merpeople, Ron – nor, thankfully, the giant squid. Light-green weed stretched ahead of him as far as he could see, two feet deep, like a meadow of very overgrown grass. Harry was staring unblinkingly ahead of him, trying to discern shapes through the gloom ... and then, without warning, something grabbed hold of his ankle. Harry twisted his body around and saw a Grindylow [GoF ch. #26; p. 429/430]
He whipped around, and saw Moaning Myrtle floating hazily in front of him [cut] He swam on for what felt like at least twenty minutes. He was passing over vast expanses of black mud now, which swirled murkily as he disturbed the water. [GoF ch. #26; p. 431]
Harry swam faster, and soon saw a large rock emerge out of the muddy water ahead. It had paintings of merpeople on it; they were carrying spears, and chasing what looked like the giant squid. Harry swam on past the rock, following the mer-song. [GoF ch. #26; p. 431]
A cluster of crude stone dwellings stained with algae loomed suddenly out of the gloom on all sides. Here and there at the dark windows, Harry saw faces ... faces that bore no resemblance at all to the painting of the mermaid in the Prefects’ bathroom ... [GoF ch. #26; p. 432]
Harry sped on, staring around, and soon the dwellings became more numerous; there were gardens of weed around some of them, and he even saw a pet Grindylow tied to a stake outside one door. Merpeople were emerging on all sides now, watching him eagerly, pointing at his webbed hands and gills, talking behind their hands to each other. Harry sped around a corner and a very strange sight met his eyes. A whole crowd of merpeople was floating in front of the houses that lined what looked like a mer-version of a village square. A choir of merpeople was singing in the middle, calling the champions towards them, and behind them rose a crude sort of statue; a gigantic merperson hewn from a boulder. Four people were bound tightly to the tail of the stone merperson. [GoF ch. #26; p. 432]
There were rocks littering the lake bottom. He dived and snatched up a particularly jagged one, and returned to the statue. He began to hack at the ropes binding Ron, and after several minutes’ hard work, they broke apart. Ron floated, unconscious, a few inches above the lake bottom, drifting a little in the ebb of the water. [GoF ch. #26; p. 433]
The crowd in the stands was making a great deal of noise; shouting and screaming [GoF ch. #26; p. 436]
They pulled Fleur's sister through the water, back towards the bank where the judges stood watching [GoF ch. #26; p. 437]
When Harry (white dots) goes to the second Triwizard Tournament task, he leaves the Entrance Hall (0) and sprints south along the western side of the lake, passing by the Durmstrang ship (1). He rounds the end of the lake (2) and reaches the judges' table (3). We can surmise that this is on a bit of the bank that sticks out, because it and the grandstands (4) are on the same side of the lake, and yet when Bagman magnifies his voice it "boom[s] out across the dark water towards the stands", rather than along the bank towards them.
After wading down what is evidently quite a gradual slope (5) into the water, over flat, slimy stones, Harry begins to swim towards the middle of the lake. Either the water is peaty or he goes quite deep almost immediately, as his surroundings are said to be dark and foggy. He comes first to a forest of tangled black weed (6) and then a plain of mud (7) "littered with dull, glimmering stones".
After this he comes to an area of grass-like light-green weed (8) which "stretched ahead of him as far as he could see" - although we've already been told that visibility is only about ten feet. Here he encounters a Grindylow - and Moaning Myrtle.
For reasons explained in detail in the section on the grounds we don't want to make the lake too huge, both because it has to seem reasonable for Harry and Hermione to stroll round it three times in one afternoon, and because Harry has to be able to sprint from the main castle doors to a point partway round the southern end of the lake in around five minutes. Nor do we really want to lengthen Harry's swim by moving the mer village right up by the castle, since that would put the mermen under the castle's sewage outfall (we know that Myrtle's toilet flushes into the lake). Therefore, I am assuming that when he meets the Grindylow Harry has only gone a bit under two hundred yards. Two hundred yards could seem like a long way if you could only see ten feet ahead of you.
Harry then swims for around four hundred yards over an expanse of black mud (9): probably the water is now too deep to allow enough light through to support much plant-life on the lake bottom.
Eventually he comes to a large rock (10) decorated with tribal paintings, which marks the start of the mer vollage (11). He swims along a sort of subaquatic street until he comes to a town square which houses a merman statue, a choir and the "prisoners" Harry has come to rescue. Once he has untied them Harry, Ron and Fleur's sister Gabrielle (gold dots) swim back to the judges (3) - probably by a more direct route (12) than Harry came out by, since they are now swimming at the surface and can see where they're going.
They left the castle at noon the next day to find a weak silver sun shining down upon the grounds. They went into Gladrags Wizardwear [cut] Then, at half past one, they made their way up the High Street, past Dervish and Banges, and out towards the edge of the village. Harry had never been in this direction before. The winding lane was leading them out into the wild countryside around Hogsmeade. The cottages were fewer here, and their gardens larger; they were walking towards the foot of the mountain in whose shadow Hogsmeade lay. Then they turned a corner, and saw a stile at the end of the lane. Waiting for them, its front paws on the topmost bar, was a very large, shaggy black dog [cut] The black dog [cut] turned and began to trot away from them across the scrubby patch of ground which rose to meet the rocky foot of the mountain. Harry, Ron and Hermione climbed over the stile and followed. Sirius led them to the very foot of the mountain, where the ground was covered with boulders and rocks. [cut] They followed Sirius higher, up onto the mountain itself. For nearly half an hour they climbed a steep, winding and stony path [cut] sweating in the sun [cut] Then, at last, Sirius slipped out of sight, and when they reached the place where he had vanished, they saw a narrow fissure in the rock. They squeezed into it, and found themselves in a cool, dimly lit cave. Tethered at the end of it, one end of his rope around a large rock, was Buckbeak the Hippogriff. [GoF ch. #27; p. 450-452]
He transformed into the great black dog before they left the cave, and they walked back down the mountainside with him, across the boulder-strewn ground, and back to the stile. Here he allowed each of them to pat him on the head, before turning and setting off at a run around the outskirts of the village. Harry, Ron and Hermione made their way made their way back into Hogsmeade, and up towards Hogwarts. [GoF ch. #27; p. 463]
Starting from Gladrags Wizardwear (0) the Trio (white dots) walk up the High Street and bear left at the fork between the lanes to Hogwarts and to the mountain, passing Dervish & Banges (1) on their left just at the start of the winding lane leading to the stile and the mountain. They must then walk for about a mile and a half along that lane (2) before reaching the stile, because normal walking speed is around three miles an hour and they set out at 1:30pm to arrive at 2pm.
As they get further away from the village (3) and further into wild countryside they notice that the cottages become more widely-spaced and their gardens bigger. Although it isn't mentioned, they will see the edge of the Forbidden Forest about a quarter of a mile away on their right. I assume that they are still walking through rough fields rather than moorland at this point, since they are heading for a stile (a device which creates a passage through or over a field boundary, designed to be useable for humans but not for livestock), and also because there should be plenty of farmland around Hogsmeade to feed the population.
Eventually they turn a corner and see a stile (4) at the end of the lane. Since they don't see it until they turn the corner there must be some sort of barrier to sight, probably trees. At the stile they meet Sirus-as-Padfoot.
Although we are not told it, the fact that there is a stile means that there must be, or at least have once been, a field of livestock on the other side of the stile. They must walk across this field, and it must be the scrubby ground which they see Padfoot crossing as he moves away from the stile.
Padfoot leads them out into rough moorland (5), which becomes increasingly boulder-strewn as they approach the foot of the mountain (6). From there they follow Sirius/Padfoot up a "steep, winding and stoney path" (7) for about a mile (just under half an hour, probably going a bit slower than normal walking speed) before reaching Sirius's cave (8). Because we know that this is after noon, and that the sun is shining directly on them as they climb, we can say that they are going broadly towards and around the west face of the mountain.
When they come back down the mountain they follow the same route back as far as the stile (4), where Padfoot (gold dots) heads off to run round the outskirts of the village (9) - which must include outlying farms, since they are about a mile and a half from the village proper at this point. The Trio continue back down the lane as far as Dervish & Banges (1) and then turn sharp left into the lane (10) which leads back to Hogwarts (11).
They walked down the dark lawn to the Quidditch stadium, turned through a gap in the stands, and walked out onto the pitch. [GoF ch. #28; p. 477/478]
Harry and Krum left the stadium together, but Krum did not set a course for the Durmstrang ship. Instead, he walked towards the forest. 'What're we going this way for?' said Harry, as they passed Hagrid's cabin, and the illuminated Beauxbatons carriage. 'Don't vont to be overheard,' said Krum shortly. When at last they had reached a quiet stretch of ground, a short way from the Beauxbatons' horses' paddock, Krum stopped in the shade of the trees and turned to face Harry. [GoF ch. #28; p. 479]
Next moment a man had staggered out from behind a tall oak. For a moment, Harry didn't recognise him ... then he realised it was Mr Crouch. [GoF ch. #28; p. 480]
'Hurry, von't you?' Krum called after him, as Harry sprinted away from the Forest, and up through the dark grounds. They were deserted; Bagman, Cedric and Fleur had disappeared. Harry tore up the stone steps, through the oak front doors [GoF ch. #28; p. 483]
'Indeed,' said Dumbledore, and he quickened his pace as they hurried out into the pitch-darkness. [cut] 'Where are they?' said Dumbledore, as the Beauxbatons carriage emerged from the darkness. 'Over here,' said Harry, moving in front of Dumbledore, leading the way through the trees. He couldn't hear Crouch's voice any more, but he knew where he was going; it hadn't been much past the Beauxbatons carriage ... somewhere around here ... [GoF ch. #28; p. 485]
Harry and Dumbledore hurried forwards. Krum was sprawled on the Forest floor. He seemed to be unconscious. There was no sign at all of Mr Crouch. [cut] He raised his wand into the air and pointed it in the direction of Hagrid's cabin. Harry saw something silvery dart out of it and streak away through the trees like a ghostly bird. Then Dumbledore bent over Krum again, pointed his wand at him and muttered, 'Enervate.' [GoF ch. #28; p. 486]
The sound of thunderous footfalls reached them, and Hagrid came panting into sight with Fang at his heels. [cut] 'Hagrid, I need you to fetch Professor Karkaroff,' [cut] [cut] [cut] Moody was limping towards them, leaning on his staff [GoF ch. #28; p. 486]
'Karkaroff, please, Hagrid!' said Dumbledore sharply. 'Oh yeah ... right y'are, Professor ...' said Hagrid, and he turned and disappeared into the dark trees, Fang trotting after him. 'I don't know where Barty Crouch is,' Dumbledore told Moody, 'but it is essential that we find him.' 'I'm onto it,' growled Moody, and he raised [originally 'pulled out'] his wand, and limped off into the Forest. Neither Dumbledore nor Harry spoke again until they heard the unmistakable sounds of Hagrid and Fang returning. Karkaroff was hurrying along behind them. [GoF ch. #28; p. 487]
'I'll leave Fang with yeh, Headmaster,' Hagrid said, still staring menacingly at Karkaroff, who was still sprawled at the foot of the tree, tangled in furs and tree-roots. 'Stay, Fang. C'mon, Harry.' They marched in silence past the Beauxbatons carriage and up towards the castle. 'How dare he,' Hagrid growled, as they strode past the lake. [GoF ch. #28; p. 488]
'For a week I waited for my father to arrive at Hogwarts. At last, one evening, the map showed my father entering the grounds. I pulled on my Invisibility Cloak, and went down to meet him. He was walking around the edge of the Forest. Then Potter came, and Krum. I waited. [cut] Potter ran to get Dumbledore. I Stunned Krum. I killed my father.' [cut] 'You killed your father,' Dumbledore said, in the same soft voice. 'What did you do with the body?' 'Carried it into the Forest. Covered it with the Invisibility Cloak. I had the map with me. I watched Potter run into the castle. [cut] I watched Potter bringing Dumbledore out of the castle. I walked back out of the Forest, doubled round behind them, went to meet them. [cut] 'Dumbledore told me to go and look for my father. I went back to my father's body. Watched the map. When everyone was gone, I Transfigured my father's body. He became a bone ... I buried it, while wearing the Invisibility Cloak, in the freshly dug earth in front of Hagrid's cabin.' [GoF ch. #35; p. 599]
Harry (white dots) and Cedric leave from the Entrance Hall (0) and walk towards the Quidditch pitch (1), soon leaving the carriage track and continuing down the lawn. Coming along by the side of the lake they then veer right towards the pitch, walk along the side of it and then turn left into the stadium. There they meet up with the other Triwizard contestants and examine the budding Triwizard maze to be used for the third task.
While this is happening, Barty Crouch Snr (gold dots) enters the grounds and makes his way along the edge of the Forest. We are not told which direction he came from or how he entered the grounds. He might just have openly walked in through the main or station gates or he might have come over the wall in an out-of-the-way corner (2). Since wizards can conjure chairs and stretchers they can presumably conjure ladders. At any rate he blunders around the edge of the Forest until he reaches a secluded area (3) which is tucked in behind the Beauxbatons caravan (4), and close to the paddock holding the flying horses (5).
Barty Crouch Jnr, in his guise as false!Moody (red dots), sees his father enter the grounds as indicated by the Marauder's Map. He puts on an Invisibility Cloak and also sets out from the castle (0), making his way towards a rendezvous with his father at (3).
At about the same time Harry, along with Viktor Krum, then leaves the stadium and heads in a direction which is noticeably away from the Durmstrang ship (6) and towards the edge of the Forbidden Forest (7). They pass Hagrid's cabin (8) and the Beauxbatons caravan (4) and arrive at (3) just after false!Moody, who watches them from beneath his Invisibility Cloak.
Harry and Viktor encounter Barty Snr, who emerges from behind a tall oak at the edge of the Forest, and is clearly unwell. Leaving Viktor to guard Barty, Harry sets off for the castle at speed. For reasons explained in the section on the grounds we know there is a sort of frond-like extension of trees here which partially hides the Beauxbatons caravan from the castle, and they are tucked in behind it. Heading for the castle, whose direction must be obvious even at night, Harry probably goes straight through this narrow neck of trees (9).
As soon as Harry has left, false!Moody emerges, stuns Viktor, kills his own father Barty Snr and carries the body a short way into the Forest (10) where he hides it under his Cloak. Harry returns with Dumbledore, going through the trees a bit closer to the Beauxbatons caravan (11) in order to be sure of finding the right place in the dark. They find Viktor, alone and unconscious. Dumbledore then sends his Patronus (grey dots), which takes a direct route through the clump of trees to summon Hagrid.
Hagrid (orange dots) comes running, and false!Moody emerges from the trees, still under his Invisibility Cloak, circles round and appears behind him (12). Hagrid is then sent to fetch Karkaroff from the Durmstrang ship (6), passing through the trees (13) in order to do so and returning with Karkaroff by the same route. Meanwhile false!Moody has gone off into the Forest, apparently to search for Barty Snr but in fact to return to his body (10).
Hagrid quarrels with Karkaroff and he and Harry (white and orange dots) then walk past the Beauxbatons caravan and back up to the castle, going by way of the carriage track (14) which takes them along by the lake (15). Once Dumbledore, Karkaroff and Viktor have also left (mint-green dots), probably heading for the Durmstrang ship (6), false!Moody Transfigures his father's body into a bone, carries him (16) to Hagrid's cabin (8) and buries him in the freshly-dug earth (17) in front of the cabin (where Hagrid had earlier on been teaching the Care of Magical Creatures class about Nifflers) and buries him.
They walked onto the Quidditch pitch, which was now completely unrecognisable. A twenty-foot-high hedge ran all the way around the edge of it. There was a gap right in front of them; the entrance to the vast maze. The passage beyond it looked dark and creepy. [GoF ch. #31; p. 538]
Hagrid, Professor Moody, Professor McGonagall and Professor Flitwick came walking into the stadium [cut] 'We are going to be patrolling the outside of the maze,' said Professor McGonagall to the champions. [GoF ch. #31; p. 539]
[cut] Harry and Cedric hurried forwards into the maze. The towering hedges cast black shadows across the path, and, whether because they were so tall and thick, or because they had been enchanted, the sound of the surrounding crowd was silenced the moment they entered the maze. [GoF ch. #31; p. 539]
After about fifty yards, they reached a fork. [cut] 'See you,' Harry said, and he took the left one, while Cedric took the right. [GoF ch. #31; p. 540]
Harry sped up. His chosen path seemed completely deserted. He turned right, and hurried on, holding his wand high over his head, trying to see as far ahead as possible. Still, there was nothing in sight. [cut] [cut]He reached a second fork. 'Point me,' he whispered to his wand, holding it flat in his palm. The wand spun around once, and pointed towards his right, into solid hedge. That way was north, and he knew that he needed to go north-west for the centre of the maze. The best he could do was to take the left fork, and go right again as soon as possible. The path ahead was empty, too, and when Harry reached a right turn and took it, he again found his way unblocked. [cut] Then he heard movement right behind him. He held out his wand, ready to attack, but its beam fell only upon Cedric, who had just hurried out of a path on the right-hand side. Cedric looked severely shaken. [cut] 'Hagrid's Blast-Ended Skrewts!' he hissed. 'They're enormous – I only just got away!' He shook his head and dived out of sight, along another path. Keen to put plenty of distance between himself and the Skrewts, Harry hurried off again. Then, as he turned a corner, he saw – A Dementor was gliding towards him. [cut] 'Hang on!' he shouted, advancing in the wake of his silver Patronus, 'You're a Boggart! Riddikulus!' [GoF ch. #31; p. 540/541]
[cut] he moved on as quickly and quietly as possible, [cut] Left ... right ... left again ... twice he found himself facing dead ends. He did the Four-Point Spell again, and found that he was going too far east. He turned back, took a right turn, and saw an odd golden mist floating ahead of him. [GoF ch. #31; p. 541]
[Fleur's] scream seemed to have come from somewhere ahead. He took a deep breath, and ran through the enchanted mist. The world turned upside-down. Harry was hanging from the ground, with his hair on end, his glasses dangling off his nose, threatening to fall into the bottomless sky. [GoF ch. #31; p. 542]
[cut] the world righted itself. Harry fell forwards onto his knees on the wonderfully solid ground. He felt temporarily limp with shock. He took a deep, steadying breath, then got up again, and hurried forwards, [cut] He paused at a junction of two paths and looked around for some sign of Fleur. [cut] Harry took the right fork with a feeling of increasing unease ... [cut] The Cup was somewhere close by, and it sounded as though Fleur was no longer in the running. [GoF ch. #31; p. 542/543]
He met nothing for ten minutes, except dead ends. Twice he took the same wrong turning. Finally, he found a new route, and started to jog along it, his wand-light waving, making his shadow flicker and distort on the hedge walls. Then he rounded another corner, and found himself facing a Blast-Ended Skrewt. [cut] The Skrewt was inches from him when it froze – he had managed to hit it on its fleshy, shell-less underside. Panting, Harry pushed himself away from it and ran, hard, in the opposite direction – [GoF ch. #31; p. 543]
He took a left path, and hit a dead end, a right, and hit another: forcing himself to stop, heart hammering, he performed the Four-Point Spell again, backtracked, and chose a path that would take him north-west. He had been hurrying along the new path for a few minutes, when he heard something in the path running parallel to his own that made him stop dead. [cut] The air was suddenly full of Cedric's yells. Horrified, Harry began sprinting up his path, trying to find a way into Cedric's. When none appeared, he tried the Reductor curse again. It wasn't very effective, but it burnt a small hole in the hedge [cut] he struggled through it, tearing his robes and, looking to his right, saw Cedric jerking and twitching on the ground, Krum standing over him. [GoF ch. #31; p. 544]
They proceeded up the dark path without speaking, then Harry turned left, and Cedric right. Cedric's footsteps soon died away. Harry moved on, continuing to use the Four-Point Spell, making sure he was moving in the right direction. [cut] Harry sped up. Every so often he hit more dead ends, but the increasing darkness made him feel sure he was getting near the heart of the maze. Then, as he strode down a long, straight path, he saw movement once again, and his beam of wand-light hit an extraordinary creature, [cut] It was a sphinx. [cut] She was not crouching as if to spring, but pacing from side to side of the path, blocking his progress. Then she spoke, in a deep, hoarse voice. 'You are very near your goal. The quickest way is past me.' [GoF ch. #31; p. 545/546]
The sphinx smiled more broadly. She got up, stretched her front legs, and then moved aside for him to pass. [cut] He had to be close now, he had to be ... his wand was telling him he was bang on course; [cut] He had a choice of paths up ahead. 'Point me!' he whispered again to his wand, and it spun around and pointed him to the right-hand one. He dashed up this one, and saw light ahead. The Triwizard Cup was gleaming on a plinth a hundred yards away. Harry had just broken into a run, when a dark figure hurtled out onto the path in front of him. Cedric was going to get there first. Cedric was sprinting as fast as he could towards the cup, and Harry knew he would never catch up, Cedric was much taller, had much longer legs – Then Harry saw something immense over a hedge to his left, moving quickly along a path that intersected with his own; it was moving so fast Cedric was about to run into it, and Cedric, his eyes on the Cup, had not seen it – 'Cedric!' Harry bellowed. 'On your left!' Cedric looked around just in time to hurl himself past the thing and avoid colliding with it but, in his haste, he tripped. Harry saw Cedric's wand fly out of his hand, as a gigantic spider stepped into the path, and began to bear down upon Cedric. 'Stupefy!' Harry yelled again; the spell hit the spider's gigantic, hairy black body but, for all the good it did, he might as well have thrown a stone at it; the spider jerked, scuttled around, and ran at Harry instead. 'Stupefy! Impedimenta! Stupefy!' But it was no use – the spider was either so large, or so magical, that the spells were doing no more than aggravating it – Harry had one horrifying glimpse of eight shining black eyes, and razor-sharp pincers, before it was upon him. [GoF ch. #31; p. 547/548]
'Harry!' he heard Cedric shouting. 'You all right? Did it fall on you?' 'No,' Harry called back, panting. [cut] He leaned against the hedge, gasping for breath, and looked around. Cedric was standing feet from the Triwizard Cup, which was gleaming behind him. [GoF ch. #31; p. 549]
He grabbed Harry's arm below the shoulder, and helped Harry limp towards the plinth where the Cup stood. When they had reached it, they both held out a hand out over one of the Cup's gleaming handles. [GoF ch. #31; p. 551]
'Accio!' Harry yelled, pointing his wand at the Triwizard Cup. It flew into the air, and soared towards him -- Harry caught it by the handle -- He heard Voldemort's scream of fury at the same moment as he felt the jerk behind his navel that meant the Portkey had worked -- it was speeding him away in a whirl of wind and colour, Cedric along with him ... they were going back ... [GoF ch. #34; p. 580/581]
Harry felt himself slam flat into the ground; his face was pressed into grass [GoF ch. #35; p. 582]
He had come back to the edge of the maze. He could see the stands rising above him [GoF ch. #35; p. 583]
'You arrived back in the middle of the lawn clutching Cedric's dead body ... none of us saw what happened in the maze ...' [OotP ch. #13; p. 226/227]
The fact that the maze used in the third task of the Triwizard Tournament is seen growing, and takes an appreciable time to grow, suggests that it may be fully physically real and not just some sort of construct in wizard space. I have tried, therefore, to work out a version of the maze which would fit what we are told and would fit inside the bounds of the Quidditch pitch, at least if we can assume, and include, a wide offside strip.
The main problem is one of scale. The pitch is five hundred feet long according to Quidditch Through the Ages, not counting any offside strip, so even with an offside strip included the entire maze is not more than about two hundred yards long. It is impossible therefore that the Triwizard Cup should be at or near the centre of the maze, and Harry should arrive at or near the centre of the maze and yet be a hundred yards from the Cup, unless the maze is at least partly in wizard space. If the maze exists wholly in the regular physical world then either Harry is at the centre of the pitch and the Cup is down one end, or vice versa. Since we are repeatedly told that Harry is heading for the centre I've placed Harry at the centre of the pitch at the point where he sees the Cup a hundred yards away, and put the Cup down one end of the pitch.
Note that because Harry is tending towards the centre whenever he can, rather than wandering randomly over the whole area, it is unlikely that his total ramble around the maze amounts to more than about half a mile, and most of the time he will only walk along a given path for about fifty feet before it or he diverges. It is possible, of course, that even though the maze has physical reality it is distorted through wizard space in order to make the internal distances seem much longer than they really are, in the same manner as the images on Google Streetview, which makes buildings which in reality are only twenty yards away appear to recede into the distance. If that's the case then the Cup doesn't need to be a whole real hundred yards from the centre, although it still needs to be at a significant distance from it. It would probably mean that the contestants would appear to the spectators to be moving in slow motion.
We know that there is space inside the stadium and outside the maze for four patrollers - including Hagrid - to be able to walk around the edge of the maze: this is probably a walkway between the bottom tier of the grandstand and some kind of barrier separating the seats from the pitch. The claim that the hedges which make up the maze are twenty feet high must be viewed with caution. If they really are twenty feet high, and the patrollers were patrolling at ground level and, of necessity, close to the base of the outer hedge, they probably wouldn't even be able to see the warning red sparks fired by distressed contestants - Flitwick certainly wouldn't be able to - and if they did see them they wouldn't be able to see where they came from, other than whether it was left or right of their own current position. Even Hagrid would just see glitter appear in the sky over the top of a solid wall of green.
JK Rowling is rather fond of using twenty foot as a generic description of a tall thing, without much idea of what it looks like. In OotP she has Grawp rip up a "towering pine" and then Hermione later refers to him "ripping up twenty-foot pine trees", although twenty foot would be tiny for a pine tree. In DH we find a full-sized adult giant described thus: "[Harry's] way was impeded by a monumental foot, which swung down out of the darkness and made the ground on which he stood shudder. He looked up: a giant stood before him, twenty feet high, its head hidden in shadow, nothing but its tree-like, hairy shins illuminated by light from the castle doors. With one brutal, fluid movement, it smashed a massive fist through an upper window". The fact that Hagrid is able to walk upright inside the castle shows that the ceilings of Hogwarts are about twelve feet high, so a twenty foot giant would be able to reach no higher than the second floor (American third floor), and that only by stretching his or her arms above his or her head, or jumping up and down. The doors should illuminate him or her up to mid-chest.
In both these cases, Rowling has used "twenty feet" to stand in for a height which internal evidence suggests was more like fifty feet. But she also gets figures wrong the other way. In GoF she says that the Beauxbatons carriage is "next to" Hagrid's hut, and we see Hagrid stand by the door of his hut and converse in (for him) a quiet voice with Madame Mqaxime who is standing by her carriage, and yet Rowling says that the carriage and hut are two hundred yards apart. Clearly twenty yards would be more realistic, and this sets a precedent for ignoring Rowling's measurements when these are clearly incompatible with the rest of the text.
We can say, then, that either the hedges are a lot less than twenty foot high, or the patrollers ride around the perimeter on brooms (or in Hagrid's case, on his flying motorbike), or there is a raised walkway around the edge, on scaffolding, to enable the patrollers to see over the top of the hedge. It could be that the patrollers actually walk around - or stand still on - the top tier of the grandstand, since there must be some kind of walkway in front of the seats to enable spectators to get to their places.
But then we have the problem that in the normal way of things, there's no reason why any but the topmost tier of the grandstand should be more than twenty feet above ground, so if the hedges themselves are twenty foot high either the grandstand has been magically raised to enable the spectators to see over the hedge, or only the top tier is occupied. And then there's the fact that Harry, moving down the straight path towards the Triwizard Cup, sees an Acromantula on an intersecting path, which means it is moving at right-angles or on a diagonal to the path he is on. There is not just one hedge between Harry and the spider, therefore, but at least two hedges and a space in between, and Harry is close to the base of the hedge nearest him. If the hedges were twenty foot high the spider would need to be thirty to forty foot high for Harry to see even the very top of it, which would be ridiculous - especially if twenty foot tall counts as "towering" for the trees in the Forbidden Forest. A spider that size would bestride the Forest like a mobile electricity pylon, sticking up above the trees.
The most sensible explanation is that the hedge is only about eight to ten feet high, as you would expect from a maze. And even so spectators on the bottom tier of seating would not be able to see over it, and the patrollers, other than Hagrid, would still need a raised walkway or a broom in order to see where the red sparks came from.
Another option, not mentioned but quite possible, is that there is a vast magical mirror suspended over the maze, which the patrollers and spectators and judges can see but the contestants can't (if the contestants could see it they could use it to find their way). In that case, the hedge could be twenty foot high and the spectators and patrollers still be able to see what's going on - but in that case we're back to wondering how Harry could see an Acromantula over at least two twenty foot hedges, one of which is right next to him, unless the Acromantula is as tall as a pylon.
Another scale issue is that a balance must be found between fitting in enough paths to justify all the weaving about that Harry does, and keeping those paths wide enough for an Acromantula or a Skrewt to fit down them. In this diagram I have made the paths around ten foot wide.
In this suggested plan for the maze, below, white dots are Harry and gold dots are Cedric. Harry's route is fairly well mapped-out in canon. Cedric's is much more sketchy, since in canon he appears and interacts with Harry at various points, but we can only guess at how he gets from point to point. What we can say is that his route must be about the same length as Harry's, since three times they arrive at the same place within seconds of each other, by different paths. I have tried to arrange the maze so that it makes sense in most if not all cases for Harry to choose the options he does. It is not possible to fit in all Harry's wanderings and still have him close to and/or heading for the centre on every occasion that he thinks he is, so we must assume either that he is sometimes wrong, or that he is "close to the centre" in the sense that he is choosing paths which will eventually take him to the centre, even if that occasionally means moving away from it for a while.
Other than the routes taken by Harry and Cedric, the rest of the maze is just a "for instance". You can fit anything you like into these regions, especially as there are bound to be more hazards than Harry himself encounters. There may be werewolves, Pogrebins, pits, Devil's Snare, concealed openings which look like solid hedges and solid hedges which are see-through and look like entrances... Just bear in mind that the maze needs to be difficult but not impossible, so there should be many diversions and dead ends, and only a few ways onto the long straight path which leads to the Cup, but whichever direction you head in initially it should be possible to find your way there eventually. It also shouldn't rule a contestant out because of a random choice made right at the outset, so you don't want very long digressions which will take a contestant half an hour to work through and which can only be got out of by going right back to the start.
Harry (white dots) enters the stadium and walks round to one end of the pitch until he and the other contestants are facing the entrance to the maze (0), into which it is possible to see for some distance and tell that there is a passage which is "dark and creepy". At this end of the stadium there is a clear area of pitch which is not covered by maze and where the judges and contestants can muster, and which is something larger than just a tiny clear patch. We know this because later on, after Cedric's death and the rebirthing of Voldemort, Harry crash-lands "in the middle of the lawn", outside the maze but still inside the stands. If there is some sort of barrier between the pitch and the seating - which you would expect there to be - then either there is a breach in it at this point to allow the contestants to enter this mustering area, or it is low enough to jump over.
Harry and Cedric enter the maze and walk (not necessarily straight ahead, nor necessarily without side-turnings) for fifty yards, until they come to a fork (1). At his point Harry goes left and Cedric (gold dots) goes right, and Cedric soon afterwards has a run-in with a giant Skrewt.
Harry speeds up - so he travels a noticeable distance. He then turns right and hurries on until he comes to another fork (2). At this point there is a solid hedge on his right, which is north. He is south-east of the centre of the maze. Harry needs to go diagonally right and ahead but "the best he could do" is to take the left fork and hope to go right later, so the right-most fork (even if not directly right) must be an obvious dud in some way. I have drawn it as obviously turning back on itself (and then coming to a dead end, should Harry go and look).
At the point at which Harry comes to this second fork, he must have been moving from east to west, because north is on his right, through the side of the path he has been walking along. So he enters the maze, walks ahead for 50 yards, bears off at an angle of probably about 45°, then turns 90° right and is now facing west. This means that if the initial fifty-yard path is straight, and in line with the long axis of the pitch, the long axis of the pitch must run from north-east to south-west. However, for reasons explained in the section on the grounds the pitch fits much better both with JKR's own sketch-map and with known lines of sight if it is oriented from east to west, so I have drawn the initial path with a kink in it.
Harry heads down the left fork until he reaches a right turn. He turns right. Cedric then emerges from a right-hand turn (3) which is behind Harry. We are not told whether this turning from which Cedric emerges is behind the point at which Harry joined the same path, or between that point and the point which Harry has progressed to. Cedric warns of the proximity of a Skrewt, then disappears down another path (4).
Harry hurries off, probably along the same line he was already on. He turns a corner (we're not told whether left or right) and encounters a Dementor (5), which is really a Boggart, pretending.
From the Boggart, Harry moves away quickly and then goes left, right, left. Twice he finds he is facing a dead end. The Four-Point Spell tells him that by now he has overshot the centre of the maze and is too far east (6). He turns back from where he was and turns right (presumably to go west), and here encounters a golden mist (7) which makes him feel as if gravity has gone into reverse. Here he hears Fleur scream - she is somewhere ahead of him, so broadly west of him.
Having fought off the gravity-inversion caused by the mist, Harry hurries forward (probably west) and comes to a junction of two paths (T-junction?). Knowing he is close to the Cup, he goes right - north - which suggests that he is now south of the centre.
He continues for ten minutes, encountering plural dead ends and twice taking the same wrong turning. This ten minute walk requires some special pleading. At normal walking speed he would travel a little under half a mile - say about eight hundred yards - in that time. OK, he would be going a lot slower in the maze because he is finding his way in poor lighting conditions, and watching out for hazards: but even quarter speed, two hundred yards, is quite hard to fit into a maze which cannot be more than two hundred yards long in total, and in which he is trying to stay near the middle. He must have zigzagged a great deal.
He then finds a new route and begins to jog along it. He rounds a corner and meets a Skrewt (8). If this is the same one that attacked Cedric Harry has probably worked his way back to near where they came in. Having temporarily defeated the Skrewt he runs back the way he had come.
He takes a left path (could be a right-angled turning or a 45° fork), hits a dead end, takes a right path, hits another dead end. He stops, casts another Four-Point Spell, then backtracks and chooses a path which heads north-west.
We are told that he then hurries along this new path, heading north-west, for "a few minutes" and then hears Imperiused!Viktor attacking Cedric on a parallel path. He briefly sprints ahead, then breaks through into this parallel path (9) and stuns Viktor. Harry and Cedric then walk along this new, parallel path for a bit and then Harry turns left and Cedric right.
This passage introduces another problem of scale, if we are to believe that the maze is physically real. The long axis of the pitch runs either east to west or north-east to south=west, so the longest that a south-east to north-west path could be is a diagonal through the middle of an east-west pitch, or just over a hundred yards. A normal walking speed is around eighty yards per minute, so if Harry is really hurrying this path could only take him about a minute and a quarter even if it traversed the pitch from side to side. Alternately, the path could change direction and run round the perimeter, in which case it could be long enough to take a few minutes at normal walking speed - but in that case, so much for Harry's being near the centre. For the sake of a coherent map I've assumed that both the hurrying and the few minutes are used loosely and that the path was only about twenty-five yards long, up to the point at which Harry broke through the hedge, and took him thirty seconds to traverse. In the dark, looking out for monsters, thirty seconds could well feel like minutes.
Having broken through onto the parallel path and rescued Cedric, and then turned left, Harry moves on, using the Four-Point Spell to check he is heading in the right direction. He hits more dead ends but feels he is getting close to the heart of the maze (and presumably he is still heading towards the centre according to his spell).
Walking down a long, straight path, he meets a Greek-style sphinx (10). She tells him he is near his goal and his quickest route is past her. Having answered the sphinx's riddle, Harry passes her and comes to a choice of paths. He takes the right-hand one and almost immediately comes to a point from which he sees the Cup on its plinth a hundred yards away, obviously down a fairly straight path or he wouldn't be able to see to the end of it. I have assumed that when he passes the sphinx he comes to the centre of the pitch, and the Cup is at the far end of the pitch.
Harry starts to run towards the Cup. Allowing for the fact that he's running in the dark, so probably not going very fast, maybe 8mph. However, almost immediately Cedric comes out of a side-turning between Harry and the Cup, "in front of" Harry (11). Since Cedric was heading right relative to Harry when last seen, he probably comes from Harry's right.
Both run towards the Cup and Harry thinks that he won't catch up with Cedric as Cedric's legs are longer - so it's not the case that Cedric is right up close to the Cup at this point. At this point they are running flat out so say 10mph, and at that speed it would take twenty seconds to run a hundred yards.
Harry sees an Acromantula moving along a path to the left (12), and heading to intersect the path he and Cedric are on, so it's coming either at right-angles or a narrowing angle. The latter probably makes it easier for Harry to have seen it over the high hedges. The spider emerges onto the path just behind Cedric and some distance ahead of Harry, and goes to attack Cedric. Harry fires at it and it turns and runs at him. He has time to yell three spells before it reaches him (13) and lifts him into the air, so say four seconds. If it is going at about the same speed as the humans, i.e. 10mph, that's about twenty-five yards.
They Stupefy the Acromantula between them, after which Cedric is a matter of feet from the Cup (14), and Harry, with sprained ankle, is somewhat further away - far enough that they have to raise their voices to speak to each other, but close enough to have a sensible conversation. Harry probably ran about fifty yards (ten seconds) before the encounter with the Acromantula, which emerged twenty-five yards in front of him and ran towards him. When it picked him up it then carried him back about twenty yards towards its starting point before it was stunned, so he is now about thirty yards from the Cup and twenty-five yards from Cedric.
Cedric comes back for Harry and helps him limp to the Cup, which turns out to be a Portkey and whisks them both away to the graveyard at Little Hangleton, somewhere hundreds of miles away in England. Cedric is killed and Harry fights with Voldemort, then seizes the Cup which transports himself and Cedric's body back to the middle of the lawn at the entrance to the maze (15).
This eventual destination explains the otherwise inexplicable plot of GoF. On the face of it, false!Moody could at any point during the year have tricked Harry into touching a Portkey and being whisked away to Little Hangleton. However, it makes perfect sense if Hogwarts is warded to prevent the use of unauthorized Portkeys. The Triwizard Cup must always have been a Portkey, designed to transport the first person to reach it onto the lawn in front of the judges, but false!Moody subverted it so that it would go first to Little Hangleton although the original destination, the judges' lawn, was still in there as well. His machinations during the year were designed to ensure that Harry would be the one to touch the only authorized Portkey on the premises.
