Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

How it opens

One night in August, Frank Bryce, the old gardener at the empty Riddle House in Little Hangleton, sees lights in its upper windows and goes up to look. Outside a door he overhears a man called Wormtail and a cold voice that calls itself Lord Voldemort talking about murder and Harry Potter, and when he is caught, a flash of green light kills him. Two hundred miles away, Harry Potter wakes at Privet Drive with his scar burning, then writes to his godfather, Sirius, to ask whether curse scars sometimes hurt years afterward.

Who you meet early

• Harry PotterHarry Potter is fourteen and spending the summer with the Dursleys at Privet Drive, a fortnight before his fourth year at Hogwarts begins. His godfather, Sirius, has been on the run since Harry helped him escape on a hippogriff called Buckbeak.
• Tom RiddleLord Voldemort, once the Hogwarts student Tom Marvolo Riddle, is in the old Riddle House with Wormtail and a gigantic snake called Nagini. His curse on Harry rebounded when Harry was a year old and left him barely alive. He tells Wormtail that he killed Bertha Jorkins and that he means to use Harry Potter.
• Peter PettigrewPeter Pettigrew, nicknamed Wormtail, is an Animagus who lived as Ron's rat, Scabbers, and escaped before he could be taken to the Ministry of Magic. He is now at the Riddle House looking after Lord Voldemort, whom he calls My Lord.
• Dudley DursleyDudley Dursley, Harry's cousin, is asleep and snoring in the next room when Harry wakes. In his letter to Sirius, Harry writes that Dudley's diet is not going well and that Dudley threw his PlayStation out of the window.