“I always assumed–and this is probably just from reading too much fantasy literature (if there is such a problem)–that the timing of the sacrifice had to be right, that V had to gain a certain amount of strength. Wouldn’t the end of the tournament have been about the same time as the solstice? It’s clearly a powerful incantation; if place and ingredients are so important, why not time of year as well?

Could it be possible that V needed Fake Moody to stay longer at Hogwarts, perhaps checking up on his old friend and double-agent Snape? Moody/Crouch is certainly suspicious of Snape and holds him in contempt for not following V into exile, or going to Azkaban. It also gave V the rare opportunity to have a spy corroborate Snape’s accounts of things, a spy with rare access to Dumbledore. Because of course Dumbledore KNEW that Snape was a double agent, so might choose to keep key information from him, as he did with the Horcruxes in book 6. (Snape knew that the ring was cursed, but not how or why.) But Moody, V might think, would be completely trusted by Dumbledore and be another source of information close to Dumbledore.

Portkeys are used so rarely in the books that it’s hard to draw too many conclusions, especially once the concept of side-by-side Apparition is introduced in book 6. However, in OotP, Dumbledore creates a portkey for the Weasley kids and Harry to travel to Grimmauld Place, after Harry’s vision of Mr. Weasley’s injury. Dumbledore, in this case, uses a Portkey because the Floo networks are under Umbridge’s watch. This indicates both that 1) Portkeys are not/cannot be monitored in the same way as other spells and 2) Portkeys are more difficult magic, and the Floo network is the preferred convenient means of travel.”

The reason GOF wasn’t my favorite is that it’s so much action. I like seeing action in a movie, but I don’t really like reading it. That’s probably the reason I liked OP so much better – less action, until the end, and a lot of internal struggle.

For the record, I think Rowling has done about the best job in creating a consistent alternate universe, with the possible exception of Tolkien.

In the wedding chapter it says that Harry had an extralarge dose of PP. Seems inconsistent with the one hour bit (otherwise why didn’t Moody just drink extra large doses, too, but probably simpler for the flow of the book with all the times they use PP. I think Rowling was trying to get around the 1 hour limit she imposed on herself back in COS.

I’m thinking the cup was always meant to be a portkey and had the coming back to the beginning of the maze magic already placed upon it. THey fake Moody overlaid the graveyard aspect. That’s why the cup was able to bring Harry back (which I had always found odd as the portkey doesn’t usually work in reverse). It brought him to the edge of the maze, not the center, because that’s what it originally was supposed to do.

I’m guessing as Melissa said that Hogwarts usually has anti-portkey protections over the castle and grounds (like the anti-apparition protections) so no one can kidnap someone by portkey; DD just lifted it briefly so that the kids could get away in OOTP.

I get the sense that Voldy was going for the grand plan, making Harry disappear right under the nose of Dumbledore and the entire school, not to mention the Minister of Magic.

Regarding plot devices, something Arabella just said reminded me of something in the earlier wedding chapter of our DH read through. Harry goes disguised as a muggle boy but as far as we know only takes one dose of polyjuice potion when a dose only lasts for one hour & we’re not shown anywhere previously where you could take multiple doses to last for longer periods. Otherwise, fake Moody wouldn’t have constantly needed to drink polyjuice potion.

My extra little complication was that I thought that using the portkey was just one step in a larger plan that we never saw come to fruition because Harry messed it up by not dying.

Because the portkey was set up in the first few chapters, so it needed a big payoff at the end

I think there are problems with any theory, as I’ve said; but this is the closest I’ve seen to a decent explanation for why something else wasn’t turned into a portkey.