The-Boy-Who-Lived/Neglected/Lied/Abounded/Betrayed/Fed Up/Left/Tortured /kills

Always read the finest print

"Professor Moody?" Harry asked, poking his head into the ex-Auror's office. He knew Moody was in there, thanks to the Marauder's Map; however, he didn't see Barty Crouch anywhere. Maybe he had just ducked out or something. "May I come in?"

"Aye, Potter, make yourself at home," came the gruff reply. Harry managed to stifle his snort of amusement at the one-eyed, peg-legged professor saying "aye," but that didn't stop his mind from conjuring an image of a swashbuckling Captain Moody swinging a cutlass and casting curses from the bow of a pirate ship, with a triangular hat on his head and a foul-mouthed parrot on his shoulder. He shook his head clear of the image, remembering his purpose, and entered the room.

"Well, out with it, Potter!" Moody pressed, as Harry failed to immediately state the reason for his visit. "I'm a busy man! Trying to figure out who entered you into that tournament is not an easy task!"

"I know, sir, and thank you," Harry said gratefully, before continuing. "Sir...last night, you said that I was in a binding magical contract. I was hoping you could tell me a little bit more about what exactly that means."

"Ah, I guess Binns still teaches that only in N.E.W.T. classes, eh?" Moody began, nodding to himself. "Well, the details are fairly complex—oaths and contracts have to be very specific about their terms and what happens if the those terms are broken, but the bottom line is that they depend on the magic inherent in a given being's True Name."

"True Name, sir?" Harry asked. "I've never heard anything like that mentioned before."

"Well, it usually only matters for contracts, oaths, and pretty esoteric rituals," Moody clarified. "The lower years at Hogwarts are more about the basics of spellcasting, and only the sixth and seventh years really deal with the advanced stuff. Basically, for a magical contract to be binding, it has to be tied to a being's True Name—if a person writes or states their own name as they know themselves, then that's their True Name. It's almost impossible for someone to say or write the True Name of someone else, exactly as that person would—you either need to be a perfect mimic, way better than a boggart, or you need to know that person so closely that you know them as well as they know themselves. A spouse or best friend might be capable of doing it, after several decades of constant companionship."

"But I didn't enter my name into the Goblet, and I haven't been that close with anyone for that long!" Harry objected. Clearly, there was something going on here; whatever it was, he was sure he wasn't going to like it.

"True, but think, Potter," Moody said, leaning forward. His ruined face cast eerie half-shadows in the flickering light of the candles. "Who, at some point in your young life, would have been placed to know your Name, without any help from you? Who might have written it down, and at that moment, it was absolutely True?"

"You're talking about my parents!" Harry exclaimed. "Do you mean that someone stole my birth certificate and put it in the Goblet?"

"Excellent, Potter!" Moody growled approvingly. "Not exactly right, but you're on the right track. No, your birth certificate is kept locked in a secure vault at Gringotts for just that reason. You might not know this, but a lot of witches and wizards during the last war pre-paid the Hogwarts tuition for their children, just in case the worst happened. That way, at least their children would have an education, you see. When they did that, they signed their childrens' name in a register kept here at Hogwarts. You were young enough—in fact, it was right after they signed the birth certificate, right there in the delivery room—that your parents could still write your True Name. Even if it isn't exactly who you are now, it still was you at one point, and it still had enough power to bind you to the terms of the Triwizard Tournament...especially since the register was signed in your blood, and that hasn't changed at all. Parents who signed that register were trusting the Headmaster to protect it...unfortunately, it looks like that trust may have been misplaced."