There was a pleasant feeling of anticipation in the air that day. Nobody was very attentive in lessons, being much more interested in the arrival that evening of the people from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang; plus Potions was half an hour shorter. When the bell rang early, Harry, Ron, Rubi and Hermione hurried up to Gryffindor Tower, deposited their bags and books as they had been instructed, pulled on their cloaks, and rushed back downstairs into the entrance hall.
The Heads of Houses were ordering their students into lines.
"Weasley, straighten your hat," Professor McGonagall snapped at Ron.
"Miss. Patil, take that ridiculous thing out of your hair." Parvati scowled and removed a large ornamental butterfly from the end of her plait.
"Miss. Black, why is your hair a vivid pink and green? Turn into a less flashy colour if you prefer a change." Rubi grinned mischievously at McGonagall, as she had only changed her hair like that on purpose, but decided to go for a light, natural red.
"Better?"
"Yes. Follow me, please," said Professor McGonagall. "First years in front... no pushing..."
"You'd make a good Weasley with that hair." Fred whispered into her ear, earning a giggle from the girl.
"If that were true, your mother would definitely love me the best! Although, I am perfectly happy with being called a Black." She replied as they filed down the steps and lined up in front of the castle.
It was a cold, clear evening; dusk was falling and a pale, transparent looking moon was already shining over the Forbidden Forest. Rubi, standing between Fred and George at the top, was practically bouncing with excitement.
"Nearly six," she stated, checking her pocket watch, "How d'you reckon they're coming?
"Dunno, but I wish they'd hurry up or everyone is going to explode from excitement," said Fred.
They scanned the darkening grounds excitedly, but nothing was moving; everything was still, silent, and quite as usual. Rubi was starting to feel cold and her teeth had begun to chatter.
Fred, noticing the young Black's shivering form, handed her his scarf and brought her into him, allowing Rubi to share his body heat. Rubi inhaled his scent and smiled happily.
Dumbledore called out from the back row where he stood with the other teachers- "Aha! Unless I am very much mistaken, the delegation from Beauxbatons approaches!"
"Where?" said many students eagerly, all looking in different directions.
"There!" yelled a sixth year, pointing over the forest. Something large, much larger than a broomstick- or, indeed, a hundred broomsticks- was hurtling across the deep blue sky toward the castle, growing larger all the time.
"It's a dragon!" shrieked one of the first years, causing Rubi to chuckle.
"Don't be stupid... it's a flying house!" said Dennis Creevey. Dennis's guess was closer...
As the gigantic black shape skimmed over the treetops of the Forbidden Forest and the lights shining from the castle windows hit it, they saw a gigantic, powder blue, horse-drawn carriage, the size of a large house, soaring toward them, pulled through the air by a dozen winged horses, all palominos, and each the size of an elephant.
The front three rows of students drew backward as the carriage hurtled ever lower, coming in to land at a tremendous speed- then, with an almighty crash. A second later, the carriage landed too, bouncing upon its vast wheels, while the golden horses tossed their enormous heads and rolled large, fiery red eyes. The door of the carriage bore a coat of arms (two crossed, golden wands, each emitting three stars) before it opened.
A boy in pale blue robes jumped down from the carriage, bent forward, fumbled for a moment with something on the carriage floor, and unfolded a set of golden steps. He sprang back respectfully. Then a shining, high-heeled black shoe emerged from the inside of the carriage- a shoe the size of a child's sled- followed, almost immediately, probably the largest woman to ever exist. The size of the carriage, and of the horses, was immediately explained.
A few people gasped. As she stepped into the light flooding from the entrance hall after climbing the steps, she was revealed to have a handsome, olive-skinned face; large, black, liquid-looking eyes; and a rather beaky nose. Her hair was drawn back in a shining knob at the base of her neck. She was dressed from head to foot in black satin, and many magnificent opals gleamed at her throat and on her thick fingers.
Dumbledore started to clap; the students, following his lead, broke into applause too, many of them standing on tiptoe, the better to look at this woman. Her face relaxed into a gracious smile and she walked forward toward Dumbledore, extending a glittering hand. Dumbledore, though tall himself, had barely to bend to kiss it.
"My dear Madame Maxime," he said. "Welcome to Hogwarts."
"Dumbly-dorr," said Madame Maxime in a deep voice. "I 'ope I find you well?"
"In excellent form, I thank you," said Dumbledore.
"My pupils," said Madame Maxime, waving one of her enormous hands carelessly behind her.
About a dozen boys and girls, in their late teens, had emerged from the carriage and were now standing behind Madame Maxime. They were shivering, which was unsurprising, given that their robes seemed to be made of fine silk, and none of them were wearing cloaks. A few had wrapped scarves and shawls around their heads. They were staring up at Hogwarts with apprehensive looks on their faces.
" 'As Karkaroff arrived yet?" Madame Maxime asked.
"He should be here any moment," said Dumbledore. "Would you like to wait here and greet him or would you prefer to step inside and warm up a trifle?"
"Warm up, I think," said Madame Maxime. "But ze 'orses-" And then her and Dumbledore worked up a solution for the tending to of her horses
"Come," said Madame Maxime imperiously to her students, and the Hogwarts crowd parted to allow her and her students to pass up the stone steps.
"Wow." Rubi breathed out. "Well that was one school with a very tall woman for Headmistress."
Fred snorted, "You're just jealous that you're too short."
Rubi gasped dramatically, "How rude of you to assume that? And what's even more rude is that you just insulted my height! Insulting the Black and Potter genes. The audacity!" She muttered the last part under her breath, making Fred only grin even more.
They stood, shivering slightly now, waiting for the Durmstrang party to arrive. Most people were gazing hopefully up at the sky. For a few minutes, the silence was broken only by Madame Maxime's huge horses snorting and stamping.
But then — "Can you hear something?" said George suddenly. Rubi listened; a loud and oddly eerie noise was drifting toward them from out of the darkness: a muffled rumbling and sucking sound, as though an immense vacuum cleaner were moving along a riverbed. . . .
"The lake!" yelled Lee, pointing down at it. "Look at the lake!"
From their position at the top of the lawns overlooking the grounds, they had a clear view of the smooth black surface of the water — except that the surface was suddenly not smooth at all. Some disturbance was taking place deep in the center; great bubbles were forming on the surface, waves were now washing over the muddy banks — and then, out in the very middle of the lake, a whirlpool appeared, as if a giant plug had just been pulled out of the lake's floor. . . . What seemed to be a long, black pole began to rise slowly out of the heart of the whirlpool . . . and then Rubi saw the rigging. . . .
"It's a mast!" She said to the trio. Slowly, magnificently, the ship rose out of the water, gleaming in the moonlight. It had a strangely skeletal look about it, as though it were a resurrected wreck, and the dim, misty lights shimmering at its portholes looked like ghostly eyes. Finally, with a great sloshing noise, the ship emerged entirely, bobbing on the turbulent water, and began to glide toward the bank. A few moments later, they heard the splash of an anchor being thrown down in the shallows, and the thud of a plank being lowered onto the bank. People were disembarking; they could see their silhouettes passing the lights in the ship's portholes.
All of them, seemed to be built along the lines of Crabbe and Goyle . . . but then, as they drew nearer, walking up the lawns into the light streaming from the entrance hall, their bulk was really due to the fact that they were wearing cloaks of some kind of shaggy, matted fur. But the man who was leading them up to the castle was wearing furs of a different sort: sleek and silver, like his hair.
"Dumbledore!" he called heartily as he walked up the slope. "How are you, my dear fellow, how are you?"
"Blooming, thank you, Professor Karkaroff," Dumbledore replied. Karkaroff had a fruity, unctuous voice; when he stepped into the light pouring from the front doors of the castle they saw that he was tall and thin like Dumbledore, but his white hair was short, and his goatee (finishing in a small curl) did not entirely hide his rather weak chin. When he reached Dumbledore, he shook hands with both of his own.
"Dear old Hogwarts," he said, looking up at the castle and smiling; his teeth were rather yellow, his smile did not extend to his eyes, which remained cold and shrewd. "How good it is to be here, how good. . . . Viktor, come along, into the warmth . . . you don't mind, Dumbledore? Viktor has a slight head cold. . . ." Karkaroff beckoned forward one of his students. As the boy passed, Rubi realized from his profile who he was.
"That's Krum!" Rubi exclaimed in awe, surprised by the fact that the Bulgarian Seeker was still in school.
Fred barked out a humorous laugh, "More like the dung head that caught the Golden Snitch at the wrong time and made his team lose but hey at least we won our bet! Well, if we'll get our money that is." He finished off sourly.
As they recrossed the entrance hall with the rest of the Hogwarts students heading for the Great Hall, Rubi jumped up and down on the soles of his feet to get a better look at the back of Krum's head. Several sixth-year girls were frantically searching their pockets as they walked — "Oh I don't believe it, I haven't got a single quill on me —"
"D'you think he'd sign my hat in lipstick?"
"D'you think he'd sign my hat in lipstick?" Rubi mimicked in a high pitched voice, feigning a hand to her forehead. The other three let out amused laughs, "Geez, how crazy can a person go? I mean do celebrities get the chance to breathe freely and away from fans that are too eager?" The boys shrugged in response, as they took a seat at their house table.
When all the students had entered the Hall and settled down at their House tables, the staff entered, filing up to the top table and taking their seats. Last in line were Professor Dumbledore, Professor Karkaroff, and Madame Maxime. When their headmistress appeared, the pupils from Beauxbatons leapt to their feet. A few of the Hogwarts students laughed. The Beauxbatons party appeared quite unembarrassed, however, and did not resume their seats until Madame Maxime had sat down on Dumbledore's left-hand side. Dumbledore remained standing, and a silence fell over the Great Hall.
"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, ghosts and — most particularly — guests," said Dumbledore, beaming around at the foreign students. "I have great pleasure in welcoming you all to Hogwarts. I hope and trust that your stay here will be both comfortable and enjoyable." One of the Beauxbatons girls still clutching a muffler around her head gave what was unmistakably a derisive laugh.
"No one's making you stay!" Hermione whispered, bristling at her.
"The tournament will be officially opened at the end of the feast," said Dumbledore. "I now invite you all to eat, drink, and make yourselves at home!" He sat down, Karkaroff leaned forward at once and engaged him in conversation. The plates in front of them filled with food as usual. The houseelves in the kitchen seemed to have pulled out all the stops; there was a greater variety of dishes in front of them than Rubi had ever seen, including several that were definitely foreign.
"What's that?" said Fred, pointing at a large dish of some sort of shellfish stew that stood beside a large steak-and-kidney pudding.
"Bouillabaisse I believe," said Rubi.
"What?" Asked George.
"It's French," said Rubi in a matter-of-fact tone.
"How'd you know?" Lee questioned.
Rubi shrugged, "Saw it in a cookbook."
The Great Hall seemed somehow much more crowded than usual, even though there were barely twenty additional students there; perhaps it was because their differently colored uniforms stood out so clearly against the black of the Hogwarts' robes. Now that they had removed their furs, the Durmstrang students were revealed to be wearing robes of a deep bloodred. Hagrid sidled into the Hall through a door behind the staff table twenty minutes after the start of the feast. He slid into his seat at the end and waved at Harry, Ron, and Hermione with a very heavily bandaged hand.
"Skrewts doing all right, Hagrid?" Harry called.
"Thrivin'," Hagrid called back happily.
"Yeah, I'll just bet they are," said Ron quietly.
"Looks like they've finally found a food they like, doesn't it? Hagrid's fingers."
At that moment, a voice said, "Excuse me, are you wanting ze bouillabaisse?"
It was the girl from Beauxbatons who had laughed during Dumbledore's speech. She had finally removed her muffler. A long sheet of silvery-blonde hair fell almost to her waist. She had large, deep blue eyes, and very white, even teeth. Ron went purple. He stared up at her, opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out except a faint gurgling noise.
"Yeah, have it," said Harry, pushing the dish toward the girl.
"You 'ave finished wiz it?"
"Yeah," Ron said breathlessly.
"Yeah, it was excellent."
The girl picked up the dish and carried it carefully off to the Ravenclaw table. Ron was still goggling at the girl as though he had never seen one before. Harry started to laugh. The sound seemed to jog Ron back to his senses.
"She's a veela!" he said hoarsely to Harry.
"Of course she isn't!" said Hermione tartly. "I don't see anyone else gaping at her like an idiot!"
But she wasn't entirely right about that. As the girl crossed the Hall, many boys' heads turned, including George and Lee, who gaped after her. Rubi frowned at this and sneaked a glance at Fred, who to her relief was snickering at the pair before his eyes landed on Rubi, sending a wink in her direction. Rubi smirked, resisting the urge to blush.
Once the golden plates had been wiped clean, Dumbledore stood up again. A pleasant sort of tension seemed to fill the Hall now. Fred and George were leaning forward, staring at Dumbledore with great concentration.
"The moment has come," said Dumbledore, smiling around at the sea of upturned faces.
"The Triwizard Tournament is about to start. I would like to say a few words of explanation before we bring in the casket —"
"The what now?" Rubi muttered. Lee shrugged.
"-just to clarify the procedure that we will be following this year. But first, let me introduce," Dumbledore said talking about the occupants that recently filled the last two vacant seats "For those who do not know them, Mr. Bartemius Crouch, Head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation" — there was a smattering of polite applause — "and Mr. Ludo Bagman, Head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports." There was a much louder round of applause for Bagman than for Crouch, perhaps because of his fame as a Beater, or simply because he looked so much more likable. He acknowledged it with a jovial wave of his hand. Bartemius Crouch did not smile or wave when his name was announced.
"Mr. Bagman and Mr. Crouch have worked tirelessly over the last few months on the arrangements for the Triwizard Tournament," Dumbledore continued, "and they will be joining myself, Professor Karkaroff, and Madame Maxime on the panel that will judge the champions' efforts."
At the mention of the word "champions," the attentiveness of the listening students seemed to sharpen. Perhaps Dumbledore had noticed their sudden stillness, for he smiled as he said,
"The casket, then, if you please, Mr. Filch."
Filch, who had been lurking unnoticed in a far corner of the Hall, now approached Dumbledore carrying a great wooden chest encrusted with jewels. It looked extremely old. A murmur of excited interest rose from the watching students; Dennis Creevey actually stood on his chair to see it properly, but, being so tiny, his head hardly rose above anyone else's.
"The instructions for the tasks the champions will face this year have already been examined by Mr. Crouch and Mr. Bagman," said Dumbledore as Filch placed the chest carefully on the table before him, "and they have made the necessary arrangements for each challenge. There will be three tasks, spaced throughout the school year, and they will test the champions in many different ways . . . their magical prowess — their daring — their powers of deduction — and, of course, their ability to cope with danger."
At this last word, the Hall was filled with a silence so absolute that nobody seemed to be breathing.
"As you know, three champions compete in the tournament," Dumbledore went on calmly, "one from each of the participating schools. They will be marked on how well they perform each of the Tournament tasks and the champion with the highest total after task three will win the Triwizard Cup. The champions will be chosen by an impartial selector: the Goblet of Fire." Dumbledore now took out his wand and tapped three times upon the top of the casket. The lid creaked slowly open. Dumbledore reached inside it and pulled out a large, roughly hewn wooden cup. It would have been entirely unremarkable had it not been full to the brim with dancing blue-white flames. Dumbledore closed the casket and placed the goblet carefully on top of it, where it would be clearly visible to everyone in the Hall.
"Anybody wishing to submit themselves as champion must write their name and school clearly upon a slip of parchment and drop it into the goblet," said Dumbledore. "Aspiring champions have twenty-four hours in which to put their names forward. Tomorrow night, Halloween, the goblet will return the names of the three it has judged most worthy to represent their schools. The goblet will be placed in the entrance hall tonight, where it will be freely accessible to all those wishing to compete."
"To ensure that no underage student yields to temptation," said Dumbledore, "I will be drawing an Age Line around the Goblet of Fire once it has been placed in the entrance hall. Nobody under the age of seventeen will be able to cross this line. "Finally, I wish to impress upon any of you wishing to compete that this tournament is not to be entered into lightly. Once a champion has been selected by the Goblet of Fire, he or she is obliged to see the tournament through to the end. The placing of your name in the goblet constitutes a binding, magical contract. There can be no change of heart once you have become a champion. Please be very sure, therefore, that you are wholeheartedly prepared to play before you drop your name into the goblet. Now, I think it is time for bed. Good night to you all."
"An Age Line!" Fred said, his eyes glinting, as they all made their way across the Hall to the doors into the entrance hall.
"Well, that should be fooled by an Aging Potion, shouldn't it? And once your name's in that goblet, you're laughing — it can't tell whether you're seventeen or not!"
"But I don't think anyone under seventeen will stand a chance," said Hermione, "we just haven't learned enough . . ."
"Honestly speaking, I think Mione is right." Rubi chimed in.
"Speak for yourself," said George shortly.
"You'll try and get in, won't you, Harry?"
"Where is he?" said Ron, who wasn't listening to a word of this conversation, but looking through the crowd to see what had become of Krum. "Dumbledore didn't say where the Durmstrang people are sleeping, did he?"
But this query was answered almost instantly; they were level with the Slytherin table now, and Karkaroff had just bustled up to his students.
"Back to the ship, then," he was saying. "Viktor, how are you feeling? Did you eat enough? Should I send for some mulled wine from the kitchens?"
Krum shook his head as he pulled his furs back on.
"Professor, I vood like some vine," said one of the other Durmstrang boys hopefully.
"I wasn't offering it to you, Poliakoff," snapped Karkaroff, his warmly paternal air vanishing in an instant. "I notice you have dribbled food all down the front of your robes again, disgusting boy —" Karkaroff turned and led his students toward the doors, reaching them at exactly the same moment as Harry, Ron, Hermione, Fred, George, Rubi and Lee. Harry stopped to let him walk through first.
"Thank you," said Karkaroff carelessly, glancing at him. And then Karkaroff froze. He turned his head back to Harry and stared at him as though he couldn't believe his eyes. Behind their headmaster, the students from Durmstrang came to a halt too. Karkaroff's eyes moved slowly up Harry's face and fixed upon his scar. Rubi rolled her eyes.
He's not something you gawk at, he's a person. Give him a break.
The Durmstrang students were staring curiously at Harry too. The boy with food all down his front nudged the girl next to him and pointed openly at Harry's forehead.
"Yeah, that's Harry Potter," said a growling voice from behind them. Professor Karkaroff spun around. Mad-Eye Moody was standing there, leaning heavily on his staff, his magical eye glaring unblinkingly at the Durmstrang headmaster. The color drained from Karkaroff's face.
"You!" he said, staring at Moody as though unsure he was really seeing him.
"Me," said Moody grimly. "And unless you've got anything to say to Potter, Karkaroff, you might want to move. You're blocking the doorway."
Without another word, Professor Karkaroff swept his students away with him.
Hi,
So as promised here's another update. I know it's basically the same as the book but I really love the upcoming chapters 46 and 48, and I think you will too so stay tuned for that!
Take care and have a good day everyone! <33