mbledore, also bowing.
"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.
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"How big d'you reckon Durmstrang's horses are going to be?" Seamus Finnigan
said, leaning around Lavender and Parvati to address Harry and Ron.
"Well, if they're any bigger than this lot, even Hagrid won't be able to handle
them," said Harry. "That's if he hasn't been attacked by his skrewts. Wonder what's
up with them?"
"Maybe they've escaped," said Ron hopefully.
"Oh don't say that," said Hermione with a shudder. "Imagine that lot loose on the
grounds. . . ."
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 Ron suddenly.
Harry 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 Jordan, 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 Harry saw the rigging....
"It's a mast!" he said to Ron and Hermione.
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, Harry noticed, 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, he saw that 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:
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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, and Harry noticed that 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, Harry caught
a glimpse of a prominent curved nose and thick black eyebrows. He didn't need
the punch on the arm Ron gave him, or the hiss in his ear, to recognize that profile.
"Harry - it's Krum!"
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CHAPTER SIXTEEN - THE GOBLET OF FIRE
I don't believe it!" Ron said, in a stunned voice, as the Hogwarts students filed
back up the steps behind the party from Durmstrang. "Krum, Harry! Viktor
Krum!"
"For heaven's sake, Ron, he's only a Quidditch player," said Hermione.
"Only a Quidditch player?" Ron said, looking at her as though he couldn't believe
his ears. "Hermione - he's one of the best Seekers in the world! I had no idea he
was still at school!"
As they recrossed the entrance hall with the rest of the Hogwarts students heading
for the Great Hall, Harry saw Lee Jordan jumping 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?"
"Really," Hermione said loftily as they passed the girls, now squabbling over the
lipstick.
"I'm getting his autograph if I can," said Ron. "You haven't got a quill, have you,
Harry?"
"Nope, they're upstairs in my bag," said Harry.
They walked over to the Gryffindor table and sat down. Ron took care to sit on the
side facing the doorway, because Krum and his fellow Durmstrang students were
still gathered around it, apparently unsure about where they should sit. The
students from Beauxbatons had chosen seats at the Ravenclaw table. They were
looking around the Great Hall with glum expressions on their faces. Three of them
were still clutching scarves and shawls around their heads.
"It's not that cold," said Hermione defensively. "Why didn't they bring cloaks?"
"Over here! Come and sit over here!" Ron hissed. "Over here! Hermione, budge
up, make a space -"
"What?"
"Too late," said Ron bitterly.
Viktor Krum and his fellow Durmstrang students had settled themselves at the
Slytherin table. Harry could see Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle looking very smug
about this. As he watched, Malfoy bent forward to speak to Krum.
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"Yeah, that's right, smarm up to him, Malfoy," said Ron scathingly. "I bet Krum
can see right through him, though. . . bet he gets people fawning over him all the
time.. . . Where d'you reckon they're going to sleep? We could offer him a space in
our dormitory, Harry. . . I wouldn't mind giving him my bed, I could kip on a
camp bed."
Hermione snorted.
"They look a lot happier than the Beauxbatons lot," said Harry. The Durmstrang
students were pulling off their heavy furs and looking up at the starry black ceiling
with expressions of interest; a couple of them were picking up the golden plates
and goblets and examining them, apparently impressed.
Up at the staff table, Filch, the caretaker, was adding chairs. He was wearing his
moldy old tailcoat in honor of the occasion. Harry was surprised to see that he
added four chairs, two on either side of Dumbledore's.
"But there are only two extra people," Harry said. "Why's Filch putting out four
chairs, who else is coming?"
"Eh?" said Ron vaguely. He was still staring avidly at Krum.
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, and Harry saw Karkaroff lean forward at once and engage him in
conversation.
The plates in front of them filled with food as usual. The house-elves in the
kitchen seemed to have pulled out all the stops; there was a greater variety of
dishes in front of them than Harry had ever seen, including several that were
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definitely foreign.
"What's that?" said Ron, pointing at a large dish of some sort of shellfish stew that
stood beside a large steak-and-kidney pudding.
"Bouillabaisse," said Hermione.
"Bless you," said Ron.
"It's French," said Hermione, "I had it on holiday summer before last. It's very
nice."
"I'll take your word for it," said Ron, helping himself to black pudding.
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