Chapter Twelve: Of Snobby French Girls and Other Things
The sixth years noticed that all of their schoolwork was getting more and more difficult than it had ever been before. In Defense Against the Dark Arts, they were doing work on Curses every other day. Any moment in between was spent reviewing spells they had already learned—but performing them without saying a word. Soon, all of their other classes were requiring nonverbal spells as well. Harish was also aggravated to find that each of their free periods were spent tackling the mounds of homework they were assigned in all of their classes.
The fourth years were finding that their classes were becoming increasingly demanding as well. They did have OWL's coming up.
"But we don't take OWL's until fifth year!" Dean complained as Professor McGonagall told them this.
"Maybe not, Thomas, but believe me, you need all the preparation you can get! Miss Granger remains the only person in your year who has managed to turn a hedgehog into a pincushion. I might remind you that your pincushion still squeaks and curls up in fright when it is approached by a pin!"
And Professor Moody's classes especially had become more demanding for the fourth years. This started when he had announced he would be performing the Imperius Curse on them.
"But—but you said it's illegal, sir," Hermione said uncertainly as Moody cleared away the desks. "You said—to use it against another human was—"
"Dumbledore wants you taught what it feels like," Moody growled, his magical eye swiveling onto Hermione and fixing her with an unblinking stare. "If you'd rather learn the hard way—when someone's putting it on you so they can control you completely—fine by me. You're excused. Off you go."
He pointed one gnarled finger at the door. Hermione looked down at her feet and mumbled about not wanting to leave.
When the sixth years were told they would be put under the Imperius Curse—that was an adventure.
"You're not getting me!" George said indignantly.
"Yeah," Fred agreed. "I'd rather have my dignity remain intact."
"You will do as you are told," Moody said in an eerily calm voice. "Unless you want to leave my class and not come back."
Both of the redheads sniffed and dusted off their robes, sticking their noses in the air.
"Fine—but we're going last."
And they went and stood in the back of the line. Everyone in their class laughed. Harish was already in line, toward the front. Then, each person was put under the Imperius Curse. Several students did silly things—they hopped around the room on one foot singing the national anthem, imitated squirrels, or did amazing feats of gymnastics that no one would be able to do normally. Finally, it was Harish's turn and he stepped forward.
"Imperio!"
It was the most wonderful feeling. Harish felt a floating sensation as ever thought and worry in his head was wiped gently away, leaving nothing but a vague happiness. He stood there, feeling immensely relaxed, only dimly aware of everyone watching him.
Then he heard Mad-Eye Moody's voice in the back of his head: Jump onto the desk…jump onto the desk…
Harish bent his knees obediently, preparing to spring.
Jump onto the desk…
Why though? Another voice asked.
Stupid thing to do, really, said the voice.
Jump onto the desk…
No, I don't think I want to, thanks, said the other voice, a little more firmly…no, I don't really want to…
Jump! NOW!
The next thing Harish knew was he was feeling a considerable pain. He had both jumped and tried to prevent himself from jumping—the result was that he had smashed headlong into the desk, knocking it over, and by the feeling in his legs, fractured both his knee caps.
"Now, that's more like it!" Moody growled. Suddenly the floating sensation disappeared and Harish's pain doubled.
"Look at that, you lot…Blake fought! He fought it, and he damn near beat it! We'll try that again, Blake, and the rest of you, pay attention—watch his eyes, that's where you see it—very good, Blake, very good indeed! They'll have trouble controlling you!"
After class had ended, the twins had helped Harish hobble up to the infirmary. Moody had insisted on casting the spell on him four more times until he had finally managed to throw the curse off completely. Madam Pomfrey had tsked at him once again, tapped her wand on his knees, and instantly they felt loads better.
"Thanks!" he said before rushing out of the infirmary. Then he and the twins made their way down to the common room. As they passed the entrance hall, they found themselves unable to proceed owing to the large crowd of students congregated there. Harish, who was the tallest of the three, stood on tiptoe and read the sign aloud for the two redheads:
TRIWIZARD TOURNAMENT
The delegations from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang will be
arriving at 6 o' clock on Friday the 30th of October. Lessons
will end half an hour early. Students will return their bags
and books to their dormitories and assemble in front of the
castle to greet our guests before the Welcoming Feast.
"Only a week away!" Ernie MacMillan of Hufflepuff exclaimed, emerging from the crowd. "I wonder if Cedric knows? I think I'll go tell him…"
"Diggory as Hogwarts champion?" Harish asked scathingly.
The trio made their way down to the common room. Everyone was buzzing with the news of the foreigners arriving in a week.
"Are you going to go for it?" one seventh year asked Harish.
"I'm not seventeen yet. I won't even be of age until August!"
"So?" another student asked. "If anyone in our house tries out, it should be you."
"Yeah!" Daphne agreed, appearing at Harish's shoulder. "Who cares about that stupid age limit? You're a sixth year anyway!"
So this got Harish thinking and he formulated a plan.
On the morning of the thirtieth of October, they went up to breakfast to find that the Great Hall had been decorated overnight. Large silk banners hung from the walls, each of them representing a house: red with a gold lion for Gryffindor, blue with a bronze eagle for Ravenclaw, yellow with a black badger for Hufflepuff, and green with a silver serpent for Slytherin. Behind the teachers' table was the largest banner of all, which bore the Hogwarts coat of arms: lion, eagle, badge, and snake united around a large letter H.
Harish and the twins sat in the centre of the tables, discussing about how Bagman hadn't sent them anything yet. They had put off sending the letter, trying to arrange for him to meet with them, but he kept shooting them down.
"It's a bummer, all right," George was saying as the fourth years sat down across from them. "But if he won't talk to us in person, we'll have to send him the letter after all. Or we'll stuff it in his hand. He can't avoid us forever."
"Who's avoiding you?" Draco asked as he sat down.
"Wish you would," Fred said irritably. The twins had been in a rather bad mood since they found out that Bagman had paid them in leprechaun gold.
"Have you guys had any ideas about the Triwizard Tournament, yet?" Draco asked, hastily changing the subject. "Thought any more about entering?"
"I asked Professor McGonagall how the champions were chosen," George replied bitterly.
"Really?" Draco asked with interest. "What did she say?"
"To shut up and mind his own business," Fred replied.
"I wonder what the tasks will be," Daphne said. "They'll probably be something dangerous."
"Nothing we couldn't handle," Fred said.
"We've done dangerous stuff before," George added.
"Course, not in front of a panel of judges," Harish said.
The three fourth years looked confused.
"McGonagall says the champions get awarded points according to how well they complete the tasks," Fred specified.
"Who are the judges?" Draco asked.
"Well, the Heads of the participating schools are always on the panel," Hermione said. Everyone looked at her, rather surprised. "All three of them were injured during the tournament of 1792, when a cockatrice the champions were supposed to be catching went on a rampage."
She noticed them all looking at her and said, with her usual air of impatience as she stuck out her nose, "It's all in Hogwarts: A History."
After breakfast, they all separated and went to their different classrooms. No one really paid attention in their lessons the entire day. Potions for the fourth year Gryffindors was more bearable than usual, as it was half an hour shorter. The same went for the sixth year Care of Magical Creatures. It turned out that Hagrid had found a new kind of ferocious beast for his students to deal with; Blast-Ended Skrewts.
They hadn't been so bad when they were about an inch or two long, but now they were almost a foot, and loved to shoot blasts of fire at any sixth year that came near. By the time the class had ended, Harish was nursing a burnt hand as they rushed to the common room to drop their bags off. Then, they hurried back upstairs and into the entrance hall.
The Heads of Houses were ordering their students into lines.
"First years in front," Snape snapped. "Taller students in the back—Blake, fix your hair!"
Harish scowled and straightened his hair, which he had rumpled up at the back. Then he gave his head a flick and his hair flipped out of his eyes.
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 overhead. They all waited; impatiently in Harish's case. They stared up at the starry sky for what seemed like ages. Finally, Harish cried, "I see something!"
Something large was hurtling across the deep blue sky, toward the castle. As it drew nearer, it grew larger and larger.
"It's a dragon!" one of the first years shrieked, losing their heads completely.
"Don't be stupid!" one of the Creevey boys said. "…It's a flying house!"
His guess was closer…As the gigantic shape drew closer, skimming over the treetops of the Forbidden Forest, they saw what it was; a gigantic, powder blue, horse-drawn carriage. There was about a dozen of the horses and each were huge and winged. Each was the size of an elephant.
The front three rows of students drew backward as the carriage hurtled even lower, coming in to land at a tremendous speed. Then, with a great crash that made Neville jump backward onto Hermione's foot, the horses' hooves hit the ground. A second later, the carriage bumped and slid to a halt.
Harish had just enough time to see a coat of arms that consisted of two golden wands crossed and emitting three stars, before the door opened.
A boy in pale blue robes jumped down, bent forward, fumbled with something for a moment on the carriage floor, and unfolded a set of golden steps. He sprang back respectively. Then Harish saw a shining, high heeled shoe emerging from the carriage—a shoe the size of a child's sled—followed immediately by the largest woman Harish had ever seen. The size of the carriage and the horses was suddenly explained. A few people gasped.
As she stepped into the light that spilled from the castle, she was revealed to have a handsome, olive-skinned face; large, black, liquid looking eyes; and a rather beaky nose. Her hair was pulled into a bun and she was dressed in black satin.
Dumbledore started to clap and everyone else slowly joined in. After the giant woman followed several students, each dressed in silk robes and shivering in the cool breeze.
"Madame Maxime," Dumbledore greeted, kissing her hand. "Welcome to Hogwarts."
"Dumbly-dorr," Madame Maxime said in a deep voice. "I 'ope I find you well?"
"In excellent form, than you," Dumbledore replied.
"My pupils," Madam Maxime said, waving a careless hand to the boys and girls that stood, huddled by the carriage.
They had wrapped themselves up in various scarves and shawls and were looking up at the castle with apprehensive looks on their faces.
"'As Karkaroff arrived yet?" Madame Maxim asked.
"He should be here any moment," Dumbledore replied. "Would you like to wait here to greet him, or would you prefer to warm up a trifle inside?"
"Warm up, I think," Madame Maxime said. "But ze 'orses—"
"Our Care of Magical Creatures teacher will be delighted to take care of them," Dumbledore said, "the moment he had returned from dealing with some of our—uh—other charges."
"Skrewts," Draco muttered. Daphne and Hermione grinned.
"My steeds require forceful 'andling," Madame Maxime said, looking as though she doubted any teacher at Hogwarts could be up for the job. "Zey are very strong…"
"I assure you that Hagrid will be up for the job," Dumbledore said, smiling.
"Very well," Madame Maxime replied, bowing slightly. "Will you please tell zis 'Agrid zat ze 'orses drink single-malt whiskey?"
"It will be attended to," Dumbledore said, bowing as well.
"Come," Madame Maxime said imperiously to her students.
The Hogwarts crowd parted to allow them to pass up the stone steps.
"How big d'you reckon Durmstrang's horses are going to be?" one of the Gryffindors asked.
"Oh please," Harish said. Several students turned to him. "They won't be coming by sky. That's already been done."
"So how will they be arriving?" a Ravenclaw asked.
Harish shrugged.
"I don't know everything."
The waited, shivering slightly now, for Durmstrang to arrive. Some people still stared up at the sky while others looked all around them. For a few minutes, the silence was broken only by the stamping and snorting of Madame Maxime's horses. But then—
"Can you hear something?" Ron asked suddenly.
Everyone else listened intently. An odd eerie noise was drifting toward them out of the darkness: a muffled rumbling and sucking sound, as though an immense vacuum cleaner was moving along the riverbed.
"The lake!" another Gryffindor cried. "Look at the lake!"
From where they were, they had a clear view of the smooth black surface of the water—except that the surface was no longer smooth any more. Some disturbance was taking place deep in the centre; 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…and then Harish saw rigging of a ship…
"It's a mast!" he said to the twins.
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 slide toward the bank. A few moments later, they heard an anchor splash as it was thrown into 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, Draco noticed, seemed to be built along the lines of Crabbe and Goyle, who were two boys Draco had been forced to play with as a child. As they drew nearer, it was revealed that their bulk was actually large fur cloaks, coarse and matted. 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.
As he stepped into the light, they saw that Karkaroff 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 Harish 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, Harish caught a glimpse of a prominent curved nose and thick black eyebrows. He didn't need the punch on the arm from Draco, or the hiss in the ear from the twins, to recognize that profile.
"Harish—it's Krum!"