Triwizard Tournament fever had gripped the castle. All the students could talk about was the upcoming tournament—who was entering, what the challenges might be, what Durmstrang and Beauxbatons would be like. Lee Jordan told anyone who would listen that one of the tasks was going to involve acromantula whilst Ginny overheard someone claim that Hagrid had been sourcing trolls to use in the tournament.
Dudley noticed too that the castle seemed to be undergoing an extra-thorough cleaning. Several grimy portraits had been scrubbed, much to the displeasure of their subjects, who sat huddled in their frames muttering darkly and wincing as they felt their raw pink faces. The suits of armor were suddenly gleaming and moving without squeaking, and Argus Filch, the caretaker, was behaving so ferociously to any students who forgot to wipe their shoes that he terrified a pair of first-year girls into hysterics.
Fred and George had managed to successfully brew their aging potion and had offered to share with Ron, Dudley, Dean and Neville if it worked. "If not, we'll fall back and try using your cloak," Fred had said.
On the morning that the other schools were due to arrive, they went down to the Great Hall to see that it had been decorated. Enormous silk banners hung from the walls, each of them representing a Hogwarts House: red with a gold lion for Gryffiindor, 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, the largest banner of all bore the Hogwarts coat of arms: lion, eagle, badger, and snake united around a large letter H.
Dudley, Ron, and Hermione sat down beside Fred and George at the Gryffindor table. Once again, and most unusually, they were sitting apart from everyone else and conversing in low voices. Ron led the way over to them.
"It's a bummer, all right," George was saying gloomily to Fred. "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 into his hand. He can't avoid us forrever."
"Who's avoiding you?" said Ron, sitting down next to them.
"Wish you would," said Fred, looking irritated at the interruption.
"What's a bummer?" Ron asked George.
"Having a nosy git like you for a brother," said George.
Later that day, the teachers led the entire school outside to wait for the arrival of the other two schools. There was a sense of excitement in the air. Dudley was looking forward to seeing what the other schools were like. As they waited, they talked about how the other two schools might get there.
And then 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, losing her head completely.
"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, powderblue, 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.
"Wow," Dudley said. "Abraxan Horses—remember, Hagrid shown us one last year!" Dudley recognized them at once.
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 that made Neville jump backward onto a Slytherin fifth year's foot, the horses' hooves, larger than dinner plates, hit the ground. 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.
Dudley just had time to see that 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 Dudley saw a shining, high-heeled black shoe emerging from the inside of the carriage - a shoe the size of a child's sled - followed, almost immediately, by the largest woman he had ever seen in his life. The size of the carriage, and of the horses, was immediately explained. A few people gasped.
Dudley had only ever seen one person as large as this woman in his life, and that was Hagrid; he doubted whether there was an inch difference in their heights. Yet somehow - maybe simply because he was used to Hagrid - this woman (now at the foot of the steps, and looking around at the waiting, wide-eyed crowd) seemed even more unnaturally large. As she stepped into the light flooding from the entrance hall, 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.
"She looks even bigger than Hagrid," Dudley commented
"I'm more interested in the students," Dean said, nodding towards a cluster of boys and girls wearing blue robes. "They have some good looking girls there."
Dumbledore started to clap, and the rest of the school followed suit. While Dumbledore greeted her, Dudley checked out the rest of the Beauxbaton students. They looked cold and were staring up at the castle apprehensively. Their robes looked to be made out of fine silk.
"Don't look up to much, do they?" he muttered to Ron. "I reckon our lot don't have much to worry about. It's not that cold."
"They probably come from a hot country," Hermione said, fairly. "You'd be shivering too if we suddenly went to a school in Norway or Finland."
"I like to think I'd be smart enough to bring something warmer to wear,' Dean commented.
The Hogwarts crowd parted to let the Beauxbatons students enter the castle.
"How do you think Durmstrang will arrive?" Neville whispered. "Gran knew someone who went to the school before—it's in Scandanavia, but has students from all over Eastern Europe."
"You kept that quiet, Nev," Ron said, annoyed. "What else did she say? What are they like?"
"That's all," Neville said. "It was only in passing."
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.
Dudley 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 Dudley 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, Dudley 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: 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.
"Those lot look tough," said Dean, nodding his head towards the Durmstrang students. "Tougher than the Beauxbatons lot, anyway."
The Durmstrang bunch all seemed to be male. At least, Dudley didn't spot any female students at the moment. He looked back over at Karkaroff, who was talking to Dumbledore still.
"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, Dudley 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.
"Dudley - it's Krum!"