Chapter 23: BEAUXBATONS AND DURMSTRANG
Harry awoke the following morning sweat and scream free, though he still wanted to send Cho something uplifting. The topic of conversation wherever anyone went, regardless of year, was the tournament. Students fourth year and up were telling the third years and under all about the Triwizard Tournament, having been at least first years at Hogwarts the year it made it's grand return. Many names were crossing Harry's ears, in particular his own but others were Malfoy, Ron and Ernie Macmillan, a Hufflepuff seventh year. Ernie and his band of Hufflepuff friends would be constantly talking about it during each Herbology lesson they shared with the Gryffindors.
"My mom wants me to enter," he was saying, "but my dad doesn't. It's weird."
Harry, tending to his blue water lily, a flower with yellow petals in the center of a large quanity of blue ones, was ignoring him.
"Cut up the leaves now," Professor Sprout barked, "they don't bite like Mandrakes do! And remember, do not eat them unless you want to not even be able to feel your own skin. It's a very strange feeling, I assure you."
"What is this stuff, anyway?" Ron asked.
"It makes an extremely potent pain reliever. Although it takes hours to prepare, it's immeasurably stronger than that Muggle one, Morphine and it doesn't do strange stuff to you, either."
"It doesn't work on magical pain, does it?" Harry asked her, guessing that she already swallowed a textbook on the subject. She did nothing but give him a quizzical look. "The Cruciatus Curse," he then said.
"Oh, that," said Hermione uncomfortably.
"'Cause I imagine I'm going to get another dose of it."
"I dunno. I wouldn't think so and I doubt you're willing to try it out."
Harry grinned at her.
"We're probably going to make the potion with this in class," Hermione went on. "You know that really foul-smelling ingredient you had to get? It's part of this potion."
Both Harry and Ron made faces of pure disgust as the smell came back to them.
It was when that Thursday came, the thirtieth of October, that every single teacher at Hogwarts gave up trying to teach anyone anything when every student's mind was clearly on the tournament. Harry spent the entirety of Care of Magical Creatures telling Hagrid that he wasn't going to enter his name into the Goblet of Fire.
"Harry, yeh have ter!" said Hagrid.
"No," said Harry loudly. "I would like to sit this one out and talk about what dangerous task is coming up next during Hogsmeade visits, thanks."
Professor Flitwick, who usually took no one's side -- and was usually a very neutral professor, thought Harry -- was very adamant about him entering.
"It's the pressure," Harry told Ron and Hermione after finally getting away from Charms, "that's going to make me so very upset when I enter my name."
"What?" squeaked Hermione. "You're thinking of entering?"
"Of course I'm not! It's just that everyone wants a Hogwarts victory --"
"You're right, you know," said Ron.
"-- and everyone seems to have it in their head that if I enter, I'll not only definitely get my name spit out, I'll win. I only won last time because Barty Crouch's son, Barty Crouch, was helping me along," Harry said irritably. "What a mess that was."
"You didn't do that bad, you know," said Hermione timidly. "I mean, no one expected you to fly your old Firebolt around that dragon, or to save everyone from the lake --"
"No," said Harry loudly for the hundredth time in one day. "The second task with the lake was embarassing and he was clearing my way through the maze, too."
He was very pleased to see that Professor McGonagall didn't share this ridiculous view that everyone else seemed to have -- or at least she just wasn't giving outward signs about it.
"Oh, a Gryffindor bringing the glory to Hogwarts would be very nice," she sighed for the second time in under thirty minutes.
By now, Harry had been holding his forehead with one hand and the other, tapping his fingers impatiently on his desk, staring at an upside-down open book that he clearly wasn't reading.
"I don't need this," he said loudly (he then realized he'd been saying a lot of things loudly in one day alone), "what with drinking unicorn blood and other oddities this year..."
"I'm sorry, Potter --" Professor McGonagall apologized.
"Save it," said Harry shortly.
"Very well," said Professor McGonagall as the bell rang, signaling all the students to drop their books and bags off in their dormitories.
"How d'you suppose they're going to arrive this time?" asked a Hufflepuff streaking past Harry.
"Last time my brother said they arrived by dragons!" his friend told him.
"Hardly," Harry called out to them. When they turned to see who was talking to them, they broke into a run.
"Suppose Durmstrang is coming by that ship again and Beauxbatons by that huge flying horse-drawn carriage?" Ron suggested as they rounded on the Fat Lady.
Hermione gave her the password and then said, "Probably. I suppose someone's going to have Harry use Raides to do something really nice just so we can show off."
Harry grinned down at Raides who was looking up at him hopefully.
"I wouldn't mind that," Raides let them know.
"I bet you wouldn't," Ron muttered, sounding slightly upset.
"What's with you?" Hermione asked him.
"I want a staff like that!" he whined.
Harry blushed, trying not to look too pleased with himself as he and Ron split at the spiral staircase to drop their books off. Sure enough, when Harry exited the castle with Ron and Hermione, Dumbledore was standing next to Professor McGonagall, apparently waiting for Harry to come.
"Potter!" said Professor McGonagall, sounding oddly happy, her arms wide out like she was going to hug him (he hoped that she wasn't going to).
Harry knew right away that, unlike Dumbledore, she couldn't possibly restrain herself when the possibility of showing off to two other wizarding schools was so much within her grasp. Dumbledore, though apprehensive, had given in. Mr. Weasley had once told Harry a few years back that wizards couldn't help but show off to each other when they congregate.
"I'm just going to show you a quick Charm that produces a dragon made of light as an, er -- a gesture of welcome to our foreign guests," Dumbledore explained. "Very popular back in ancient times to light up grand events as it provided enormous amounts of light that never burned out."
Raides, taking Harry's open hand over her head as a hint, jumped up into the air, transforming into the grand Staff of Cybele and landed right in his hand. Many people stopped talking as she did this to stare though it wasn't quite on the scale of stares that he would be getting after summoning the dragon made of light.
"This was a discovery of mine after reading through a book on ancient forms of entertainment," said Dumbledore, grinning but he cleared his throat loudly from the look on Professor McGonagall's stern face. "Just repeat after me, Harry, while making a figure-eight in the air with the staff. That's it, good. Now, keeping making it until the dragon is fully out. Lumos --"
"Lumos --"
"Vipera."
"Vipera."
As soon as he finished this, what looked more like a snake than a dragon started coming out of the staff's crystal, head first. It was pure white and very bright, so bright it lit up from the castle front doors over to Hagrid's cabin. The dragon was about three feet thick, it's body perfectly round, it's head sporting teeth made of heavenly rays of light and where there would have been eyes in it's sockets, there were instead pearly-white balls.
It's head, the fangs being about six inches long, looked very menacing, though as it extended out of the staff, it immediately headed for the middle of the congregation of students. Everyone except a few very brave Gryffindors quickly got out of the way, which was probably what made Dumbledore shout, "No need to run! It can not hurt you, let alone sink it's teeth into you!"
The dragon of light then start doing it's own figure eight just over the heads of the students and staff, lighting up on the front grounds of Hogwarts as if it were day. All of it was quite beautiful to look at, if slightly startling at first. When the tip of the tail extended out of the scarlet crystal, the dragon had to have been at least one hundred feet in length.
When Harry found his voice, the first thing out of it was a "wow" at his own handiwork. There were murmurs of interest and fright at the enormous-being-an-understatement light-dragon.
"That makes the wand-light spell, Lumos, look like child's play!" shrieked Ron in amazement.
"Ron, so far anything this staff has done has made wands look like child's play," Hermione told him in a honey-have-I-got-something-to-tell-you sort of voice, staring up at the dragon just a few feet above their heads.
It was rather like a large, moving, magnificent chandelier except it wasn't; it was a so-very-long dragon made up of light that moved ominously overhead, so long, in fact, that along it's path, there was always at least two coils of it's body swirling above you.
For quite a long time, there was very little talking and a lot of staring done until some of the people got their senses back.
"Weasley, straighten your cloak!" barked Professor McGonagall, stilling staring up at the light-dragon and then, "And someone tell Mr. Gulia that Muggle hats should not be worn when welcoming foreign wizards! First years in front, no pushing! Seventh years in the back. All in order!"
Ron took off his cloak, which was perfectly straight to begin with, brushed off some leaves from a nearby tree and put it back on. Harry followed Ron, Hermione and the other Gryffindor seventh years to the back of the line the teachers had placed most of the students in.
"It's just about six," said Harry, looking down at his golden watch.
Someone pointed up in the sky and shouted, "Look! A flying house!" but Harry knew it wasn't a flying house, it was the Beauxbatons horse-drawn carriage.
"Why can't they come in something more interesting," Ron groaned, "like maybe a Gate... or one of those cool Teleportation Charms that they used to use back in the third century!"
"Don't be ridiculous, Weasley," said Professor Sinistra, who teaches Astronomy. "No one uses Gates anymore, they got too closely associated with Dark magic and the Teleportation Charms, while they looked very nice, were superceeded by the much easier to use Apparation and Disapparation. Besides, some still have trouble with those," she added, looking at the back of Professor McGonagall's head with a sharp stare.
Gazing up at the cloud-free sky, Harry pulled his cloak closer to himself, as it was quite cold out, and looked skyward. The image of a giant something was soaring high over the Forbidden Forest. As it came closer and closer, Harry could make out the gigantic, powderblue image of the carriage itself which was roughly the size of a large house. The dozen or so enormous horses, all palominos and all each nearly the size of an elephant, were pulling the gigantic carriage. All of this, of course, was to accomodate the size of the headmistress of Beauxbatons which was a large woman who was part-giant named Madam Maxime.
The front row of students took one large simultaneous step backwards as the carriage flew ever lower, coming in at an astonishing speed. Then, with an almighty bang that made the ground beneath everyone quake, the horses' hooves, the size of the golden plates in the Great Hall, slammed into the ground. The carriage itself landed not a second later, bouncing slightly on it's equally vast wheels. The horses were alarming this close up, tossing their heads and staring at students with their large, fiery red eyes. On the door of the carriage was the Beauxbatons coat of arms, two crossed golden wands, each emitting three stars.
And then the carriage door opened and a girl in pale blue robes jumped down from it (it rose a few feet off the ground), dropping down golden steps as she fiddled with something on the side. She stepped backwards so that the rest of the students inside the carriage could emerge and the first thing coming out was a shiny, high-heeled black shoe, bigger even than the black, pointy hat upon Harry's head. A few people gasped, or at least, those third year and below as the rest had already seen the giganticness that was Madam Maxime. As tall as Hagrid himself, the two of them got on very well, almost too well, Harry thought, because each time he had visited Hagrid with Ron and Hermione, there was a stockpile of letters from her inside his cabin.
Following the shoe, which shined brightly from the light of the dragon, were silk robes of black, exactly like what she had worn on her arrival last time except those were of satin. She gave a startled look at the light-dragon as she spotted it, causing the carriage to shake.
"Dumbly-dorr!" she gasped, a massive hand, gleaming with opals, over her heart.
"My dear Madam Maxime," said Dumbledore at once, curtly stepping through the wall of students, "how do you do? Kindly ignore the rather extravagant source of light our dear Minerva, here, suggested we use," he added, smiling which made Professor McGonagall turn as red as Madam Maxime's fingernails.
Madam Maxime would have then proceeded to walk but she caught sight of the equally enormous Staff of Cybele which rose a clear two or so feet above Harry's head. It's scarlet crystal stuck in the mouth of the lion's golden head, the golden fur covering the length of the staff, down to the tail where it changed smoothly back to scarlet; it froze her. The hand on her heart moved up to her mouth and she gasped again. Harry supposed he ought to get used to this as there was going to be plenty of it.
Harry's mouth moved wordlessly for a moment and then he said, "The Staff of Cybele."
"Is it?" said Madam Maxime weakly.
"Mr. Potter will be introducing Cybele's most excellent staff, Raides, to yourselves and our delegations from Durmstrang during the Welcoming Feast," said Dumbledore, bowing slightly but as he did so, something inside the lake stirred, signaling the arrival of Durmstrang. "And here they come!"
Harry, introduce Raides? He wasn't exactly informed of this ahead of time... He looked at Dumbledore, who looked back, grinned, then turned his attention to the lake.
"I'm positively freezing," Ron whispered to Harry. "Couldn't you come up with a tricky little charm to prevent us from becoming icicles?"
"I don't know any," said Harry, "and I'm not about to try anything with Dumbledore standing next to me."
Dumbledore looked at Harry again, still grinning.
Harry, feeling Dumbledore's gaze penetrate him, looked at Madam Maxime, who carelessly waved a hand behind her, calling her dozen of students forth. They joined the Hogwarts students in watching the lake. They did look very cold, however, as their robes were made of fine silk and they were not wearing cloaks. Some of them wrapped scarves and shawls around their heads but it wasn't helping much. A few stared up at the castle, some stared at the lake, some were looking at the Staff of Cybele and more still were looking at the dragon above their heads.
A muffled rumbling and sucking sound was emanating from the middle of the lake as though a tremendous vacuum cleaner was edging along the riverbed. Harry recalled from last time how the Durmstrang party arrived: by teleporting ship. Quickly becoming not smooth at all as it usually was, in the center of the lake, great big bubbles were forming on the surface. Waves were washing over the now-muddy bank. Quite suddenly, out of the middle of the lake itself, a humongous whirlpool appeared like someone had pulled a large plug out of the bottom of it.
"...and there's the mast," said Ron lazily.
Slowly, the magnificent Durmstrang ship rose out of the water, gleaming in the combined light from the moon and the light from the dragon. Last time it had looked slightly skeletal, but now it more resemebled that of a ship having undergone a complete reconstruction. Harry doubted at all whether it was the same ship as it clearly wasn't. The previous one looked like it had been pulled from wreckage and restored so that it just worked but this one was ocean blue along the edges with what had to be a charm on the sides itself to make it look like the painting was water -- or was it real water, slapped on and made to stick to the sides of the ship? Misty light shimmered out of the portholes and finally, with a big sloshing noise, the ship rose fully out of the lake, bobbing on the high waves and then it glided gracefully towards the bank.
But it didn't stop there. The ship rose a few feet above the water and began changing shape entirely. Within a few seconds, it had turned into a wonderful, several-room cabin that floated on air. The front door swung open and out of it, along the water, a lengthy piece of stone, stretching past the doors of the cabin, extended, sloping downwards, further and further until it touched the bank. There were small, yellow lights every few inches along the bridge to the bank. It looked rather like someone had paid a lot to erect a house out on a river and then connect a beautiful drawbridge to the shore. But they couldn't be a Muggle because the walls of the house were made of water.
"That looks very strange," said Ron quietly, his face screwed up in confusion at the odd walls. "Can't you stick your hand through that? And it must be freezing inside!"
"It's a Solidifier Charm," said Hermione with an air of superiority. "You can turn anything liquid solid and it's harder than a wall of foot-thick steel. It's probably warmer in there than the castle."
Ron sighed at the side of her head as a very familiar someone else emerged from the cabin made of water: Professor Karkaroff. All of students following him, for a second, looked to be built far bigger than even Dudley but their bulk was due to their robes which were made of shaggy, matted fur. Karkaroff's own furs were sleek and silver, exactly like his hair. He paid absolutely no attention to the seven foot staff in Harry's hand or the dragon over his head doing figure-eights... but his students sure did.
"Hello, hello, Dumbledore!" he called heartily as his foot stepped onto the shore, his voice every bit as fruity and unctuous as Harry remembered it. "Beautiful night! How are you?"
"Excellent, thank you, Professor Karkaroff," replied Dumbledore.
Kararoff finally looked up above and Harry saw that the goatee he had had last time he was at Hogwarts was now no more than sparse hairs on his chin. The hair on his head was white and short. He was a tall, thin wizard, somewhat like Dumbledore. When he reached Dumbledore, Karkaroff shook one of his hands with both of his own. He smiled, showing his very yellow teeth and his smile, this time, Harry noticed, extended up to his eyes. Last time his smile had not, leaving his face a mixed breed of warmth and coldness.
"And how are you this fine evening," said Karkaroff, walking over to Madam Maxime.
Madam Maxime did nothing more than give Karkaroff a set of cold eyes which was unsettling and Karkaroff, dropping his proper manner, looked down at the ground, beckoned his students forth, and walked up into the castle.
"Karkaroff has -- veil, I vill tell you during ze feast," Madam Maxime whispered slowly to Dumbledore in a voice so quiet Harry wasn't supposed to hear but he did anyway.
"What has Karkaroff done?" Harry whispered quietly to Ron and Hermione. "Madam Maxime just said he did something... but she wouldn't say what."
Ron and Hermione looked at him and then all three of them shrugged.
"I thought he would have quit being headmaster of Durmstrang after Voldemort," said Harry. "I mean, Voldemort does want his skin and being headmaster of a school, he sure knows where Karkaroff is."
Harry awoke the following morning sweat and scream free, though he still wanted to send Cho something uplifting. The topic of conversation wherever anyone went, regardless of year, was the tournament. Students fourth year and up were telling the third years and under all about the Triwizard Tournament, having been at least first years at Hogwarts the year it made it's grand return. Many names were crossing Harry's ears, in particular his own but others were Malfoy, Ron and Ernie Macmillan, a Hufflepuff seventh year. Ernie and his band of Hufflepuff friends would be constantly talking about it during each Herbology lesson they shared with the Gryffindors.
"My mom wants me to enter," he was saying, "but my dad doesn't. It's weird."
Harry, tending to his blue water lily, a flower with yellow petals in the center of a large quanity of blue ones, was ignoring him.
"Cut up the leaves now," Professor Sprout barked, "they don't bite like Mandrakes do! And remember, do not eat them unless you want to not even be able to feel your own skin. It's a very strange feeling, I assure you."
"What is this stuff, anyway?" Ron asked.
"It makes an extremely potent pain reliever. Although it takes hours to prepare, it's immeasurably stronger than that Muggle one, Morphine and it doesn't do strange stuff to you, either."
"It doesn't work on magical pain, does it?" Harry asked her, guessing that she already swallowed a textbook on the subject. She did nothing but give him a quizzical look. "The Cruciatus Curse," he then said.
"Oh, that," said Hermione uncomfortably.
"'Cause I imagine I'm going to get another dose of it."
"I dunno. I wouldn't think so and I doubt you're willing to try it out."
Harry grinned at her.
"We're probably going to make the potion with this in class," Hermione went on. "You know that really foul-smelling ingredient you had to get? It's part of this potion."
Both Harry and Ron made faces of pure disgust as the smell came back to them.
It was when that Thursday came, the thirtieth of October, that every single teacher at Hogwarts gave up trying to teach anyone anything when every student's mind was clearly on the tournament. Harry spent the entirety of Care of Magical Creatures telling Hagrid that he wasn't going to enter his name into the Goblet of Fire.
"Harry, yeh have ter!" said Hagrid.
"No," said Harry loudly. "I would like to sit this one out and talk about what dangerous task is coming up next during Hogsmeade visits, thanks."
Professor Flitwick, who usually took no one's side -- and was usually a very neutral professor, thought Harry -- was very adamant about him entering.
"It's the pressure," Harry told Ron and Hermione after finally getting away from Charms, "that's going to make me so very upset when I enter my name."
"What?" squeaked Hermione. "You're thinking of entering?"
"Of course I'm not! It's just that everyone wants a Hogwarts victory --"
"You're right, you know," said Ron.
"-- and everyone seems to have it in their head that if I enter, I'll not only definitely get my name spit out, I'll win. I only won last time because Barty Crouch's son, Barty Crouch, was helping me along," Harry said irritably. "What a mess that was."
"You didn't do that bad, you know," said Hermione timidly. "I mean, no one expected you to fly your old Firebolt around that dragon, or to save everyone from the lake --"
"No," said Harry loudly for the hundredth time in one day. "The second task with the lake was embarassing and he was clearing my way through the maze, too."
He was very pleased to see that Professor McGonagall didn't share this ridiculous view that everyone else seemed to have -- or at least she just wasn't giving outward signs about it.
"Oh, a Gryffindor bringing the glory to Hogwarts would be very nice," she sighed for the second time in under thirty minutes.
By now, Harry had been holding his forehead with one hand and the other, tapping his fingers impatiently on his desk, staring at an upside-down open book that he clearly wasn't reading.
"I don't need this," he said loudly (he then realized he'd been saying a lot of things loudly in one day alone), "what with drinking unicorn blood and other oddities this year..."
"I'm sorry, Potter --" Professor McGonagall apologized.
"Save it," said Harry shortly.
"Very well," said Professor McGonagall as the bell rang, signaling all the students to drop their books and bags off in their dormitories.
"How d'you suppose they're going to arrive this time?" asked a Hufflepuff streaking past Harry.
"Last time my brother said they arrived by dragons!" his friend told him.
"Hardly," Harry called out to them. When they turned to see who was talking to them, they broke into a run.
"Suppose Durmstrang is coming by that ship again and Beauxbatons by that huge flying horse-drawn carriage?" Ron suggested as they rounded on the Fat Lady.
Hermione gave her the password and then said, "Probably. I suppose someone's going to have Harry use Raides to do something really nice just so we can show off."
Harry grinned down at Raides who was looking up at him hopefully.
"I wouldn't mind that," Raides let them know.
"I bet you wouldn't," Ron muttered, sounding slightly upset.
"What's with you?" Hermione asked him.
"I want a staff like that!" he whined.
Harry blushed, trying not to look too pleased with himself as he and Ron split at the spiral staircase to drop their books off. Sure enough, when Harry exited the castle with Ron and Hermione, Dumbledore was standing next to Professor McGonagall, apparently waiting for Harry to come.
"Potter!" said Professor McGonagall, sounding oddly happy, her arms wide out like she was going to hug him (he hoped that she wasn't going to).
Harry knew right away that, unlike Dumbledore, she couldn't possibly restrain herself when the possibility of showing off to two other wizarding schools was so much within her grasp. Dumbledore, though apprehensive, had given in. Mr. Weasley had once told Harry a few years back that wizards couldn't help but show off to each other when they congregate.
"I'm just going to show you a quick Charm that produces a dragon made of light as an, er -- a gesture of welcome to our foreign guests," Dumbledore explained. "Very popular back in ancient times to light up grand events as it provided enormous amounts of light that never burned out."
Raides, taking Harry's open hand over her head as a hint, jumped up into the air, transforming into the grand Staff of Cybele and landed right in his hand. Many people stopped talking as she did this to stare though it wasn't quite on the scale of stares that he would be getting after summoning the dragon made of light.
"This was a discovery of mine after reading through a book on ancient forms of entertainment," said Dumbledore, grinning but he cleared his throat loudly from the look on Professor McGonagall's stern face. "Just repeat after me, Harry, while making a figure-eight in the air with the staff. That's it, good. Now, keeping making it until the dragon is fully out. Lumos --"
"Lumos --"
"Vipera."
"Vipera."
As soon as he finished this, what looked more like a snake than a dragon started coming out of the staff's crystal, head first. It was pure white and very bright, so bright it lit up from the castle front doors over to Hagrid's cabin. The dragon was about three feet thick, it's body perfectly round, it's head sporting teeth made of heavenly rays of light and where there would have been eyes in it's sockets, there were instead pearly-white balls.
It's head, the fangs being about six inches long, looked very menacing, though as it extended out of the staff, it immediately headed for the middle of the congregation of students. Everyone except a few very brave Gryffindors quickly got out of the way, which was probably what made Dumbledore shout, "No need to run! It can not hurt you, let alone sink it's teeth into you!"
The dragon of light then start doing it's own figure eight just over the heads of the students and staff, lighting up on the front grounds of Hogwarts as if it were day. All of it was quite beautiful to look at, if slightly startling at first. When the tip of the tail extended out of the scarlet crystal, the dragon had to have been at least one hundred feet in length.
When Harry found his voice, the first thing out of it was a "wow" at his own handiwork. There were murmurs of interest and fright at the enormous-being-an-understatement light-dragon.
"That makes the wand-light spell, Lumos, look like child's play!" shrieked Ron in amazement.
"Ron, so far anything this staff has done has made wands look like child's play," Hermione told him in a honey-have-I-got-something-to-tell-you sort of voice, staring up at the dragon just a few feet above their heads.
It was rather like a large, moving, magnificent chandelier except it wasn't; it was a so-very-long dragon made up of light that moved ominously overhead, so long, in fact, that along it's path, there was always at least two coils of it's body swirling above you.
For quite a long time, there was very little talking and a lot of staring done until some of the people got their senses back.
"Weasley, straighten your cloak!" barked Professor McGonagall, stilling staring up at the light-dragon and then, "And someone tell Mr. Gulia that Muggle hats should not be worn when welcoming foreign wizards! First years in front, no pushing! Seventh years in the back. All in order!"
Ron took off his cloak, which was perfectly straight to begin with, brushed off some leaves from a nearby tree and put it back on. Harry followed Ron, Hermione and the other Gryffindor seventh years to the back of the line the teachers had placed most of the students in.
"It's just about six," said Harry, looking down at his golden watch.
Someone pointed up in the sky and shouted, "Look! A flying house!" but Harry knew it wasn't a flying house, it was the Beauxbatons horse-drawn carriage.
"Why can't they come in something more interesting," Ron groaned, "like maybe a Gate... or one of those cool Teleportation Charms that they used to use back in the third century!"
"Don't be ridiculous, Weasley," said Professor Sinistra, who teaches Astronomy. "No one uses Gates anymore, they got too closely associated with Dark magic and the Teleportation Charms, while they looked very nice, were superceeded by the much easier to use Apparation and Disapparation. Besides, some still have trouble with those," she added, looking at the back of Professor McGonagall's head with a sharp stare.
Gazing up at the cloud-free sky, Harry pulled his cloak closer to himself, as it was quite cold out, and looked skyward. The image of a giant something was soaring high over the Forbidden Forest. As it came closer and closer, Harry could make out the gigantic, powderblue image of the carriage itself which was roughly the size of a large house. The dozen or so enormous horses, all palominos and all each nearly the size of an elephant, were pulling the gigantic carriage. All of this, of course, was to accomodate the size of the headmistress of Beauxbatons which was a large woman who was part-giant named Madam Maxime.
The front row of students took one large simultaneous step backwards as the carriage flew ever lower, coming in at an astonishing speed. Then, with an almighty bang that made the ground beneath everyone quake, the horses' hooves, the size of the golden plates in the Great Hall, slammed into the ground. The carriage itself landed not a second later, bouncing slightly on it's equally vast wheels. The horses were alarming this close up, tossing their heads and staring at students with their large, fiery red eyes. On the door of the carriage was the Beauxbatons coat of arms, two crossed golden wands, each emitting three stars.
And then the carriage door opened and a girl in pale blue robes jumped down from it (it rose a few feet off the ground), dropping down golden steps as she fiddled with something on the side. She stepped backwards so that the rest of the students inside the carriage could emerge and the first thing coming out was a shiny, high-heeled black shoe, bigger even than the black, pointy hat upon Harry's head. A few people gasped, or at least, those third year and below as the rest had already seen the giganticness that was Madam Maxime. As tall as Hagrid himself, the two of them got on very well, almost too well, Harry thought, because each time he had visited Hagrid with Ron and Hermione, there was a stockpile of letters from her inside his cabin.
Following the shoe, which shined brightly from the light of the dragon, were silk robes of black, exactly like what she had worn on her arrival last time except those were of satin. She gave a startled look at the light-dragon as she spotted it, causing the carriage to shake.
"Dumbly-dorr!" she gasped, a massive hand, gleaming with opals, over her heart.
"My dear Madam Maxime," said Dumbledore at once, curtly stepping through the wall of students, "how do you do? Kindly ignore the rather extravagant source of light our dear Minerva, here, suggested we use," he added, smiling which made Professor McGonagall turn as red as Madam Maxime's fingernails.
Madam Maxime would have then proceeded to walk but she caught sight of the equally enormous Staff of Cybele which rose a clear two or so feet above Harry's head. It's scarlet crystal stuck in the mouth of the lion's golden head, the golden fur covering the length of the staff, down to the tail where it changed smoothly back to scarlet; it froze her. The hand on her heart moved up to her mouth and she gasped again. Harry supposed he ought to get used to this as there was going to be plenty of it.
Harry's mouth moved wordlessly for a moment and then he said, "The Staff of Cybele."
"Is it?" said Madam Maxime weakly.
"Mr. Potter will be introducing Cybele's most excellent staff, Raides, to yourselves and our delegations from Durmstrang during the Welcoming Feast," said Dumbledore, bowing slightly but as he did so, something inside the lake stirred, signaling the arrival of Durmstrang. "And here they come!"
Harry, introduce Raides? He wasn't exactly informed of this ahead of time... He looked at Dumbledore, who looked back, grinned, then turned his attention to the lake.
"I'm positively freezing," Ron whispered to Harry. "Couldn't you come up with a tricky little charm to prevent us from becoming icicles?"
"I don't know any," said Harry, "and I'm not about to try anything with Dumbledore standing next to me."
Dumbledore looked at Harry again, still grinning.
Harry, feeling Dumbledore's gaze penetrate him, looked at Madam Maxime, who carelessly waved a hand behind her, calling her dozen of students forth. They joined the Hogwarts students in watching the lake. They did look very cold, however, as their robes were made of fine silk and they were not wearing cloaks. Some of them wrapped scarves and shawls around their heads but it wasn't helping much. A few stared up at the castle, some stared at the lake, some were looking at the Staff of Cybele and more still were looking at the dragon above their heads.
A muffled rumbling and sucking sound was emanating from the middle of the lake as though a tremendous vacuum cleaner was edging along the riverbed. Harry recalled from last time how the Durmstrang party arrived: by teleporting ship. Quickly becoming not smooth at all as it usually was, in the center of the lake, great big bubbles were forming on the surface. Waves were washing over the now-muddy bank. Quite suddenly, out of the middle of the lake itself, a humongous whirlpool appeared like someone had pulled a large plug out of the bottom of it.
"...and there's the mast," said Ron lazily.
Slowly, the magnificent Durmstrang ship rose out of the water, gleaming in the combined light from the moon and the light from the dragon. Last time it had looked slightly skeletal, but now it more resemebled that of a ship having undergone a complete reconstruction. Harry doubted at all whether it was the same ship as it clearly wasn't. The previous one looked like it had been pulled from wreckage and restored so that it just worked but this one was ocean blue along the edges with what had to be a charm on the sides itself to make it look like the painting was water -- or was it real water, slapped on and made to stick to the sides of the ship? Misty light shimmered out of the portholes and finally, with a big sloshing noise, the ship rose fully out of the lake, bobbing on the high waves and then it glided gracefully towards the bank.
But it didn't stop there. The ship rose a few feet above the water and began changing shape entirely. Within a few seconds, it had turned into a wonderful, several-room cabin that floated on air. The front door swung open and out of it, along the water, a lengthy piece of stone, stretching past the doors of the cabin, extended, sloping downwards, further and further until it touched the bank. There were small, yellow lights every few inches along the bridge to the bank. It looked rather like someone had paid a lot to erect a house out on a river and then connect a beautiful drawbridge to the shore. But they couldn't be a Muggle because the walls of the house were made of water.
"That looks very strange," said Ron quietly, his face screwed up in confusion at the odd walls. "Can't you stick your hand through that? And it must be freezing inside!"
"It's a Solidifier Charm," said Hermione with an air of superiority. "You can turn anything liquid solid and it's harder than a wall of foot-thick steel. It's probably warmer in there than the castle."
Ron sighed at the side of her head as a very familiar someone else emerged from the cabin made of water: Professor Karkaroff. All of students following him, for a second, looked to be built far bigger than even Dudley but their bulk was due to their robes which were made of shaggy, matted fur. Karkaroff's own furs were sleek and silver, exactly like his hair. He paid absolutely no attention to the seven foot staff in Harry's hand or the dragon over his head doing figure-eights... but his students sure did.
"Hello, hello, Dumbledore!" he called heartily as his foot stepped onto the shore, his voice every bit as fruity and unctuous as Harry remembered it. "Beautiful night! How are you?"
"Excellent, thank you, Professor Karkaroff," replied Dumbledore.
Kararoff finally looked up above and Harry saw that the goatee he had had last time he was at Hogwarts was now no more than sparse hairs on his chin. The hair on his head was white and short. He was a tall, thin wizard, somewhat like Dumbledore. When he reached Dumbledore, Karkaroff shook one of his hands with both of his own. He smiled, showing his very yellow teeth and his smile, this time, Harry noticed, extended up to his eyes. Last time his smile had not, leaving his face a mixed breed of warmth and coldness.
"And how are you this fine evening," said Karkaroff, walking over to Madam Maxime.
Madam Maxime did nothing more than give Karkaroff a set of cold eyes which was unsettling and Karkaroff, dropping his proper manner, looked down at the ground, beckoned his students forth, and walked up into the castle.
"Karkaroff has -- veil, I vill tell you during ze feast," Madam Maxime whispered slowly to Dumbledore in a voice so quiet Harry wasn't supposed to hear but he did anyway.
"What has Karkaroff done?" Harry whispered quietly to Ron and Hermione. "Madam Maxime just said he did something... but she wouldn't say what."
Ron and Hermione looked at him and then all three of them shrugged.
"I thought he would have quit being headmaster of Durmstrang after Voldemort," said Harry. "I mean, Voldemort does want his skin and being headmaster of a school, he sure knows where Karkaroff is."