The Goblet of Fire Page 16

  Now slip me snug about your ears,

  I’ve never yet been wrong,

  I’ll have a look inside your mind

  And tell where you belong!’

  The Great Hall rang with applause as the Sorting Hat finished.

  ‘That’s not the song it sang when it sorted us,’ said Harry, clapping along with everyone else.

  ‘Sings a different one every year,’ said Ron. ‘It’s got to be a pretty boring life, hasn’t it, being a hat? I suppose it spends all year making up the next one.’

  Professor McGonagall was now unrolling a large scroll of parchment.

  ‘When I call out your name, you will put on the Hat and sit on the stool,’ she told the first-years. ‘When the Hat announces your house, you will go and sit at the appropriate table.

  ‘Ackerley, Stewart!’

  A boy walked forward, visibly trembling from head to foot, picked up the Sorting Hat, put it on and sat down on the stool.

  ‘Ravenclaw!’ shouted the Hat.

  Stewart Ackerley took off the Hat and hurried into a seat at the Ravenclaw table, where everyone was applauding him. Harry caught a glimpse of Cho, the Ravenclaw Seeker, cheering Stewart Ackerley as he sat down. For a fleeting second, Harry had a strange desire to join the Ravenclaw table too.

  ‘Baddock, Malcolm!’

  ‘Slytherin!’

  The table on the other side of the Hall erupted with cheers; Harry could see Malfoy clapping as Baddock joined the Slytherins. Harry wondered whether Baddock knew that Slytherin house had turned out more Dark witches and wizards than any other. Fred and George hissed Malcolm Baddock as he sat down.

  ‘Branstone, Eleanor!’

  ‘Hufflepuff!’

  ‘Cauldwell, Owen!’

  ‘Hufflepuff!’

  ‘Creevey, Dennis!’

  Tiny Dennis Creevey staggered forward, tripping over Hagrid’s moleskin, just as Hagrid himself sidled into the Hall through a door behind the teachers’ table. About twice as tall as a normal man, and at least three times as broad, Hagrid, with his long, wild, tangled black hair and beard, looked slightly alarming – a misleading impression, for Harry, Ron and Hermione knew Hagrid to possess a very kind nature. He winked at them as he sat down at the end of the staff table, and watched Dennis Creevey putting on the Sorting Hat. The rip at the brim opened wide –

  ‘Gryffindor!’ the Hat shouted.

  Hagrid clapped along with the Gryffindors, as Dennis Creevey, beaming widely, took off the Hat, placed it back on the stool, and hurried over to join his brother.

  ‘Colin, I fell in!’ he said shrilly, throwing himself into an empty seat. ‘It was brilliant! And something in the water grabbed me and pushed me back in the boat!’

  ‘Cool!’ said Colin, just as excitedly. ‘It was probably the giant squid, Dennis!’

  ‘Wow!’ said Dennis, as though nobody in their wildest dreams could hope for more than being thrown into a storm-tossed, fathoms-deep lake, and pushed out of it again by a giant sea-monster.

  ‘Dennis! Dennis! See that boy down there? The one with the black hair and glasses? See him? Know who he is, Dennis?’

  Harry looked away, staring very hard at the Sorting Hat, now sorting Emma Dobbs.

  The Sorting continued; boys and girls with varying degrees of fright on their faces moving, one by one, to the three-legged stool, the line dwindling slowly as Professor McGonagall passed the ‘L’s.

  ‘Oh, hurry up,’ Ron moaned, massaging his stomach.

  ‘Now, Ron, the Sorting’s much more important than food,’ said Nearly Headless Nick, as ‘Madley, Laura!’ became a Hufflepuff.

  ‘’Course it is, if you’re dead,’ snapped Ron.

  ‘I do hope this year’s batch of Gryffindors are up to scratch,’ said Nearly Headless Nick, applauding as ‘McDonald, Natalie!’ joined the Gryffindor table. ‘We don’t want to break our winning streak, do we?’

  Gryffindor had won the Inter-House Championship for the last three years in a row.

  ‘Pritchard, Graham!’

  ‘Slytherin!’

  ‘Quirke, Orla!’

  ‘Ravenclaw!’

  And finally, with ‘Whitby, Kevin!’ (‘Hufflepuff!’) the Sorting ended. Professor McGonagall picked up the Hat and the stool, and carried them away.

  ‘About time,’ said Ron, seizing his knife and fork and looking expectantly at his golden plate.

  Professor Dumbledore had got to his feet. He was smiling around at the students, his arms opened wide in welcome.

  ‘I have only two words to say to you,’ he told them, his deep voice echoing around the Hall. ‘Tuck in.’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ said Harry and Ron loudly, as the empty dishes filled magically before their eyes.

  Nearly Headless Nick watched mournfully as Harry, Ron and Hermione loaded their plates.

  ‘Aaah, ’at’s be’er,’ said Ron, with his mouth full of mashed potato.

  ‘You’re lucky there’s a feast at all tonight, you know,’ said Nearly Headless Nick. ‘There was trouble in the kitchens earlier.’

  ‘Why? Wha’ ’appened?’ said Harry, through a sizeable chunk of steak.

  ‘Peeves, of course,’ said Nearly Headless Nick, shaking his head, which wobbled dangerously. He pulled his ruff a little higher up his neck. ‘The usual argument, you know. He wanted to attend the feast – well, it’s quite out of the question, you know what he’s like, utterly uncivilised, can’t see a plate of food without throwing it. We held a ghosts’ council – the Fat Friar was all for giving him the chance – but most wisely, in my opinion, the Bloody Baron put his foot down.’

  The Bloody Baron was the Slytherin ghost, a gaunt and silent spectre covered in silver bloodstains. He was the only person at Hogwarts who could really control Peeves.

  ‘Yeah, we thought Peeves seemed hacked off about something,’ said Ron darkly. ‘So what did he do in the kitchens?’

  ‘Oh, the usual,’ said Nearly Headless Nick, shrugging. ‘Wreaked havoc and mayhem. Pots and pans everywhere. Place swimming in soup. Terrified the house-elves out of their wits –’

  Clang. Hermione had knocked over her golden goblet. Pumpkin juice spread steadily over the tablecloth, staining several feet of white linen orange, but Hermione paid no attention.

  ‘There are house-elves here?’ she said, staring, horror-struck, at Nearly Headless Nick. ‘Here at Hogwarts?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Nearly Headless Nick, looking surprised at her reaction. ‘The largest number in any dwelling in Britain, I believe. Over a hundred.’

  ‘I’ve never seen one!’ said Hermione.

  ‘Well, they hardly ever leave the kitchen by day, do they?’ said Nearly Headless Nick. ‘They come out at night to do a bit of cleaning … see to the fires and so on … I mean, you’re not supposed to see them, are you? That’s the mark of a good house-elf, isn’t it, that you don’t know it’s there?’

  Hermione stared at him.

  ‘But they get paid?’ she said. ‘They get holidays, don’t they? And – and sick leave, and pensions and everything?’

  Nearly Headless Nick chortled so much that his ruff slipped and his head flopped off, dangling on the inch or so of ghostly skin and muscle that still attached it to his neck.

  ‘Sick leave and pensions?’ he said, pushing his head back onto his shoulders and securing it once more with his ruff. ‘House-elves don’t want sick leave and pensions!’

  Hermione looked down at her hardly touched plate of food, then put her knife and fork down upon it and pushed it away from her.

  ‘Oh, c’mon, ’Er-my-knee,’ said Ron, accidentally spraying Harry with bits of Yorkshire pudding. ‘Oops – sorry, ’Arry –’ He swallowed. ‘You won’t get them sick leave by starving yourself!’

  ‘Slave labour,’ said Hermione, breathing hard through her nose. ‘That’s what made this dinner. Slave labour.’

  And she refused to eat another bite.

  The rain was still drumming heavily against the high, dark win
dows. Another clap of thunder shook the windows, and the stormy ceiling flashed, illuminating the golden plates as the remains of the first course vanished and were replaced, instantly, with puddings.

  ‘Treacle tart, Hermione!’ said Ron, deliberately wafting its smell towards her. ‘Spotted dick, look! Chocolate gateau!’

  But Hermione gave him a look so reminiscent of Professor McGonagall that he gave up.

  When the puddings, too, had been demolished, and the last crumbs had faded off the plates, leaving them sparkling clean, Albus Dumbledore got to his feet again. The buzz of chatter filling the Hall ceased almost at once, so that only the howling wind and pounding rain could be heard.

  ‘So!’ said Dumbledore, smiling around at them all. ‘Now that we are all fed and watered’ (‘Hmph!’ said Hermione), ‘I must once more ask for your attention, while I give out a few notices.

  ‘Mr Filch, the caretaker, has asked me to tell you that the list of objects forbidden inside the castle has this year been extended to include Screaming Yo-yos, Fanged Frisbees and Ever-Bashing Boomerangs. The full list comprises some four hundred and thirty-seven items, I believe, and can be viewed in Mr Filch’s office, if anybody would like to check it.’

  The corners of Dumbledore’s mouth twitched.

  He continued, ‘As ever, I would like to remind you all that the Forest in the grounds is out-of-bounds to students, as is the village of Hogsmeade to all below third year.

  ‘It is also my painful duty to inform you that the inter-house Quidditch Cup will not take place this year.’

  ‘What?’ Harry gasped. He looked around at Fred and George, his fellow members of the Quidditch team. They were mouthing soundlessly at Dumbledore, apparently too appalled to speak.

  Dumbledore continued, ‘This is due to an event that will be starting in October, and continuing throughout the school year, taking up much of the teachers’ time and energy – but I am sure you will all enjoy it immensely. I have great pleasure in announcing that this year at Hogwarts –’

  But at that moment, there was a deafening rumble of thunder, and the doors of the Great Hall banged open.

  A man stood in the doorway, leaning upon a long staff, shrouded in a black travelling cloak. Every head in the Great Hall swivelled towards the stranger, suddenly brightly illuminated by a fork of lightning that flashed across the ceiling. He lowered his hood, shook out a long mane of grizzled, dark grey hair, then began to walk up towards the teachers’ table.

  A dull clunk echoed through the Hall on his every other step. He reached the end of the top table, turned right and limped heavily towards Dumbledore. Another flash of lightning crossed the ceiling. Hermione gasped.

  The lightning had thrown the man’s face into sharp relief, and it was a face unlike any Harry had ever seen. It looked as though it had been carved out of weathered wood by someone who had only the vaguest idea of what human faces were supposed to look like, and was none too skilled with a chisel. Every inch of skin seemed to be scarred. The mouth looked like a diagonal gash, and a large chunk of the nose was missing. But it was the man’s eyes that made him frightening.

  One of them was small, dark and beady. The other was large, round as a coin, and a vivid, electric blue. The blue eye was moving ceaselessly, without blinking, and was rolling up, down and from side to side, quite independently of the normal eye – and then it rolled right over, pointing into the back of the man’s head, so that all they could see was whiteness.

  The stranger reached Dumbledore. He stretched out a hand that was as badly scarred as his face, and Dumbledore shook it, muttering words Harry couldn’t hear. He seemed to be making some enquiry of the stranger, who shook his head unsmilingly and replied in an undertone. Dumbledore nodded, and gestured the man to the empty seat on his right-hand side.

  The stranger sat down, shook his mane of dark grey hair out of his face, pulled a plate of sausages towards him, raised it to what was left of his nose and sniffed it. He then took a small knife out of his pocket, speared a sausage on the end of it, and began to eat. His normal eye was fixed upon the sausages, but the blue eye was still darting restlessly around in its socket, taking in the Hall and the students.

  ‘May I introduce our new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher,’ said Dumbledore brightly, into the silence. ‘Professor Moody.’

  It was usual for new staff members to be greeted with applause, but none of the staff or students clapped except Dumbledore and Hagrid. Both put their hands together and applauded, but the sound echoed dismally into the silence, and they stopped fairly quickly. Everyone else seemed too transfixed by Moody’s bizarre appearance to do more than stare at him.

  ‘Moody?’ Harry muttered to Ron. ‘ Mad-Eye Moody? The one your dad went to help this morning?’

  ‘Must be,’ said Ron, in a low, awed voice.

  ‘What happened to him?’ Hermione whispered. ‘What happened to his face?’

  ‘Dunno,’ Ron whispered back, watching Moody with fascination.

  Moody seemed totally indifferent to his less-than-warm welcome. Ignoring the jug of pumpkin juice in front of him, he reached again into his travelling cloak, pulled out a hip-flask, and took a long draught from it. As he lifted his arm to drink, his cloak was pulled a few inches from the ground, and Harry saw, below the table, several inches of carved wooden leg, ending in a clawed foot.

  Dumbledore cleared his throat again.

  ‘As I was saying,’ he said, smiling at the sea of students before him, all of whom were still gazing transfixed at Mad-Eye Moody, ‘we are to have the honour of hosting a very exciting event over the coming months, an event which has not been held for over a century. It is my very great pleasure to inform you that the Triwizard Tournament will be taking place at Hogwarts this year.’

  ‘You’re JOKING!’ said Fred Weasley loudly.

  The tension that had filled the Hall ever since Moody’s arrival suddenly broke.

  Nearly everyone laughed, and Dumbledore chuckled appreciatively.

  ‘I am not joking, Mr Weasley,’ he said, ‘though, now you mention it, I did hear an excellent one over the summer about a troll, a hag and a leprechaun who all go into a bar –’

  Professor McGonagall cleared her throat loudly.

  ‘Er – but maybe this is not the time … no …’ said Dumbledore. ‘Where was I? Ah yes, the Triwizard Tournament … well, some of you will not know what this Tournament involves, so I hope those who do know will forgive me for giving a short explanation, and allow their attention to wander freely.

  ‘The Triwizard Tournament was first established some seven hundred years ago, as a friendly competition between the three largest European schools of wizardry – Hogwarts, Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. A champion was selected to represent each school, and the three champions competed in three magical tasks. The schools took it in turns to host the Tournament once every five years, and it was generally agreed to be a most excellent way of establishing ties between young witches and wizards of different nationalities – until, that is, the death toll mounted so high that the Tournament was discontinued.’

  ‘Death toll?’ Hermione whispered, looking alarmed. But her anxiety did not seem to be shared by the majority of students in the Hall; many of them were whispering excitedly with each other, and Harry himself was far more interested in hearing more about the Tournament than in worrying about deaths that had happened hundreds of years ago.

  ‘There have been several attempts over the centuries to reinstate the Tournament,’ Dumbledore continued, ‘none of which have been very successful. However, our own Departments of International Magical Co-operation and Magical Games and Sports have decided the time is ripe for another attempt. We have worked hard over the summer to ensure that, this time, no champion will find himself or herself in mortal danger.

  ‘The Heads of Beauxbatons and Durmstrang will be arriving with their short-listed contenders in October, and the selection of the three champions will take place at Hallowe’en. An impartial judg
e will decide which students are most worthy to compete for the Triwizard Cup, the glory of their school, and a thousand Galleons personal prize money.’

  ‘I’m going for it!’ Fred Weasley hissed down the table, his face lit with enthusiasm at the prospect of such glory and riches. He was not the only person who seemed to be visualising themself as Hogwarts champion. At every house table, Harry could see people either gazing raptly at Dumbledore, or else whispering fervently to their neighbours. But then Dumbledore spoke again, and the Hall quietened once more.

  ‘Eager though I know all of you will be to bring the Triwizard Cup to Hogwarts,’ he said, ‘the Heads of the participating schools, along with the Ministry of Magic, have agreed to impose an age restriction on contenders this year. Only students who are of age – that is to say, seventeen years or older – will be allowed to put forward their names for consideration. This’ – Dumbledore raised his voice slightly, for several people had made noises of outrage at these words, and the Weasley twins were suddenly looking furious – ‘is a measure we feel is necessary, given that the Tournament tasks will still be difficult and dangerous, whatever precautions we take, and it is highly unlikely that students below sixth and seventh year will be able to cope with them. I will personally be ensuring that no underage student hoodwinks our impartial judge into making them Hogwarts champion.’ His light-blue eyes twinkled as they flickered over Fred and George’s mutinous faces. ‘I therefore beg you not to waste your time submitting yourself if you are under seventeen.

  ‘The delegations from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang will be arriving in October, and remaining with us for the greater part of this year. I know that you will all extend every courtesy to our foreign guests while they are with us, and will give your whole-hearted support to the Hogwarts champion when he or she is selected. And now, it is late, and I know how important it is to you all to be alert and rested as you enter your lessons tomorrow morning. Bedtime! Chop chop!’

  Dumbledore sat down again and turned to talk to Mad-Eye Moody. There was a great scraping and banging as all the students got to their feet, and swarmed towards the double doors into the Entrance Hall.