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—THE NEXT FEW WEEKS PASSED BY QUICKLY. When the students arrived in the Entrance Hall, they found themselves unable to proceed owing to the large crowd of students congregated there, all milling around a large sign which had been erected at the foot of the marble staircase.
Rigel, the tallest of the three, stood on tiptoe to see over the heads in front of them and read the sign aloud to the other two.
"TRIWIZARD TOURNAMENT The delegations from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang will be arriving at 6 o'clock on Friday 30th of October. —Lessons will end half an hour early—"
"Brilliant!" They heard Ron Weasley mutter to Granger. "It's Potions last thing on Friday! Snape won't have time to poison us all!"
"—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." Rigel finished
"Only a week away!" said Ernie Macmillan of Hufflepuff, emerging from the crowd, his eyes gleaming. "I wonder if Cedric knows? Think I'll go and tell him.."
"Cedric?" asked Draco blankly, as Ernie hurried off.
"Diggory," said Rigel. "He must be entering the Tournament."
"That idiot, Hogwarts champion?" Draco scoffed as they pushed their way through the chattering crowd towards the staircase.
"He's not an idiot, you just don't like him because he beat Slytherin at Quidditch in our first year," Rigel pointed out.
"I've heard he's a really good student— and he's a Prefect." Blaise joined in.
"You guys only like him because he's handsome," said Draco scathingly.
Rigel tried not to let his surprise show, but he couldn't stop his eyes from widening a bit.
"Excuse me, I don't like people just because they're handsome!" He eventually said.
"Well, I do— and goddamn, he's hot as hell." Blaise whistled.
••
The appearance of the sign in the Entrance Hall had a marked effect upon the inhabitants of the castle.
During the following week, there seemed to be only one topic of conversation, no matter where Rigel went: the Triwizard Tournament.
Rumors were flying from student to student like highly contagious germs: who was going to try for Hogwarts champion, what the Tournament would involve, how the students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang differed from themselves.
Rigel 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 armour were suddenly gleaming and moving without squeaking, and Argus Filch, the caretaker, was behaving so ferociously to any student who forgot to wipe their shoes that he terrified a pair of first-year girls into hysterics.
Other members of staff seemed oddly tense, too.
"Longbottom, kindly do not reveal that you can't even perform a simple Switching Spell in front of anyone from Durmstrang!" Professor McGonagall barked at the end of one particularly difficult lesson, during which Neville Longbottom had accidentally transplanted his own ears onto a cactus.
••
When they went down to breakfast on the morning of the thirtieth of October, they found that the Great Hall had been decorated overnight.
Enormous silk banners hung from the walls, each of them representing a Hogwarts 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, the largest banner of all bore the Hogwarts coat of arms: lion, eagle, badger and snake united around a large letter 'H'.
Rigel, Draco, and Blaise sat down at the Slytherin table.
"Can people just shut up about the bloody tournament?!" Blaise finally snapped. "It hasn't even started yet!"
"Who are the judges?" Draco asked, ignoring what Blaise had just said.
"Well, the Heads of the participating schools are always on the panel," said Rigel, and everyone looked around at him, rather surprised, "because all three of them were injured during the Tournament of 1792, when a cockatrice the champions were supposed to be catching went on the rampage."
He noticed them all looking at him and rolled his eyes, "It's all in Hogwarts: A History."
"Well, we don't read." Draco pointed out, making Rigel roll his eyes again.
••
When the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students finally arrived, (each of them in their own unique, dramatical way), they all finally started acting like normal... well as normal as it was in a school which had students from two other schools as well.
"Honestly, the girls from Beauxbatons are rather gorgeous—" Blaise bit into an apple and continued, "—but that attitude makes me want to punch them in the face instead of kiss them."
Rigel let out a chuckle. "You've got to see it from their point of view, Blaise." He said, looking at the Beauxbatons girls, some were already ogling at him, making him grimace. "They've come from a modern, fancy school. Our school, however, is ancient and historical. Of course they wouldn't feel at home here as much as they do there."
"Right, but that doesn't mean that they have to be a bitch." Blaise deadpanned.
