Through the gates, flanked with statues of winged boars, and up the sweeping drive, the carriages trundled, swaying dangerously in what was fast becoming a gale. Leaning against the window, Aila could see Hogwarts coming nearer, its many lighted windows blurred and shimmering behind the thick curtain of rain. Lightning flashed across the sky as their carriage came to a halt before the great oak front doors, which stood at the top of a flight of stone steps. People who had occupied the carriages in front were already hurrying up the stone steps into the castle. Cedric, Aila, Cho, and Adam jumped down from their carriage and dashed up the steps too, looking up only when they were safely inside the cavernous, torch-lit entrance hall, with its magnificent marble staircase.

“Blimey,” said Ron loudly from up front, shaking his head and sending water everywhere, “if that keeps up, the lake’s going to overflow. I’m soak–Arghh!”

A large, red, water-filled balloon had dropped from out of the ceiling onto Ron’s head and exploded. Drenched and sputtering, Ron staggered sideways into Harry, just as a second water bomb dropped. People all around them shrieked and started pushing one another in their efforts to get out of the line of fire. Aila looked up and saw, floating twenty feet above them, Peeves the Poltergeist, a little man in a bell-covered hat and orange bow tie, his wide, malicious face contorted with concentration as he took aim again. Seeing Aila within radius of the water bomb, he immediately shifted his aim. 

“Peeves!” yelled an angry voice. “Peeves, come down here at once!”

Professor McGonagall, deputy headmistress and Head of Gryffindor House, had come dashing out of the Great Hall. She skidded on the wet floor and grabbed Hermione around the neck to stop herself from falling.

“Ouch! Sorry, Miss Granger–”

“That’s all right, Professor!” Hermione gasped, massaging her throat.

“Peeves, get down here now!” barked Professor McGonagall, straightening her pointed hat and glaring upward through her square-rimmed spectacles.

“Not doing nothing!” Peeves cackled, lobbing a water bomb at several fifth-year girls, who screamed and dived into the Great Hall. “Already wet, aren’t they? Little squirts! Wheeeeeeeeee!” And he aimed another bomb at a group of second years who had just arrived.

“I shall call the headmaster!” Professor McGonagall shouted. “I’m warning you, Peeves–”

Peeves stuck out his tongue, threw the last of his water bombs into the air, and zoomed off up the marble staircase, cackling insanely.

“Well, move along, then!” Professor McGonagall said sharply to the bedraggled crowd. “Into the Great Hall, come on!”

Cedric held onto Aila’s hand firmly as he helped her across the slippery floor, careful not to let her slip, and into the Great Hall.

The Great Hall looked its usual splendid self, decorated for the start-of-term feast. Golden plates and goblets gleamed by the light of hundreds and hundreds of candles, floating over the tables in midair. The four long House tables were packed with chattering students and at the top of the Hall, the staff sat along one side of a fifth table, facing their pupils. It was much warmer in there. Cedric dropped Aila off at her table before heading over to his own.

Aila looked up at the staff table. There seemed to be rather more empty seats there than usual. Hagrid, of course, was still fighting his way across the lake with the first years while Professor McGonagall was presumably supervising the drying of the entrance hall floor, but there was another empty chair too, and Aila couldn’t think who else was missing.

“Where’s the new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher?” asked Cho, who was also looking up at the teachers.

They had never yet had a Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher who had lasted more than three terms. Aila’s favourite by far had been Professor Lupin, who had resigned last year. She looked up and down the staff table. There was definitely no new face there.

“Maybe they couldn’t get anyone!” Isabella Berkshire — another friend and her dorm mate — said, looking around anxiously.

Aila scanned the table more carefully. Tiny little Professor Flitwick, the Charms teacher, was sitting on a large pile of cushions beside Professor Sprout, the Herbology teacher, whose hat was askew over her flyaway grey hair. She was talking to Professor Sinistra of the Astronomy department. On Professor Sinistra’s other side was the sallow-faced, hook-nosed, greasy-haired Potions master, Snape.

On Snape’s other side was an empty seat, which Aila guessed was Professor McGonagall’s. Next to it, and in the very centre of the table, sat Professor Dumbledore, the headmaster, his sweeping silver hair and beard shining in the candlelight, his magnificent deep green robes embroidered with many stars and moons. The tips of Dumbledore’s long, thin fingers were together and he was resting his chin upon them, staring up at the ceiling through his half-moon spectacles as though lost in thought. Aila glanced up at the ceiling too. It was enchanted to look like the sky outside, and she had never seen it look this stormy. Black and purple clouds were swirling across it, and as another thunderclap sounded outside, a fork of lightning flashed across it.

Then the doors of the Great Hall opened and silence fell. Professor McGonagall was leading a long line of first years up to the top of the Hall. If Aila and the others were wet, it was nothing to how these first years looked. They appeared to have swum across the lake rather than sailed. All of them were shivering with a combination of cold and nerves as they filed along the staff table and came to a halt in a line facing the rest of the school — all of them except the smallest of the lot, a boy with mousy hair, who was wrapped in what Aila recognised as Hagrid’s moleskin overcoat. The coat was so big for him that it looked as though he were draped in a furry black circus tent. His small face protruded from over the collar, looking almost painfully excited. When he had lined up with his terrified-looking peers, he caught someone’s eye at the Gryffindor table, gave a double thumbs-up, and mouthed, “I fell in the lake!” He looked positively delighted about it.

Professor McGonagall now placed a four-legged stool on the ground before the first years and, on top of it, an extremely old, dirty, patched wizard’s hat. The first years stared at it. So did everyone else. For a moment, there was silence. Then a long tear near the brim opened wide like a mouth, and the hat broke yet another song.

The Great Hall rang with applause when the Sorting Hat finished and Professor McGonagall unrolled 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. Aila clapped with her fellow Ravenclaws as Cho cheered for Stewart Ackerley as he sat down. 

Professor McGonagall read out more names and more first years stepped forward to be sorted. When the Sorting finally ended, Professor McGonagall picked up the hat and the stool and carried them away. Meanwhile, Professor Dumbledore had gotten 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.”

Aila dug into her steak as she and Cho talked about their summers. “Fred and George just left me there!” Aila said exasperatedly as her friends broke into fits of laughter. “In a muggle shop thirty minutes walk away from home. And they had the audacity to lie to Molly and Arthur about where I was!”

Cho nudged her. “Tell us who walked you back home,” she said slyly.

Aila blushed and shoved her as Isabella pestered her about her mystery saviour. “Whatever, I’ll find out sooner or later,” Isabella said with mock hurt. “My summer was terribly boring. Enzo invited over the rest of his Slytherin gang and I swear, no matter how hot they are, just having them around the house for one day is enough to make them very unattractive.”

“Don’t you live in a mansion?” AIla pointed out.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying!” Isabella cried in exasperation. “I can hear them from across the bloody mansion. I’m not even kidding! They’re that loud. The girls weren’t that bad though, except maybe Pansy. She’s still a stuck-up bitch and I don’t even know how they put up with her, because I sure can’t.”

When they had finally finished their dinner, 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, 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. “As ever, I would like to remind you all that the forest on 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?” Aila gasped. She looked around at Cho and Roger Davies, her fellow members of the Quidditch team. They were apparently too appalled to speak.

Dumbledore went on, “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 toward 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 toward 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 toward Dumbledore. Another flash of lightning crossed the ceiling. Cho gasped from beside Aila.

The lightning had thrown the man’s face into sharp relief, and it was a face unlike any Aila 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 are 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 Aila couldn’t hear. He seemed to be making some inquiry 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 toward 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?” Dumbledore said 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, who 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 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.

“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 that 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!” Fred said loudly from the Gryffindor table.

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 that 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.”

“Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students coming here?” Cho whispered excitedly to her.

“I know,” Aila said with a smug smile on her face.

“There have been several attempts over the centuries to reinstate the tournament,” Dumbledore continued, “none of which has been very successful. However, our own Departments of International Magical Cooperation 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 shortlisted contenders in October, and the selection of the three champions will take place at Halloween. An impartial judge 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.”

“Are you going to participate?” Cho whispered. Before Aila could answer, Dumbledore spoke again, and the Hall quieted 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’s 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 toward the double doors into the entrance hall.

The moment Aila got into her dorm, she showered, changed and immediately went to bed. She couldn’t help but smile into her pillow at the thought of the Triwizard Tournament. Bill and Charlie were right — it was going to be an exciting year.