1

The Scottish twilight had barely settled over the Great Lake when a low, subterranean rumble began to vibrate through the very soles of the students' boots. It was a sound like shifting tectonic plates, accompanied by a violent churning of the usually placid waters. Suddenly, a skeletal mast, blackened and dripping with freezing silt, breached the surface like a resurrected leviathan. This was the Durmstrang Ship a grim, spectral vessel that looked as though it had been hewn from the shipwrecks of the North Sea, its tattered sails fluttering like the wings of a colossal, lightless bat.

As the vessel glided silently toward the shore, the Hogwarts students stood in a sea of dropped jaws and frantic whispers. Gone was the airy elegance of the Beauxbatons carriage, which had arrived moments before drawn by a dozen silver-blue winged palominos. While the French students had descended with the grace of ethereal dancers, the Durmstrang delegation brought the scent of pine resin and the sharp, metallic tang of the frozen North.

The heavy thud of the gangplank hitting the stone was a declaration of power. Out marched a phalanx of young men and a few shadowed, stoic women clad in blood-red robes and cloaks of thick, matted bearskin. They moved with a synchronized, military precision that commanded the air around them. At their center, shoulders hunched and eyes as dark as the Bulgarian mountains, stood Viktor Krum. His presence turned the excitement of the Hogwarts crowd into a sudden, reverent hush.