A pure scoundrel, and the kind who doesn't even bother to put on an act—everyone already knows what sort of person he is anyway.
If circumstances allowed it, Scrimgeour would have loved nothing more than to throw Karkaroff, this man who once escaped judgment, straight into Azkaban.
"I think that's fair," Madame Maxime agreed. "Even deductions need a reason for the lost points."
Madame Maxime was also a bit worried that Karkaroff might deliberately give low scores to all the champions from schools other than his own.
"Fine, fine!" Karkaroff said irritably, thinking it over. In the end, he raised his wand with obvious reluctance and cast his score—a 7.
The score wasn't good or bad; at most, it could be called strict. But since Cedric was the first champion to perform, a cautious approach was reasonable.
"That's already the highest I can give him!" Karkaroff snapped, even more irritated when he noticed the others still watching him. "If he wants a ten from me, he'll have to defeat that damned dragon!"
"That's reasonable enough." Madame Maxime nodded slightly after exchanging a glance with Harry.
"Um, excuse me for interrupting?" Huck asked timidly. "How are… Perrier and I supposed to score? I mean, we can't use those sticks like you to make the numbers appear…"
"Please rest assured, we've prepared for that," the French Minister of Magic, Fernando, said with a smile as he handed each of the Muggle prime ministers a sheet of parchment—or rather, something that had once been parchment. The two sheets were exceptionally smooth and rigid, so sturdy that they wouldn't bend in hand and could even be written on directly.
"You two just need to write the score you want to give directly on it," Scrimgeour added. "The corresponding number will appear above your heads."
"Oh?" Perrier wrote a number on the parchment with interest. The next second, a large 9 floated above his head.
"I know my score might be a bit high compared to yours," Perrier explained with a smile, "but I think that boy showed extraordinary courage. Not everyone can face such a massive dragon so calmly—at least I couldn't… well, though I don't know magic."
"A reward for courage?" Dumbledore nodded slightly. "That's reasonable, Prime Minister. Please score according to your own judgment."
Following the French prime minister, Huck gave a nine as well, as if unwilling to be outdone, with much the same reasoning.
The champion from Durmstrang who followed Cedric was Maria Miller. She faced a Romanian Longhorn and, with equal stubbornness, chose to attack the dragon's eyes directly with the Conjunctivitis Curse.
Unfortunately, the effect was shockingly poor. It wasn't that the dragon was immune to the curse—it's actually one of the effective spells wizards use against dragons. The only problem was that Maria's spell clearly enraged the Romanian Longhorn.
The furious dragon wildly spewed flames at everything in front of it, then madly tried to gore the little pest that dared attack it with its gleaming golden horns. What followed was despair for Maria: in its pain-fueled rage and blinded state, the dragon accidentally crushed its own clutch of eggs underfoot.
Thus, quite unexpectedly, the second champion received five zero scores, because those eggs were truly gone.
Maria Miller had triggered the single biggest deduction possible. Even though Karkaroff struggled to give his school's student a pity point, under the furious roar of the dragon handler chief who charged over, he obediently gave a zero.
He had no choice. If Karkaroff insisted on giving Maria a three or four, the dragon handler chief would probably beat him into a three or four.
"Ministers, Headmasters!" the chief said without ceremony. "We cannot afford to lose any more dragon eggs. For the remaining eggs, we'll substitute props. This may cause some suspicion in the dragons, but it's necessary preparation—farewell!"
"That was… quite the storm," Humphrey remarked oddly, watching the dragon handler's retreating back.
"No helping it—they did unexpectedly lose real eggs," Scrimgeour explained, uncharacteristically embarrassed.
"No, I didn't mean… Let's just continue watching the competition. The next champion is about to go on," Humphrey changed the subject.
What he had wanted to say was that the hierarchy among wizards didn't seem very pronounced, even between a dragon handler and a Minister of Magic—was it because of magic?
The existence of magic made many things different.
Something to explore.
Though there were nine student champions in total, the competition honestly moved quite quickly. The champions either swiftly stole the golden egg from the dragon's nest or failed outright, sometimes unbelievably fast.
Dragons were like a threshold: those who could pass it might take some risks but still managed relatively easily. Those who couldn't were completely stumped, unable to bypass the dragon's guard no matter how hard they tried, and sometimes nearly got themselves killed in the process.
Beauxbatons' student champion, Alain Dehaka, nearly got stomped to death by the dragon. If he hadn't desperately jumped into the gap between the falling dragon's claws at the last moment, he'd probably be paste by now.
Dehaka's close call made the audience gasp, further driving home the danger of the task.
Though Dehaka survived, he was judged zero like Maria Miller—not only did he fail to get the golden egg, he nearly died.
As for the others, the students each headmaster favored performed much better—like Karkaroff's prized student, Krum, and Madame Maxime's favorite, Fleur.
Was it that Durmstrang students were just stubborn? Or was their style simply aggressive?
More like getting back up where you fell.
In any case, after Durmstrang's first student used the Conjunctivitis Curse only to cause the dragon to crush all its eggs and eat a zero, Viktor Krum still chose the Conjunctivitis Curse to attack his dragon.
While the dragon thrashed in pain, Krum used a Summoning Charm to call his flying broom from Durmstrang's great ship, then rode it to steal all the eggs.
As expected of an internationally famous Quidditch player—Krum's agility as he flew through the dragon's spewed flames, slashing claws, and beating wings was like casually grabbing a piece of toast from his own kitchen. This effortless performance earned him higher scores than the other students.
Karkaroff had every reason to give Krum a ten this time. Dumbledore gave 9, Madame Maxime gave 8, and both Muggle prime ministers gave straight tens—because Krum used a flying broom, which perfectly matched their image of wizards.
Most importantly, Krum flew fast and flew well, which thoroughly impressed them.
"I must remind you both that the scoring standards for student champions differ from those for professor champions," Crouch said in his rasping voice.
"Of course, that's easy to understand," Huck replied immediately.
Unfortunately, Fleur embarrassed Madame Maxime. Compared to Krum's flawless egg retrieval, Fleur had a rough time. It was hard to imagine competing in such a tense, intense event while wearing a skirt that restricted movement.
Fleur also underestimated dragons' resistance to magic. She used a spell to put the dragon to sleep, and it did enter a slumber. Under those circumstances, her egg retrieval should have gone smoothly without incident—but she accidentally got her skirt ignited by flames snorting from the sleeping dragon's nostrils.
Karkaroff docked her points heavily for that.
In the end, Fleur scored 46 points. Her beauty captivated many in the audience.
"I think I've figured it out," Huck said, having grown familiar enough to lean in and joke. "Headmaster Karkaroff clearly favors that student named Krum, and Headmaster Maxime favors that beautiful Fleur. So, Headmaster Potter, which student do you support most?"
"This could also be taken as asking which you think is Hogwarts' most outstanding student," Perrier added curiously. "Definitely not that Cedric, right?"
"They are all Hogwarts' most outstanding students, or the Goblet of Fire wouldn't have chosen them," Harry said, shaking his head slightly under Dumbledore's amused gaze. "But if we must rank them, Hermione Granger is probably the strongest among them, because while studying wizarding magic, she's also been learning shamanism from me."
"Among all the student champions, Hogwarts' are the youngest," Madame Maxime said calmly. "Especially Mr. Malfoy and Miss Granger—they're only third-years. That means they'll face greater pressure than the other champions."
"We'll know the results soon enough, won't we?" Karkaroff said suddenly, pleasantly. "Look, the Malfoy boy is up."
Draco took the field.
Today he wore—well—a rather wild outfit: a short jacket sewn from beast hides, with a wolf head draped over his shoulder as decoration. This distinctive attire drew cheers from the stands, from both wizards and Muggles.
To wizards, it signaled that this boy was an unusual shaman priest. To Muggles, they just wanted to see something strange, something out of the ordinary.
Dual-wielding war hammers, Draco had later acquired a pair forged from basilisk corpse materials—though not from the fangs, just a section of bone. Combined with steel by Harry, they had become Draco's most comfortable weapons. He was now a mature Enhancement Shaman… apprentice. In the days leading up to the competition, with Harry's help, he had established connections with all four common elements.
This meant Draco could infuse his weapons with elemental energy. But more than that, over the past month, Harry had focused on improving Draco's close-combat skills.
And those skills? Ultimately, they came down to constant fighting—taking hits or giving them. Instincts etched into the body through long battles and training couldn't be crammed in a day or two.
Harry could only ensure Draco wouldn't get swatted by claws, tail, or wings the moment he got near the dragon.
So, over that month, the thing Draco did most was—take hits.
Then dodge.
"My God! What am I seeing?!" Ludo Bagman shouted frantically. "Look! One of our youngest champions, Malfoy, is charging like a real wolf! He's facing a Hungarian Horntail! The most irritable, most aggressive breed of dragon! It's attacking Malfoy!—It missed!!"
"Unimaginable agility—I'd swear this isn't speed a wizard should have! Merlin's pants! Malfoy just leaped onto the claw swiping at him! He's jumping again! What am I seeing?! Malfoy is bouncing around on the dragon's back like a cat! The dragon can't touch him!"
"Oh?! He's swinging his war hammers! But will that even work? I mean, those two little hammers against a massive dragon are like poking a person with a toothpick—you could mash the flesh to bits and still not kill the person—sorry, my analogy might be off, but you should understand my excitement!"
"You can see Malfoy is annoying the Hungarian Horntail—it's starting to roll! Trying to crush Malfoy on its back! Failed! Malfoy jumped away! But is this right?! This can't be right—the student champions' task is just to steal the golden egg, isn't it?"
"But we can all see that Malfoy hasn't gone anywhere near the golden egg so far. His target is only the Hungarian Horntail! I get it! He wants to defeat the dragon! He wants to kill it!! Heavens!! Our youngest champion wants to take down a dragon head-on!!!"
Malfoy's wild actions kept the cheers in the stands rising without pause; his every move gripped the audience's hearts.