Tom looked around the Great Dining Hall decorated with lights, flickering candles and tantalizing scents wafting from time to time, turned and walked towards the subway classroom He could see the Hogwarts Halloween dinner with his eyes closed: Dumbledore's skeleton orchestra playing on Hagrid's giant pumpkin; the undead dancers giving choreographed dances to the young wizards; the tables filled with a wide array of food, including, I'm sure, a greasy rack of meat: meat is thickly sliced, rubbed with spices, oil and salt, skewered on iron skewers, coated with a layer of peanut oil and sprinkled with sesame seeds, grilled slowly over the coals and immediately cut with a knife as soon as the outside is charred, a witch can use a cutting spell. Put them in your mouth, and as you chew, the fat spills out of the cracks in the meat and bursts in your mouth....
But this had nothing to do with Tom, who had a couple of sandwiches and a mug of butterbeer in his arms, and that was his dinner.
Hermione had put on a new robe and was waiting for him in a corner outside the Great Dining Room, where the two of them would go together to Nick's death anniversary.
At that moment, two pairs of eyes locked on Tom.
"Fred, look."
"I'm looking, George."
Fred and George had been secretly watching Professor Lockhart. The news they had received from the Marauder's Map had been so amazing that they found it hard to believe, but the Marauder's Map was never wrong.
Either there was something wrong with Professor Lockhart, or there was something wrong with the map, and the map had never been wrong, so there was something wrong with Professor Lockhart.
q.e.d
The argument is rigorous and the evidence is sufficient.
The two became even more convinced of their findings when they saw that Professor Lockhart had gone on a "date" with a girl named Hermione Granger instead of attending the Halloween dinner.
The way Fred and George looked at Professor Lockhart changed, and was filled with respect.
"That's amazing, we could never pull a prank like that in our lifetime, could we? He's a direct substitute for a teacher."
George nodded in astonishment. As for denouncing him? They had no such dull, conservative ideas: it was such a great joke, and if it ended in a denunciation, it would be ugly.
"Is that Tom really a Ravenclaw? That's an operation Gryffindor would be ashamed of." Fred sighed quietly from the sidelines.
"I remember he got stuck at the initial sorting ceremony for a while, when the Sorting Hat was probably debating whether or not to put him in Gryffindor." George remembered the scene from the Sorting Ceremony a year ago. At every Sorting Ceremony, he and Fred had watched intently, and had given a warm round of applause to every new student, except for Slytherin, who had received a less warm and hearty round of applause from both of them.
Fred said with a straight face, "The Sorting Hat is for Tom's benefit. If they put him in Gryffindor, he might already be living in Azkaban right now."
George laughed.
Lee Jordan, a friend of the twins, came over, "What are you guys laughing about here instead of going to the party?"
George said with a straight face, "We think happy thoughts."
"You're playing another joke! Take me, will you?" Lee Jordan caught on to his two old friends' lies in an instant, and reached out both arms to embrace the Weasley brothers with one of them.
"Lee, let go, it's too tight."
The sound of the three's banter was getting closer and closer to the Great Dining Hall.
...
Tom walked down the path that led to the dungeon, a corridor that was also lit with candles, but the effect was the same as Tom's candles: eerie. The candles looked tiny, dark on the outside, glowing blue, and eerily ghostly.
Step by step, Tom made his way into the dungeon, and he could feel the temperature physically drop around them. Every time they inhaled the air, it irritated their airways like ice,
Hermione unconsciously pulled her clothes tighter. At that moment, a strange sound came from underground, pricking their eardrums, the sound of fingernails scraping against a blackboard, if an analogy were to be drawn with the sound of the living world.
"Oh, Merlin, can you call that music?" came Ron's voice as he rounded a corner up ahead. He and Harry had arrived before Tom. At that moment, Tom and Hermione followed them, watching Harry, Ron and Neville walk shivering down the corridor.
"Professor Lockhart, you.... Hermione?" Harry tried to greet Tom, but was stunned to see Hermione behind him, he hadn't expected to see any other students here.
"Miss Granger was very interested in the death anniversary, so I brought her along."
But for the presence of the suited professor, Ron would have blurted out something along the lines of, "Is there something wrong with his head?" and ended up giving Harry and Neville a complicated look, exchanging glances with them.
The five of them moved on and arrived at the death anniversary site, where a Nearly Headless Nick stood in the doorway, wrapped in a black velvet curtain.
Nick removed his hat, welcoming the five guests.
The subway classroom was already filled with milky white translucent figures, as hundreds of ghosts arrived for Nick's death anniversary, turning the once empty subway classroom into a crowded dance floor.
"Don't go through any ghost's body," Tom reminded his friends, but Neville accidentally bumped into a ghost and suddenly felt as if someone had poured a basin of ice water on him.
The ghost Neville bumped into was, from the looks of it, a young woman with a long, slender figure, waist-length hair, a floor-length robe, and a very beautiful face. It is a pity to see such a figure wither at such a florid age. She was arrogant and overbearing, and seemed to be a bit of an arrogant person.
As she felt someone walk through her, she looked back, and seeing Neville trembling, her eyes took on a hint of contempt.
Tom and Hermione recognized the ghost as the ghost of Ravenclaw tower - Lady Grey, or more specifically, Helena Ravenclaw. Hogwarts is a place where most ghosts of English origin can go, as they have all studied at Hogwarts.
Ghosts can move freely around the place where they lived, so these wizards can return to their alma mater as ghosts after they die. However, many of the ghosts only come to the opening ceremony to watch the ceremony and then leave. Only a few ghosts, including Peeve and Professor Binns, remain in Hogwarts castle every day. Each of the four houses had a ghost representing it.
The Gryffindor ghost is Nearly Headless Nick, the youngest of the four ghosts. Most Gryffindors die without much thought and "move on" without a moment's hesitation, and Nick is one of the few who decided to stay.
The Ravenclaw ghost was the beautiful Helena Ravenclaw before them, the noblest of them all, if not the noblest, being a direct descendant of the Four Founders, and the only direct descendant with an identifiable name. The other three founders may have descendants, but not necessarily direct descendants. Gryffindor's descendants are untraceable, he was named after his birthplace, Godric's Hollow, so it is possible that there may have been descendants there, it is a rather unusual little valley, where Gryffindor was born, where the Potters and Dumbledore lived, and where the author of History of Magic, Bathilda Bagshot, also settled.
The Hufflepuff and Slytherin descendants are also royal, except that they have dropped the surnames of their ancestors, Gaunt for those claiming to be Slytherin, and Smith for those claiming to be Hufflepuff... though they retain symbols of their ancestors: the Slytherin locket and the Hufflepuff goblet, God only knows how they got there.
To Tom, claiming ancestry with a different surname was incomprehensible. It was as if a man claiming descent from King Jing of Zhongshan, a member of the Han clan, had given his name as "Tuohu," some strange European custom, perhaps. Helena Ravenclaw is much more orthodox than these strange descendants from nowhere.
The ghost of Slytherin, called Bloody Baron, is from the same era as Helena of Ravenclaw, the oldest ghost at Hogwarts, and is so violent that even Peeves fears him. He also has a few entanglements with Helena....
The Ghost of Hufflepuff is a jolly fellow, known to everyone as "Fat Friar", but his real name was forgotten, but he doesn't care. He graduated from Hufflepuff and was subsequently executed by the Church. His magic aroused suspicion, and the high clergy suspected his ability to cure smallpox and his fondness for pulling rabbits out of a goblet. But these were probably just excuses, triggers. There was also a struggle for higher power behind the death of the Fat Friar.
The Fat Friar came very close to being a cardinal during his lifetime. The cardinals, also known as the cardinal, are the hierarchy of the Church, and although their numbers have increased over time, they remain the undisputed hierarchy of the Church: the cardinals can elect the Pope! The Fat Friar came very close to reaching the top of the Church.
Helena Ravenclaw's gaze swept over the faces of the living five, and paused briefly when she saw Hermione, a girl she recognized and had an impression of: hardworking, studious, intelligent. So she greeted Hermione with a gentle nod, thinking that someone as smart as Hermione was qualified to talk to her.
But when she saw Tom she froze, seemed to remember something, her transparent cheeks seemed less transparent, she looked at Tom's finger and stared at the ring for a few moments.
"What's your name?" she spoke.
"Gilderoy Lockhart." Tom wondered, why did she suddenly care about me?
Helena remembered the name, and the image of a pompous figure came to her mind, which she found somewhat distasteful.
She scoffed and walked straight away.
Helena Ravenclaw was just a small episode. The atmosphere in the subway classroom was getting "warmer" as ghostly guests entered and floated into the room. Nick had also invited a band of ghosts, who were the source of the sound of fingernails scratching the blackboard. But the ghosts seemed to enjoy the music, waltzing to the accompaniment of musical saws.
Hundreds of ghosts danced in the blue candlelight, and as they gathered, the temperature became as cold as winter, and the breath exhaled by Tom and the others formed a great cloud of white mist in front of them, which condensed and did not disperse.
"Let's walk, let's move, our feet are going to freeze if we keep going like this." suggested Tom, Hermione and he were fine, but Harry and the others had to be careful not to catch cold.
Harry took the lead, moving carefully along the edge of the dance floor, they saw ghostly nuns in various guises, men in chains and rags, the Fat Friar of Hufflepuff, a knight with an arrow in his head....
They also saw the Bloody Baron, bony, blind and covered in silver blood. It was clear that, even among ghosts, the Bloody Baron was a monster, a true abomination in every sense of the word. The basement classroom was obviously crowded, but there was still plenty of space around him.
Including Bloody Baron, all the "resident" ghosts of the Four Houses had come.
"There are a lot of ghosts here." Ron looked around and saw that all the ghosts he knew were there, even Peeves, who was wearing a bright orange party hat on the death anniversary.
They kept their mouths shut and turned away from Peeves. If it was a dinner party, there would be food. Away from the dance floor was a table covered in black velvet. Tom was wise enough to stop a great distance away, and at the same time grabbed Hermione, asking her to look at the dishes on the table first.
Indeed, the faces of Harry and the others turned pained as the three approached the table, as if he had smelled something foul. Hermione kept her distance and silently watched the thin plates of rotting food: foul-smelling salmon, charred cake, maggot-covered lamb belly, cheese covered in green hairs.... the only "normal" food is a huge grey tombstone-shaped cake with a tar glaze spelling out the words:
Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington.
Died October 31, 1492.
She immediately recalled the words Tom had spoken to her earlier, the empty words not intuitive enough, and now has a deeper understanding of the ghosts' habits.
"I think they let the food rot, to make the taste stronger." she guessed, as she tried to get a closer look at the rotting lamb belly. Tom was carrying some food in his arms, but the atmosphere was not very appetizing to him, it would be better to say that people with appetites in this environment are different.
Harry and the others ran back to Tom, and the "fresh" air from the long table seemed to linger on their bodies.
Nearly Headless Nick finished greeting the guests and approached Tom, apparently in a good mood, as there were quite a few guests today.
"Did you have a good time?" asked Nick.
"Well, it was a revelation." Tom fobbed him off with words.
Nick, who had almost lost his mind, said proudly, "Even the weeping widow from Kent came...".
Tom interjected, "Since the scene is so grand, the Headless Hunters Club should get the news too, right?"
Nick's face changed instantly, "Oh, no," he groaned in pain.
Suddenly, as if in a study hall after the appearance of the class teacher, everyone in the basement fell silent, and as they looked right and left, a hunting horn sounded.
Twelve headless horsemen rode out of the cellar walls on ghostly horses, an apparition that drew applause from all present. The riders ran to the center of the dance and gave their horses a jolt. In front was a tall specter, bearded head under his arm, struggling to blow his horn.
It must be the captain of the Headless Hunters Club, Sir Patrick Delaney-Podmore. He jumped down from his horse and was about to say something, but a clear bang stopped him dead.
He looked towards the source of the sound and saw Tom's serious face, a broken glass ball in his hand.