Sir Nicholas was delighted with the stunned looks on the young students' faces. He hated being called "Nearly Headless Nick"; this was his little revenge.
He set his dangling head back onto his neck, cleared his throat, and said,
"All right, my dear Gryffindors, I hope you can win the House Cup this year, all right?
Gryffindor has never gone this long without a trophy!
Merlin's beard, Slytherin has actually taken it six years in a row. The Bloody Baron never stops boasting about it in front of me—it's thoroughly unpleasant.
Oh, and he's Slytherin's House ghost."
Sir Nicholas pointed toward the Slytherin table. Harry saw a ghost sitting in the empty seat beside Malfoy.
He was terrifying to look at, his whole body stained with blood, his tattered robes blotched and splashed with it. Compared to him, Sir Nicholas was practically friendly. Even without doing anything to scare them on purpose, his mere presence was enough to frighten Hermione into trembling again.
Miss Otter's courage was a lot smaller than he'd imagined.
"Why does he look like that? All covered in blood?" Seamus asked, fascinated.
"I've never asked," Sir Nicholas said, shaking his head. Ghosts did not care to have people know how they had died.
Once everyone had eaten their fill, Harry felt a faint ripple in space again. This time he was ready for it and realised it wasn't the effect of a single spell, but of many spells cast together.
It had to be the house-elves all casting at once, using Apparition to whisk away the leftover food.
When the food vanished, the plates were spotless again, shiny enough to reflect faces.
A moment later, new dishes appeared—sweets and desserts this time. Candies, jellies, rice pudding, treacle tarts, chocolate puddings, jam doughnuts, sherry trifle, ice cream in all kinds of flavours…
These were the after-dinner desserts. Harry thought that if every meal was this lavish, he'd raise both hands to agree Hogwarts was the best magic school in the world.
Children were simple by nature; in the space of a single meal they'd become familiar with one another.
Neville told Harry and the others about his family—how he'd always thought he was a Squib until an accident at eight finally awakened his magic.
Seamus, for his part, shared the story of how his dad had nearly died of fright when he found out his wife was a witch.
After a little while, the puddings and other after-dinner treats disappeared as well. Dumbledore rose to his feet once more and announced to the students that Quidditch team tryouts would be held in the second week of term, and that anyone interested could sign up.
All the children from wizarding families loved Quidditch, but Harry felt nothing in particular. He would rather spend more time getting stronger.
But then he thought that becoming a Quidditch player might be a good way to boost his fame another notch.
Being the Boy Who Lived wasn't enough. He had to be brilliant as well—only then would other students look up to him, and that would make it much easier to recruit more borrowers.
Harry decided he'd think seriously about whether to join the Quidditch team.
As for whether he could become an excellent player, that question never even crossed his mind.
For one thing, his not-so-decent father James Potter had been a Chaser—and captain of the Gryffindor team, at that.
If his father had a natural gift for Quidditch, his own talent shouldn't be too far off.
On top of that, at Kamar-Taj, if you used borrowed magic skillfully enough you could fly, and Harry could manage the same feat using the chaos magic within his own body—with even greater agility.
You weren't allowed to use magic in Quidditch, but subtle use of raw magical power wasn't against the rules. Combining magic flight with a broom, his manoeuvrability would far outstrip that of any ordinary wizard, letting him dominate the pitch completely.
After a few more reminders and a pointed scolding directed at Fred and George, those two notorious troublemakers, Dumbledore drew his wand and gave it a light flick.
Long golden ribbons streamed from the tip of his wand, swirling high above the Great Hall and twisting together until they formed glowing letters in the air.
"Choose whichever tune you like," Dumbledore said grandly. "Let us all sing the Hogwarts school song!"
And so the whole school raised their voices together:
Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hogwarts,
whether we're balding old men or children with scraped knees,
our minds are ready to be filled—
for right now our heads are empty, packed with air, dead flies, and bits of fluff,
so teach us something that's really worth knowing,
give back what we've managed to forget,
just do your best and leave the rest to us,
we'll study and study until we crumble into dust.
There was no fixed melody for the song; every student sang it to their own tune. By the time most of them had finished their versions, the Weasley twins were still bellowing away, dragging out the last lines to the solemn beat of a funeral march.
It wasn't against the rules, though. When the two of them finally stopped, Dumbledore led the applause, and his clapping was the loudest of all.
This made Harry like Dumbledore even more. The kindly old wizard and the Sorcerer Supreme had a lot in common.
They stood at the top yet remained gentle, dignified yet warm; reliable, but with a child's heart still hidden inside them. They were always in front, shielding others from harm, yet somehow never felt far away.
"What beautiful music," Dumbledore said. "Well then, students, it's time for us to rest. Off to bed with you all. Please leave in an orderly fashion and return to your dormitories."
With that, he declared the Sorting Ceremony over.
The Gryffindors followed Percy, threading their way through the noisy crowd as they left the hall and started up the marble staircase.
The wall along the side of the stairs was covered in portraits, and as Harry and the others passed, the painted people called out greetings:
"Welcome to Hogwarts!"
"What a lively little bunch of witches and wizards."
Hogwarts' layout was incredibly complex. Under Percy's guidance, Harry and the others passed one hidden corner after another.
A door concealed behind a sliding panel, a passage hidden behind a hanging curtain, staircases that slowly rotated and changed direction by themselves…
All of it was astonishing.
In a place like this, even a full week wouldn't be enough to memorise all the obvious secret passageways, never mind the deeper, more hidden ones scattered throughout Hogwarts in places no one ever noticed.
Harry felt that searching out those hidden routes could be a fun pastime in the future.
Suddenly, the Gryffindor line ground to a halt. A bundle of walking sticks was hanging in mid-air, waving about.
Hermione frowned in puzzlement. "What is that, some kind of magic?"
Harry blinked at her question. He could clearly see a mischievous ghost ahead of them, shaking the bundle of walking sticks back and forth.
Why couldn't Hermione see the ghost? Was it some sort of invisibility spell?
Thanks to his chaos magic, Harry's spiritual sight had reached a deeper level than that of ordinary sorcerers.
The Sorcerer Supreme had once told him that when he became strong enough, he might be able to use spiritual sight alone to observe other dimensions—
and even glimpse parallel universes along different timelines.
The older Gryffindors clearly knew exactly what was going on. Percy calmed the first-years:
"It's just a ghost who enjoys playing pranks. Nothing to be afraid of."
Then he raised his voice slightly and called out, "Peeves, show yourself!"