Butterfly Effect ; H. Potter

62. the sorting hat's warning.

"Do you think we're hallucinating?" Harry muttered to Antheia. He did not want to tell the others that he and Luna were having the same hallucination, if that was what it was.

"Not at all," said Antheia. "Luna can see them, too."

"So, you can see the horses, or whatever they are, too?" asked Harry, not fully reassured.

"Yes," replied Antheia, "but I've never seen them before."

"Did everyone see that Grubbly-Plank woman?" asked Ginny. "What's she doing back here? Hagrid can't have left, can he?"

"I'll be quite glad if he has," said Luna, "he isn't a very good teacher, is he?"

"Yes, he is!" said Harry, Antheia, Ron, and Ginny angrily.

Harry glared at Hermione. She cleared her throat and quickly said, "Erm ... yes ... he's very good."

"Well, we in Ravenclaw think he's a bit of a joke," said Luna, unfazed.

"You've got a rubbish sense of humour then," Ron snapped, as the wheels below them creaked into motion.

Luna did not seem perturbed by Ron's rudeness; on the contrary, she simply watched him for a while as though he were a mildly interesting television program.

Rattling and swaying, the carriages moved in convoy up the road. When they passed between the tall stone pillars topped with winged boars on either side of the gates to the school grounds, Harry leaned forwards to try and see whether there were any lights on in Hagrid's cabin by the Forbidden Forest, but the grounds were in complete darkness. Hogwarts Castle, however, loomed ever closer: a towering mass of turrets, jet black against the dark sky, here and there a window blazing fiery bright above them.

The carriages jingled to a halt near the stone steps leading up to the oak front doors and Harry got out of the carriage first. He turned again to look for lit windows down by the Forest, but there was definitely no sign of life within Hagrid's cabin. Unwillingly, because he had half hoped they would have vanished, he turned his eyes instead upon the strange, skeletal creatures standing quietly in the chill night air, their blank white eyes gleaming.

Harry had once before had the experience of seeing something that Ron could not, but that had been a reflection in a mirror, something much more insubstantial than a hundred very solid-looking beasts strong enough to pull a fleet of carriages. If Luna was to be believed, the beasts had always been there but invisible. Why, then, could Harry and Antheia suddenly see them, and why could Ron not?

"Are you coming or what?" said Ron beside him.

"Oh... yeah," said Harry quickly and they joined the crowd hurrying up the stone steps into the castle.

The Entrance Hall was ablaze with torches and echoing with footsteps as the students crossed the flagged stone floor for the double doors to the right, leading to the Great Hall and the start-of-term feast.

The four long house tables in the Great Hall were filling up under the starless black ceiling, which was just like the sky they could glimpse through the high windows. Candles floated in midair all along the tables, illuminating the silvery ghosts who were dotted about the Hall and the faces of the students talking eagerly, exchanging summer news, shouting greetings at friends from other houses, eyeing one another's new haircuts and robes. Again, Antheia noticed people putting their heads together to whisper as she passed; she glared back at them when they made eye contact with her which seemed to quiet them until she walked away.

Luna drifted away from them at the Ravenclaw table. The moment they reached Gryffindor's, Ginny was hailed by some fellow fourth-years and left to sit with them; Antheia, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville found seats together about halfway down the table between Nearly Headless Nick, the Gryffindor house ghost, and Parvati Patil, and Lavender Brown, the last two of whom gave Antheia excessively big smiles and greetings, which confirmed her suspicions that they had stopped talking about her a split second before. Antheia decided she shouldn't care too much as she looked over to the staff table in search of Hagrid.