Return of Sebastian Sallow | 10 Yr After Hogwarts

Chapter 128: Durmstrang Arrives

"Hey you!" April's voice is warm and loose, I'm sure in large part to the coffee and the catching up with Thiago and Ominis. When I arrived, the three of them looked as excitable as most of the students seem to be this morning. They're sitting in their usual configuration at the faculty tables, but huddled and hunched as if sharing the greatest gossip.

Adorable.

I couldn't stop myself from grinning as I walked up to them. Not only from the sight of their closeness — three of my dearest people on this glorious planet — but from the sight of the Great Hall, itself. Ronan truly outdid himself. The whole school has been and continues to be abuzz with the anticipation of our 'esteemed guests' arriving, and the ball, for which the seasonal decor has been building up around the school during the past couple weeks.

The hall smells of buttery pastries, toasted almonds and hazelnuts, warm apple cider and fresh pumpkin juice. Mountains of cinnamon-sugar doughnuts battle to stay stacked in whimsically-shaped sculptures as eager hands grab for them. Flat pans of oat-crusted apple and cranberry crisps can hardly keep up with the spoonfuls that are hastily dished out. Briefly, I wonder if the more traditional breakfast foods feel a bit left out, the eggs and potatoes and tomatoes and sausages being neglected for the Autumnal delights.

From what I can tell, Deputy Headmaster Ronan decided to run with a seasonal theme more in the line of 'harvest' than of 'spook', and it's a choice I greatly appreciate that makes me feel right at home.

Jack-o-lanterns are stacked upon one another at every column that lines the hall — the bigger pumpkins sitting upon the floor, and the others becoming progressively smaller until about halfway up the column. Each of them is well lit with magical candlelight from within. Some have triangle eyes and some are round. Some half goofily missing teeth, and a handful have sympathetic, swooping eyebrows. It becomes clear very quickly they all sport a happy expression — no doubt, this was Ronan's directive for the third year students he had recruited to help him carve them.

From the tops of the pumpkin towers spring lovely bunches of dried, golden wheat that spray outward and culminate in a grouping of candles that float just above them, as opposed to the candles floating about the hall as usual.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" April asks with a smile, sliding her hand onto my knee beneath the table once I've finally sat beside her. "I figured it must have taken him all night, but I spoke with Deek this morning in the vivarium. He said that, with all the charms, it took Ronan under a half hour!"

"That's mad," I sigh, mindlessly sipping at a cup of tea that was waiting for me — chai, no doubt April's doing — and letting my gaze wander upward to the ceiling.

Merlin's bloody beard hole...

Instead of the typical wash of floating candles above, Ronan has created a veritable tapestry of decor. Strings of shockingly traditional but brilliantly stunning British buntings zig and zag across the infinitely arched ceiling, displaying triangle flags of burlap and varying colors of fall, interspersed with the occasional crimson, emerald, sapphire, or amber flag adorned the appropriate Hogwarts house emblem in gold or silver. These, too, are interspersed with gloriously lush, living honeysuckle, as the strings that the flags are all tied to aren't strings at all. Rather, the whole display seems to be budding from a living vine of English Ivy — leaves being a beautifully marbled green, orange and red — and of course the honeysuckle, too, which casts the faintest hint of a sweet scent to cut through the smells of breakfast.

When my eyes land upon the centerpiece of the ceiling, I feel April lean in and ask, "recognize it?" My whole body relaxes from her nearness.

Oh, do keep leaning into me, my darling.