Chapter 95
Chapter 95
“I regret this. You were right.”
The four sat cautiously on a bench. Hermione pressed close to Suer’s arm, apparently seeking warmth.
The underground classroom was enormous yet crowded with hundreds of pearly, translucent figures. Its furniture had been pushed against the walls and draped in black velvet. Ghosts floated across the packed dance floor while thirty musical saws produced a dreadful, quavering din.
“It is certainly an experience.”
The sight of hundreds of ghosts waltzing to ghastly music was undeniably impressive. Suer’s breath formed white clouds before him.
The room was bitterly cold. Even a troll knew ghosts carried their own chill.
Harry rubbed his hands together.
“Shall we walk around?” Movement might warm his feet.
“Don’t pass through anybody,” Ron said with a shudder. “You don’t want to know what it feels like.”
They circled the dance floor, passing gloomy nuns and a ragged man wrapped in chains. The Fat Friar, Hufflepuff’s house ghost, chatted cheerfully with a knight who had half an arrow protruding from his forehead.
Most ghosts retained the appearance they had at death, and the variety of fatal injuries fascinated Suer. One blackened figure had plainly burned; a bare-chested man covered in scars had probably been hanged.
“Oh, no.” Hermione suddenly clutched Suer’s arm and buried her face against his shoulder. “Quickly. I don’t want to speak to Moaning Myrtle.”
How had he forgotten Myrtle?
An image flashed through Suer’s mind, but before he could grasp it, Hermione dragged him past the drifting, bewildered ghost.
“Who?” Harry asked once they had hidden among another group.
“She lives in a toilet in the second-floor girls’ bathroom,” Hermione explained after checking that Myrtle was gone.
“In a toilet?”
“Yes. It never works because Myrtle is always having tantrums. She cries that everyone looks down on her, though nobody has said anything. Sometimes she appears while you’re using the bathroom and screams in your face. It’s dreadful.”
“Look over there.” Ron pointed.
A long table stood at the opposite end of the room, covered in black velvet and pale plates.
There was food.
Harry hoped desperately for warm pumpkin juice.
“Let’s see,” Suer said. “Then you’ll know.”
They approached, stopped at a safe distance, and clapped hands over their noses. Suer remained expressionless; he knew what awaited them.
The stench was appalling. Hermione silently swore never to attend another ghost gathering.
Beautiful plates held cakes baked black as charcoal and heaps of what might once have been haggis, now crawling with white maggots.
Hermione retched.
The only remotely edible object was a grey, tombstone-shaped cake bearing silver words:
SIR NICHOLAS DE MIMSY-PORPINGTON
DIED 31 OCTOBER 1492
A fat ghost floated to the table, sank his lower body through the cloth, opened his mouth wide, and passed through a platter of reeking salmon.
“Can you taste it that way?” Harry asked.
“Living people?” The ghost looked at them sadly. “More or less. Quite pleasant.”
He drifted away.
“Only some ghosts can taste anything,” Suer explained. “They let food rot to strengthen the flavour–”
“Stop. I’m going to be sick.” Ron’s face had turned purple as he pinched his nose.
“Let’s leave,” Hermione whispered, tugging Suer’s arm.
They turned away. As they passed a cluster of ghosts, a disturbance opened a path through the crowd. Suer’s arm accidentally passed through a ghost moving in the same direction. Piercing cold shot through his body.
“Sorry.”
“Think nothing of it,” the ghost said mournfully. “Are you Hogwarts students?”
“Yes, sir.” Suer rubbed the gooseflesh on his arm.
“How remarkable. I wished to attend Hogwarts myself, but my home was too far away.”
“That is a pity.”
A plump female ghost flew towards the wall, pursued by a small figure in jester’s clothes–Peeves.
“Myrtle.” Hermione hid behind Suer again.
Moaning Myrtle ignored them. She wailed through the wall and left the classroom while Peeves chased her, pelting her with mouldy peanuts.
“Pimples! Pimples!” he shrieked.
“Oh, dear.” Hermione looked sympathetic.
Ron crouched and examined one of the peanuts thoughtfully.
Nearly Headless Nick drifted towards them.
“Enjoying yourselves?”
“Oh, yes,” Harry lied.
“A satisfactory attendance,” Nick said proudly. “The Wailing Widow came all the way from Kent. Ah, how are you, Sir Maken?”
“Quite well, Sir Nicholas.” The ghost who had spoken to Suer bowed formally. “Thank you for inviting me, and may you endure forever.”
Nick returned the bow happily. “Your three-hundredth Deathday approaches. I shall be delighted to attend.”
“You will, of course, be invited.”
The conversation sounded absurd to Suer, though it was plainly ordinary among ghosts.
After a while, Nick said, “It is nearly time for my speech. I had better warn the orchestra. Make yourselves at home.”
When he had gone, Hermione whispered, “We’ll leave as soon as Nick finishes speaking.”
“Wonderful,” Ron muttered. “I’ve wanted to leave for ages.”