Chapter Four

Race of Doom

Harry, Ron, and Hermione arrived safely in the Great Hall and sat at their usual places at the Gryffindor table, putting their wands next to their plates, just in case. The Great Hall seemed a bit more crowded than usual but Harry thought that was probably due to the claustrophobic effect of the enchanted ceiling. It made the eyes hurt to look at it for very long. This evening it was filled with a nauseating array of rainbows, twinkling stars, and pink clouds. Miniature pastel-colored winged unicorns had sprung up from somewhere and were flitting about, scenting the air with a sickeningly sweet imitation-strawberry smell, and scattering tiny flowers in their wake. Everyone knew winged unicorns didn't exist but for some reason they always seemed to pop out of thin air any time someone combined rainbows with pink clouds. Only Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil seemed at all enchanted by this affront to the senses.

'I see Hufflepuff hasn't gotten a bigger table,' said Ron as he sat down. 'They're still using those manky old folding things they found in the garage.' Harry turned and looked over at the Hufflepuffs—he didn't realize Hogwarts even had a garage. There were about thirty or so rather morose first-years, most crammed around five grotty card tables with cigarette burns and stains on the plastic surfaces. One table had a leg propped up on matchbook covers. There were also three first-years sharing one sticky TV table and several more held their plates in their laps. A jug of pumpkin juice had already been tipped over as the students jostled each other for space.

'At least they've all got chairs now, I'm sure they got tired of sitting on the floor. The Marx triplets still don't look happy though, do they?' Harry said sympathetically. The Marx brothersZeppo, Gummo, and Karlwere direct blood descendants of Rowena Ravenclaw and every single wizard in their family, even the duffers, had been sorted into Ravenclaw house. Strangely, the Sorting Hat had seemed a bit tetchy at the Sorting Feast this term. It had been shrieking 'Hufflepuff! Hufflepuff!' even as it was being brought into the Great Hall by Professor McGonagall, then muttered 'You know the drill,' instead of singing its usual dorky song. The Hat grumpily refused to put any students into the other three houses and went quiet. The wizarding tabloid The Moon (All the Fits That Are News to Print), insinuated there was a lawsuit in the works, according to an unnamed source, and there was talk that the new students were sleeping in the Hufflepuff common room on military surplus camp-beds.

Meanwhile, Draco Malfoy and his unpleasant sidekicks Crabbe and Goyle were at the Slytherin table snickering and pointing, which is what they had done every day, at every meal, for the past five years. At least they had a hobby. Today they were sitting with their backs to the Gryffindor table for once, but had creatively pinned their POTTER STINKS buttons to the backs of their pointed hats. Goyle had pinned his on upside-down. Every so often a little unicorn would swoop over the Slytherin table only to be swatted out of the air by Malfoy. Strangely enough, no-one seemed at all upset by this except for Lavender and Parvati. Each time a winged unicorn hit the floor with a splat one of the pair would let out a squeak like a squashed mouse, which was nothing compared to the ungodly racket the unicorns made.

Ron was staring at his empty plate, as was just about every other student. 'House-elves are a bit late tonight,' he said, still staring as though that would make food appear. He turned to Hermione and pulled a face. 'I certainly hope you haven't convinced them to go on strike.' Before Hermione could answer the plates filled, just like magic, or something almost nearly unlike magic. There was cold Spam with that revolting jelly left on, Wheat Meat, tinned off-brand baked beans, Minute Rice, Vienna sausages, instant mashed potatoes made with too much water, barely thawed Brussels sprouts, pasta with cheese substitute, and creamed spinach. Most of this appeared to have been haphazardly slopped into whatever container was closest, clean or not. Vienna sausages were obscenely crammed into a smallish water pitcher, baked beans were spilling out of an overturned pot lid, and creamed spinach had been carelessly heaped onto a butter dish that still held a half-stick of butter. To add insult to injury for dessert there were cherry cough drops and the ultimate example of man's inhumanity to manNecco Wafers. These had been unceremoniously dumped into a colander.

'Crikey, are we expected to eat this?' moaned Ron as he watched runny mashed potato drip from the tines of his plastic spork. Hermione stared in disbelief at the cold Spam and its wobbly jelly, then shut her eyes and disgustedly threw her napkin back onto her plate.

Harry had long since given up on having a decent meal tonight since the loss of Trevor—those leftover Honeydukes sweets were even starting to sound appetizing. He nudged Ron with his elbow. 'Look at the teachers' table,' he whispered, trying not to laugh. The teachers were none too happy with tonight's dinner either. Professor Snape had speared a drippy little pink Vienna sausage on the end of his knife and was eyeing it suspiciously. Professors Sprout and Flitwick had both pushed their plates as far away as they could without dropping them off the table and Professor McGonagall had given up and had turned her back on the proceedings. Even Hagrid, who had the culinary expertise of a wombat, was only sniffing his plate and grimacing. Several times he had picked up the plate and looked under it as though it was some colossal bad joke and that was where the real food was hidden. Professor Dumbledore, on the other hand, had spied the Necco Wafers and was happily eating them, even the brown ones, whatever they were. He offered one to Professor McGonagall who could only tighten her lips and shake her head quickly. Dumbledore shrugged and started eating the rest like a starving man.

While Harry was idly poking rubbery Minute Rice around the puddle of water on his plate he realized that nothing about this term had been at all right. It was worse even than Book EightHarry Potter Gets Voted Off the Island. Several weeks ago at the Dursleys he had been woken by his Uncle Vernon shrieking at the top of his lungs. When Harry had gone down to investigate, Uncle Vernon had grabbed him by the collar and propelled him out into the back garden which was now filled to a depth of about three feet in gravel. Harry had tried to suggest that maybe Aunt Petunia had had the garden redone as a surprise but Uncle Vernon was having none of it. 'Where's the water feature then? Where is the bloody water feature?' he shouted as he jumped up and down, face beet-red. 'If the garden had been done properly there would have been a water feature!' The Dursleys had of course assumed Harry had magicked up twelve tons of gravel during the night, though if Harry was going to do illegal magic during the summer holidays he would have just turned them all into dryer lint and stuffed them down the plughole. Aunt Petunia's immaculate garden waist-deep in gravel just wasn't worth risking expulsion from Hogwarts, amusing though it was. Later Harry's cousin Dudley had sprouted hairnot the normal hair in the normal places, but a strip of thick black fur down his back. The Dursleys also blamed this on Harry (though Harry had tried to suggest it was some freakish type of puberty) and made him sleep in the back garden for the rest of the summer. He'd burrowed into the gravel and slept there, even in the rain, during the last days before term started. Then there was this horrendous food and the nonsense with the Sorting Hat. The gravel and Dudley's fur could have been passed off as 'normal,' or at least normal in the wizarding world, but could someone have tampered with the Sorting Hat? It should have been stored safely in Dumbledore's office, where no-one could get at it. The most that should have happened was that it got a little dusty or deposited with the occasional phoenix dropping.

'Hermione, just what did you find in that book about the low, sinister honking noise?' asked Harry, but before she could answer Neville's fork had suddenly grown to about twenty feet long and knocked Draco's hat into his warmed-over gazpacho soup. He had accidentally picked up Harry's wand instead of his knife and besides stretching his fork to monstrous size he had created a tidal wave of baked beans that was threatening to engulf them all. Beans poured from every bowl and glass. It was all Harry could do to keep his head above the mess. He was a lousy swimmer and swallowed more baked beans than he would have voluntarily consumed in his lifetime (Harry sincerely hoped that this wasn't how Fosgood the Flatulent got started), but managed to dog-paddle his way, gagging, to the doors. Ron and Hermione, better swimmers than Harry, were already there struggling to open them, shouting every spell they knew as the tide of beans rose higher. All they had managed to do was to make the doors turn pink and grow warts. Harry's wand, unfortunately, was still clutched in the panicked hands of Neville Longbottom who had been swept to the other side of the room in the initial wave of beans. Students clambered shrieking onto windowsills and hung by wall lanterns and still others were caught struggling in the vile ocean of cheap, tepid, tinned baked beans. Several unicorns were caught unawares and had mercifully drowned, their sodden bodies floating past. Flitwick was hooked by the back of his robe to a chandelier and Dumbledore was perched upon an upturned card table, paddling with a dinner plate. He had inexplicably managed to rescue the colander of Necco Wafers. A great sneering mound of beans and tomato sauce swept by Harry and he could have sworn it looked like Professor Snape, but he couldn't be sure.

'Did you hear that?' shouted Harry, clinging to a doorknob. Hermione stopped in the middle of a whopping great Mekkalekka-Hi-Mekka-Heiny-Ho spell and she and Ron put their ears gingerly to the warty door. From outside the Great Hall came a familiar noise.

It was a low, sinister honking sound.