At this moment, Harry was already very hungry.
He had only eaten a little snack at noon, and the lunch Gareth brought from home. After walking a long way in the pitch-black, cold, and rugged road, his stomach had long started growling fiercely.
The last student to be sorted was Gareth, and he was sorted into Gryffindor as he had hoped.
Or rather, a red-haired boy not being sorted into Gryffindor would be a strange and peculiar thing in itself.
After the Sorting was over, Professor Weasley took the Sorting Hat and the list and left.
At this time, Principal Phineas Black stood up, with a very annoying and punchable smile on his face, his little mustache twitching, and began to speak.
"Before the term begins, I have a few words to say to everyone..."
The older Gryffindor students immediately dropped their heads lethargically.
"What's wrong?" Harry softly asked a senior next to him.
"Just you wait." The senior groaned, "Principal Black definitely won't end his speech in less than half an hour."
As the senior said, Principal Black's speech lasted nearly an hour before he reluctantly ended it.
"So, I hope everyone can grow and learn safely and healthily in the school, and I need to add, Quidditch matches are still banned this term—"
The students let out a sigh of regret.
"Alright, I think everyone is already hungry." Principal Black didn't feel he did anything wrong, and with open arms he said, "Now, I declare, the feast begins!"
At that moment, the plates in front of the students were instantly filled with delicious food.
Harry was dumbfounded. He had never seen so many of his favorite things on the table at once: roast beef, roast chicken, pork chops, lamb chops, sausages, steaks, boiled potatoes, roast potatoes, fries, Yorkshire pudding, pea shoots, carrots, gravy, ketchup, and for some strange reason, there was also mint hard candy.
To be honest, it's not like he hadn't eaten these things. After all, when he was at the Dursleys, the Dursleys didn't stop Harry from eating; it's just that Dudley, the wig-wearing pig, always liked to steal food from Harry.
But eating freely like today, and without someone vying for food, was truly a first for him.
"It looks really nice." A ghost wearing a ruff stared at Harry slicing steak, speaking sadly.
"Won't you have some?"
"I haven't eaten in over three hundred years." The ghost said regretfully, "I don't need to eat, but of course I miss their flavors—I think I haven't introduced myself yet? Sir Nicholas of Minxi Bo Pingtong, the resident ghost of Gryffindor Tower."
"Oh, I know you!" Gareth pointed at the ghost and said, "Nearly Headless Nick, right?"
Harry wisely kept silent.
"Nearly headless?" A sweet voice came from the Hufflepuff table not far away, "How can you be nearly headless?"
Harry turned around, it was the little girl who just got sorted, her name seemed to be Poppy Sweeting?
"It's a secret," Sir Nicholas turned his head and gave Sweeting a mysterious smile, "But I'm happy to share it with others—look."
He grabbed his left ear and pulled down, his head wobbled and slipped off his neck, resting on his shoulder as if his head were connected by a hinge.
It seemed someone tried to chop off his head, but didn't finish the job.
"Oh!" Sweeting exclaimed, "By Merlin, you look terrible, terribly..."
"What?" Sir Nicholas asked as he pulled his head back on his neck.
"It's nothing." Sweeting waved her hand and said.
Harry didn't mind too much, he just focused on eating.
There's nothing more important in this world than eating until full, and if there is, it's eating until stuffed.
After everyone had eaten to their heart's content, the leftover food vanished from the plates all at once, and even the dishes became spotlessly clean.
After a while, the pudding arrived. All sorts of ice cream, apple tarts, syrup tarts, chocolate sponge cake, fried jam donuts, soaked jam pudding, strawberries, jellies, rice puddings... Harry took a piece of caramel pudding, and the topic turned to everyone's families.
"I come from Uganda, both my parents are wizards." Nacha O'Nai said, "I was planning to attend Vagado to study magic, but my mom brought me to the United Kingdom."
"What about you, Randall?" Gareth turned to Randall Purlovet and said.
"Both my parents are pure-blood wizards." Randall Purlovet said, "I'm quite interested in Gobstones. Any of you like Gobstones? I wonder if there is a Gobstones Club at Hogwarts, I'd like to apply to join."
"There probably is." Gareth said with a smile.
"By the way, there are some rather wild magic plants at my home." Randall said mysteriously, "These plants come from China—a very distant place, they have quite a temper and like to bite."
"Oh, could it be Chinese Biting Kale?!" Eric Northcott asked in an excited tone.
"Yes." Randall responded with a smile, "If there's a chance, I'll bring it to school for everyone to see—what about you, Quisida?"
Quisida Bloom seemed to be a Frenchman. Harry noticed he was wearing a beret.
He's so certain of this because he knows French people can't be separated from their berets—just not sure if French folks in this era have the same habit.