A dish best served cold

8

Halloween was normally a relaxed, but festive fair. Full of jollity and celebration, visitations from more ghosts than usual, and even the occasional special happening, with a spiritual projection of someone from beyond the grave. Or at least, for everyone outside of Hogwarts it was. For those in these walls, Halloween had become synonymous with strange and unhappy events.

Today's Halloween started in the same vein as those past. The day began overcast and dreary. The sky looked as though it wanted so very badly to open, but was just short a few tears short. The Great Hall was decorated only partially, the Professors wanting to save the full decorations for tonight's feast. There were floating Jack O lanterns, and a few bats flying around, but other than that, it looked like your standard morning breakfast hall.

But it didn't feel like it. The student body was eerily calm. Not the type of calm that you find in someone that is content, or happy with their situation, but rather the type of calm that comes over someone when they are trying not to be noticed. Calm on the outside, tense and a bit nervous on the inside. Ask anyone in that expansive room how they were feeling, and they would have said fine. Tell them that you knew how they were really feeling, and they would have clammed up.

Something was off today, and everyone knew it. The only people that showed no indication were the Headmaster, and Harry. Harry felt it, he had just decided to try and lighten the moods of his friends with light and humorous conversation. It wasn't working well, but he was getting a few laughs. There was a dull buzz throughout the hall as other people were attempting to keep up the façade of normality.

The Headmaster also felt it, but he knew that it was his duty to keep a cheery face, for he knew that if even one student felt better because of his cheer, he had done his job. What he didn't realize was that quite a few students had indeed begun to feel better about the day because of the old man's smiling visage. Besides, they had something fun to look forward to today.

Quidditch.

The second game of the season had been scheduled for today. Quidditch was almost never scheduled on Halloween whether because of calender discrepencies, or superstitious staff members objectin, but Halloween was on a Saturday this year, and the first Hogsmeade weekend was the following Saturday, meaning that if they had waited, they would have fallen behind the planned schedule that they had tediously worked out over the summer.

The first match of the season had seen Ginny Weasley filling in for Harry in the position of Seeker while he recovered from his attack. She had not done well as expected,meaning that the match against Hufflepuff was much closer than it should have been. In fact, the Hufflepuff seeker had been the one to catch the snitch. The only reason Gryffindor had won that game was because the chasers had built up a substantial lead, and the beaters had kept the Hufflepuff seeker from catching the snitch, so that by the time that the little golden ball was caught, Gryffindor had a points cushion that kept them from losing.

But the main focus was on this match coming up, in which Harry was going to be playing, after recovering almost fully.

It was a match between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw. And Harry had a bone to pick with Cho Chang, the Ravenclaw seeker. She had led the verbal attacks on Luna for a long time, and Harry was going to show her why he was considered the greatest seeker in a century at Hogwarts. He knew some moves that were beater like in tactics, that were both legal, and quite intimidating.

The problem now was getting the players motivated, considering how dreary and downcast everyone and everything was.

-HPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHP-

In the locker room, the Gryffindor team was silent. You could hear the sounds of the students passing by, going up the find their seats overlooking the raised field.