For the first time in its history, the Great Hall of Hogwarts welcomed a gathering of "outsiders".
In the kitchens below, the house-elves had polished every piece of dinnerware to a gleaming, reflective shine for the occasion, and the food laid out across all five tables was lavish—yet remarkably few students seemed to be paying much real attention to what actually sat steaming before them.
Bryan rose to give another brief address, his voice resounded across the hushed Hall.
"We welcome you to Hogwarts for this exchange with the greatest enthusiasm and anticipation we can offer.
This exchange is unprecedented in the entire history of the wizarding world, and I believe you have all seen for yourselves, this very evening, the profound significance behind this crossing of magical boundaries that so many, on all sides, once considered impossible.
I believe this marks a great beginning. Together, we shall open a new age of prosperity for magical civilisation over the world."
With that, Bryan raised the cup before him, toasting the many beings now seated together at the table set specially between the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw sections.
At the staff table, Dumbledore and the rest of the professors did the same, cups rose in an uneven wave of agreement.
"Bit much, isn't it?"
Ron muttered, frowning slightly at the flourish—though under Hermione's immediately sharp look, he still raised his own cup obligingly and gave it a small, half-hearted wave toward the delegation's table.
The feast began properly.
Nearly every student in the Hall had their eyes fixed, in one direction or another, on the table of "outsiders" rather than on their own plates.
Truth be told, the goblins—by far the most numerous group at that table—held little genuine interest for anyone watching.
Students at Hogwarts saw plenty of goblins already in the ordinary course of things; Gringotts was full of them year-round, and even on Hogsmeade weekends students often crossed paths with visiting goblins at the Three Broomsticks.
Sitting down to a proper meal alongside them was hardly remarkable—novel, perhaps, at most, but nothing to stare at for long.
The children Professor Rahansen had brought only slightly stirred the young witches' and wizards' curiosity in turn.
They were impeccably well-mannered throughout the meal, and the sheer abundance of food laid out before them held, apparently, not much appeal for any of them; instead, it was the Hall itself, and the young witches and wizards seated all around them, that seemed to catch and hold their attention as their eyes were moving constantly across the enchanted ceiling, the floating candles, the House banners.
Quite a few girls sat gazing, thoroughly entranced, at the filly seated further down the table. It truly was a beautiful sight to behold—beneath the warm glow of a thousand floating candles, its sleek coat shimmered with every small movement.
Polly could feel the eager stares pressing in on her from every direction around the Hall, and it only made her considerably shyer, so much so that she didn't dare so much as touch the generous pile of fresh fruit set in front of her place.
"I'd love to have a stroke of her mane, just once."
Lavender said longingly, watching from a few seats down.
"I heard centaurs are all master diviners. Maybe she's even better at it than Professor Trelawney—"
Hermione wrinkled her nose at that, looking distinctly unimpressed by the comparison. Professor Trelawney was, notably, one of the very few professors at Hogwarts she genuinely held in low regard.
Harry, meanwhile, was more concerned with keeping an eye on Hagrid and Grawp than with the filly. Walking into the Hall earlier, Hagrid had explained hurriedly that Grawp was his brother though he hadn't gone into much further detail beyond that single, bare fact.
To keep a proper eye on him throughout the meal, Hagrid had given up his usual seat at the staff table to sit beside Grawp instead, out among the delegation, beaming with pride as his brother seized an entire leg of beef—barely a third properly cooked through and tore into it with both massive hands at once, while everyone nearby gave the pair a wide, cautious berth.
Honestly, Harry couldn't quite work out what Professor Watson genuinely hoped to accomplish by bringing Grawp into Hogwarts at all, watching the scene unfold.
Grawp could hardly string together a proper sentence even with considerable effort, so there was basically no chance of him taking part in whatever "exchange" this whole arrangement was actually meant to produce.
Oh—perhaps there was one purpose it served, after all: Grawp's presence made every other "outsider" in the Hall seem just a little less out of place by comparison.
The last pair Professor Watson had led down from the final carriage—a boy and a girl who both looked to be roughly first-year size drew no small amount of curiosity of their own from the watching students, quite separate from Grawp's spectacle.
Harry had initially assumed they must be brother and sister, travelling together. But that assumption was probably mistaken, since the two of them, sitting side by side throughout the entire meal, never once exchanged so much as a single word between them.
The boy looked visibly nervous throughout, which wasn't especially surprising given the circumstances.
Every so often he reached tentatively for something to eat off the platters arranged in front of him. But the girl beside him, dressed in her elaborate, intricate attire, regarded the food set before her with cool indifference.
She sat throughout the meal with immaculate posture, as though bred to that from birth within some great and ancient house, and the young witches and wizards scattered around her failed entirely to catch her interest—only now and then would her gaze flick, toward Professor Watson at the staff table.
As for the three house-elves sitting together further down: in a Hall filled with noise and overlapping chatter, the three of them sat quietly at their designated places as though they'd simply been left behind there by accident.
No one paid them the slightest attention throughout the meal, and they, for their own part, were doing everything within their power to shrink from any notice—all while fighting, on the side, against the powerful ingrained urge to leap up and start clearing away the empty plates accumulating around them.
The feast drew slowly to its close in a manner that felt, somehow, both festive and strangely, quietly hollow all at once.
"Heads of House, and student Prefects, please lead the students of your respective Houses back to your common rooms for the evening—"
Bryan said, his gaze sweeping once or twice across the Gryffindor table before settling on Hermione.
"Miss Granger, if you'd wait a moment before you go. You'll be coming with me to show our guests to their lodgings."
"And don't forget to ask around while you're at it—"
Taking full advantage of Lavender's momentary inattention, Ron leaned in close to Harry and whispered quickly.
"—find out whether that girl's actually a Veela or not! It's driving me mad not knowing for certain."
"And Dobby and Kreacher—"
Harry added, before he too made to leave with the rest of the departing crowd.
"—give them my best, would you, once you see them properly settled."
The professors moved through the dispersing crowd, helping guide the students of each House back toward their respective common rooms.
Barnah climbed down carefully from the staff table with assistance, murmuring a final round of instructions to the goblins he'd brought along for the exchange.
"Professor Watson, a letter's come for you—from the Ministry!"
Filch came hurrying in from the entrance hall, shoving his way somewhat rudely through the thinning crowd of departing students, waving an envelope stamped with a red Ministry seal above his head.
"Ah—thank you, Argus—"
Bryan scanned the letter's contents quickly, raised one eyebrow slightly at whatever it contained, and said nothing further about it.
Once the general student body had been "herded out" of the emptying Hall, the Prefects fell in behind their respective Houses to lead the way.
By the time Draco and Pansy finally disappeared down the passage beside the entrance hall with the rest of the Slytherins, no student remained in the Great Hall at all except Hermione.
"This way—"
Bryan beckoned to the guests at the delegation's table. Professor Dumbledore and Professor Snape slipped out quietly through the small side door at the front of the Hall.
Hagrid, meanwhile, stuck close to his brother throughout, with all the air and posture of a prisoner's dedicated "escort," clearly not intending to let Grawp out of arm's reach.
"This is Miss Hermione Granger—"
Bryan said, leading the group toward the entrance hall and up the main staircase beyond it.
"Should any trouble arise during your stay here at Hogwarts, you may bring it to her attention. In turn, you're expected to follow her guidance on matters concerning the school. Is that understood by everyone?"
Hermione offered the still-unfamiliar faces around her a stiff, carefully polite smile.
Bryan led the whole group up to the third floor, past his own office door, and on down the corridor through several turns before finally coming to a stop before a classroom door.
He pushed it open and the gentle sunlight and crisp, clean air that greeted them from within drew a small gasp of surprise straight out of Hermione. She followed Professor Watson inside without hesitation, the members of the exchange delegation were walking in behind her one after another.
The room no longer looked anything remotely like a classroom.
It had become, in its entirety, a forest.
As far as the eye could see in any direction, trees stretched out—not too densely grown together, leaving clear paths and open clearings throughout, but seemingly, without any visible end.
Hermione knew that the forest couldn't truly be infinite in any literal sense. But at the very least, whatever magic had been used here, it had to span the equivalent area of a few Quidditch pitches laid end to end.
A stream, its surface glittering with light from some unseen source, split the whole forest neatly in two along a gentle curve. On one bank, where the ground levelled out into open, grassy meadow, stood a tidy row of custom-built, two-storey cottages, each one topped with a matching sloped roof.
"You lot—"
Bryan said, gesturing toward the children Professor Rahansen had brought, toward Polly standing a little apart, and toward the goblins taking in the scene.
"—those cottages are your quarters for the duration of your stay. One room allotted to each of you individually."
He turned and pointed across the glittering stream, toward the deep, hollowed interior of a banyan tree grown so thick and ancient-looking it was almost frightening, and said to Hagrid, who was watching with curiosity:
"That one there is for Grawp—I've arranged it specifically for his sleeping quarters. Go and have a proper look with him now; I think you'll find it considerably roomier than it might first appear from this distance. Oh and I shouldn't think he needs to keep himself shrunk down small while he's staying in there."
"Come on, then, Grawp—let's go see yer new home!"
Hagrid slung one arm affectionately around Grawp's shoulders and set off toward the great banyan tree without waiting for Bryan to finish his sentence, clearly eager to show his brother the arrangement.
"P-Professor Watson, could you—Dobby wants—"
"No, Dobby. You are not to go back down to the kitchens and work tonight. You're to properly rest, right here in your own quarters, like everyone else."
Bryan said it firmly, without hesitation but at the sight of the three house-elves' visibly "despairing" little faces falling at the instruction, he paused, considered the matter a moment longer, then added, with a small concession:
"Though if Hermione should ever need a hand with something during your stay, you're all welcome to help her out."
At that small addition, all three house-elves looked considerably more at ease.
The little boy with the unruly, chestnut-coloured hair was settled comfortably into one of the cottages on the left bank of the stream, while the girl was led separately by Bryan toward a dim little bunker set some distance further off from the main row of cottages.
An old, plain bronze key was pressed into Hermione's hand.
"The key to this whole place, Hermione. From here on, they'll take their meals in the Great Hall alongside the ordinary students, same as everyone else at the school.
During the daytime hours, they're free to explore the castle grounds as they wish, but once the lights go out for the evening, they're all expected to return here without exception, no matter what. You might use this time now to get to know them all a little better—"
Bryan said, then turned his attention to Barnah standing nearby.
"Amelia's written to me—she wants to talk about setting up a workshop to manufacture the Surveillance Omnioculars we discussed. I'm off to see to it now. You'd best come along with me to the Ministry—"
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