The first feast happened on the Saturday of the second week.
He had sent invitations on the Monday — folded notes delivered by the Hogwarts internal post, which still ran on the house elf network and still reached every student in the castle before breakfast if the request was made the previous evening. The notes were brief: a dinner on Saturday in the first floor classroom he had rented from McGonagall for the occasion, seven o'clock, no formality required. His name at the bottom. No explanation of the food, because explaining the food in advance diminished it.
He had started the prep on Thursday.
The menu had been planned since February — the specific question of what to cook for twenty-five Hogwarts students and a variable number of international guests had required thinking about range. Not everyone. A selection: things that were British and things that were French and things that were from Northern Europe, organized so that each person at the table could find something that was theirs and something that was new.
The British component he knew well: a proper roast, the kind that required the bones started the day before; a shepherd's pie with the lamb slow-cooked until it had stopped being individual pieces of meat and become something more integrated; a leek and potato soup that had the specific quality of a thing made from good stock and time rather than from shortcuts. The French component required more preparation — a daube de bœuf that he had been working on since the beurre blanc lesson in Padstow, the specific challenge of a braise that needed twelve hours and precise temperature management, and a tarte tatin he was confident about. The Northern European component was the least familiar: a gravlax he had taught himself from a recipe book found in London, a rye bread baked on Friday afternoon, a beet dish from a Scandinavian recipe that had landed in the Black library from an unknown source and which he had tested twice in October.
Sable let him use the full kitchen from six in the morning on Saturday. He worked steadily through the day with the focused quality of someone who had a plan and was following it without needing to think about whether the plan was correct, because that thinking had already been done.
The classroom, when he arrived at half past six with the first trays, had been transformed by the Room's adjacent logic — he had not asked the Room to do anything to the classroom, but the Room had apparently decided that the occasion warranted intervention, and the result was a space that had the warmth of something that had been arranged by someone who understood what dinner was for. Long table, set properly. Candles. The kind of light that was for eating rather than for working.
He had not done this. He looked at it for a moment and accepted it and set the trays down.
They came.
Not all of them — not everyone he had invited. But enough of them: eighteen Hogwarts students from all four houses, the specific distribution of fourth-years who had decided to come. He recognized the two first-years he had noted at the Sorting in September, now settled into Gryffindor and Hufflepuff with the ease of people who had been here long enough to know where they were. He recognized the sixth-year from the Witness noticeboard morning, who had looked at him then and said nothing and had apparently been looking in the same direction since.
Viktor Krum came.
He arrived at seven fifteen with two other Durmstrang students — not the ones who had been at his shoulder since September but different ones, which meant he had made a choice about who to bring rather than simply arriving with his standard configuration. He looked at the table and the food and then at Ron with the quality he brought to things that confirmed a hypothesis he had been forming.
'You cooked this,' he said.
'Yes,' Ron said.
'All of it.'
'Most of it. Sable helped with the gravlax brine.'
Krum looked at the gravlax. 'This is Scandinavian.'
'Yes. I had a recipe from one of the books I bought. It was highly recommended. I wasn't sure about the dill ratio.'
'The dill ratio,' Krum said, with the quality of someone encountering a concern he found both entirely reasonable and entirely unexpected in this specific context. He looked at Ron again. 'You are a strange person,' he said, which was how Krum paid compliments and which Ron had come to recognize as such.
'Probably,' Ron agreed, and directed him to a seat.
Fleur came with four of the Beauxbatons students, which was more than he had expected. She assessed the table with the specific attention she gave things she was going to form a view on, and then she tasted the daube and was quiet for a moment in the way that was its own review, and said: 'The braise needed at least twelve hours.'
'Thirteen,' he said. 'I started it yesterday morning.'
She looked at him. 'You are impossible,' she said, which Ron had by now identified as Fleur Delacour's version of the same thing as Krum's you are a strange person, which was to say approval stated as exasperation.
The dinner was good in the specific way that meals were good when the people eating them had not been obligated to attend and had chosen to be there. The conversation found its own structure — Krum and Neville, improbably, discussing Nordic Herbology traditions; two of the Beauxbatons students and Seamus in a conversation that appeared to involve a great deal of hand gesturing and no shared language but was nonetheless producing mutual comprehension; Harry across the table from one of the quieter Durmstrang students, saying something earnest that was being received with the specific quality of someone encountering Harry Potter the person rather than Harry Potter the champion and finding the person considerably more interesting.
He photographed the table from the doorway before he sat down — the whole thing, all of it, the three schools in one room eating food from three countries at a table that was warm and lit and had not required an occasion beyond the simple intention of feeding people well.
He sat down and ate his own food and let the room be what it was.