The school's luncheon for Georgiana consisted of local Rouen specialties: Rouen-style pigeon, mille-feuille cake, and a bottle of apple brandy. What would have counted as an ordinary meal at Hogwarts had the University of Rouen students eating with delight, as if it were a holiday. They sat at rows of tables, not separated into Houses as they would be at a magic school, but gathered in small groups of friends, chatting as they ate.
Yet regardless of how good the chef was, it was hard to imagine anyone having much appetite in this place—the wooden courtyard of this two-story building was covered everywhere in skeletons.
They were on the beams, the window frames, the corridors, and the arcades: skulls, leg bones, and statues of dead children. All the wood had been painted black. Even the occasional sculptures of the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child did nothing to dispel the pervasive aura of death.
In fact, as early as 1253, this had been Rouen's largest public parish cemetery. When the Black Death swept across Europe in the fourteenth century, Rouen had not escaped it either. At first, people were still buried, but later those who died from the disease were rapidly cremated. The north wing of this courtyard had originally been intended to hold the urns of Black Death victims, but before the attic could be completed, vast numbers of more dead were brought in, turning it into a morgue.
To reduce the risk of infection, people dug a pit in the courtyard and buried any bodies that could not be cremated in time, regardless of age or sex. In other words, anyone who struck the ground with a hoe might unearth human remains. That was why the newly built greenhouse had been moved next door, to the School of