During class, every teacher could clearly sense that the children's minds were not on their studies.
The moment morning classes ended, they vanished without a trace. Many did not even eat lunch. Albus wore an expression of anger that was rare for him.
Pomona looked at Flitwick, and Flitwick looked at Pomona. Neither said a word. The afternoon classes were even more "agonizing" than the morning ones. Snape gave three people No Exit.
If that had been all, it would still have been tolerable. But the students began dividing themselves into small groups according to whether they could attend the ball and which ball they could attend, then establishing their own rules within those groups.
There had been all sorts of clubs before, but those had been formed around common interests. Now they were divided by charm, social ability, and the like, as if a second world had formed among the students.
In the fifteenth chapter of Dream of the Red Chamber, Jia Baoyu went to school, where he met a classmate named Qin Zhong. Like Baoyu, he was someone as fine as jade. The moment they saw each other, both felt inferior.
Baoyu had been born into a wealthy family, while Qin Zhong was the late-born son of an assistant official in the imperial camp. Only through the support of his elder sister, Qin Keqing, had he been able to enter the private school of Jia Mansion. That chapter happened to describe a funeral procession at Ningguo Mansion. Its scale had plainly exceeded all proper limits; anyone unaware of the truth might have thought some imperial relative had died.
There was an old servant named Jiao Da, a veteran of three generations of the Ningguo household and of the same generation as Grandmother Jia. Back when the old Duke