On the surface, the start of a new week seemed no different from the week that had just passed for the Hogwarts students.
The long house tables in the Great Hall were still laden with abundant, steaming food whenever it was time to eat.
Owls still flapped in through the doors and windows of the Great Hall, dropping letter after letter and package after package.
Yet that was only the surface. Looking more closely, one would notice that far more owls than usual were flying into the Great Hall.
Most of these extra owls were delivering newspapers and magazines such as the Daily Prophet.
No student or professor found this surprising.
After all, even the Evening Prophet, which was only published when major events occurred, seemed to have become a regular fixture.
For several days in a row, the pages of the Evening Prophet had been completely filled with news of war.
Friction and conflict were breaking out in every magical society and Muggle country, growing increasingly intense.
This trend had even affected the Daily Prophet. Although it had condensed its reports on war-related news, it was still nearly twice as thick as usual.
The trivial stories that usually filled the Daily Prophet had become almost impossible to find.
In the blink of an eye, it was already Wednesday. At breakfast, countless owls swept over the Great Hall again, and newspapers and magazines fell like raindrops.
"Ugh!" Anthony Goldstein merely glanced at the Daily Prophet before folding it shut and pushing it aside in distaste.
"Anthony, what's wrong with you?" Chris Moen picked up the Daily Prophet and read it for a few moments. "It doesn't seem like... anything major happened?"
"Nothing major happened?" Terry Brown turned toward Chris and glanced over the Daily Prophet. "Isn't all of this major?