Eyes in the Hogwarts Great Hall

"Forgive him, dear Sir Lear." The one who took up the conversation was a Germanic-looking ghost with a colonel's mustache and splendid aristocratic attire. He appeared very meticulous, though he spoke rapidly.

"I think we might... consider giving him another chance to turn over a new leaf? After all, he is part of the castle too..."

"A chance? My dear Adolf—not that magical little mustache!"

Sir Lear waved his transparent arms excitedly.

"We've given him enough chances to fill the Black Lake! He brings shame upon all us respectable ghosts! Stealing, pranks, frightening students... he really is no good—eh?"

At that moment, a ghost in lace-trimmed high-waisted breeches, with a gleaming medal pinned to his chest, noticed the children below him, stiff as statues.

He drifted lower and peered down at them curiously.

"Hey! What are you doing here?" His voice carried curiosity and a trace of irritation at being interrupted.

No one dared make a sound.

Most Muggle-borns and some half-blood first-years stared wide-eyed, their faces filled with a mixture of curiosity and fear.

To them, ghosts were the stars of horror stories or Halloween decorations. Yet now they had appeared right before their eyes, alive—or perhaps that was the wrong word—and they could speak and argue. The impact was no less profound than seeing magic for the first time.

The pure-blood first-years reacted somewhat differently.

A flicker of undisguised disgust crossed Draco Malfoy's face. He lifted his chin slightly, as though getting close to these "lower spirits" would tarnish his status.

But a boy beside him whispered to his companion, "Look, that's the Bloody Baron, Slytherin's resident ghost. I heard the silver chains on his robes are..."

There was a smug air in his voice, as though he had long known of these ghosts and their origins, treating them as part of Hogwarts's ancient traditions. He might not like them, but they were still "their own furnishings."

The instant the ghosts appeared, Uchiha Madara's half-lidded eyes opened completely.

He slowly turned his head, his crimson Sharingan calmly watching those translucent beings.

There was no fear in his gaze, no curiosity, not even the pure-bloods' complicated sense of superiority or disgust. There was only cold, detached scrutiny and a desire to study them.

His eyes slowly swept over the ghosts' outlines, their transparency, and the way they interacted with matter—passing through walls and chandeliers—as though assessing their energy structures, forms of existence, and... whether they possessed any experimental or practical value.

To him, they might not have been "ghosts," but another kind of phenomenon or specimen.

"Oh, oh, oh!" The short, plump ghost of "Count Filch" noticed the first-years as well. He let out a round, merry laugh and drifted above the crowd.

"Let me see... these must be this year's little sprouts! Freshly minted first-years!"

He smiled kindly, by ghost standards. "You're about to attend the Sorting Ceremony, aren't you?"

A few of the braver children, especially several pure-blood first-years, nodded slightly.

"Good, good." The fat count's ghost looked delighted. "I hope some of you clever little heads get sorted into Ravenclaw! You know?"

He puffed out his transparent chest with a touch of pride. "Many, many years ago, I graduated from Ravenclaw myself! The hall of wisdom!"

Sir Lear's ghost snorted beside him, apparently unimpressed by the fat count's "recruitment speech." But he said nothing more about Peeves and instead began conversing with the other ghosts in low voices.

Their topic shifted to a suit of armor somewhere in the castle that needed repairs, or a new dessert recipe the kitchen house-elves had developed.

The ghosts' arrival and conversation were like a strange gust of wind, temporarily scattering the first-years' fear of the Fire Dragon Exam and replacing it with a more concrete, bizarre shock of magical reality.

Harry watched the transparent figures drifting about and arguing endlessly. His nervousness strangely mingled with a sense of absurdity and a growing feeling that all this was real—

This was the magical world. Even the ghosts were so... full of personality.

The atmosphere in the room became subtle. Fear, curiosity, disgust, scrutiny, showing off, research...

All kinds of emotions flowed silently among the different groups of first-years.

The ghosts, however, seemed to have lost their sustained interest in the stunned "little ones." After chatting for a few more moments, they drifted away just as they had come, passing one after another through the wall opposite them and vanishing from sight.

"All right, children, line up and follow me," Professor McGonagall said, appearing at the doorway at some point. She stood there like a host about to raise the curtain on a stage. "The Sorting Ceremony is about to begin."

The line began to move slowly.

Harry felt like a fish thrown onto shore. Even as he gulped in air, he could not conceal the heart hammering faster and faster from nerves.

He stood behind a boy whose hair looked like dried grass, and he could hear Ron's equally heavy breathing behind him.

The instant they truly crossed the threshold and entered the Hogwarts Great Hall, an unprecedented flood of sensations completely swallowed Harry.

Light—thousands of candles, perhaps even more, none of them set in candlesticks.

Instead, they floated in midair in defiance of gravity, like a brilliant river of stars hanging upside down, illuminating the Great Hall as brightly as day!

Golden light flowed across the ancient, massive stone walls, danced across the surfaces of the four long tables that ran through the hall, and reflected dazzling spots of light.

Sound—the indistinct clamor they had heard outside had now become a clearly discernible tide of voices.

It was full of life, yet the vastness of the hall gave it a strange echo. Mixed with the soft clinking of cups and plates, it formed a lively and majestic background symphony.

Eyes—hundreds of gazes shot over from the four long tables in unison!

Curious, scrutinizing, expectant, teasing... like tangible searchlights, they focused on the newly arrived first-years, who looked awkward and anxious.

And at the center of those gazes, the black-haired boy walking relatively near the front of the line, standing tall with a strange Flame Fan Crest embroidered over the left breast of his black robe, drew the attention of the overwhelming majority.

Whispers burst forth and spread between the long tables of every house like droplets of water thrown into boiling oil.

"Look over there! That black-haired kid!"

"Yes, him! My little brother saw him on the platform. He didn't take the boats! He used a Portkey, and a really high-grade one at that!"

"A Portkey? Elliott from the Norton family personally picked him up? Merlin, how many Galleons would it take to maintain its stability?"

"His eyes... did you see them? When the firelight flashed just now, they really seemed to be red..."

"Not just his eyes, look at his robes! They're nothing like the styles from Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions! The cut, the fabric, and that reflective crest on his chest... I've never seen anything like it!"

"Shh! Keep it down, he seems to be looking this way..."

Unlike Harry and the others, who were so overwhelmed by the splendid sight and dense concentration of stares that they nearly forgot how to move their limbs, Uchiha Madara did not hesitate in the slightest as he entered the Great Hall.

He did not even raise his eyelids a fraction more, as though the deafening clamor around him and the hundreds of focused gazes were nothing more than a breeze and dust brushing past a mountain cliff.

Yet on the level of his vision, an entirely different "feast" had already unfolded.

The Sharingan activated.

In his eyes, the floating candles were no longer simple sources of light.

The core flame of every candle was drawn and arranged by invisible threads of magic, forming a complex lighting and temperature-control matrix that covered the entire ceiling.

The candle wax consumed by the flames was silently replenished by another subtle cycle of magic, endlessly sustaining itself.