In early October, a piece of news became the latest curiosity at Hogwarts, discussed with relish throughout the school, especially by Gryffindor's little lions.
The news concerned Gryffindor's ghost, Nearly Headless Nick.
The curiosity was not, of course, that Nick had once again applied to the Headless Hunt and been rejected. After all, he applied every year and failed every year. Apart from first-year students who had no older siblings at Hogwarts and might take a little interest, the other students did not care at all.
What amused the whole school was that Nick planned to hold a banquet this year, inviting every friend he could to celebrate his five hundredth deathday on Halloween night.
Yes, that was right: his deathday.
It was utterly absurd.
Harry and the others simply could not understand why anyone would want to celebrate the day he had been killed, even if he was a ghost. All they could say was, perhaps it was because ghosts had no brains? (The ghosts of Hogwarts: o(≧口≦)o)
Absurd as it sounded, though, Harry honestly had been just a tiny bit interested. And not just him; Hermione felt the same way. The two novices were rather curious about ghost celebrations and such.
But Ron put the idea out of their heads with a single remark.
"You want to go to the Deathday Party? Then you'd better think carefully about what the food at a ghost banquet would be like," Ron said with an indifferent expression.
Harry and Hermione only had to imagine it for a moment before they saw the error of their ways and firmly declared their position: the school party would be better after all.
The Halloween party was quite interesting, especially since they had heard that Dumbledore had invited a skeleton tap-dancing troupe from Switzerland this