Harry and the others looked toward the noise, only to find that Peeves had suddenly started causing trouble. Ginny, beside them, had been splashed with quite a bit of soup and other liquids.
"Peeves, how dare you make trouble here!" Nick exclaimed.
Peeves mumbled something unintelligible, then quickly slipped away.
"I need to have a word with him," Nick said, then went after Peeves.
"That's odd. Peeves likes causing trouble, but he's never really done it at a feast before, has he?" Hermione said, rather puzzled.
Peeves loved a lively crowd and enjoyed attending all sorts of feasts. Most of the time, though, he was not allowed in. Last year in particular, because Hogwarts had hosted students from six other schools, Peeves had been kept under strict supervision for a time and had not been allowed to do anything.
To be allowed to attend feasts, Peeves rarely caused trouble at them. Even so, the only ones he could attend were the Welcome Feast, the Christmas Feast, and the end-of-term feast.
He was not even allowed to attend the Halloween Feast.
Yet today, he had actually caused a disturbance at the Welcome Feast, one of the few he could attend? It was not a major disturbance, but it was still quite unusual.
"Probably because this year's going to be rather unusual, so everything's rather unusual." Ron had just struggled to swallow the food in his mouth and nearly choked. Only after Lavender gently patted his back for a while did he recover.
It was a massive public display of affection, the kind that tormented a whole crowd of single people around them at once.
The feast continued for a little while longer before Dumbledore stood up at the front. The noisy Great Hall soon fell silent.
A few goofballs had not