80
Dinner time
🍽️

Joining a file of other Ravenwing students you head off on the long winding route back to the Hogsnorts Great Hall to get your dinner.

You take a seat at the Ravenwing table and look around you, flabbergasted.

Tonight Slumblebore has enchanted the walls and ceiling of the Great Hall to look like the whole hall is itself placed upon another table, as big as a parade ground, with great giants at either side ready to eat. An image of a candlestick towers above you and the ceiling in this giants’ dining hall is far above that. The enchantment is unbelievably realistic.

"Don't forget to eat Arthur!" Daniel reminds you, with a grin.

You look down to see yet another incredible feast.

Huge succulent poached salmon lie head to tail down the table, each one laid to rest in a solid silver tureen. Small mountains of roasted new potatoes, studded with salt crystals and veined with melted butter. Steamed broccoli the size of small trees, standing upright and giving off a wonderful green fresh aroma. Piles of chestnuts, slathered with marmalade and honey. Cunningly artificed marzipan animals, generously daubed in tomato ketchup.

It is all so delicious you can't stop an involuntary slobber which you quickly wipe from your chin with the table cloth.

You cram food into your mouth and gulp it down.

You are just gobbling up your eleventh marmalade and honey coated chestnut, when all of a sudden Slumblebore's enchanted imagery on the walls shows one of the giants reaching for the students in the hall: a colossal hand outstretched.

You scream and shout with the other students - Slumblebore's enchantment looks so real - when the hand appears to pick up the Hogsnorts Hall and carry it to his mouth!

Chairs are leaning crazily as the simulation progresses to show the inside of the giant's mouth as he chomps and swallows the hall. It looks as if you are falling, falling down the giant's throat, into his stomach. There are cries of dismay from some of the other younger students who have to be reassured that it is all just an amazing illusion.

As you continue your own meal, the simulation shows you pass through the giant's stomach, into the small intestine, then the large intensive until finally you emerge with a plop and drop into a bucket.

The students break into wild applause - this is one of Slumblebore's best ceiling enchantments yet!

"Bravo, bravo!" shouts Daniel Colliers-Wood, "Now I know how this chestnut feels, ha ha! Bravo!"

This signals the end of the best dinner you have ever had.

Turning to Daniel you say.