The Transfiguration classroom at seven in the evening looked entirely unlike itself.
McGonagall had cleared the desks and arranged three long tables in a U-shape, and someone — he suspected Dobby, based on the enthusiasm of the execution — had added candles in quantities that suggested a personal investment in the occasion. The effect was warm and slightly overstated, which was exactly right for a dinner that was being hosted by a thirteen-year-old and was not trying to pretend otherwise.
He had transported the food from the kitchens with Sable's assistance — the broth in its pot, the duck in its roasting pan, the noodle components in careful order, the tarte tatin wrapped and resting. He had set the kitchen in the classroom up in the corner with a warming charm on the broth and the duck and had spent twenty minutes satisfying himself that the service logistics would work.
The guests arrived between seven and seven fifteen.
The students came in the specific way of people who had been given something slightly formal and were calibrating their response to it — Neville with the careful dignity he brought to situations he was uncertain about, Seamus and Dean with the ease of people who defaulted to good humour, Parvati and Lavender together with the assessing attention they brought to new social configurations. Luna arrived alone and approximately on time, which was unusual for Luna, and looked at the room with the particular quality she had when she found something genuinely pleasing.
Ginny came with Harry and was already talking when she arrived, finishing a sentence that had apparently started in the corridor. Harry was listening with the quality he had developed over the past few months — the one that was not managing a person but actually hearing them.
Hermione arrived precisely at seven with the expression of someone who had been looking forward to something and was now establishing that the thing was as good as anticipated.
'It smells extraordinary,' she said.
'It should,' he said. 'Go and sit down.'
The teachers came at seven fifteen in a cluster that suggested they had encountered each other in the corridor and arrived together without planning to. McGonagall came in first with the quality of someone entering a room she had technically arranged and was now occupying as a guest, which produced a specific adjustment in her bearing that was very slightly less formal than her usual classroom presence. Lupin behind her, immediately comfortable, the ease of someone who had spent years making himself at home in difficult places and found a table of students and colleagues considerably easier than most of what he had been asked to manage. Babbling with the quick assessment of someone cataloguing the room. Dumbledore last, with the specific quality he brought to everything — the benign attention that appeared mild and was not.
Ron was in the corner with the broth.
'Please sit,' he said, with the calm of someone who had work to do and would be with them shortly. 'The consommé will be two minutes.'
He went back to the broth and did not look at the room and focused entirely on the temperature of the consommé in the pot and the order in which he would distribute the cups and the specific logistical sequence that would get twenty portions of a hot liquid to twenty people within a window narrow enough that the last cup was still hot when it arrived.
This was the part of cooking for a group that was different from cooking for yourself. The food itself was one problem. The service — the movement of the food from the preparation area to the people — was a separate problem with its own constraints and its own solutions. He had worked this out with Sable on Thursday, the logistics of twenty plates, the timing, the temperature management. He had an order. He was going to follow it.
Dobby appeared beside him.
'Harry Potter's friend is preparing the service,' Dobby said, with the gravity of someone confirming a known fact.
'Yes,' Ron said. 'Can you manage the warming charms on the duck while I'm doing the cups?'
Dobby looked at the duck in its pan with the focused assessment of someone who had been doing warming charms considerably longer than Ron had been alive and found the task well within scope.
'Dobby can manage the duck,' Dobby said, with the specific dignity he brought to tasks he considered worthy.
'Thank you,' Ron said.
He began the service. Twenty cups, transferred from the pot with the ladle, arranged on the tray with the specific care of someone who understood that the way a thing was presented was part of what the thing was. Amber. Clear. Each cup exactly as full as the one before it.
He moved through the tables. Students first — the arrangement he had decided on, because the teachers would wait with the patient ease of people who had been waiting for things for a long time and the students needed the reassurance of being served first, of being told by the sequence itself that they were welcome here, that the formality of the occasion was not formal in a way that excluded them.
Neville received his cup with both hands, which was the gesture of someone who had been taught careful manners and used them genuinely rather than performatively.
Luna looked at her cup with the quality she brought to things she found beautiful — direct, unhurried, as though she had all the time in the world to look at it properly before doing anything else.
Seamus said, 'That smells incredible,' with the unstudied honesty of someone who had not yet calibrated the appropriate level of response to a consommé.
Dean said, 'Seamus,' in the tone of someone performing mild reproof while agreeing entirely.
Then the teachers.
He was aware of the specific quality of serving Dumbledore — the old man received the cup with the same courteous attention he gave everything, with the quality of someone who was not performing graciousness but simply being it, and who had been being it for long enough that it was indistinguishable from his natural manner. He looked at the cup with the half-moon spectacles and said nothing, which was its own form of assessment.
McGonagall received hers with a 'Thank you, Mr. Weasley' that had the quality of something said with more care than the words themselves contained.
Lupin smiled. It was the kind of smile that reached the eyes without effort.
Babbling was already looking at him with the brightness she had in their sessions, but she turned it on the cup when he set it down and gave it the same assessment she gave Rune sequences: reading it before experiencing it, understanding the structure before the content.
He returned to the corner and picked up the ladle for his own cup, which was the one that had been left over, and stood at the service area and drank it there rather than sitting because he was still in the mode of someone who had work to manage and sitting felt premature.
It was correct. It was the consommé he had been reaching for — the amber, the clarity, the flavour that tasted of the bones and the time and nothing extraneous.
He set down the cup and began preparing the duck.