Hogwarts' Golden Glory

The auditorium doors were open, and light poured out, paving a narrow golden path along the corridor floor.

The edge of the light path slowly extended forward on the stone slab, as if someone were tracing the edges of the stone slab with an extremely fine pen. It became more stable with each step forward, until it stopped in the middle of the corridor, as if it had confirmed its boundaries.

On the walls on both sides of the corridor, a new candlestick hangs every few steps. The candlesticks are silver with smooth edges, and the candle flame burns evenly inside the lampshade without flickering.

The lampshade is made of transparent glass with very shallow patterns engraved on its surface. When light passes through the patterns, it casts a long, thin shadow on the wall, the edge of which looks like a fine net that is moving slowly.

Icicles hung from the ceiling above the door frame, each one a different length.

The longest was nearly three feet long, and the shortest was only a palm's width wide. The edges were cut into smooth bevels, as if the angles had been carefully measured by the same two hands.

Each icicle contains a tiny blue flame sealed inside, which slowly rotates within the ice, like a frozen candle flame, or like the ice itself slowly burning.

As light passes through the ice, it is refracted into thin beams that fall onto the floor of the foyer, casting flowing spots of light at people's feet.

Many tiny silver bells hang from the dome of the foyer, connected by transparent threads. At intervals along these threads is a light-colored bead that reflects light subtly.

When someone passes underneath, the bells don't ring, but they slowly rotate once in the air. No one touches them; they just rotate on their own, as if propelled by some constant, slight airflow.

Snowflakes fell continuously from the dome of the ceiling, stopping about a foot above the ground to form a slowly flowing white mist that covered most of the hallway. The mist was thin, like a veil of white gauze gently billowing in the wind. As someone passed through the mist, it parted at waist height, revealing the stone floor beneath, before closing again, leaving a dark watermark. This watermark evaporated within seconds, as if it had never existed.

New tapestries, woven with fine silver threads, hang on the walls on both sides of the foyer.

The outlines of trees, rivers, and mountains are all moving slowly, as if being blown by the same gust of wind and carried away by the same river. The tassels on the edge of the tapestry are swaying gently and continuously.

The foyer floor was covered with a dark carpet, the texture of which showed alternating light and dark stripes under the light, with a thin, long arc woven with silver thread at intervals.

At the junction of the carpet and the stone floor, there was a row of tiny round lamps. The flames inside the lamps were covered by glass covers, forming a continuous halo in the hallway. It was only interrupted by a brief shadow when a student passed by, and then it returned to its original state.

The music in the orchestra pit had been going on for a while, the melody winding around the walls, curving slightly at the corners, and flowing back to the center along the edge of the room.

The music became more intense as it entered the main hall, as if guided by the sound reflections of the room itself, intertwining with the flickering flames in the fireplace.

The flames in the fireplace were turned up much higher than usual, with the flames extending upwards along the fireplace wall and naturally narrowing before reaching the flue inlet, forming a stable beam of light.

Before those changes occurred, the crowd in the lobby had been standing there for quite some time. Some stood still, some moved slowly, and some checked to make sure their dance partners were still in the same place.

"I wasn't planning on coming tonight."

The voice came from the right edge of the Hufflepuff area. A boy in a dark gray robe was looking at the untouched drink in front of him, as if talking to a friend or confirming with himself, "My dance partner only agreed the night before. She told me she was ready to come, but she wasn't sure where she would be standing."

"Did you find her later?" someone next to me asked.

"Found her. She was standing next to the second pillar by the wall. After seeing me, she didn't move forward, but just stood there waiting for me to come over."

"Did you go over there?"

"I walked over here. Otherwise, I wouldn't be standing here now."

Another voice broke in, coming from near the Ravenclaw area. A girl in a light blue robe was adjusting her cuffs, her tone as if sharing confirmed information: "I heard that several different bands will be playing this year, not just one."

"Where did you hear that from?"

"Fred Weasley said it. He asked me what style of music I wanted, and I said a waltz would be fine."

Will he take what you tell him seriously?

"He said he would pass it on. But I'm not sure if he'll include it in the conversation or if he'll go out of his way to tell the band."

"Then you can wait until after the show starts and observe whether he says anything."

"Good idea. I'll put this on my watchlist."

A Hufflepuff girl in a dark green robe leaned against the wall, tilting her head to talk to the person next to her. Her voice was soft but her tone was clear: "I thought there would be a lot of people wearing the same color tonight, but when I came into view, I found that there was no concentrated distribution of color. They were almost all scattered."

"When you walked in wearing dark green, did you clash with anyone else wearing the same color?"

No. There's no similar color in this area on my side.

Near the entrance to the foyer, two Gryffindor boys stood side by side. One of them was looking down at the tips of his shoes, as if to make sure they weren't muddy from the journey. The other boy, having already checked, was looking up at the candlelight deep within the foyer.

"Can you smell that layer of mist?"

"I smelled it, but not strongly. It smelled like a mixture of diluted pine and old books."

"I originally thought the scents at the ball would be more floral or sweet, but the aromas here are more subtle than I imagined and not easy to identify directly."

"That might have been specially formulated, using magic to prevent the scent from being presented directly, but rather to slowly seep in as a background fragrance."

In the tapestry above the fireplace, a new tree sprouts from the edge, its branches slowly extending, tiny twigs branching out from its tips. The shimmering silver threads flow continuously along the edges of the branches, as if a slowly growing tree is being reintegrated into the winter landscape. The flames inside the icicles rotate once more, the angle of light shifting slightly, causing subtle changes in the length of the shadows cast by those crossing the hallway.

A girl in a silver-gray coat stopped in front of the tapestry. She looked up at the newly grown tree and said, "The location of this tree looks like it was deliberately arranged."

"It adjusts itself according to the direction people are coming from," said her companion standing next to her. "The tree on the tapestry rearranges its branches according to the silhouette of the people approaching it."