THE SORTING HAT
fore. A moment later the desserts appeared. Blocks of ice cream in
every flavor you could think of, apple pies, treacle tarts, chocolate
éclairs and jam doughnuts, trifle, strawberries, Jell-O, rice pud-
ding . . .
As Harry helped himself to a treacle tart, the talk turned to their
families.
“I’m half-and-half,” said Seamus. “Me dad’s a Muggle. Mom
didn’t tell him she was a witch ’til after they were married. Bit of a
nasty shock for him.”
The others laughed.
“What about you, Neville?” said Ron.
“Well, my gran brought me up and she’s a witch,” said Neville,
“but the family thought I was all-Muggle for ages. My Great Uncle
Algie kept trying to catch me off my guard and force some magic
out of me — he pushed me off the end of Blackpool pier once, I
nearly drowned — but nothing happened until I was eight. Great
Uncle Algie came round for dinner, and he was hanging me out of
an upstairs window by the ankles when my Great Auntie Enid of-
fered him a meringue and he accidentally let go. But I bounced —
all the way down the garden and into the road. They were all really
pleased, Gran was crying, she was so happy. And you should have
seen their faces when I got in here — they thought I might not be
magic enough to come, you see. Great Uncle Algie was so pleased
he bought me my toad.”
On Harry’s other side, Percy Weasley and Hermione were talk-
ing about lessons (“I do hope they start right away, there’s so much
to learn, I’m particularly interested in Transfiguration, you know,
turning something into something else, of course, it’s supposed to
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