Chapter 233: Halloween - Subtle Manipulations!
Halloween in the wizarding community was a nasty business.
A nuisance, especially for the Ministry of Magic, and its employees, who had to deal with the flux of illegal magical objects at the bottommost levels.
Malfoy Manor had served the gathering of upper-class wizards and witches for ages.
With its pure-blood guests and ancient history of the family, the manor acted as an annual host of Halloween feast where countless matches had been made and would for years to come.
Of course, it also served as a playground for children, providing many candies, cakes, and assortments suitable for the occasion. But the prime reason for the feast had always been to bring together young wizards and witches of marriageable age.
Today, under the bone-chilling windy night, the manor looked like a huge candle in itself.
All around the manor, hundreds of Jack-o'-lanterns were hovering, howling, cackling at the incoming guests. Some were singing, some were chasing children, and some were having an in-fight about who among them was the biggest and scariest.
A huge bonfire was burning in the middle of the vast lawn backside of the manor.
A few spare chairs were dancing on their legs, ghosts were roaming around, presenting themselves to the young and old alike, and children were prancing here and there with ever-changing robes that howled with werewolves costumes, glowed red with vampires costumes, and sprouted a long nose with hags costumes.
Round tables with plates of Barmbrack (-a type of bread-), Bonfire toffee, Candy apples (-biting which revealed tiny figurines of magical creatures-), every flavor beans, fizzing whizzbees (-that caused a person who sucked on them to float a few inches off the ground-), Soul Cakes (-that mimicked a distorted facial appearance of their eaters-), and many drinks to wash these down glided from one end to another in the lawn.
The Halloween feast was also the night when the patriarch of the Malfoy family, Lucius Malfoy, presented the richest collection of wine from the family-owned Malfoy Apothecary.