"Can I call you Tori? You know Tori, I'm a great friend."
"I don't get it, why are you being nice to me?"
"Maybe I don't want to see you friendless."
When Victoria Silvers, who comes from a long line of Slytherins, is sorted into Gryffindor her life...
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The morning of the Hogsmeade visit dawned bright but windy. After breakfast, they queued up in front of Filch, who matched their names to the long list of students who had permission from their parents or guardian to visit the village.
Tori was going with Fred, George, and Lee to Zonko's before Hermione's meeting at the Hog's Head. All Hermione had told her was that Harry could teach them a thing or two. Tori was all ears about that.
"We better start hurrying up or we're going to be late," Tori said, glancing at the clock over in the corner of Zonko's Joke Shop.
They walked down the main street past the post office, from which owls issued at regular intervals, and turned up a side-street at the top of which stood a small inn. A battered wooden sign hung from a rusty bracket over the door, with a picture on it of a wild boar's severed head, leaking blood on to the white cloth around it. The sign creaked in the wind as they approached. All four of them hesitated outside the door.
"Well, come on," Tori sighed, opening the door.
It was not at all like the Three Broomsticks, whose large bar gave an impression of gleaming warmth and cleanliness. The Hog's Head bar comprised one small, dingy, and a very dirty room that smelled strongly of something that might have been goats. The bay windows were so encrusted with grime that very little daylight could permeate the room, which was lit instead with the stubs of candles sitting on rough wooden tables. The floor seemed at first glance to be compressed earth, though as
There was a man at the bar whose whole head was wrapped in dirty grey bandages, though he was still managing to gulp endless glasses of some smoking, fiery substance through a slit over his mouth; two figures shrouded in hoods sat at a table in one of the windows.
There were several students inside as well. Tori recognized a few. Neville Longbottom was talking to Dean Thomas and Lavender Brown, who was followed by Parvati and Padma Patil (Tori remembered that Harry she Ron had brought them to the Yule Ball the previous year) with Cho Chang and one of her usually-giggling girlfriends.
Tori noticed Katie, Alicia, and Angelina waving them over. Hazel Doe was seated in the bag with another Hufflepuff girl. Three Ravenclaw boys she was pretty sure were called Anthony Goldstein, Michael Corner and Terry Boot, Ginny, closely followed by a tall skinny blond boy with an upturned nose whom Tori recognized vaguely as being a member of the Hufflepuff Quidditch team.
Bringing up the rear, was the four of them whom were carrying large paper bags crammed with Zonko's merchandise.
The barman had frozen in the act of wiping out a glass with a rag so filthy it looked as though it had never been washed. Possibly, he had never seen his pub so full.
"Hi," Fred said, reaching the bar first and counting his companions quickly, "Could we have ... twenty-six Butterbeers, please?"
The barman glared at him for a moment, then, throwing down his rag irritably as though he had been interrupted in something very important, he started passing up dusty Butterbeers from under the bar.
