hh_mirror

True to her word, Camilla had come by the Sorting Room to collect her old friend Francis when his Sorting ended. She'd worried a bit that the talking hat would send him into another anxiety attack or something, and was pleased to find he'd weathered the final interrogation scarcely breaking a sweat. "There's a bar in Ravenclaw but it really isn't a good idea to bring Henry there," she confided. "Henry and Charles still aren't getting along. I'm taking you back to Gryffindor, and we can have a drink in the common room there, the three of us. Gryffindor's my house."

She didn't actually specify who she meant by the three of us, but assumed that was obvious enough.

She murmured the requisite password to the Fat Lady for entrance to the common room, with an aside to Francis, "I'm sorry -- you'll get used to things here, in time. The portraits do move and talk." He seemed awfully tense. A cocktail or two should settle his nerves. "I'll bring you some of Henry's cigarettes, how's that?" Nicotine might help too. "Unless Priscilla's finally weaned you off smoking. I stopped a while ago, when Nana got very very sick toward the end. Henry still does smoke." And why shouldn't he? Dead people couldn't get lung cancer, Camilla imagined.

Ever the hostess, Camilla settled her friend into a cozy armchair. "I'll just be a moment. I don't know whether Henry's reading or napping or what, but he'll want to come down, I'm sure." With that, she left him alone.