She is delighted by the living portraits.

She is less than delighted by Peeves.

"Do you want me to go to the Bloody Baron?"

There's a pop, and a little man with wicked, dark eyes and a wide mouth appears, floating cross-legged in the air, clutching the walking sticks. "Oooooooh!" he says, with an evil cackle. "Ickle Firsties! What fun!"

He swoops suddenly at them.

Oh. Hell. No.

What does she have--just her wand, her stuff is elsewhere--she doesn't know any spells yet--

She leaps up to try to grab one of the sticks away from him, or at least yank him off-course.

The other kids duck, but Peeves is caught by surprise by this and drops all the sticks.

"Go away, Peeves, or the Baron'll hear about this, I mean it!" barks Percy.

He glares at Dorea then blows a raspberry and zooms away, cackling rattling coats of armour as he passes.

She brandishes the stick she managed to grab in his direction as he flees.

"You want to watch out for Peeves," says Percy, as they set off again. "The Bloody Baron's the only one who can control him, he won't even listen to us prefects."

"Where did he get these, anyway?"

Shrug. "Who knows."

At the very end of the corridor hangs a portrait of a very fat woman in a pink silk dress.

"Password?" she says.

"Caput Draconis," says Percy, and the portrait swings forward to reveal a round hole in the wall. They all scramble through it—Neville needs a leg up—and find themselves in the Gryffindor common room, a cozy, round room full of squashy armchairs.

Percy directs the girls through one door to their dormitory and the boys through another. At the top of a spiral staircase—they're obviously in one of the towers—they find their beds at last: five four-posters hung with deep red, velvet curtains. Their trunks have already been brought up.

"Oh, wow."

The other girls—Parvati Patil, Lavender Brown, Fay Dunbar, Kellah Bimm, and Alice Tolipan—pull on their pyjamas and fall into bed, exhausted.

"I can't believe we're finally here," sighs Lavender.

"It's kind of amazing," Dorea agrees.

"But we have class tomorrow so let's sleep, okay?" Alice calls between yawns. "Good night!"

"Goodnight."

—she's wearing Professor Quirrell's turban, which keeps talking to her, telling her she must transfer to Slytherin at once, because it's her destiny. It gets heavier and heavier, and tightens painfully—and there's Malfoy, laughing at her as she struggles with it—then Malfoy turns into the hook-nosed teacher who'd been talking to Quirrel earlier, Snape, whose laugh becomes high and cold—there's a burst of green light—

—Dorea wakes up at four AM, drenched in sweat and shaking.

--Well that was strange and unpleasant. She tries to go back to sleep.