They all duck.

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

Peeves sticks out his tongue and vanishes, dropping the walking sticks on Neville's head. They hear him zooming away, rattling coats of armour as he passes.

"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."

Victor wonders what the Bloody Baron has on Peeves. But it seems like Percy doesn't know. Follow follow.

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.

Well, that's... something. Victor feels slightly unnerved by the red velvet curtains.

Muninn takes off and circles the room, then lands on top of his cage.

Ron and the other boys pull on their pyjamas and fall into bed, exhausted.

"Great food, isn’t it?” Ron mutters to Victor through the hangings, then yelps. "Get off, Scabbers! He's chewing my sheets."

"Yes, the food is very good. Do you need help with your rat?"

"No, I'm alright—gah—" He successfully grabs and traps his rat. "And I'm going to sleep, I'm dead."

"Goodnight."

He curls up in his unnervingly elaborate bed.

"'Night," he mumbles, and promptly passes out.

It takes Victor a little longer than that to fall asleep.

—he's wearing Professor Quirrell's turban, which keeps talking to him, telling him he must transfer to Slytherin at once, because it's his destiny. It gets heavier and heavier, and tightens painfully—and there's Malfoy, laughing at him as he 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—

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

- well that means it is time to have a bath. Other concerns can be dealt with as they arise.

It's unsettling that there aren't any chores to do, or at least none he knows about.

He is clean and dressed in a fresh set of robes before anyone else in his room wakes up. He doesn't even try to get back to sleep; he can't shake the feeling that there's something he needs to do.