Surrogate Best Friend

[Ophelia Dippet]

Ophelia's grin widened. "Black Bart! That's just delightful to say, isn't it?" she said, chuckling as she returned her attention to the niffler. It wasn't exactly an elegant name, but nifflers were hardly elegant creatures. As she continued to chuckle, Ophelia inhaled the wrong way and ended up sort of snorting in the middle of her laugh, which wasn't exactly an elegant sound. They were well suited for each other.

Blushing and falling quickly silent, Ophelia decided the best course of action was just to pretend that she had never made such an ungraceful noise, and hope that this stranger didn't bring it up, either.

She probably ought to have learned his name by now, since he was helping her come up with a name for her niffler and she had just offered to help him Christmas-shop for his mother, both of which seemed like rather personal things to be doing with a complete stranger. Her grandfather, however, was absent, because he was always either absent or absent-minded when she needed him to do guardian things, so he'd be the stranger for a little longer.

"I don't think he looks like a sir anything," she said, scratching the back of the niffler's neck. "That's a little too noble for a niffler. But Blackbeard, that's rather ignominious," she said with a grin. "Didn't Blackbeard--didn't he put lit candles in his beard when he killed people?" she asked, with a (very subdued) laugh.