Surrogate Best Friend

[Ophelia Dippet]

"Well, he's hardly the intimidating sort, is he?" she asked with a smile. Ophelia had never had any skill with divination, so she had no way of knowing, in that moment, how much of a terror the adorable little thing would become in her household in the coming weeks. Indeed, she would be the only person who actually liked the little guy. Right now, though, she couldn't imagine anyone ever having a single complaint about the tiny creature.

"I think the alliteration suits him," she said with a cheerful look, reaching down to scratch the niffler's back as she did. Alliteration wasn't the sort of term she would have come up with on her own, but he'd used it first and she thought it was the sort of long and delightful word that tended to make the person who used it seem well read, so she was quick to appropriate it.

"So that's settled," she said, reaching in and picking the niffler up as if to announce to whoever else in the pet shop might be watching that she had officially claimed this pet. "Now for my end of the bargain--what sort of pet are you looking to get your mother, Mr...?" she said, drifting off as she realized that she didn't actually know this gentleman's name.