WHO: Parvati Patil and Ginny Weasley WHEN: January 1998, the night the kids returned to Hogwarts WHERE: Gryffindor House WHAT: Lending a hand, hopefully. Or a sock. CHALLENGE: Backstory (Overlook), Bingo (A friend, predawn, a pair of mismatched socks)
Parvati Patil always dressed to impress. This had been the case practically since her first day at Hogwarts, and now, starting the second half of her final year there, was not the time to start slacking off. Unfortunately, something had gone Wrong. She had no idea how it had happened; no doubt it was a result of allowing (or, frankly, expecting) her mum to do her packing for her, but somehow, none of her socks had made it back into her trunk. None of them.
What was worse, though, was that last night she'd gotten caught up in the excited antics of a couple of third-years and been hit by several minor spells that were, at the time, only a mild inconvenience. She'd laughed! She hadn't known.
It was incredibly early, but Parvati often got up before the sun rose in order to prepare for the day. She was, to the dismay of everyone around her, a morning person. This was how she discovered the tragic oversight, and also how she discovered that none of the girls in her dorm could help her. They all had tragic or boring taste in socks, except for Lavender, of course, who didn't have quite what Parvati was looking for to match her planned accessories. Look: the Hogwarts uniform was a black robe, okay? Accessories were Parvati's life.
She put the socks she'd been wearing yesterday back on. Thanks to those horrible third-year boys, one of them was bright orange and the other was glowing faintly purple. It would've been funny if she had other socks to wear, but she didn't, and it was much too early to hammer on the door of a boys' dormitory to demand they reverse their spells. Parvati Patil was damned if she was going to become the center of a storm of gossip by going anywhere near the boys' dorms this early in the morning. No, she would have to rely on the aid of a friend.
Leaving the useless other girls in her dorm to sleep, she pulled her peach silk bathrobe on over her nightgown - it did not look good with the socks, to put it mildly - and went down a flight of stairs to the sixth year dormitory, where she lightly tapped on the door. Ginny would have socks that would match Parvati's outfit plans, she was sure of it. Ginny would also have to listen to Parvati rant about this horrible situation. That was the price one paid for being Parvati Patil's friend. The other girls in Parvati's dorm, freed of the need to be that friend today by their own poor fashion choices, might even send Ginny a fruit basket in thanks.