✰Never Speak Ill of the Dead✰

The Army of Fur Babies (Daisy)

Daisy POV

August 30, 2021

Rose let go of the orange circle. "I hate those things." I mumbled. At least I didn't have to pay for damage to the supermarket. And it was especially good that I wasn't at my house; they would kill me.

The rest of the group took off after the circle, and I followed them. It led us to a strange building with a big sign on the front that said Adoption Center. Rose opened the door, and a little bell jingled.

"How can I help you?" The employee said, holding back a bunny from escaping.

"Eeeee fur babies!" Lily squealed.

"Shut up, Lily." Rose whispered. "We need to get going; we have priorities." She turned around to find every other person she brought looking at some form of animal. "Oh, good God." She scoffed.

"Aw!" Lily ran over to cuddle a cat.

"Guys! We are busy; stop procrastinating!" Rose yelled. I looked at her, but no one else batted an eye. They kept playing with the animals.

"Look how cute!" Lucy said while holding a bearded dragon.

Rose groaned. "We can come back later." Rose said. Again, the group entirely ignored her.

"Come on, Rose, look at the mice!" Hugo said excitedly after running over to Rose and tugging on her sleeve. His arm jerked down a little bit further and pulled Rose down with it. I could see the pain on Rose's face. She had gotten mad at him for not listening, so how was she okay with him almost ripping her arm off?

"Sorry. Can we have one?" Hugo asked.

"No. We can't. We need to go." She answered.

The rest of our group still didn't move after almost 10 minutes of Rose trying to get them to leave.

"This is hopeless." She said. She collapsed on the ground, and a small dog came over and sat on her lap. She started petting the dog and continued. "No one is going to do anything. They don't listen to me, and now we are going to lose the war."

I looked at Rose. We're friends at school, I was always closer to Al and Scorp than her and Alice, but we were still great friends. She had a way of making all the people in a room pay attention when she was talking. It was bizarre that these people were ignoring her. I felt like I should help her. I was the only one who was paying attention anyway.

"Can I help?" I asked her.

She looked up at me and then stood up. "Yeah. Can you try to get their attention? You're good at it." She asked.

I nodded. Then I cupped my hands around my mouth to amplify the sound. "Guys!" Everyone looked up. I didn't blame them; it was louder than I expected. "I get it; the animals are cute, whatever! We've got stuff to do, so you can either be entirely useless and look at animals that you will have so many other chances to see, or you can come to help get someone so we can maybe have a chance at living past this year!"

They all looked slightly shocked, and then they stood up.

Rose smiled. "Okay, let's figure this out." She walked over to the brown-haired girl at the front desk, who was looking at us with a strange expression. "We need to go upstairs." Rose said.

"What? No. That's where we live." The girl said, "You can't go up there."

Rose sighed and then came back to us. "What now?" She asked.

"I got this." Hugo said. "I hope."

"You sure?" Rose asked. She didn't seem to trust her brother. It made sense; he didn't seem like the best at communicating.

"Yeah." Hugo said. He walked over to the lady at the desk. "Hi! You must be Akira! I'm friends with Ellie!

"And you must be Hugo." She answered. Rose looked shocked. I could practically see the words 'How the hell does she know him?' running through her mind.

"Yep, that's me. Can we go upstairs to see Ellie? I want to introduce her to my friends."

"Who's Ellie?" Rose whispered.

"I don't want all of them upstairs, but I can go get her if you'd like." The girl, Akira, said.

"That would be great! I really want her to meet my friends." He said.

"Sure." Akira walked up the stairs, and Hugo walked back over with a huge smile on his face.

"How? How do you know them?" Rose asked.

"Well, Ellie is my slytherfriend and Akira is her friend. Akira owns the shop, and Ellie helps her with it. They are kinda like sisters, but not really." Hugo said.

"What the hell is a slytherfriend?" Rose asked. I laughed.

"It's like a partnership between Slytherin and Hufflepuff. You get partnered with someone from the other house in the first year, and you get to hang out all the time. It's an amazing program." Scorpius said.

Then we heard footsteps on the stairs. Akira and someone else, who must have been Ellie, came downstairs.

"I don't know why they couldn't have just come upstairs." Ellie said.

"I don't know if we can trust them." Akira answered.

"Of course we can trust them."

Ellie reached the bottom of the stairs and walked over to us. Her braid bounced against her back as she moved. She seemed a little too cheerful. I'd seen her around in the common room, and she was normally like that. Akira stayed in the back, watching.

"Hey!" Ellie said. She hugged Hugo and then looked at the rest of us. "Nice to meet you all."

Lily looked at her. She seemed offended that Hugo had a friend she didn't know. I think there was something about Weasleys that made them easy to read. Or maybe I was just good at it.

"We should probably go outside." Rose said. "There are a lot of animals in here."

"Okay." Ellie said and walked outside. The rest of us followed her. "This yours?" She asked, tossing the orange circle at Rose.

"Yeah. It is." Rose said.

"Yeah, okay, and why did it break my window? There are better ways to get my attention." Ellie asked.

"Fastest way." Rose replied simply.

"Also because it's magical." I said.

"Sorry?" Ellie blinked.

"Okay, so Ellie, that's your name, right? You are part of a secret team of people with superpowers to defeat the death eaters." Lily said.