Daisies • HP Next Generation

Vanishing Doorways and Materializing Friends

The following morning, Daisy and the other first year Hufflepuffs struggled to navigate the hundreds of corridors, and one-hundred-forty-two staircases of Hogwarts - even with the maps they had been given. There were several occasions when someone was sure they had found the classroom.

"I think this is it!" Sophia might say while pointing over to a door.

Regina would leap towards it excitedly, and grab the handle. The door would promptly disappear, or move to the other side of the hallway. A couple of doors they found were normal, but locked, or needed to be tickled in the right place to open up.

Jasper came up with what seemed to be a great idea of using specific portraits and suits of armour as markers of where they had already been, but they soon discovered that their markers were completely useless, because they kept getting up and moving after the herd of Hufflepuffs walked away.

Even with all the distractions, they eventually made it to all of their classes, the first of which was English, located in the newest corridor of the castle. Their first class of the week was with the Slytherin first years, which (and Daisy was displeased to find herself following the usual Slytherin prejudices) looked like the most unpleasant group she'd seen so far.

As it was a Muggle class, Daisy knew what to expect from English. Aside from the fact that everyone was wearing robes, and writing with quills and parchment instead of pencils and paper, everything was normal. Professor Ryder, a friendly talkative bloke, taught English the same way Muggles did. Or at least, he seemed to towards the end. They spent most of the class playing games to get to know each other's names.

During the games, Daisy's suspicions of the Slytherins were verified to be at least partially true. Every time Daisy spoke, she noticed a couple of them smirk. Connell Adair, and Bella Castle even had the nerve to layer their voices with disgust when saying Daisy's name - even in front of the teacher.

"Just ignore them," Sophia whispered. "You're just a target because you're Muggleborn, and related to Harry Potter, who put a couple of their parents in prison when he defeated Voldemort."

"That's really comforting," Daisy whispered back sarcastically. "It really helps to know that this isn't a temporary thing, and that I wasn't imagining it."

After charms with Professor Flitwick, which they had with the Ravenclaws, was the first class with Gryffindor: World History. Daisy was a bit nervous for this class, simply because she didn't know what to do about Lily, or if there was even anything she could do besides wait.

Luckily, there wasn't actually anything to be worried about. Lily came and sat next to her before class started.

"Hey. Look, I'm sorry if I seemed kind of mad yesterday, I just thought... that how my parents made friends was the only way to make friends. I thought that all my plans were ruined because we were in separate houses, but that isn't true. Forgive me?"

Daisy smiled. "Of course."

Lily continued to introduce them to her fellow Gryffindor first years, Wyatt Warner, and Gracie Ellis, before Professor Anthony Goldstein ushered them to sit down and gave them a pretest on how much they already knew about different historical points in time.

Following a delicious lunch, was Daisy's first potions class. Daisy had mixed feelings on how this class would go, as according to James it was 'the worst class ever taught at Hogwarts,' but Albus considered it one of his favorites. And surely it couldn't hurt that Daisy's Head of House taught the class.

Professor Sawyer held an inviting smile while waiting for all the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw students to shuffle in and find seats. The potions classroom was located on a hillside, meaning that it was in the dungeon, but one side of it faced the sloping outside of the hill. Windows let in natural light and air, making it more cozy and friendly than a couple of the other dungeon rooms Daisy had peered into on the way down.