Daisies • HP Next Generation

A Complete Answer

"Merlin's beard, Daisy," Jonathan whispered. "You might actually be on to something."

The two stood looking at the empty space where Arianne and Malia should have been. Their bags were gone, the chairs pushed in. No books had been left out. All was still.

"Let's take a look around, then," Daisy said.

Jonathan nodded and crouched to look under the table. Daisy picked up random books off the shelves to look behind them. She didn't see how this could be of any use. It wasn't as if two girls could be hiding inside a table leg or behind a book. Then she reminded herself that she was at Hogwarts. As far as she knew, those hiding places could be realistic ones.

It had only been a minute or two when Jonathan and Daisy stopped.

"This random search isn't going to get us anywhere," Daisy said.

Jonathan agreed, and sat down on the floor where he was underneath the table. His eyes scanned the shelves Daisy had just browsed through, and then he seemed to spot something.

"Searching randomly might not help, but maybe we won't have to search randomly."

Daisy was about to ask him what he was talking about when she saw what Jonathan was looking at. It was the portrait of the woman reading that she had seen earlier that day. The woman had moved her book slightly and was watching them through half framed glasses. She smiled when their eyes met, and waved, the sleeve of her long gown-like blue robes swinging with her arm.

"Excuse me," Jonathan approached the portrait. "Sorry to bother you, but we were wondering if you saw where two other students went. They were in here pretty recently. Two girls, one in Hufflepuff, and one in Ravenclaw."

The woman in the portrait nodded. "I saw them."

Jonathan waited a moment, but when the portrait just returned to reading her book, he cleared his throat to get her attention again.

"Can you tell us where they went?"

The woman tilted her head thoughtfully, and for the first time, put her book down. "Why do you want to know?"

Daisy stepped forwards to speak, this time. "We think they know more about the missing students."

"You would be right," the woman said. "I made a mistake in telling that boy where to go. How am I to know that you wouldn't be another mistake?"

Daisy had no idea how they had gotten to a boy now. They had been talking about Malia and Arianne, hadn't they? But she figured that they must be connected somehow.

"We want to help people. We don't want anything else," Daisy said to the portrait.

The woman seemed to study the two of them for a long time, but neither of them dared to say anything. She hadn't turned back to her book yet, which they both saw as some kind of positive sign.

"Look for The Complete Guide," she said finally. "And no, I won't answer any more questions." The woman reopened the pages of her own book, and no amount of coaxing from Jonathan or Daisy would convince her to act otherwise.

"The Complete Guide?" Daisy wondered aloud. "The complete guide to what?" She moved back over to the bookshelves, this time reading the book titles carefully instead of pulling books off the shelf.

Within a couple minutes of searching, it soon became apparent to them that this method of searching wasn't going to work. So far, they had found A Complete Guide to Potion Experiments, by Drew Gothel, The Complete Guide to Magical Pets, by Jane Peverell, and The Complete Guide to Hidden Passageways, who's author's name was smudged out of the worn fabric cover. The last one had seemed promising at first, but turned out to be all about building secret passages and knowing their uses, not finding them.