Daisies • HP Next Generation

Peace Returns

A/N You may have noticed the changed cover doesn't say "Daisy Dursley: Flower Sparks" it says "Daisies." I'll probably change the title to this at some point, as the sequel will most likely be called either Petunias or Poppies, and Daisies would fit with that theme.  

Chapter 31: Peace Returns

Over the next couple of days, Daisy found herself seated on a growing chair of popularity. People, including older students she had never spoken to before, offered their congratulations and tried to weasel some small fragment of information from her. Daisy, as instructed, kept her mouth shut. In fact, they all had.

Even without any leaks of information, people still came up with their own explanations, many of which were close to the truth. People usually guessed that Malia had tried to abduct Daisy and Jonathan, just as she had the others, but in this version of the story, one of them had an extra wand up their sleeve and attacked Malia when she wasn't looking. Others hypothesized that Daisy was secretly trained in Muggle martial arts and had fought with her bare hands while Jonathan got the wands and freed the others.

In all versions of the story, Malia was the main villain, an obvious conclusion as she had left with the Aurors. Arianne was also either a sidekick, or an unwilling helper that turned good in the end, something people guessed by the fact that she was Malia's sister and no longer a prefect.

A few evenings later, McGonagall did offer an official report of events to the entire student body, but the account didn't include any reasoning behind the events and did not fully explain what the Room of Inquiry was.

"Why don't we check out the Room of Requirement since we're here?" Jonathan asked. They were just walking through the seventh-floor corridor again, and any change in subject was a welcome one to Daisy. Sophia hadn't been content with any amount of detail Daisy had told and retold her.

"You think of a place first," Daisy said. Daisy and Sophia stopped in front of the empty wall as Jonathan paced the floor three times, and stopped.

No door appeared.

"I guess I must have done something wrong," Jonathan murmured. He repeated his pacing, and again, no door.

Daisy walked past him to make her own request from the room. Show me home. I need to be back home, she thought repetitively, her eyes near shut so that only a small bit of the floor was visible between her eyelashes.

Daisy's eyes fluttered open again, and she looked at the wall confusedly. "Why isn't anything there? We are in the right corridor, right?"

"This is the same one as before," Sophia nodded. "So, what are the conditions for the room to turn up?"

No one spoke for a moment, as a few other students passed through the corridor without looking at the three first years staring at a blank wall.

"You have to walk past it three times, and think really hard about a place," Daisy said. "We did that."

Sophia nodded and continued on the path of pacing on her own just as Jonathan and Daisy had done.

"I guess you're missing something, then," she said when the door still didn't appear.

They shrugged it off and left the corridor, heading towards the Great Hall. For the first time in more than a week, Daisy's mind wasn't on the recent events of disappearance. Why hadn't the room showed up? It couldn't have been destroyed. Something with such powerful magic couldn't just fall apart.

"You lot look cheerful," came the sarcastic words. Albus seemed to be walking on his own towards the dungeon. His school bag was still slung over his shoulder, and an old piece of parchment was held folded in his hand.