Veraisy: Their Story

Daisy- I Offer to Help a Stranger

My first year at Hogwarts went by quickly. I made friends with the girls in the Hufflepuff dorm, one of which was the girl with the cat named Noodle. He and Meatball really hit it off, so we decided to keep the two in touch over summer break. I generally got good grades, and only got a few detentions for late homeworks. Then it was back to dad's, where he picked up his old trend of ignoring me like I would go away if he didn't acknowledge my existence. The good thing was that I got to see Silvie again and show off the moves I had taught myself at Hogwarts.

The school had absolutely no form of gym if you don't count all the cardio from running around the castle, so I had kept up my practice either in my dorm room or any empty classrooms. It was hard without anyone to guide me, but my friends agreed to be spotters, so at least I didn't die.

Anyway, after learning a bunch of new things and finally mastering the beam (most of it, but it's still a win), it was time to head back to school. I wasn't nearly as nervous as I had been the year before. Then, Hogwarts had been a complete mystery to me. Now, it was a fun place to go where I had friends and as much food as I wanted.

Still, I had trouble sleeping in different places, even if I'd been there before. After two and a half months sleeping alone in my bedroom, it was hard to readjust to a room full of the breaths of my roommates and Susan's snores.

The common room was empty when I got there. That made sense, because it was close to one in the morning on the first day back, when people didn't have homework to keep them up. All but one.

Cedric Diggory, ever the overachiever, was sitting in an armchair and reading what looked like the standard book of spells, grade five. He wasn't wearing his new prefect's badge, but you could just tell in the way he held himself that he had responsibilities.

"Can't sleep?" he asked.

Cedric was like the dad of Hufflepuff house. He knew everyone by name, even most of the first years. He didn't care that they hadn't even been here for less than a day. He made it a point to learn every first year's name by the time classes started. He was always there when someone needed to talk, and he never got mad at anyone in Hufflepuff, no matter what they did. No one took advantage of it. We were Hufflepuffs, after all.

I shrugged. "Maybe I need a snack."

"Well..." Cedric shut his book and smiled. "We just so happen to be right down the hall from the kitchens. Ever been?"

I shook my head. "It's way past curfew," I said.

"Filch never comes down this way," Cedric said, smiling. "If you need comfort food, go for it. Our secret. Come on, I'll walk you."

Cedric led me through the tunnel that made up the entrance to our common room, then out of the pile of barrels that concealed it. I hadn't known where the kitchens were before, but Cedric was right. Just down the hall and behind a painting of a fruit bowl, the backbone of Hogwarts revealed itself.

It was bigger than the Great Hall and Entrance Hall combined. Four tables were off to the side in the same way the house tables were upstairs, but these were bare, and it was like they were an afterthought in the chaos of the rest of the room.

Shelves and counters and cabinets lined the walls and formed isles throughout the room, some pristinely clean and some stacked with empty mixing bowls and cutting boards. Sinks were piled high with dishes, and ice boxes took up almost an entire wall off to the side.

But all that was nothing compared to the elves.

There had to be hundreds of them, running around, cleaning dishes, mixing things together, putting things away, and taking things out. It reminded me of the ant colony in my backyard at home, the way they moved in a sort of organized chaos.