Chapter One

Arriving

"So, I was watching Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone the other day, and you know that part when it's the quidditch match?" Abril told Lorena through the phone, "Well, I noticed Filch cheering in the Slytherin stands. It was so funny."

"Really? I've never notice him!" Lorena said smiling, "Poor Filch, I'd hate to be him. Having a wizard family and all that and poof! He's born not being magical"

"I know, right? They should've killed him"

"How mean!" Lorena said laughing.

"I'm dying to go to the Wizarding World" Abril said, "It'll be super awesome"

"Oh, I know. It'll be epic. I can hardly wait!"

"But obviously we must take one day of the week to go shopping. Promise?"

"Ok, promise. But only if you buy a Death Eater t-shirt "Lorena said with a smile.

"Deal. Also, I want to get myself a sexy American"

"I'll be sure to find a ginger just for you"

Abril made a sound of disgust, "Eww, no. I want a blond guy with blue eyes"

"Pff, you and your clichés" Lorena told her with a laugh.

"You know me. I'm all for clichés"

"That you are. Well I have to go now, time for supper"

"'Kay, see ya. Dream about me. Bye"

"Don't worry, I will. Bye "Lorena said snorting.

Lorena stretched, left her phone on top of the side table and turned off her laptop. She then went to put her pyjamas on and then headed to the kitchen for a snack.

She and her friend Abril had been best friends for quite a while now, and both of them were huge Harry Potter fans. They had attended the same junior high school, and although they had gone to different high schools, and had new friends, they talked on the phone and hanged out sometimes. And now attending university, and having totally different careers, medicine and fashion design, that was no impediment for them to remain best friends.

After a quick supper, Lorena went upstairs and with a dramatic sigh, started the horrible task of cleaning her room before going to bed. After all, sleeping under tons of clothes, papers, and books it's not very comfortable. Finally, she tucked herself under the bed's sheets, took one of her Harry Potter books from the side table and started reading one of her favourite passages.

"…Fred and George tried to get me to make one when I was about five. I nearly did, too, I was holding hands with Fred and everything when Dad found us. He went mental. Only time I've ever seen Dad as angry as Mum. Fred reckons his left buttock has never been the same since..."

After some time, she left the book on the night table and turned the lamp off to go to sleep. As she had already read all the books nearly three times, she only read them sometimes so she wouldn't forget. It sure would be awesome to go to Hogwarts, but as that was sadly impossible, she had to just accept Orlando's Wizarding World.

After turning off the computer, Abril stood up from the chair in front of her desk and sank into the pillows of her bed. After some minutes, she went down to the kitchen singing the tune from a One Direction song and went to the fridge to get something to eat. She found a magazine and started reading it for the third time.

Surely, Harry Potter were her favourite books in the world. She had to admit that, before, she wasn't a great reading fan, but these books had made her more enthusiastic about it. Although her friend Lorena despised some of her preferences in books (honestly, how was it possible not to fall in love with Travis Maddox? she couldn't understand it), Lorena had to admit that she was thrilled that she was the one responsible for making Abril read more and more books.

Abril returned upstairs and sank once again on her bed, covered herself with the sheets and closed her eyes to go to sleep. Suddenly, with a yelp, she stood up and hurriedly went to kiss each and every single one of her One Direction posters. "Good night, Liam. Good night, Zayn. Good night, Niall. Good night, Louis. And good, good night to you, my perfect Harry". Once she was satisfied and had made sure that none of her posters had been left un-kissed, she covered herself with the sheets, not caring that it was a freezing night and she only had a tank top and shorts, and went to sleep at last, longing to dream about his one true love, Cedric Diggory. Or maybe Draco. That wouldn't be so bad, either. It would just be utterly awesome to go to Hogwarts and meet all the characters, go to Hogsmeade and take classes, but as that was sadly impossible, she had to just accept Orlando's Wizarding World.

Suddenly the whole room was turning madly and Abril was thrown from her bed and into a tornado of colours and sounds. She tried to grab something but she just kept on flying…

…it looked like there was no gravity, and Lorena turned and turned uncontrollably in the tornado. She closed her eyes tightly, just wanting to make it stop…

…just when Abril thought that it was going to last forever, she felt something crash under her and the world stopped spinning. She was on a bed…

…and the room where she was was dark, so Lorena couldn't see exactly where she had landed. But she was still very sleepy, and the tornado had exhausted her…

…so Abril just laid on the bed and closed her eyes, falling asleep again.

Lorena woke up but didn't open her eyes immediately. She had had the most bizarre dream, where the only thing she did was fly in a tornado full of colours and sounds. Besides, she was super comfortable under the covers, and didn't want to feel the cold just yet.

Just when she was drowsing again, she heard a yawn on the left of her bed and she opened her eyes surprised. What she saw surprised her even more. The white ceiling of her room was gone, and instead there was a blue canopy above her. She turned her eyes to the sides and saw blue curtains with bronze stripes.

Slowly, she sat on the bed, which, she noticed, was also blue and bronze instead of the white with coloured hearts cover her bed usually had, and listened to the sounds around her. She heard a snore and another yawn coming from in front of her bed, and then a thump from the right.

"Gosh, I'm so hungry" a female voice said, startling Lorena.

"You're always hungry Melissa" another female drowsy voice answered.

"Well I don't know about you, but I'm going to the Great Hall and see if breakfast has already been served" the first voice said, and then there was the sound of a door opening and closing.

"Great Hall", Lorena thought incredulously. This couldn't be happening. This was definitely not happening. It was impossible! She must have still been dreaming. And yet…

"Hey Lorena, are you already up? I don't want Melissa to finish all the food before we get there"

Lorena froze when another voice called her name. "If this is real..." she thought "They even think I've been here since forever". She rose slowly from her bed and, with a trembling hand, opened the curtains of her bed.

The room where she was was large but cosy, with four beds in each corner. One of them was empty, probably belonging to the girl named Melissa, and another one had still the curtains drawn. Lorena turned to the bed beside hers and saw a short girl with long curly hair the colour of wheat and blue eyes.

"Are you okay? You look like you saw a banshee" the curly hair girl asked her, frowning.

"Umm…" was all Lorena could say.

"C'mon. Dress up and let's go have breakfast. I bet the food will help that pale face you woke up with"

Without a word, Lorena stood up and found her…uniform…neatly folded on a chair. She put on the grey skirt, white stockings, white blouse, a vest, and a striped blue and bronze tie. A little thought crossed her head, "I'm in Ravenclaw", but Lorena was still too dazzled to process it, and so she followed automatically the curly hair girl out of the room.

As she stepped down the stairs, she felt like walking on a cloud, and her mind felt fuzzy and unfocused, as she saw the common room, with its comfortable chairs, a nice fire, bookshelves that went all the way up to the roof, a marble statue of a woman and a few students that were also going down for breakfast.

It wasn't until she and the girl arrived to the Great Hall and saw the the hundreds of students sitting in four tables, chatting and eating breakfast that it hit her like a splash of cold water. She was at Hogwarts!

She flushed furiously and had to use all her self-control not to scream at the top of her lungs, so she just walked besides the girl towards the Ravenclaw table, her hands shaking in excitement. There were students of all ages there, all talking happily with each other. Lorena grab some toast and a glass of "Oh my God, pumpkin juice!" and studied the other tables. At the far left side of the Hall was the Slytherin table, just next the table where she was, and next there were the Gryffindors and on the right side were, at last, the Hufflepuffs.

Everything was all right for now, well, all right in the terms that she was now slowly processing that she was at Hogwarts, but Lorena wasn't sure what would she do when she actually saw the main characters of the series. Because this was no Wizarding World nor a movie set, this was real!

The first important character she saw was Professor McGonagall, and her heart skipped a beat when she saw her at the professor's table in front of the other four house tables.

She also noticed Dumbledore, Hagrid, Professor Flitwick (he was indeed tiny), and some students like Justin Flinch-Fletchley, Millicent Bulstrode or Penelope Clearwater.

And then she saw them. The Golden Trio. Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger…and Harry Potter.

They had just entered the Great Hall and were walking towards the Gryffindor table, and Lorena suddenly understood how Harry's admirers felt when they finally met the Boy Who Lived, because in that moment, the only thing Lorena wanted to do was to run to him and cry and hug and kiss him.

"Lorena, is everything okay?"

Lorena turned to look at the curly hair girl and tried to smile, although she felt like she was about to start hyperventilating.

This was too much, too much to stand and too quickly to take in. Lorena focused on her food to try to control her emotions but something made her look up and at that precise moment, she locked eyes with another girl who was entering the Great Hall with a bunch of girls.

Abril almost cried when she saw Lorena. She had also arrived at Hogwarts! Not caring if someone looked, she ran towards her and the two friends hugged each other in a bone-breaking embrace. Lorena took her hand and dragged her out of the Great Hall to the hallway, and then she turned to face her. They both stared at each other for a few seconds and at the exact same moment they screamed together, hugging, dancing and jumping.

"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God I can't believe we're here!" Abril said excitedly.

"It's like a dream come true! I don't even know if it's actually a dream or not!" Lorena answered equally excited.

"When I woke up, I wasn't very sure where I was. It was like "Is this real?" And then this Asian girl told me to dress up and have breakfast with her and all the other girls. It was like she'd known me forever!"

"I know! One moment I was sleeping in my bed and the other a short girl with curly hair dragged me out of it like we were best friends. It looks like, for them, we have studied here since the beginning"

"Wait a sec. If that's what they think, then it means we can do magic!" Abril said, widening her eyes.

Lorena smiled excitedly but then frowned.

"Then we must have wands. But where are they?"

"Let's check our trunks. I bet they'll be there " Abril said, and without another word, she turned around and ran through the corridor, "I'll see you at lunch!"

Breakfast forgotten, Abril ran down one of the staircases, praying for it not to move, and after getting lost a few times, she finally arrived at the end of one of the bottom corridors near the dungeons. There were barrels scattered all over the place, and Abril had no idea how to enter the common room. Luckily, just a second later she heard a voice behind her and turned to see the Asian girl followed by other girls, walking towards her.

"There you are! We were wondering where you'd gone to," she said, and taking out her wand, she tapped the second barrel of the second row, and a door appeared in the wall.

The girls walked through the door and Abril could finally appreciate the Hufflepuff common room. It had an earthy feeling, but was cosy, with fluffy looking seats in front of a fireplace and plants hanging over the ceiling. Black and yellow curtains hanged from round-shaped windows, which had the view of the lake and the west greenhouses. Abril went up to her room followed by the other girls, and immediately started looking for her wand. At last, she smiled as she took out a wooden wand with stripes carved on the grip.

"I didn't know you got along so well with that Ravenclaw girl" Abril heard the Asian girl ask her suspiciously.

Abril turned to look at her and saw that she looked a bit offended, and that made her feel bad.

"I'm sorry" she answered, "t's just that we…owled each other through the summer and became quite close"

"And you just saw her today?" the girl said raising and eyebrow, "You surely have been distracted this days"

Abril frowned thoughtfully and stood up to look at the plaque on the door of her room.

"Speaking about that, what day is today?" she asked as she read the plaque.

"It's Tuesday"

"No, no. The date" she said impatiently. The plaque read "Sixth Year".

"Oh, it's the twelfth of September"

Abril nodded thoughtfully. So Lorena and her were in sixth grade, and the year was just beginning, but still, they had to manage to learn everything they could as they obviously had "gone through" their previous years.

As Abril took her bag and went out of the common room, she almost stumbled with a boy that was walking towards her.

"Oh sorry I didn't see you… " she started apologizing, but her mouth dropped as she saw that she had almost knocked down Ron Weasley.

"It was my fault" Ron sputtered as he flushed, "Anyway, I um... was actually looking for you"

Abril stared at Ron in surprise, noticing he was slightly shorter than her.

"Really?"

"Yeah. Um… Fred and George are looking for you" he said uncomfortably.

"M… me?" Abril said even more surprised.

"About the chocolates you asked for. I don't know what they are talking about"

"Oh, yeah… the chocolates" Abril said hesitantly, "I'll look for them later, I guess"

Ron just shrugged and turned around quickly, leaving her startled.

She resumed her way through the castle when she remembered how short Ron looked. She was just wondering in what year Harry was when she heard someone calling her. She looked up cautiously but relaxed when she saw Lorena running to catch up with her.

"I just saw a huge carriage parked in the grounds, and a couple of guys I passed on my way here were talking in another language!" Lorena said breathlessly when she reached her.

Abril widened her eyes and a huge grin appeared in her face.

"It's the Triwizard Tournament!"

8