Not One More
Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise.
There is nothing as heart-breaking as watching someone go through something you understand completely and be unable to help. You see the tiny first years sobbing themselves to sleep silently and it's not because they're homesick, it's because little Kirsty Thompson won't be back this evening because she's in detention, having her classmates practice the Cruciatus curse on her, or because Luke Mitchell has three broken limbs and no parents left but he isn't allowed to go home. These are children, children who came here to learn and make friends, to fall in love with magic and the world it opened for you, not to be tortured and broken, not to be left screaming on the icy floor of a dungeon, not to cry without making a sound, without moving because they're so afraid of their teachers.
And you can't fix this. When you were made a prefect you thought you'd be cuddling new kids who missed their rabbits, not binding up gaping wounds on bodies that look too small to hold that much blood. You thought you'd spend evenings curled up with Ernie in the common room, sorting out rotas and birthday cakes, celebrating good grades for your house and being as much of as a big sister as our prefects were to you. You're trying, truly, but when the letters you write to their parents aren't little things like a twisted ankle or perhaps a worry about eating or sleeping habits (oh Merlin, what you'd give for kids with a regular enough life to have possible disrupted sleep schedules, these children barely get the time in the night to have any energy to function every day), but are apologies that their child will be coming back with one less leg or once, just once, not at all. Grace O'Malley was sweet and giggly and snub-nosed pretty with freckles and now she is silent and still and dead, because you couldn't save them all and she was the slowest and her accepting face and wave will haunt you until your dying day because she was fourteen years old.
You just want to stop, to go back, to be an eleven year old on your first day and to turn, run and never get this far because this isn't fair. Instead, you sit up in your pyjamas and walk towards Beth Martin and hug her tight, whisper her stories until she sleeps because these children are the future of this stupid, horrifying, wonderful school and you'll be damned before you lose even one more. Not one more.