"We need to do this, Sue," said Hannah Abbott as they hefted one of the magnificent Hufflepuff noticeboards onto the large, round table in the centre of the Hufflepuff common room. It rested there reluctantly, staring up at them from under the mountain of papers stuck all over its wide surface.
Susan Bones sighed. Not only was the parchment a mountain, but there were even more scraps scattered across the floor, having fallen astray when they'd carried the board over. Even magical glue dulled over time, and many of the scraps posted on this message board (of which there were several, all hanging at strategic points throughout the common room and all needing to be cleared) had been stuck to it for a long time... probably as early as six years ago, when Susan and Hannah were just little first years who didn't know what they were in for, staring up in wonder at the night sky festering over the Great Hall.
"I don't see why we don't just burn it all," she said wearily.
"Susan!"
"One little wave of my wand --" she took her wand out of its place behind her ear pointedly "-- and our problems would just go up in flames... gone."
Hannah bit her lip and looked away, down at the endless sheaves of parchment that they were supposed to be sorting through. Hadn't they been through enough? thought Susan. Were there not more useful things for them to be doing? Many parts of Hogwarts were still just rubble; their common room had only escaped the destruction of the battle because it was so far down in the castle. Shouldn't they be helping out with restoring the ruined areas?
But... no. Every seven years it fell to the Prefects of the year that would next be leaving -- and anyone that they could lasso into helping out -- to clear away years of memories, accumulated on these few boards that were perhaps the heart of Hufflepuff house -- the places of communication for its students. If Hogwarts opened next term then Hufflepuff would be clean and tidy for new and old students to return to. House Elves rarely came down to the common room: in Hufflepuff, it was generally the responsibility of the people who used things to keep those things tidy.
"They're not problems, though, right?" Hannah asked quietly, holding up a torn piece of parchment which depicted a small caricature of the Ravenclaw house crest -- probably drawn in the run-up to a house match -- and smiling wistfully. "They were good times..."
"Times that are over," replied Susan, picking up an even crueller one of Snape, with his hooked nose and greasy hair, who was apparently one of the bravest men of the war. How much things had changed...
"Not as over as you think."
What Hannah held this time was not parchment, but a photograph.
It was actually a torn-off clip from the Daily Prophet, dated from her second year, which showed her Auntie Amelia shaking hands with some Minister or other.
"...Is that... a moustache?" Susan asked, once the jolt of seeing Amelia like that, smiling seriously at the reporter, subsided. She was still grieving, just as she knew Hannah must be for her parents, and it still hurt to see a picture of her aunt suddenly.
"Yes," confirmed Hannah, "you drew it on."
"What? I don't remember doing that..."
"You did."
"Why --"
"Zacharias told you to shut up complaining about how seriously people took her, but not you, and Justin told him to stop listening in to our conversations, and George Summers said that maybe you just needed some feature to make people take you seriously. So Ernie suggested --"
"-- A moustache! Yes, I remember now..."
"And they drew one on you --"
"And it wouldn't come off for days..."
"And they got Colin Creevey to take a picture, and then made you draw the moustache on this picture to compare and --"
"Hannah," interrupted Susan, "what happened to that picture?"
Hannah faltered. "...Well, we must have put it on the noticeboard."
Their eyes turned back to their task, and they cringed.
"It's just," Susan said haltingly, "I have something in mind..."
She threw away one last stray piece of parchment -- 'Lockhart -- Prat or Prodigy? Unanimous vote: Prat' -- and stepped back to admire their handiwork. Hannah and Ernie stepped back, too (Susan had gone to get him a few minutes into their work -- "Oh, honestly, Ernie! A cursed leg is not a good enough excuse to back out of important duties!"); they looked ready to roll down their sleeves and collapse on soft, comfy armchairs, but also very pleased.
"Is it ready, do you think?" asked Hannah after a beat, turning to them to see their reactions.
"Personally, Hannah, I think it was ready half an hour ago, but --"
"But?" said Susan, a dangerous note to her voice.
"But it's smashing," Ernie assured them, quite genuinely. "It's certainly ready to go back up now."
Wordlessly, Ernie slumped onto a chair and rested his still-recovering leg while Hannah and Susan lifted the board up and, with much effort, hung it back up in its spot, the place that had seemed so lonely without it.
"There," they breathed and, again, took a step back, running their eyes once more over the memories that they had rendered anew.
In the left top corner of the board, the clipping of Amelia and the photograph of Susan, each with a drawn on moustache, were pinned firmly next to each other. The aunt and niece looked nothing alike -- and, yet, they did. There was a seriousness about the eyes... something about their smiles...
A small gap later, there was a photograph of Hannah and Ernie with her parents, staying over at the Abbott family home during the summer term. The bright sun obscured much of the picture, and they spent most of their time hiding their eyes from it -- still, they looked happy. The photograph was taken just before they went for a day's travelling through the countryside; they got lost, the weather turned foul and there didn't seem to be any hope in sight. But then, they came across a farm, and the farmer agreed to shelter them for the night. A baby lamb was born that night -- they were the first things it saw when it opened its eyes.
There were a few other snapshots from that summer, and each held their own memory.
In the bottom left corner, Zacharias, George and Justin were looking shocked as seven Slytherins tripped up at once. If it weren't for their occasional smirks as the tripping was repeated time and again, and the one word scrawled on the back of the photograph -- Revenge -- they would just have looked like innocent by-standers. But anyone who saw the photo would know different -- and Susan, Hannah and Ernie wanted Hufflepuffs of future generations to see that you shouldn't try to get revenge (it was wrong, look at the pain on their faces! And you might get caught...), or, as Zacharias would say if he were to see it, never try and get revenge when there's a camera around. All your hard work will be for naught if someone with less moral standards than you gets their hands on a picture.
...Anyway, it was a lesson of some kind, and that's what some of the photographs were meant for. There was a particularly amusing one in which Zacharias had attempted a Wronski Feint. He'd never tried that one again, not after being laughed at for weeks. Nor had he tried a bounty of other things more than once, and there were plenty of pictures on that, too... actually, almost the entire lower board was taken up by them.
If he were to ever find out... but there were ways she could prevent that. And if he did, it would still be funny.
Funny enough to make her laugh a little, as it happened. As the adrenaline after the last battle had overtaken her, as she'd stumbled upon her friends and realised they were still alive, all she'd been able to do for a while was laugh. With relief, sadness, the kind of laughter you can't stop once it's started. But this -- this light kind of laughter she hadn't had in weeks. It felt good, to have Hannah and Ernie laughing along with her.
The middle of the board was the special thing.
A huge photograph spread out between everything else, enlarged with magic to fit the space. It showed the entirety of Hufflepuff house, wrapped up very warm and grinning -- for each held in their hand a perfectly round snowball.
The Gryffindor vs. Hufflepuff snowball fight in Susan's third year was one of her happiest memories of Hogwarts. Hogwarts at its best... when House rivalry determined nothing more than what snowballs you threw at which person. Eventually, even that distinction had stopped mattering. It had been every girl for herself that day... yet everyone involved had lost and won equally, when losing resulted in you being covered in snow, and winning meant that you had covered at least one other person in snow.
Colin Creevey, she remembered, had taken that picture. Seconds later the Gryffindors had ambushed them and the fight was on, but somehow the picture made it back to them... Even though he was not a Hufflepuff, Colin would be honoured for all the photographs he had given them, as was fair.
A picture of him waving at the photographer, his arms round his brother, made it onto the bottom right corner of the board. Next to that, with barely any gap, was one of Cedric Diggory, who made every Hufflepuff proud to be of that house, and should forever more.
Not knowing their fates, Colin and Cedric looked happy. So did everyone else in the pictures (well, maybe not Zacharias, but...), and that was what was important about them. Whatever had happened since, the memories remained intact -- this noticeboard, once a means of expression for Hufflepuff students, would now serve as a reminder of how important house unity was.
"With this," Susan whispered, "we honour them."
Disclaimer: You know it, J. K. Rowling probably owns it.
Challenge Names: The Character and Scene Challenge from EveryShadeOfDeath (yep, my second fic for this challenge!) and the Anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts Challenge from The Fourth Black Sister.
Where?: Harry Potter Fanfiction Challenges Forum
Character and Scene Challenge: Pick two numbers and get a character (Susan Bones) and a 'scene' (laughing and looking at photographs).
Anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts Challenge: Write a oneshot about the Battle of Hogwarts, could be a little before or after or on its anniversary or such like.
Notes: Not sure how well this fulfilled the second one, I had to edit it a bit, but hopefully I did well for both challenges. Writing about the Hufflepuffs was very enjoyable (I actually love Zacharias; hence, I torture him!) and hopefully I kept all this canon compliant. Goodness knows I was on and off hp-lexicon enough, not to mention re-reading the books. Oh, the pain...
Please review and let me know what you think. I hope you enjoyed, but constructive criticism is just as welcome as gratuitous praise. ;)