title: Still/Life
author: Sirikit
rating: K
summary: A series of small likenesses. Hufflepuff gen (Susan, Ernie, Zacharias, Hannah, Justin, not necessarily in that order).
a/n: These are basically sketches that I've been doing to try to figure out the characters. Figured I could corral some together into something resembling a fic. Lyrics from The Knife.

We share our mothers' health
It is what we've been dealt?
What's in it for me?
Fine; then I'll agree



I. Susan
.

She walks without idleness, in that tall, straight manner of well-brought-up girls. She will never be pretty, but there's something about her face that inspires attention, a quality of seriousness that, for the rest of her life, will lead people to assume that she is older than she is. Her features owe more to her father's side of the family, and she knows she has the Bones face: the quizzical eyes, the angular jaw, the hair in that indifferent shade between brown and red. In the mirror, she sees pleasant regularity.

(Her father sees differently; he sees his brother in her smile, and the ghost of his sister in her frankness.)

Sometimes she feels -- not depressed, but -- immobile, rooted in place by her good family and her good friends and her own good nature. But she cannot unmake her own essentials; she can't flirt with the wrong boy or dye her hair or ever risk anything of great value because she understands, to the marrow, how much has already been lost.

(She walks forward with her head held high.)