The House of Hufflepuff was not known for kindness.
Loyalty, yes. Hard-working, yes. But not kindness. This was only too well known by the first year Isabella Harthow.
She was initially delighted to be welcomed into Hufflepuff, as everyone acted so cheery and that was exactly what she needed when she walked, trembling ever so slightly, down to her table.
Loyalty as a trait did not mean House Loyalty. It meant loyal to one's self, loyal to what you believe in, loyal to who you believe in. It meant you were less fickle than others, but only by a little, as there is only so much a hat can do when placing a quarter of the waiting 11-year-olds into their new homes.
A home to some wasn't a home to all. Bonds form fast at Hogwarts, the children who already know each other forming groups, the children who don't scrambling desperately for their own.
What a fate, Isabella thought briefly, to be a lonely Hufflepuff. That seemed to be the contradiction that everyone would associate with them. There was the cowardly Gryffindor, the dumb Ravenclaw, the impulsive Slytherin, and the lonely Hufflepuff.
She didn't think they realized that that wasn't how it worked. In fact, she doubted the sorting hat's accuracy entirely because there was no way that if they were sorted accurately they would be placed equally into four groups based off bravery, loyalty, cunning, and intelligence. It simply wasn't feasible.
(She hated the hat with every fiber of her being, or at least the idea of it. She was nearly placed into Ravenclaw and it seemed to be its whim that decided otherwise. She occasionally wondered if it truly would be better, or if the discrimination ran rampant there too.)
But her doubts of the hat's accuracy were entirely irrelevant in the end, because there really wasn't anything sure could do about it.
Hufflepuff was not known for its kindness. This was the sudden, shocking realization Isabella had come to when her belongings were torn apart by her roommates. A realization that had been carved further into her skull with every curse cast in the halls, with every muttering of "mudblood".
She never asked what it meant and she was never told. Her mind only gradually developing a vague idea of indescribable hatred for no good reason.
She lasted until fifth year. Lasted through the shunning from her supposed home. Lasted through humiliation after humiliation, hex after hex. Lasted through begging help from a teacher, only for the culprits of the latest incident to receive detention. Lasted through the resulting fury and backlash of her going to an authority.
Isabella sat in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom crying silently when suddenly there was the bang of the bathroom door, a flash of red hair, and a book thrown into a stall with a splash. Slightly dazed, as this had happened in a mere second, Isabella exited her bathroom stall and went to retrieve the book that the girl had thrown away with such passion.
She was rather shocked to find it was blank.
Hesitantly, as there must be a reason the book was tossed as it was, she began to write in the book. And the book began to write back.
The book's name was Tom and he always knew what to say.
She found, speaking (or rather writing) with Tom, that she wasn't quite as opposed to the less moral side of humanity as she had thought, and was actually quite probably part of that side. If she were to look back, the point that Tom began to act... more real, it would be after she expressed this sentiment to him.
"Really?" he wrote, in an almost too perfect cursive, "Then why do you never retaliate? You could stop them from hurting you if you really tried. I always thought it was your morals holding you back."
At this point, they had been writing for a few months and she could almost hear the amusement in his tone. He didn't believe that she meant her words for a long time.
"It's not about morals. There's just so many of them and so few of me that retaliation would only make it worse," Isabella wrote back irately.
"Silly girl," he responded, "You don't need to fight all of them. You only need a example."
And she found one. The next one that struck out against her was shocked when she fought back instead of her regular dodging. So shocked, in fact, that when Isabella cast a "Petrificus totalus!" he couldn't block in time.
He wasn't found for a week, and wasn't able to go back to class for another month after that. Isabella had made sure that everything was healable, after all he had no use as an example if he was dead. (Tom thoroughly disagreed with that statement, but he didn't argue with the decision.)
When Tom told her to give him back to Ginevra Weasley, a first year, Isabella initially felt very insulted. After she forced him to explain why, she insisted upon helping him, at least as backup.
"I don't need backup."
She smiled, "Don't be silly, Tom, everyone needs backup."
At the end of her fifth year, Tom gave the signal on the wall of the bathroom where it all started.
"Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever."
The corner of her mouth twitched, "A touch dramatic, aren't you?" she muttered softly as she made her way through the passage Tom showed her.
When she confronted a wounded Harry Potter, Tom's diary safe in her hands, Dumbledore's phoenix was safely contained in a small cage she conjured and trapped it in.
There was an overwhelming amount of emotion on his face, all of it screaming at her, "Why? What kind of a monster are you? What have you done?"
The words he said aloud managed to hit her hard, though not the way he wanted. She mused, quietly, that that was the Potter luck.
"What kind of a Hufflepuff are you? Betraying your house, betraying Hogwarts," he gestures desperately at little Ginny Weasley, "You're killing her."
I calmly leveled my wand at him, "I am not betraying them. My loyalties never lied with them in the first place. Why should I care if she's dying?"
He looked incredulous, as if it was inconceivable that I would not know the answer, "Because she's human."
A sardonic smile landed on my face as I said the motto carved into my brain.
"The House of Hufflepuff is not known for kindness."