Helga rolled up her scroll and sighed in frustration, rubbing her eyes with the heel of her hand. Hogwarts had finally begun to feel like a real school, and applications for the second year were practically flying themselves in. Though the first year group had done well, many people had been unwilling to send their children away for a magical education or to pull them out of the institutions they had previously been in abroad, in some cases. Now that word had had time to spread about the quality level of education they provided, the requests and reservations and questions had been pouring in, and not a one of them was able to keep up with it without sacrificing valuable sleep time. It was much more stress than she had initially anticipated.
A knock sounded from the door. "Come in," she called. Rowena pushed it open and raised an eyebrow at the candle stubs scattered on the desk.
"Did you forget that you are a witch?" she asked, a hint of amusement in her voice. Helga rolled her eyes.
"I prefer to work by candlelight." Rowena pulled out a chair and sat. She watched Helga flip through her scrolls and hold them up one by one to the candle to read them for a moment.
"You should sleep." she told her. "You'll get more done tomorrow."
"As well as loose track of all the progress I've made today." She retorted without looking up. Rowena chuckled; Helga had a bit of a reputation around here for forgetting things. The more important the thing, in fact, the more likely she was to misplace the memory. "My lack of sleep is not the only thing weighing on my mind, however."
"What do you mean?"
She sifted through her scrolls for a minute before handing her one. Rowena lit a lumos and held her wand between her teeth as she unrolled the scroll. It was a list of applicants, all different ages, with only one immediately apparent thing in common; they all had well-known names, pureblood names.
"What about them?" She said around the wand.
Helga frowned at her, as though it should be obvious. "They're not my kind of students, yet they are applying to study under me." Rowena's face was still blank. "They are Salazar's kind of students." she explained further.
"Perhaps they are not."
"What do you mean?"
Rowena dragged her finger down the list. "Here, this one, and her too. I saw them both on Salazar's own list as well, but he did not want to take them."
Helga frowned, puzzled. "Why not? They have the blood purity he so strongly desires. Godric only barely managed to convince him the world would not end if a few Muggle-born students attended, and I still hear him mutter under his breath about it now and again. I, however, look for a kindness of the heart, a willingness to accept your surroundings. Why should he send his purebloods to me?"
"Pure blood is not all of what our friend Slytherin desires in his students." Rowena explained patiently, setting the scroll aside and leaning forward. She wordlessly put out the light of her wand. "He desires passion and ambition, and cunning. The need to come out on top found buried deep in the souls of those who were raised to believe that they were on top. That, I think, is why Salazar so desires pureblooded children to study underneath him, not because of their wizarding heritage."
"And these children do not possess that?" She shrugged.
"I do not know." She paused for a moment, appearing to gather her thoughts. "Children, especially magical children, are like books. They are all bound in the same dull leather with little to mark them as individuals on the outside. Inside, however, they are all different and beautiful in their own ways. Even two copies of the same manuscript will have differences. As you would never judge the quality of a book by its cover, so too you should never judge a child."
Helga almost looked offended. "I know that. Better than most, I might add." Rowena smiled softly at her.
"Any yet you judge these children by their last names." Before Helga could retort, she patted her hand and quickly exited the room, leaving her friend alone in the soft candlelight with her thoughts.
AN: Final chapter! These drabbles were actually a lot of fun to write, and I might resurrect this idea for another set of characters sometime. Hope you all enjoyed!