HUFFLEPUFF

by Grimm Sister

The duffers. The left-overs. The house with so little glory. Hard-workers. Just. Loyal. The house whose common room we never enter in the books. The characters who seldom mean much, who crack under pressure. What does it mean to be in Hufflepuff?

6. E xpulsion

E xpulsion

Rubeus Hagrid would have drawn little comfort from the knowledge that a member of her house bearing the worst of Salazar's assault would be only what Helga Hufflepuff would have expected. Only fitting, she would have found it, that Slytherin's first strike, his heir's first betrayal, expelled a Hufflepuff halfbreed from the school. He might have been comforted that it would make her proud that he remained after all. Hufflepuffs' influence lingered.

And she certainly would have found it fitting that a Hufflepuff should try to love Slytherin's monster into complacency, although she would have known from experience that it would fail. That a Gryffindor saved him would only have amused her. The breadth and depth of her influence, it showed. Hufflepuffs lingered.

Harder to say is her opinion on what followed between Rubeus and his former House. For it was his own house which turned away from the Groundskeeper's new apprentice. One of the poor duffers of Hufflepuff had been duped by monster or true culprit – that much everyone knew. Only Hufflepuffs respected him enough to believe he could do it: uncover Slytherin's secret where Gryffindors and Ravenclaws had failed. Approaching with love to disarm the charms. They believed his guilt, a higher compliment in its way than the acquittal granted him generally.

But it is a fearful thing, when such tight ranks close with you on the outside. Rubeus Hagrid always knew that he was playing with and loving dangerous friends, ones which could destroy him forever if and when they finally chose to strike – but he had already endured the fiercest blow a friend could deliver. What pain could a blast-ended skrewt cause him compared to this?