The House Competition
Round 9 It all Ends Here
House: Hufflepuff
Class: DADA
Type: Drabble
Prompt: [Object] Hufflepuff's Cup
Word Count: 979 words
Helga Hufflepuff sat at the high table, looking over the Great Hall that had been left empty by laughing students going home for the summer. She smiled placidly and fingered the arms on her goblet.
"You've completed it then?" asked a voice from the side. Helga looked up at her friend.
"I have Rowena," she replied, "A goblet that will turn water into the potion to fulfil your greatest need."
Rowena nodded but did not reply. Her cheeks were looking increasingly sunken these days, and her pale skin had grown almost translucent. She lowered herself down into the chair beside Helena and raised her eyes to the enchanted ceiling. Helga followed her gaze.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" she commented, "you were clever to enchant it so."
Rowena's face betrayed some hidden grief, "No amount of cleverness will save me now, my friend. I am dying, and I have little strength left."
Helga searched her friend's face. The two women were old and had led worthy lives. The school they had helped build now protected young witches and wizards and allowed them to safely grow their skills. Rowena had discovered healing and protective magic that would serve the world for many years.
"Do you fear what comes next, my friend?" Helga probed.
Rowena fell into silent thought.
"No," she replied eventually, "but I fear what I must leave unfinished here. My daughter –" her voice caught on the word.
"Helena's death was not your fault," Helga soothed. Her friend had been reticent to share why her daughter had been travelling for many years to Albania, but Helga knew the young woman had been killed by a spurned lover, much to her mother's grief.
Helga carefully withdrew her wand from her robes and waved it over the goblet. Aguamenti, she murmured, and the cup filled with clear, cool water. She handed it to her friend.
Rowena smiled and pushed it back towards Helga. "Thank you, but you know death can only be delayed or cheated for so long. If I cannot change what has happened, then so be it."
Helga silently pushed the cup back. "Perhaps your greatest need isn't to delay death, but the goblet can still offer assistance. Please drink."
Rowena signed and drained the goblet.
Hundreds of miles away, a young woman's ghost felt a tug. Helena Ravenclaw floated down from the tree in which she had been resting. She ignored the clanking chains from the howling ghost of the man who would have chosen to be her husband. An irresistible urge filled her. She blinked as a memory floated through her mind of herself as a young girl. She had fallen over the exposed root of a large tree and scraped her knee. She felt the same feeling now that she had then when she rushed to her mother for a hug and a healing spell. It was a call to go home.
Helena floated through the forest and up into a tall tree above a clearing. Below her, the Bloody Baron sat upon his knees with his head bent upwards, howling in grief. Helena debated leaving him here, but sensed he would follow her anyway.
"Sir Kirke!" she called out. The baron gazed upwards, not quite meeting her gaze. "Come, we must return to Hogwarts."
The journey to the castle took two weeks. Helena hesitated before the doors. She could, she realized, simply float through them, but it felt inappropriate to do so in this place where she had been a diligent student and a pitiful daughter. So she waited. The sun descended from its midday peak over the placid lake and rested above the tree line of the forest. Finally, Helga Hufflepuff arrived and opened the door.
"I saw you from the kitchen windows," she explained, "your mother is waiting for you."
"Professor Hufflepuff," Helena greeted, "I cannot thank you enough."
Helga paused and then drew an ornate goblet from her robes, "I know you cannot drink, but if you would like to pass through it, perhaps it will give you strength."
Helena nodded her acceptance and wafted through the cup and into the castle. Behind her the Bloody Baron turned and drifted towards the basement, howling all the way.
Rowena Ravenclaw was in her tower, lying on a pile of embroidered pillows with her eyes closed. Helena hesitated but felt courage rise within her,
"Mum, it's me."
Rowena opened her eyes, slowly and laboriously, "You came. I – I hoped the goblet would draw you home."
Both women paused and regarded each other. Then they spoke at the same time,
"I'm so sorry," they exclaimed. As each realized what the other had said, they fell into a long silence. Rowena eventually broke it.
"I should never have separated from you," she explained, "I should have asked you to return so long ago, with or without the diadem."
"No!" exclaimed her daughter, "If I hadn't stolen –" but Rowena cut her off.
"When I heard what had happened to you, I made a choice," she waved off Helena's interruption, "I won't leave you to wander alone. I'm prepared to leave an imprint of myself here once I -" she trailed off as speaking became too challenging.
Helena shook her head violently, "You can't!" she insisted, "you've spent your entire life exploring the unknown, don't forgo that for a pale imitation of life."
Rowena was rapidly losing energy, but she felt the sincerity of her daughter's words.
"As you wish." she exhaled, "Will you stay here, at the school? I've built it for you."
Helena nodded and floated beside her mother's bed as her breathing slowed and then stopped. She stayed in Ravenclaw tower as Helga and Godric came to prepare her mother's body for burial, and she stayed until students returned to the tower in the fall when she began her duties as their house ghost.