Disclaimer: No, I'm not J. K. Rowling. (Or Ogden Nash, either.) But I'm flattered that you should ask.
"It has been argued that the 15th-Century surge in transfiguration research was a significant factor contributing to the growing Muggle association of magic with Christian heresy, which would subsequently come to fruition during the so-called witch-hunts of the Renaissance. Barbieri, the foremost proponent of this view, argues that the understanding of Vanishing and Conjuring which became dominant during this period (and, despite occasional criticism, has remained so) implies an openness to ontological contradiction fundamentally antithetical to any Realist philosophic system. Others, however, maintain that the seeds of the separation were planted long before, and that the Hanau interpretation ultimately posed no difficulties that a society not already determined on fragmentation could not have readily overcome; cf. Bowen et al., 'Quintus MacMurdagh and the Rise of the Wizarding Soothsayer', pp. xv-xviii."
"MacMurdagh," Anthony Goldstein muttered to himself. "Now, which one was he again?" With a dexterity known only to Ravenclaws studying for O.W.L. exams, the young Floo-powder heir flipped Studies in the Development of Magical Theory shut with the point of his chin, withdrew the Broma House Dictionary of Historic Witches and Wizards from the middle of the stack of books he was carrying, and opened it one-handed to the M's, all without breaking his stride down the fifth-floor corridor.
"'MacMurdagh, Quintus, 1166-1243,'" he read aloud under his breath. "'Headmaster of Hogwarts from 1224 to 1240, chiefly remembered for adding Divination to the Hogwarts curriculum. Strongly influenced in his youth by a local preacher's explication of the Sibylline Oracles, he developed, during his tenure as Hogwarts's Spell-Casting (now Charms) master, a theory of oracular power as a form of magical ability, which, though heavily criticised by more orthodox wizards, led him as Headmaster to institute the first optional third-year course in Hogwarts's…'"
The last word, of course, was "history", but Anthony didn't get to it just then. A sound of soft, feminine weeping suddenly reached his ear, jerking him out of his academic reverie – which, ordinarily, such a sound couldn't have done, but there was in these particular muffled sobs a distinctive, familiar timbre, which smoothly bypassed all his attention's usual defences.
He raised his eyes from his books and glanced around him, and, in doing so, quickly realised a number of interesting things. First, he had somehow missed the turn that would have taken him to the Ravenclaw Tower stairwell – which was quite odd, since ordinarily he could have walked that path in his sleep. Second, the place where he had wound up instead was no random sport of Hogwarts's ever-ramifying network of corridors, but a spot he had come to know quite well after three months of stealing off there once a week to practise proscribed DDA techniques. And third, the door of the Room of Requirement was plainly visible, and it was from behind this that the sound he had heard was issuing.
He reached out a hand, and turned the knob; the door opened to him, and he stepped into a darkened room lit only by a few soft candles. He laid his books down on a table that obligingly sprang into being as he reached for it, and called, softly, "Hannah?"
A kneeling figure at the far end of the room detached itself from the shadow of a large, squashy futon; it lifted its head, and the candlelight caught its bobbing blonde ringlets and tear-streaked cheeks. "Anthony?" said Hannah Abbott in surprise, her voice hoarse with the dryness of her throat. "What are you doing here?"
Anthony shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "Given where we are, I would guess that I was needed – but you'll have to tell me why."
Had the light been better, he would have seen a faint flush colour Hannah's cheeks; as it was, he just saw her purse her lips in self-conscious irritation. "I really dislike magic, sometimes," she said. "Couldn't it be enough for the Room that I needed a quiet place to feel sorry for myself for a while? Who asked it to decide that I also needed someone to talk to?" (But, despite her words, there was a note in her voice suggesting that she wasn't really too much aggrieved.)
Anthony just smiled. "The next time I meet its builder, I'll complain to him about it," he said. (In fact, the builder had been a her, but nobody then living knew this; unlike her Parselmouth colleague, Helga Hufflepuff had succeeded in keeping her secret Hogwarts chamber an actual secret.) "Seriously, though, what's the matter? O.W.L. studies overwhelming you again?"
Hannah groaned. "Oh, please, Anthony, don't mention O.W.L.'s," she said. "Bad enough that this had to happen at all, but that I had to be a fifth year when it was happening – and a prefect, on top of it…" She moaned faintly, and sank her head back onto the futon. "Oh, why did I have to be born in 1980? Why did I have to be born at all? Mum had already miscarried once by the time she had me; she could have done it again. I could have spent a few months in a warm, cozy bubble of amniotic fluid, and then gone straight to Heaven without having to find out what kind of things born people do to each other when they're afraid of doing what they know they ought to because somebody might hurt them who shouldn't be able to hurt them, but who can hurt them because some other people didn't do what they ought to, and everything about life is just horrible, and ohhhhhhh…" and her voice trailed off into an inarticulate series of whimpers.
Anthony went over and knelt down beside her, and waited patiently for her to recover herself. He didn't say a word or reach out a hand, just then; over the course of the past few months, he had come to understand her well enough to know that wasn't what she needed. In a mood like this, she would just slap away any attempt at physical reassurance, and, as for words, they were the last thing that would do her any good – but if she just knew that someone who cared was there with her, that would often give her the strength to conquer the mild hysteria into which she was wont to work herself. For Hannah Abbott, though afflicted with a high-strung, emotionally volatile temperament, was at bottom the very opposite of a self-indulgent drama queen.
Sure enough, it hadn't been much more than half a minute when Hannah's whimpers subsided, and she drew herself up, took a few deep breaths, and looked Anthony steadily if moistly in the eye. "All right," she said. "You know the statue of Onesimus the Orthodox on the third floor?"
"I think so," said Anthony. "He's the one who founded Slagar Abbey, isn't he? Tall mitre, hooked nose, tame bear cub clinging to one leg?"
"That's the one, yes," said Hannah. "Well, here's what one of my Housemates wrote on his pedestal sometime last night."
She raised her wand and muttered, "Scriptione Rementa," and two lines of crimson script appeared in the air in front of her. They weren't long lines – Anthony, though no speed-reader, took the whole passage in at a glance – but, brief as they were, they said quite enough to explain Hannah's reaction to them. The one-T abbot, he's a priest, it read. The two-T Abbott, she's a beast.
Anthony stared at this for a long moment, not trusting himself to speak until he had found something more innocuous to say than his knee-jerk reaction. At length, his Ravenclaw breeding came to his rescue, and he came up with, "A Muggle-born, I suppose. I don't imagine many Hufflepuff purebloods read Ogden Nash, do you?"
Hannah squinted at him quizzically. "Ogden Nash?" she said. "The Custard the Dragon poet, you mean? What does he have to do with it?"
"That couplet's a parody of one of his verses," said Anthony. "'The one-L lama, he's a priest. / The two-L llama, he's a beast. / And I will bet a silk pyjama / There isn't any three-L lllama.'"
"Oh." Hannah took a moment to process that, and then giggled. "Oh, I see."
"There's a footnote, too," Anthony added. "I'm not sure of the exact wording, but it's something like, 'The author's attention has been directed to a type of conflagration known as a three-alarmer. Pooh.'"
It was really a delight to see Hannah laugh, he thought. There was something about the gay little dance of her ringlets as her shoulders shook, and the way she pressed her knuckles against her right cheek as though half ashamed of being so frivolous in a young wizard's presence, and – well, everything about her, really. She just wasn't like any other girl he'd ever known. (Which, he supposed, was also true of every other girl he'd ever known, but somehow it seemed more important in Hannah's case.)
"No," she said at length, when she'd recovered her breath. "I don't suppose most of our pure-bloods would know that one. Not that it really matters," she added, her face darkening again. "I'm sure they'd agree with the sentiment, whatever the person's lineage who wrote it."
"How could they, though?" said Anthony. "How could anyone think that about you? You couldn't do anything beastly if you tried… well, all right, you could," he conceded, as his Ravenclaw respect for facts caught up with his emotions, "but you'd have made it right again within twenty-four hours. Why could your Housemates possibly be this bitter against you?"
"Because I'm D.A., of course!" Hannah exclaimed. "Because I won't apologise for it! Because I won't pretend that being able to silence better teachers and humiliate disfavoured students gives you any kind of right to be believed or respected! Because, apparently –" here her voice broke, and she squeezed out the last few words in a sort of strangled croak "– apparently, caring about what's right makes me a bad Hufflepuff."
"Ah," said Anthony, comprehending.
"I didn't think that was how it was supposed to work," Hannah said hoarsely. "I thought we were the House of the Copybook Headings – the ones you could rely on to do the right thing even when it wasn't grand, shrewd, or sophisticated. Loyalty, honesty, generosity, all the common work-a-day virtues – that was what they told me made you a Hufflepuff, and, like the fool I am, I believed them. And now it turns out that, all the time, the only thing that really mattered to my fellow badgers was staying safe." (She practically spat this last word.) "Elfrida Wigton, who I was so glad to see get made Head Girl; Justin Finch-Fletchley, who's already made some little speech about how much he regrets having participated in disruptive activities – even Ernie seems to have lost his nerve after that first run-in with the Inquisitorial Squad. It's not just that they're afraid, I could understand that; it's that they really seem to be proud of acting like scared little rabbits – as though they think it's immoral to tell the truth if there's any chance of its making someone uncomfortable."
Anthony sighed. "Now that sounds familiar," he said. "Like that letter I got the other day from the head of Goldstein Floo's Japanese branch – prompted by Aunt Portia, I've no doubt. He kept quoting the first line of the Seventeen-Article Constitution as though it were the Shema or something; I think there were five different sentences, in a single two-foot letter, that included some variant on 'Regard harmony as noble, and non-contrariness as honourable'."
"I'm not trying to be contrary," said Hannah plaintively. "It's just that some things are more important than House points – especially when you know you're not going to win the Cup anyway. That's true, right?" she added anxiously. "I'm not crazy? So long as Slytherin controls the Squad…"
"Oh, of course," said Anthony. "They'll get the Cup, and it won't mean anything. Anyone with half a brain can see that; I think even Professor Snape can, though he won't let on that he minds."
"Right," said Hannah, with a little exhalation of relief. "So it isn't as though it can even do us any real harm for me to keep standing with Dumbledore. And I'm not looking to get into fights, Anthony, truly I'm not; even if I wanted to, with O.W.L.'s and all I don't have time to call out every foolish remark about Ministry authority being unlimited or whatnot, and anyway I don't want to because prefects shouldn't overreach themselves either. I know I get a little shrill when I'm talking about it just as a person, to Susan or the Friar or somebody, but mostly I just try to keep quiet and leave the fighting to smarter, cooler-headed people like you and Granger. But apparently that's not enough for what used to be House Hufflepuff; you have to actually believe, in your own mind, that whoever can hurt you worst is always right, and if you let on even a little bit that you have different standards, then you're…" (Rather than say it, she gestured up to the glowing red letters again.)
"Well, you shouldn't be too hard on them," said Anthony. "I think it's part of human nature to resent anyone who reminds you that you're not being the person you ought to be, and find some reason to hate and condemn him. Like when Henry VIII beheaded his chancellor just because the chancellor was famously wise and good, and his not going along with the whole Anglicanism thing made it obvious what a farce it all was. In a way, it's really a compliment…"
"I know all that, Anthony," said Hannah sharply. "But it's hard, all right? It's hard to love something so much for so long, and then have it let you down so hard." She lowered her eyes to the ground, and all the breath seemed to go out of her as she added softly, "Anyway, it's hard for me."
And, at the sight of that small, deflated form, something primal rose up in Anthony's soul. She was right, he knew – and he was glad that it was so; if Hannah Abbott could ever have failed to be devastated by the betrayal of the things she cared for, the world would have been a much poorer place. But that was no excuse for leaving her in devastation. No, he couldn't fix her House, but there were other things she loved – and of the fidelity of one of them, at least, he could give her, then and there, the strongest possible pledge.
With a single, instinctive movement, he threw his arms around Hannah's waist and pressed her to his bosom. She jerked her head upward in surprise, and the momentary shock in those wide grey eyes nearly broke Anthony's resolve – but the trueness of his intent must have shown in his face, for the next moment she smiled, and her body relaxed in his arms as in the security of home.
Thus emboldened, Anthony reached out and brushed a tear-dampened ringlet off her cheek; then he lowered his head, and his lips, like a key in a lock, met hers.
It wasn't their first kiss, by any means. Hardly a D.A. lesson had gone by, after a certain point, without the two of them sneaking a peck or two under cover of the glare of counter-jinxes; what else could one expect from two attractive young enchanters who had so unexpectedly discovered each other in the prefects' carriage that September? But this – this was something more: real, and serious, and binding, in a way that those surreptitious effusions had never dreamed of being. Anthony knew that perfectly well, and he could feel in every muscle of Hannah's body that she knew it, too.
Such kisses set their own time limits, and it wasn't long before the two of them reluctantly disengaged, and shared a glance in which more emotions were blended than they had ever realised they could feel. Then Hannah rolled her eyes, and turned her gaze toward the nearest wall of the Room. "Okay, fine," she said, mock-surly. "I guess you were right."
Anthony chuckled. "So you don't dislike magic all the time, then?"
"I can live with it," said Hannah simply.
"Speaking of which, I really need to get back to my dormitory," she added, as she rose to her feet and Vanished the crimson script. "I still have nine inches of essay left to write, a Candy-Cloud Charm to master, four different species of upas flower to memorise… you know the litany." She managed a shaky smile. "Wish me luck."
"Godspeed," said Anthony.
Hannah nodded. "Yes, that's even better," she said.
She gathered up her books and exited the Room (pausing by the door to throw one last grateful look behind her), and left Anthony alone in the candlelight with his thoughts.
These, as may be imagined, were numerous and manifold, but after a minute or two they came to rest, incongruously enough, on his family's Japanese branch manager and the late Shotoku Taishi. Wa tame taka, mu-go tame so: it was well enough in its way, Anthony supposed, but he was grateful that his own nation had chosen other prime directives. Because there was another side to the exaltation of harmony and amiability – a side that the Japanese themselves had distilled into a colloquialism. Deru kui wa utarareru, they said. "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down."
Not my nail, Anthony thought fiercely. Not if You-Know-Who himself holds the hammer. While my lungs and wand arm still work, Hannah Abbott keeps protruding, however many Nash travesties get scrawled onto the local statuary.
And then, at that thought, a perfectly outrageous idea came into his head: the sort of idea a well-read Weasley twin might be expected to have, rather than a Ravenclaw prefect. But it wouldn't damage anything – and, in terms of poetic justice…
"Oh, yes," he murmured, with a quiet little grin. "Yes, indeed."
And so the populace of Hufflepuff House woke up the next morning to find eight lines of script shimmering over the great frieze (built in 1650 to commemorate the school's septuacentennial) that stood beside their dormitories' entrance lattice. Seven of the lines glowed a resplendent azure, while the eighth shone like burnished gold; no-one who saw it, before it dissolved at the end of the day, could help admiring the magical skill it bespoke.
The words themselves were more controversial, and were vigorously debated by all the Hufflepuffs but two: a pinch-lipped, bespectacled fourth year, who had the sense to know when she had been comprehensively outclassed, and a blonde-ringletted prefect who didn't need to say a word, because the inscription said it all for her.
Lots of people are nicer than I,
Or at least more discreetly pliant;
They'd sooner assert that nifflers fly
Than be thought in the least defiant.
Being Like Folks, on whatever terms,
They treasure like stored-up manna;
I'm a stiff-necked outcast feeding on worms –
But nobody else has Hannah.