The Houses Competition
House: Ravenclaw
Class: Herbology
Category: drabble
Prompt chosen: Helga Hufflepuff
Word Count: 987 (wordcount. Net)
Disclaimers/triggers: none.
When she was young, Helga was taught that life was precious. And she believed it.
Which was why it was always kind of strange to her when she saw how effortlessly cruel others could be. People had a habit of erasing life like it was nothing. Like spiders weren't living creatures too.
Helga leaves spiders where they are. Or she picks them up with her fingers and guides them gently outside.
If she is ever in the wrong place, she hopes she is greeted with mercy too. She hopes she is not killed for simply existing.
"I don't like bugs," Fisk tells her when she meets him, but she falls in love with him anyway.
Fisk has pretty cheeks. He looks soft and precious. He is loud and says dumb things that make her laugh. When they are alone together, she feels precious too. She feels like she has been picked up and taken somewhere safe, just like a rescued spider.
He makes other people laugh too. Fisk has friends, and around them, Helga feels like an outsider. She feels like she is listening in on their laughter when she doesn't belong. She is quiet and they are loud, and she doesn't know how to talk to any of them.
They would all crush spiders.
Fisk makes her feel precious, and Helga feels hurt by him when he doesn't even try to hurt her. His cruelty is some of the most effortless she has ever seen, because he is not trying.
She leaves him to his friends.
xXx
When she was young, Helga pretended to be a dragon.
"Don't you mean a princess?" her father had said, desperately trying to get her off the ground and out of the dirt. There were people around. He didn't want his daughter looking like a child.
She was a child. What did he expect?
"I want to be a dragon," she insisted.
Dragons were huge. She'd seen them. They were beautiful and strong.
Iver is beautiful and strong too. His braids are as long as her arm. His nose is sharp. He speaks softly to her, like she is a child or a deer. He wins duels as fiercely as she falls in love. He roars like a dragon when he fights.
He slays her one. She cries for nine days, and on the tenth, she leaves him too.
She doesn't think he understands why. Iver is noble, but he is not sensitive. Speaking softly to her is not the same as showing empathy to others.
She is bitter about Iver.
xXx
When she is older, Helga meets Rowena Ravenclaw and Godric Gryffindor. They are also travelling, and they begin to travel together.
They are a wolf pack. They are a murder of crows. They are flying together.
"What is this one called?" Rowena asks her, a burnt stick and a folded square of parchment in her hand.
The badger pup in Helga's lap is squirming.
"This is Ove. His mother is not coming back," she tells Rowena, who simply hums and starts to write. She asks Helga more questions about badgers.
"He looks like he'll be a fine young lad for us," Godric says.
"He will," Helga promises.
Ove is scared of everything. He is motherless and afraid. Helga coddles him and lets him know that now, neither of them are alone. They are flying in a flock of four, now.
She is not leaving.
xXx
When they are older, they meet Salazar Slytherin. He joins their travels. Salazar shares Helga's love of all creatures, and he introduces her to snakes. He speaks to them in the softest language she has ever heard.
"I think they are better than humans most of the time," he tells her.
Salazar is skinny and wise. He walks softly. His lashes are long. He talks about animals and injustice and how beautiful the world of magic is. His fingers are rough in hers. When he whispers to her, sometimes it is in the language of snakes, as though he has forgotten she is not more than human.
They settle down together, still a group. They have travelled so far together; it feels wrong to part. They know so much; it seems wrong not to teach it.
They start to create a school together. They find the perfect spot. Woods and a lake. Rolling hills interrupted only by rock.
It's perfect.
And then the four of them split up.
Salazar always seemed so loving to her. Perhaps he has forgotten that one needs to love other humans, too. His anger and outrage at her acceptance of all into their special school seems sudden, but maybe it wasn't. Maybe he was cruel all along.
This is the first time that the other leaves her.
xXx
When Helga was younger, she used to often feel lonely.
She's surrounded by others now, by little witch-children that fill up halls built years ago, back when there were four of them. Now they are three, and Helga has not stopped accepting everyone. Be that a child born of the non-magical, or a giant squid in need of a home, or a union of house-elves.
She carries Ove in her arms. He is much too slow on his own but much too attached to be left alone. And she is in a hurry.
Selby is another teacher, just like Salazar was. But Selby is not cruel enough to reject a student. And he would never slay a dragon. And he would never kill a spider.
He is soft and beautiful and he shares her love of all creatures.
He waits for her patiently.
"Hello," Selby greets her, soft like her, and takes Ove from her. "Are you ready?"
They leave Hogwarts together, and when they return one week later, it is to spend the rest of their lives together there, now as husband and wife.
Helga never leaves this one.