Author's Note: This fic is a compendium of all of the various drabbles, meme responses, and assorted works I have written in the Hufflepuff Zuko universe. As such, some of the chapters will be very short, and some will be quite long. Most chapters are linear within themselves, but they are not in chronological order. This work is not entirely a true fusion. The characters from Harry Potter still exist in this universe, and will occasionally show up. This takes place some years after the 2nd Voldemort War and the events of the Harry Potter canon, but before the epilogue.

I frequently take prompts and post universe notes on my tumblr: attackfish.

September 1st, 2005: First Year

Zuko fiddled with the yellow and black tie and kept his head down. The common room was a bright, sunny yellow that made him crave windows and air. But it was underground. There only thin sad windows hovering near the ceiling to show a band of darkness and starlight. There was nothing but yellow and laughing people.

The Slytherin common room, as everyone knew, was in the dungeons. So maybe this was a bit better. There were windows here. Who knew whether the Slytherins had anything but the damp, dank stones to look at? That was where Azula was, where Zuko had asked, begged, to be, but the Hat had laughed at him.

Zuko clasped his wand in his pocket and fingered the carving on the handle. It was Uncle Iroh's dead son's wand. Uncle Iroh's dead son had been a Gryffindor. Zuko wondered, feared, that Uncle Iroh was hoping he would be a Gryffindor too.

Never give up without a fight.

Part of him was relieved that Azula was there, and he was somewhere else. And then he would notice how relieved he felt, and guilt would pool into his stomach. His sister was all alone down there in Slytherin house. She hated being alone.

When they were really little, before the orphanage, when they had been in Muggle foster care, they had been split up, but Azula kept using accidental baby magic to apparate to wherever Zuko was. His foster parents would wake up in the morning, and there would be two children sleeping in the little crib, where there had been one before. And now Azula and he were separated again for the first time since they were four years old, and it was his fault for not being sorted with her.

It always felt like he couldn't get away from her, but the thing was, well, it wasn't like anybody else knew what it was like. A lot of people in the orphanage had families killed by someone named Lestange. It was impossible to forget, but also sometimes it was really really easy. And it wasn't like Hufflepuff was a good place to have that name, or to be Bellatrix Lestrange's fatherless prison children.

But nowhere was, was it?

As a girl hurled herself down onto the sofa beside him. It almost toppled over under the force of her. She was tiny. She shouldn't be able to do that. She flung her arm out, and it smacked him in the head. "Hey!" he yelled.

Her hand landed on his ponytail She grabbed it. "So what's this?"

Zuko pried her hand off, but her fingers came away with a few black strands. "It's mine!" he yelped.

"Yeah yeah yeah." She folded her arms and propped up her feet on his lap. "So everyone's talking about you."

"Great."

"Stop it." She winked at him, and he squinted, trying to figure out what was wrong with her eyes. "Tonight, you and me are finding a way out of here."

"What?" he stared at her blankly.

She punched his arm. "I hear there are all kinds of secret passages around!"

Zuko pressed himself into the sofa cushions, away from her, his eyes darting over the room miserably before he nodded. She going to be his friend whether he liked it or not. He could already tell. She was like Azula that way. She didn't give him a choice.