Of mudbloods and prejudices

Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to J.K Rowling. I am only a fortunate soul who decided to write a story about these lovely beans.

Ted.

"Slytherin!" Ted clapped as loud as he could while Andromeda stood up and walked towards a lousy table. He had hoped she would return the smile he gave her, but he only watched her move without aknowlegde him.

Ted let that slipped away and waited paintently for his turn, hoping that after he was selected he would have more time to talk with Andromeda. Kids normally ran away from him because they thought he was only a weird boy, but this chocolate hair girl was different. She exulted an aura of power and aristocracy that made it impossible for him to stay away.

And she was the first girl who laughed with him and enjoyed his company. Ted didn´t want that the only friendship he had formed almost inmediatly went lost because he had strange behaviours, especially when Andromeda came from an only wizards family.

He could already seen the amazing things that would happen to him.

The selection continued the most boring way for an hyperactive eleven year old boy. Many children went to Gryffindor and Ravenclaw but few ended up at Slytherin and Hufflepuff. Ted guessed that they were rather important so that not everybody entered there, but at the same time convinced himself that he would go to into the lousy lion table or the shy eagle one. He wasn´t so pompeous as Andromeda for ending up at an important table when he barely had money to waste.

He didn´t notice when professor McGonagall called his name and one of the boys from the line had to pushed him to force him to walk. With his cheeks painted crimson he sitted at the stool with legs shacking, seeing the hat coming closer. Before they put it on him, his bright blue eyes tried to found his new best friend´s brown ones so he could dedicate her the most brilliant smile ever made, but he discovered with surprise that she was looking intendly at a girl a few years older who looked like Andromeda, and Ted guessed it was Bellatrix.

´This one´s easy, so I see´ Was the only thing he heard the hat said before it screamed out loud "Hufflepuff!"

Ted got up smiling with amusement and ran towards the table that was clapping and where some boys have stood upon the seats to receive him with encouragement. Falling into his own seat, his eyes started to look for Andromeda again, convinced that she was going to look at him now. Sadly, his stare collided with a pair of brown eyes that belong to who he thought was Bellatrix and he perfectly understood why Andromeda was so afraid of her.

He had never seen such eyes that look more like deep wells with no exit. Even at a long distance he could see something strange, maybe a hidden insanity or even pure cruelty, gleeming while a wicked smile transform her beautiful face. The girl said something out loud that left many of those close to Andromeda in silence, Ted saw her answering something even thought he couldn´t said what. Seeing that the smile in Bellatrix face didn´t dissappear he suppoused it was something of her liking and felt happy that at least that night Andromeda could enjoy a happy dinner.

The selection finished when the last boy was sent to Ravenclaw, but the most extravagant man Ted ever saw stood up to speak some words. His white beard reached the waist of his purple tunic, and with those half moon glasses and weevil hat Ted´s mom would have believe him to be a religion fanatic or a tramp that was seeking money. Ted simply wanted to know where he bought his clothes.

" Welcome, new and old students, to a new tearm at Hogwarts! For security measures I only wish to reminded you all that the forbidden forest is still, as it´s name clearly says, forbidden even when you considered it appropriate for your secret reunions. Our caretaker, miss Amory, has put a new list of not allowed products from Zonko´s stores, especially since the Fireworks explosions that ocurred last year at the dungeons. Now, seeing that I can hear your stomachs roaring, let´s eat!"

The plates inmediatly filled with thousands of exotic foods that Ted could only have dreamed before: From pumpkin cakes, to figg pastels, lamb and more and the students were distributing them one by one during one of the best welcome back feast´s ever.

Ted was finishing one pumpkin cake when it was announced that the prefects had to take their new students to their common rooms. He raised his head once more and his eyes finally met those from Andromeda, who stared back at him for a few seconds that were enough for the boy to feel happy. Maybe they were both tired and surely tomorrow they would talk about everything that happened more calmly.

Ted noticed that his prefects were a boy with brown hair and amber eyes that was shouting at his partner, a small blond girl with long teeth, about the posibility of failing his potion´s NEWT if she didn´t help him that year. The girl apparently thought it was more important to lead the new students to their common room than helping who she said was ´An irresponsible and good for nothing boy´ and strangely Ted already felt home. Walking by with ten more children, they wander long halls and thousands of moving staircases.

He wasn´t sure how long has it passed before they arrived to a corridor that was near a pear´s portrait. Going right, Robin, the blond girl, took out her wand and turned around to look at the expectant children.

"For entering our common room you will need to learn a song. I don´t think it´s necessary that I remaind you that no one from other houses can come in unless they have an especial permission from professor Sprout, our head house."

"That only happened once, and I was twelve" Charles murmured, apparently amazed with his insignia.

"The song´s rythmn is very easy- two in the right then three in the left then four going down and one going up- you all have to do that with this one" She touched the last barrel "Otherwise it won´t work and you will need a strong bath to take off the vinegar smell. Understood?"

Ted was memorizing mentally the rythm in his head because if he was sure of something, was that he didn´t want to arrive to class smelling like vinegar. After Robin touched the barrel like she told them to, they all saw how the rest of barrels turned around and lead them throught a passage that ended up in a room with many chairs and sofas that were painted yellow and black, with a badger´s shield on top of the biggest chimney.

"Now I will asked the girls to follow me to their dorms while the boys stay with Charles. Welcome to Hufflepuff!"

Charles took out from his right pocket a pergamine that was very wrinked and stood up in the first step of the staircase while he tried to read it. "That´s it! Well, it´s suppossed that you can´t change your dorm so if you don´t like one of your dorm mates just ignored it, because I assure you that Sprout won´t do anything giving thought that she is a fan of us all being friends and that stuff. Okay, in the first doorm the one´s that will have to sleep together for the next seven years are Wilson, Howell and Abbott. The second dorm, which is the one in the left, belongs to Tonks, Smith and Bones."

The boys didn´t doubt to start making their way and entered the rooms that belong to them until they finish their magical education. Ted had to admit that it was enormous, warmer that he thought and the beds were beautyly decorated with a dosel that was also yellow and black. His trunk was already beside the bed next to the window.

"Did your parents want you to end up here?"

Bones was a red hair and cubby boy and Ted started to think that he had too many nervous manners, as if he believed that someone might kick him anytime. Smith was the exact opposite- he had an aristocratic demeanor, he had fine features and his light blond hair was perfect as if it wasn´t allow that one single hair was out of order. In a funny way he reminded Ted of Andromeda´s sister.

" Of course they do!" Smith was already comfortably sit on his bed and was looking at Bones as if he thought he was nothing "For generations my family has always ended up in Hufflepuff. It would be a shame for them if I had ended up somewhere else. And by the way, Which house is better than ours?"

Ted spoke withouth thinking "Slytherin"

It was as if he had let a bomb fell in the middle of the room. Bones looked at him with wide eyes and Smith finally met his eyes. Growing up friendless and with just one older sister to mess with, Ted was not used to be the centre of attention and couldn´t help but to lower his head to stop looking at Smith´s bright brown eyes.

"Slytherin?" The name left Smith´s lips like poison "Well, if you like to live with vipers, then that is your house"

Perhaps it was what Andromeda had told him during their trip or the anger that it caused him to hear someone insulting his friend´s home, but something possessed Ted in those moments to talk "It´s a good house! I heard they accept ambicious and talented persons who want to make a change. What´s the matter with that?"

"What´s the matter with that? They´re ambicious because they would do anything to anyone who steps on their way to success, ¿Talented? At doing harm, at making revolutions and becoming dark wizards and did you said making changes? The only thing that feds their minds is finding ways to keep control over everything. They are wicked!"

" We all are wicked within!" Ted was starting to sweat and that their room maintain itself warm was not helping "You do realize that you sound like someone with a lot of prejudices?"

Smith let out a dried laugh " Are you calling me a prejudiced while defending them? Tell me something, are you muggle born?"

"What does that have to do with them?"

"They are not okay with muggle borns coming to Hogwarts" Bones said with a lower voice that was barely audible for Ted and Smith "They really like to keep the pure blood of mages"

"They repude you, that´s the truth. Just tell one Slytherin that you have normal parents and they would already look at you up and down while saying how little of a thing you are"

Ted remembered the laughs with Andromeda, that she helped him tied his tie with a pure smile on her face, that she asked him about his family. She wasn´t like them, what Bones and Smith were telling him were lies "Liars" He ended with the discussion "Not everyone has to filled the same sack"

Smith shrugged "Say what you want, but no one from Slytherin would hang out with a mudblood" He saw the grin at Ted´s face and Smith smiled petulantly "You don´t like that name, do you? Get used to it, Tonks. It´s already your mark."

The lights went down and Ted lasted a long time looking at the cealing while thinking about everything they had fought about with his new room mates. Maybe Bellatrix was like they had described Slytherins, but not Dromeda and he was sure of that. Some day he would show his dorm mates that not all Slytherins believed he was lesser for being a mudblood or rule their lives throught stupid prejudices

And with that idea, sleep finally attacked him.