Chapter Thirteen

A/N: Thank you to TheDoctor'sAmazingCompanion and angelazzarello94 for reviewing the last chapter.

The Hufflepuff Common Room was far better than it had been described to Selena by relatives. That was not surprising, in truth, as none of her relatives were actually members of Hufflepuff House in their times at Hogwarts, so would not have known anything of the commons other than the rumours that circulated. However, even things that she had been told by her grandmother, whose husband and daughter had both been Hufflepuffs, were far surpassed by the real thing.

The first thing Selena noticed about the room was the warmth of it. They had been inside the Great Hall, a relatively warm room, for over an hour now, and so they were suitably warmed enough to reduce the effect for now, but she imagined that, should she ever come straight in from the outside, the heat would almost knock her backwards with the force of it. The blazing fire in its grate cast a comforting glow across the space, and it brought a smile to her face, to be reminded of the fire in the grate at their grandmother's house, where she and Teddy went to stay every weekend. Her feelings of homesickness were beginning to ebb away already.

"It's lovely, isn't it?" Fred observed, looking around the room with a smile upon his face that mirrored her own.

"It's amazing!" she responded, giggling a little. "It's even better than I imagined it to be."

"And the best thing is that we're close to the kitchens, so if we get hungry, there's less chance of being caught going to get a snack!" he added, and both of them burst into peals of laughter. Selena shook her head. It was typical of boys, or at least the ones that she knew, to think of proximity to food before the lovely atmosphere of the place where they would spend the majority of their evenings for the next seven years.

"Well, there's that as well, I suppose!" she responded, her words punctured with giggles. They still laughed for a little while after, when a glaring Prefect called them over to assign them to their dormitories. They nodded slowly in agreement when the boy told them they would have to be in bed in half an hour, but stayed in the Common Room while everyone else made their way to the dorms. They didn't know anyone else in the year group, after all, and so they thought they might as well stick together for a little longer.

"Have you got any family?" she asked Fred, striking up a conversation. The boy spluttered with laughter in response.

"You've got to be joking, haven't you?" he responded, his shoulders shaking as he laughed. "I'm a Weasley, Selena. We're the biggest family in the Wizarding World by about double!"

"Alright, that's a fair point. I can't believe I didn't remember that." she sighed with a smile. After all, she had spent the past eleven years of her life, close enough, living with Harry and Ginny, going to Weasley family gatherings every other Christmas, when they were not with their grandmother. She had met the entirety of the family on a few occasions, including Fred, and she found it difficult to believe she could have suddenly forgotten that fact.

"Don't worry. Once you've met one Weasley, you've met them all, I suppose. If you're not one of the family, that is." he told her, and suddenly his expression changed from a cheeky grin to an apologetic smile. "Sorry. That's not what I meant."

"No, it's alright." she responded, assuming that she knew to what he was referring. "I'm not one of the family, really. But I don't mind that. I've got my grandma, and I've got Teddy. They're all the family I need, even if I do live with Harry and Ginny. I'm not a Weasley, I'm a Lupin, and I'm proud of that."

"You should be." he said with a nod, and suddenly the tone of their conversation had become a little more sombre. They both knew the topic that they were drawing towards, but neither of them shied away from it, though both knew that it was a sensitive matter. "You know, my grandad said that your dad was really brave, and your mum. They fought to beat the Death Eaters, and they couldn't have won the Battle of Hogwarts without them. They were heroes. You should be proud of them."

"I am proud of them." she responded honestly, nodding her head sadly. Her eyes were becoming slightly glassed over with tears, though she tried to blink them back. It was not often that she talked about her parents, as there was not much she could remember about them at all, and the emotions were coming steadily to the surface. "And you should be proud of your dad, too. He was really brave, taking on so many of them like that, especially when he was so young."

Fred smiled in response to her tribute, just as she had done in response to his. Neither of them spoke afterwards, both taking the time to treasure the sparse memories they had, and the stories that they had been told by others.

Eventually, a female prefect, with a softer face and manner than her male counterpart, arrived to inform them that they would have to go to bed, or else all of them would get into trouble. Not wanting to incriminate the girl, who seemed to only have their welfare in mind, the two bid goodnight to each other and made their way up to their dormitories.

That night, Selena clutched her blanket to her chest, every so often casting glances across to the photograph she had placed on her bedside table, of herself, her brother and their grandmother, Andromeda, on Christmas Day a couple of years ago. She had always saw the photograph as her family, as it being complete, but now, for the first time, she noticed the spaces on the edge of the frame, where her parents should have stood.

'I'm not going to let them down.' she thought, her determination shining in her eyes, even as they glistened with unshed tears. 'I have always been proud of them. Now, I'm going to make sure they're proud of me.'

A/N: Please review!