Hufflepuff

SOMETIME(?)—Swan was broke. Her widowed mother wasn't rich by any standard, and she certainly wasn't going to give her daughter money to blow on "stupid stuff" like trick wands, fanged frisbees and glitter.

And no one would give Swan a good job. Apparently, they thought she was irresponsible or something. Was it the neon stripes in her hair? Sure, she tried helping Filch—why did he even invite her, she thought he hated students—but that job was disgusting. The House Elves banned her from helping in the kitchen after the Great Pie Pan Incident. She couldn't leave Hogwarts often enough to work a job in Hogsmeade, and most of the businesses there wouldn't let her in the front door anyway. What was a girl to do?

Right now, the only way to avoid homework—oops, she meant keep herself entertained—was to wander the Hogwarts grounds aimlessly for hours, occasionally stopping by Hagrid's to play with his dog Fang. He always said she was good with animals.

That was an idea. Almost all the kids had some sort of pet, and some of the animals were quite troublesome if left alone. She could set up a pet sitting business!

Since she figured out how to work the Whumping Willow in her First Year, she operated her business out of the Shrieking Shack, where she could let the animals be noisy and run wild without bothering anyone. Before long, she needed a partner to help her control all her charges.

Filch volunteered first, the weirdo. Thankfully, she didn't have to work with him long, because he was rather fond of terrifying both students and their pets, and she couldn't be sending traumatized owls and scared cats back to their owners. Even she knew that was a bad business practice.

Somehow, Bellatrix heard about Swan's pet sitting business and decided she wanted in on the action…except her idea of action was eating canned cat food, Imperiousing owls to fly into the wall, and ripping the bells out of cat toys. Swan would rather be overrun with pets, thank you very much, so she was relieved when Death Eater duties called Bellatrix away.

Finally, she got a decent partner when Lavender Brown volunteered. The girl was too giggly, but she knew something about working with animals. She even found a spell that essentially turned her wand into a laser pointer, so the cats could be entertained by chasing a red dot…and then one day she miscast the spell and ended up starting a fire. In a panic, Swan forgot the water spell, but she got all the pets out in time.

As she watched the Shrieking Shack burn, Swan decided to call it quits and move on from pet sitting.