Helga Hufflepuff loved food. A warm bed in a cozy nook with a full belly was her only ambition in life.
None of the other three understood the importance of this, because none of them had ever gone without a single aspect of it. But Helga had. She'd grown up without for many a year until she figured out how to make food last with magic. You couldn't make food from nothing, but nothing prevented you from coaxing more from food than nature thought should last.
Rowena, Slytherin, and Gryffindor were raised in castles not unlike Hogwarts. Even on the coldest days, they had food on the table and a fire in the hearth. Not Helga. Helga knew what a toe snapped off by frost looked and sounded like. Thank Magic she didn't know what it felt like. Still had all ten of hers, thanks for asking.
Helga put her House as near the kitchens as they would let her, ready access to food. Her House would be open to all. She'd leave the cunning to Slytherin, the brave to Gryffindor, the clever to Rowena. She'd take any who came knocking at the door, or barrel as it was.
A comforting refuge for miscreants like her. Den of badgers. Thick as thieves.
Helga Hufflepuff's smile always made Salazar Slytherin nervous. Too wide, too much teeth. Godric smiled a lot too, in a rather obnoxious manner. But something in Helga's was a little bit unsettling to Salazar.
"Mundanes do not belong at Hogwarts," Salazar declared at the staff meeting.
"We haven't any mundanes here," Godric frowned, pausing his sketching of what appeared to be a design for a dueling room.
Salazar waved an impatient hand at him. "Children of mundanes. You know to whom I refer. They belong in their muddy hovels with their low-born parents to drink the blood and eat the flesh of their dead god."
Ravenclaw rolled her eyes. "They are undereducated magicals, not mundanes, Slytherin."
"They are a blight is what they are," Salazar huffed. "You would think a religion that touts necromancy would be more inviting of sorcery in general." He continued to grumble under his breath about muddy, bloody hedge-borns and the travesty that the Dark Arts were misunderstood and suffering witches to live. "We should be rid of them before they come to burn us all as demonic cultists."
"I believe in equality," Hufflepuff chimed in airily. Ravenclaw and Godric smiled at her indulgently. "Magical children from less fortunate circumstances whether by circumstance of wealth or birth should be given the same opportunity to learn."
"Well said," Ravenclaw praised. Godric made asinine noises of affirmation before turning to Ravenclaw, renewing his funding campaign for the suits of armor he wanted to line the hallways.
Helga turned to Salazar with that smile on her face. "After all, mundane or magical, we have the same weaknesses to death."
Then, she turned to Godric and made an absurd comment about getting armor for the house-elves too.
Godric Gryffindor poured another round of ale for Helga, and himself of course. His in whatever tankard the house-eves had nearby; hers in that fae-be-cursed cup. In all the years that Godric knew Helga, never had he seen her drink from anything but that cup.
It was a gaudy, impractical looking thing: gold with two finely wrought handles and a badger engraved on its surface. But it never filled over. No matter how hard Godric tried. If he poured a little, then just a little would be there. If he poured a pitcher, then it taunted him with nary a drop threatening to spill. No matter how much or how fast he poured. It didn't disappear either. He'd watched Helga pour a pitcher full back out, enigmatic smile on her face, saying she couldn't possibly drink that much before classes.
"Only drink from a source you can trust," Helga explained to Godric when asked at dinner some time ago. Not that that explained anything. Godric had seen her gulp down plenty drinks of questionable origin from that cup. Many of which he'd poured for her.
Salazar snorted. "Afraid someone might poison you?"
Helga grinned at Salazar, who inexplicably fidgeted in his seat before looking away.
"Pwyll piau hi," she sang while saluting Salazar with her cup. She drank deeply, an easy smile still on her lips. Not another word said on the subject.
Helga loved the contrast of yellow and black.
Gryffindor boasted that his gold was for valor and joked that red was for hiding the blood of enemies that fell before the might of his blade. Slytherin chose silver for purity and green in honor of his Emerald Isle roots. Sweet Rowena wrote poems on how blue was wisdom and bronze was the strength to wield that wisdom with righteousness.
To Helga, yellow was the happiness of a smile. Yellow drew your eyes and inspired all kinds of sunny feelings. It made you forget what might be hiding in the black.
Rowena Ravenclaw was likely the only person alive that knew Helga was mundane-born. Rowena sat in the kitchens watching Helga teach a newly rescued house-elf how to roll dough for a treacle tart, by hand rather than magic.
"Magic interferes with taste and texture," Helga explained. "Just like how you don't stir a potion with enchanted implements; food must be prepared by hand."
The house-elves listened in rapturous attention. Helga's word was gospel, and Rowena wasn't sure whether that was a consequence of Helga's status as their savior from abuse or Helga's natural knack for handling magical creatures.
"Wit beyond measure…" Rowena murmured to herself, prodding the mass of metal on the table in front of her with her wand. "...is a treasure."
"For women, it's creativity; for men, it's hilarity." Helga snickered. Rowena snorted, jerking her wand. The transfiguration went askew.
Rowena groaned. "Hopeless. It looks horrid."
Helga glanced over at the offending circlet. The silver strands intricately braided together to meet at a centerpiece. "Is that a literal depiction of a blood eagle?"
At the center was an extremely realistic depiction of an eagle, every feather carefully detailed. The wings spread wide to blend seamlessly with the braided strands on each side. However, where its chest should have been was a gaping hole; the metal warped and protruded like rib bones wrenched open.
Rowena hid her face burning with mortification. "My concentration broke," she grumbled from behind her hands.
The pitter-patter of house-elves running about the kitchen and cooking filled the air. Rowena peeked between her fingers to see Helga pulling something out from one of her many hidden moleskin pockets. A sapphire.
Helga pressed the gem into the cavity and bent the silver strands to hold it in place. Grinning, she presented the masterpiece to Rowena.
"That's grotesque," Rowena guffawed, most unlady-like. Plucking it from Helga's hands, she examined the diadem closer. It really was miserable looking, but she couldn't help smiling at it. With her wand, Rowena carefully inscribed: Wit Beyond Measure is Man's Greatest Treasure.
"Man's?" Helga wrinkled her nose.
"Didn't you say man's wit was hilarity?" Rowena challenged, a sardonic brow raised. "For any who wear this must possess a keen sense of humor."
Suddenly, a wide grin filled with mischievous mirth stretched across Helga's face. "Care for a wager?"
Rowena squirmed uncomfortably in her seat. That look always spelled trouble. Usually for Rowena. She still had a crescent scar on her buttock from the unicorn debacle. "What are the stakes?"
"If I win, you have to wear that for the portraits," Helga said, tapping the diadem. "The bet is whether Slytherin and Gryffindor will believe this is enchanted to make you wiser just by wearing it."
"Fine, but you can't tell them whether it is."
"Obviously. We'll ask them to put it on and tell us how it makes them feel. I bet Slytherin is going to claim he feels smarter, and Gryffindor will just agree. Hubris."
"Is that a double or nothing?"
"Sure, stakes?"
"If either Slytherin or Gryffindor suspect it is unenchanted, then you have to tell me what all your cup really does."
Helga rolled her eyes. "Fine by me."
"Well met, Slytherin."
Only a near century of mental discipline prevented Salazar from visibly startling. He turned to greet Hufflepuff. She stood behind him in a modest brown frock, peasant-looking without any adornments but for the very fine material. They were in a hallway of the dungeons where this particular stretch had neither alcoves nor rooms from where Hufflepuff could have been hiding as he passed.
In a prior encounter, Salazar had asked Hufflepuff before where she'd emerged from, and she'd nonchalantly replied, "Badgers like tunnels." Then, she'd given him such a sharp smile that he felt he was unlikely to like her responses if he inquired further. He'd looked though, after, but no amount of hexing or curse-breaking revealed any egresses.
Salazar nodded a greeting to her, "And to you."
She smiled innocently at him before turning around and going down the hall in the direction he'd just come. Humming to herself. A cheerful diddly that echoed off the walls and rang in Salazar's ears like a requiem.
Godric was certain Helga was scolding him. But he really couldn't concentrate on anything she said when she smiled those sacred blue eyes at him.
"Gryffindor, I'm serious," Helga huffed a cute little pout. Curses, what had she been saying? Something about his new sword.
Godric nodded. "I understand."
Helga narrowed her eyes dangerously. He tried not to finch; he'd definitely responded too quickly. "If you're sure… I won't have you offending the goblins. I just managed to get them to tolerate being civil with magicals."
Godric flashed his most charming smile. "I would never."
She looked skeptical for a moment before smiling shyly at him. "Alright, have you shown it to Rowena yet?" He shook his head. She beamed at him, and he saw stars. "Oh, I can't wait to see her face! Come."
Helga tugged his hand, and he followed unwittingly to his doom. Wherein Rowena lectured him for four hours about the recklessness and foolhardiness of keeping an enchanted sword that never dulled and absorbed poison in a school for children. She was decidedly not amused when he told her his plan to keep it out of reach by putting it in his hat.
Rowena and Helga were old friends of a sort. By old, Helga meant she'd known Rowena since they were children, not that Rowena was aware of that. Of a sort because Helga spent most of that childhood pickpocketing Rowena's mother when they often came to Helga's village in Wales. Rowena met Helga officially when Helga came to her home in Scotland for an odd job, hired by her mother. Rowena never learned the details behind that particular story; she'd been too excited to discover her new friend could feel the wards on their land to care that she never saw her father again after that day.
From then on, Rowena and Helga were inseparable.
"Helena is looking for you."
Rowena looked up from the runic grid she was carving out in the middle of the room. "She's as bad as her sire."
"Not that she would know that," Helga retorted.
Rowena shrugged dismissively. "Not that she needs to."
It was the only argument that lasted between them. Helga thought the man in question was arrogant, ill-mannered, and too hopelessly in love with the memory of his dead wife. Rowena thought his biggest sin was that he didn't like Helga. Besides, Rowena had argued in the past, he had his legitimate heir beget with his beloved, and Helena was her sole heir, future Lady Ravenclaw no strings attached. What more could either possibly want from her?
"At least stop hiding from her," Helga scolded mildly.
"I'm not hiding," Rowena glared, affronted by the notion.
Helga's eyebrows twitched in unconcealed amusement. "Yes, that's why you are sitting inside of a storage closet covered in dust, a closet which is conveniently across the hall from the most atrocious tapestry of dancing trolls."
"Barnabas is a creative visionary," Rowena defended. "I don't think I've ever even seen that form of dancing before–"
"He's barmy," Helga interrupted. "And the subject matter happens to be the only creature your ten-year-old is scared of."
"Only because she's never met a boggart," Rowena replied weakly.
Helga looked at her incredulously. "Which would likely still be a troll."
"Ah, yes, true," Rowena returned to looking at the convulsing rune pattern, frowning. "I've put in expansion and cataloguing features so there's no limit in storage space and you can easily request what you require without needing to root around." She pointed to an empty space on the floor. "I want to add a function for transporting lost items here, but I can't figure out how the castle would go about labeling things lost without reading the minds of every student all the time. Maybe the castle could do a sweep every night and deposit anything out of place here."
Helga shook her head, exasperated. "Rowena, that's unnecessarily convoluted. Just ask the house-elves to put any misplaced items that they find whilst cleaning the castle here."
"Ohhh," Rowena sighed. "Yes, I suppose that would be best. I'm already worried what complications will arise from this experimental use of different alphabets. It's not activated, yet its pulses are alive."
Helga plucked the chisel from Rowena's hands and began carving a rune set in the empty space. Rowena hovered over Helga's shoulder and laughed. "What writing is that? Whatever are you even adding?"
"Goblin," Helga flashed her a feral grin, a perfect imitation of said being. "It's for a network of tunnels. A castle is never complete without secret shortcuts."
"Fair enough," Rowena agreed. They both startled in surprise when, upon putting the last rune into the grid, a blinding light flared, and when their sight was recovered, the runes were gone but the room positively breathed with magic. Sharing a look, they burst into girlish giggles before hastily leaving the room.
"You know, I keep finding Helena trying to sneak the diadem on," Rowena mused as she walked out the door in front of Helga. "I've been keeping her away from it; put it on a stand out of her reach. Haven't the heart to tell her it's not real, what with Slytherin and Gryffindor going on about how it was my best work."
Helga snickered, "Maybe you can put it in this room. She'd never come and go here with–what is that–eight trolls standing guard."
Helga Hufflepuff loved food. It wasn't a hardship to volunteer for the Herbology and Care of Creatures courses. She would be first to admit she wasn't particularly erudite. She preferred putting honest work in for earnest gains. Well, as honest as tending a garden flourishing in nightshade and flesh-eating flora was or as earnest as letting First Years unwittingly raise livestock that ended up in the Great Hall tables was.
Hufflepuff drew magic from the earth to charm plants to grow heartier and yield more bountifully. Greens tasted best after a touch and song from Hufflepuff. Even potion ingredients harvested by her were better. Animals, mundane or magical, adored her.
"We like her," the snakes told Salazar as if it were the most obvious fact in existence. "She doesn't bother earth."
Salazar wrinkled his brow. Some concepts didn't come across quite right. Like hearing a foreign idiom translated literally. "In what way?"
The snakes seemed to shrug. With what shoulders, Salazar couldn't tell you. The gesture was too disturbingly human-like to further contemplate the mechanics.
"Do you mean she respects nature?"
"She doesn't have a human presence," a snake responded.
"She's not human?!" Salazar exclaimed.
Another snake gave a rather derisive hiss. Salazar was too distracted to be offended. "No, she's human. But not her presence."
This was a limitation of parseltongue. Magic translated the snakes' meaning as close to words that Salazar knew as Salazar understood them. But it could not convey them as the snakes meant them. Unless it was too foreign of a concept; then Salazar had to muddle his way through the incoherent hisses.
One snake nodded. "Her presence is like shadow on the ground. As steady as dirt on the belly and welcome as sturdy shelter."
"We never feel her coming," the snakes explained. "And we can taste sorcery."
That drew a shudder from Salazar despite the warm day. He understood the individual words but the message was incomprehensible. As one, the snakes turned their attention to something behind him.
"§ƨhźşҫ!" they exclaimed softly, rushing past him. His eyes followed to find Hufflepuff standing a few paces away, smiling.
"Hello beauties," she greeted. She acknowledged Salazar politely before continuing her walk toward the forest where the thestral paddock was.
Salazar stared after the little procession of chattering snakes led by Hufflepuff who nattered along in clear English. Nursery tales of the old gods gnawed the recesses of his memories, and for once, Salazar was sure he really didn't want to know at all.
Helga always kept a knife on her. "For fruit and cheese," she'd told Rowena. At Rowena's dubious raised eyebrow, Helga admitted with a tinge of chagrin, "Sometimes letters."
Rowena's scrunched nose said much about how sanitary she thought that was.
Godric was fairly certain he'd never seen her use it on food, or mail for that matter. Salazar thought it looked just as good for stabbing as slicing.
Helga Hufflepuff's smile was definitely sinister. It took a while but Salazar finally figured out why it made him nervous: her smile never reached her eyes. Godric laughed him off, never one to doubt a friend. Ravenclaw was particularly defensive when Salazar tried to warn her of Hufflepuff's artifice. She seemed to take his caution against Hufflepuff personally. That and his isolationist policy regarding mundanes. The latter of which made little sense since he personally knew both her magical parents had been isolationist.
It all came to a head at a staff meeting.
"The hunts have escalated!" Salazar tried to reason with them. "We cannot keep exposing ourselves for a bunch of muddy hedge-borns!"
"I'm sure their parents were married," Hufflepuff retorted primly. She looked pointedly at Salazar's locket which contained a lock of his beloved's hair. Unlike some, her eyes silently accused.
Salazar bristled, indignation coloring his face. "Mudbloods then!"
Hufflepuff stilled, small smile frozen, looking oddly fragile. She blinked one slow blink at him and tilted her head just so. "Come again?"
"Mudblood," Salazar sneered, too aggravated to see the dangerous look that began shadowing Ravenclaw's face. "Dirty blood. Low-bred creatures of dirt with no respect for our ways. Magic sprung up from the ground with no heritage. Yet, rather than be humbled by the blessing, they are traitors to their own blood, the very magic that flows in their blood. It might as well be dirt for all they care."
"Salazar," Godric growled in warning.
"Oh, lay off Godric," Salazar snapped. "You agree with me! How many hunters have you slain to rescue our kind from the pyre? How many witches and wizards have we buried, dug out of the ashes, pulled out from the depths of lakes and rivers? You're just langlocked right now because you still think you have a chance to bed Mudblood Hufflepuff!"
"Salazar!" Godric roared. His face fierce, burning with anger and embarrassment. Dust floated down from the rafters where they had been disturbed by the sheer force of Godric's voice.
Salazar paled. Perhaps a step too far. He hadn't meant to call her one, since she was likely just half-mundane at worst. He hadn't meant to call Godric out like that either. Salazar's eyes caught sight of Godric's trembling hands. Godric was an honorable wizard; honor necessitated satisfaction. But Godric was his brother in all but blood. Salazar couldn't let him throw the gauntlet.
"I can clearly see my tenure at Hogwarts is no longer desired," Salazar said tonelessly before Godric could overcome his indecision. Ravenclaw was halfway to her animagus form, ready to claw his eyes out. And Hufflepuff, well, Hufflepuff was finally not smiling at him.
Salazar turned on his heel and quickly left the room, the castle, and Scotland.
Godric sat in the Great Hall, watching the Deputy Headmaster place the Sorting Hat on the new student. He smiled faintly beneath his beard, voluminous and white as snow piled on the coldest day in the Scottish Highlands. It felt like just yesterday the four of them were squabbling about how the children would be chosen for their housing arrangements when they were no longer around to handpick their protégés. Now he was the only one left. His smile disappeared; his face falling easily into the stern lines that had developed over the years.
Godric hadn't seen Salazar in over half a century after he left. One of Salazar's apprentices had taken over the course duties, but no one could stand in the place of his sworn brother. Godric would have forgiven Salazar in time. If only he would have apologized, but Salazar never sent word. Merely handfuls of foundlings over the years made their way to Hogwarts courtesy of Salazar. Godric liked to think Salazar's rescue of these mundane-born children was his way of apology; they always did say actions spoke louder than words.
Rowena had left them about a decade ago, after the tragedy with Helena and the mundane-born baron. The first and last mundane-born that Salazar had taught–what a complex relationship that was. The boy was quintessentially everything Salazar wanted in a student: ambitious, cunning, resourceful; but the boy's pride in nobility over magic and wicked temper fueled Salazar's prejudice that even the most ideal mundane-born could not wash away the taint of their humble origin, regardless of breeding.
Godric shuddered involuntarily, recalling the soul-crushing cry that had burst from Rowena when the Baron returned from his task of retrieving Helena. Not even in their darkest nightmares could they have imagined that both would come home to Hogwarts as ghosts. The once-loquacious Helena was struck mute as she watched her mother wither away from a broken heart. Helena finally had undeniable proof of her mother's love, proof she was constantly scheming for but was never satisfied with the signs in front of her. The Baron, resentful of Salazar for binding his allegiance to Hogwarts through magical vow, was now bound to Hogwarts for eternity in chains of guilt. Poetic justice, Helga had stated bitterly over her cup of spirits before swallowing the contents in a single motion. Godric could only grimace and mimic the action, the words 'just desserts' dying on his tongue in sweet sorrow from the mead.
"Hufflepuff!" the Sorting Hat cried. Godric clapped politely along with the rest of the staff.
Helga…Godric could not help but think of Helga fondly. They were never more than friends. As much as one could be friends with a sunny shade. She'd left Hogwarts shortly after Rowena's death. With her best friend and her goddaughter no longer alive, Helga vanished like a thief in the night. A few years later, a small boy with familiar blue eyes and a wide smile that could steal the stars from the sky arrived for Sorting. He didn't say much about himself but he came armed with a dagger and golden cup and a knack for smithing; and that was all Godric needed to know.
Although he was the last to sit in these great halls, Godric knew that all four of them would live on forever in the legacy of Hogwarts.