Hufflepuff Table

Hufflepuff Table

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The Hufflepuff table is situated between Gryffindor on the right and Ravenclaw on the left, though there is a wide space between Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw due to the aisle to the Staff Table.

The third time she sat here on the first of September, but the first time she wasn't beaming. Maevie tried to put the genuineness back into her smile, tried to follow the other's conversations but it was hard. Her heart wasn't in it this time.

Most of the train ride she had spent with her housemates. At least the ones that hadn't sneered at her for some reason. She couldn't tell if they'd always done that and she just hadn't ever noticed, or if they somehow knew what she'd done over the summer and felt the same kind of disgust she felt too. She had pretended she hadn't seen.

And then a queasiness had settled low in her stomach, the moment Maevie had gotten off the train and her gaze had fallen onto the towering, window-lit castle in the distance. A sight that had almost lifted her off the ground the past two years she'd seen it, and that now looked like guilt, shame and sorrow wrapped in magic.

For the first time coming to Hogwarts, she wasn't on the brim of explosion with excitement, but crawling on the inside.

The noise of the Great Hall rose and fell like it always did. Bursts of laughter, squeals of friends reuniting after a summer apart, jovial, elated, happy. She felt like an island within a sea.

Because summer had been great until it hadn't.

Her night terrors had almost all but stopped, sleep as easy as she remembered it from before. She had visited her brother in London with her mum, had done all the sightseeing, had even gone to a cinema. Things had calmed in her head, the memories of the tower just a faint glimmer at the back of her mind, there but almost harmless.

And then she had gone to St. Mungo's. To Ever, to her friend. To see her, give her the bracelet she had spent close to an hour picking out. It had been so long then, Maevie had thought Ever would be better, that they could talk about what they'd do when she finally came back to school.

She hadn't been better though, she had been barely recognizable.

And then Maevie had made it worse.

A twinge twisted her stomach and she dropped her eyes to the bracelet still intact, still hugged around her wrist. Absentmindedly she stroked the glass beads, twisting them between thumb and forefinger.

It was a losing battle from the start.

Rae had done everything she could to drag Benji over to the Ravenclaw table, insisting they needed to offer some amount of comfort to his obviously petrified little sister. It wasn't a secret that Kathryn didn't like change, and it was easy to imagine her being overwhelmed now that she was no longer staying up in Julia's room but a part of these large, loud and lavish feasts herself.

Rae could still remember her own sorting and the distress that had clung to her. It was only right they try to be there for her.

Benji-The-Most-Impossible-Boy-In-The-World had other ideas. He'd grabbed her by the wrist and wrangled her back into her seat the moment Kate was sorted and she'd tried to drag him to her. He thought the poor girl needed to learn how to adjust, and while she didn't disagree – they couldn't very well have the girl be WEAK – the first night, when everything could appear so new and terrifying, hardly seemed the time. Looking back, she'd have given anything to know Elliot or Rocio that first night and to have some comfort while she sorted through the big and overwhelming emotions.

Benji wanted his sister to drown while they sat merrily at the Hufflepuff table pretending the girl wasn't seconds from a silent meltdown.

"Neither of us is in the towers. Sitting with her until she has to go is the least we could've done. No, you'd rather sit here and let Kaitlyn get cosy with your sister. They're not going to be friends, Benji. If you think the way to reconciliation is through Kate, you've got another think coming, Laurence. I'll push her down the stairs again."

Poor Kathryn.

Glancing across the table, Rae spotted another not-so-happy feast attendee. Little Maevie Golding. Well, not so little anymore. The once adorable first year now looked like she was transforming into a fully moody teenager. She would fit right in amongst the ranks of many within the castle.

"What's got you looking like Santa cancelled Christmas? It's only the first night back." And while Rae wasn't the biggest fan of Hogwarts, her summers were only getting worse and worse. The girl was at the point where she'd prefer to simply remain at the castle and deal with its predictable problems.

"Anything your handy prefect here can handle?" she asked, offering her boyfriend up.

Alice was torn. She didn’t want to be back at Hogwarts, especially since her sister wasn’t there. But at the same time, she was hoping for some normalcy. She wouldn’t have to deal with betrothals or the health of her sister. She was confident that the healers at St. Mungo’s were doing the best they could for her, but honestly… would that be enough? Alice had been, up until now, extra optimistic about Everleigh.

The longer that her sister went on without any real big breakthroughs though, that optimism was making way for pessimism but she told herself that she just had to be realistic. So realism is where she was settling.

That said, Alice felt… a lot when she entered the Great Hall. She looked immediately at the Ravenclaw table where Everleigh should be but was not before making her way to the Hufflepuff table. She frowned when she saw little Maevie there. The girl was her sister’s friend – one of the ones who had been kidnapped too – and who had actually stayed in contact.

Everleigh didn’t have very many friends, but Maevie was one.

In a way, Alice could see herself taking the young badger under her wing. The girl had been through a lot too. She needed people in her corner.

Alice sat down next to the girl, smiling a bit despite herself. She could feel melancholy radiating off the girl in waves. She spotted the bracelet she was playing with, which made her think of something the healers had told her. And shown her.

“That’s pretty,” she commented softly, almost relieved that Maevie’s melancholy felt familiar to her. Like an old friend.

Fucking hell if they weren't all gloomy as shit.

The Opening Feast was supposed to be a time of celebration. A time of reconnecting with friends after a long summer and enjoying good food. Instead, here they all sat with little Marge looking like someone had stomped her kitten and Alice looking like...well Alice.

His girlfriend was no help, yammering on and on about his sister and what they should have been doing.

Kathryn was fine. She was fine. Benji knew her better than anyone, he reasoned, and he knew she wasn't the soft, wilting little flower she sometimes presented herself to be. Kathryn was a Cuddrun. Somewhere beneath all the veneer of propriety and manners, lay the rambunctious little girl he'd cared for since infancy. He knew her quirks, her likes and dislikes, and while naturally - and unnaturally - some of that had changed, he knew she was strong and resilient.

She wouldn't have survived half of what she did if she hadn't.

Julia enjoyed babying Kate. She loved doting on and indulging her, and it wasn't to say that Benji didn't, but his sister was getting older and she needed to learn how to stand on her own two feet. How to navigate life's difficult moments without succumbing to a figurative comfort blanket. How to behave on her own, without waiting for someone to direct her.

"She's fine," he nearly snapped, giving his little sister an encouraging glance as she settled herself at the Ravenclaw table. "You don't give her enough credit. She's stronger than everyone thinks." She'd prove it too. He knew Katie and knew eventually, she'd prove to them all that she wasn't a delicate little doll.

His eyes rolled at the mention of Kaitlyn and some sort of reconciliation. "You almost sound jealous," he said, a grin forming across his lips. "Too bad Emmanuel's not here. You could go get cosy with...actually! Look there he is!" He grinned, giving a friendly wave to the boy who still wore a bruise across his left eye. Gryffindor it seemed. Hmm.

Benji would argue the merit of that.

"What's got you looking like Santa cancelled Christmas? It's only the first night back. Anything your handy prefect here can handle?"

Him? Prefect him? Right, he was meant to be helpful he supposed, and he liked Marge. Alice...well, she was fine too. "Need me to cause some ruckus around here?" his hazel eyes twinkled. "We could get the show really going if you want?"

The air shifted as someone claimed the spot next to her, drawing her gaze up and around. Immediately, her heart sank through her stomach.

Alice was smiling at her, Ever's sister, glancing at the bracelet Maevie's fingers had stilled over. Did she know? Had someone found out what had happened and told Ever's family? Would she tell everyone what she'd done, what a terrible friend she was?

Shame, guilt and fear spiked her blood in a rush, begging for pretence.

Quickly, Maevie pulled her arm off the table, tugging the sleeve over her bracelet as she hid away the pangs of conscience behind a small smile. "Thank you. I...got it in London during summer." It was the truth after all. Half of it.

"What's got you looking like Santa cancelled Christmas? It's only the first night back."

Her head swivelled, gaze landing on Rae. Sending another splinter under her skin. Maevie pushed some more effort into her smile, it even reached her eyes this time. "Nothing," she lied. "Tired."

"Anything your handy prefect here can handle?"

Her eyes landed on Benji next and she pushed her hands underneath her thighs, legs swinging under the table. Painfully aware of all their eyes on her — observing, scrutinizing, did they find it weird the way she acted? — Maevie forced even more energy into her demeanour.

What usually felt like a well with no bottom yawned empty and dry today but she tried anyway.

"Need me to cause some ruckus around here? We could get the show really going if you want?"

A widening grin spread over her face and she nodded sheepishly, red locks bouncing. "How?", she asked, a little excited despite everything.

Aligning herself with Maevie was easy. When Ruth and Benji appeared, though, that threw her emotions into a rollercoaster. The two were always so high energy, which she didn’t blame them. If her life was as normal as theirs, then perhaps she’d be that way too. But she didn’t even know who she was at this point.

The mention of prefects caused something to shift within Alice. She’d been a proud prefect in the past, but after how last term had gone for her – the trauma she had been through and the dealing with Everleigh – had caused her to not make the cut this term. That had been a slap to the face, especially since Benji was still one. She frowned as her eyes fell on his stupid badge.

"Need me to cause some ruckus around here? We could get the show really going if you want?"

Brown eyes rolled and then landed on Maevie. The girl was grinning now and that worried her. She bit her tongue, feeling the shift within the third year. “I’m sure that we can figure something out without breaking any rules,” she responded curtly, hoping that the others would get the hint.

The last thing Maevie needed was to fall into some bad habits. As far as Alice knew, the younger girl still followed the rules. And while Alice was finding the adults in her life much less trustworthy than she thought they should be, it didn’t mean that everyone at Hogwarts was just as bad.

No, this would be better.

Maybe.

Hufflepuff!

Blossom wasn't sure if she was annoyed or surprised at the hat, may be her sister was right, may be the hat was defective. She walked over to the table that looked festive in it's yellow and black. It also seemed to be the table with the most life. Not to mention her sister Poppy waving madly at her but there was no room at that end of the table, so there was no chance of joining her, which left her trying to find a seat elsewhere. But still a Hufflepuff, Rose had convinced her that she would be the next queen of Slytherin, but apparently the hat hadn't been told this. What did this mean for her now. Was she to be queen of Hufflepuff? Did they even respect royalty or when they more anarchistic in nature. She wasn't sure, but regardless she would do just as Rose said, enter like a queen and claim her throne.

Blossom held her head high as she took an empty seat she would not be anything but confident and regal even though she didn't feel it but looking at the other first years they looked just as scared as she was trying to hide she was. Hogwarts so far was everything she'd been told, but it was way more people than she'd expected. She'd never attended school, she'd had lessons with various tutors (Poppy made several of them quit) so this was a whole new territory for her.

There seemed to be a lot of noise and life on the table as various groups chatted with each other, she'd almost wished she'd been a Ravenclaw at least then she would have known some of Briar's friends to chat to. A boy who looked about Tulip's age seemed to be offering to cause a ruckus, she wasn't sure what over but if it happened she figured she'd very quickly duck out and get behind her sister Poppy would absolutely make sure all ruckus was in front of her, and carnage in her wake, actually if a ruckus happened she'd go find Tulip, The Asquith Rebel without a clue would never get involved in something that would actually require her to break a sweat.

"What happens after they are done with the hat?" Blossom asked no one in particular, she had been told the food was good, but was it like some of the dinner parties Mater and Papa threw and they'd have to wait an eternity to get fed.

Galen sat silently at the center of the staff table, his blue eyes skimming the students. He paid close attention to the new faces, attempting to gauge who may cause problems this term. He hoped none would.

This was his first Opening Feast as Headmaster, as last term he came in once term was underway. The staff felt tighter this time around – though that was perhaps because he fully trusted each and every one of them. Last term, it had been his predecessor that had hired them. It had been up to him to remove anyone he didn’t see fit for their roles, or who wasn’t trustworthy.

Gideon took his seat on the other side of Byrne – Blackwood, really, but it was too confusing with too many professors having the same surnames. Just as Laurence would always be Laurence.

Once the Deputy was sitting, Galen cleared his throat and rose to his feet, drawing the attention of the room to himself with his militaristic presence. “Good evening. For those of you who are new, welcome to Hogwarts. You will find that it is an exceptional institution that will ask more of you than you think you are capable of giving. For those of you who are returning, you already know what is expected of you. I trust you have not forgotten over the summer.”

A beat. Some announcements. “We still have some auror presence on the grounds, so get used to seeing them around. Also, Prefects are no longer to patrol outside; their patrols have been moved indoors for security reasons.”

Would any of them argue? It didn’t matter.

“Regarding duelling club and quidditch. Both activities remain suspended. We are working toward a resolution, however I will not speculate on a timeline at this point.”

Galen truly hated the speech at the beginning of each term as a student because it was highly inefficient. The more administrative updates could be pinned on the bulletin boards in the common rooms instead of highlighted here.

“Enjoy your feast,” Galen said and took his seat. He lifted his glass, and the tables were immediately covered in food.

Really, for the past two years, she had been saying how different it was. To be a fourth year, then a fifth year. Each September, she had sat at this table and remarked upon the strangeness of it. How she was different compared to the year before, how she was 14, then 15. In a way, a cycle of self-evaluation that was never quite the same, with each year bringing something new. And now, she was 16.

Sixteen!

It boggled the mind. It was not 15, nor 14, but 16. It was the last step before true adulthood, before her last year at Hogwarts. And the difference this time was not simply that she was older, or that it was OWLs year, or that William was gone, no, she had been older before, and noted it, and moved on, but that the years ahead had taken on a different proportion. At 14, there had been three years remaining. At 15, two.

Both still meaning she had time at Hogwarts, that she would still be at Hogwarts, year after year, with the comfortable and correct assumption that there was more ahead than behind, that the shape of her life at school was still expanding outward rather than drawing inward toward its conclusion. But 16 was one, because she counted this year already - and one was not the same arithmetic at all.

It was close enough now that her seventh year had shed its abstraction. It was a finite thing, and from where she sat, she could finally make out its shape. She had never feared endings, not when they were natural, inevitable, and right. But the prospect of leaving settled inside her differently than the rest.

Not heavier. Just... nearer. Sadder, too, perhaps.

Ellen did not shy away from that emotion within herself, because this was strange. Not strange in the way that change was strange, because she had been watching herself change. Gauging the differences each September brought until the act became its own quiet tradition. 14, then 15, now 16. Each time she had noted it, and each time the noting had been part of the rhythm of returning: the train, the feast, the noting. She had simply... not stopped to consider that the rhythm would end. That after seventh year, there would be no Hufflepuff table to sit at, no Hogwarts Express to ride, no first of September on which to take stock of who she had become. The measuring itself would stop, because the occasion for it would be gone, and she would simply be whoever she was, without the frame of a new school year to hold the reflection up to.

Would she sit here next September and think how different it was to be 17, and wonder why 16 had not prepared her for it?

The pattern seemed to indicate yes, but she felt otherwise. Her last year would be so fundamentally focused that it was likely why she was so inclined to these deep thoughts- to think now, linger now, when she had the time to do so.

It was, if anything, the correct arrangement of things. That the path from here to there was no longer a question of if but when, and she was content to see it through.

.. what she was not content with, was Headmaster MacLean (just the latest in a line of Headmasters and Headmistresses that had been replaced or imprisoned) announcing that Quidditch and Duelling remained suspended, as though this were simply a continuation of policy rather than what it actually was: a failure that had now persisted for three full years. Three. She had arrived at this school under one Headmaster, endured the installation of a Headmistress, and was now listening to her second replacement, and at no point during that turnover had either activity been restored.

And the Aurors? Still here? It was foul. Not because she objected to security, not because she did not understand the reasons, but because the reasons had not changed in two years, and the Aurors had not left! She did not want to get used to seeing them around. That was precisely the problem. Getting used to things was how they became normal, and this was not normal, no matter how many Septembers it appeared in.

Would they still be here when she was in her seventh year? Would she sit at this table one last time, and the Aurors would still be patrolling the corridors, and Quidditch would still be suspended, and the Headmaster, whoever it was by then, and wasn't that a dreadful thing to have to consider, would simply announce it as fact?

Ellen looked around. Did no one think the same?

The table carried on as tables did. Benji was grinning about something, and Ruth was sitting here, for some reason. Little (or, well, growing) Maevie, and Alice, who seemed equally.. well, she couldn't tell exactly. A first year she didn't know asking questions about the Sorting. Life, small and loud and immediate, and not a single face suggested its owner was sitting in the same place she was.

Perhaps they were. Perhaps they simply wore it better. Either way, she had been thinking too much.

Shaking her head, "They store it away," she answered the new first year- Asquith?