Post by Deleted on Feb 3, 2018 19:07:36 GMT
HANNAH BETHANY ABBOTT
** 24 -- HERBOLOGIST -- WELSH -- SINGLE **
"I am brave, I am bruised
I am who I'm meant to be, this is me"
Her mother tells her that life isn't fair. She is fourteen, and writing home about the unfairness of there being two champions for Hogwarts, and Harry blinking Potter stealing the spotlight from Cedric, and her mother tells her that life isn't fair.
Her mother is a Ravenclaw - but Hannah isn't. She is a Hufflepuff, and she knows that life isn't fair. But it should be.
She wanted Cedric to win. She cheered herself hoarse at every Quidditch game and went silent with joy when his name came out of the Goblet, because it had truly found the very best of Hogwarts. She was not as good as Cedric - she wore a Potter Stinks badge, and wore it proudly - but she wanted to be. Everyone in their House wanted to be as good as Cedric. He was loyal and fair and strong and steady and clever and talented and quick and handsome and good, so very good.
They do not always think of Hufflepuffs as being these things. Hufflepuffs are the other house, the one where people who don't quite fit go - and that is another way in which things are not fair. Even Flitwick sighs when Justin doesn't get a charm quite right, and she always fumes in her quiet, unaccustomed way. You think we are your cast offs, she thinks, bitter. You think we are the kids no other House wanted. But this is a story about choice. She tells herself, tells the first years upset that they're considered duffers. The wand chooses the wizard, but the wizard chooses the House.
We are not your spare parts.
We are not the cast offs. We are just the kids who didn't choose you.
It is another way in which life is not fair but it should be, and Hannah tells herself these things to make it better. Most days, she believes them.
It is harder, these days, to believe it, when one of her own is dead.
Cedric had been the best of her House, and Dumbledore had called him brave. She was angry at that speech because yes, he was brave - but brave is a Gryffindor word, alongside courageous and noble and chivalrous and daring. Cedric was not a Gryffindor. He was loyal. He was fair. He was hard working. He was strong, and he was steady, and he was a Hufflepuff. He would not have bled back and yellow, bled as red as any other, but he had lived by the tenets of their House.
And he had died by them.
When the people who know him well tell stories, she thinks, this is what I want to be.
She tries to remember the way he held himself and his steady grace, the quiet kindness in his eyes. She keeps these images in her head and tries to find them in herself. He had been the best of her House, and he deserved to have respect paid to that in the only way she knows.
She knows that it isn't fair to blame Potter for Cedric's death. She knows that Cedric wouldn't want that.
On good days, she doesn't.
She gets the letter with her prefect badge in mid august. It falls out onto the table and her parents congratulate her, and she smiles a little. A letter comes from Ernie. She reads it, but she she doesn't answer. She takes her bike out and rides around the neighborhood for an hour instead, like she used to when she was a kid, before coming home.
Then she answers Ernie. His letter says that she likely got it because she notices the little things - and she smiles a little at that, because she knows it's not for her grades. She does try to be attentive - when Susan grumbles about Potter being the only wizarding war orphan to get sympathy, she drops Muggleborn names and losses at her best friend's feet until she understands that things go bump in the night in the Muggle world too, that they were not the only ones with wars, and she was not the only one with lost family.
She sees the little things. She remembers which first years tend to get lost and which ones are okay on their own. She remembers which third year has nightmares and how they take their hot chocolate. She remembers that Susie doesn't like to be hugged when she's upset.
Cedric did all of this and more.
She doesn't know how to fill his shoes.
But she tries.
She tries to remember the way he held himself, and the steady grace in his eyes, and she tries to find these things in herself. She does not always succeed, for it is a difficult year, with Umbridge around. Ernie would conjure plates and blast them in the fireplace to work off his anger, but Hannah practiced very small reducto spells, grinding the broken shards to dust. When they met in the Hog's Head, Ernie asked questions and Susie watched, quiet and steady as her aunt, and Hannah knew that Cedric might have been the best of them, but now they would have to be that for him.
Her Defence marks dropped. Umbridge's lesson plans turned her stomach, and she could not bear to follow them. Her Charms marks soared, and she took her homework to the Room of Requirement, where she watched the others studying and sparring and flirting, and got Charms help from Cho. She learned how Parvati and Lavender breathed together, and she met the Weasley twins, who Ernie found annoying and she found endearing. When she stopped to help a Creevey brother with a spell, she thought of Cedric - and she shook it off. She had a job to do.
She spent her free time in the greenhouses. Umbridge is a blight on her school, and it felt good to trim back dead leaves and watch the green grow.
Blights do not last.
During her exams, she made mistakes. She crumbled under pressure. She cried easily, at bad grades and bad days, or when too many people looked at her at once, like when she tried to transfigure a ferret in her OWLs and got a flock of flamingos instead.
She cried hard.
She got on the train the next September with a skip in her step.
A few weeks later, they pulled her out of Herbology to tell her that her mother had been killed. She leaves a mess on the work bench because she expected to come back. Pomfrey gave her a hot drink, and then sent her back through the Floo. Her father hugged her, and did not let go. She cried into his jumper.
Her mother was not an Abbott, just a Muggleborn girl from a subrbub, but she was buried in Godric's Hollow with the rest of the Abbotts.
On the way home, she made her father stop and buy a young lilac. When they got home, she planted it in the back garden. She didn’t use gloves because she wanted to feel the dirt under her fingernails. She pressed fertiliser around it and put a spell of growth and health on it. If the Ministry kicked off - well, she could do with a fight.
Letters came from the others. Ernie told her gossip, and about the first years. Neville, who she’d made friends with over the work benches in Greenhouse 2 in their free periods, told her rambling stories with pressed flowers and drying herbs between the pages.
She sent back gossip from the suburbs for Ernie, told Neville about her garden, and reviewed the books Susan sent her. Then she went and sat with her father, and he told her about meeting her mother in Muggle Studies.
The magic on the lilac went weird. It produced tiny little apples on the second week of every month. She made pies with them and took them to her grandfather’s house.
She missed sixth year, but not the gossip, thanks to Ernie.
Susan didn’t write for a week. When the Daily Prophet came, she went out to the garden, and pulled out yellow roses and daises and the first few sprigs of lilac, and sent them by owl. When Susan wrote back about Potter’s sudden potions excellence and a review of a book on magical urban crime, she replied with a letter about books and pies and chess.
She added, shakily, “I miss my mum.”
Susan’s brisk, to the point letter arrived a week alter. And under the signature, in scrawled, un-Susan like handwriting, it said “I miss my aunt.”
When it came to seventh year, she did not know how to run from or at difficult things - only to take them one step at a time. She just had Ernie, and Neville. Justin and Susan both fled.
What terrified her the most was going back to Greenhouse Three. Not the Death Eaters, or the scarring detentions, or having to curse other students. It was that spot where her heart first shattered.
The first time a first year burst out crying in the Great Hall, she swept him up and hugged him. She did not cry with him - she cried easy, but that was for stress and frustration and panic, not sympathy.
It took three weeks for her to brave the greenhouses. She found Neville there, working on a tiny potted nightshade. She helped. They wanted something green to come out of this year.
Sometimes they talked. Sometimes they worked in silence. Sometimes they talked about the DA, or Harry, or Hannah’s mother.
She kept peace hidden up her sleeves. She still wore her prefect’s badge, even in hiding. But some of her first years had red on their robes, blue, even green. They checked in three times a day, kept them safe. She had always been harmless, a wallflower. Naive, and a little slow, but she was no longer playing. Her amour was to be the biggest sheep in the herd. She bore the cars of curses she blundered into - and first years did not bear those scars.
Neville and Ginny and Luna and Ernie had been driven into hiding. Hannah still walked the halls, until the very last minute.
The Carrows tripped her, or used her for target practice. They laughed, and she laughed with them, a beat off, like she wanted to be in on the joke. Then she left hexes on their desk chairs. Conjured bloody taloned birds to chase them. Slipped poisons in their tea.
There was yellow on her robes, and no wolves lived among the sheep - so they thought.
When the fight came to Hogwarts, and the statues themselves rose in their defence, Hannah thought about Neville’s hands buried in warm earth, in the light of the greenhouses. She thought of Cedric. She thought about her mother’s funeral.
They called Cedric brave, and they called her kind.
But loyalty, fairness, honesty, effort, grit were the tenets of her House, and she lived and breathed them. She would be fair if it killed her. She would be fair if it killed them.
And it did.
They won, and they lost, lost and lost.
When Fred died, Ernie cried harder than she did. Tears are not a measure of grief - merely of salt water on your face. When it came to the funerals, she had Susan on one side and Ernie on the other. Neville was up ahead of her. Afterwards, she dragged him away, and they got dirt under their fingernails.
After the war, Hermione went back to make up the year she spent saving the world. Hannah went back to make up the year she spent grieving.
Fifth years said she would have been handed the diploma anyway, but how you get there matters.
She wanted to be a Healer, once, but she spent too much time grieving, and too much time fighting, and now she is tired. Instead she take off after finishing school, takes the chance at apprenticing for her Herbology Mastery, and travels the world. She sees more of it than she ever thought she would get the chance to, growing up in rainy Cardiff. She goes to the Amazonian rainforest and the Australian outback and up the Alps and into the Grand Canyon. She sees everything she ever dreamed of and so much more - and then, she comes home.
With a Herbology Mastery under her belt and a healthy savings account, she opens up a greenhouse-cum-nursery-cum-apothecary off Diagon Alley. She sees her friends again, having gotten by only on letters and flying visits. She settles, content and happy, and every morning she looks to the mantlepiece, where photos of her mother and Cedric and her friends sit pride of place, reminding her to be the best of them - the best of herself.
She is happy. She never thought she could be - but she is.
Her mother is a Ravenclaw - but Hannah isn't. She is a Hufflepuff, and she knows that life isn't fair. But it should be.
She wanted Cedric to win. She cheered herself hoarse at every Quidditch game and went silent with joy when his name came out of the Goblet, because it had truly found the very best of Hogwarts. She was not as good as Cedric - she wore a Potter Stinks badge, and wore it proudly - but she wanted to be. Everyone in their House wanted to be as good as Cedric. He was loyal and fair and strong and steady and clever and talented and quick and handsome and good, so very good.
They do not always think of Hufflepuffs as being these things. Hufflepuffs are the other house, the one where people who don't quite fit go - and that is another way in which things are not fair. Even Flitwick sighs when Justin doesn't get a charm quite right, and she always fumes in her quiet, unaccustomed way. You think we are your cast offs, she thinks, bitter. You think we are the kids no other House wanted. But this is a story about choice. She tells herself, tells the first years upset that they're considered duffers. The wand chooses the wizard, but the wizard chooses the House.
We are not your spare parts.
We are not the cast offs. We are just the kids who didn't choose you.
It is another way in which life is not fair but it should be, and Hannah tells herself these things to make it better. Most days, she believes them.
It is harder, these days, to believe it, when one of her own is dead.
Cedric had been the best of her House, and Dumbledore had called him brave. She was angry at that speech because yes, he was brave - but brave is a Gryffindor word, alongside courageous and noble and chivalrous and daring. Cedric was not a Gryffindor. He was loyal. He was fair. He was hard working. He was strong, and he was steady, and he was a Hufflepuff. He would not have bled back and yellow, bled as red as any other, but he had lived by the tenets of their House.
And he had died by them.
When the people who know him well tell stories, she thinks, this is what I want to be.
She tries to remember the way he held himself and his steady grace, the quiet kindness in his eyes. She keeps these images in her head and tries to find them in herself. He had been the best of her House, and he deserved to have respect paid to that in the only way she knows.
She knows that it isn't fair to blame Potter for Cedric's death. She knows that Cedric wouldn't want that.
On good days, she doesn't.
She gets the letter with her prefect badge in mid august. It falls out onto the table and her parents congratulate her, and she smiles a little. A letter comes from Ernie. She reads it, but she she doesn't answer. She takes her bike out and rides around the neighborhood for an hour instead, like she used to when she was a kid, before coming home.
Then she answers Ernie. His letter says that she likely got it because she notices the little things - and she smiles a little at that, because she knows it's not for her grades. She does try to be attentive - when Susan grumbles about Potter being the only wizarding war orphan to get sympathy, she drops Muggleborn names and losses at her best friend's feet until she understands that things go bump in the night in the Muggle world too, that they were not the only ones with wars, and she was not the only one with lost family.
She sees the little things. She remembers which first years tend to get lost and which ones are okay on their own. She remembers which third year has nightmares and how they take their hot chocolate. She remembers that Susie doesn't like to be hugged when she's upset.
Cedric did all of this and more.
She doesn't know how to fill his shoes.
But she tries.
She tries to remember the way he held himself, and the steady grace in his eyes, and she tries to find these things in herself. She does not always succeed, for it is a difficult year, with Umbridge around. Ernie would conjure plates and blast them in the fireplace to work off his anger, but Hannah practiced very small reducto spells, grinding the broken shards to dust. When they met in the Hog's Head, Ernie asked questions and Susie watched, quiet and steady as her aunt, and Hannah knew that Cedric might have been the best of them, but now they would have to be that for him.
Her Defence marks dropped. Umbridge's lesson plans turned her stomach, and she could not bear to follow them. Her Charms marks soared, and she took her homework to the Room of Requirement, where she watched the others studying and sparring and flirting, and got Charms help from Cho. She learned how Parvati and Lavender breathed together, and she met the Weasley twins, who Ernie found annoying and she found endearing. When she stopped to help a Creevey brother with a spell, she thought of Cedric - and she shook it off. She had a job to do.
She spent her free time in the greenhouses. Umbridge is a blight on her school, and it felt good to trim back dead leaves and watch the green grow.
Blights do not last.
During her exams, she made mistakes. She crumbled under pressure. She cried easily, at bad grades and bad days, or when too many people looked at her at once, like when she tried to transfigure a ferret in her OWLs and got a flock of flamingos instead.
She cried hard.
She got on the train the next September with a skip in her step.
A few weeks later, they pulled her out of Herbology to tell her that her mother had been killed. She leaves a mess on the work bench because she expected to come back. Pomfrey gave her a hot drink, and then sent her back through the Floo. Her father hugged her, and did not let go. She cried into his jumper.
Her mother was not an Abbott, just a Muggleborn girl from a subrbub, but she was buried in Godric's Hollow with the rest of the Abbotts.
On the way home, she made her father stop and buy a young lilac. When they got home, she planted it in the back garden. She didn’t use gloves because she wanted to feel the dirt under her fingernails. She pressed fertiliser around it and put a spell of growth and health on it. If the Ministry kicked off - well, she could do with a fight.
Letters came from the others. Ernie told her gossip, and about the first years. Neville, who she’d made friends with over the work benches in Greenhouse 2 in their free periods, told her rambling stories with pressed flowers and drying herbs between the pages.
She sent back gossip from the suburbs for Ernie, told Neville about her garden, and reviewed the books Susan sent her. Then she went and sat with her father, and he told her about meeting her mother in Muggle Studies.
The magic on the lilac went weird. It produced tiny little apples on the second week of every month. She made pies with them and took them to her grandfather’s house.
She missed sixth year, but not the gossip, thanks to Ernie.
Susan didn’t write for a week. When the Daily Prophet came, she went out to the garden, and pulled out yellow roses and daises and the first few sprigs of lilac, and sent them by owl. When Susan wrote back about Potter’s sudden potions excellence and a review of a book on magical urban crime, she replied with a letter about books and pies and chess.
She added, shakily, “I miss my mum.”
Susan’s brisk, to the point letter arrived a week alter. And under the signature, in scrawled, un-Susan like handwriting, it said “I miss my aunt.”
When it came to seventh year, she did not know how to run from or at difficult things - only to take them one step at a time. She just had Ernie, and Neville. Justin and Susan both fled.
What terrified her the most was going back to Greenhouse Three. Not the Death Eaters, or the scarring detentions, or having to curse other students. It was that spot where her heart first shattered.
The first time a first year burst out crying in the Great Hall, she swept him up and hugged him. She did not cry with him - she cried easy, but that was for stress and frustration and panic, not sympathy.
It took three weeks for her to brave the greenhouses. She found Neville there, working on a tiny potted nightshade. She helped. They wanted something green to come out of this year.
Sometimes they talked. Sometimes they worked in silence. Sometimes they talked about the DA, or Harry, or Hannah’s mother.
She kept peace hidden up her sleeves. She still wore her prefect’s badge, even in hiding. But some of her first years had red on their robes, blue, even green. They checked in three times a day, kept them safe. She had always been harmless, a wallflower. Naive, and a little slow, but she was no longer playing. Her amour was to be the biggest sheep in the herd. She bore the cars of curses she blundered into - and first years did not bear those scars.
Neville and Ginny and Luna and Ernie had been driven into hiding. Hannah still walked the halls, until the very last minute.
The Carrows tripped her, or used her for target practice. They laughed, and she laughed with them, a beat off, like she wanted to be in on the joke. Then she left hexes on their desk chairs. Conjured bloody taloned birds to chase them. Slipped poisons in their tea.
There was yellow on her robes, and no wolves lived among the sheep - so they thought.
When the fight came to Hogwarts, and the statues themselves rose in their defence, Hannah thought about Neville’s hands buried in warm earth, in the light of the greenhouses. She thought of Cedric. She thought about her mother’s funeral.
They called Cedric brave, and they called her kind.
But loyalty, fairness, honesty, effort, grit were the tenets of her House, and she lived and breathed them. She would be fair if it killed her. She would be fair if it killed them.
And it did.
They won, and they lost, lost and lost.
When Fred died, Ernie cried harder than she did. Tears are not a measure of grief - merely of salt water on your face. When it came to the funerals, she had Susan on one side and Ernie on the other. Neville was up ahead of her. Afterwards, she dragged him away, and they got dirt under their fingernails.
After the war, Hermione went back to make up the year she spent saving the world. Hannah went back to make up the year she spent grieving.
Fifth years said she would have been handed the diploma anyway, but how you get there matters.
She wanted to be a Healer, once, but she spent too much time grieving, and too much time fighting, and now she is tired. Instead she take off after finishing school, takes the chance at apprenticing for her Herbology Mastery, and travels the world. She sees more of it than she ever thought she would get the chance to, growing up in rainy Cardiff. She goes to the Amazonian rainforest and the Australian outback and up the Alps and into the Grand Canyon. She sees everything she ever dreamed of and so much more - and then, she comes home.
With a Herbology Mastery under her belt and a healthy savings account, she opens up a greenhouse-cum-nursery-cum-apothecary off Diagon Alley. She sees her friends again, having gotten by only on letters and flying visits. She settles, content and happy, and every morning she looks to the mantlepiece, where photos of her mother and Cedric and her friends sit pride of place, reminding her to be the best of them - the best of herself.
She is happy. She never thought she could be - but she is.
OOC NAME: Bea
