How to Be a Pureblood

Chapter 1| I've Become What You Cannot Embrace

Remember me now, time cannot erase

I can hear your whispers in my mind

I've become what you cannot embrace

Our memory will be my lullaby

Sing Me to Sleep - Alan Walker

TW: eating and food.

"Slytherin!" The quiet clapping of a few Slytherins filled the sudden silence, from the students who hadn't really been paying attention beyond listening for the name of their House to be called out as a first year was sorted. But at the silence, they paid attention, realizing just who had been sorted into their house.

A few claps from the Gryffindor table rang out, more enthusiastic than those from the Slytherin, before they too had the same realization.

Everyone stared.

The girl, Weasley, Rhiannon, by McGonagall's declaration, sat frozen on the stool. Everyone was too frozen to usher her to her house table, so the Great Hall sat in stunned silence for a long moment, only a few whispers from the group of first years, muggleborns asking what had made it so shocking from others more likely to know what had happened.

Rhiannon seemed to shake herself out of the stupor before everyone else, slipping off the stool and handing the hat to Professor McGonagall, before walking to the Slytherin table.

Slowly, the Great Hall slipped back in order, a few Slytherins clapping awkwardly as their new housemate slid onto the bench.

McGonagall, hat and list firmly in hand, called out the next name.

"Weasley, Ronald!" Her voice had only the slightest tremble to show her surprise at the outcome of the previous sorting. The applause for Weasley, Ronald was somewhat muted, waiting until the expected and welcome "Gryffindor!" to fill the Great Hall with noise again.

The boy seemed more relieved than anything, as he joined his redheaded brothers and his newest friend at the table. Under other circumstances, he might have been proud, but the Sorting of his sister had shaken everyone's well-founded trust.

All of the Weasleys had been in Gryffindor after all, as had almost all of those who married into the family. Being in another house had never really occurred to any of them before, except maybe a few thoughts at landing in Hufflepuff when they felt particularly scared.

Percy's siblings had jokingly mocked that he'd be in Ravenclaw once, but their mother had reprimanded them for being mean.

So maybe another house might have been accepted, but not easily and definitely not willingly. (And definitely not for Slytherin.)

Rhiannon Weasley's expected future had already taken a very sharp and very dark turn in the eyes of her family and those of everyone else who heard the news, except maybe her own. She didn't have many thoughts of her future at this moment. Not at least, beyond the next few weeks.

Even now, she was more exhausted than anything else. She'd eaten her packed lunch sandwich only an hour before, when Percy reminded her to eat, so hunger wasn't her main priority at the moment, only getting to bed soon.

The Sorting ceremony and the feast, however, did not hurry along for her, so it was only until much later that the prefects gathered all the Slytherin first years together and took them down to the dungeons.

If Rhiannon were less tired, she might have paid more attention to what the first years were being told, something about sticking together and travel only in groups of three or more, but she wasn't, so nearly everything was promptly ignored.