Extra Ordinary (Riddle Era)

Chapter 49

Lucy was a tightly wound spring that fall. And every day, the world wound her tighter. Every day, she smiled. Every day she stood stoic in the face of her peers, in the face of praise from teachers, in the face of a panic that had settled along her bones like a second skin. She comforted housemates and friends, no longer just Myrtle. She kept a calm face on her features. She persisted.

When Anna woke up crying from nightmares about formless beasts that petrified herself and her friends, Lucy murmured quiet assurances that it was only a dream.

When Marion was searching in a panic through the halls because she couldn't find Myrtle and was certain she'd been petrified, Lucy had been the level head. Had traced the halls of the palace with Marion. Had found Myrtle. Had let both of them cry on her shoulders.

When Joseph was too nervous to walk home late from the library alone, Lucy walked all the way up to Gryffindor tower with him, keeping cool conversation and promising never to breathe a word of the nerves he swore he did not have.

And every time, Lucy didn't falter. Didn't blink. Didn't miss a beat or a breath. She persisted.

And at night, when the sleep didn't come, or when it did and it hung leaden with too stiff limbs attached to Ella and Myra and Matthew and sometimes other faces, to muggle born friends like Myrtle and Helen and Joseph, to herself, Lucy stepped quietly from the room. She didn't wake a soul. She didn't shed a tear. She kept her head up and she pretended.

But the pretending never quite stuck once her eyes were closed.

Because of course, Lucy wasn't an idiot. The chances of two muggleborn Hufflepuffs being the two targets of a random phenomenon were low. And true, two didn't make a pattern. But it made her suspicious. It made her worry. It made her wonder about the words other students - usually purebloods - called them. Called her.

Mudblood, they said sometimes. And Lucy had never been bothered. She hadn't grown up around the term, hadn't had the hate of it grilled into her. And hate was a thing Lucy had a tendency to shrug off more easily than she was sure she should. Hate, after all, was easy. Hate often said more about the hater than the hated and in this case, it had always said they were snobbish. Small minded. Angry and looking for a target. God knew that's what it had meant when Tom had called her that word.

So, no, Lucy had never paid much attention to the slur. But she also wasn't foolish enough to brush off the malice that often accompanied it. And malice like that... Well. Two wasn't a pattern. But that was the only defense Lucy had against suspicions that the late sleepless nights always made worse. That the whispers in the hall made worse.

Because while most people were whispering fears, some were whispering that maybe it wasn't so bad. Maybe it was a natural order reasserting itself. Maybe this was a good thing. A purge the school needed to return to its glory days. Lucy hadn't understood what that meant at first, but she'd learned fast enough. Apparently it was well known in wizarding Britain that once upon a time, when Hogwarts was founded, Salazar Slytherin had wanted to take only pureblood students. That some people thought he had had the right idea. That muggle borns didn't belong among true wizards, who had inherited their talents instead of simply getting lucky.

Really, the knowledge didn't surprise Lucy. In every place in the world, where there was an us, people would find a them to pick a fight with. To blame. To ostracize. It was simply the way of the world. And it didn't matter if that world was wizarding or muggle.

Of course, a lack of surprise didn't make the reality of it easier. Nor did it make it any easier to bear the willful ignorance of so many of her peers. When they weren't sobbing on her shoulder in the dark of the common room or a hidden hallway, or, in Myrtle's case, the second floor girl's bathroom, they were pretending nothing was wrong. They were complaining about their classes. Comparing notes on essays. Looking forward to the end of the term and the holidays and, in some circles - mostly Tom's - gossiping about Slughorn's Christmas party.