Harry Potter Next Generation: Family Legacy

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Proud to Be One (Scorpius)

 I craned my neck, trying to see if any of the Seekers had gotten the Snitch yet. James Potter and Gretel O'Brian were speeding after the tiny fleck of metal. Red, gold, blue, and bronze leapt from every corner of the pitch. And, astonishingly, there was a red and gold burst right next to me.

"Come on Albus!" Hazel called. The other Slytherins around her, wearing borrowed blue scarves looked at her, disappointed. Disappointed that their star Beater was cheering on a Gryffindor, and a Potter to boot.

"I thought you wanted Ravenclaw to win," I said, nudging her teasingly. "If Gryffindor wins then Slytherin won't play at all." And you're not supposed to cheer for Gryffindors, I added silently.

Hazel turned her eyes from the game. "I'll be on the team next year," she said. "So I'll still be able to play. In Slytherin, once you're in, you're in. And anyways—"

Her sentence was cut off as Peter Nott groaned into the microphone, along with half of Hogwarts.

"And Potter catches the Snitch!" he yelled. "Gryffindor wins, 280 to 40. Slytherin and Ravenclaw are out of the running, Hufflepuff and Gryffindor are now in the finals!"

Hazel shouted "yes!" at the top of her lungs, and ran off to meet her friend, coming off from the field, wincing from where Ravenclaw Chasers had repeatedly thrown the Quaffles at him. I smiled sadly. Gryffindor had been winning the Quidditch Cup for ten years straight, and I knew that my own team had Hufflepuff teams.

Don't worry about it, Scorp, I told myself. If Gryffindor wins that means they're better than Hufflepuff. Still, a twinge of anger. I knew that if Hufflepuff lost, the Gryffindors would not let us forget it. They weren't as nice and good as everyone thought.

"Malfoy!" my Quidditch captain barked. I looked behind me, to where the Hufflepuff Quidditch team was perched, amongst the victorious red and gold and frustrated blue and bronze. Prince waved me over frantically, like he was directing some hippogriffs into a corral.

I stood on the bench I was sitting on and pranced to the Hufflepuff one. Each time I stepped, the bench would tilt dangerously and cause the other people sitting on it to shriek and glare.

"We're not going to let Gryffindor win this year," Prince snarled. His borrowed blue and bronze scarf fluttered around his neck, revealing the yellow sweater underneath. "Their heads are too big already."

My fellow teammates murmured their agreement, and Prince rubbed his hands together. The noise of the game had subsided, and already half of the crowd had gone back into the castle.

"I've got a plan," he announced. "When playing the final game against Gryffindor, I want you, Grimble, to throw away the rulebook."

Grimble, the other Beater, looked surprised, and Prince narrowed his eyes. "I don't care if Gryffindor gets mad, if Mum— I mean, Madame Prince gets mad and gives us a couple of fouls— just do whatever it takes to not let Gryffindor get either a significant amount of points or the Snitch."

His eyes lit up and he turned to me. Like an insane person form the Uncurable ward at St. Mungo's.

"Malfoy, that means you can't stop at anything from getting the Snitch! Get it, or, or—" he stuttered to a stop and I took a small step back.

"I'll get the Snitch, okay?" I said. "Don't worry. Potter won't know what hit him."

Prince nodded, slowly calming himself. "Don't be sympathetic or anything to the Gryffindors," he said to the entire team. "It's time that we showed them that Hufflepuffs are a force to be reckoned with."

"Wait, Captain," said one of our Chasers, Arita King," are you telling us to stop acting like Hufflepuffs?"

Prince shook his head. "Hufflepuffs are loyal and determined. We're supposed to be nice and weak. But nothing says that we can't want to beat the other houses at their own game, Arita."

I walked down the deserted corridor, anxious to get away from my buzzing housemates. Even though the final Quidditch match was in three weeks, everyone thought that it was tomorrow, the way they acted.

Candles hovered in the air, looking as if they had floated out of the Great Hall. Patches of silver moonlight shown onto the stone floor and highlighted my tousled black robes.

The castle was eerily silent, except for a few murmurs that probably came from the Bloody Baron or someone like that. For a moment I wished Hazel was with me, but I knew that wouldn't happen until the summer. She spent all of her time with Potter. Sure, he may be her best friend, but that didn't mean she could abandon me in the process.

I don't need her, I told myself. I did, I knew, but wasn't going to admit it.

I pushed Hazel to the back of my mind, and a new pondering thought entered my mind. Prince's words kept going through my mind as I walked further down the corridor, right before rounding the corner.

I wasn't really surprised that Prince's words where in my head— he had been yelling at me to catch the Snitch for a couple of hours. But the words I was thinking about wasn't about Quidditch at all.

"Hufflepuffs are loyal and determined. We're supposed to be nice and weak. But nothing says that we can't want to beat the other houses at their own game."

Just as Slytherins did not have to be all evil and mean (Hazel), or all Gryffindors had to be the protectors of everyone (James Potter), my housemates and I were not all kind. We didn't take things laying down.

For the first time since entering Hogwarts, I felt proud to be a Hufflepuff.