Huffily Puffily || Golden Trio

Despite It All || liii

A/N: thanks awriterlololol for this amazing art!! I always show it and all other huffily art off to everyone around me LOL

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Inside Emma's brightly decorated room at Wool's Orphanage, three orphans sat playing a game of chess. Perhaps 'playing' was a generous term for the complete and utter destruction Lucy Rochester was sending their way, because even with Emma and Nathan's combined efforts, they only lasted a few rounds at most.

Lucy sighed as Emma began setting up the board again. She had an hour before she had to leave for King's Cross and she had been playing chess for at least three hours now. Emma hated losing any sort of board game and Nathan was glad to spend time with anyone that wasn't insufferable; the chances of them quitting were slim.

"Why are you so good at chess?" Nathan groaned. Aside from helping Emma, he was also keeping score. In a total of thirty and a half games, half being the time Grayble trampled over the board before anyone could win, Lucy won all of them. Quirrell would have been so proud.

"The evil wizard who tried to kidnap me was also rather fond of the sport," Lucy explained, remembering the countless hours she spent with Voldy-Quirrell. And she knew for certain Voldemort liked chess because it was one of the few activities besides reading that Tom was willing to partake in. The only other activity was pranks, but only if she could learn something through it.

She had loads of fun explaining to Nathan and Emma every detail of her years at Hogwarts. She told them everything from her first potions lesson with Snape to the battle inside the Chamber of Secrets. It was exciting telling a story that no one believed, and one that they wouldn't judge her for, on top of that. Emma and Nathan obviously thought she was making it up, but they were impressed by her storytelling anyway.

Since they didn't believe her, she wasn't technically breaking any laws. So take that, minister.

"What's his name again?" Emma asked.

"Moldevort," Lucy answered in a serious tone.

Well, she changed a few details. One of them being Voldemort's name, and another being that she never mentioned Tom's name. As far as they knew, her diary companion's name was John Fiddle.

No, she was not accepting criticism on that.

Aside from knowing it would annoy Voldemort and Tom, Lucy was wary of spreading information about Lord Voldemort to anyone who might get in trouble for it. It was far-fetched, but if a ministry official ever did hear a bunch of muggle children talking about Hogwarts and the darkest lord of all time, she'd likely find herself arrested, or whatever they did to children who broke the law.

"Odd name, isn't it?" Emma hummed.

Lucy grinned. "He was an odd man. Also, you may want to reconsider that move."

Emma looked down at the chess board, where she had been about to move her pawn a space forward. She stared for a solid minute before groaning and dropping the piece altogether. "Alright, I give up! This is melting my brain!"

"What brain?" Nathan said innocently.

Emma scowled. She picked up the chess piece and chucked it at his head. "Shut up, Nathaniel. You failed your vocabulary test last year. Fourteen years old and you can't spell the word yacht! Can you believe it, Lucy?"

"I cannot, dear Emma," Lucy shook her head disappointed at Nathan, knowing full well that she couldn't spell the word yacht either. She hoped her professors wouldn't mind too much that her spelling was about to get a lot worse. It wasn't her fault that her personal dictionary turned out to be a murderous wizard.