from valley broad

Her plan was to head directly to her bedroom, to stay there for a few hours, compose herself and face the new day. But standing in front of her bedroom, the familiar sight was not a balm to her heart, being alone, what she had wanted more than anything a few seconds ago, sounded suffocating. And, there was somewhere she would rather be. Softly, she closed the bedroom door, hoping not to wake her friends. She didn’t move for a minute, hesitating, fearing she would be disrupting him. She needed him, she needed his strength and comfort. With that thought in mind, she walked down the corridor, hesitation gone. He would never deny her that. 

Quietly, she entered into his room, leaving her cloak at a chair by the door, toeing off her travel boots before she slipped into his bed, curling herself around his back, her small hands clutching the fabric of the front of his shirt, her nose buried in his neck. The ache was still filling her body, the absence of her siblings gnawing at her. 

But Godric’s scent, his steady breathing, this warm wonderful room, it allows her to breathe easily. 

After sleeping for a few hours, Helga quietly slipped off her room and started heading to the greenhouse, worried that the plants wilted while she was gone. She choose mostly unused corridors, the ones she knew students were still getting to know, ones that took extra turns to get to their destination so people tended to ignore. She choose them hoping to evade running into anyone. But her bad luck meant that just as she entered a corridor, she spotted a familiar face coming in her direction.

Her heart beat faster, fear and excitement twisting together inside of her. Eleonora. She missed her, missed her smiles and easy company. But she didn’t want to see her, didn’t want Eleonora to see her this way.

Turning around, she walked away.

She asked the elves to give her some time alone in the kitchens, her heartbroken face an argument strong enough that they didn’t protest or remind her of breakfast, they just snapped out of the room, one by one until she was all alone. That’s when she started crying; at first small sobs, but the more she cried, the more she considered spending months without seeing her siblings, losing precious time with Henrietta, the harder she cried, her whole frame shaking.

A noise at the corner of the kitchen startled her, one of the students was there. Usually she had no problem with students trespassing in the kitchen, she wanted this space to be welcoming and comfortable for all. But being caught in a moment she thought was just hers made her uncomfortable. No, it made her angry.

“You shouldn’t be here!” she snapped at Freddy, holding tightly to one of the prep counters, her knuckles slowly turning white, “You are not supposed to be here.”

Helga breathed a sigh of relief when she reached the founder’s sleeping quarters, she had been able to cross the school without any incident, her room was right in front of her, she had at least a few hours to rest and cry before she had to face anyone.

Just as her hand wrapped itself around the doorknob, a door opened besides her, at first she only saw Rowena’s long dark locks, and she still felt tempted to just hurry into her room, lock the door behind her and leave her problems for later, but the second she saw her friend’s eyes she crumbled and closed the distance between them, tightly wrapping her arms around her friend, burying her face in her neck. 

“They are gone. They left. Rowena... I am all alone.”

She hadn’t told her friends what time she would be arriving, she wanted to go to her room and unpack before seeing anyone, give herself some more time to process and arrange her face. The castle was quiet, the sun was still struggling to get up, the untouched snow quietly glittering.

A few elves showed up the second she closed the door behind her, without asking, they grabbed her bags and left her alone once more. The Great Hall seemed bigger, she was so used to students walking around everywhere that seeing it so deserted felt wrong. Everything felt wrong. 

Meow.

Looking down, Helga noticed a cat had joined her.  “Owain?” didn’t the elves take her cat with them? Bending down, she picked up the cat, tutting at it, but only when she had it in her arms that she realized it wasn’t Owain. “You must be his sister, or brother.” she murmured petting it.

Footsteps echoed through the hall, looking up, she took a deep breath and tried to keep her expression happy as Tomas approached. “Is this one yours?”

“Or will it exact it’s revenge by ensuring that we get no more kisses, ever?” she asked with a little laugh. “Angry that it’s wish for a kiss was spurned. Like a jilted lover.” Eleonora finished a little dramatically, mostly because she thought it was amusing. “I’m not sure?” she said with lips pursed a little in thought. “Maybe…ones you’re aware of? I really don’t know.” 

She gave a little grin as Helga patted her cheek, finding her far too adorable. “Yes— the Slytherin one from Norway. I don’t actually know if he’s from the mountains. But he looks like a mountain.”

“So it’s not general bad luck, it’s bad luck in romance?” this plant was getting bigger and bigger powers, soon it would be predicting her husband. “Traditions have power, they come from somewhere, they usually exist to help you in your life. If you don’t know them, it means they have no power over you. There won’t be any repercussions, so I think we relax.”

“Where else would I hold my ammo?” Eleonora said with what appeared to be actual confusion, her brows innocently furrowing together a little. It had seemed like a rather smart idea to her at the time. She’d had snowballs at the ready. Eleonora was fairly certain that Helga smiling at her and asking her to be a cookie taste tester was the exactly the opposite of punishment, but Eleonora wasn’t about to complain. “It may have been the best punishment I ever received.” 

Eleonora grew a little bashful as Helga looked to her wrist, having touched the other girl as a rather spur of the moment thing. With slightly pinked cheeks, she let the other woman loose. “But then I’d be missing you instead. And who knows what treacherous terrain lies between here and there?”

Staring at Eleonora, Helga begins laughing before she can reply, her eyes closing as she ducks her head and laughs harder. “You are something else! And you will definetly get yourself sick if you do this again! Putting snow in your clothing!” if there was an available blanket nearby, she would definetly be covering Eleonora again, a third time.  “The best? That’s good.”

Phoebe gave the Founder a fond smile, but waved her hand over her work, it righted herself with a whispered word of power. “It’s not a big deal, I just get a little… involved with my work, the quiet is nice, it helps me focus. I can be a little scatterbrained,” Phoebe had long since learned to enjoy soft moments, “nothing has broken, don’t worry Miss Hufflepuff.”

The Healer’s face flushed at Helga’s soft touch, and gently leaned into it, it was soothing, nice. “Oh, that I understand,” Phoebe reached up to gently rub at the back of Helga’s hand, her voice dropping, “I don’t have any siblings, but I am very close to my cousin. Missing family, it’s odd, you know they’re there and they love you. But you still want to be around them, physically,” Phoebe flushed a little suddenly realizing she had probably spoken too much.

“I’m the opposite, I find the quiet very distracting. I like it when there is some noise, the students walking around, my siblings in the room,” sometimes she would invite them to her office just so she could have her noise, “a student sent me a cat as a christmas gift. So far it’s been very quiet, a cute little baby, hopefully it will become noisy soon.” working in the kitchens usually gives her the background noise she desires but she ends up worrying so much about getting in the way of the elves that she loses precious time.

“I’m sure not all of them had dark intentions.” Rowena smiled, running her fingers through her hair. Her leaning in only encouraged Rowena’s patting her head further, “You would be perfectly fine without me, Helga, you are an amazing witch and an even better woman.” She didn’t think much of the compliment, knowing that no one deserved it more than Helga herself. 

“You’re not?” Rowena dropped her hand too innocently, “But I could have sworn I heard you purring.” She teased. “And you better get used to it because you are adorable my dear.” The conversation turned to Helena and Rowena shrugged, “I’m not sure, I try to give her her space. She’s at that age, you know, when she doesn’t want her mother crowding her.” She’d been at that age for a long time. 

"Exactly, curiosity must have been the inspiration of at least some of them.” she concluded, pleased to find a good common ground that allowed her to think well of her students, “No, I wouldn’t be. I would have to deal with Godric and Salazar by myself and I may be patient, but without you here, I think I would have given up already.” shooting her friend an unimpressed look, she shot back, “Do you want me to list your virtues? I will, but I recommend you sitting down first, because the list is quite long.”

Raising an eyebrow gently, Salazar inclined his head thoughtfully. “I believe we’re all respected by our students, besides, I think the both of us know that there would be very little real challenge to walking on water, it just depends how you want to try and do it.” He smiled at Helga. He knew that she was easily as capable a witch as any that existed, though people seemed to forget that because of her somewhat demure nature. 

“We all worked together to make this happen, there may have been some level of luck, but there was also a hell of a lot of hard work.” He remembered all of the planning, all of the coordination and sending of invites to the school. Not to mention all of the late nights working on the castle. “There are very few people here who could be blind to all of the work we’ve put in, especially you. We make this a school, but you more than many make this a home for our students. Especially those who’ve lost their home.”

“You and Rowena are impossible. Every time I try to compliment the two of you, you shrug and find a way act like it’s nothing.” regardless of their behavior, she will continue trying to shower them with compliments, there is no one more deserving.  “But it’s best if we don’t teach any of our students that just now. You know they would try walking in the great lake, and if one of them fails...” they co-exist peacefully with the mermaids on the lake, but she has a feeling they wouldn’t like having a scrawny student swimming among them. 

Perhaps Eleonora lingered a little too long in her answer, biting down on her lip in thought as she wondered whether giving Helga a little kiss on the cheek and claiming it was ‘just in case’ was a line that wasn’t meant to be crossed. So instead, she reached out a little hand to tentatively squeeze Helga’s, even a little nervous to do so much as that. Helga was of course the most welcoming of the founders, but Eleonora didn’t want to overstep. “Hopefully,” she said with a little laugh. “Do you think it’s the forgiving sort?”

Eleonora was having a little moment of fun pretending to be a soldier, though. “And let them think that they can get away with leaving you all pink?” she teased a little more. “It’s okay- I’m not afraid of that overgrown blonde mountain man.”  His sister was more intimidating in nature, anyway. “Do you?” she said with a bit of a grin. “Are there a lot of people around here looking for excuses to be kissed? Is this the school you’ve built?”

“Well, it wants people to come together through a kiss. It seems like a good happy tradition, not something that will haunt you if you break it.” the more she speaks the more she is tempted to drop a kiss to guarantee they won’t have bad luck, she is usually very good at following traditions, “Do you think you can be affected by another group’s traditions? I don’t think you can, there are too many! I think you are only tied to the traditions of your people.”

Eleonora leaned forward a little conspiratorially, though it earned her a wince as her muscles protested, the ache already setting in. She might just spend the rest of the new few hours in the tent to avoid admitting she wasn’t entirely sure how successful moving again would be. “Well they don’t have to know it’s my example, do they?” she said with a little smirk in her grin. Then she held her breath a little as Helga tapped against her hand, tapping her own fingers back a little playfully. “My hands and my lips are newly reformed,” she insisted. 

“Well…I had a snowball in my pocket,” she said with a little laugh. She brought her hand out from under the blanket to show the bit of water it’d left behind, though she was still trying to surreptitiously dry her and the blankets with her wand. “How else was I supposed to make sure I had enough ammo? That I wouldn’t be caught by surprise?” The she reached out to grab Helga lightly by the wrist without thinking. “No, no, I didn’t realize there wasn’t one nearby. Don’t worry yourself over it.”

“You really had a snowball in your pocket?”  that’s a level of dedication to a play game that she did not expect from anyone, but by the yells and cries coming from outside, perhaps she miscalculated how much the students enjoyed the game.  “I’ll try to believe you. You were punished for your actions, maybe you learned your lesson.”

My dearest Helga,

No thanks are required. I was simply taking the time to respond to your letter. If anyone deserves that much it is certainly you.

Don’t worry for a moment about anything here in Hogwarts, the three of us can manage the castle whilst you keep yourself busy dealing with whatever family affairs must be contended with. Not to mention that the house elves have started cooking almost as well as you. Perhaps they’ll put you out of a job soon? Though I doubt you’d ever allow that to happen.

On the topic of family matters please accept my extended sympathies for whatever you’re dealing with. Family affairs and politics are often some of the most complicated of situations to navigate. Once more if there is anything you feel I can do, even if it is something small please do not hesitate to inform me. I’m more than willing to do my best to support you in your time of need, as I know you would do the same.

I shall insure that your office and rooms are warm and cosy for when you return and I anticipate your return with enthusiasm.

All my affection,

Salazar.

P.S.

In times of old, when I was new And Hogwarts barely started,  The founders of our noble school Thought never to be parted

The blush was adorable, Hei wanted to trace it with her finger, but she resisted the urge. “No, we do not celebrate Christmas there. Someone here told me.” She had thought it was just an excuse to steal a kiss from her at first, but several other people had confirmed the tradition. “It was also a good excuse to kiss you.” She admitted without any trace of embarrassment. “You look very beautiful tonight.” 

“How interesting. You see, I’ve never heard of it.” she said, not wanting to doubt the student who had no reason to lie to her, but still feeling a little bit embarrassed by the whole thing. “Perhaps it’s more common here in Scotland then it is in Wales.” hiding her nervousness by a bright smile, she turned back to the students, “as you can see, no matter how much you study, there is always something new for you to learn about plants. They are connected with our development as a society, and as such, we create traditions around them.” seeing a few smiles that were more teasing then happy, she added, “as I guess some of you already know.” the drop in her tone was enough to make them blush self consciously, “I believe it is a party, go have fun.” she said, holding on to Hei’s wrist to keep her close.

“It is one of the rarest strengths.” His family took pride in their abilities as warriors, but more important to them was the strength of their hearts. It was the one thing he didn’t brag about. Surprisingly, Dayo had not warranted a detention, but he was sure that would change. “I’ll find them.” He looked confused at her question. “It’s her spear. We all had training. One of my sisters is a warrior by trade, she leads our people in battle. Bri considered joining, but she prefers the needle to the spear. She’s fearsome with both.” While neither Shacklebolt broke the rules about carrying weapons on them, both had brought their weapons along so they could keep up their training, often seen on the ground sparring. 

“It would certainly be quite the character to avoid all of the traits that you’ve espoused,” Abraxas agreed with a gentle nod, “either way, I think that it is encouraging that there is always somewhere, for someone to find a home in Hogwarts. That is what this place really needs to be.”

“No one has told me anything,” he said quietly, “well no one in particular, but when asking after specific rare tomes and books I was frequently sent your way.” 

“Exactly! This is exactly what the castle is supposed to be.” she smiled, pleased he understood their objectives so quickly. “Where do you think you will fit in?”