Tears
Originally by Cristina
Seth was bored. Bored bored bored. Rounds were so very dull when he was paired with another prefect who ‘preferred to split up’. Supposedly it meant that the would cover the castle grounds much faster. What it really ended up meaning was Seth getting a twenty minute nap before going out to catch straggling curfew breakers.
Except there were none. This was the fourth empty corridor, what was the point of being a prefect if everyone else behaved? Seth mused that if Wendy were with him, she would scold him for hoping to catch ickle firsties out of bed, that he should be pleased their fellow classmates were following the rules. Honestly though, if he turned another corner to nothingness he was going to lose his bloody mind.
Seth couldn’t help but preen when he found this corridor not empty. Success, student out of bed. And not just any student, a slytherin. “Oy!” he called watching the kid freeze. How cute, one scared of breaking the rules. “Fifteen points from Slytherin for loitering in the halls after curfew.”
“I’m not loitering!” came the indignant response, and Seth’s grin grew as he recognized that exact voice. Not just any Slytherin, his bitty brother Henry.
“Oh ho, looks like another ten for arguing with a prefect and defying authority.” Seth sing-songed, and before his brother could sputter out a response, “And just look at the state of you! Don’t you know that your uniform is suppose to be clean and pressed. You represent not only your house but your school when you wear it. That’ll be another five. A round thirty it’ll be then.” He could see his brother’s face grow redder and redder with each point off he took. It was so fun to watch his brother get worked up over house points, like they mattered in life. Detentions were what you had to worry about, and Seth was being kind enough not to hand out one of those. And he was just about to point this out when Henry stalked off.
“Hey come back here!” Seth called after him. “I’m not done talking to you.” Still no response. Honestly. Seth didn’t even understand why he was so mad. But he wasn’t stopping and Seth couldn’t just let him stalk off to his common room alone, to be caught by another prefect. That and if he left things as they were, he was bound to get a howler from their mother by morning.
“Oy! If you don’t stop I’m docking another thirty!”
Ah, that got him him to stop. Look he was even moving over the wall, Seth rolled his eyes. He bet that Henry would have gone off to pout in a corner if there was one close enough. He stood in front of his brother watching him stare at the floor for a good half a minute before he spoke up. “You’re such a baby, it’s only house points,” Seth said with a laugh. “You’ll get them back after your potions exam tomorrow!”
“It’s not funny, Seth!” Henry grouched finally looking up to his brother, “I work hard for my points and that—stupid badge of yours is ruining it!”
Merlin, his brother was such a goody goody. “Oh poor, poor Henry!” Seth mocked, covering his heart with his hand. If him docking points was him ruining things, he needed to get his priorities straight. “What’s the House cup matter, anyway? Oooh, the Great Hall gets decorated in your House colors! Big whoop!”
“It proves which House is the best,” Henry snipped, lifting his chin.
Seth scoffed, “And you think Slytherin is? See, little brother,” he managed to wrap his arm around Henry’s shoulders and tug him away from the wall and down the corridor, “if you’d just been sorted into Gryffindor, we wouldn’t be in this dilemma!” They would in a whole different dilemma. Seth quite liked not having Henry in his house, responsible for him a whole lot less often that way. But why couldn’t he be a Ravenclaw or even a Hufflepuff. No he just had to be sorted into---
“I’m a Slytherin!” Henry proclaimed interrupting Seth’s inner monologue causing him to roll his eyes yet again. Didn’t his brother know that being in Slytherin wasn’t as great as he thought it was. He felt he expressed this quite clearly during his summers home before his brother joined him at school. Gryffindor was the best house. And now the snakes have gone and brainwashed his brother and it wasn’t fair.
“Yes, we’re all aware and quite ashamed about it, yadda yadda yadda, Mum wailed for days when she heard,” Seth bemoaned, tugging Henry around a corner watching his brother’s eyes grow.
“She did not,” Henry huffed
Seth just nodded sadly, before continuing on. “She did, she did,” he said, sounding remorseful, “She knew after that it would only be a short while ‘til you figured out you were adopted.”
“Am not!” his brother protesting anchoring his feet into the ground and breaking away.
“Are too!” Seth countered, putting his hands out, checking off his fingers, “Mum’s a Gryffindor, Dad’s a Gryffindor, I’m a Gryffindor! One of these things is not like the other…” he finished off tapping his brother on the nose, taking great pride in the look of horror that was forming on his brother’s face. Completely worth the shouting when he realized that Seth was just teasing.
Except there wasn’t any shouting. Just tears. Big fat tears rolling down his brother’s face and Seth panicked realizing he had gone to far. “What---Henry, stop it!” Seth said frantically, ushering his brother into the nearest loo. Henry let out a wail, and it was everything Seth could do to not just slap his hand over his mouth to muffle the sound. There was no way--- Henry couldn’t have actually believed him. This was going to be a weeks worth of howlers. And his brother was earnestly crying, he was only teasing! He didn’t want to make Henry cry! “You’re---not adopted! A surprise but---I didn’t mean!” Seth stuttered, pulling out napkins to wipe at his little brother’s face.
“I should-should’ve been a Gr-Gr-Gryffindor!” Henry cried, chest heaving. Seth propped him down on a toilet and grabbed onto his shoulders. Seth’s chest tightened as Henry kept whimpering. This was not good at all. He had to fix it.
“No---you’re a Slytherin! And you’re one of the good ones, at that! You don’t hex people in the corridor, you play fair during gobstones; you even wait your turn in line to pick out brooms, who does that?” Seth felt like he could breathe again when the tears abated. It was all true too, he wasn’t just saying words to get the tears to stop. There were days he was sure the sorting hat was wrong in placing his brother. He followed every rule. He just didn’t get it.
“Because there’s an order to things,” Henry muttered, taking in a shuddering breath. Seth shook his head with a laugh and ruffled Henry’s hair.
“You’re a strange little thing, aren’t you,” he said, hefting Henry up by his arm. “Go wash your face before I dock some more points----I’m kidding!”
