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aroacehogwarts · 6 years

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Like The Phoenix

Happy Solstice, all! This was a fic created in case one of the White Dragon participants couldn’t finish their gift. Happily, they can! So instead this is a little teaser of what I’m sure is to be an avalanche of awesome! Gift giving officially starts tomorrow. For now, please enjoy this aroace-centric fic. :D

Gryffindor, where the brave reside! Ravenclaw, where the wisest dwell! Slytherin, where the ambitious stay! Hufflepuff... where hard workers live?

Like the brave and righteous don’t work hard to correct injustice? Like the wise don’t work hard to gain knowledge and experience? Like ambition means you don’t have to work hard to achieve results? Sometimes, being in Hufflepuff was an identity crisis.

It was one certain Hufflepuff that struggled with this on the night we watch them. It was near the beginning of the school year. Slytherin had won last year’s Cup. Ravenclaw the year before. And Gryffindor the year before that. A lot could change in the coming months, but Slytherin already had a nice head start. It wasn’t particularly uncommon for a student to not see their house win the Cup at the end of the year the entire time they were at Hogwarts, but this student had never seen that coming. The house known for hard work and toil, and even their Head of House wasn’t certain the last time Hufflepuff had won the Cup - though they did know Hufflepuff had won the Cup at some point. A small comfort, if even that.

So what, really, was Hufflepuff? Who, really, was this Hufflepuff? Let us call them, Alex, for their own anonymity and comfort. However, we shall share their story because it is an important one, and one that Alex would want shared.

“Avis.” BANG.

Alex conjured flights of bird after flights of bird. The spell wasn’t mastered, so the birds disappeared minutes after conjuring, meaning Alex wasn’t buried in an avalanche of feathers.

“Could you quit that?” an annoyed voice came from the doorway that Alex’s back was facing.

Well, the noise was bound to have drawn somebody at some point.

“No,” Alex replied tersley. “Avis!”

“Incendio!” Fire burst through the dark, stone room, setting most of the flocks alight, withering the birds away to nothing.

“Hey!” Alex rose and turned. “Do you know how dangerous that is?”

The fire-caster wasn’t someone Alex recognized off the bat, but Alex guessed they were a year younger. Their blue bowtie identified them as a Ravenclaw. Their scowl made their emotions at the moment quite clear.

“Dangerous for you, maybe. I could put the fire out far before it hurt me.”

“Rude.” Alex turned and sat, unwilling to get into a duel with this random younger year. Instead of the calming casting, Alex pulled out a cube. One side held a large button, another a series of smaller buttons, another a metal ball that could be scrolled in any direction, and so forth. Alex took to playing with the cube instead.

“Hello? Aren’t you going to cast more birds? C’mon.”

Alex ignored them. The Ravenclaw was clearly itching for a fight. Alex did not want to give it to them.

The Ravenclaw sighed. “Fine, be that way.”

Alex relaxed slightly as their footsteps walked away, then immediately tensed when the footsteps started getting louder and closer again.

“What’s your problem, huh?”

“Nothing,” Alex said, keeping a level voice.

“Yeah, I bet. You and all the other perfect Hufflepuffs.”

“What?” Alex couldn’t help the tinge of surprise that came with the word. “Perfect Hufflepuffs? Don’t you mean loser Hufflepuffs? Nobody Hufflepuffs?”

“Yeah, right. Free to just be yourselves, not having to live up to some restrictive stereotype that people think only means one thing making the pressure so great it literally breaks you.”

“Whoa, what?” was all Alex could manage. This was far beyond anything Alex had expected to deal with today. Wasn’t one internal crisis enough for one day? Apparently not.

“Nothing. Nevermind.” The Ravenclaw turned to leave. Alex got the impression that this time, there would be no returning.

“Wait! No, that was a... useless response. I just didn’t know the other Houses felt the same way?”

The Ravenclaw paused but didn’t turn to face Alex. “Same way?”

“Yeah, I feel like...,” Alex paused to gain courage to say the words out loud. “I feel like I don’t fit in anywhere. We’re supposedly the House of hard work, right? But bravery, wisdom, and ambition don’t take hard work? Anyone from any House could work hard. So what does it even mean to be a Hufflepuff? What do I have to be proud of?”

The Ravenclaw was silent for a few moments. “Nothing.” Alex’s heart came crashing down. Alex turned to avoid having to look at the Ravenclaw. “None of us do, really. The Houses are just meaningless sortings based off a couple of dead people several hundred years ago. Who knows what purpose the sorting really served back then. I definitely don’t think it serves a purpose now, though. I mean, everyone thinks Ravenclaw just means book smarts, but that’s not the only kind of intelligence. It’s not definitively the best kind of intelligence either. And you think there are no intelligent Gryffindors nor Hufflepuffs nor Slytherins? The Houses are just oversimplified views of the traits that a person, at one point in their life, when they’re young and are highly unlikely to know what you really want now nevermind for the rest of your life.”

Now it was Alex’s turn to sit in stunned silence.

“Wow, that was... Wow,” was all Alex could manage. Everything they’d been unable to articulate had just been summed up by this unknown Ravenclaw. “Alex.”

“Hm? Oh, Jamie.”

Alex felt an odd kinship with Jamie. The sorting rant was oddly relaxing. That’s what made Alex admit, “you know, it’s funny. Realizing I was asexual was easy. Realizing I was arospec was harder. But coming out as both of them to my family and friends was a breeze. Yeah, I was nervous, but I was also excited. I guess I’m just lucky, but I never had any crisis over my orientation. My House, though? Crises galore.” Alex laughed, a tad darkly.

“A-asexual?”

“Never heard of it?”

“No. What’s it mean?”

“It generally means a lack of sexual attraction.”

“So then arospec. Short for?”

“Aromantic spectrum. Aromantic is a lack of romantic attraction. The spectrum part just means it’s not so clear as never experiencing romantic attraction. Some experience it only under certain circumstances, some experience it just at a very low level, some might experience it at differing intensities, etc. Anything beyond just plain experiencing or not experiencing romantic attraction.” Sometimes it could be tiring to explain this sort of thing over and over again, but this time, Alex was actually excited. Jamie seemed genuinely interested. This wasn’t a case of someone just not knowing or understanding Alex. This was a case of something thirsting to know what these words meant. Alex was inexplicably excited over this.

“If arospec is a thing then asex-spec? Asespec? Must be a thing, too.”

“Yes! Acespec. Same principal as arospec but with sexual attraction.”

“And are these the only words you know? Asexual, acespec, aromantic, arospec?”

“No, there are tons of terms out there! More than I could even list. There’s - and you can attach asexual or sexual or aromantic or romantic after each of these - demi, gray, lith, cupio, fray, apothi, quoi, etc. Lesse, what’d I say? Quoi means you confuse different attraction types or can’t tell them apart. It can also mean a whole host of other things, like finding the whole concept of attraction meaningless or illogical to you. Demi means you don’t experience an attraction until after a bond is formed. Gray is basically another term for acespec - it means a whole lot of things that basically mean you don’t simply experience attraction or don’t simply not experience attraction. And... I’m rambling, aren’t I?”

“Yes, but go on, go on!”

Alex smiled, a genuine smile - the first in what felt like ages. “What haven’t I defined yet?”

Jamie closed their eyes, trying to remember as much as Alex. “Lith, cupio, fray, and apothi,” Jamie said.

Alex raised an eyebrow but didn’t stop to question. “Lith means you can feel and desire a type of attraction and relationship but only in theory. Fray means you experience attraction until you form a bond with someone. And apothi means you’re specifically asexual or aromantic and sex or romance repulsed. And these are really just the tip of the iceberg. I’ve got a book I’ve been bogarting if you want it?”

“The book talks about all this stuff?”

“Yes! It’s got definitions, theories, and even personal stories in it. It’s helped me feel not so alone.”

Jamie was quiet, thoughtful. “So can you be more than one thing at once? Like bi and demi?”

“Oh yeah, you can be so much more than that. You could be demibiromantic quoipansexual or whatever mix of things best suits you.”

“I would love to see the book,” Jamie said quietly.

“Well come on, then!” Alex hopped up and walked over to Jamie. “It’s just in my dorm room. Don’t tell anybody, but I keep it under my pillow. It comforts me. I’d be happy to know it’s helping someone else.”

Jamie seemed a little flustered following a few paces after Alex. “I don’t want to take something so precious to you.”

“You’re not! I’m sharing.”

Without any sense of awkwardness or embarrassment, Alex knocked on the barrels outside the common room once they’d reached the area by the kitchens. Alex couldn’t help but laugh at Jamie partly attempting to avert their eyes and partly sneaking a curious glance. “Houses are meaningless, remember?” Alex teased.

“Right,” Jamie relaxed, climbing in after Alex.

And that is where our story ends, dear listener. As they say, the rest is history. Alex and Jamie became close friends after that night, and each were welcomed without too many second glances into the other’s common room. Jamie soon came out as aromantic acespec to Alex, the only person they were out to for many years.

Hopefully the moral of this story has been made clear, but if not, let me spell it out for you: it’s not the labels that others put on you that matters; it’s your actions - big and small alike - that matter.

#hufflepuff #aromantic #asexual #aro headcanons #ace headcanons #aroacehp #aro spectrum #ace spectrum #coming out #ravenclaw #plaontic relationships #safefora #not character #white dragon #hufflepuff mod #long post

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