No. 62

Prompt: Harry Potter, author’s choice, “Not Slytherin, please, Mr. Hat,” eleven-year-old Tom Riddle said. “Put me in Hufflepuff.”
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What began with eleven-year-old Tom Riddle's, "Not Slytherin, please, Mr. Hat, put me in Hufflepuff," ended in decades of terrorism, misery, and the entire Potter family save one slain in their own home.

No one had foreseen how the House full of cast-offs and rejects, cobbled together with fierce, unyielding loyalty would band together behind one boy, who had been cast off and rejected. No one could have imagined how that House would rise up to bring decades - centuries, millennia - of remembered pain to bear against a world that had mocked and ridiculed them, ignored them and forgotten them.

Ruthless ambition had its danger. Pursuit of knowledge whatever the cost had been the downfall of more than one witch or wizard. Reckless courage for the sake of glory and fame left many injured in its wake. But the kindness and loyalty of the quiet, gentle, tender-hearted Hufflepuffs was dangerous to no one. Or so everyone had thought.

The boy who'd helped Harry get his trunk onto the train had been very polite, very nice, but there had been something odd in his gray eyes that Harry didn't quite understand. And then he met Ron, and they chatted away, and Harry mentioned the nice boy who'd helped him with his trunk. He ought to say thank you properly, after all. Aunt Petunia had told him so, and while she was wrong about many things, she wasn't often wrong about manners.

"Cedric Diggory?" Ron shivered. "Careful. He's a Hufflepuff. There wasn't a witch or wizard who went bad who wasn't in Hufflepuff."