Arranged Marriage

Chapter 6

Thunder rumbles outside as I turn once again in my bed. I'm exhausted, but I can't sleep, which unfortunately is quite common for me. I'm never really able to turn my mind off at night. I just lay for a couple hours before sleep eventually overtakes me.

Susan, Hannah, and Margret all sleep peacefully in their beds, while I lay here watching the rain from the storm outside pelt the window. On nights like this, where I have an especially hard time falling asleep, my mind jumps from topic to topic. Tonight the main things running through my mind are: the tri-wizard tournament, Harry, and Cedric.

All the possibilities of what could happen are running through my brain, and unfortunately, most of them are not good.

Images of Harry or Cedric hurt, or worse, flash in my mind. I lay motionless as the images keep replaying.  Who the hell would put Harry's name in that goblet? Why? What does this mean? It feels like my head is going a mile a minute and suddenly I feel claustrophobic in my own bed.

I sit up and rip off the sheets as quickly and quietly as I can so I don't wake the others, put my slippers on, and then tiptoe my way to the door and exit the room. I make it to the common room thinking that maybe I'll feel better if I sit in here for a while. But it quickly proves to be no help. Looking around the room, I'm reminded even more of Cedric. I'm reminded that I'm at Hogwarts, that the tournament is going to be starting soon, that I'm a Hufflepuff.

Don't get me wrong, I do love being a Hufflepuff. I love the life that I've made for myself here at Hogwarts. But on dark nights like this, I really feel like a fraud. Like I'm neither of the two versions of myself that I'm constantly switching between.

There's the Sara I am at home. The pureblood with her pureblood family, feared and respected. Reserved and classy. Never stepping out of line, never doing anything to draw attention to herself. Resentful of everyone around her.

Then there's the Sara I am here at Hogwarts. Kind and friendly, always willing to help someone out.  Someone who pushes back on things that are unfair. Someone who often breaks rules.

But the problem is I don't know which one of those people I really am. There will come a time, once I finish my schooling, where my parents will expect me to marry, someone of their choosing most definitely, and continue my life the way most pureblood witches do. At home with the children. I've known that would happen my whole life, but is there a chance that my future could look different? 

Before I got sorted into Hufflepuff I didn't think so, but there could be a chance. But when I start to think that there is, I just as quickly start to feel like it's impossible. What if I really am just another pureblood snob? What if I'm just a product of my environment and that because I was placed into Hufflepuff I developed this other persona. What if in some alternate universe I was  in Slytherin and I was just like my brothers? Maybe the sorting hat made a mistake, and I've just been trying to prove that it didn't this whole time to make myself feel better.

I'm breathing quickly, and I'm so hot that I feel like I might as well be in the desert, despite the fact the fire in the fireplace has long died out.  I want more than anything to be in the fields and woods by the manor. Just laying there in the grass, letting the breeze cool me down. But I'm not there and it's storming, so I couldn't go outside anyway.

I make my way to the door and exit the common room, I know that I'm not supposed to roam that castle at night obviously, but honestly I've broken worse rules at this point. I turn and start to make my way to one of the halls that has a lookout window of the lands that surround the castle. It's the closest to nature I'm going to get right now.