#fuffy hates you all and is going to go lie down and cry for a while now | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mistysnat · 7 years

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a home to call our own, ch. 2 - faith/buffy

fuffy hogwarts au, also on ao3!

As Faith walks through the train she glances into other occupied compartments, casually trying to gain some info on her soon-to-be peers. One contains a girl with a red bob and skin pale as a ghost who’s reading furiously. Another houses a tall brunette girl who’s complaining loudly (to herself it seems) that there’s not a television to be found in the entire train and she’s bored, what is she supposed to do? Faith continues to walk until she reaches an old woman with a pushcart of food for sale.

After Faith’s spent a small but agonizing amount of her cash on the only thing vaguely resembling actual, non-flying food that she could find, and has scarfed it down quickly, she feels the train beginning to slow to a halt. An attendant with a chipper Scottish accent making her rounds through the hall pops her head in and tells Faith to leave her backpack in the compartment, as her stuff, as well as everyone else’s, will be magically sent to their rooms after they get their dorm assignment. Despite having been flown over the ocean in a car with wings, Faith’s still not sure she trusts “magic”, and beyond that, she doesn’t trust people, period. She considers smuggling her backpack in under her hoodie, but decides against it. That thing would be pretty hard to hide, and none of her belongings are worth anything. She has a few favorite shirts and a pair of jeans she likes, but, judging by the matching black cloaks everyone around her has suddenly donned, she probably won’t be able to wear that stuff here anyway. Instead she grabs her wallet and her plastic bag filled with a few sentimental items that she’s embarrassed by but has kept for years anyway, and shoves them into one of the deep pockets of her ratty jeans.

She disembarks off the train in a crush of eager students, all chattering so excitedly they sound like a flock of pigeons fighting over the last bread crumb. For a second Faith wishes that she could join in on the excitement and gossip with friends like everyone else, but then she remembers that she doesn’t need anyone and she’s better off alone. Faith’s stomach is tied up in knots, and she’s suddenly struck with a sick, nervous feeling—different to the kind she hopes she’s left behind at her mom’s though. More anticipatory, less dreadful acceptance. She stands by herself to wait for whatever’s about to happen next.

Minutes pass, and the flurry of talk quiets, as if the students know that something is about to go down. They continue to whisper among themselves; Faith can hear several individual conversations going on at once, all of them about something called “houses” and which house people are going to be in. Faith has no idea what the houses are, but she listens closely, hoping to gain some information that will make her feel less confused and lost. Number seven and four on Faith’s list of the Top Ten Feelings That I Hate that she wrote when she was nine.

“I hope I’m a Gryffindor. Everyone says it’s the best house,” Faith hears a tall redheaded boy say. “All my siblings before me were Gryffindors.”

“--Slytherin for me. That’s the one that’ll really get you ahead in life--” Faith notices that a few people glance suspiciously at the boy who says that.

“--I just hope I’m not in Hufflepuff--”

“Oh, anything but Hufflepuff! They’re all a bunch of wet, soggy blankets!”

“Nah, Slytherin is worse. You want everyone to think you’re about to turn evil, always keepin’ an eye on you, eh? And if you do get put in Slytherin, it’ll probably be true.”

“Gryffindor or Ravenclaw are good, I’m crossing my fingers. I’ll just die if they put me in Hufflepuff...me mum already thinks I’m dense.”

Faith frowns at all these strange words. Gryffindor? Hufflepuff? What did I expect from a school called Hogwarts, Faith thinks.

Soon mini boats are sailing across the surface of the lake, and the students scramble in. A petite blonde girl wearing the same black cloak as everyone else follows Faith into the boat that she’s chosen, almost causing it to tip over.

“Oops! Sorry!” the girl exclaims in a high pitched American accent.

“It’s...okay,” Faith says as she holds onto the edge of the boat, trying to get it to steady.

“I’m Buffy,” the girl holds her hand out to shake. “What’s your name?”

“Faith,” Faith shakes her hand after a moment of hesitation. Then she slowly turns away and frowns into the mist that swirls on the lake’s edge, trying to catch a glimpse of where they’re heading. She sees the outline of a castle—recognizable to Faith from one of the few bedtime stories her mother read to her when she was little—slowly come into focus through the fog and feels a jolt of shock and something like pure excitement. That’s not where she’s going to be living, is it?

Faith glances at Buffy out of the corner of her eye. Buffy’s patting her long hair and tapping her feet on the bottom of the boat. She’s pretty and blonde and she has shiny pink lips. Kind of like Amy and Becky from school. They thought Faith was the trashy daughter of a whore.

“So...uh…. Do you see the castle?” Faith hunches into herself slightly when she realizes that she just spoke out loud. And that what she said was so stupid.

“Yeah! It’s so pretty! I’m sooo excited!” Buffy squeals as she starts bobbing rapidly in her seat, causing the boat to list side to side again.

“So, did you...know about Hogwarts? Like before we came?” Faith doesn’t know why she’s suddenly being so talkative. Oh well, can’t help to at least get to know some other people a little, right? Even if this was the type of girl that Faith had learned to stay away from, the hard way. They tend to send Faith home with the kind of wounds that don’t show, words that turn into wounds and grow and grow in Faith’s chest until they come out of her eyes in bitter tears that can’t be held in any longer; pain and hurt and a voice whispering why were you dumb enough to think they’d like you?

“Nope!” Buffy looks over at her and smiles widely. “Just heard about it when I got the letter! Mom didn’t want me to go at first, but, uh...well dad said it was okay.” Her blinding smile dims slightly. “What about you? Did you know?”

“Yeah,” Faith says before she can stop herself. “I did. My mom told me a lotta stories about the day I’d come here, my whole life. Sometimes she’d cry, saying she’d miss me so much—and she’d go on and on about what it was like when she was here too.” Faith holds her face still and tries to act convincing. She doesn’t know why she lied.

“That’s cool!” Buffy smiles. “It’s awesome that you’re not the first one. So you won’t be confused or anything.”

“...Yup,” Faith nods sharply and turns away again. She’s suddenly sure that she just made a bad decision. Typical that that feeling only ever comes after she’s done something and can’t take it back.

“Can I ask you about the houses? I heard they’re kind of like teams? And I heard that Gryffindor is for good, brave people, and Ravenclaw is for smart people—guess I won’t be getting in there—and that Slytherin is for...kind of scaryish people and Hufflepuff is for, like, sweet people? Is that true?

“Uh...yeah, pretty much,” Faith says with fake certainty. That sounds pretty similar to what she overheard.

“I hope I’m put in Gryffindor,” Buffy smiles. “But everyone I’ve talked to has been saying that. I probably won’t be.”

Me too, the tiny, hopeful inner voice inside of Faith that only ever pops up rarely (and that Faith quickly shuts down when it does) speaks up. I want to be a Gryffindor too. Brave...good...all the things I’m definitely not, the voice transitions into her regular old pessimistic one. The one that’s kept her alive so far.

“Hey, where’s your cloak?” Faith is interrupted from her dejected thoughts by the question.

“Huh?” she asks, stalling for time. Shit! She might get caught in that lie sooner than she thought. “Oh, uh...my family didn’t have time to...shop. It’s getting shipped.”

“Oh,” the girl blinks and starts chewing on her lip. Her face doesn’t reveal much and Faith can’t tell if she believes her or not. “Well, I have an extra one. You can borrow it until yours comes, if you want. So you don’t get in trouble….”

“Um, okay.” Faith hates charity, but it probably is a good idea to blend in in the beginning. Especially when it seems like she still has a lot to learn about Hogwarts. And Buffy seems nice about it, no fakeness that Faith can detect.

“Here you go,” Buffy pulls out a thick black bundle of cloth from a shimmery pink bag that she’s apparently smuggling in.

Faith yanks the heavy cloak on over her clothes, and still, despite Buffy’s niceness, Faith knows. She’s been in this situation before, she can feel the sickly, embarrassing energy—this girl is the pretty, nice, blonde girl that Has, and Faith is the skinny, scrappy, unkempt, not-so-nice girl that Doesn’t Have. She hates it. She doesn’t say a word to Buffy for the rest of the boat ride and keeps her eyes on the horizon as they cut swiftly through the creeping fog.

#fuffy #faith lehane #buffy summers #btvs #fanfic #fanfiction #faith x buffy #mine #my writing

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