Title: All Your Houses
Fandom: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
Length: 720
Rating: G
Characters: Rose Granger-Weasley, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley
Author note: takes place after the end of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child; spoilers for the beginning of the play. My thanks to lilliburlero for a helpful exchange about the house system as it operates in other school stories.
Summary: All adolescents rebel sooner or later; it’s to be expected. In the case of Rose Granger-Weasley, the flashpoint is her Extended Summer Project.



All adolescents rebel sooner or later; it’s to be expected. In the case of Rose Granger-Weasley, the flashpoint is her Extended Summer Project.

The ESP is the latest thing in magical education, pinched (its critics say) from the Muggle equivalent of N.E.W.T.s. They’re trialling it at Hogwarts this summer as an option for the incurably keen, into which category Rose naturally falls. It’s mostly for sixth-years, but she’s hardly going to let that stop her.

Rose chooses to do her ESP on History of Magic, which is the sort of thing Scorpius Malfoy would normally eat up with a spoon. But Scorpius is too busy making up for lost time with Rose’s cousin Albus (finally, she thinks, and rolls her eyes), so there’s no one to pace herself against. She reads and reads until her eyes are sore, and the more she reads, the more she thinks about the school and all that terrible stuff that happened in fourth year, the angrier she gets.

She’s never stopped to think about the House system before. It’s a fact of life. It’s what everyone knows about Hogwarts. It’s always been there, right from the start. A system that sums up a child at eleven years old and marks them for ever, sticks a label on you that won’t come off, no matter what you do. That sets one house against another, not just in sports, the way she’s read about in Muggle school stories, but in lessons. As if everything in life is a competition: Us against Them.

She’d been so proud to be Sorted into Gryffindor where she belonged, proud and relieved. She’d been ashamed of Albus for ending up in Slytherin with the likes of Scorpius Malfoy. Spoiling the family tradition. Letting the side down. She and Albus are probably never going to be best friends again, the way they were back when they were six, but she understands him better now. She knows something of what he went through, and how she was a part of it. She looks back at last year’s Rose, so convinced of her own superiority as a Gryffindor, and feels a twist of cold dislike.

She can’t change what happened, but she can do the next best thing: produce a meticulously researched, passionately argued, no-holds-barred critical account of the Hogwarts House System from its inception to the present day, with footnotes citing both wizard and Muggle sociologists, and a stirring peroration calling for the abolition of this antiquated, manipulative and divisive structure.

*~*~*

“Oh dear,” Hermione says, when Professor McGonagall’s owl arrives. “Rose seems to have upset Professor Binns with her ESP. Minerva says they thought at first the shock might have made him vanish for good.”

“Pity it didn’t,” Ron says. “Binns should have gone to the Old Ghosts’ Home years ago.”

“Ron!”

“I know, I know you liked him, but honestly, Hermione, he was awful. I don’t suppose he’s got any better in the last 20 years.”

“Yes, well,” Hermione says, “that’s Minerva’s problem. What are we supposed to do about Rose?”

She’s always found Rose harder to deal with than Hugo. Maybe it’d be different if she and Rose spent more time together, but there never is any more time, and anyway they’re too alike to get on well. It’s infuriating, because it’s such a cliché, but it’s true.

“How about nothing?” Ron says, reaching for the marmalade. “If the worst she’s doing is writing extra-long essays, most parents would consider that a win.”

Hermione makes a non-committal noise and pours herself another mug of coffee. It ought to be herbal tea – she’ll be bouncing off the walls if she keeps drinking this stuff – but she needs something stronger this morning.

“She’s fifteen, Hermione. Of course she wants to change the world. Remember S.P.E.W.?”

“That was completely different,” Hermione says indignantly.

“Mhm,” says Ron, crunching toast. “Anyway, she’s probably not going to smash the system overnight. If she still wants to do it when she’s running Hogwarts in 20 years’ time, she can have that fight with the parents and governors. I know who I’m backing.”

“Rose running Hogwarts,” Hermione says, a bit doubtfully. “Is that where you see her ending up?”

“Only if she wants to,” says Ron. “She’s her mother’s daughter, after all.”