Wolves Run Amongst Us

She was taking me to Hufflepuff.

...

She wasn't taking me to Hufflepuff, instead, I found myself stood outside a small portrait of a bowl of fruit, I glance over at Bella's carbon copy anxiously.

"Well? What now?" She smirks at me and taps on the portrait, it swings open and low and behold an elderly purple elf is stood there, features worn and haggard, ears dropping and clothes relatively clean. The elf's kind smile changed it all though.

"Thank you, Andy, I will take her from here." With a smile from Bella's sister, she turned on her heel and strode away.

"Wait, where you going? I don't know my way back from here!" I reach for her, but she's already turned the corner and the elf had placed a gentle hand on my forearm.

"Come, let me show you."

The elf turns around, still holding onto my arm and tugs me forward into a large, low-ceilinged room filled with stoves, wooden table and countertops, busy elves, and above all a cooking pot of smells, too many to distinguish quite what's cooking.

I struggle to keep my head down, away from a jagged-edged dirt ceiling. "Now, child, sit." I do as the elf says and sit on the floor at one end of the table, the chairs being far too low to sit on and not have my knees up round my ears.

Soon a plate full of food appears and the elderly elf from earlier slides on the chair next to me. "Eat, and I will tell you why you're here." I look from the elf to the food and grab a fork, digging in with gusto. I glance up at the elf as I chew messily, uncaring.

"Andy and her friend Mr Tonks often come here for hot chocolate, I know her on a more intimate level as a freed elf from the house of black. I am forever in debt to her, although she insists otherwise." She chuckles as I polish off the rest of the food and soon another is placed in front of me, this time I eat more slowly, setting a pace as I don't want to make myself sick from ingesting too much too fast and making my shrunken stomach hurt.

"Mrs Madame Pomphrey noticed first that you were underfed and decided to come to me, in which I asked dear Andy to bring you here. You shouldn't be ashamed of how much you eat child as, as you can see, it will only cause harm." The elderly elf leans forward and rests her tiny hand on my forearm, bare from where I've rolled up my long shirt sleeves.

"Now, once you've finished eating I want you to go to Miss Andy's sister and tell her everything. Mistress McGonagall and Madame Pomphrey know you're not muggleborn. But have kept their knowledge of you from you for your own safety. It is only being brought up now because you being severely underweight could change you forever and that will in turn, greatly affect your friends." She rubs up my arm gently disturbing the long hairs there. "When you're done go find Mistress Bellatrix and talk to Madame Pomphrey, in exactly that order." The elf smiles warmly for the last time before getting up and checking in on the other elves, busy cooking tea for that night.

***

I had done as the elderly elf said, eaten as much food as I could stomach, feeling content for the first time in months, I'd accidently had a nap for a few minutes in the warm kitchen and then woken myself up from my snoring.

One of the kitchen porter elves had shown me how to get back, in a less roundabout route which had taken me outside closer to the whomping willow than anywhere else.