The Petrified Mudblood and Ghost (2)

"Perhaps it was aimed at everyone who refused to obey him," a voice drifted from the corner, cold and carrying the air of someone who saw through everything. The speaker was an older girl holding a letter, its edges crumpled from being gripped too tightly.

"My mother said in her letter that the whole Wizarding World is talking about it. That Slytherin's heir wants to establish a new order. Not an order of pure-bloods, but—an order for him alone. Those who obey him can live, regardless of blood status. Those who disobey him, even pure-bloods, will die."

The classroom fell silent for several seconds. Everyone was trying to digest what those words meant.

Among Hufflepuff's yellow ranks, the atmosphere was the most fragile.

The badgers did not use anger to hold themselves up like Gryffindor, nor did they use reason to shut fear away like Ravenclaw. Their fear was naked and undisguised, like a sheet of paper that had been pierced through, unable to block even the faintest breeze.

Justin was a Hufflepuff. He was their classmate, someone who attended lessons with them, ate with them, and chatted with them in the common room. Now he lay in a Hospital Wing bed, his body rigid, his skin gray-white, his eyes wide open like an abandoned stone statue in a corner.

Several younger girls clung to one another and cried, their sobs muffled but their shoulders shaking violently. The boys sat in silence, pale as paper, absently picking at their knees with their fingers. An older boy stood before the fireplace with a sheet of parchment listing every Hufflepuff student. He was checking them off one by one—who was in the common room and who was outside. Every time he called a name and heard an "Here," his shoulders loosened slightly.