Have mercy, Jones," griped a blond boy across the table from Heri. "You might not care about the Sorting but some of us are trying to pay attention."
Jones flushed angrily.
"And who are you to tell me what to do?" she snapped.
The boy gave her a flat look.
"Zacharias Smith of the Smith family that can trace their lineage back to the time of the Founders. Now close your mouth and give the rest of us a bit of courtesy."
Heri patted Jones arm to comfort the other girl as she swelled with offence. Heri shrugged and rolled her eyes to show Jones there was no point in being angry. They shared an embarrassed giggle.
The Sorting dragged on, the remaining students seemingly trying to follow Heri's lead by taking forever to be placed. When 'Zabini, Blaise' was finally put in Slytherin, Heri almost breathed a sigh of relief. (Almost. She might have hurt Jones' feelings if she had.) A kingly feast appeared on the table before them and was tucked into with great gusto. She hadn't eaten anything that day besides a few pasties on the train, and that had been half a day ago.
As they ate, Heri was bombarded with questions. What's it like being Heri Potter? (Well enough she supposed; she had never known any other way of being.) Why had she been living in hiding? (She hadn't known she had been.) Where had she been living? (Really none of their business.) Could they get a look at her scar? (Weird but okay.) Did she really wrestle a troll when she was eight? (She didn't remember any troll, but there had been a cyclops.) Why was she attending school when she was already so powerful? (Powerful or not, turning down a quality education would be short-sighted.) Would she take a picture and autograph it for them? (Well, if they really wanted to . . .)
It was overwhelming. Hagrid had explained it to her that she was famous, but Heri hadn't realised that it was more superhero famous than passing oddity famous. She had expected "Hey, isn't that the girl that survived the Killing Curse? How weird!" not "OH, MY GOD! It's the girl that survived the Killing Curse! Somebody call my mum!" Well, Heri supposed the fuss was mainly because Voldemort had exploded into dust as well when he was trying to kill her; now that she thought more about it, that was likely the main reason. Still, people paying homage to her for her amazing talent in not dying was bewildering.
Going to bed later that night, Heri hoped all the fuss would blow over after a few days. Surely after the others see how unexciting she really was they would move on.
Two weeks later — during a Transfiguration lesson wherein she had transfigured her matchstick into a needle on the first try and earned Hufflepuff twenty points — Heri realised that the attention she was receiving wasn't going to be fading any time soon.
Zacharias Smith wasn't sure how he felt about Heri Potter. On one hand, she was a pleasant girl that he got on with better than he would have expected, what with his distaste for most of the girls he grew up with. She also brought pride to Hufflepuff for housing the Girl Who Lived. On the other hand, he had been expecting to be the most important student in their year, what with him being a descendant of Helga Hufflepuff herself as well as being a son of a goddess (which goddess he didn't know yet since his father said that he was to find out when she revealed herself to him). It was true that he wasn't allowed to let anyone but the other children of divine descent know about his heritage, but he had expected to at least be able to comfort himself knowing he was the most unique of the first-years. He had forgotten that Heri Potter was his age.
When he had set sights on her, Zacharias knew that there was something about her. Others might have attributed it to charisma or her magical prowess shining through, but he knew there was more to it than that. Even before her name had been revealed, eyes had been on her. She was short but she felt like the tallest among them; she didn't make a spectacle of herself but they were all aware of her. Zacharias had never met someone with such presence before, not at that age.
"I feel like I need to stand whenever she enters a room," said Ernie Macmillan, a legacy of Clio, the Muse of History. Zacharias and Ernie had known each other since their diaper days. Ernie had noticed the same thing as Zacharias about Potter. "It would feel like ignoring . . . I dunno, the Minister maybe, if I didn't."
It was like that for everyone, Zacharias had noticed. They would snap to attention whenever Potter appeared, straightening as if they were in the presence of royalty. Was it an instinctive reaction to her fame, or her family's importance maybe? He just couldn't understand it.
Heri Potter was all quiet self-confidence wrapped in a mannerly outer-shell. She had the whole of Hufflepuff eating out of her hands the moment she sat down and even now after the novelty had faded a bit, they still flocked to her like lambs to their shepherd. He didn't think he'd ever seen her without at least two other people hanging around beside her, honestly enjoying her presence beyond the giddiness of talking to someone famous. He didn't know how she did it; mutinously, he wondered if she had somehow been manufactured by some higher power out to torment him.