Errand Thinking and Cleaning Solo Finished

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Ruby wandered outside. She had heard about the request for people to complete chores, and she had decided to help out. She would be cleaning up by removing the litter strewn around the grounds and near the Great Lake. It disgusted her how people just left their trash on the ground, despite it being terrible for the environment and animals. Why did they do it, even at Hogwarts? It was ridiculous! They'd be going inside anyway, at some point. Why couldn't they find a rubbish bin or vanish their mess? It was one thing for people to be lazy and inconsiderate, but it was another to defile the beautiful grounds and cause direct harm to creatures and the rest of the environment. Did people simply not care? Did they not realize the severity of what they were doing, or the consequences of their actions? Ruby would gladly talk to some of these people personally, to explain what they were doing wrong, why it was bad, and to point out the effects of it – even the effects that it would come to have on the individual themselves. She just didn't understand why they would do this. The concept of not caring about nature was entirely foreign to her.

Therefore, she had turned her passion and irritation into action, and the least she could do was to help with this. Her sharp blue eyes began scanning the area, picking out the things that weren't supposed to be there. She walked over to the nearest piece, stuffed it into one of the bags that she had grabbed for this purpose, and repeated for every other piece of rubbish that she found. The task was far from tedious – it comforted her, knowing that she was doing something small to help with the problem. The methodical patterns that she could allow herself to fall into by doing this soothed her, and they helped her to enter a tranquil state despite her feelings about the fact that this errand had to exist because of the trash. Now was a perfect time to think, and after a while of picking up garbage, daydreaming slightly, and pondering over some of her calculations, analyses, and aspirations, her mind wandered to the letter she had received this morning. It was almost the end of the school year, but she hadn't known where she was going for the summer until the owl had come.

At the beginning of this year, her parents had relentlessly sent her letter after letter demanding that she tell them what house she got sorted into. At the beginning, the words had been surprisingly kind, but when Ruby hadn't replied, they had started to get colder and threatened her with sending a Howler and getting her to tell them somehow. She didn't want the attention that came with a Howler, so she had reluctantly replied with a short letter consisting of the truth of her sorting results. Her parents had never truly paid her that much attention, and when they had, it had normally been in the wrong places. Before she had entered Hogwarts, they had made it clear multiple times that they did not approve of Slytherins, and that they would be perfectly fine with her being in any house but Slytherin. They had instructed her on what to think and believe in order to get into Ravenclaw or Gryffindor. So, of course, she decided that she would become a Slytherin. Well… perhaps not just like that. After proper research on the truth of what the house was like, she had warmed up to it and accepted that it was quite probably the place for her. Ambitious, determined, resourceful, clever, self-preserving, cunning… that sounded about right, from what she had done in the past and what her three closest cousins had said about/to her. Then again, she had also concluded that Ravenclaw would work very well, too. There was a possibility of Gryffindor as well, but that was less than Slytherin or Ravenclaw. She had realized that it would probably be her large ambitions and her willingness to do whatever it took to reach her goals that would likely place her in Slytherin. She had been right.

Her parents had never responded once she had replied. They hadn't communicated at all with her, even indirectly. Her aunt and uncle – parents of the three cousins who were like older brothers and best friends to her – had said that they were taking her to their house for the holidays, but they wouldn't tell Ruby anything about her parents or what her parents thought. She had also noticed that her aunt and uncle had been wary of her after she had become a Slytherin. They treated her slightly differently at first. Before long, though, they had returned to normal, and made it clear that her house wouldn't change how they felt about her. Her cousins had met up with her a day after her sorting, and it only strengthened their relationship, if anything, so there was nothing to worry about there.

Her parents… why had they behaved this way? Why did they care about her house? Before coming here, she had tried desperately to please them, tried to be the girl that they wanted her to be. Their ideal daughter was not unrealistic, but it simply wasn't who Ruby was. She had tried to fit their mold, tried to be someone she wasn't. No matter what she did, she seemed to never be good enough for them. She still hadn't entirely realized that it might be something wrong with her parents and the way they were thinking about things, rather than something being wrong with her, which was what she currently believed. Why had they suddenly contacted her now? What did they want? Why did they want her to be at home? Was that place even a home now? She had never considered directly rebelling against her parents until the day of her sorting. What would the consequences be?

Distraught and feeling a little like she was being torn apart, Ruby finished with the last of the trash that she could see, and returned the now-full bag to the area where she had got it. She solemnly made her way back to the castle – or perhaps just to a different part of the outdoors, maybe to climb a tree. It was going to be a long day or two of waiting in apprehension until she could have answers to some of her questions. She didn't consider that the answers could be worse than this stage of oblivion. They would be something that she never would have guessed.

Word Count: 1116

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