Big Brother is Watching

[Knight Whitledge]

He had sat quietly with a pair of second years at dinner, and remained close to one of the older prefects—a Mr. Allaway—on the journey from the Great Hall to Gryffindor Tower. Knight knew that Handsome must be incredibly pleased to have him in the same house, and he was happy that his brother was happy, but wasn’t happy enough that he could express that happiness to keep his brother happy.

The long and short of it: Knight was not thrilled.

He did his best to put on a brave face—something that did not come naturally to the boy who should not have been a Gryffindor—and socialize with his new housemates. Handsome saw him before he saw Handsome (thus denying him a chance to retreat), and by the time he saw his brother coming towards him, it was too late to flee. Knight instead affixed a strained smile to his face and gave his brother a little wave.

@'Handsome Whitledge'

  

[Handsome Whitledge]

Handsome's main concern with the Sorting Hat going missing was the fact that Honey had ended up alongside Sweetie in Slytherin. While his youngest sister had always seemed a little sharp-tongued, he never felt she belonged in his rivaling house. Perhaps the hat would put her in Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff once everything was back to normal.

Knight, on the other hand, had been smoothly (temporarily) into Gryffindor with him and Cupcake—something that pleased the prefect greatly. Because Knight had always found a way to avoid social interactions and instead stick his nose in a book, Handsome could keep an eye on him to assure he was making friends.

He approached his younger brother, a wide smile on his face. "I see the staff have decided to temporarily decided to place you with your sister and I. I wonder if your name had much to do with it," he teased lightly, ruffling the younger boy's hair. "Nevertheless, I hope you're settling in well at the school, if not Gryffindor house. The first day of first year can be quite overwhelming." He wanted to add 'and you haven't even vomited yet!', but he had a feeling that might trigger that very response from his brother.

  

[Knight Whitledge]

He decided the best course of action would be to ignore the comment about his name. Handsome, after all, did not mean anything at all unkind by it, and under brighter circumstances, the younger Whitledge himself might have been able to see the humour—or at least the irony—in his situation.

“I haven’t really had much of a chance to settle,” Knight pointed out, and nor would he. The eleven-year-old was resolved to not commit whole-heartedly to his new hell house until he absolutely had to, however much his brother and sister might wish to see him thrive there. Why couldn’t he have been placed in Ravenclaw, where it wasn’t frowned upon to sit quietly with a book and ignore people?

“Better here than Slytherin, though,” he added earnestly, pleased to be very well separated indeed from one of his siblings in particular. Sweetie, he knew, would have made his life a misery in the dungeon house, however short-term his stay there might have been!