BELATED Secret Santa fic for Adanwen! Her prompt was a "Sybil/Tom Hogwarts AU", where both characters were sorted into Hufflepuff. This lil' story soon got away from me (big shocker) and so it will be a short multi-chaptered fic that I will try to update quickly over the next few days. But it has been fun to write! And I decided to keep the characters in "Edwardian" Britain, so keep that in mind while reading it.

Hope you enjoy this little fantasy AU! Stay tuned for updates and share your thoughts! Thanks for reading!

JUST & LOYAL
by The Yankee Countess

Chapter One

1912

"Now there's no need to be nervous, darling; just let the Hat do its duty, and everything will be fine," Mary assured her from where she sat on the train.

Sybil glanced up from the book she was reading. "I'm not nervous," she replied with a smile. And she truly wasn't. She had been waiting for this day for years—the day she would finally begin at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The Crawley family was one of the oldest pure-blood magical families in Britain; descendants of Salazar Slytherin himself, which perhaps explained why a majority of the Crawley family ancestors were sorted into Slytherin, including their grandmother, father, and Mary, herself. But there were some Gryffindors and Ravenclaws here and there, including their Aunt Rosamond, and Edith, both of whom had been sorted into Ravenclaw.

Speaking of Edith, she had disappeared from the Crawley family's private train car, only to return with an armful of sweets from the trolley cart.

Mary rolled her eyes. "What a wonderful way to start the new school year, Edith; with a plump belly and rotting teeth."

Edith rolled her own eyes, before sticking out her tongue. "Well I was going to share, but now I think I won't," she stuck her nose up into the air.

"What makes you think I would want any of your sweets anyway?" Mary muttered, though she did seem to be eyeing some chocolate frogs that Edith had collected.

However, Edith was ignoring her sister's question and was grinning madly, as if she were bursting with a secret. "Guess who I came across?"

Sybil looked at her sister with curious eyes and opened her mouth to speak, but the compartment door opened, and the cheeky grin of their cousin made a sudden appearance.

"Matthew!" Sybil gasped, leaping to her feet and embracing him quickly. "It's so good to see you!"

Matthew laughed and returned the hug. "And you as well, Sybil; I can't believe how quickly time has gone! It only seems like yesterday that you were crawling around in the Downton nursery, and now here you are, preparing to begin your first year at last."

Sybil made a bit of a face at her cousin's words. She never cared for it when people only seemed to remember as "the baby" of the family, and hoped that perhaps now that she was finally starting at Hogwarts, those thoughts could finally be put to rest and she could at last, be acknowledged for the growing witch she was becoming.

"Ah, so the Captain of the Gryffindor Quiditch team has decided to grace us with his presence? My, what did we do to deserve this?"

Matthew sighed and ran a hand through his hair, before turning and forcing a smile as his blue eyes met Mary's brown. "And lovely to see you too, Cousin Mary."

Mary was the only one amongst them whom Matthew would address in that manner. Sybil exchanged a look with Edith, who seemed to be rather amused by the interaction. They both believed that despite Mary and Matthew's banter, the two of them secretly liked one another. However, they also knew that the both of them were far too stubborn to admit it.

"How was your summer holiday?" Sybil asked, tugging on Matthew's hand to sit down next to her. "Is it true that the entire Gryffindor Quiditch Team went to Ireland for the World Cup?"

Matthew chuckled and nodded his head, while Mary rolled her eyes and turned her attentions to the window, pretending she didn't care. "We did, we did, and had a chance to meet with several of Hogwarts new scholarship students while there."

Mary groaned, interrupting their cousin's story. "I can't believe this new scholarship policy, why it's utterly preposterous!"

Sybil frowned at her sister's argument. "Oh Mary, how can you say that? Every witch or wizard should have the chance to attend Hogwarts—"

"Is it fair to families like ours? Families that pay good money so that people like Edith and me and now you, Sybil, can receive the best magical training and education, while these people do nothing?"

"Do nothing!?" Sybil gasped, feeling righteous indignation kindle in her blood. "These people, as you call them, Mary, work very hard and slave away long hours in factories and shipyards and coal mines to make ends meet! Every penny they earn goes to putting food on the table and a roof over their heads, and if a good institution like Hogwarts wishes to offer some help to the children of these hardworking families—"

"What on earth have you been reading?" Mary interrupted.

Sybil folded her arms across her chest. "The Common Cause, if you must know."

"The what?" Mary looked utterly baffled.

"It's a newsletter; there were some women in Ripon passing them out when I went with Mrs. Hughes last Thursday to pick up my uniform from the dressmaker's."

"Oh here we go," Edith groaned with a shake of her head. "You've awoken the 'the suffragette', Mary."

Sybil turned her eyes and glared at her other sister. "You say that as if it's a bad thing, when in truth, I am quite proud of the label," she lifted her nose into the air, trying to look every bit as haughty as their grandmother.

"Of course you are," Edith muttered, before popping a lemon drop into her mouth.

Sybil opened her mouth to retaliate, but Mary cut her off again. "You're eleven years old, Sybil, you don't know what you're talking about—"

"Oh for heaven's sake, stop it!" Sybil snapped. "I may only be a first year, but I'm not baby! So stop dismissing what I have to say as if I am!"

"Here, here!" Matthew cut in, to which Mary groaned and rolled her eyes again. "Sounds like you're a Gryffindor to me, Sybil," he added with a wink.

"I think she's going to be Ravenclaw, like me," Edith grinned, opening a box of Bertie Bots Every Flavor Jellybeans. "She certainly reads like one."

"Don't be so sure," Mary muttered, her gaze fixed on the passing scenery as the train continued its journey. "She has the ambition to be a fellow Slytherin."

Despite the arguments they had been having, Sybil did smile as she listened to them. "Well, perhaps. I mean, I would be honored to be in any of those houses. But maybe I'll surprise you all? Maybe I'll be in Hufflepuff?"

Both Mary and Edith started to laugh then, which did cause Sybil to frown. "What's so funny? There's nothing wrong with Hufflepuff, it's a perfectly good, respectable, and honorable house!"

"I agree," Matthew added, though his agreement did little to ease Sybil's distaste at the way her sisters continued laughing.

"Oh gracious, it is the sort of thing that would happen," Mary sighed after her laughter finally died down.

"Very true," Edith added, for once offering a rare moment when both older Crawley sisters saw eye to eye on something.

Sybil folded her arms and leaned back in her seat with a pout. "I don't see why it's so amusing," she muttered.

"Only because it's never happened, dearest," Mary explained.

"There's never been a Hufflepuff in the Crawley family before," Edith clarified.

Sybil's frown softened at this and she sat up a little straighter, her lips curling into a proud smile at the thought. "Then I shall be the first."

Mary lifted a brow at this. "Don't count your chickens, Sybil; that's your Slytherin ambition talking."

"And in the end, the Sorting Hat always has the final say," Edith added matter-of-factly.

Just then the soft sound of a knock on their compartment door brought all of their attention to a boy standing on just the other side, a boy who looked a bit nervous and out of place.

"Tom!" Matthew quickly rose to his feet and opened the train door. Both Mary and Edith frowned and even narrowed their eyes in question as without asking, Mary put his arm around the smaller boy's shoulders and pulled him inside. "Cousin Mary, Edith, Sybil—meet Tom Branson; he's one of the scholarship students I met while in Ireland over the summer," he explained.

Mary nodded her head, while Edith gave a soft "how do you do"; neither greeting was very warm or welcoming. Sybil rolled her eyes at her sisters, before rising and crossing the compartment to where young Tom Branson stood, smiling at him (and at the gasp emanated from her sisters) as she held her hand out to the boy to shake. "Sybil Crawley; I'm pleased to meet you Mr. Branson."

"LADY Sybil," Mary was quick to add, giving her youngest sister a look of warning.

It was clear based on his mismatched suit that Tom Branson did not come from the same sort of world she and her sisters grew up in. Nor, she doubted, did he come from the sort of world in which their cousin had been raised. However, despite the scrutiny he was receiving, Sybil noticed how the boy swallowed the nervous lump that had been stuck in his throat, lifted his chin, and without another moment's hesitation, reached forward and took Sybil's offered hand in his own, giving it a good, hearty shake. "Pleased to meet you…Lady Sybil."

"Oh please, just 'Sybil' is fine," she returned with a smile.

"Sybil!" Mary hissed, before rising to her feet and gently putting her hands on Sybil's shoulders. "My dear, we'll be at Hogwarts soon; we should get our robes on."

Sybil bit back the groan in her throat at her sister's meddling, and instead smiled again at the boy before releasing his hand. "I'll see you at school, Tom; and who knows? Perhaps we'll both be sorted into the same house?"

He smiled at this, but before another word could be spoken, the compartment door was shut on both him and Matthew.

"Sybil…" Mary announced in a rather icy tone, turning her sister around until they were facing each other. "Don't get any ideas."

Sybil frowned. "What is that supposed to mean!?"

"You know what it means!"

Sybil twisted herself free from Mary's grasp. "I was simply being polite! He looked so nervous, and who can blame him? So far away from home, not knowing anyone—"

"That hardly gives you an excuse for forgetting yourself!" Mary warned. "Just because people like him are at Hogwarts and will be sharing classrooms, dormitories, and meals with us, DOES NOT make him our equal! And you don't do him any favors by encouraging him to forget that."

"Mary's right," Edith added, another rare moment, twice in the same day. "Telling him to just call you 'Sybil'? That's not fair to him."

"Why?" Sybil asked, though she knew the answer they would give. She just didn't like it. She was perfectly fine being friends with everyone, regardless of their social standing. But apparently the world was not ready for such "radical" thinking.

"Because when we finish at Hogwarts, we all must return to the world," Mary answered. "We go back to Downton, Matthew will go back to Manchester, and people like Mr. Branson will be returning Dublin…or wherever he came from in Ireland."

Sybil shook her head. "Then what is the point of going to Hogwarts, or any school then, if not to better our minds, and thus, better the world?"

Mary and Edith seemed to be lost on what to say then, and Sybil turned away from them, opening the garment bag that contained her new Hogwarts uniform. "I for one am hoping it will be a new and better world than the one in which we presently live," she stated with a smile.

That smile only grew when later, during the sorting ceremony, the hat announced in a loud clear voice, "HUFFLEPUFF!"—for both herself and Tom Branson.

To be continued...