Hufflepuffs can be hard to write.

Witness what happened to Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which, though not written by J.K. Rowling, did involve her. While not going into spoilers, let’s say that he ends up acting very out of character with how he’s portrayed in Goblet of Fire, for what seemed to me inadequate cause.

Let’s take a step back, though, and ask: what do the four Hogwarts houses represent, anyway? People who take the online Sorting Hat test often seem to think that they are human archetypes, like Myers-Briggs types, the Ennead, the Four Humours (and its variations), star signs, or any other made-up way of describing human difference. None of those things have much psychological rigour, if any at all, though they do correspond to some realities of the way human characteristics clump together.

I’d maintain that, although there’s an aspect of truth to the “human archetypes” idea, the houses are also story archetypes. Very broadly, Slitherin is the antagonist (scheming and ambitious); Ravenclaw the advisor (eccentric and knowledgeable); Griffindor of course the hero (courageous and of good intent); and Hufflepuff the sidekick (reliable and honest).

Hufflepuffs can be hard to write, or at least, hard to write interestingly. They’re even harder to write as the protagonist, because we’ve been conditioned to think of our protagonists as flashy, dramatic, angsty. It’s as if you tried to write Lord of the Rings with Sam in the Frodo role.

At the same time, the more I see of the world, the more I’m convinced that without Hufflepuffs we’d be in a lot more trouble than we are. They’re the people who just turn up and do their job right, whether anyone’s watching and applauding or not (and usually they’re not).

Again: hard to write that interestingly. But it can be done, and I’m committed to doing it.

One of the ways in which it can most easily be done is in a romance. There are a number of different types of romantic hero, but one of them is the Reliable Guy. Romance is largely (certainly not entirely) written by and for women, and the Reliable Guy appeals to many women who’ve been disappointed by men–often men of other romance hero types, like the Ambitious Bastard (Slytherin), the Impractical Self-Absorbed Loser (Ravenclaw), or the Flashy, Angsty Dude Who Thinks It’s All About Him (Griffindor). The only downside to the Reliable Guy is that he’s not very exciting, and if you can overcome that issue, he’s romance dynamite.

One good way to overcome the not-exciting issue is to make the Reliable Guy a competent protector against an external threat. I’ve just been reading a couple of books by T. Kingfisher, Swordheart and Paladin’s Grace, both of which feature romance heroes who are Reliable Guys with a military background who can, and do, physically protect the heroines (women who have previously had unsatisfactory relationships with a Vague Loser and an Ambitious Bastard respectively). Both books are primarily romance, with a sword-and-sorcery B plot providing the complications so necessary to a good romance. But also, both go beneath the surface of the Reliable Guy to show that he does, in fact, have a good deal of angst and trauma going on, he just doesn’t let it keep him from doing his job. This is a remarkably effective approach to the Reliable Guy.

I’ve written a couple of Reliable Guys myself. Patient, the romance hero in Hope and the Patient Man, is a craftsman who takes pride in his work, and just the kind of gentle, kind, persevering Reliable Guy the brilliant and capable, but haunted, heroine Hope needs to get her through her issues. Perse (short for Perseverance; people in my setting are largely named for admirable qualities, and the naming is often, though not always, accurate) in Underground War is also a craftsman of a sort, a baker, and is, again, just the kind of solid anchor that the brilliant and capable Precision needs in order to overcome her trauma. Both of them have their own issues: Patient has a simmering anger that, in a later book, bursts out unexpectedly, and Perse has experienced rejection within his family and his culture over his choices, something that Precision can also relate to. They’re not simple beasts of burden (as the Rolling Stones might put it). There’s conflict and struggle going on under the placid exterior.

And this, I think, is a significant part of the secret to pulling off a Hufflepuff hero. He has layers. He’s no longer just a sidekick, uncomplainingly backing up the hero like the bass player in a band that’s named after the lead singer. He’s now in the centre of the narrative, and as such, he needs–and can easily have–a backstory and some struggles and losses. What makes him the Hufflepuff is that he’s never going to give you up, never going to let you down, never going to run around and desert you. What makes him the hero, though, is that the author is going to pound on that quiet determination as hard as they can, taking special care to hit the spot where he was wounded.

I’ve been talking as if women can’t be Hufflepuffs, which is obviously not true. I personally gravitate to both reading and writing about competent, pragmatic women who will just get on with things with a minimum of outward drama; I can’t be having with princesses. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t have plenty of internal drama, imposter syndrome, worry that the Reliable Guy won’t respect you if you show him your vulnerable side, doubt that he could possibly like you (especially if he finds out the ways in which previous men have told you you’re inadequate and don’t matter and you somehow believe them despite knowing that they’re lying bastards…) A question that seems to come up a lot for Hufflepuff women is “What if I disappoint people? That will be terrible!”

It also comes up for men, though in a slightly different formulation. The hero of Paladin’s Grace says at one point: “She can’t rely on me, all right? And being reliable is all I’m good for.”

The big fear for a Hufflepuff is falling apart, failing to do your duty because of your issues. This makes them emotionally guarded. They come across as unemotional, because if they let themselves show emotion they might not be able to stop, and then who would keep the important wheels turning?

But if they’re a protagonist, if you get inside their heads, you see that vulnerability alongside the toughness. And it’s this play back and forth between the inward chaos and the outward order, along with that order being slowly imposed on external threats, that makes a Hufflepuff interesting.

Griffindors are easy to make interesting, because they’re interesting on the outside. You don’t even need to go below the surface. They’re the kind of people that everyone looks at when they walk into the room, and they expect to be looked at. That can be a trap for authors, who think that casting a Griffindor (handsome, athletic, courageous, charming, and probably wealthy) as the hero is as much work as they need to do, that character development is unnecessary because they’re pretty to look at, and that readers will easily forgive them being self-absorbed, high-handed and willing to let the costs of their bad decisions fall on other people. Or that casting a Griffindor princess (beautiful, intelligent–or so we’re told, though very seldom shown–dramatic, and special) is likewise adequate, without giving the reader any other reason to like or respect her, such as having her make good decisions or treat other people with consideration. For me, as a reader, seeing characters like this in the lead roles of a romance is a guaranteed fail.

But give me a good pair of Hufflepuffs mortally afraid of disappointing each other, and we’re off to the races. Lindsay Buroker is good at them, too (particularly in the Emperor’s Edge novels, but really in all her work); so is Lois McMaster Bujold, on occasion. For me, it’s a winning formula, and one I want to explore more in my own work.