dursley [h. g.]

•• dursley •• || the aftermath

Kendra was not usually the type of person to make rash decisions, and when she did, they were at the very least based in some form of logic. But there was something about that day in the bathroom and the morning that had led up to the moment of her standing before her cousin, about to make a bad decision, and her friend, about to let him do it.

And so, Kendra jumped in front of the spell. 

In retrospect, it had been a terrible idea. She had no idea what kind of spell was going to come out of Harry's mouth, and any other day there was probably a 90% chance the spell was expelliarmus anyways. But there was some tugging feeling in her gut that something was different this time. Maybe because it was Draco instead of someone else, maybe because Harry was still freshly angry over what had happened to Katie Bell.

Even Kendra didn't know what the spell was when she heard it. But there was no time to think about it, because whatever the spell was and where it was that Harry had found it, Kendra had been sliced by a thousand tiny knives and crumpled to the floor, blood leaking out of a hundred lashes.

She could see Harry's look of shock and horror as he watched her fall, and then bleed. It was as though it took a moment for him to register what he had done, and to who he had done it. And then, as it processed, he fell to his knees in front of Kendra. She watched the water on the floor, already mixing with blood, splash onto his pants and bottom of his white button-down. 

"Oh my God, Kendra, I'm so sorry..." Harry trailed off, unsure what to do. He had never been the healer among the two of them- it was always Kendra who knew how to fix the aches and pains of others, to fix tiny papercuts with the wave of her wand, to splint broken bones. Harry just did what she told him to, and as her blood spilled into the water on the ground, her focus slipped. 

"What did you do to her, Potter?" Draco asked incredulously, sounding closer. He had been crying, Kendra could tell. She smiled slightly, pleased that at the very least she had stopped them from fighting or at least fighting with wands. 

"I don't know, it was in a book, I didn't know what it did," Harry snapped back. Draco came into her line of sight. 

"Kendra? Can you hear me?" he asked. His hair was wet with the spray from the sink, his eyes bloodshot from crying recently. 

"Unfortunately," she muttered. There was a pause as neither boy knew what to do, and could only stare at Kendra as she bled out. 

It had been a stupid idea, even if she had accomplished what she wanted, Kendra decided. She wasn't really keen on bleeding out in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom and was even less keen on haunting it with the ghostly girl. "Are you going to sit here and stare or are you going to go get someone, Malfoy?" Harry snapped at Draco, who turned his cold stare to Harry. 

"I don't want to leave her here with you. Believe it or not, I know more about this than you do, Potter," Draco spat back. Kendra shut her eyes. Maybe she was going to die and the last thing she would hear would be her cousin and Draco Malfoy arguing over who was going to save her. 

"What is going on in here, gentlemen?" The dangerously soft voice of Severus Snape, her unlikely hero, came from the doorway of the bathroom. Neither Harry nor Draco spoke. Footsteps padded through the wet floor and Kendra's focus hazily found the face of Professor Snape, who seemed more frightened than she had ever seen him. His face drained of all color, he pulled out his wand, muttering healing spells under his breath as Harry and Draco both looked on, horrified by what had come from their feud. 

Kendra felt her skin stitch itself back together in each of the spots where her flesh had opened itself up to the open air. She closed her eyes, wondering if she would be upset at Harry when she opened them again. She felt arms gingerly scoop her up from the puddle of sink water and blood, and the feeling of danger that she realized had been haunting her the whole day subsided. At the very least, she would not die in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, and that in itself calmed her.