dursley [h. g.]

••dursley•• || damon's dilemma

Kendra found a distressed Damon in the library, quite alone. Kendra approached him cautiously. She was out of breath from the walk back to the library, so she sat down next to Damon after he looked up at her. He had never been one for snapping- before his father had left his mother, he had been a yeller. Both Damon and Mabel despised him for it, hardly ever speaking of it and raising their voices even less.

"Hello, Kendra," Damon said, sounding tired. He leaned his head against a shelf of books behind his chair.

"Is everything alright, Damon? You look pale," Kendra noted. It was true. His normally toffee skin looked as though someone had taken a piece of chalk and rubbed it all over his skin. He shrugged. He didn't seem sure about any of his movements.

"The entire house is upset with your cousin," Damon said, not sounding angry with her. "Hufflepuffs are loyal creatures."

"You don't sound angry with me," Kendra said finally, constantly feeling like she was walking on eggshells. She didn't deal with anger in other's well, her entire family had always taken their anger out on Harry. There was no calming them down once they got started on him.

"I'm not. Like I said, we're loyal. I knew you before I was a Hufflepuff. You're more my family than my house is. You've always been there for me, and I can appreciate that. If you say that Harry didn't put his name in, I'll believe you," Damon said, smiling at her through his thinly veiled agony.

"That's not all, is it?" She asked. Damon, of all people couldn't lie to her, particularly now. His typical upbeat self was long gone, only a despondent shell of the friend she knew. She had only seen him like his once before, in their first year. His father had written him a letter, begging him to leave Mabel and his mother for Spain. He had thrown up three times before Kendra had managed to bring him to the Hospital Wing and give him a dreamless sleep potion. "Is it.." She trailed off, not wanting to bring up the past unnecessarily. He shook his head.

"No," he said, pausing. "Yes, I don't know. A lot happened last night."

"Start from the beginning. You went back to your common room after the cup called Harry's name," Kendra said, putting a comforting hand on Damon's shoulder. He took a deep breath in.

"I lost Mabel in the crowd. She might have gone to talk to someone, maybe someone wanted to talk to her, maybe she was upset. I don't know. Matt found me pretty quickly, before we even got to the common room. He started ranting, going on about how he was a cheat and he was trying to steal Huffelpuff's glory," Damon sighed, shaking his head. "He said Harry had gotten help from someone, someone smart. Someone who could figure out how to do it. Someone he trusted not to tell anyone else." Damon paused and looked at her pointedly. She frowned, her eyebrows bunching up together in distress.

"Me? He thinks I helped Harry put his name in? I'm only a month older than him, I couldn't get over the line and I'm certainly not skilled enough to confund a magical object that powerful," Kendra said, shaking her head. "He knows we're cousins, then?"

Kendra and Harry didn't tell very many people that they were related. It caused trouble, something that they had both known for a long time and was only being proved again now. However, Harry was famous, and it wasn't that hard to figure out why a girl with the last name of the family he lived with, his aunt and uncle, hung around him so often. She wasn't surprised Matt had found out about her and Harry's relationship, but she was worried that rumors would spread. The last thing Harry needed was another rumor on top of the already accumulating pile.

"Yeah. He puzzled it out himself," Damon sighed, looking apologetically at Kendra. "I defended you when he accused you. You would never put him in that kind of danger, no matter the reward. He started going off on me, saying I was being disloyal to Hufflepuff by taking your side in the argument."