𝐈𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒 - Harry Potter x Fem!Reader¹

2.. BACK TO THE BURROW

By the time Y/N finished the bacon and eggs, the three Hudsons were already seated around the table. None of them looked up to say a thank you as they entered and sat down. Uncle Lucian's large red face was hidden behind the morning's Daily Mail, and Aunt Eden shoved past Y/N to start cutting a grapefruit into quarters, her lips pursed over her horselike teeth.

Cameron looked furious and sulky, and somehow seemed to be taking up even more space than usual. This was saying something, as he always took up an entire side of the square table by himself. When Aunt Eden put a quarter of unsweetened grapefruit onto Cameron's plate with a tremulous "There you are, Cam-Cam," Cameron glowered at her. His life had taken a most unpleasant turn since he had come home for the summer with his end-of-year report.

Uncle Lucian and Aunt Eden had managed to find excuses for his bad marks as usual: Aunt Eden always insisted that Cameron was a very gifted boy whose teachers didn't understand him, while Uncle Lucian maintained that "he didn't want some swotty little nancy boy for a son anyway."

They also skated over the accusations of bullying in the report — "He's a boisterous little boy, but he wouldn't hurt a fly!" Aunt Eden had said tearfully.

However, at the bottom of the report there were a few well-chosen comments from the school nurse that not even Uncle Lucian and Aunt Eden could explain away. No matter how much Aunt Eden wailed that Cameron was bigboned, and that his poundage was really puppy fat, and that he was a growing boy who needed plenty of food, the fact remained that the school outfitters didn't stock knickerbockers big enough for him anymore. The school nurse had seen what Aunt Eden's eyes — so sharp when it came to spotting fingerprints on her gleaming walls, and in observing the comings and goings of the neighbors — simply refused to see: that far from needing extra nourishment, Cameron had reached roughly the size and weight of a young killer whale.

So — after many tantrums, after arguments that shook Y/N's bedroom floor, and many tears from Aunt Eden — the new regime had begun. The diet sheet that had been sent by the Smeltings school nurse had been taped to the fridge, which had been emptied of all Cameron's favorite things — fizzy drinks and cakes, chocolate bars and burgers — and filled instead with fruit and vegetables and the sorts of things that Uncle Lucian called "rabbit food."

To make Cameron feel better about it all, Aunt Eden had insisted that the whole family follow the diet too, including Y/N. Aunt Eden seemed to feel that the best way to keep up Cameron's morale was to make sure that he did, at least, get more to eat than Y/N.

But Aunt Eden didn't know what was hidden under the loose floorboard upstairs. She had no idea that Y/N was not following the diet at all. After a few days of surviving the summer off of carrot sticks, Y/N had sent Daniyar to her friends with pleas for help, and they had risen to the occasion magnificently.

Daniyar had returned from Hermione's house with a large box stuffed full of sugar-free snacks. (Hermione's parents were dentists.) Hagrid, the Hogwarts gamekeeper, had obliged with a sack full of his own homemade rock cakes. (Y/N hadn't touched these and instead placed them on her bedside table as decoration.) From the Potters came a basket packed with homemade treacle tarts, bottles of pumpkin juice, and a large jar of Mrs. Potter's strawberry jam. Mrs. Weasley, however, had sent the family owl, Errol, with an enormous fruitcake and assorted meat pies. Poor Errol, who was elderly and feeble, had needed a full five days to recover from the journey.

And then on Y/N's birthday (which the Hudsons had completely ignored) she had received five superb birthday cakes, one each from Hermione, Harry, Ron, Hagrid, and Sirius. Y/N still had three of them left, and so, looking forward to a real breakfast when she got back upstairs, she ate a quarter of a grapefruit without complaint.