A/N: For the Bingo Card Drabble Competition, Round 2. Medium Card 79: Seamus Finnigan.
Family Dispute
He didn't particularly like Harry Potter, but he didn't hate him either. And even if it was an issue between his best friend and his mother, he'd take his mother's side.
Unless, of course, there was hard-clad proof saying otherwise – but there wasn't. Potter had come back with a dead body and the cup: a cup he'd said over and over again he didn't want. How was that supposed to look, after all? Clutching a dead body, half frozen in grief and guilt – but what grief? What guilt? And how were they supposed to know what had happened behind closed doors, when Moody had dragged him off and Dumbledore had followed.
They weren't told the truth: just loads of wild stories like Moody being You-Know-Who himself. That was preposterous, really, because there hadn't been hair nor hide of You-Know-Who since that fateful – and equally mysterious – Halloween.
And he'd never particularly liked Potter; he was okay enough, but they always seemed to bump shoulders when someone else wasn't looking. Though he respected him…most of the time. But it was so easy to doubt him: the Parseltongue incident, the incident with the Cup, and now with Cedric's death and his outrageous sounding claims.
A tiny voice in his head pointed out that Harry hadn't been wrong with the Basalisk – but it was just another one of those things they didn't know the truth of. They said he slayed the Basalisk with Gryffindor's sword – but how'd he find it? How'd he open the Chamber?
Gryffindor was supposed to be a house of trust as well as bravery, but Seamus didn't think he trusted Potter enough to believe him. Even if it had been Dean though, there wasn't any proof, and his mother was strong in her own debate. So he agreed with her; there was no argument, after all.
And if his mother, and the Prophet, turned out to be undeniably wrong, he thought he was man enough to apologise. He was in Gryffindor after all, and not for the same reasons as Potter.