WHO: The Tonkses WHAT: Dora's upset WHEN: [Backdated] Friday, July 16 WHERE: Outsider HQ RATING/STATUS: Sad/In progress
Going to work that day and pretending nothing was wrong was the hardest thing Dora had ever had to do. She couldn't get their faces out of her head, and every time she closed her eyes, they were there, staring at her, surprised and terrified and looking at her like she was a monster. And she was. She'd been forced to kill off the rest of her father's family, and for what? So a few Death Eaters would believe she had a place among them? The hunt had been a bad idea in the first place, but she'd honestly thought that by going she would be able to fake it or pretend she just didn't catch anyone, but oh, how wrong she had been. And she'd panicked, and done it.
And now she had to tell them. She had to come clean and tell them herself before someone else did, but she didn't know how she was going to do it. She was a mess, had barely been able to keep it together at the Ministry, and once she'd gotten back to her flat, then she'd broken down--again--and written her mother, because she couldn't bare the thought of talking to her father yet, not until she had to.
She didn't even have an overnight bag with her when she arrived at the Outsider headquarters to see her parents, so sure was she that they would disown her or send her away; but she didn't think she could stomach being near her father anyway. Dora looked terrible when she got there; she was even having trouble with her Meta abilities, so with her hair back, she threw on something with a hood and put on a pair of boots to hide her hair and fake her height as best she could; when she found her parents, she pulled them into a room, locked the door, and put a Silencing charm on the room so they wouldn't be overheard. The other Outsiders would find out eventually, but they couldn't know now.
At first she couldn't even speak; looking at her father just drove a knife of guilt into her chest that literally pained her. She wasn't crying heavily like she had been before she got there, but was crying nonetheless. She kept herself away from them, refusing to let them comfort her. She didn't deserve it, least of all from them.
"I have - to - tell you something," she said, her words halting as she tried to calm herself enough to speak and breathe, but it wasn't easy.