WHO: Becca Dunstan & Dolores Umbridge, featuring Vera & Elliot Dunstan WHAT: Nothing stays hidden forever WHEN: Today WHERE: The Dunstan family home & the MRC WARNINGS: :(
It was a perfectly normal morning in a perfectly normal house as the perfectly normal Vera Dunstan poured herself a cup of coffee and yawned, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. She’d never quite liked mornings, though it had been long enough that surely she ought to be used to it.
“Do you want tea or coffee, Elliot?” she called to her husband, not waiting for the answer before pouring him a cup of coffee too. It was Wednesday. Elliot always had coffee on Wednesdays.
“Oh just some—” Elliot started, glancing up from his newspaper to find that the mug had already been placed on the coaster to his right, with Vera taking the seat across. “I’m not sure why you ask if you already know the answer.”
“It’s called being polite. You’ll find that—” A knock on the door interrupted the rest of what she was going to say, causing Vera to look towards it with a quizzical expression. “Well! Who could that be?” she asked as much to herself as to Elliot, before standing up and going to see.
“Can I help you?” she asked, looking at the woman standing on the steps in entirely too much pink.
The ID system falling was not something Dolores was going to take lightly. She saw this as a failure under her name and that was something she was not going to let stand without another name being added to the fault list. Dolores had been pouring over employee files, compiling evidence to support her case of who to lay the blame with. It was her hours of scrutinizing the files that brought to her attention the discrepancy that brought Dolores to the door of the Dunstan home. Something was off about Becca’s files.
“Hem-hem,” Dolores cleared her throat looking up at the woman curiously. “May I come in?” Dolores spoke in her sickly sweet voice, “You are the mother of Rebecca Dunstan, yes?” Dolores offered what she hoped was an encouraging smile. “I am her employer.” She clasped her hands together as she looked up at the woman she was judging each movement of.
Becca had mentioned her employer once or twice off hand, descriptions of a woman with a fondness for pink and a slightly terrifying disposition. But Vera found this odd. “Perhaps introducing yourself first would be advisable. And I can’t imagine why you would need to talk to me. Rebecca’s an adult. I don’t tend to interfere with her employment matters…”
“Dolores Umbridge,” she introduced herself furthering her concern. Wouldn’t they know their daughter worked for the Muggle-born Registration Commission, and in turn should they not know who she was. “I am not here to discuss Rebecca’s employment, I am here to speak with you.” Dolores smiled as she tilted her head to the side a little. “I just have a few questions won’t be a moment.”
Vera regarded Dolores skeptically, unsure why her daughter’s employer would need to speak with them, especially it hadn’t anything to do with her employment. Nonetheless after a heavy moment of hesitation she held open the door.
“Come in then. I’m afraid we don’t have long before both of us need to be off to work, however,” she said as she led the other woman into the kitchen. “Elliot, this is Ms. Umbridge, Becca’s boss. Evidently she has some questions for us.”
Elliot muttered a hello as they both waited expectantly for Dolores to get to the point.
Dolores followed the woman in and listened making a sort of thinking hem-hem like noise as the woman mentioned work. “What is that you and Mr. Dunstan do?” Dolores queried quickly as she looked around the home. How very interesting, not exactly as she was expecting? She nodded in Mr. Dunstan’s direction as he muttered something she assumed was a hello. “When was your first exposure to the magical world?” Dolores asked jumping to the point hoping the answer would solidify her growing suspicion that Mr and Mrs Dunstan were in fact muggles.
Neither Vera nor Elliot knew very much about what was going on, shielded pretty decidedly by Becca in terms of a whole war they didn’t know existed. But that didn’t mean that Vera didn’t find this whole situation increasingly odd. “That’s rather obvious, isn’t it?” she asked. “Certainly with the way you keep everything so hidden, nobody would know anything if it weren’t for that letter. I’ll never forget such a thing! But I’m sorry, why are you asking?”
Dolores felt her face tense as she tried to keep a pleasant smile. So her precious employee, the one she hoped would take on more of a roll was a mudblood, a magic thief. “Oh, just conducting some interviews with those who came from non-magical heritage. Looking into the approach of introduction,” Dolores lied. “So, it was a shock, which is not surprising. Any suggestions to offer in the approach?” Dolores asked as if interested, though she had her information she could leave, but she didn’t want them to tip off their daughter first. “Any suggestions and I’ll be on my way.”
“Having someone come along to explain things was helpful,” Elliot supplied. Vera nodded her agreement, still feeling hesitant. Certainly this could have been done via a letter or other communication. This hardly felt worth interrupting their morning.
Nonetheless, Vera offered up a polite smile to Dolores. “Yes, we found the process to be about as adequate as it can be. Is that all?”
Dolores nodded along as if she was intently listening, “Thank you for your input.” She looked at her work and scribbled something down as if she was making note of the conversation. “It has been a pleasure, but I don’t wish to keep you from work any longer.” Dolores didn’t even wait for an answer before she turned on her pink heels and let herself out of the Dunstan’s home.
There was a long moment of silence as Vera and Elliot simply looked at each other, trying to decide what they thought about the interruption to their usual routine. Finally Vera shrugged. “Well! That was peculiar. Becca said she would come by for Easter. I suppose we can mention it to her then.”
With a nod, Elliot went back to his paper.
Unfortunately, Becca had no idea that things had become so dire. It was a perfectly normal morning for her as well, a breakfast of low-key dread as she made her way into the office to pretend she was working until it was the end of the day and time to go home. It was how every day felt now, but she was getting kinda used to it.
She didn’t really think twice about the fact that Umbridge wasn’t there when she arrived.
Dolores had put in the request for staff to help with the arrest of Rebecca Dunstan. She had enough evidence to support her muggleborn status. She had fraudulently altered documentation upon her registration to hide her illegal status, to hide the fact she had stolen magic. Becca was worse than those who fled in Dolores eyes. She had stolen her trust, who knows what information she had taken from the registry. It had to be her that helped the ID system crumble. Becca needed to be punished for her crimes.
Dolores opened the door to the office, walking in flanked with two officials behind her. “Rebecca just who I’m looking for.” She walked in with purpose pleased to see the young gal had shown up on time and wasn’t tipped off.
Everything stopped.
It didn’t really, but it certainly felt like it, a surreal moment of panic that had Becca just staring at Dolores. She hadn’t needed to say anything — from the look on her face to the tone of her voice to her use of Rebecca (not to mention the two officials she had with her), Becca knew exactly what this was. She knew exactly what was going to happen.
She’d been so stupid to think she could get away with this.
Frozen to the spot, she stared at Dolores, hoping her expression skewed more confused than terrified. “Madam Umbridge?”
Dolores smiled at Becca’s expression taking some pleasure in it. “Oh, dear I am sure you know we are here to arrest you,” she chuckled a little before clearing her throat with a hem-hem. “You falsified your documents, lied to me, and funnelled information instrumental in the take down of our ID system. You have a lot to answer for.” Dolores gestured to the officials to go about the physical arrest.
“I didn’t do any of that!” she objected weakly, knowing full well that she’d done all of it. The thing she hadn’t done was steal magic. She wasn’t any lesser than the rest of them. Hadn’t their inability to tell for the last eight months proved that??
Her eyes darted around the room as her pulse raced, trying to figure out if she could outrun the two people about to arrest her. But there wasn’t an escape route. Her coworkers — people she’d worked aside for months — were all staring at her and starting to crowd around. Nobody was going to let her get away while Dolores Umbridge stood there.
Still, she pulled away at first when hands grabbed her by the shoulders, but it was only a moment after that when she felt arrest chains wrapping around her wrists. “No no no no no no no,” she said, eyes wild and pleading at the crowd around her.
But there was nothing to be done. The MRC was the last place a muggleborn could expect to find any sort of sympathy.