WHO: Becca Dunstan WHAT: Life as a secret muggleborn is hard WHEN: Recently WHERE: Nebulous places WARNINGS: Nah
Becca wondered if there was a limit to how much prolonged anxiety a person could take before their body decided to rebel. She kept expecting the constant burning feeling in her stomach to stop at some point, as if she’d finally get used to the new status quo. But every morning she woke up with a vague feeling of nausea that never really subsided, and every sight of the Ministry made her want to curl up in a ball just a little bit more. It’d been months, but her heart rate never felt normal.
She’d pulled it off so far, her records and files deep in the MRC where she could keep an eye on them and make sure nobody looked too hard. But she knew that if anyone really wanted to, that if anyone really did...
Everytime Becca had to try and justify working at the MRC, the constant panic she felt intensified. It was a wonder that nobody noticed her shaking as she bit down on the overwhelming need to scream.
She didn’t know how much longer she could handle it, but there was no end in sight.
Living in Diagon Alley was meant to be fun. It was meant to be the full wizarding experience, only now the wizarding experience bordered on miserable on its best day let alone its worst. It was bad enough knowing that the wandless weren’t that far outside her door. It was worse having to pass them multiple times every day and knowing that could have been her.
Of course, now Becca knew she’d never be one of the wandless. If she got caught at this point, it would be Azkaban for sure.
“Just take the fucking picture,” the man in front of her growled as he stood impatiently, having waited at least an hour in a line that had only seemed to grow longer as the days ticked by. People kept waiting until the last moment to register for their identification cards, and Becca couldn’t blame them. She didn’t want it any more than they did. More so, maybe.
She knew at least some of the things that the cards did, after all.
“Smile!” she said, pressing the enthusiasm so hard in order to fake it that her voice sounded deranged to her ears. The man in front of her only frowned further, hands clenching at his sides. Nobody had tried to attack her yet, but Becca wasn’t convinced that someone wouldn’t try.
She could feel a spike of panic as she handed the man his ID.
With every ID she was more complicit, and she wasn’t sure if there was a point when saving herself wasn’t worth the things she had to do.
Becca wasn’t sure she was really much of a Gryffindor anymore either.
The thing was, Becca hadn’t meant to lie.
Or maybe she had at first, but it was less about lying and more about fitting in. It’d been easy to lie and then it’d been hard, but it was even harder to confess. The lie felt so big now, so unwieldy, and the stakes were so much more than just offending her friends.
But she didn’t think she could handle it alone anymore. She was getting so tired of the lie.