ROCK BOTTOM

Zoe Genevieve Shafiq

There were so many reasons to think that it had been an awful idea to turn herself. She knew that. She had thought it all through in advance, but she still wasn’t sure that she was expecting it to happen… the way that it had. Torture… that she had been expecting. She had run off from a registration, which was technically against the law or whatever, and the people that enforced the laws just happened to really enjoy torture. So of course, a good part of her had expected getting tortured. But it had been a while since she’d really had to experience any kind of real, physical pain. It had been the norm for her at Icarus when she’d been registered. Every single day she had been sent to that place, and she had been poked and prodded and tested on, and she thought she’d never felt worse pain in her life. But then Dorian had saved her, and had taken her to his apartment. Not being tortured for months on end had made today… harder. Once she had made it back to Kolna, which was where she still had to stay apparently, she hadn’t been sure that she would be able to leave it. She had just been that exhausted.

She hadn’t even meant to fall asleep. She wasn’t even sure that she could call it falling asleep, when it felt like she’d mostly just… gone unconscious for a while due to the pain and the everything else that had happened. The torture--she’d expected that. But the Veritaserum… that was something that she had not prepared for. Maybe she should have. That was probably the most naïve bit of all of this… that she hadn’t thought that they would go to those lengths to figure out who had helped her and how she had stayed hidden for as long as she had. But they had, and there had been no way to stop it. She had tried, but there was just… nothing that she could do. So now they knew. The Ministry knew that it was Dorian that had been harboring her, that had been helping her all of this time, and she had no idea what kind of trouble he was doing to get into. She didn’t know if he was going to be sent to Azkaban, because it would be all her fault if he did. He hadn’t necessarily been for her turning herself in, but she had thought it was the best option. She hadn’t thought of all of the negative ramifications especially not ones impacting him.

Cami hadn’t even known if she would be able to warn him about what was going to happen, but then he had shown up at her door. That might have been the biggest surprise of the day. He had come to see her. Everything about their relationship had had to be a secret this entire time--obviously. But coming to see her was… definitely not all that secretive. She knew that this place was next to abandoned and that likely no one had seen him coming but still. She didn’t know if she had even expected to hear from him once she’d registered. Seeing her meant his family would inevitably find out that he was… whatever… they were. Seeing a Muggleborn. Dating one, if it got that far. And she hadn’t thought that it would. She hadn’t thought that he was going to show up at her door, but he had. She’d had to tell him what had happened; obviously it was… clear that she had been tortured, but she’d had to tell him the rest. To her, being tortured was not the worst part. The worst part was the fact that they knew now, and he was going to get in trouble because of her. She didn’t know what to expect with that.

It was later in the night now, and there was no curfew now. That was good for her, because she needed to get her mind off of everything that had happened today. She knew that she still looked like she’d just been ran over by a truck--or barreled over by curses for hours but that saying didn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but she’d found herself at the park anyway. After months of being cooped up in a small apartment with the curtains drawn, she thought that the openness of a park was exactly what she needed tonight. She’d walked for just a little while, but that had gotten more difficult to do so she’d eventually dropped down onto the grass to look up at the sky. She didn’t honestly care if she looked ridiculous, because it was the first time in ages that she’d been really able to be outside and appreciate it.

[googlefont="cochin"][googlefont="cochin"]

[attr="class","sensesimage"]

[attr="class","sensesimagetab"]

[attr="class","sensesimagetabtext"]

[attr="class","senseshovtab"]tagged

[attr="class","senseshovtab"]zoë's outfit

[attr="class","senseshovtab"]827

rock bottom

[attr="class","sensesborder"]

[attr="class","sensestable"]

[attr="class","sensestextbox"]This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. This wasn’t how any of this was supposed to go. The stupid regulations that had been lifted… Right now, Zoë almost wished that they hadn’t been. That she hadn’t had no reason to go back to Kolna. That she hadn’t ended up with Link in her bed. She knew that those stupid pictures had come out, and now she didn’t know what to think. There was no reason to think that there was going to be anything that came of it. At least at the time. They had been drunk. She had taken him home with her. That had been the first mistake. She had taken him home with her, and she hadn’t thrown him out until morning. She hadn’t really thrown him out at all, and now they were in this mess. And it was a mess. Because he had a girlfriend, and a life, and everything that he was supposed to have. With Izzy. And she was a muggleborn. She was a muggleborn, and she had bags of oxy hidden in her apartment. And she knew that she had to tell him. She knew that she had to tell him that she was pregnant. That they had do decide what they were going to do. Because she knew the answer.

She knew what she was supposed to do. She knew what the right thing to do was. But she also knew that she didn’t want to. It was stupid, and she was probably making the stupid choice, but she didn’t want to. And she wasn’t going to. So, he could make whatever choice he wanted, but she had made hers. She had made her choice, and she knew that she was probably going to spend the next nine months, eight months? Whatever it was, regretting it. She was probably going to hate herself for the fact that she had made this choice. That she couldn’t really guarantee that she could keep it safe. But she was going to try. She was going to try. Because she had a nephew, and she loved him. So, this couldn’t be too much different… Only it was. Zoë knew that it was. Because this wasn’t babysitting every once in a while, when she was in town. This was… This was forever. This was the rest of her life. She was going to be this kid’s mum for the rest of her life.

And whether or not Link wanted anything to do with it, that was a problem for a different day. That was a problem for when he was there, and she could talk to him. But she didn’t really think that she wanted to do that either. That wasn’t fair. She couldn’t put it on him. It wasn’t his fault she got pregnant. She was the girl. She was the one that was supposed to be responsible for that. But she hadn’t’ gotten pregnant while she had been in Kolna. She hadn’t been preventing it from happening in there either though. Something about that place had probably been doing that for her. That wouldn’t have surprised her. Whatever they were eating was making sure that they weren’t having kids. That they weren’t going to procreate and make the situation worse for everyone. Letting them go though, that changed the rules, and she didn’t know what to do. She had to do something. She had to talk to someone. And she didn’t know who. Yaxley, seemed like the answer, but she didn’t want to talk to him either. She didn’t want to tell him this.

Right now, Zoë wasn’t convinced that she wanted to tell anyone, but she had to. She had to tell Link, and she knew that she was going to have to do something to try and make sure that she kept it safe. Because it was her responsibility now. The Minister was a woman. A doctor. She was a doctor… But Zoë didn’t think that she was going to take meetings with mudbloods. Even ones that had been famous before all of this had gone through… Still, someone might. She would have to try. Tomorrow morning, she would have to see if she could get a meeting with someone. Someone that might listen. And it might not work. They might just kill her, get her out of the way. Solve the problem all on its own, without much of a fuss. That would have been the cruel way to handle it, and she had to hope that they weren’t going to do that. That they would listen, and not kill her, or the kid that they had accidentally made that night. The one that was growing inside of her, even as she wandered through this park. Looking over as she walked Zoë thought that she saw someone laying in the grass off the path, and as she got closer her eyebrows knitted together a little bit, “Cami?”

ψ[newclass=".sensesimage"]width: 500px; height: 200px; background-image:url('https://i.imgur.com/4mMR8gP.gif');[/newclass][newclass=".sensesimagetab"]width: 500px; height: 200px; background-color: #8f2633; opacity: 0; -webkit-transition-duration: 1s; transition-duration: 1s; -moz-transition-duration: 1s;[/newclass][newclass=".sensesimagetab:hover"]opacity: 0.5; -webkit-transition-duration: 1s; transition-duration: 1s; -moz-transition-duration: 1s;[/newclass][newclass=".sensesimagetabtext"]padding: 15px; text-align: center; height: 180px; color:#ffffff;font-family:cochin;font-size:20px;[/newclass][newclass=".senseshovtab"]width:300px;background-color:#8f2633;padding:5px;color:white;margin-top:10px;margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;text-align:center;font-family:cochin;font-size:12px;[/newclass][newclass=".sensesborder"]background-color:#504748;width:500px;height:40px;[/newclass][newclass=".sensestable"]background-color:#f5dde0;width:460px;height:400px;padding:20px;overflow:auto;[/newclass][newclass=".sensestextbox"]font-family:cochin;color:#470810;text-align:justify;font-size:12px;[/newclass][newclass=.sensestable::-webkit-scrollbar]width:5px;[/newclass][newclass=.sensestable::-webkit-scrollbar-thumb]background:#222;[/newclass]