If I knew then What I know now...

Somehow she didn't think that she was going to be in this position... Well... Ever, in her life, but Zoë knew that now she didn't have a choice. There was only one option that she was even going to consider, and she knew that she needed help. Where she was going to get it... That part she didn't know. She didn't know how she was going to get a meeting in here at all, let alone with someone that might listen. But she knew that she needed help. She knew that she needed to appeal to someone that might be able to do something about it, and so Zoë had somehow managed to get herself in here. She had made it passed the lobby. No one looked twice at the mudblood. She was registered. They kept tabs on her. As much as she hated it, she had played by all of their rules, and right now, she was more than glad that she had. She had been a model little prisoner, and right now she was hoping like hell that that would play in her favor. She needed it to play in her favor. She needed something to go right.  Merlin only knew that there was so much about this that could go wrong. Telling the wrong person could get her killed. Telling anyone at all could get her killed. And then there was going to be the problem of actually hunting Link down, and telling him too. This was not an easy thing to handle, this was not something that could just be solved. This was something that they had done, in a moment of drunken stupidity, and now there was no way out of it. They were in this, and he didn't even know it yet. If she were being honest, she wasn't sure that she wanted him to know. He had never used to want kids. And for all she knew that was still exactly the same. They were not together. They were not going to be together. He was with Izzy, or whatever her name was. That was good, for him, and she had been doing just fine on her own. Better, actually, she had been doing better. But there was nothing better about this. There was nothing about this that could even really be considered good right now.  Getting killed almost felt inevitable. There was a reason that in the year that this had been going on, no one had had to deal with it. And maybe they had been lacing their food with something. Maybe it had been impossible in Kolna. But it wasn't impossible now. It was very clearly possible, and figuring out what to do about it was on her. This was all on her. She should never have been so stupid. She should have ignored him in that bar. She should have left the moment that she had seen him. But she hadn't. She had acknowledged him. And she had let him buy her a drink without so much as raising a word in protest. And one had become two, and two had become she didn't even know how many. And then there were the pictures. Whatever it was that had happened, there were pictures to prove that they had left together. It wasn't a big leap to figure out what had happened. Zoë had no idea what he had told Izzy when the pictures had surfaced. Nothing, probably, that there was nothing to any of it.  That was a lie. There was very much something to all of it. And there was no denying that anything had happened anymore. Maybe there would have been. If this hadn't been the end result. But it was, and the only way to go now was forwards. She had to keep moving forwards, and in the literal sense that meant heading up to the office of Isolde Macmillan. She was the one that Zoë had somehow managed to swing an appointment with. She had enough money, and enough pull once to have asked for, and been granted a meeting. Why on earth she had been shuffled up here, and not to someone in Law Enforcement she didn't know. But she would take whatever she could get. And she thought that right now, she might even believe in her psychotic mother's God if he were trying to help her out by sending her up here to talk to this woman. Taking a deep breath she knocked on the door, and waited for an answer. There was no turning back. There hadn't been since she had realized what was going on. This was her life now. One day at a time.

Zoë's Outfit

@isolde

'Cause love only comes once in a while

OUTFIT

It was unsurprising that so many of the muggleborns wanted to meet to discuss their current situation given the changing tides that Andromeda had put into motion. Isolde had seen everything from upstanding citizens to those who wanted to turn themselves in given the loosened regulations. Everyone was looking for something. They wanted a better job, better pay, a differently scheduled rotation…she had even been informed that someone wanted to move back into Kolna, which she thought was absolutely ridiculous, but fine. Fine.

Although she took her job with the utmost importance, there was something on her mind that was far more pressing. Her daughter: Izzy. It had been a few days since she had figured it out. Izzy was pregnant.

Merlin’s Beard, sometimes it was like history was doomed to repeat itself, she thought as she shuffled her paperwork and moved through the Courtroom on the bottom floor of the Ministry. She had gone and gotten herself knocked up when she was barely seventeen years old and now Izzy had done the same thing. Granted, Isolde’s talks about the birds and the bees, saving herself for marriage, and the importance of not having…well, you know…had managed to push back her daughter’s timeline nearly a decade, it didn’t change the fact that her daughter was exactly where she had been. Isolde could only hope that Lincoln Orville didn’t let her down the same way Lucian Kirkpatrick had.

There were days when she resented him more than she could ever possibly explain. But another part of her didn’t blame him. Kirkpatrick had done exactly what he needed to do — he’d done what he thought was right. And by doing that, he had given her an unbreakable bond with her daughter.

Isolde raised her chin a little higher as she stepped onto the lift. She had done it all on her own. And if Lincoln turned out to be an asshat like her baby’s father, then…she would help her daughter, however, she could. Because that’s what women did. They stuck together.

As the lift dinged, Isolde strolled out and headed back towards her office, her pace slowing slightly as she realized there was someone in front of her door. Had they scheduled her another appointment while she was in court? Surely they wouldn’t have…she had told them she wanted the afternoon off. Isolde slowed, even more, pulling out her schedule and looking through the dates and times. Sure enough, a shining appointment was highlighted during this block — scheduled by her damn secretary, judging by the pink ink the witch had used. Zoë Armstrong. As in the pop singer? Mudblood? This was going to be an interesting one. Isolde raised her eyebrow, praying that her secretary had put the girl’s file in her office already. “Sorry, running a bit behind, Miss Armstrong.” She breezed past her and quickly unlocked her office and gesturing the girl inside. “What can I do for you this afternoon?”

If I Knew
Then

This was not who she wanted to be, and this was certainly not how she thought that she would be doing this. Zoë hadn’t thought that she would be having a baby, ever. But now she was. Now she was pregnant, and she didn’t think that there was really a worse time that this could have happened. She didn’t think that there was a good reason for it to have happened now, and she didn’t think that there was a way that she was going to be able to keep it a secret for very long. Not if she wanted help, and she did. She wanted help, because she knew that there had to be something that she was going to want to do for this child. And she didn’t think that she even really understood it, because she didn’t know that she was going to care, except that she did care. She already cared very much, and she didn’t want the fact that she was a muggleborn to have to mean that this kid was going to die. That wasn’t fair. She hadn’t meant to get pregnant. They certainly hadn’t been thinking when they had been drunk. But that didn’t mean that it was the kid’s fault either.

If there was anything that was going to come from this, she thought that they would just kill her. That seemed like the most likely scenario for all of this. They would just send her to someone awful and tell them that they didn’t need to worry about returning her. Zoë Armstrong would cease to exist, and then they wouldn’t have to worry about it. They wouldn’t have to worry about the fact that she was going to be pregnant, and that they would very literally be killing unborn babies with their testing and their curses, and whatever else. She knew that this could kill her. That telling them about the kid was likely to get them both killed, but she didn’t really have another option. It wasn’t like she could run. Sure, it would be easier, now that the regulations were lifted, and all of that, but Zoë didn’t really have anywhere to go, and she didn’t want to get anyone in trouble. That was something that she was holding on to in the back of her mind. That she didn’t want to get Link in trouble of any sort. If they asked who the father was… She didn’t know what she was going to say

She didn’t want to lie, because she knew very clearly who’s baby it was. But he was with Izzy, and she didn’t want to get in the middle of that any more than she already had either. She had already screwed that up for him, and what was supposed to have been a drunken one-night stand had become this, and she knew that they were going to find out. That Link and Izzy were going to find out, because she was going to tell him herself. She wanted him to know, and she wanted him to know that she didn’t want anything from him. That she wasn’t expecting him to do anything. She just wanted him to know that the baby was his. That they had created this tiny human together, and that she was going to keep it. Zoë knew, somewhere in the back of her mind, that it would be easier not to. That there were ways to handle it that wouldn’t put anyone at risk, and that would mean that she was most certainly not going to be getting in the way of his life. But she didn’t want to do that.

And maybe that was selfish of her, but she didn’t think that it was. She didn’t think that stepping up and taking responsibility for something for the first time in her life was something that she was going to regret. At least, she hoped not. She had to hope that Lady Macmillan wasn’t going to think that they needed to kill her for it. As Zoë came up here, she wasn’t surprised to see Izzy was the one behind the desk, but she did her best not to let that bother her. She didn’t need a confrontation with the other witch right now. She didn’t need to deal with that. Not when she was coming up here to talk about what to do about the fact that she was pregnant with her boyfriend’s baby… That part was definitely going to have to be left out if at all possible. “That’s alright Ma’am.” She knew how to keep her head and use the manners that she had picked up over the years. It wasn’t like anyone had bothered to actually teach her manners… “I have a bit of a situation, and I’m not entirely sure who I need to talk to, but seeing as you’re a lawyer, I thought that I’d start here.”

@ lady macmillan - 823 - zoë's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOXOGRPHY 2.0

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if i knew then

[attr="class","reasonsmallisolde"]'Cause love only comes Once in a while And knocks on your door And throws you a smile

[attr="class","reasonbodisolde"]Isolde wasn’t annoyed by the changes that the Wizarding World had seen over the past few months, in fact, it was much to the contrary. Isolde enjoyed the changing of the tides. She was happy that things were falling more in favor of equality. But of course, she knew better than to spew her ideas like propaganda around the Ministry. She was not here to be the voice of light nor dark. She was here to be a level head. That was the reason that Andromeda had come to her. There were plenty of other Pureblood women around that would have fit into her puzzle like a clockwork gear, but Isolde was different. She was a lawyer and therefore forced to see the world in more than just black and white. She knew how to examine everything from all points of view, whether it was putting on rose-colored glasses or simply looking at things upside-down.

Isolde hadn’t taken this job because of the power though, she had to admit, being a right hand of the Minster was a nice change of pace. No, she’d taken this job so she could help balance out the Minister’s Department. She’d known about the sort of women that she’d picked – purebloods, usually erring on the side of darkness, with connections to what was left of the Dark Lord’s regime. She was familiar with some of them – after all, Izzy’s father was a Death Eater.

But she wished for a different world. One in which she wouldn’t have to worry about what would become of children that had been born to muggle mothers and fathers. One in which she wouldn’t have to worry about her own daughter out on the streets at night alone. They lived in dangerous times, didn’t they?

Isolde shook her head, freeing herself from her own thoughts as she listened to what Zoë was saying.

“Situation?” She finally questioned as she sat down. She wasn’t sure what the girl was talking about – after all, it could be any number of things. Perhaps she was dissatisfied with where she was living, or the job that she was currently doing? Isolde had had strange requests come from the muggle-borns over the past few months, so she sincerely doubted that anything the girl might say would shock her. She removed her courtroom robe and slung it over the coat rack that was in the corner before moving towards her desk. Sure enough, her secretary had brought up the file and left it for her. At least the poor girl had done something right, she thought with a sigh.

As she sat down behind her desk and gestured for the woman to sit in one of the plush chairs across from her, Isolde took a moment to look over the girl in front of her. Zoë looked tired - as many of them often did. Whatever she had come here for, Isolde hoped she could help.

Opening it, she began glancing over the girl’s preliminary records. Nothing much of note – she had been a pop star (still was, presumably) with an exemplarily work record thus far. At least, if anything, her record made this easier. It wasn’t one of those situations in which she couldn’t entertain any leeway. “Do you find yourself in some sort of legal trouble?” There wasn’t anything in this file that would make her believe that. It appeared that even though Miss Armstrong was a public figure, she’d never had a record. “I’m sure I could recommend a few lawyers currently taking cases for muggle-borns.” Isolde herself wasn’t able to. It was too much a conflict of interest, given her employment status at the Ministry. But she could always help. She would always help.

[attr="class","reasontagisolde"]@ zoë | 623 | OUTFIT

[attr="class","credisolde"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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if i new then

what i know now

i'd fall in love

Zoë would have liked to have been just about anywhere else. She would have really liked to have been anything but pregnant right now. But she was. She was pregnant, and she was in a situation that she couldn’t see a way out of without help. She was going to need someone to help her out of this one, because there were options, and she knew that. But she didn’t want that. She wanted to do this right. It wasn’t like she had planned on it. It wasn’t like she had asked for this to happen, but it had, and now she wanted to do something right. She wanted to manage to not screw one thing up in her life. And if that one thing was going to be a kid, well, now was the time.

Of course, she had the worst timing in the world, but Zoë thought that maybe it had been exactly what she had needed. She thought that she had needed the wake-up call. A dose of a reality that didn’t suck. Maybe she had needed the hope that this had brought with it. Because if she could do this, if by some grace of a god that she didn’t believe in, this could happen, and this kid could get here, and she could manage to not screw it all up in the process. Then this could have been a blessing that she didn’t know that she even needed until it was shoved on her. She didn’t have any idea what had caused this, other than timing, and well, the obvious.

But it could have just as easily not happened. After everything that she had put her body through over the years. After the two years of abuse that she had had at the hands of the Death Eaters. It could have just as easily been different. Things were not good. Things were not what they needed to be, at all. She had put herself through hell for years, and then they had made it worse, and somehow, through all of that, all it had taken was one night, and a couple of drinks, and a smile that she had been a sucker for nearly her entire adult life. Zoë didn’t want to think about him though. She knew that she needed to talk to him, but she wanted to be able to tell him something.

To be able to tell him that his kid wasn’t in danger. And she knew that she needed help for that. She knew that she was in trouble. Because being pregnant, and having the job that she did, Zoë knew that she was going to have to try and come up with something. Some answer that was going to make it so that she was okay, and she didn’t know what that was. Some sort of reassignment, maybe? Or a permanent assignment with someone that wasn’t going to hurt her. That wasn’t going to hurt her baby. She’d keep her head down. She wouldn’t do anything to draw attention. She just needed help. And this was risky. Merlin, she knew that this was risky.

If this didn’t go like she thought it would. If Lady MacMillan turned out not to be the person that Zoë was hoping that she was, she didn’t know what she would do. She didn’t know if she could be the one getting to see her very last day today… “Yes, ma’am.” She didn’t know what to say as she looked over the file in front of her, but Zoë had to hop that whatever was in there, it wasn’t going to hurt her now. “Not exactly. I’m…” She shook her head, “I don’t think I need a lawyer, actually. I just, I’m pregnant.” It was as simple as that really, she just didn’t know how to go about breaking that news gently, but she wanted it out there, she wanted to know what was going to happen to her, and to her kid. “I just found out. And given my… Situation…”

@ lady macmillan • 676 • zoë's outfit

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