Centuries
Outfit | @percy
May 23, 2017 - Lufkin University - Percy's Office

Professors had office hours, that was something that still happened, even at the University and Toire thought that it was probably the easiest place to catch her uncle. She couldn't really say why it was that she wanted to talk to him of all people, but she did. Getting locked out of the school wasn't something that she had planned on, but what she needed now was advice. She needed advice from the uncle that had taken school, and his future the most seriously. Because Papá was smart, and he had been Head Boy, but getting advice from Papá right now wasn't going to do her all that much good, and Andromeda had kept her on at the hospital, and she had offered to help her, but Toire needed advice... She thought that she had already made up her mind about what it was that she wanted to do, but she needed to hear an opinion, any opinion, that wasn't the one in her head. Because even if what her uncle had to say counteracted what she thought that she wanted to do, at least she would have talked to someone. Someone that she thought would at least try and help her. Because she didn't think that Uncle Ron, or Aunt Ginny would be all that much help right now either... 

She headed across campus and she was trying to look like she belonged there, but with finals as close as they were, she knew that that wasn't the case. She thought that there was a good chance that things weren't going to work themselves out all that easily and that meant that she was going to have to think all of this through. That she was going to have to make a choice, and she didn't want to make choices that weren't for the good of everyone else. She wanted to make choices that were going to help people. That was the entire point of trying to help people. She wanted to make good on her promises. She wanted to do the right things, and the only way to do that was to move forward. But it was hard to move forwards when there were people trapped in that castle that she loved. Her sister was there, and her cousins... She wanted them all to be okay, she wanted all of this to be okay... And she thought that it would be, she thought that it would be, in the end, but they had to get there first. They had to get to the point where everything was okay. 

Taking a breath she made her way to her uncle's door and she knocked. Really she didn't know if these were his office hours or not, and she didn't know if he was in a class if she was going to have to wait... But she thought that she could wait, for a little while, if need be... She could wait, and then she had to hope that he had a second to talk to her and give her advice... She just needed someone to talk to for maybe five minutes. Enough time to tell her whether or not she was crazy and if she was, if the family would ever forgive her for it. Because she wasn't going back to that school, and no one was going make her. She wanted to take her N.E.W.T.s early, and she wanted to go to the hospital and she wanted to do what was best for her, and really, all Toire wanted to know, was if that made her a monster... Because everyone was so worried about what it was that they were doing, and they were so worried about getting everyone else out, and she just wanted to get out of the way... 

He was not handling this well at all. The term was not yet supposed to be over yet, and yet knowing that this children were most likely not going to come home was eating Percy Weasley alive. The typically stoic, and calm Weasley was on the verge of tears as he looked down at his desk. The paper before him bore the news and the details of what had happened. He was thankful that Terrianne had not be one of those who had pushed the Death Eaters into what they had done. Running a hand over his head he knew that he needed to grade the rest of his exams but he could not concentrate on it.

A knock came at his door and he sighed. Had he locked the door, he couldn’t remember. A quick glance up at the knob showed that he had, so he stood and moved from behind the large desk and around to where the door was. He unlocked the knob before turning it slowly. He made a face for a moment when he looked at the young woman before he let out a sigh of relief.

He hugged his niece, a sign of affection that was not often bestowed by the elder Weasley before motioning for her to go inside the office. ”How are you, are you okay?” He demanded sotly.

She hadn’t meant to get locked out. Toire knew that people were going to be mad that she wasn’t in the school with everyone else. She knew that she was already in trouble for that, because she should have been there, she should have been locked in, and she wasn’t, and Toire thought that she had a perfect excuse. No one could even say that she was lying, because she had said that she was going to sit in on something with the Director, and really that had been the truth, because Andromeda had been there too. They had both been at the wedding, so if anyone wanted to really check she had been exactly where she had said that she was going to be. Not that it made all that much of a difference in the end. It just made her feel that much better. That she hadn’t really lied… But now she was stuck, out here, and Dom and the rest of her cousins were in that castle. She knew that Dominique would help look out for everyone else, because if there was one thing that Dominique was it was brave. She was every bit the Weasley, and Toire knew that she was every bit the Delacour. They were sisters, and they may have looked similar, but she was one, and Dom was the other, and that was how it was going to be… That was how it had always been.

Going to talk to her uncle was uncharacteristic, and she knew that she didn’t turn to Weasleys for advice very often. She much preferred to be her maman’s daughter, and she didn’t make a secret of that. She was almost a bit snooty to be a Hufflepuff even, and she knew it. She knew that she took after Maman in the fact that she did things that no one would have ever expected of her. She had chosen to date a Slytherin with a bad reputation. And she had chosen to work for Uncle Viktor, even though that meant working for Narcissa Malfoy. She still believed that there was something good about Andromeda, and that it didn’t matter who the father of her baby was, because in some way she was still the aunt that she had always known. She thought that there was good in everyone, and it just took the right person to see it. She didn’t care if Teddy was a werewolf, she still cared about him. That was just who she was. No one was going to tell her that she could or couldn’t do something, because no one was going to get to tell her that she couldn’t. Toire could do whatever she pleased, because she knew that she was strong enough. Her maman had not raised a weak daughter and she might not have been a fighter the way that Dominique was, but she was strong all on her own.

Right now she knew that this was a different kind of strength. This was the strength of will that it was going to take to get through whatever it was that they were facing now. This was going to be a war. There was no denying that this was going to be a fight, and Toire knew that she was going to have to figure out what she could do to help. That was why she was grateful that Andromeda had kept her on at the hospital. She thought that she could learn to make a difference there, and she knew that she was going to get all too friendly with people that her own family was currently having problems with… But she was the Weasley that didn’t fit the mold this time around, and she knew that if it came down to it she would fight with them in the end… But she didn’t want to just conform to what everyone expected of her, because she didn’t know how to be the typical Weasley, she didn’t want to be. She wasn’t a Weasley… She was… But she was a Delacour, and anyone that had spent any amount of time with her in her life, knew that. When her uncle opened his door and hugged her Toire automatically hugged him back. “I’m okay. I’m fine. It’s not me we need to worry about being okay.” She didn’t think that anything was actually going to happen to anyone in the school, but that didn’t change the fact that they did have people to worry about.

Percy was quite lucky in the regard of his family. They were a complicated bunch, and they always would be. For many reasons other than what people could see, there was always conflict, people taking sides in arguments, and his mother who could sometimes rule with an iron fist. All of it through was meant with good intentions. Every child in the family was raised to love one another to be a part of the family and each child stood out in their own unique way. Terrianne was a dancer despite her coloring and complexion, Archibald was an artist who had his own quirks, Fred pranked, and Toire; well, Toire was the one that he always though hated the rest of them.

Perhaps it was Percy reading too much into things, perhaps it was him thinking this way, but he knew (like everyone else) that Torie did not fit, and she never had. He would not be surprised if she cast off her name or just used her mother’s maiden name eventually. He knew how much that would hurt his mother, and his brother.

”This is traumatic for the whole family Toire. How was everyone when you saw them last, are the twins doing okay?” He was more worried about Terrianne than Archibald though, she was the one he was closest too. His little angel.

She didn't hate them. As much as she thought that her family thought, that she hated them, Toire didn't. She was just different than them. And different didn't always mean bad... It just meant different. They were just going to have to come to terms with the fact that they were not going to understand her, and they weren't going to agree with her. She wasn't choosing the 'bad guys' over them. She wasn't choosing anyone over anyone else, but she couldn't bring herself to go back to that castle. She wanted to take the immunity. She wanted to take the chance that Andromeda was going to give her to stay out here. To take her tests, to be ready to go back to school at Lufkin in the fall, and in the meantime start her healer training... It was something that she wanted to do. It was something that she thought that she was ready for, but she knew that her family might not look too kindly on her taking any favors... Even ones from Andromeda. Because she wasn't Aunt Andi anymore... She was. She would always be the aunt that they had grown up with, but now she was something else too. She was someone else, and she wondered if maybe she hadn't been that someone all along...

Until she proved that she really was as Dark as her name though, Toire wasn't going to find fault with her. It wasn't her fault who she had fallen in love with. It wasn't anyone's fault who they fell in love with, and she didn't want to think about that either. She didn't want to think about falling in love. She didn't want to think about everything in her life that wasn't the same as it was before. She didn't know. Nothing had changed really. But she cared. She cared about him, and she cared about her family, and she cared about his family. Toire's greatest downfall was how much she cared, and she knew that. She knew that she cared enough to see the good in absolutely everyone. She knew that she cared enough to get herself in trouble sometimes, but she couldn't find it in herself to stop caring. She was always going to care. That was who she was. She just couldn't stop caring because someone decided that someone else was now the enemy and that they had to hate them. It didn't work like that. Life, didn't work like that. It wasn't so cut and dry, it wasn't black and white. Them and us. It couldn't be, and yet she knew that that was how her family thought.

It was them, or it was us, and there was nothing in between. Except that Toire was in between. She was in between all of it. She cared about people on both sides, and she knew that her Uncle Viktor did too. She knew that if she had wanted to really hear someone say that she wasn't doing anything wrong by letting Aunt Andi help her, then she should have gone to him. But she had chosen Uncle Percy instead. She had chosen him because he was the one that had been on the 'other' side before. He was the one that had sided with the Minister against the family. And she wanted to know that she wasn't the only one. She didn't hate them, just like he didn't hate them. She just wasn't like them. And she was tired of everyone saying that she was the one that was different. She didn't want to be that person at all... She shook her head at his question and stepped back out of his embrace, "I don't really know. Archie was fine last time I saw him. As fine as any of us were... But I don't really know about Terrianne..." She and her cousin didn't run in the same circles, and there was no doubt about that. "No one's going to touch them... They aren't after blood traitors right now... They want the muggleborns..."

It was a hard place to be, Percy was aware of the situation that his niece now found herself in. She was in the middle of this whole thing and it was never going to something easy. It had not been easy for him to go through and Percy knew that on some level a few of the family would still never trust him the same way. It was a shift in views, he knew that the other side of the war were just like them, doing what they thought was right, following their beliefs, doing their best to raise their families the way they thought they should be raised. It was not easy, and it was never going to be as simple as all of that. There were so many things that were factors and that affected every single part of it. He knew it himself, because he had lived it. He had seen the shame and disappointment in his mother’s eyes. He didn’t want that for Toire, but this was a battle she would fight on her own.

”Good, good.” He said with a nod. He knew that the twins could take care of themselves he had raised them to be able to take care of themselves, after all look at who they were family members of! Look at the family they came from, if they couldn’t he would be mighty disappointed. ’They won’t hurt them for now, but if things don’t go their way, I am not sure what lengths they will go to to get it; I just have to have the hope that Flint won’t let the students get hurt. “ Unlike the last two Headmistresses who just seemed to fuck everything up.

”So, what are you going to do now, you can’t get back in. “ She could take her exams like Fred and George did. That would be true hassle.

Stuck in the middle of this fight was somewhere that Toire realized that she was going to be, the moment that she realized there was a fight starting at all. She knew that she had been in the middle of it from the moment that she had dated a Slytherin. The moment that she had chosen to date someone that wasn’t like them. That wasn’t Weasley approved, she had had to deal with the consequences of being the one that was different. And she knew that her grandmother wasn’t going to approve of the fact that she wasn’t doing exactly as they expected her to. She knew that there was no real love lost between the people that Toire loved, and her grandmother. Because Grandmother Molly wasn’t someone that was quick to forgive, and neither were the Blacks. And Toire had gotten to know them both. She had spent countless days with Andromeda, because of Teddy, and now because of the fact that she was her teacher, and then her boss… She knew her. Or at least she thought that she knew as much of her as she shared with them. And she knew her younger sister too. She had worked for Narcissa Malfoy, and she had come to know her before that. She had gotten to know her, and she liked her. They were friends. Or as close to friends as she thought that the older witch was going to allow her to get. Things like that, relationships like that, made it difficult to choose either side over the other.

This wasn’t her war to fight, as much as people thought that it should be. She knew that there were people on both sides that had suffered because of the other one. She knew that there were people on both sides that the other ones would have liked to see dead. That was just out it worked out. That was how life worked out, and she knew that she was going to have to learn to balance all of it. She was going to have to learn to not care quite as much, and she knew that it was going to be nearly impossible to do that. There was a reason that she was a Hufflepuff, and not a Gryffindor. The first Weasley in generations not to be sorted into Gryffindor, but she hadn’t been. She just simply wasn’t, and then there had been others after her that hadn’t been. There had been more cousins that were in Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff, and even Deacon was in Slytherin. But she thought that it would be okay. She thought that they would figure out how to continue to be a family. Because they were her family. Whether they thought that she hated them or not, whether they thought that she was the one that didn’t fit or not, they were still her family. This was still her life, and Toire couldn’t do anything to change that.

Her uncle wasn’t someone that Toire was close to, she wasn’t really close to any of her papá’s siblings. Though if she thought that she had to pick one, she would pick Aunt Ginny. She was free spirited enough that she thought that maybe she just might understand the decisions that she wanted to make. She wanted to help, she wanted to protect her family, but she knew that she wasn’t a strong enough fighter to do it that way. She wanted to make a difference, and she wanted to do it in a way that she thought that she really had a shot at. And that was in the hospital. That was learning to do something worthy of her skill set. Something that could, just maybe, save someone’s life some day. That was what she wanted to do. That was who she wanted to be. And there was a part of her that thought that maybe she was better suited to do that as a Delacour than she was as a Weasley… Though that thought had yet to really take root in her mind. It was just fleeting, something that came floating by like a leaf on the wind… Maybe it would be easier on everyone if she weren’t a Weasley, in name, by the end. “It’s not the kids that they are after though. It’s the muggleborns… Your children are Weasleys, but they aren’t muggleborns, and Penelope isn’t a muggleborn… No one is coming after them.” She thought that she understood what it was that they were doing. She thought she understood who and what they were after… “I’m going to take my exams out here instead…” She knew that explaining just how she was doing that was going to be the real problem…