𝙻𝚎𝚐𝚊𝚌𝚒𝚎𝚜 | 𝙳.𝙼.

The Waiting Game

Romina held her tongue until the moment she got back home. Then, she let it all out. She had a lot of time to digest Rolf's confession on the train ride home and it helped her sort some of her feelings out. The truth of the matter is that she was angry. She was so, so angry.

As soon as she was home, she told her aunt and uncle everything. Needless to say, Sage and Lyonel were in a state of shock. It was clear to Romina that they never expected her to find out, and that just made her even angrier.

"So what, you expected me to live in the dark about this my whole life?" Her dark eyes shifted between the two adults incredulously. "Seriously?"

"I didn't know they had a child," Lyonel said, though it sounded like he was speaking to Sage rather than their expectant niece.

"We never really looked back..." Sage said, meeting Romina's gaze. "Sweetheart, we're sorry—"

"Are you?" Romina cut in sharply. "Because it sounds like you were never going to tell me! It looks like you were intending on lying to me for the rest of my life! How dare you!"

"Romina, watch your tone," warned Lyonel.

"My tone?" Romina was once again incredulous. "Are you kidding me!? You're going to reprimand me about my tone when I just told you that I know that I have a bloody cousin, grandparents, aunts and uncles!? My tone is what worries you right now!?"

"Romina, let's try to calm down," Sage said and moved towards Romina. The girl took the same steps back from her aunt. "Romina, please—"

"NO! According to Rolf and his family, you guys took me away from them! You never told me about them! You didn't let them see me!"

"I had to, Romina! You were in danger!" snapped Lyonel. "After the war, the ministry wasn't exactly giving our family much consideration!"

"But later you could have said something!" Romina argued. "You could have shown me pictures of them! You could have told me about them! It would've made a huge difference in my life knowing that I had another part of a family who weren't evil!"

"I couldn't trust anyone but myself and your aunt and I am not sorry about that!"

"What your uncle means is that we didn't know who we could trust after the war," Sage cut in just as Romina was about to shout again. "A lot of families claimed that they were under the imperius curse and that's why they did whatever the Dark Lord demanded."

"But you knew that Rolf's father wasn't part of that, none of his family was except for my mother!" Romina exclaimed.

"Romina, I couldn't trust anybody. I hardly knew them at that time!" Lyonel said. "Caplan and Elora weren't exactly all for family reunions. They got married without even telling us first!"

"You could have told me," Romina insisted. "Especially when I started Hogwarts."

"We didn't know that Elora's brother had a son," Lyonel repeated, "We don't know anything about them, actually. When we made the decision to leave the wizarding community, we followed through to every extent. We cut off all ties."

"Knowing that one day I would step into it," Romina frowned. "And that's when you should have told me. 'You have grandparents. You have an aunt and an uncle. You have more family'. But you didn't. You let me believe that the only family I had were Death Eater parents. You thought that would be the best for me. To let me wallow with that burden. You have no idea what it's done to me. This whole year—" she swallowed hard, pushing down the tears she felt stinging in her eyes. "This whole year, I've had the worst thoughts about myself."