Choices need to be made

He felt himself tense. Taught as a bow string as he looked wordlessly at Hazel. Her words were a bitter thing. Perhaps too bitter for him to swallow. His eyes followed her animated speech, his expression set in grim lines. When she spoke his sisters name, each one hit like a blow. Flinch, flinch. Jerking outright at the final name. At the sibling he had been closest to, who had been almost his twin. She bared the secrets he had been denying, shoving them between them so he couldn't ignore them. Couldn't pretend. His father took, and used only what children were of use to him. The rest he discarded. Basilisk had worked very hard all his life to be useful to his father. 


Hazel wasn't done yet. She tossed his insecurities out next, and he glanced at Spider. Ashamed their kid was hearing this. Basilisk wasn't the only one losing his rosy glasses. Spider idolised him. Had idolised him. Surely no longer after today. “Spider…” he said, his voice breaking as he glanced at the kid, and then away again. Unable to meet their eyes. He settled on looking at Hazel once again, but it was clear he was struggling to look directly at her. His insides hurt, something was crawling up his stomach. He didn't know how to process his feelings. That wasn't something he'd ever been good at. It was true, what Hazel said about Sirius. Their Warlord was likely in his last year of life. “He's so angry at Sirius. If I walk away…” he knew exactly where his father's anger would fall next. “You're asking me to give up my own father.”