Dilemma
Alecto all but stumbled as she left the hospital. A passing muggle woman around her own age halted in her steps and regarded her with apparent worry, but Alecto simply spared her a hostile glare which left no doubt that any concern was unwelcome. Shakily, she leaned against the window of a shop, taking no notice of the household supplies displayed inside. Certainly, she had as good as known what was wrong with her, but being told to her face by a professional healer was an entirely different thing.
Her period, that usually occured with minute regularity, was now nearly a month overdue, and recently she had repeatedly found herself overcome by a recurring sickness that could only have one explanation. Apprehensively, Alecto did the only reasonable thing and let herself be checked at St. Mungo's, just to find the worries creeping up inside her stomach confirmed. She was pregnant.
The thing about it was, if she calculated back then the only person that could possibly be the father was Amycus. She had heard the stories, of course, of children conceived in incest that were mutilated or mentally damaged from the beginning of their lives. Confessing to her parents that she was carrying her twin brother's child? No way, never. Should she them that she had no idea who the father was, become one of those girls her mother spoke of in the same contemtous voice that she used when she spoke of Muggles or Mudbloods, one of those girls that got prematurely knocked up with some nameless, faceless man's bastard spawn? She could already see her father's disappointed face in front of her inner eye.
No, there was only one possibility, there had never for a second been another one.
Purposely getting rid of an unborn child was looked down upon in the wizarding world, and she knew that she wouldn't find a healer that would help her do it, at least not by honest means. However, the rumors that she had heard about Muggles came to her mind at once, about how those barbaric creatures frequently aborted the children which they had conceived by carelessly whoring around. Convincing a muggle healer to do it would certainly cost hardly any effort at all.
Her decision was made.
She placed a hand on her belly, held herself absolutely still and motionless and tried to feel inside herself, focused on the tiny being that she now knew with certainity was growing inside her womb, created from the very same cells that its mother was made of, feeding off her body, as good as a part of her. It was much too early to physically feel anything, naturally, the embryo was still much too small and not able to do any such thing as move around or kick the inside of her stomach yet, but unexplainably, as if it was somehow connected to her on an entirely different level than just physically, she could feel the thing live.
It could almost be considered to be an unspoken law of nature that a mother was supposed to love and protect her child above all else. Thus, to Alecto the thought of killing her own unborn child felt like a crime against nature itself, the ultimate form of cruelty.
Slowly, with nearly unnoticable movement, the corners of her mouth lifted into a twisted, deranged smile, and a dry chuckle escaped from the depth of her throat. Was this not such delightfully wrong thing to do?