Dorcas finally returned home after her auror training, apprenticeship and field work. She was an auror before she went home to Philippa and grandpa and that would mean nothing to either of them but it meant something to her. It meant something to not come back empty-handed. When she returned in her mind she would finally sit down and tell Philippa everything and grandpa would come in later after work to find that everything was understood, strained she assumed but at least Philippa would know. But when she went home she found grandpa. He had aged. In her mind he was still the same age as he'd been when she'd last left him. She still sent letters but had not received any back since she never left a return address, not even when she was figuratively right down the street. He had aged so much that it startled her. She hadn't been away for so long and he'd always taken good care of himself but…

Grandpa was there when Dorcas told Phillipa about being a witch. She hadn't needed to do magic to be believed. It had been grandpa that confirmed and he steeled himself against whatever emotion came up. His own emotions. At first, Dorcas told him that she and Philippa should speak alone first and she had hesitated and Grandpa understood why. She had almost said that they should act as if he hadn't known all along. She would understand if Philippa felt betrayed but she didn't say that out loud and granpda insisted he be there. They had both been keeping the secret so they should both be there to tell her and grandpa hesitated now instead but Dorcas understood, that they should be together to both be yelled at if she felt so inclined.

But of course she hadn't. She knew all along that something was the matter. That something was strange about the school only because of the silence that surrounded it. She went to a school on a scholarship for swimming and wasn't always discussing the meets? Of course not! Impossible. The summer after school, she came back and all Dorcas had to talk about was that she swam everyday, sometimes multiple times a day so for seven whole years she didn't come home talking about it had made no sense to Philippa. That she hadn't been there to see her off to school even though Dorcas' term started earlier had also been strange. Really, she said measuredly, strangely, there had been a time when she thought that Dorcas had been sick. And she was glad, she said her eyes shimmering with tears that, if nothing else, that that had not been the case. Dorcas told her she had a right to feel angry or betrayed. Philippa asked if it was a betrayal. Dorcas said no.
"So?", Philippa said, "what was there to be betrayed by?"
"I could have told you sooner."
"Why didn't you?"
Grandpa chimed in softly, "There is a law. I think I only know because we are family and I had to know otherwise…", he trailed off.
"Then why say anything now? Has the law changed?"
"No."
"Then," Philippa said shrugging.
Philippa wasn't temperamental but could get passionate, is what grandpa liked to say if he was being funny but he could not understand the scope of this conversation anymore. They had grown up so fast and right there but he still did not understand how they spoke to each other. Philippa had some right to feel angry and maybe even betrayed but she didn't and it wasn't a betrayal as such. On Dorcas part, he didn't understand why she insisted on Philippa feeling that way anyway. For several years now Dorcas hadn't lived in that house. After school, she had not come back and then only briefly before she moved out and this they never spoke about but had a feeling Philippa and she had or someday would. Shining a brighter light on all of the girl's conversation was his confusion. He didn't understand why she hadn't come home. This was maybe not the betrayal but what Philippa felt too. The sting of loving someone who insists that you not love them.

The Slytherin boy Dorcas had met before she went into the room of requirement's name was Ethan. He dreamed about Dorcas. Dorcas, after she found the Quiet Library, assumed that that's where Ethan had been studying, that Lydia and she might someday run into him again but they never did and she never thought about him again. Ethan knew that one of his house prefects was Dorcas' best friend but he didn't dare ever bring her name up to her directly. Any information he got about her was through brief observations and small pieces of conversations and the few classes they had together. He had a crush on her. He loved his house but this was the only time he'd feel the frustration of their isolationism. At this time, students from other houses visited others in their common rooms. The busiest and most crowded was the Ravenclaw common room because so many of them had friends in Hufflepuff. The second busiest was the Hufflepuff common room because they had so many friends in Ravenclaw and an open door common room where anyone, if they sincerely needed it, could find friendship or fellowship there but it was more difficult to get into their common room because of the drums. The third was Gryffindor where someone generally had to be invited in and no one from any other house ever went into the Slytherin common room for any reason. There was no attempt to. The only time the common rooms were free from other houses were during house loyal events such as Quidditch, around exam time or if they blocked out days or weeks or months of time to be house only common rooms. Ethan knew about this and wanted so badly to come into the Slytherin common room and find her sitting across from Lydia but he knew that would never happen. He could find a reason to go to the other common rooms but that would have been deeply suspicious. There were only four or five Slytherins to that went to the Ravenclaw tower or the Gryffindor commons and their close friends or siblings lived up there. Even Lydia didn't visit Dorcas in her common room. Ethan sighed pacing his room and made a plan. I will talk to her on the last day of school. Lydia left early and that changed his plan. I will talk to her at the end of this year, this year, this year. He never did.

Grandpa was not sick in the medical sense, not yet. He knew, as an old man, that he had done nothing wrong in letting Dorcas go to school. He knew he had done nothing wrong in making a home for both of his girls but he knew also that it might come to this. It had stunned some part of him to open the door and find her standing there. He saw his own age, his heartache in her eyes then. Seeing her, something that should have healed, something that should have been mended broke further. He had been holding on waiting for her so they could be a family again and he knew it would happen because he had raised her. This was their house, their home. If they had wanted to move they could not have because she would come back someday. That someday might be so late that he wouldn't be there anymore but she would come back. He knew about the pull and spell of home. That evening, he aged several more years than he had previously. His body acknowledged that it had done it's job in keeping him on his feet for so long, carrying such a heavy burden. Dorcas confirmed that she would stay this time and all the old that grandpa had fought off rushed into his body and moved everything around. It made his bones heavier, his muscles ache and his back tried to hold him up again and was unfit to the task. He moved slower and sat in his chair longer. Dorcas was too young and would never get old enough to know that someone could cause such a change. Philippa too but for her part she knew something understood something of what Dorcas coming home meant: they could finally live again. They had both been waiting, Philippa with less faith than grandpa.

When they all woke up later than they might have the next day Philippa went over what had been said the day before and how absurd it was. She almost believed she might have dreamt it but Dorcas was sleeping in the bed she'd grown up in. Had the whole thing been a dream? The magic, the school, the waiting? She heard the gentle groan and creak of grandpa making his way slowly and steadily down the stairs. Dorcas had slept in her clothes. She'd waited a little downstairs went upstairs when she thought everyone was asleep and collapsed in bed, hiccuping a little over her sobs. Philippa didn't know how to comfort her anymore. She used to do this when they were very young, when she first came to live with them and Philippa would get in bed with her, back to back and breath in nice and deep so that Dorcas knew she was there and she had enough breath for both of them.

The second day this happened, Philippa put clothes out for her.

"Enough. You're home."

As the days wore on, the sobs became less. And when they stopped all together, Philippa went to her bed which was now much smaller now that they were older and taller and brought the blanket from her bed over. She covered them both. She put her back against Dorcas' inhaled deeply until Dorcas fell properly asleep.