Daniel was dead.

As was protocol, another ministry official had requested to speak with her privately and informed her in the middle of her work day that her brother — her handsome, young, aspiring cook, brother — had perished in the shipwreck. Fallon had detached from her body almost immediately, seemingly watching from above as she blankly stared at the official. She went through the motions, telling Gabe in inexcusable blunt terms why she needed to leave so suddenly, and flooed to Kieran's where she had had to tell him. Their mother presumably knew already, she hoped, as Fallon hadn't spoken to her in years it felt like. Not since graduation, maybe. Maybe shortly after? It didn't matter now, she would have to speak to her mother at Daniel's funeral. And Seamus — Seamus would be distraught.

Seamus would have to somehow pass his OWLs a month after losing his brother.

Fuck.

Fallon left Kieran's early, still too in shock to tolerate her brother's immediate turn to drunkenness. She looked for Malou at home, already thinking of flowery ways to describe death to the woman who knew more of it than Fallon ever hoped to, but couldn't find her roommate anywhere. Daniel was dead, gone. A nibbled on corpse unceremoniously fished from the sea. If anyone could understand it was Malou. Or Jesse.

A sharp pang ran tore through her heart as she thought of her (former?) fiancé. It'd been a month since their argument and they hadn't spoken, though that was more due to her unexpected tour of rural Ireland than it was avoidance of him. Gabe and she had had to leave for Ireland mid-afternoon the second week of March and had only returned two days ago. Thankfully, it wasn't trafficked muggles this time but an actual smuggling plan. They had handled it swiftly enough, but the mountains of paperwork in the aftermath were yet another deterrent from speaking to Jesse.

She had a plan for how they moved forward, a compromise discussed over and over with Gabe until it was fine tuned and agreeable to all parties. But, it didn't matter now because Daniel was dead.

It was still early when Fallon arrived in Jesse's flat, too early to have expected him to be home from work already. Numbly, she sat on the edge of the bed with his bedroom door wide open for an indiscernible amount of time. If Kirke walked past she hadn't noticed, if Jesse was in the other room she didn't know. Daniel was dead and she could think of nothing else.