The following is a scene Aberdeen relives over and over in her nightmares.

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The hazy influence of the Imperius Curse guided her to the door. Unguarded. What threat would there be within this building, after all? Within this office full of skilled aurors, poised to leap to action at a moments notice? She pushed open the door.

The exact details of the next few moments were lost to the obfuscation of the curse and a desperately repressed memory, but the look of confusion on Gawain Robards’ face as she pulled her wand on him, quickly transforming into horror as she started to speak the Unforgivable spell, was ingrained crystal clear in her mind’s eye. Each time would she relive this moment, it would be to the tune of a cacophony of thoughts spiraling through the void of her curse-befuddled mind.

Wait, something’s not right...

She was aware of her wand being raised.

No, wait, this isn’t right--

And there was the initial perplexed look on Robards’ face. At the time, she didn’t register his reaction. All she knew was that she needed to kill him.

You can’t kill him, you mustn’t--

There was a moment. In all the times she would look back on this catastrophe, she would have at least the vaguest sense of there being one moment, a fraction of a second, during which the voice in her head steadily telling her to kill Robards was so very nearly drowned out by the voice in the back of her mind, a barrage of thoughts all hitting her at once:

You always swore you’d never use an Unforgivable Curse

That you’d never kill

You have too much to lose

You are too much relied on

Robards has a family

What will it do to them if he dies?

And what will it do to your family if you’re the killer?

How can you protect anyone if you can’t stop yourself from doing this?

Luke, Akiva, Adon, Raynor--

Robards was reaching for his wand now.

Robin...

But the hesitation only lasted a moment.

Please don’t do this. Please, please, please--

'AVADA KEDAVRA.'

And it was then that the expression changed from confusion to horror. She watched the life leave him without really registering what it meant. But somewhere deep inside the recesses of her mind, she was sobbing.

The next thing she remembered was noises at the door. She turned to see Adon Eleor and Kabir Ahmed. Her wand was still raised. Her head was thudding. The blissful state the Imperious Curse kept her mind in seemed to be trembling somehow. What was going on? What did she need to do now that Eleor and Kabir were here? Did she need to kill them too? She took a staggering step forward. She couldn’t make out much of what was happening, but she was vaguely aware of her two colleagues talking to her, trying to persuade her to give up. Give up what, though? What had she done? She felt so lost. She needed the voice to tell her what to do.

But the voice was gone. The gentle embrace of the Imperius Curse shuddered and then dissipated. It was as though she had fallen from a great height in a dream and woken with a jolt. All the details of the situation came flooding to the forefront of her mind, everything suddenly in sharp relief. The full impact of what she had just done hit her like a punch in the gut.

Without even realising she was doing it, she dropped her wand. 'No...' She fell to her knees, unable to support her own weight anymore. More than anything, she suddenly craved unconsciousness, but it would not come. She was stranded in brutal reality, staring ahead unseeing, eyes clouding with hot tears. For what may have been the first time in her life, Aberdeen had no idea what to do.

'...No...'