Undeterred, Sam kept following. She had to. If she didn't, it was as bad as admitting their friendship had collapsed beyond all repair. She hadn't waited this long to let that happen. She half wanted to call Dora out for being so selfish, but instead bit her tongue. "That's not true," she responded quietly, almost meekly. "You knew how I felt about me Pa." A different sort of loss, perhaps, but one all the same. "And all this time I've been trying to show that you won't lose me."

Although, a fat lot of use it'd seemed to have done.

She wasn't sure if what Dora was saying was meant to help her, or Dora herself. It wasn't exactly reassuring for the Ravenclaw to be compared to Charlotte Kettleburn, regardless of the period of time the older girl had been avoided for. Sam slumped a little, trying to hold herself together. At least there was a glimmer of hope. Those last words: ' am not used to people caring enough to push'. That meant Dora knew she'd done it for all the right reasons, yes? That Sam had constantly put herself in that position, however frosty the response, because she cared.

Sam raised her gaze back upwards, the movement letting a lone tear stray down her cheek. She rubbed it away roughly; it had already betrayed enough. "You wan' me to list the reasons?" she said with a sniff. "Because there's a 'ole load of 'em. But mainly, because when you're wiff me, you make me a better person. I aspire teh things I'd ne'er even heard of before I met you. You make me feel safe 'n' secure, 'n' you're the one of the onleh people in the world I trus' nearly as much as meself. You've never judged, onleh accepted me feh who I am...encouraged me." She gave a small smile, her eyes fixed on Dora's brown ones. "And 'cos I realised what 'urt the most these last few weeks is 'ow much I miss yeh."

For one of the first times in her life, she'd felt distinctly lonely, despite being surrounded by more good friends than she'd ever had. And what she'd really, REALLY like now, was a bestie hug.