Ortum Infernum [d.m]

Chapter One

December 2003

Everything was grey.

The hedges beyond her window stood like an ominous wall. A stark contrast against the bleakness of the sky. She stared at the beginning effects of winter, her dark eyes unseeing. Odette's mind was lost to the memories that she had kept at bay, hidden behind walls that were as tall as the hedges that surrounded the manor.

A prison she had built in her own mind.

She felt empty. The hollowness inside her expanding until she could no longer feel much of anything else. There was no space left for anything that wasn't grief.

It was consuming her—becoming her.

Was it the cold that was numbing her fingertips? Or was it merely the void in her chest? She could no longer tell if the coldness she felt was a factor of her exteriors or if it emitted from within her.

How did it all come to this?

She could sense movement from her peripheral vision and turned in time to see a house-elf just before it vanished, leaving behind a tray of food on the round table.

She turned back to the window. To the emptiness that laid beyond. The emptiness that mirrored her own. She had no appetite.

When did she become this?

The silence was heavy. Suffocating.

Odette stared at the plate of food in front of her before casting her gaze at the cloudless sky that stretched endlessly through the ceiling to floor window of the dining room. The view was different from the one in her bedroom. They were in a different wing of the manor afterall. But it evokes the same feeling.

The same emptiness.

She always seemed to be looking out the window, as if she subconsciously expected that someone would appear in the foyer.

"Odette," her mother's voice cut through the oppressive silence in her mind. She sounded worried, her voice wavering. "Please eat something."

She turned to meet her mother's gaze. Her brown eyes looked tensed and she appeared older than Odette remembered. She could not recall when her mother's eyes had lost their warmth.

Silently, she picked up a spoon and ate just because her mother had asked—pleaded her to.

Her hand spasmed the entire course of the dinner.

Later that evening, she shared the velvet longue chair with her mother in the sitting room. Her cold hand was grasped tightly in her mother's, enclosed between the older woman's warmer hands. That was the only part of her that didn't feel helplessly cold.

It was bleeding into midnight. They both sat still in the dim light, staring at the old grandfather clock as the seconds ticked by in an agonising manner. Her mother kept whispering reassuringly to her but her eyes wouldn't meet hers. Not once.

"It'll be alright, darling." Tick, tick, tick. "It'll be alright."

Odette felt as though she should be the one comforting her mother. It was her job as a dutiful daughter. But she couldn't bring herself to do it. She had forgotten what it was like to be a daughter that comforts her distressed mother.

They were watching the clock face, but Odette couldn't register the time. She wasn't sure how long they had sat there—with the clock ticking away and her mother murmuring words of comfort like a prayer—until a sharp pop sounded as her brothers apparated into the room.