Ortum Infernum [d.m]

Chapter Two

    The silence that blanketed the Coventry manor was stifling and eerie.

Corvux had raised a finger to his lips and raised his wand up to cast a non-verbal spell. Odette walked over to grasp her mother's hand, feeling the sense of trepidation pressing in on them as the room felt suddenly too small.

She watched as her brother walked over to a far wall and placed his hand flat against it. He listened for a moment then jerked back and casted several more intricate spells. Muttering the incantations under his breath and guiding his wand in precise motions in the air.

When Corvux deemed that the wards he added had strengthened enough, he strode over to one of the windows and parted the heavy drapes, just enough to glance out.

Then he lifted his wand.

Every muscle in Corvux's body tensed up and Odette felt instant dread fill her body. She seized up in fear. Her hands started to tremble uncontrollably.

Someone—an intruder had triggered the wards that her family had set up around the estate. Designed to keep unwanted company from breaching it and stepping close to their manor. Corvux looked weary from the battle he had narrowly escaped. Icarus was unconscious and wounded.

She couldn't let her brother fend off the intruder by himself.

Odette willed her hands to stop shaking. She had to try to clear her mind, to drag herself back into the present. Someone was out there. She had to defend her home and protect her family.

She glanced at her mother, met her wide and terrified eyes with her own, before she moved resolutely across the room to stand just behind her brother. With a deep breath she inched forward to peek out the window. Her wand gripped tightly in hand.

There was a silhouette of a hooded figure, standing just beyond the hedges. Their head was lifted as they looked at the second floor, directly at their window. A silver mask obscured their face.

A Death Eater.

     Odette often found herself scrambling to remember. To recall a time from the depths of her mind—a time before she couldn't recognise herself.

That was how she had begun to associate and sort through her memories. Categorised into the before and the after.

Of course, it wasn't always as simple as that. There were some moments that bleed into one another. Others that she couldn't quite recollect. Moments that didn't fit into either category.

Ones that she wished she could forget.

But there are moments that she recalled frequently. The ones that happened before the grief consumed her.

Before the war began. Before things were set into motion and spiraled gradually beyond any of their controls. Before she lost the people she cared about.

She reminisced about her days at Hogwarts most often. Remembering a time when the cold didn't bite at her skin, that didn't seize her heart and tear at her soul. When her heart wasn't just her own.

When her heart had belonged to a dragon.

October 1995

     Transfiguration was perhaps one of the more interesting classes taught at Hogwarts. At least that had been the collective opinion of most of the student body.

Odette enjoyed learning it well enough, but she wasn't very exceptional at it. And because of that, she tended to withdraw her interests from things that she didn't immediately excel in.