Ortum Infernum [d.m]

Chapter Nineteen

Trigger warnings: Blood and gore, minor character death, psychological torture, graphic descriptions of torture on humans and animals. Please skip this chapter if you cannot handle the topics mentioned above.

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The classroom was dark and dingy. Barely any of the setting sunlight reached where she sat at a desk. Her cheeks were wet with tears and her hands were clutching the sides of her seat so tightly that her knuckles had turned white. A horrid sound echoed in the empty classroom. It grated against her eardrums.

Odette watched in morbid horror as the rabbit gurgled out it's final breath before it stopped twitching. At long last.

She stared at the empty socket of where an eye used to be, feeling bile rising up her throat. It's white fur was stained crimson with its own blood. Intestines pooled on the desk from it's open stomach, the blood dripping steadily off the edge of the desk and onto the floor.

Amycus Carrow had switched from birds to rabbits.

He said she reminded him of one.

The torture lasted longer this time, probably because he was still seething about what she had done this time.

Neville Longbottom had snuck to her house dorm in the middle of the night and pleaded for her help. A member of Dumbledore's Army, a seventh-year Ravenclaw, had been chained in the Great Hall for two consecutive days and severely punished because he had snuck out to release his girlfriend from her punishment.

The Carrows had been sure to make an example out of him for all the rebels. It worked, as most members of Dumbledore's Army had strangely disappeared after that. Nobody knew where they went. The professors were ordered to look for them but to no avail.

Some people, even Odette herself, had speculated that they might have found a way to escape the castle. But the school grounds were crawling with Death Eaters and dementors. It would have been impossible for a group of inexperienced students to execute the escape.

As it turned out, they had been hiding in the Room of Requirement.

"You're the only person that can help us," a ginger haired girl that accompanied Longbottom had said to her. She looked vaguely familiar. "You won't be punished like the rest of us."

There was a bitterness to the ginger's tone. It irked Odette to an extent, but she tried to let it wash over her.

It was with a heavy heart that she decided to assist them in rescuing their friend. Fully aware of the punishment she had to endure afterwards without anyone else's knowledge.

It was her job to protect and assist the students, she was appointed Head Girl for that very reason and she wasn't going to fail them when they needed her.

Odette's attention was brought back to the present when a rasp of knuckles against the desk made her startle. Amycus Carrow had sauntered over to leer at her by the desk. His close proximity made her feel sicker than she had been before.

"It seems that you have yet to grasp the concept of why it's necessary to punish these rebels," Carrow had said to her in a calm and pleased tone.

He prodded at the rabbit's corpse with the end of his wand, digging around in the bloody intestines until he located the eye that he had gouged out. With a gentle flick, he rolled the orb towards her. Odette flinched as it dropped onto her lap and rolled down her skirt.

"The Headmaster values order. As do I. Those that fail to follow the rules must deal with the consequences. This is a universal law that even the filthy Muggles adhere to in their world."