Tempting Desires //Mattheo Riddle

3 New Students

The next morning Florence bolted up out of her bed her panting, sweat dripping down her forehead. She looked round the room, it was dimly lit. The familiar green and black walls surrounded her, the same smell of vanilla and fire whiskey filled her nostrils.

She checked the clock placed on her night stand. 6.30am. Nearly time for school.

She looked to her left, Pansy lay fast asleep on her side in her bed as usual. On her right she saw Astoria also fast asleep her pink satin eye mask covering her face with her silk pyjamas.

She was in her dorm.

But how?

She laid back down clutching her head as a dull throb pulsed in her temples. She pressed her fingers against her forehead trying to ease the relentless pressure that seemed to squeeze her skull. Each heartbeat sent a jolt of paint radiating from her head, a constant turmoil. She hadn't drank last night? Had she?

As she sat there, the world around her began to blur and fragments of the previous night flickered in her mind like a broken film reel.

Yells echoed in her ears, the sound of gasps in the Great Hall and the eerie patter of feet through distant corridors. She remembered running out of the Great Hall, the announcement of Deans death rattling her to her bones. She remembered a large figure sprinting down dark corridors as she raced after them. With those memories came a wave of hazy confusion.

She remembered the two boys. One was tall and had a charismatic Italian accent. His face was chiselled near to perfect and he seemed to possess hazel brown eyes that she could forever get lost in. Well that was if he wasn't a complete arsehole. Their conversations flickered back into her head. How he had called her beautiful, his fingers on her lips, HE CALLED HER CARA MIA?! Florence scrunched her face in disgust as she recalled the boy.

Her mind filled with the image of the other boy, the smaller puppy like boy. She had to admit it, he was a right weirdo. He never seemed to stop always moving, and god he looked at her like she was some sort of toy!

Suddenly, a vivid image crashed into her consciousness- a face that made her heart race. The image of the tall, curly brown haired, wicked boy from last night. His sinister smirk the forefront of her mind. His toasted brown hair and striking emerald green eyes that held secrets untold glared down at her. He had a darkness that loomed over him and possessed a magnetic charm that seemed to draw her in.

She saw herself tied down to a chair his dark figure looming in-front of her. He had asked her some weird questions. Who her mother was, what her mother did, and the weirdest of all. Where her loyalty lies.

Why on gods green earth did he need to know that? Who was he and why had he taken her in the first place? At the time, she had assumed he was an auror but now... now she wasn't so sure.

The memory of the Italian boy whispering the words 'Obliviate' as- Hold on. How was she even tempering any of this!? Florence lay there confused when suddenly it clicked.

Her mother.

Throughout her childhood, her mother had taken great pleasure in torturing her daughter then using a charm to make her forget all the pain. As Florence grew older the charm began to stop working after using it so much Florence almost became immune you could say?

From that day on any time her mother would torture Florence using the cruciartus curse or some sort of spell or even sometimes by using a physical weapon and then trying to wipe Florence's memory of it, the young girl would remember every second. Her screams, the blood her mother's wicked grin. Every. Single. Thing.

Florence always tried telling herself that her mum would wipe her memory of the torture because she felt some sort of guilt or perhaps sympathy. But as time went on she realised it was just her mother's sick way of feeding on 'innocent prey' or so she called it.