The Unknown

Chapter 26: Thestrals

Dahlia was in the hospital wing with the rest of the year, everyone was sat on different beds while Madam Pomfrey walked around the room, making sure none of the students were injured enough to need potions to heal. Even those who looked unharmed she checked over and fortunately, the majority of the people only had cuts, none that really needed potions. There was the odd person here and there that had to have glass removed from their skin as it seemed to get lodged underneath it or was too painful for some of the students to remove.

She sat on a bed closest to the door, Hermione beside her while across from them sat Ron on another bed. Hermione and Ron were talking about what happened, Ron saying it was bloody lucky that no one got really hurt while Hermione began to sprout off ideas of what could have happened. Dahlia, on the other hand, just stared at her left hand, brushing it with her other along the cuts, and she knew she had cuts on her face too. She prayed to the Norns that they wouldn't be permanent, she didn't need any more scars on her face.

Thankfully, they didn't have to remain in the hospital wing long. Professor Dumbledore came and inspected the students, asking what happened in their own account, but he never asked Dahlia. He avoided her and didn't even look her way when Ron and Hermione spoke but there was a moment, a moment when Madam Pomfrey said they could all leave that Dumbledore glanced quickly in her direction and when they clapped eyes, he looked down but his head stayed in her direction and she got the sense that he knew she did it. He, however, would suspect it was the Horcrux inside of her, not her own anger acting on her magic and the lies the God of Thunder spoke.

Sports and Self-defence was cancelled for the fifth-year students as they had already gone into that period while being in the hospital wing, and even though it was a double period, Professors Romanoff and Barton knew they wouldn't concentrate and would just gossip all lesson. Being distracted while exercising with machinery could sometimes end in disaster and they didn't want to risk injuries. Hermione took the time to go to the library, study, and begin homework for other lessons while Ron went back to Gryffindor tower with the other boys. Dahlia was offered to go to both places but turned them down, just wanting to go for a walk and think.

Thankfully, the hallways weren't filled with students, only the odd one or two that didn't have lessons. Dahlia made her way to the wooden bridge and when she got to the middle, she leaned against it and looked out to the horizon. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath and sighed as she opened them. She picked up her locket from under her shirt and held it tightly as she began to think of everything. Why was she still at Hogwarts? She came back to learn magic, she came back because she feared what Voldemort would do to others to find out where she was. She came back so that Odin wouldn't discover a living girl on Niflheim, discover the truth behind her existence, but now it didn't seem to be worth it. She could practise magic on Niflheim, have teachers there. She would find a way to contact those on Midgard and keep a close eye on Voldemort's followers so she could protect others and stop the war like she was prophesied to, and when it came to Odin, she trusted her sister to protect her. She made a mistake by returning to Hogwarts, she only put herself in danger from the Avengers and Voldemort and his followers. The only positive that came with her return was the fact that she could see her friends but even then, it was covered with doubts. If the truth was revealed, if she told them, who would stand by her side and who would abandon her? With the lies and twisted truths that Thor was teaching about her father and the nine realms, could they, or anyone for that matter, trust in her prophecy and be on the side of the light? Or would they believe she would be only a murderer and torturer like her family?

She laughed to herself, thinking back to when she thought her life was complicated when she first started Hogwarts. If there was somehow a Time-Turner that would take her back all of those years so she could tell her younger eleven-year-old self on the train to Hogwarts just how confusing her life would get by the end of that year, she probably would have laughed and said that it was impossible and that she was crazy. She went from the lonely orphaned girl whose parents died in a car accident to the daughter of a god and a witch, her mother sacrificing herself and the daughter becoming the saviour of the wizarding world. A world she never knew existed and didn't believe in. Now, she was the victim to some prophecy, a target for gods and man alike and she was only fifteen years old. A part of her wished that she had a normal life but then she would be denying her father, sister, and brothers, and that was something she would never do. She was sure now that if she was to face a Boggart after all these years of knowing her family, her time spent with her father and Hela, she was sure that it would turn into them being taken from her forever before she ever truly got to meet them.