Dark Arts, Oliver Wood

Two: Welsh Dragon

DARK ARTS
Act One, Chapter Two:
Welsh Dragon

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rule #2 of necromancy: if it is absolutely necessary to enter a graveyard, use the buddy system.

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Mount Greylock, Massachusetts
Last January

It was still unbearably cold in the hospital wing; Mae was beginning to suspect that Ilvermorny's staff had yet to discover the joys of indoor heating, and thus subjected all of their students to the worst weather New England had to offer. No one had thought to use spells to keep the cold out, and the castle's granite and stone walls were frigid to the touch. 363 years of this fucking school, and no one decided that students freezing to death wasn't ideal.

Fantastic.

Shivering, Mae sat up on her creaky cot, putting one of her stiff pillows behind her back. She hated the Ilvermorny hospital exponentially more with every visit; this was unfortunate, considering as she'd spent the last three nights here. Most of the school was filtering through this week, everyone sick with something or other. But Mae just stayed on the corner cot, spending her days trying to catch up on Runic work until, in the late afternoon, Head Nurse Vargas brought her a Potion for Dreamless Sleep, and Mae could finally fall into wonderful nothingness. Still, Vargas was close to kicking Mae out altogether; she'd said, just that morning, I don't see how night terrors are preventing you from partaking in daytime activities.

Fucking night terrors. That's what everyone called them. Nobody Mae talked to seemed to care that she could feel her dreams long after she woke up. Sometimes, she found mud under her fingernails when she woke from dreams about digging in hard, packed earth with just her hands. Sometimes, she knew words in languages she'd never heard spoken before. Mae would leave the hospital wing as soon as Vargas managed to explain how she'd fractured her collarbone during the night a month ago – and not a single second sooner.

Last night's dream made her feel sick. She was in a graveyard, though she couldn't remember much about the physical place. There was a woman, and there was a throne, and a crown that looked like it was made of human bones, and–

But as Mae tried to recall the pieces of it, they slipped away from her. Again, the dream was just a bad taste in her mouth and a paralysing fear in the rest of her.

Someone drew back the curtains around her bed, and Mae instinctively threw an arm up to shield her eyes from the light. The intruder snorted. "Good morning, sunshine."

Mae watched as Professor Hodgeson pulled up a chair next to her cot, scraping it obnoxiously across the floor as he did. Mae couldn't resist her smile. Hodge, her Ancient Runes teacher, was by far her favourite among Ilvermorny's staff; for starters, he managed to teach an interesting class about a subject which, under anyone else, would've been mind-numbingly boring. He was funny, and seemed to care about his students, and had a decidedly posh English accent.

"Court," he said by way of greeting. Everyone called her that since she'd become Quidditch Captain. Mae was also a single syllable, but no one listened when she pointed that out.

"Professor."

"How are you?"

"Are you only asking that because you're about to tell me you've assigned the biggest project of the year, and I have an automatic fail?"

The corner of his mouth twitched. "Vargas says you're refusing to leave."

Mae crossed her arms over her chest. "She's refusing to help me. Isn't that, like, against our constitution?"