The Hated Hero

Darling I am Celestial

"Rowan!" Delphi cried, and she quickly got to her feet. She reached out her hand to touch him. . .

And the illusion shattered away. With a shudder that racked her body, she awoke tied to a chair with enchanted ropes. A cold, hard metal room surrounded her. She looked around. No one was in the room, but she couldn't make out any door or any way out.

Absently, she wondered how much time had passed in her sleep and why they had bothered with such an illusion. Her stomach grumbled, and Delphi forced herself to try and ignore it. She had to escape. That was simply it. After a few minutes of struggling with her bonds, she sighed.

Time trickled by until finally, her captors had entered. One of them was Sibyl Pennykettle, the old crone. With her was, naturally, the Starkiller family, including Rowan and another woman Delphi didn't recognize.

"Ah, so this is what the young hero has become," Sibyl crooned.

"I knew you'd fall for my illusions," the strange woman said as if her statement were a mere fact and nothing more.

"What do you want with me?" Delphi demanded.

"Trying to feign innocence, are you?" Carren scoffed. "When you tried to sneak into our camp?"

"You didn't have to keep me," Delphi pointed out.

"You knew our location," the strange woman said. "It was too risky. You would have alerted the Aurors to our position, and then what would happen to us?"

"Justice," Delphi sneered against her judgement.

Sibyl flicked her wand and Delphi felt a sharp slap across her face.

"You will not disrespect the Dark Lady!" Sibyl hissed.

"At peace, Sibyl, the girl does not know of whom she is speaking to," the strange woman said with a smile curling up on her serene face.

"Let me guess," Delphi said, realizing how similar her face looked to Rowan's. "Lady Starkiller?"

"That title belongs to my daughter, I'm afraid," the Dark Lady said with a nod towards her third daughter. "But good guess, for the daughter of that fraud in England."

"I hate what my father did to innocents, but he wasn't a fraud," Delphi corrected.

Lord Starkiller raised his eyebrows. "You have no idea, the forces you are attempting to play with."

"Do I?" Delphi asked.

"We're asking the questions here," Carren said hastily, pointing her wand at Delphi's throat. "What were you doing? How did you come across our camp?"

"I was trying to find my best friend," she said. "And a cure for another. But surely you knew that?"

Rowan's eyes widened before he composed his face again. Delphi found how still, how silent he was to be unsettling. It was always during his worst times that he was at his most quiet, even if he was a naturally quiet person.

"And how did you find us?" Carren repeated.

"Being the descendant of Dark Lords affords one certain privileges."

"Please, you've rejected your heritage completely!" Sibyl cried. "Any dark wizard worth their salt knows you're not one of us."

"Besides, she's lying," the Dark Lady added.

"Tell us the truth! Crucio." Sibyl ordered.

Delphi writhed as the sharp pains racked her body from the inside, and couldn't help but shake. She couldn't tell them the secret of her ancestors' wand.

"Crucio."

The spell repeated over and over again, until the screams in the room weren't her own.

"Stop, stop, please stop!" Delphi was finally aware through her own seeing red of Rowan begging with Sibyl. "I'll erase her memory, I'll follow the rules, just please stop!"

"And why should we trust you with the task of erasing her memory, if you're so sentimental towards her?" the Dark Lady asked.

"It's my fault, isn't it?" Rowan said, much more coolly. "I'll take care of it."

"It's not that simple-"

"I've caused you the most trouble, haven't I?" he pointed out, a fierceness in his voice. Delphi noticed that his form flickered and was starting to smoke a little. "I'll cooperate with you, I'll do what you want, just-"

"I've had it with your demands, you spoiled brat!" Lord Starkiller turned to his grandson and punched him. There was complete silence in the room. Rowan slowly reached his hand to his cheek, where a cut where the Starkiller ring had hit him was.

With a coldness that terrified Delphi, he slowly stood up, drawing to his full height. He was just as tall as his mother, but not quite as tall as Lord Starkiller.

"It's too bad then, all the ways you tried to make me more powerful," he said calmly as he shimmered again and the smoke emitted from his form again.

"Rowan, stop," Carren said, instantly afraid, raising her hands in the first calming gesture Delphi ever saw from the woman. "Stop, please."

"I don't think I want to," he said. Delphi saw defeat in Carren's expression. Then, before anyone could do anything about it, she Apparated away. Lord Starkiller, Sibyl, and the Dark Lady were about to join her, drawing their own wands when a dark mass that vaguely resembled smoke and the cosmos appeared.

The powerful dark wind blew and Delphi understood.

He's an Obscurus now.

The other three Disapparated without another word, and Delphi was trapped in a room with an angry Obscurus.