UNKNOWN | D.M (UNRAVEL BOOK 4)

[ 13 ]

"Good evening..." the two replied, trying to be as polite as possible.

"Sit," Umbridge beckons with a nod and Aine glanced at Harry before they both took their respective seats with the desk and chair provided. She looks down onto the table, a couple of parchment lay across the placemat surface and a small hourglass stood in front of her eyes.

Aine raised a brow, looking up to her professor. Will she ask us to sign some autographs as a form of punishment? she questions in her mind.

"You're going to be doing some lines for me today, Mister Potter, Miss Estoileon," Umbridge stated and Aine reaches for her bag as she plans to take out her quill. "No, not with your quill," the professor said. "Going to be using a rather special one of mine," she added, a hint of excitement in her voice. She stood up gracefully and struts towards the students with two quills in her hand. Then, she places one on each table and Aine examines it silently.

"Now... I want you to write, 'I must not tell lies' on the paper given," she instructed and Aine let out a soft exhale. 

Again, with the lies. What part of what she said was a lie? She just couldn't fathom it. Was what she said about Voldemort's return really such a big false truth? No, he is back. Tom Riddle is reborn before her eyes in the graveyard and there was no mistake about it.

"How many times?" Aine heard Harry asking grouchily and she waited for further instructions.

"Well, let's say for as long as it takes for the message to sink in," Umbridge simpers with her toad-like smile. She twirls around back to her table.

"You haven't given us any ink, Ma'am," Aine remarked and Umbridge pauses, she turns to Aine, her eyes curling into slits.

"Oh, you won't need any ink," she replies and the two began writing their lines.

Aine picks up the black quill, sceptical about it. She stole a peek at Umbridge who was happily sipping her sweet royal milk tea, feigning ignorance. Then, back to the parchment, Aine stared emptily over the blank page before moving her wrist to write the lines.

I... Must... Not... Tell... Lies...

Her voice muttered in her head as she moves the quill across the paper, her letters forming the words neatly in cursive. When she was done with the first line, she took a moment to look at the shiny red words that she had inked out before she went on with her second line. It was then she felt a prickly feeling on the back of her palms but the girl had ignored it, thinking it was probably her mind playing tricks with her.

However, the tingling sensation only seemed to increase the more she wrote. Her finger clutched tightly onto the quill and she bit her lips, dismissing the pain that only grew. By the tenth line, she places the quill down before she stretches her fingers out, numbing the pain. Then she continued, her pacing growing slower and slower while the discomfort spreads to her wrist. It was only until it felt like her hand was burning that she drops her quill, letting out a muffled gasp of pain that Umbridge looks up at her. The woman's lips curled when she realize that the students finally figured out the secret of the quill.

Aine held her wrist, giving it a light squeeze before her sleeves unveiled the words on her hand that had been transferred over from her paper. The scarlet letters in cursive had appeared on the back of Aine's hand as if it was engraved with a letter opener blade. Yet— even as Aine continued to stare at it, the words on her skin had disappeared, leaving nothing but a slight redness on her outer coverings. She blinks at it, confusion fanning across her face.

She continued on with the lines with her quill in her hand, the words gliding across. I must not tell lies... 

Only this time, she noticed the words re-emerging on her skin and the searing pain that returned. Once again, they healed themselves, leaving nothing but rubbed skin. Red and swollen. She writes another and again, and again— it would bleed and then disappear over and over again.  Then it finally struck Aine that the words she had written were not ink, but her very own blood.