➥COMPLETED
Dark, mysterious, powerful.
When Charlie Weasley was given the order to find her and recruit her for the war, these were the words Dumbledore used to describe Anastasia Voinescu, an incredible young witch that chose her life as an outcast...
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A DARK WIND; a black mass with shining white eyes. Anastasia Voinescu hadn't been older than six years when her own body stopped obeying her any longer. It came in waves; slow and flat at first, later crashing down on her with the intensity of a tsunami, losing all the control, additionally to her mind.
It was fear and pain, shame and a deep cutting wrath for her magical self that made it so easy for the parasite to take over the young girl, that with every inch of her body wished to be normal. Instead she turned into darkness, instead she grew into an ash-coloured, tendril-equipped cloud; into something obscure.
When they came for her to get her, she didn't fight. They told her what she was. They told her what she could have become. They told her, she was dead.
An Obscurial only on rare occasions turned older than ten. The rest of her short life, she had to be locked away. She was a thread, dangerous not only to the secrecy of the magical world, but to anyone, including herself. If they only knew what she would become.
It was a miracle. Anastasia survived. How, they didn't know. Why, they didn't know. The black thread left her body over night, and never returned. But it left something inside her, something dark ...
Against all odds, Anastasia started going to Durmstrang Institute at the age of eleven, and graduated seven years later with powers beyond measure. It remained unknown, whether it was what the Obscurus left in her, or if what grew inside her that had the Obscurus fleeing. But darkness turned into a glowing, a blood red glowing, a force way bigger, way more dangerous, way more alluring.
They feared her. They haunted her. They failed. Living deep in the forests of Transylvania, they didn't dare a second try getting at her, and so Anastasia Voinescu became a legend, a myth, and at some point a scary tale, redoubtable and dreaded — until they needed her.
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Charlie Weasley was used to dangerous creatures. He was working with dragons, for Merlin's sake! So why on earth was he so nervous, standing in front of this forsaken forest with trees standing that close to one another that even the first sunrays of this new day didn't dare to fight their shadows. It was ridiculous! Charlie practically lived in the Forbidden Forest during his time at Hogwarts, feeding invisible Thestrals, watched werewolfs from his hideout in treetops high above the ground, tried to ride unicorns, befriended with centaurs ... There could be nothing in this forest that he hadn't already seen. In the end she was just a witch. A witch that chose to live alone. A witch with a special gift that she could use to kill him with a snap of her fingers ...
"Enough", he scolded himself, straightening his shoulders. It wouldn't get better if he kept standing here, staring into the darkness and breaking his head about whatever might hide in there. He had his orders. The last order Albus Dumbledore had given him, before he got murdered. If Dumbledore had thought that this witch was needed, what else could Charlie do than trust him?
Nevertheless, it was not the easiest to believe that she could be helpful at all. Wasn't she said to be evil? Didn't she murder her own parents at the age of only seven? Wasn't she said to be evil? Like real evil? The horror stories muggles were telling about her were as numerous. None of them was nice. But nothing was worse than what you could hear wizards talk about Anastasia Voinescu. While you could easily believe that the muggles made up all those stories about vanished wanderers and bloodstreamed animals, of red eyes glimming in the darkness, and of unnatural screams coming out of the depths of these terrifying shadows, it was hard to not give a damn about what the wizarding world was whispering under their breath about the blood red devil roaming these woods, saying that even the vampires were too scared to enter these part of Transylvania.
Charlie's feet didn't seem to care about the orders his brain was sending, but maybe that was because they couldn't be any more contradictory. One half of his mind was screaming at him to finally move, to be the Gryffindor he was, and finally enter this bloody forest and do what he had to do; the other half was urgently whispering warnings, telling him to screw Dumbledore and his mad plan that had no chance to work out at all.
Breathing in and out in monotonous waves, Charlie fought a war inside his own head, roaring lion against scaredy cat. Finally, with sweating palms and a drumming heart, he closed his eyes for one last deep breath, as if this forest was an ocean, and he had to dive into its depths, and stepped into the shadows that gulped him like tossing waves ...
