✔️ 𝐔𝐍𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐇𝐄𝐃 → 𝑐.𝑤𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑙𝑒𝑦

02 | I N S T R U C T I O N

   TO CALL THIS forest a strange place would have been an understatement. Goosebumps covered Charlie's arms, even as the air was moisture and damping in the summer heath, just like those hours before a thunderstorm would finally bring relief. No birds were singing in the treetops, there was no wind, no rustling leaves, no cracking branches but the ones below his feet. The dragon tamers senses were the most sensitive they could be, he could even feel the muscles in his ears, listening into a frightening silence.

   He would have preferred to just apparate, or at least go by broom, but the trees stood so tight to one another that flying was impossible, and Moody warmly suggested that if Charlie didn't feel the urge to get blown up the second he appeared out of nothingness.

   "Seems like you've no idea who you'll have to deal with, boy!", Moody had told him in a moment Charlie's mood was eased, almost euphoric about this new adventure awaiting for him. "Anastasia Voinescu had killed for way less grave reasons than to knock on her front door. You're experienced with dragons, are you? This woman is like one; a real angry one. One of those that have been mistreated for years and seek for nothing but revenge." He quietly laughed, as he'd enjoy the girl's cruelty. "You don't want to mess with her, believe me, Weasley. This task isn't like taming dragons. This is like catching a Chimera with your bare hands while you're wrapped up in pork and drenched in chicken blood!"

   Thinking about it now, Moody's words haven't even been frightening enough. The shiver that back then had ran down Charlie's spine was nothing compared to what he was feeling now. His heart was bumping blood through his veins in a speed that had him fear he could collapse every now and then. His hand was so tightly wrapped around his wand, his fingernails deeply dug into his palm, even though he knew that his wand would be totally useless when it came to a fight with Anastasia Voinescu.

   "Why me?", Charlie had asked Dumbledore, thinking about all those people who probably could have done better; Aurors for example — and why didn't Dumbledore himself go for her? "Why would she listen to me? If she's as dangerous as you say, why shouldn't she just blow me up?"

   "I have a feeling that it will work", the old headmaster had just replied, a twinkling in his brilliant blue eyes, a smile on his lips.

   That this answer wasn't really satisfying Charlie was out of question. But what else could he do than trust Dumbledore? At least that was what all of them, the whole Order, did. Even now he was dead, everyone somehow was still following his instructions he had wisely spoken before his downfall, as if he had known ...

   The hair on Charlie's neck suddenly rised. He stopped immediately, as if someone had put a body binding curse on him, his muscles tensed even more, his ears tried so hard to hear something in this deafening silence, it almost hurt. He commanded himself to keep his wand lowered, to not give Voinescu a reason to fear him.

   Ridiculous, a voice in his head sneered. As if this woman would fear anything in this world at all! It was him being scared, feeling like a deer in the darkness of a foreign forest, predated by a monster with night vision that called this woods his home. For seconds that felt like hours, nothing happened. But there it was again!

   Like a breath, a quiet wind; something you wouldn't ever hear under normal circumstances. He wasn't even sure if it really was a noise, or if it wasn't just the sensation screaming soundless whispers ... Again! Charlie involuntarily flinched, trying to see something in the shadows, but all that was surrounding him were trees, and more trees. He dared to raise his voice slightly higher. And that was his failure.

 •✧• 

   "You won't recover, Anastasia. I'm afraid I have no better news for you. This disease is rare, and unfortunately it is lethal."

   Not what a ten year old girl wanted to hear. Anastasia could clearly remember how the air refused to float back into her lungs, could still feel the dizziness, the anger, but amongst all the despair that had its hand wrapped around her throat, squeezing tightly, until the old wizard with his long beard and those fascinating blue eyes blurred in her vision.

   "Why have you surpressed your magic, Anastasia", he asked, his voice so calm it did hurt in her ears. "Why have you tried to hide it."

   "They didn't allow it." Her voice had been so faint, as if her last breath had already been taken. "They said it was unnatural. They said it was evil. That the devil himself cursed me. They told me to stop. But sometimes I couldn't ..."

   "Relatable", Dumbledore had said with a what she back then thought was a reassuring smile. Now she knew what kind of human being Albus Dumbledore had been. Acting like a lovely grandpa, all understanding and caring, he did nothing but use her. She had been the first known Obscurial in decades, she was his human guinea pig. "As I already told you, there is no cure. But what we can try is to put off the evil hour, making it as comfortable for you as we can. And maybe, just maybe, the end isn't as close as we fear it is, Anastasia."

   She had agreed. Of course she had agreed. She had been a ten year old girl, scared and helpless, alone and unloved, and for sure she didn't want to die. At this point she would have had done anything to survive as long as she could. She had agreed. And the joke was on them; Dumbledore and his healers, oh, those healers that had her locked up, torturing her with those tests, trying to provoke the Obscurus, trying to control it. She had told them to stop, she didn't want to go through this painful transformation, girl to black ashes, ashes to girl, over and over. She told them. They didn't care.

   With a dead panned look upon her face she remembered how they screamed when she came back for them eight years later, how they begged and pleaded, how the lights died in their eyes, one by one, healer by healer. Goosebumps covered her arms thinking about all she had done, but it wasn't regret, it wasn't remorse. It was satisfaction. And as her lips curved into a smile, it immediately froze, her body tensed, and she turned towards the door of her small hut, glaring at it as if she could look right through it.

   Oh, you poor bloke ...

 •✧•