Post by dahlia jade greyback on Sept 7, 2024 21:22:03 GMT -7
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Cairo, Egypt
June 13, 2029
June 13, 2029
Dahlia’s shaking hands relaxed only enough to allow her fingers to unclench from around his throat. The aged and frail body of one of the magical world’s most notorious serial killers lay beneath her, lifeless and still. Fenrir Greyback, her father, was dead.
Returning to official work a few months prior, Dahlia had been itching to do her actual job once again. During her time benched from actual cursebreaking, she had visited Egypt on a couple of occasions. Her work as a translator had become far more important for the newest class of rookies than anything she had ever done in an official capacity. While she never viewed herself much as an instructor, they (the new recruits) seemed to like her immensely. It had something to do with seeing a younger face, allowing them to associate better. That and they had occasionally seen her pop into the Hogwarts classrooms to deliver materials. She wasn’t one of their professors and had zero authority over them, so that made her cool. Dahlia liked the attention too, as she had never really received it before this. Especially not during her own time at school.
Getting back into the field felt amazing though. A new chamber had been discovered in the past month or so, and while it was still unknown to the non-magique, the Cursebreakers were busy exploring and plundering it of anything that would spell bad news for the non-magical crowd. Dahlia’s expertise in the region obviously meant she was immediately brought on, and Gringotts finally gave her the green light to enter the tomb with her own team. It felt nice to have that sort of authority, especially with how her time with the bank had been. Constant delays and stagnation, whether if it was from Hag’s Fever or her concussion, had started to make her second guess the career path. As much as she enjoyed it, especially because she could talk shop with Rhys, there was a point where it became annoying. The never-ending feeling of being left out was not a fun one. She had grown up with that and disliked it more now because there was a simple solution to it all: doing her job.
The two months of the summer she spent mapping out, researching, and raiding the tomb was easily the best of her career. While the items she plucked from inside weren’t inherently dangerous, they did give her a sense of worth. Finally. And then it was all done with. The bank was content with how the job had gone and was positive that there weren’t any further hidden rooms off of what had been searched. This was, unfortunately, so common in Cursebreaking that Dahlia felt the looming feeling of loss starting to come on again. She had finally gotten to do what she loved, just to have it end without a big finish. But there was also nothing she could about that. Gringotts would assign her something else soon enough, and off she would go to some other part of the world until they had more for her to do in Egypt. The paycheck she received this time proved that they were happy with the work she had done.
She was due to travel back to England in a few days along with the rest of the research group that had been with her and a couple of trainees. Dahlia didn’t mind hanging around Cairo, it just wasn’t preferable. The hotel the bank put them all up in was nice enough, much better than the safe houses they were typically relegated to. But she also felt trapped by it. Like they were supposed to all stay there until it was time to depart. That was really what had caused her to wander on the magical side of the city. She had explored it enough over the years, and there were far less restrictions for her to do so than on the non-magical side.
On one of these nighttime excursions, that was when she first saw him. The long, twisted beard and scrawny arms couldn’t hide what Dahlia could sense. The deep, primal understanding that the man down the street was her father, wracked by age and unknown injuries delivered to him by his terrifying life. There had always been a vague thought in the back of her mind about what she would do if she accidentally stumbled upon Fenrir Greyback out in the wild. She anticipated him to be the hulking figure he had been when he slaughtered her mother and left her afflicted with lycanthropy. Not this feeble old man. And with the way her siblings proudly wore the Greyback name, Dahlia had expected him to come hunting for all of them. Because that was who he was, right?
The terror that gripped her that night was something she hadn’t felt since she was turned. An unknown amount of time passed between when he waddled out of sight and when Dahlia realized that she could move on her own again. Never once had she frozen in fear like that, except during their last encounter. She didn’t sleep that night, instead opting to pace back and forth in her hotel room as she tried to figure out what to do. Did she call Rhys and Max and ask them what to do? Should she contact the authorities? Both sounded like the right plan of action, until she picked up her phone and a much darker thought popped into her head:
What if she killed him?
No one would ever care if she did it. Fenrir had murdered and assaulted an uncountable number of innocent people and destroyed just as many families. He had killed Rhys’s mother, and her own, and others just like them. And for what? To sow chaos? Or just because he had the taste for it? Her own rage towards him had fueled her in the years that followed her attack, and for a long time she had vowed to find him and kill him. That reality slowly disappeared as she came to terms with the fact that finding him would be nigh impossible. The fact that he unknowingly appeared before her like this…the Aurors would never question her for his murder. She would be doing the magical world a service, and herself one too.
And so she spent the rest of the day planning. That night, she was going to try and find him again and confront him. She had never killed anyone before, but she was sure she could do it to him. Dahlia didn’t require any answers from him on why he did the things he did. There was a multitude of spells she could cast that would snuff the life out of him in a moment’s notice. A ninety-year-old man didn’t stand a chance against her.
The brain was a funny organ, a fact that she had discovered over the past year since she had received her clubbing by the security troll at Gringotts. It should have acted as an inhibitor, like it always did the second she placed herself into dangerous situations. Normally, it shifted over to calculated moves and next steps for survival, mostly because that was what was required of it whenever she was on the job and ended up in trouble. Tonight, it was on autopilot. She had never been so calm in her life, which she would later realize was scarier than she originally thought.
Writing out a lengthy letter addressed to Rhys and Max explaining what she was doing and why in case she died (which there was a very good chance of happening considering who she was going up against), she wanted them to know that she was doing this for all of them and was completely sane of mind in doing so. Dahlia gave herself one last long look in the bathroom mirror before setting out, knowing that this was the last time she was going to see herself in this way. The next time, she would either be a murderer, or dead.
It wasn’t very hard to find Fenrir a second time. Dahlia almost felt like it was too easy. Which shouldn’t have come as a surprise, because he had to have been expecting it. Not many wandered the night like the two of them were right now, and especially not sporting such similar eyes. The elder Greyback took off down an alleyway the second he sniffed her out, Dahlia assuming he already knew who she was and why she was here.
A couple of quick turns through cluttered back alleys and she was on him in an instant, pulling both of them to the ground in a cloud of dust and a clatter of several old bikes that toppled over next to them. Dahlia’s brain went blank the second she found herself grabbing ahold of him. Using magic would have been far simpler, but something deep inside her told her that she wanted to see the life squeezed out of him. Her hands found his neck, and all he did was grin back up at her. There was no fight, much to her frustration, which only made her clamp harder until she could see the blood vessels starting to pop in his eyes. The same ones that she had Rhys inherited. She relented for only a moment, just long enough for his flailing arms to smack her back into reality as they dug into her wrists, an unconscious struggle for survival, she assumed, as she deprived him of oxygen.
And then it was over. His eyes went still, she felt the grip of his massive hands loosen around her arms, and the heaving chest that lay below her stopped moving for the final time. Aside from the bark of a street dog in the vicinity, all was silent.
She didn’t know how she got back to her hotel room, the total blackout that followed the moment she pulled her hands off of his throat didn’t end until she blinked awake on the floor of the shower, lukewarm water pelting her from above. From there, she slept until it was time to head back to London. At some point, she remembered the letter she had written and made sure to burn it before leaving. Dahlia wasn’t sure how to proceed now, but the news would eventually come out once the authorities realized who it was, dead in that alleyway. Returning to England seemed like the smartest thing to do, and solemnly she joined her team for the portkey back, feeling like every person that looked her way knew what she had done…
dahlia jade greyback ● 1,774
MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0
