the unhallowed affair - t.m.r

obscurité

"darkness"

June Twenty-Ninth, 1945

The midnight hour chimed at Juliette's flat, but she could not hear it.

Mind and body to darkness, was what Tom had said, translated directly from Latin.

In modern grammar (or at least the Wizarding world), however, the meaning was much more sinister. To fog the mind, and poison the body.

Juliette was fortunate enough to make out the words before she could feel her mind cave in, and physically feel her blood run cold. Soon, her mind would succumb to mania and spiral into madness. While her vision almost immediately went grey and spotty, she would still hallucinate, hearing things that weren't there, seeing people that were only in her head. In most cases she'd studied, the victim's worst fears would appear in said hallucinations, making it even harder to fight the curse.

Physically, her legs had given out, and she could no longer feel them. The feeling was spreading into her hands, too, starting at the tips of her fingers and working its way up to her shoulder blades. At some point, she fell over, but of course, she wasn't aware of that.

She screamed- she knew, because even though she couldn't hear it, she still had only slight feeling in her mouth.

Shit, what was the counter curse?

Normally, this was something Juliette could recognize with ease, and if she saw it happen to another person, chances are she would've been able to save them by now. But this was a very, very hard thing to do when you were near death.

Her mind had almost fallen through. Her body, unbeknownst to her, was currently curled up on the ground, shaking uncontrollably.

With whatever little strength she had left, she mumbled- no, choked the words from her lips.

"Cogitationes expellere corpus purgare,"

Her vision slowly cleared, and she gasped for air that she wasn't even aware that she had lost. Feeling slowly returned to her limbs, but when she tried to stand up, she was still very lightheaded, stumbling into her coffee table.

"That son of a bitch!" She cursed to herself, partially at the table, but mainly at Riddle.

When she finally managed to stand up, she looked down at her body. Like she assumed, there was no physical evidence to Tom's curse, the only marks on her body being the ones he gave her in Borgin & Burkes.

He gave me ones similar.

She cringed at the thought, trying not to let her mind wander to whatever Anastasia was referring to. Now was not the time.

Since her mind was almost stable again, she began running through the events of the night.

First, she realised what Tom was actually planning, so she naturally confronted him, leading her to Malfoy Manor and somehow her near-miss with Death.

So naturally, she knew she had to show up at Borgin & Burkes tomorrow like Tom said. Not because she was threatened by his words, but because now she wanted to kill him herself.

Even if she had to play the long game.

__

Sleep came easily that night, thanks to her stressful day. However that stress carried over into the morning, plaguing her thoughts as she got ready to leave.