Wildfire • D.M

Forty-eight

Pitch black darkness enveloped alora as she felt the crackle of glass crumble beneath her elbows. The dark crowded around her, fear striking her chest.

She had been following the group, but along the way she was somehow separated while escaping. The millions of orbs that illuminated the room had been shattered, leaving her abandoned in a seemingly endless darkness.

"Lumos." Her wand flickered with a weak light emitting from the tip.
Her head spurred as she picked herself up from the cold ground and darted around for an exit. With all the glass and broken shelves in her way, her directional instincts were rendered useless.

Her calculating eyes narrow down on a door and without hesitation, her feet carried her directly towards it. She gasped while occasionally slipping on shards of glass but eventually caught herself as she stumbled towards the door.

She drew closer, desperate to find her friends until the air was knocked out of her lungs. A masked death eater loomed over her, cold boney fingers wrapped around her throat almost crushing it.
"Found you." The man's voice croaked.

"Yaxley." A familiarly eerie voice echoes. Alora's eyes widened as the masked dementor was shot back by a fiery green spark. Yaxley fell unconscious as alora scrambled to her feet in desperate haste.

"Are you alright dear? Did he hurt you?" She feigned, rushing over to her 'daughter', a worried expression riddled all over her face.

There she stood in false innocence. Her 'mother' had come to save her.

"don't come near me." She stammered back anxiously, almost tripping on the body that had been shot back merely moments ago.

The woman cracked a grim smirk. Her facade suddenly drops as she reveals her true insanity.
"So. You've found me out." She stared through half-lidded eyes.

Holding her wand between her fingers, she directed it towards the all too familiar woman that was equally as much of a stranger to her.
"I said stay back."

"Alora dear... don't point that thing at me that's not very proper. I won't ask you nicely twice." The woman glares. Amused by her bluff.

Alora seethed.
"Don't try to mother me. You're not my mother."

She stepped forward. Alora stepped back twice.
She grinned through her thin lips.

"Oh but I raised you dear." She sneered. "Yet still, look how you turned out.. an impudent little brat."

Alora tightened her grip around her wand, adrenaline rushing through her veins. She prods the wand closer causing the woman to flinch.

"Who are you really?" She demanded an answer. A fairly simple question yet the woman laughed amusedly at it.

"If it's a name you're looking for... I'm sorry to disappoint but I haven't one.
They call me the faceless woman." She cackled.

The faceless woman... she had only been a rumour circling the wizarding world. Nobody would have thought she were real. She was thought to be one of Voldemort's underground allies, so dedicated to the dark forces that her identity had been stripped to a mere whisper of a person.

"B-but the faceless woman-"

"Is just a myth?" She hissed amusedly. "Don't be so naive... I am very much real."

"Then..What happened to my parents and the real moira? Tell me what happened that night. The truth. No more sneaky lies." The girl demanded, no sign of resistance in her expression.

"Oh come on alora sweetheart, you're not really going to threaten me with that thing are you? We both know it's all a bluff, just put the wand down." The 'faceless woman' waved her hand mockingly.

"Try me." Alora states firmly.

"You want to know? Fine. But don't be disappointed when you get the answer."

Alora nodded once, the wand in her hand unwavering.

" Your filthy traitor of a mother was always favoured by the dark lord, it was only natural that I'd grown to hate that naive woman after she pushed me down the ranks.

She had made an agreement with the dark lord to create a weapon of mass destruction that would end the wizarding war entirely. But of course, once she began to become infatuated with that insolent father of yours, she began to change. It was only a matter of time before that traitor had betrayed the dark lord and in return gain her freedom.

All of this because of you...

As for that pathetic half-blood moira lithia... I had a hunch that night when there was no child to be found at the scene of your parents' death. I scoured the forest until I stumbled upon that useless wench. She was dead before she could even utter you another lullaby to keep you from screaming." She spoke dauntingly, her eerie look in her eyes low.

"Y-You killed her... " the words fell from Alora's lips.

The faceless woman smiled eerily, the corners of her lips etched a wicked smile on her face. She nodded, her body swaying menacingly forward.

"S-Stay back!" Alora could feel the bile in her throat as she held back her tears. The utter disgust unsettled her with a violent anxiety attack that wracked her brain.

"Don't be ridiculous alora. Just come home with me and I'll forget this whole little tantrum even happened."

"No! Don't come near me!" She repeated with all the seriousness in her tone.

"You ungrateful brat!" The faceless woman drew closer, forcing alora to back into a wall, panic written all over the girl's face.

"I said Stay back!"A scream wracked her throat as her arm erupted in purple flames, surrounding her in pure wildfire. She slashed the faceless woman across the side of her complexion with a sharp shriek.

The woman stepped back in shock, her eyes widening at the sheer amount of power she had just emitted. Wildfire.

Alora gasped shakily at what she had just done. She wasn't a wicked person but she just lost control of her powers for a moment. The woman crumbled infront of her shaken figure, her face burned badly by the flames.
"I-I'm sorry.. I didn't mean t-"

"I knew it."  She was cut off by a shrill cackle of the faceless woman.

This time, it was alora who stood in shock.
"Wh-what?"

A grim smile crept onto her face.
"I knew from the hunch I got the moment I saw you that night. If I hadn't know any better I would've killed you as an infant."

"What are you referring to?" Alora stammered.

"Don't you get it? The reason I kept you all these years? I though lera had a hidden motive."

The woman was insane with crazed delusions. She held the burnt flesh of her face together in her burning palms yet she ridiculed the young girl.

"You're the weapon." The faceless woman uttered.

Alora was rendered motionless.
She felt a sharp pain shoot through her body as she was struck by a spell that threw her to the ground.

A weapon?
They hadn't even unravelled the half of it.