Nurmengard, 1963 (Age 7)
The solar of the East Tower was a room of suffocating elegance. Silver tapestries depicted the slow, celestial dance of constellations, and the furniture was carved from blackwood, sharp and unyielding.
Aurelia sat at the low tea table. She was small for seven, a delicate doll made of porcelain and nightmares. Her hair was pulled back so tightly it strained the pale skin of her temples. Her eyes—one the icy silver of a blizzard, the other the burning crimson of a dying star—were fixed intently on the teapot in her hand.
"Again," Vinda Rosier said. She did not raise her voice. She stood by the window, a silhouette of severe grace, watching the snow fall.
Aurelia lifted the porcelain pot. It was heavy, but her strength was not the issue. The issue was the tremor. Inside her veins, the Obscurus hummed—a constant, static noise of chaos that wanted to shatter the china, tear the table apart, and scream.
She poured. The dark amber liquid arched toward the cup.
Clink.
The spout kissed the rim of the teacup. A tiny sound, barely a whisper.
"Stop," Vinda commanded.
Aurelia froze. The Obscurus flared hot in her chest, a flash of irritation. The liquid in the cup rippled, turning to steam for a fraction of a second before she forced it back down.
Vinda turned. She walked to the table, her heels clicking on the marble floor like the ticking of a metronome. She looked down at the child.
"You are angry," Vinda observed coolly.
"It is stupid," Aurelia hissed, her voice possessing a strange, harmonic duality. "I can crush this cup into dust with a thought. Why must I hold it like a feather?"
"Because power without control is merely a natural disaster," Vinda replied, sitting opposite her. She reached out, her gloved fingers tilting Aurelia's chin up. "And because the world will not fear you if they see you coming. They will fear you when they realize you are already in the room."
Vinda poured her own tea. Her movements were fluid, silent, hypnotic.
"Listen to me, ma petite," Vinda said, her eyes locking onto Aurelia's heterochromatic gaze. "You are a predator. That is your nature. But you cannot walk into a room of wolves wearing your teeth on the outside. They will band together and tear you apart."
Vinda took a sip, placing the cup down without a sound.
"Politeness is not weakness, Aurelia. It is armor. It is the glamour spell that requires no magic. You will learn to smile when you want to scream. You will learn to bow when you want to kill. Make them love you. Make them trust you."
Vinda leaned in, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.
"And when they are charmed, when they lower their shields to welcome the elegant girl with the strange eyes... that is when they will never see the knife."
Aurelia stared at the Frenchwoman. Slowly, the chaotic buzzing in her blood quieted. She understood. The tea set was not a chore. It was a battlefield.
She poured the tea again. The stream was perfect. The silence was absolute.
Vinda Rosier smiled, cold and proud. "Perfect."
The Carpathian Mountains, 1965 (Age 9)
The forest did not welcome intruders, but it bowed to its masters.
The night was absolute, the moon shrouded by heavy, iron-grey clouds. The snow was knee-deep, undisturbed save for the tracks of the creature they were following.
Aurelia crouched on the thick branch of an ancient pine. The cold did not bother her; her blood ran at a temperature that would have killed a human child.
Below them, in a small clearing, a stag stood alert. It was a magnificent beast, its breath pluming in the freezing air.
"I can smell its heart," Aurelia whispered.
It was true. The scent of the stag's blood was a physical weight in the air, thick and sweet like copper and honey. Her fangs ached, descending sharply against her lower lip. The Obscurus coiled in her muscles, begging to be released. She wanted to drop from the tree, a cloud of black smoke and red eyes, and tear the animal apart. She wanted to feast.
"Wait," a voice rumbled from the shadows of the trunk beside her.
Vlad Dracula did not crouch; he adhered to the darkness as if he were a part of the wood itself. He was still, utterly motionless, like a gargoyle carved from ice.
"It is panic that drives you," Dracula instructed, his voice a vibration that she felt in her bones rather than heard. "You are hungry, so you wish to rush. You wish to overwhelm."
"I am stronger than it," Aurelia argued, her fingers digging into the bark until the wood splintered. "I am faster."
"A wolf is faster than a sheep, yet wolves starve every winter," Dracula countered. "Look at the stag, Aurelia. Really look."
Aurelia forced her eyes to focus, pushing past the red haze of hunger. She watched the stag's ears flick. She saw the tension in its hindquarters.
"It senses something," she noted.
"It senses your intent," Dracula corrected. "You are leaking bloodlust into the air like a clumsy child spilling perfume. A beast kills from hunger. A beast makes noise. A beast makes a mess."
He placed a hand on her shoulder. His grip was iron.
"A King kills from necessity. A King strikes only once."
He released her. "Retract your aura. Become the snow. Become the wind. Do not think of the kill. Think of the silence after the kill."
Aurelia closed her eyes. She inhaled, drawing the frantic, buzzing energy of the Obscurus deep into her core, locking it away. She slowed her own heart rate until it beat once every ten seconds. She let the hunger become a cold, hard stone in her gut, rather than a fire.
When she opened her eyes, the red glow had dimmed. She was part of the night.
The stag relaxed. It lowered its head to graze on the bark of a sapling.
Aurelia moved.
She did not turn into smoke. She simply ceased to be on the branch and began to be on the ground. It was a blur of motion too fast for the eye to track.
There was no struggle. No roar. Just a single, wet snap.
The stag fell. Aurelia stood over it, her hand on its neck, feeling the life fade. She had not savaged it. She had ended it.
Dracula drifted down from the tree, landing without breaking the snow crust. He looked at the clean kill, then at the girl who wiped a single drop of blood from her lip.
"Better," the Vampire Lord murmured. "Control the blood, Aurelia. Or it will control you."
Nurmengard, Study, 1966 (Age 10)
The fire in the hearth had burned low, casting long, wavering shadows across the walls of the high study. The only sound was the scratching of a quill and the occasional clack of a marble chess piece moving of its own accord.
Gellert Grindelwald sat in his high-backed chair, looking not at the board, but at the girl sitting opposite him.
She was ten now, tall for her age, possessing a beauty that was becoming increasingly severe. She did not fidget. She sat with the poise Vinda had drilled into her and the predatory stillness Dracula had cultivated.
"Check," Aurelia said softly.
Grindelwald looked down. His white King was cornered by her black Knights. It was a trap he had seen coming five moves ago, but he had let her spring it to see if she would hesitate. She hadn't.
"An aggressive flank," he noted, moving a Bishop to intercept. "But you leave your Queen exposed to the Rook."
"The Queen is a distraction," Aurelia replied instantly. "While you chase her, my pawns have taken the center."
Grindelwald smiled. It was a genuine expression, one that crinkled the corners of his eyes. "Sacrifice for the greater position. Good."
He leaned back, steepling his fingers.
"Tell me, Aurelia. Why do we play this game?"
"To sharpen the mind, Vater."
"No," Grindelwald corrected gently. "We play because the board is the world in miniature. And the pieces..." He gestured to the white pawns huddled defensively around their King. "Who are they?"
"The Muggles," she answered. There was no hatred in her voice, only a detached curiosity. "The non-magical."
"And what do you see when you look at them?"
Aurelia thought for a moment. She thought of the history books he had given her. The wars they fought with machines. The smoke of their factories.
"I see... confusion," she said slowly. "They breed. They consume. They fight over lines on a map. They are blind."
"Precisely," Grindelwald said, his voice taking on that hypnotic, charismatic cadence that had once rallied thousands. "They are not evil, Aurelia. A sheep that wanders off a cliff is not evil; it is merely stupid. It is leaderless."
He waved his hand, and the chess pieces reset.
"There are those, like Albus Dumbledore," he said the name with a heavy, complex mixture of respect and bitterness, "who believe our duty is to hide from them. To live in the sewers and shadows, letting the blind tear the world apart, provided they do not touch us."
He leaned forward, his mismatched eyes burning into hers.
"But that is not mercy. That is negligence. If you see a child playing with a loaded gun, do you hide? Or do you take the gun away?"
"I take it away," Aurelia said firmly.
"Even if the child cries? Even if the child hates you for it?"
"Yes."
"That is our burden," Grindelwald whispered. "We do not hate them, Aurelia. We pity them. We are the shepherds. We are the adults in a nursery that has caught fire. We must be strong enough to do what is necessary, for their sake as much as ours."
He picked up the black King and placed it in her palm. It was cold and heavy.
"They will call you a monster," he told her. "They will call us tyrants. But remember this: The shepherd always looks like a monster to the sheep, until the wolf arrives."
Aurelia closed her fingers around the King. She felt the weight of it. The logic settled into her soul, interlocking perfectly with the discipline Vinda had taught her and the control Dracula had enforced.
"I understand," she said. "We lead because we are the only ones who can see where the path goes."
"Yes," Grindelwald said, a profound pride swelling in his chest. "Yes, my daughter."
Nurmengard, The Balcony
Aurelia stood on the highest parapet of Nurmengard, the wind whipping her silver-white hair around her face like a veil of smoke.
She was ten years old, but she felt ancient.
Below her, the Austrian Alps stretched out in a sea of jagged white teeth. She looked at the horizon, where the sun was setting, bleeding crimson light across the snow.
Inside her, the Obscurus was a hum of infinite power, a nuclear reactor waiting for a switch. But she did not tremble. The vampire blood held her body in a stasis of perfect regeneration. Her mind was a fortress of etiquette, strategy, and purpose.
She had the Mask of the Aristocrat.
She had the Heart of the Hunter.
She had the Vision of the King.
She gripped the stone railing, her mismatched eyes narrowing as she looked toward the West. Toward a world that did not know she existed. Toward a school called Hogwarts. Toward a wizard named Dumbledore.
She was no longer just a child. She was a loaded weapon, resting on the table, waiting for the hand of history to pick her up and pull the trigger.
She smiled, and the expression was terrifyingly beautiful.
"I am ready."