SERPENT HEART° TOM RIDDLE

043. NULLA SALUS BELLO

CHAPTER FORTY THREE
— there is no security in war

         "ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT DRAGONS ARE REAL?" Eddie's incredulous voice filled Rhea's ears as they sat inside his treehouse. Rhea watched as the stones she had collected from the fairies in the forest floated a few inches away from the tip of her wand. A small, amused grin played on her lips at Eddie's question. She always found it so fascinating at how he was impressed by things that she thought everyone grew up knowing. Rhea glanced over her shoulder, the stones dropping to the ground as she turned her body to face the boy. He'd hit a growth spurt while Rhea had been away at school, a fact that slightly saddened her.

"Of course dragons are real." Rhea said amusedly, watching as Eddie's eyes grew wide. "They're incredible. There's all sorts of different kinds too — Peruvian Vipertooth, Ukranian Ironbelly, Hebridean Black —"

"Which is your favorite?" Eddie interrupted excitedly, glancing up from the charcoal sketches he had sprawled out in front of him.

Rhea's grin grew even wider.

"The Hungarian Horntail," She sighed. "It can make a stone turn red hot in seconds. It's so viscious that even the most skilled dragonologists have a hard time taming it. I used to dream about finding one and being able to ride one."

Eddie frowned.

"Is that what you want to be then, a dragonologist?"

"No." Rhea shook her head firmly. "Father says that I need to work in the Ministry, so I decided to become a Hit Witch. He believes that I'll be able to work my way up and gain a lot of valuable allies that will help us restore the family name."

Eddie didn't say anything for a few seconds and Rhea knew it was because he didn't understand. He didn't understand that this was the way that things were in her family. Her father was always pulling the strings, even if it didn't seem like it. Rhea realized that the moment he pulled her and Pluto aside and told them who they would be before they boarded the Hogwarts Express during first year.

Pluto was to ask the Sorting Hat to put him in Ravenclaw and he would spend his time with his nose in books while dating someone from a good family ("like the Carrows", he had said). He would be quiet, have little to no friends, and keep his head down, so as to not say anything to mess things up for them further. Rhea, on the other hand, was to make friends and allies with as many people as she could while keeping up the appearance that she was kind and perfect, on a path destined to right her family's wrongs. She'd perfected her act to a pathological degree and most of the time she had difficulty determining what was really going on in her head.

Eddie cracked a smile, noting the troubled expression beginning to appear on Rhea's face.

"Maybe one day you'll have a dragon of your own that you'll be able to ride all the way into the clouds with." Eddie said hopefully. Rhea smiled, picturing that image in her head. Her, on the back of dragon with the wind hitting her in the face as they soared through the air.

"Yes," Rhea said wistfully, "Maybe."

Rhea gasped when the memory came to an abrupt end and she found herself dropping to her knees in shock, catching herself with her hands to keep from falling over. For a moment, all Rhea wished for was to return to the comfort and safety she felt in that memory as she talked about dragons with Eddie. It wasn't until she looked up and saw her father standing several feet away from her with his wand at his side, smoke bellowing from the tip, that Rhea remembered where she was.

Nurmengard Castle was as Rhea had imagined it — dark, dreary, and crawling with wizards from the Alliance. Grindelwald's slogan, "For the Greater Good", was carved over the prison's entrance where Rhea and her father dueled at. Every morning before the sun even had a chance to rise over the Alps, her father would summon her from her bed where they would train, day and night.