SERPENT HEART° TOM RIDDLE

044. DRACO DORMIENS NUNQUAM TITILLANDUS

CHAPTER FORTY FOUR
— a sleeping dragon is never to be tickled

             THE COOL BREEZE BRUSHED AGAINST RHEA'S SKIN AS SHE SAT ON THE GROUNDS ADJACENT TO THE CASTLE, HER MOTHER'S BOOK OPEN ON THE GROUND IN FRONT OF HER. She held her hands in her lap as her eyes darted around behind closed eyelids. Rhea could hear the sound of nature all around her, amplified so intensely that she could feel blood starting to run from her ear and along the side of her neck. She didn't move and she tried not to think about how long it was going to take her to scrub blood from her white blouse (a habit she seemed to be doing a lot of ever since she came to stay with her father) as she refocused her attention away from the pain in her ears to the hundreds of thousands of voices that she could hear in her head. Muggles and witches and creatures alike chattered in her head, giving Rhea the worst headache she had ever felt in her life as she searched for the only thing that mattered to her.

Dragons were always the easiest beasts for Rhea to find whenever she performed this spell. Dragons and dark creatures alike would speak to her, calling out to her. Rhea guessed her family's connection to dark magic made it easier for them to communicate, but Pluto tried to perform the spell once and said he couldn't understand what they were saying. Over the years Rhea had learned to expand her reach of the spell past the lands of Wiltshire so that she could hear what kinds of magical creatures were roaming about in towns and villages in different parts of the country. The force of having so many voices in Rhea's head would take its toll eventually, but Rhea always knew to pull away before things become too bad. Except, she couldn't find Phytios. Her dragon was either too far out of range or . . .

Rhea felt blood run from her nose as she grimaced at the searing pain that shot through her head, yet she pushed through, desperate to find her dragon.

Giving up wasn't an option. Someone had taken something that belonged to her and she would not rest until she got it back.

But, Rhea could feel her magic crying out for her to stop and she would need to save her power for when she found Phytios. Rhea opened her eyes, stopping the spell and silencing everything at once. Her eyes widened while her ears rang for a moment, her surprised gaze landing on the pale face of Gellert Grindelwald as he stared at her. 

"Did you find your dragon?" Grindelwald asked, although his tone made Rhea believe he knew the answer to her question before she answered. Rhea stared at the dark wizard for a moment, noting the calm expression on his face. She wondered how he had been able to sneak up on her without her noticing.

"No," Rhea said, wiping the blood from her face with a handkerchief before her gaze dropped to her mother's book, filled with anger and frustration. Even though Rhea was no longer looking at him, she could still feel Grindelwald's gaze on her. "I will try again soon."

"Yes, you should." Grindelwald said. He turned his back to Rhea and blew away like smoke in the wind, flying through the air in the form of a black cloud. 

Rhea frowned. When she had come to Austria, she expected Grindelwald to be much more involved in her training than he was, but she supposed the dark wizard had more important things to worry about. Still, he had yet to ask her how she had managed to bring a Thestral back to life or to demonstrate the spell to him at all. Every time she asked her father or Vinda about it, they would just say that Grindelwald was waiting for when the time was right to see what she could really do. Rhea wasn't exactly sure what that was supposed to mean.

After a few more unsuccessful attempts at trying to locate Phytios and a blouse that was more red than white, Rhea found herself back in her room at the castle, rummaging through her closet when her owl, Mercury, came soaring through the window with a letter between his beak. Rhea hurriedly threw her shirt on and fed her bird before looking at the unopened piece of parchment, relieved her bird had made it past the guards around the castle.