𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐇𝐀𝐃𝐎𝐖 𝐎𝐅 𝐌𝐀𝐆𝐈𝐂 || 𝐒𝐄𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐀𝐍 𝐒𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐎𝐖

Chapter Twenty-Five: She's here

Chapter Twenty-Five 

A woman sat alone in a dark room, barely illuminated by a few candles around the room. For several years, she had been locked in Azkaban—the darkness was more familiar to her than the light. Leona Oswald, with the aid of an outside source, had managed to escape the custody of the Aurors who were escorting her outside of Azkaban to court. For weeks, she had been living in secret away from any law enforcement.

Suddenly, she stood up and shoved everything off her desk with an angry shout. The door opened and a poacher who had been outside stood in the doorway. "Ma'am, is everything alright?" He asked.

"Does everything look alright to you?" She hissed angrily, looking up at him.

She had just been informed of the situation that had gone down at a poacher camp. The girl they had kidnapped had been saved and parts of their plans had been exposed—whether the Ministry believed it or not. Leona believed she had made a mistake by putting her trust in any of the poachers to carry out this simple task.

While in Azkaban, Leona had managed to take over Rookwood's poaching ring through someone on the outside who had access to the prison. She would tell him what to do and he would carry out her demands. Rookwood's poaching ring wasn't all too hard to take over either; most of the poachers were dumb moon minds who just wanted someone to tell them what to do because they were too stupid to do it by their own free will.

Leona wondered how Rookwood ever kept the poaching ring alive for so long when his poachers were idiots. But one thing about the poachers was, they were extremely loyal, especially if you promised something that they wanted.

But, unfortunately for her, she had made the first mistake of trusting a poacher to carry out a simple task. Kidnap Anne Sallow, leave whatever form of note or communication needed so that either her brother or his friends would find it, and to bring the other girl, Matty Ambrose, in exchange for Anne's freedom.

Well, almost none of that ended up happening. Anne Sallow was kidnapped and taken to a poacher camp and Matty did indeed come around to the camp—but that was just to ruin things and take Anne back. All because one stupid poacher hadn't carried out exactly what she had asked. He didn't even write Matty's name down. Leona was disgusted by how stupid he had been.

"Bring me whatever fool was in charge of this," Leona demanded angrily. Her expression showed that she was not joking around at all.

The poacher scrambled out of the room and immediately went to go ask if they could find whatever other poacher was in charge of this task. Rookwood had been a ruthless leader, that much was obvious, but from what they had observed ever since Leona got out of Azkaban—she was much crazier and willing to go to drastic measures quickly. All because she simply didn't care about the consequences. She had spent enough time in Azkaban for all of that to slip away.

Now, back to the point, everyone is probably wondering about. Why Matty and how did she know her? Why did she want her in exchange for Anne's life?

During her time in Azkaban, she liked to be kept up to speed with things going on outside of the dreadful prison that was hidden away with no way of being able to get news to its prisoners. Word in the Wizarding world passed around quickly and just about two years ago, Leona had heard a little rumor about the school.

There was a girl, fifteen years old, who had attended for the first time. Nobody knew exactly why she came in so late but nobody really questioned it after the first couple of weeks of her being there—there was enough to question after that. But then, after Rookwood was killed and Ranrok was defeated, rumors began to swirl about this new student. Word got out that she might just have a strong connection to an ancient form of magic and that was how she was able to take out Rookwood's poaching ring and Ranrok in the same year while barely knowing much about magic.