The first thing that Oleandra noticed upon entering the Greengrass family's summer home was the smell. Pungent, sickly sweet and metallic; the air was laden with the odour of freshly spilled blood.
And that's when she saw the bodies. And also, the stack of threatening letters, all tinged with blood. It was the BBC, asking her family to pay their TV licence fees.
Now, the wisest course of action would have been to immediately run away and call Magical Law Enforcement, or even the Aurors, but Oleandra couldn't have explained her presence here, when she was supposed to be aboard the Hogwarts Express.
It looked as though a tornado of knives had worked its way through her home, butchering whatever it had encountered, splattering the walls with red as if it had attempted to create some sort of demented modern art piece. The Entrance Hall was littered with bodies, lying in a pool of their own blood. Their eyes were glassy and lifeless, and yet they still seemed to be staring deep into her soul.
Oleandra's stomach churned; she had to clap a hand to her mouth to stop herself from adding vomit to the décor. Her stomach was already weakened by the eldritch visions she had just experienced, but she just barely managed to keep her breakfast inside of her.
Fighting back the urge to retch, Oleandra bent down to examine the victims' faces. Some of them had thuggish miens, while some others had ugly but otherwise unremarkable features. However, they all had something in common; each one of them was wearing Death Eater robes… and some smelled of wet dog.
"Crabbe's father…?" Oleandra murmured. "And Werewolves…?"
Oleandra had seen Crabbe Sr once, the only time she had attended the Sacred Twenty-Eight's annual Christmas Ball. But unlike their previous encounter, he was now covered in deep cuts, and he was also missing the lower half of his body, as if someone had taken a chainsaw to his torso; and it went without saying that he was quite dead indeed.
Oleandra now had somewhat of an idea as to what could have happened:
In her opinion, the female Dusk-Elf and her monstrous Lethifold were behind these killings. Her sharp knives would have caused the fine cuts on the bodies, while the Lethifold would have been responsible for the large lacerations and the torn off limbs. Curiously enough, the monster had not sated its hunger on the bodies; rigor mortis had not set in yet either, which meant that these kills were extremely fresh: no more than two hours had elapsed since they had breathed their last.
So, putting together the timeline… the Dusk-Elf must have somehow found a way to track down her own heart back to Oleandra's summer home. The Elf had attended Hogwarts for a year in disguise, so she must have known and hoped that Oleandra would return home over the holidays, but instead of finding Oleandra walking through the front door, it had been a gang of Death Eaters.
For once, Oleandra had been incredibly lucky. The Death Eaters had probably wanted to drag her off to Voldemort or wanted to finish her off for good, while the Elf had already sworn eternal vengeance upon her. But instead of succeeding at any of those things, they had both tried lying in ambush for her and taken care of each other for her...
And maybe, if Oleandra was lucky enough, the Death Eaters had also killed the Elf…
Oleandra got back to her feet and stared down the dark and foreboding corridor that led deeper into the house. What had once been a safe haven for her was now the enemy's lair… She flipped the light switch, but the corridor's lamps remained obstinately turned off.
In her Mystic Eyes' vision, her hidden runic traps were still very much active. Oleandra's eyes flashed; this was her home, her domain! If the Elf thought that her hastily planned ambush could beat the runes that Oleandra had carefully painted on the walls, then she was dead wrong!
"Lumos Maxima," Oleandra murmured, before activating the protective charm around her neck to guard against surprise attacks. Dusk-Elves hated light, so lighting herself up like a Christmas tree was well worth losing the advantage of surprise.
With her brightly lit wand in front of her, Oleandra bravely stepped over the bodies and entered the corridor which led to the dining area and the kitchen. Slowly but surely, she inched her way forward until she had reached the end of the corridor. She cupped a hand to her ear, but heard nothing.
Oleandra took a deep breath, before dropping and performing a somersault on the ground, rolling to the opposite wall of the dining room to offer a smaller target to her would-be assailant. She then quickly got to her feet and scanned the room.
Empty.
If the Dusk-Elf had indeed been here, then she had most likely taken away her heart already. Nevertheless, Oleandra needed to make sure, so she cautiously made her way to the refrigerator, half-expecting the Elf to burst out of a cupboard at any moment.
Upon opening the refrigerator, Oleandra was assaulted by the horrible smell of rotting food. She quickly looked behind her one last time, just in case, before opening the meat drawer. And much to her surprise, there it sat, upon a pile of meats in various stages of decay: the Dusk-Elf's heart, which was still beating weakly.
Oleandra had half a mind to crush it right there and then, but after a moment's hesitation, she slipped the beating heart back into her pouch, where it belonged. Viviane had recommended that she keep it for herself, and Oleandra trusted her advice.
"Why the Hel didn't she take it?" Oleandra murmured to herself. "Was it because she was interrupted, or because she couldn't, or…?"
Now that she had her prize in hand, Oleandra wanted nothing more than to be rid of this place. She had fond memories of this house, but its inviolable sanctity had been ruined by those who had invaded it. It just wasn't the same any more…
Oleandra walked back through the dark corridor and emerged into the Entrance Hall, but just as she was stepping over Crabbe Sr's corpse, the front door flew open, and in walked a masked figure.
Death Eater!
"What the hell were you thinking!?" the masked man growled furiously. "Casting the Dark Mark over the house of the girl we're supposed to be ambushi—"
His voice trailed off, as he saw Oleandra standing over the bodies of his comrades.
"What the bloody—"
"THURSAAAAZ!" Oleandra screamed, curling her fingers into the O.K. hand sign and blasting the man off his feet and out of her house!