Breaking Branches and Dry Leaves OPEN

@Bubba McGarry

Opeila looked after the two Slytherins disappearing in the castle before turning to Bubba again. There was no more anger on her face, instead there was caution. She had no idea where to start even. "Did anyone tell you about what has happened at Hogwarts in the last years?", she would ask him.

What could she tell the boy? What would be too much, what would scare him off? She didn't want to scare him. Or- maybe she did. A bit of fear was good, it was only healthy in a place like Hogwarts. Opeila never ever let go of her wand during her patrols. It was easier in summer, when the sun began to set at roughly 9.30 pm, when it was not all dark. Now, in winter, it was always dark. There were too many shadows and often Opeila had to actively calm herself to not freak out.

"I may be mistaken but I felt like you viewed this as an overreaction." The way he had tried to lighten the mood when she had found them had truly caught her by surprise a little. She couldn't think of many older years who would react that way to finding a first year outside at night.
"In my first year we were woken up by noises in the common room and all of us naive little idiots went down to check. The biggest idiot was the first one down when they opened the door and moments later the common room was under attack by dark spiders. Their bites cursed their victims, turned their limbs black. I was cursed until my third year, for almost two years."

She would spare Bubba the details of the owl that was turned into a monster when her blood sample came to life, of the blackness that forced the cursed to the ground in the most excruciating pain they had ever felt. Surely he got the point.
"Last year on the first day, we had some Hufflepuffs suddenly knocking on our doors. They were trying to save themselves from a shadow monster. I saw a classmate get killed by one of these monsters." Stabbed in less than a second. Dead. Jack's horrified face, her own shaky attempts to get him to move away from the scene of horrors.

For the entirety of her second year she had been unable to even think about it, the tiniest things had set her off. Not anymore. Her words conjured the memories, but all emotions were sealed inside, not to be seen on her face. "I would have died in my first year had I been on my own, I really would have. So would others have. Had the things that happened to us happened while we were sneaking around the school at night not even knowing a spell to create light, we would have died."

Her green eyes were examining Bubba's face, trying to tell whether she was scaring him or if he even appeared not to believe her. "It scares me to think of them being so reckless now, so I try to be unpleasant enough to get them not to do it again, easy as that."