Chapter 5.2- Doom Days

He ached to curse the Centaur for the words it had just spoken, but the thought of dealing with an enemy who had their back turned to him rubbed him all the wrong way. It was not in the nature of Doom to attack like a coward. It was also not in the nature of Doom to let an insult go unanswered. He consoled himself with the knowledge that he would return to this forest one day or the other, and then he and the Centaurs could answer the question of what shined brighter- mars or his rage.

At least Firenze had confirmed that the dragons were in the forest. That was good. Very good. They were probably under some powerful wards that prevented him from running into them. He briefly considered a visit to Hagrid to see if he could get the half giant to take him to see the dragons themselves, but ruled it out as a waste of time. He already knew what was coming. What would then be the point in wasting time to go see it when he could instead spend the time preparing himself for facing it. Tom Riddle knew of the conjucvitis curse. It had in fact been a favourite of the Slytherin upper years when he had first come into the castle, and he’d even been on the receiving end of the curse a few times for his ‘mudblood’ roots, so he knew the counter curse at the very least.

Just to learn the main thing that remained. His thoughts on that, he continued the journey to the Chamber of Secrets almost halfheartedly. Inwardly, he tried to guess at the incantation and wand movements for the curse. Both times, he’d been cursed from behind, but he knew a lot about dark magic, and even spell theory so he could make a few guesses. The wand movement was the easier bit to figure out. A sharp downward slash was most probable. The spell made a sharp cut down the middle of the victim’s eyeball. The countercurse began with an upward swoosh so it would also made sense. The incantation? “Occulus with a suuffix” he murmured to himself assuredly. Every spell that affected the eyes had at least that much in common. The suffix. Probably something to do with cutting. Cutting? Could be cleaving, more literally to describe the effect of the eyeball being literally torn open in two halves.

The incantation for the counter curse would probably not be much use. It used the standard “finite maledictus’ suffix with the ‘occulus’ prefix brought the spell together. It was a generic countercurse incantation and would probably work for all sorts of ocular curses when paired with different wand movements. Useful, but also meant that he was nowhere closer to getting the incantation.

He knew he fucked up when he realised that the entire forest had gone silent at some point during his internal debate. Looking from left to right, he was sure that his feet had kept him along the route. He looked upwards then, and the scream that sounded out made his bones vibrate.

“Ahhh” the creature screamed as it fell down at hum with mouth wide open.