"Protego!" a girl shouted out, her voice echoed throughout the house. Then there was running, footsteps echoed in the stairs of the house. "Mom! Look how good I can do it now" the little girl said towards her mother sitting around the table in the kitchen.
The women turned towards her young daughter with a bright smile. "Very good Ophelia, you are doing so well" the women turned quickly to cough.
Ophelia stood and looked at her mother with a worried expression. "Mom, are you okay?" she asked while looking at her mother with worried eyes.
Lyra lifted a hand, waving off the concern even as the cough lingered in her chest. When it passed, she straightened in her chair, smoothing the sleeve of her robe as if that alone could restore order to the moment.
"I am fine," she said, softly but firmly. "Come here."
Ophelia hesitated, then crossed the kitchen and stopped just in front of the table. Up close, she could see the faint shadows under her mother's eyes, the way her skin looked almost too pale in the morning light. Lyra noticed her staring and reached out, resting a hand over Ophelia's smaller one.
"You held the shield longer this time," Lyra continued. "And your focus did not waver. That matters more than strength."
Ophelia nodded, though the knot in her chest did not loosen. "It felt different," she admitted. "Like it stayed even after I stopped thinking about it."
Lyra looked at her daughter for a moment. She felt the knot in her stomach again. "That's good dear, not let eat some breakfast and then go out and train some more" she pushed out a chair for Ophelia to sit on.
As days dragged on. Ophelia noticed her mother was getting worse, she just laid in bed all day now.
The house grew quieter, the kind of quiet that pressed in on Ophelia's ears. Morning light no longer reached the kitchen table because Ophelia stopped sitting there. Instead, she spent her days moving between her mother's bedroom and the books Lyra told her to read.
"Mom, here," Ophelia said softly one afternoon, setting a bowl of vegetable soup on the nightstand. The steam curled upward, untouched. "Eat this. You haven't had anything today."
Lyra's eyes opened slowly. They were duller now, unfocused in a way that frightened Ophelia more than the coughing ever had.
"In a moment," Lyra murmured. Her voice sounded far away, as if it had to travel a long distance to reach her mouth.
Ophelia sat on the edge of the bed, fingers twisting together in her lap. She watched her mother breathe, counting each rise and fall of her chest, afraid of what would happen if she lost count.
That night, Lyra asked for parchment and ink.
Ophelia brought them without question. She stood in the doorway while her mother wrote, her hand unsteady but determined. The name on the envelope made Ophelia's stomach drop.
Grindelwald.
Lyra sealed the letter with shaking fingers and handed it to Ophelia.
"You are not to open it," she said. "And you are not to ask what it says."
Ophelia nodded and took the letter to the owl in the kitchen window. She attached the letter carefully, as if it would crumble if she wasn't careful enough. "Please be quick" she said to the owl.
The owl took flight into the night, wings cutting through the dark until it vanished beyond the trees. Ophelia remained at the window long after it was gone, her reflection faint in the glass, her hands still raised as if she could will it back faster.
The days after that blurred into something hollow.
Lyra slept almost constantly now. When she woke, it was only for minutes at a time. Her breathing grew shallow, uneven, like each breath had to be negotiated. Ophelia stayed close, reading aloud from the books her mother had once chosen for her, even when Lyra did not respond. Sometimes Ophelia thought she saw her fingers twitch, as if listening.
On the third night after the letter was sent, Lyra did not wake at all.
Ophelia noticed when the silence stretched too long. When the rhythm she had memorized failed to return. She sat frozen at the edge of the bed, eyes fixed on her mother's chest, waiting for movement that never came.
She whispered her name once.
Then again.
The room felt wrong, as if the air itself had withdrawn. Ophelia reached out with trembling fingers and touched her mother's hand. It was cold in a way she had never felt before.
"I'm here," Ophelia said, her voice breaking. "I'm right here."
But Lyra did not open her eyes.
"mom" she whispered once more.
A tear fell onto her hand as she held her mothers hand tightly.
Ophelia stayed in her mothers room for several days. Sleeping on the floor next to her mother.
The house that was once so warm and bright, now felt cold and empty of everything.
Ophelia barely noticed the passing of time. Day and night bled together, marked only by the way the light shifted across the walls and disappeared again. She slept in short, restless stretches on the floor beside the bed, waking each time she thought she heard her mother breathe.
She never did.
Sometimes she spoke anyway.
She told Lyra about the dreams she had, about the books she tried to read but could not finish, about the spells she practiced only in her head because lifting her wand felt wrong without her mother watching. Her voice echoed softly in the room, unanswered.
The kitchen remained untouched. Plates sat where they had been left. Lyra's cup still waited on the table, a thin film forming on the surface of the tea. Ophelia passed it every day and never moved it, afraid that doing so would mean accepting something she was not ready to name.
Hunger came and went, dull and distant. When she did eat, it was standing at the counter, a few bites at a time, as if sitting down would make the silence heavier.
Nights were the worst.
The dark pressed in, thick and suffocating, and Ophelia curled closer to the bed, clutching her mother's sleeve even as it grew stiff beneath her fingers. She whispered apologies she did not fully understand. Promises she was not sure she could keep.
"I'll remember," she murmured once, her forehead pressed to the side of the mattress. "I won't forget anything you taught me."
The house answered only with the soft creak of settling wood.
On one of those nights, when exhaustion finally pulled her under, Ophelia dreamed of standing in the kitchen again. Lyra sat at the table, whole and smiling, a cup of tea warming her hands. Ophelia ran to her, heart pounding with relief.
"I love you"