A/N: I'm totally crap at titles. I've got a lot of fanfic I have to complete and since I haven't written in a long time, I decided to write this to see how much my writing skills have declined. The answer is a lot, methinks.

This fic is based on part of a dream I had a few days (nights?) ago. Yes, I'm a weirdo who dreams about dramas/movies I watch. In fact, this is my second dream fic.

The main character does not have a name. Eomma means mum. Have a fun time figuring who tf 'she' is.

c. 1910s

The sky was still dark when she woke up, the only sources of light illuminating the forest being a number of stars and the barely visible crescent moon. She shivered, curling up into a ball and pulling the blanket over her head. She'd never get back to sleep now. Turning over, she reached out across the makeshift bed, frowning when she realised that her mother wasn't there. Of course, this wasn't the first time she'd woken up to find her mother missing; her mother would up and leave every other night, always while her daughter was still sleeping. However, this was the second night in a row. Where was her mother disappearing off to and why? The secrecy of it all left her with an unsettling feeling. She tossed and turned, trying to ignore the feeling, trying to go back to sleep.

The next time she opened her eyes, she'd just been jostled awake by her mother. After sitting up and rubbing her eyes, she surveyed her mother who was bustling around, preparing breakfast. Something close to breakfast, anyway. For as long as she could remember, her mother had always looked rundown and exhausted but never so much so that she looked unhealthy. The woman in front of her did. Sallow skin, red eyes, hollow cheeks. She tried not to stare but she couldn't look away. Such a drastic change, literally overnight. Whatever her mother had been doing out there last night, or rather in the early morning, had taken a toll on her.

"Eomma?" she muttered, slowly moving off the bed and standing up. "Where did you go last night?" That wasn't what she had wanted to ask but she'd blurted it out regardless.

"Not now," Eomma responded, motioning for her to sit down with her. "Later," she added, shoving a plate of meagre helpings towards her.

Knowing that her mother was a woman of few words, she dropped the subject and began to eat, wondering, not for the first time, what the world beyond their forest was like.

.:. QK .:.

Another mundane day passed by and before she knew it, it was time to retire for the night. Unsure of whether her mother would disappear for the fourth night in a row, she literally laid in wait until she could find out either way. She tried to ignore the guilty feeling weighing down on her chest, reminding herself of why she had to do this. While she felt like she was betraying her mother's trust, she couldn't help but feel like her mother was betraying her right back. Despite spending the last two days patiently waiting for Eomma to tell her what was going on, she still knew nothing about her mother's nighttime escapades. Nothing at all. Eomma had to know how worried she was, waking up to find her mother missing in the dead of the night, waking up again to find her looking iller than the night before, and yet she didn't feel the need to even begin explaining it to her. Whatever it was.

Sure enough, around two hours after turning in for the night, she felt her mother stir and get up. Continuing to feign sleep, she waited until the crunching footsteps faded away before opening her eyes and throwing the blanket off her body. Sitting up, she wondered how on earth she was supposed to see anything in the darkness of the forest. Her mother had probably used the wand lighting charm but she had yet to acquire her own wand let alone learn how to use magic. As she stepped out of the shelter, though, something overcame her and she suddenly found that she didn't need a light source.

As if under some sort of trance, she gracefully walked through the pitch black forest, heading towards something she couldn't even see. Instead of being met with the usual silence she had come to associate with the forest, she could hear hissing, slithering, twigs breaking, leaves crunching, and other noises she simply couldn't identify. As she walked further and further into the unknown, her skin started tingling and her chest began to feel somewhat heavy. Gradually, the hisses grew louder and louder until she could practically hear them in her mind, hear herself hissing, and she cast a glance at her arms to see them changing colour and becoming scaly. All of a sudden, she fell forwards and hit the forest floor, her whole world going dark...

.:. QK .:.

The following morning, she found herself waking up in her own bed rather than on the cold forest floor. Yawning, she took a moment to stretch her arms and legs, only to regret it when she felt jolts of pain run through her stiff muscles. All fleeting thoughts of the previous night having been a dream—or nightmare—vanished from her mind as she tried to remember what had happened right before she had blacked out. Remembering the reason she'd snuck into the depths of the forest in the first place, she turned her head to the open side of the shelter and peered out. She hissed, realising too late that her neck muscles were just as stiff as the rest of them, inadvertently reminding herself of the constant and incessant hissing she'd heard in the forest the night before.

"You're awake," Eomma said, appearing in her line of sight mere seconds later. She knelt next to the bed, an unreadable expression on her face. "How are you?"

"Eomma, I heard something yesterday," she began, wincing as her head spun a little. "I heard hissing coming from the depths of the forest..."

"I know," Eomma replied, stroking her daughter's hair and smiling sadly. She rose to her feet, turning away from her daughter and standing in front of the open part of the shelter.

She heard her mother sigh as she presumably stared at the area of the forest they had both ventured into the night before. "What happened to me?"

"You became a woman," Eomma responded, her back still turned to her.

Her eyes widened. She was not yet twelve and, from what she understood, a girl became a woman when— No. That had not happened to her. Tears stung at her eyes. She was too young. No one besides she and her mother resided in the forest. How...?

"I had hoped this wouldn't happen until you were at least thirteen as I was... the first time." Her face grew red, and she couldn't help but feel angry. Why had her own mother stood by and let this happen to her? Was this the horrid reason she was sneaking into the forest every night? How could she not warn her? "But when you started bleeding, I knew it wouldn't be long before you first transformed."

Transformed. The word stopped her in her tracks, her momentary anger towards her mother quickly forgotten as memories of the prior night assaulted her mind. Scales. Hissing. Her ankles fusing together, causing her to hit the ground. She remembered it all, even what happened after her supposed blackout; she recalled manoeuvring through the forest at floor level, slithering across the leaves and twigs on the soily ground, spotting a large viper not far from her, and witnessing said viper transforming into a woman—a woman she knew all too well.

"You're a snake!" she accused, cringing at how bad it sounded but not regretting that she'd said it.

Eomma turned her head towards her so fast that she had to have whiplash. "No," she said firmly, her gaze as cold as ice. "We're snakes."

A/N: Lol, she's a python in the HP films but I'm not sure what she is in FB? I mean, she looks a little different... or is that just me? In the books, she seems to be more of a viper so that's what I've gone with. After all, pythons are not venomous but Nagini is.

Since we don't know much about maledicti (pl?), I assumed that the mother's beast form is the same as the daughter's. I also assumed a lot of other things like Nagini isn't really her name (come on, who would name their daughter 'snake lady'), that her father isn't in the picture (because no one in their right mind would want a snake for a partner/wife), that the maledictus can't turn into her beast form until after she hits puberty e.t.c.

Please don't take offense if I've imagined her backstory to be very different to the one you've thought up for her.

Bye!