Written For:

- Day 35 of 366 Days of Writing Challenge: Mistakes

- Chocolate Frog Cards: Carmilla Sanguina (Gold) Write an AU in which any canon female witch is or becomes a vampire.

- Candy from the Trolley: Black Licorice (challenge): Write about someone who is tall and lanky.

- Gringotts Prompt Bank/Figures of Speech: as dead as a doornail,

- Gringotts Prompt Bank/Once Upon a Time: "You have made me a monster, but I won't let you do the same thing to her."

- Gringotts Prompt Bank/OC Names: Celia

- Writing Prompt Club: dead

Pairings/Characters: Violetta Bulstrode, OC

Word Count: 847

Dead as a Doornail

Oh how wrong we were to think, that immortality meant never dying.

When Violetta opened her eyes, she expected darkness. The soothing, painless darkness; the end to her suffering. Instead, she found herself staring up at the speckled night sky, the view obscured by the silhouettes of tall, thorny trees.

She sat up, feeling the cold breeze rush down her throat as she sucked in a breath. Where was she? What was happening?

Violetta closed her eyes again, trying to remember her last thought. She had been at home at Grimmauld Place, in her bed. She had been surrounded by her husband and children—they weren't crying anymore, but their faces were red and puffy with anguish. Violetta had been ill, so very ill that no Healer or Medic could help her. She was dying.

The face which stuck in Violetta's memory the most was that of her eldest daughter, Cassiopeia. Violetta loved all her children, of course, but Cassiopeia was the closest. They engaged in many mother-and-daughter activities together, and Violetta found that she suffered the most when Cassiopeia was away at Hogwarts, compared to how she felt at the absence of her other children.

No mother could truly help having favourites.

It seemed as though Cassiopeia had suffered the most at Violetta's illness. She knew that death was coming to take her mother, and it pained her immensely.

"Cassie," Violette murmured, allowing her eyelids to flutter open once more. Her voice was carried away on the chilly wind, but her daughter didn't appear. Violetta was still sitting on the rough ground in the middle of nowhere, utterly confused.

She climbed to her feet and dusted herself down, realising that she wasn't in her bedclothes, as she had been before. Violetta was clad in fine dress robes, ankle-pinching shoes, and her hair was pinned to the back of her skull, leaving a painful imprint on her scalp. It was with a small gasp, that she realised these were the clothes that she had requested to be buried in.

"I know you're confused," a sweet, languid voice sang from behind her. Violetta spun around to face the person, patting at her pockets desperately. The unknown person laughed—a high, sing-song laugh that seemed to comfort Violetta. "You do not need your wand anymore."

Violetta looked at the person—it was a woman. The woman was tall—taller than any woman that Violetta had ever met before, but there were no heeled shoes on her feet. Her skin was so pale that it was almost grey, but her eyes were a deep, dark brown. Her hair was the same chocolate brown, and it hung around her shoulders in thick ringlets. Aside from the paleness and the Muggle attire that she was wearing, the strange woman didn't seem really all that strange.

"Who are you?" Violetta demanded to know. Her eyes scanned the woman's face, desperate to find something she might recognise, but she came back with nothing. "What have you done to me?"

"My name is Celia," she replied calmly. She strode towards Violetta, holding her palms up in surrender. Violetta began to relax slightly—until she noticed something sharp glimmering in the corner of Celia's smile.

"V...vampire!" Violetta shrieked, and she made to dash in the opposite direction. She didn't take into account the uncomfortable heels that she had been dressed in, however, and she tripped almost as soon as she had taken off. Celia helped her to her feet, gripping her wrists with her long, strong fingers. "Please don't kill me," Violetta whispered, panic swelling within her chest.

"I'm not going to kill you," Celia muttered. "You are already dead."

oOo

"So, I'm dead?" Violetta questioned, after about thirty minutes of Celia explaining her new disposition.

"As dead as a doornail," Celia answered. "But yet you live."

Violetta sighed, looking down at her knees. Her dress had gotten muddy in her earlier struggle, but that was the last of her problems as of now. "Why did you turn me? I was dying. I was ready to die."

Celia shrugged, her brown curls bouncing on her shoulders. "I was interested in you. You were too young and beautiful to die. A woman pushed aside by the patriarchal figure, the sadness at losing your son to the family's incessant beliefs."

"I have made so many mistakes," Violetta continued. "So many mistakes that I have yet to fix. I suppose, I can still fix them now?" she turned to Celia hopefully, but the vampire's face was rigid, her mouth set in thin line.

"You can never go to your old family, Violetta. They think that you are dead now. That is how it must be."

Violetta nodded sadly. "I will miss my daughter so. Cassiopeia...she was my sunshine. The love of my life."

"Should she fall ill, we can take her."

Violetta shot a dark look at Celia. "No," she insisted. "No. I won't give her this life," she paused, taking a breath. "You have made me a monster, but I won't let you do the same thing to her."