This is a flashback/storyline filler from a story I have six chapters written for. If you want to see more, let me know. This countess is somewhat tied to the snippet in Chapter 1.

Disclaimer: The recognizably named places, names of recognizable characters and other such material is owned by their respective copyright holders. All storyline segments, situations, original characters, places and other original content is owned exclusively by the author.

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She had been an older witch whose love of violence was only exceeded by her lust for blood and horrific torture.

That she had invented the Cruciatus curse to, in her words, "...inflict upon Flamel, Dumbledore and their ilk all the pain and suffering we've experienced as a result of their plotting..." somewhat explained her attitude.

In contemporary mundane terms, she was a homicidal psychopath. By comparison, Bellatrix Lestrange was a proper, demure, gentle soul. While Anastasia wasn't a raving lunatic the way that Bellatrix was after Azkaban, she was far more evil.

She would imperio husbands and use them to rape and otherwise torture their own children while their wives/mothers were forced to watch. Prior to inventing Cruciatus, she was best known for having fathers under the imperio rape and then joint their sons and daughters.

Stories of Vlad Drăculea were an inspiration to her as parts of her family descended from his line. She revered the written memory of him and amongst her most prized possessions were his hand-written diaries. She especially favored his entries following a battle; entries written in the blood of his enemies.

When Grindewald fell to Dumbledore, she was forced into hiding. Her joys in life were somewhat curtailed until the first rise of Lord Voldemort. Her coming out of hiding made fresh the trail the Unspeakables had been following since Grindewald's downfall.

While she and Voldemort had several joyous weeks together, she refused to be a follower.

Their parting of ways occurred after he insisted she take his so-called "Dark Mark." She had no intention of her beautiful alabaster skin being blemished with his disgusting snake-shaped brand. Voldemort may have enjoyed learning to cast Avada Kedavra, but he certainly did not enjoy parting with Anastasia and learning to cast the spell version of Cruciatus at her tutelage. Her demonstration of it was her parting shot. She cast it on him and held it on him as she gathered her belongings. Once her trunk was packed, she released him from the spell, told him what a complete and utter failure he was compared to her Lord Grindewald and walked out of his life.

Thorn caught up to her in Romania in August 1976. He found her due to the seemingly random trail of bodies the mundane police had continued to find in the area in and around Satu Mare near the Hungarian and Ukranian border. While neither the mundane nor the magical communities of these three countries generally interacted in anything resembling friendly terms, the Unspeakables transcended borders and gathered all information, piecing things together and assembling the various dots of information into a complete picture.

With each body found, and her uniquely-defined injuries apparent, it was child's play to find her.

There was no brave or glorious battle involved in her demise. She clearly was not expecting to be found. To say she was surprised when her right arm from the elbow down was silently reducto'd off would be an understatement.

Once he had her subdued and her magic bound, Thorn proceeded to spend the next week gleaning every possible piece of information from her before he provided her with the release of death. Between veritaserum, Pepper-up potions and legilimency, he captured all of her secrets, including the subtle casting differences between the spell and curse versions of Cruciatus; signed, sealed and delivered. By the time he was done marching through and recording her mind, her death was a mercy. He incinerated her body to a fine white ash, searched her manor for useful information, bound her house elves to him for which they were thankful, tore down her wards and sent anonymous owls to the Hungarian, Ukrainian and Romanian offices of magical law enforcement letting them know she had been responsible for most, if not all, of the regional unsolved slayings of mundanes and magical alike.

He felt neither guilt nor elation. She was a rabid dog. He euthanized her and cleaned up most of her mess.

The Hungarians, Ukrainians and Romanians finished his job when, after their investigation of the grounds of her manor, obliterated all remaining buildings, removed the buried bodies of the victims on the grounds and turned the lands over to the mundane Romanian Orthodox Church to be cleansed and blessed, as even the magical governments felt the land had been desecrated.

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