Professor Helena Dauphine

## Academic and Professional Career

Helena was always an exceptional child. Her abilities with magic began earlier than most and because her parents were muggles she was forced to repress her abilities. This repression caused a powerful obscurial to form inside her that would shape the rest of her life.

Once she started going to Hogwarts she had difficulty controlling the dark void inside. She isolated herself, fearing her own reactions to others. Another student, Damien, noticed her struggles and befriended her. He taught her to restrain the darkness and she quickly gained much more control through his aid. Eventually, he revealed the reason for his compassion. He too had a secret. He was an unregistered animagus. He would wander the forbidden forest at night in his animal form, a dog, to ensure he didn't accidentally transform and hurt a classmate. Having shared their innermost fears the two quickly became inseparable. So strong was their love that despite their relative isolation from others the relationship quickly became the envy of the school. They thought they would be together forever, but fate would not be so kind.

Damien had not shared all his secrets with Helena. Not only was he an unregistered animagus but he was a Lestrange, adopted by a kind family to hide his heritage. However, the ministry discovered his lies, and having an unregistered animagus from the Lestrange family was too much; they quickly apprehended both Damien and Helena. Helena’s pleas for her love fell on deaf ears and they imprisoned him.

Helena was devastated and the trauma of this event, in addition with the loss of Damien’s calming influence, caused the dark void to grow inside her. She was beginning to lose control, when a strange thing happened. A being, calling himself Nullaerus, appeared to her. At first, she was frightened, and thought this to be a ghost, but she felt this being to be oddly familiar, and despite her apprehensions, trusted it. He helped her maintain control in spite of her loss.

Fearing the void he knew must be growing, Damien refused to be separated from his love for long. He escaped his captors and sent Helena a secret letter instructing her to meet him in the forbidden forest. She did so, but the ministry anticipated their meeting. Although she took precautions, she was followed. When she met Damien they attacked. The couple fought valiantly against the assault, but could not prevail. Helena, seeing that their failure could only end in Damien’s demise, did the unthinkable: she embraced the darkness, and bonded with her obscurial. However, she knew that this would not be enough to help Damien. Even if they escaped this trap there would be another, and another. They would hunt them down forever. Turning toward Damien, and fueled by the power of her Obscurial and her love for him, both light and darkness filled her, and she hurled the most powerful spell she would ever cast.

The spell apparated Damien to a safe place, a place they had met many times before in isolation: a garden in Hogwarts. At the same time, using a doubling charm, she created a double of Damien’s body. Since Damien’s soul was not duplicated the clone was lifeless. She collapsed from the energies she had just focused. The Aurors quickly surrounded her and she did the most cunning thing she had ever done- she lied. She told them that Damien had been evil and had cast an Imperius Curse on her, forcing her to do his bidding, but in the fervor of the fight he had lost control over her, and she immediately killed him for his mistake. The Aurors, believing Damon to be evil, barely gave a second thought to her story, and escorted her back to Hogwarts.

Once safe at the school, she quickly made her way to the garden, hoping to find her love there, and find him she did, but her spell had unintended consequences. Damien was trapped in his animal form. She tried desperately to find a cure. Potions, spells, artifacts- she studied them all in a vain attempt to reverse the curse. Even worse, the channeling of so much power had strengthen the void, and as the void strengthened she slowly began losing her memories, starting with the most distant childhood ones.

Terrified that this forced amnesia would continue so that even Damien would be foreign to her, she left Damien safe at Hogwarts and traveled to find answers. Going from school to school she searched the libraries, but she would find no solutions. With no where else to turn, she began to look in the more disreputable places. Black markets, bounties hunter taverns- anywhere she thought she could find help. And “help” did come.

Some dark wizards, sensing the power within her, approached her with the offer of aid; an offer she took out of desperation; but their intentions were far from noble, and they imprisoned her. Using dark magic and artifacts they forced her to allow the Obscurial to take control. And through her it did terrible things; things the Wizards were too weak or cowardly to do themselves- torture, killing, other vile acts of brutality. The more she released the Obscurial the more memories she lost; slowly losing more and more of herself to the dark void corrupting her. She tried to escape several times, and even succeeded once, but they caught her again and her resistance just added to their abuse. As a punishment for her rebellion they forced her to kill a Muggle ‘traitor’ in front of his children. Helena, powerless to stop the raging Obscurial, watched the terror in the children’s eyes as it killed the old man. As the man fell, slain by the Obscurial, his pocket watch rolled on the floor and came to rest in front of Helena. Helena, now in full control, fell to her knees. Tears filling her eyes, she picked up the watch as she begged the children’s forgiveness. Her captors, not waiting for their reply, roughly grabbed Helena and took her back to her cell, throwing her inside. As she lay in the dim light, she saw the name Damien scratched in the paint, and she wondered who would be so important that she would have scrawled his name on the wall. She wept, clutching the pocket watch, feeling the emptiness of having lost something precious to her, but not knowing what it was.

Fortunately for Helena, her captors greatly underestimated her resolve. She watched and learned from her tormentors. With the knowledge she gained from them, and what little she remembered from her previous frantic travels, she found a way to remove her Obscurial. She trapped it in the only object she had at the time, the pocket watch she had been allowed to keep as a cruel joke by the Wizards. Immediately the Dark Wizards sensed the loss of the Obscurial‘s power and rushed to the cell, finding Helena half unconscious on the floor, drained from capturing her Obscurial. Thinking her now useless, they were about to kill her when something unexpected occurred. Helena remembered. She remembered all the rage of Damien’s imprisonment, the vicious trap set by the Aurors, the terrorized look on the children’s faces, and Damien‘s love and compassion. She remembered it all, and fury burned within her. Through that fury she tapped into the power of her trapped Obscurial, but it was no longer the Obscurial who was in control. Helena wielded its full power, and she was free to take her revenge.

Helena now works to punish all who would take advantage of the innocent. Each time she traps evil she regains some memory of her past. Because of this, and their cruel treatment of her, Professor Dauphine is a brutal enemy of Death Eaters. She is cunning in tracking them and vicious in fighting them. She has even been known to toy with them using the Imperious Curse, leaving them powerless against her.

She teaches Botany at Hogwarts, using the serene beauty and relative safety of her garden to hide her beloved as she searches for a cure. The evils she imprisons decorate the scenery as statues; unable to move, forced forever to view the one who had brought them to justice.

## Personal Life

Tapping into the power of her Obscurial gives her immunity to poisons, vast Pyromantic powers and the ability to cast difficult spells such as Imperium Curse and Astal Projection with great ease.

Helena usually has full freedom from the Obscurial, but the more she draws from its power the less control she has. If she allows herself to bond with it fully she wields incredible power but at the cost of losing control. When that happens she has to get help from others to trap the Obscurial once more.

Helena has some skill with healing.

Helena has no love for the Ministry or Aurors.