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Bathilda's Secret

"Stop," said Hermione and Elizabeth at the same time.

"What's wrong?" asked Ron.

They had only just reached the grave of the unknown Abbott.

"There's someone there. Someone watching us. I can tell. There, over by the bushes," said Hermione, pointing.

They all stood quite still, holding on to each other, gazing at the dense black boundary of the graveyard.

"Are you sure?" asked Ron.

"I saw something move, I could have sworn I did…"

"Do you hear anything, Emmett?" Elizabeth asked.

He shook his head and tightened his arm around her.

Hermione broke from them to free her wand arm. Elizabeth did the same.

"We look like Muggles," Ron pointed out.

"Muggles who've just been laying flowers on Elizabeth's parents' grave! Ron, I'm sure there's someone over there!"

There was a rustle and saw a little eddy of dislodged snow in the bush to which Hermione and Elizabeth had pointed.

"It's a cat," said Ron after a second or two, "or a bird. If it was a Death Eater we'd be dead by now. But let's get out of here, and you and Elizabeth can put the Cloak back on."

They glanced back repeatedly as they made their way out of the graveyard. Elizabeth was glad to reach the gate and the slippery pavement. She and Hermione pulled the Invisibility Cloak back over themselves. The pub was fuller than before: Many voices inside it were now singing the carol that they had heard as they approached the church. For a moment Elizabeth considered suggesting they take refuge inside it, but before she could say anything Hermione murmured, "Let's go this way," and pulled them down the dark street leading out of the village in the opposite direction from which they had entered. Elizabeth could make out the point where the cottages ended and the lane turned into open country again. They walked as quickly as they dared, past more windows sparkling with multicolored lights, the outlines of Christmas trees dark through curtains.

"How are we going to find Bathilda's house?" asked Hermione, who was shivering a little and kept glancing back over her shoulder. "Elizabeth? What do you think? Elizabeth?"

She tugged at Elizabeth's arm, but Elizabeth was not paying attention. She was looking toward the dark mass that stood up at the very end of this row of houses. She sped up.

"Elizabeth—"

"Look at it…"

"I don't… oh!"

She could see it; the Fidelius Charm must have died with James and Lily. The hedge had grown wild in the sixteen years since Hagrid had taken Elizabeth from the rubble that lay scattered amongst the waist-high grass. Most of the cottage was still standing, though entirely covered in dark ivy and snow, but the right side of the top floor had been blown apart; that, Elizabeth was sure, was where the curse had backfired. She, Hermione, Ron, and Emmett stood at the gate, gazing up at the wreck of what must once have been a cottage just like those that flanked it. Elizabeth pulled off the Cloak.

"I wonder why nobody's ever rebuilt it?" whispered Hermione.

"Maybe you can't rebuild it?" Harry replied. "Maybe it's like the injuries from Dark Magic and you can't repair the damage?"

She grasped the snowy and thickly rusted gate, not wishing to open it, but simply to hold some part of the house.

"You're not going to go inside? It looks unsafe, it might—oh, 'Lizabeth, look!"

Her touch on the gate seemed to have done it. A sign had risen out of the ground in front of them, up through the tangles of nettles and weeds, like some bizarre, fast-growing flower, and in golden letters upon the wood it said:

On this spot, on the night of 31 October 1981,

Lily and James Potter lost their lives.

Their daughter, Elizabeth, remains the only witch

ever to have survived the Killing Curse.

This house, invisible to Muggles, has been left

in its ruined state as a monument to the Potters

and as a reminder of the violence

that tore apart their family.

And all around these neatly lettered words, scribbles had been added by other witches and wizards who had come to see the place where the Girl Who Lived had escaped. Some had merely signed their names in Everlasting Ink; others had carved their initials into the wood, still others had left massages. The most recent of these, shining brightly over sixteen years' worth of magical graffiti, all said similar things.

Good luck, Elizabeth, wherever you are.

If you read this, Elizabeth, we're all behind you!

Long live Elizabeth Potter.

"They shouldn't have written on the sign!" said Hermione, indignant.

But Elizabeth beamed.

"It's brilliant. I'm glad they did. I…"

She broke off. A heavily muffled figure was hobbling up the lane toward them, silhouetted by the bright lights in the distant square. Elizabeth thought, though it was hard to judge, that the figure was a woman. She was moving slowly, possibly frightened of slipping on the snowy ground. Her stoop, her stoutness, her shuffling gait all gave an impression of extreme age. They watched in silence as she drew nearer. Elizabeth was waiting to see whether she would turn into any of the cottages she was passing, but she knew instinctively that she would not. At last she came to a halt a few yards from them and simply stood there in the middle of the frozen road, facing them.

She obviously wasn't a Muggle. She gazed at the house that was supposed to invisible to her. After a few moments, she raised a gloved hand and beckoned.

Hermione moved closer to Elizabeth, her arm pressed again hers. Emmett stepped closer as well.

The woman beckoned again, more vigorously. Elizabeth could think of many reasons not to obey the summons, and yet her suspicions about her identity were growing stronger every moment that they stood facing each other in the deserted street.

Finally, Elizabeth spoke, causing Hermione to gasp and jump.

"Are you Bathilda?"

The muffled figure nodded and beckoned again.

Elizabeth and Hermione looked at each other. Elizabeth raised her eyebrows; Hermione gave a tiny, nervous nod.

They stepped toward the woman—Emmett and Ron gave tiny noises of protest—and, at once, she turned and hobbled off back the way they had come. Leading them past several houses, she turned in at a gate. They followed her up the front path through a garden nearly as overgrown as the one they had just left. She fumbled for a moment with a key at the front door, then opened it and stepped back to let them pass.

She smelled bad, or perhaps it was her house: Elizabeth wrinkled her nose as they sidled past her. Now that she was beside her, she realized how tiny she was; bowed down with age, she came barely level with Elizabeth's chest. She closed the door behind them, her knuckles blue and mottled against the peeling paint, then turned and peered into Elizabeth's face. Her eyes were thick with cataracts and sunken into folds of transparent skin, and her whole face was dotted with broken veins and liver spots. Elizabeth wondered whether she could make her out at all; even if she could, it was the young blonde whose identity Elizabeth had stolen she would see.

The odor of old age, of dust, of unwashed clothes and stale food intensified as she unwound a moth-eaten black shawl, revealing a head of scant white hair through which the scalp showed clearly.

"Bathilda?" Elizabeth repeated.

She nodded again. Elizabeth became aware of the locket against her skin; the thing inside it that sometimes ticked or beat had woken; she could feel it pulsing through the cold gold.

Bathilda shuffled past them, pushing Hermione aside as though she had not seen her, and vanishing into what seemed to be a sitting room.

"I'm not sure about this," breathed Hermione.

"I think we could overpower her if we had to," said Elizabeth. "Listen, I should have told you. I knew she wasn't all there. Muriel called her 'gaga.'"

"Come!" called Bathilda from the next room.

Hermione jumped and clutched Elizabeth's arm.

"It's okay," said Elizabeth reassuringly as she led the way into the sitting room.

Bathilda was tottering around the place lighting candles, but it was still very dark, not to mention extremely dirty. Thick dust crunched beneath their feet. Elizabeth wondered when was the last time anyone had been inside Bathilda's house to check whether she was coping. She seemed to have forgotten that she could do magic, too, for she lit the candles clumsily by hand, her trailing lace cuff in constant danger of catching fire.

"Let me do that," offered Elizabeth, and she took the matched from her. She stood their watching him as he finished lighting the candle stubs that stood on saucers around the room, perched precariously on stacks of books and on side tables crammed with cracked and moldy cups.

The last surface on which Elizabeth spotted a candle was a bow-fronted chest of drawers on which there stood a large number of photographs. When the flame danced into life, its reflection wavered on their dusty glass and silver. She saw a few tiny movements from the pictures. As Bathilda fumbled with logs for the fire, Elizabeth muttered "Tergeo"; The dust vanished from the photographs, and she saw at once that half a dozen were missing from the largest and most ornate frames. She wondered whether Bathilda or somebody else had removed them. then the sight of a photograph near the back of the collection caught her eye, and she snatched it up.

It was the golden-haired, merry-faced thief, the young man who had perched on Gregorovitch's windowsill, smiling lazily up at Elizabeth out of the silver frame. And it came to Elizabeth instantly where she had seen the boy before; in The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore, arm in arm with the teenage Dumbledore, and that must be where all the missing photographs were: in Rita's book.

"Mrs.—Miss—Bagshot?" she said, and her voice shook slightly. "Who is this?"

Bathilda was standing in the middle of the room watching Hermione light the fire for her.

"Miss Bagshot?" Elizabeth repeated, and she advanced with the picture in her hands as the flames burst into life in the fireplace. Bathilda looked up at her voice, and the Horcrux beat faster upon her chest.

"Who is this person?" Elizabeth asked her, pushing the picture forward.

She peered at it solemnly, then up at Elizabeth.

"Do you know who this is?" she repeated in a much slower and louder voice than usual. "This man? Do you know him? What's his name?"

Bathilda merely looked vague. Elizabeth felt an awful frustration. How had Rita Skeeter unlocked Bathilda's memories?

"Who is this man?" she repeated loudly.

"'Lizabeth, what are you doing?" asked Emmett, shuffling closer.

"This picture! It's the thief, the thief who stole from Gregorovitch! Please!" she said to Bathilda. "Who is this?"

But she only stared at her.

"Why did you ask us to come with you, Miss Bagshot?" asked Hermione, raising her own voce. "Was there something you wanted to tell us?"

Giving no sign that she had heard Hermione, Bathilda now shuffled a few steps closer to Elizabeth. With a little jerk of her head she looked back into the hall.

"You want us to leave?" Ron asked.

Bathilda repeated the gesture, this time pointing firstly at Elizabeth, then at herself, then at the ceiling.

"Oh, right… Hermione, Ron, Emmett, I think she wants me to go upstairs with her."

"All right," said Hermione, "let's go."

But when Hermione moved, Bathilda shook her head with surprising vigor, once more pointing first at Elizabeth, then to herself.

"She wants me to go with her, alone."

"No, no way," said Emmett, wrapping his arm around her waist.

"Maybe Dumbledore told her to give the sword to me and only to me?"

"Do you really think she knows who you are?"

"Yes," said Elizabeth, looking down into the milky eyes fixed upon her own, "I think she does."

"Well, okay then, but be quick, Elizabeth."

"What? No!" said Emmett. "No way am I letting you go—"

"Emmett, if she has the sword," Elizabeth cut in quietly, "I have to go."

Emmett looked between Elizabeth and Bathilda a few times before he sighed and let go of her waist.

"Lead the way," Elizabeth told Bathilda.

She seemed to understand, because she shuffled around her toward the door. Elizabeth glanced back at Hermione, Ron, and Emmett with a reassuring smile. As Elizabeth walked out of the room she slipped the silver-framed photograph of the unknown thief inside her jacket.

The stairs were steep and narrow: Elizabeth was half tempted to place her hands on Bathilda's back to ensure that she did not topple over backward on top of her, which seemed only too likely. Slowly, wheezing a little, she climbed to the upper landing, turned immediately right, and led her into a low-ceilinged bedroom.

It was pitch-black and smelled horrible: Elizabeth had just made out a chamber pot protruding from under the bed before Bathilda closed the door and been that was swallowed by the darkness.

"Lumos," said Elizabeth, and her wand ignited. She gave a started: Bathilda had moved close to her in those few seconds of darkness, and she had not heard her approach.

"You are Potter?" she whispered.

"Yes, I am."

She nodded slowly, solemnly. Elizabeth felt the Horcrux beating fast, faster than her own heart: It was an unpleasant, agitating sensation.

"Have you got anything for me?" Elizabeth asked, but Bathilda seemed distracted by her lit wand-tip.

"Have you got anything for me?" she repeated.

Then Bathilda closed her eyes and several things happened at once: Elizabeth's scar prickled painfully; the Horcrux twitched so that the front of her sweater actually moved; the dark, fetid room dissolved momentarily. She felt a leap of joy and spoke in a high, cold voice: Hold her!

Elizabeth swayed where she stood: The dark, foul-smelling room seemed to close around her again; she did not know what had just happened.

"Have you got anything for me?" she asked for a third time, much louder.

"Over here," she whispered, pointing to the corner. Elizabeth raised her wand and saw the outline of a cluttered dressing table beneath the curtained window.

This time Bathilda did not lead her. Elizabeth edged between her and the unmade bed, her wand raised. She did not want to look away from her.

"What is it?" she asked as she reached the dressing table, which was heaped high with what look and smelled like dirty laundry.

"There," she said, pointing at the shapeless mass.

And in the instant that Elizabeth look away, her eyes raking the tangled mess for a sword hilt, a ruby, Bathilda moved weirdly: She saw it out of the corner of her eye; panic made her turn and horror paralyzed her as she saw the old body collapsing and the great snake pouring from the place where her neck had been.

The snake struck as she raised her wand: The force of the bite to her forearm sent the wand spinning up toward the ceiling; its light swung dizzyingly around the room and was extinguished: Then a powerful blow from the tail to her midriff knocked the breath out of her: She fell backward onto the dressing table, into the mound of filthy clothing—

She rolled sideways, narrowly avoiding the snake's tail, which thrashed down upon the table where she had been a second earlier: Fragments of the glass surface rained upon her as she hit the floor. From below she heard Emmett call, "Liz?"

She could not get enough breath into her lungs to call back: Then the heavy smooth mass smashed her to the floor and she felt it slide over her, powerful, muscular—

"Yes," whispered the voice. "Yesss… hold you… hold you…"

The snake coiled itself around her torso, squeezing the air from her, pressing the Horcrux hard into her chest, a circle of ice that throbbed with life, inches from her own frantic heart, and her brain was flooding with cold, white light, all thought obliterated, her own breath drowned, distant footsteps, everything going…

A metal heart was banging outside her chest, and now she was flying, flying with triumph in her heart, without need of broomstick or thestral…

She was abruptly awake in the sour-smelling darkness; Nagini had released her. She scrambled up and saw the snake outlined against the landing light: It struck, and Hermione dived aside with a shriek; her deflected curse hit the curtained window, which shattered. Elizabeth could hear Emmett and Ron screaming she and Hermione's name from the doorway as they tried to get to them, but couldn't because of the snake. Frozen air filled the room as Elizabeth ducked to avoid another shower of broken glass and her foot slipped on a pencil-like something—her wand—

She bent and snatched it up, but now the room was full of the snake, its tail thrashing; Hermione was nowhere to be seen and for a moment, Elizabeth thought the worst, but then there was a loud bang and a flash of red light, and the snake flew into the air, smacking Elizabeth hard in the face as it went, coil after heavy coil rising up to the ceiling. Elizabeth raised her wand, but as she did so, her scar seared more painfully, more powerfully than it had done in years.

"He's coming! Hermione, he's coming!"

As she yelled the snake fell, hissing wildly. Everything was chaos: It smashed shelves from the wall, and splintered china flew everywhere as Elizabeth jumped over the bed and seized the dark shape she knew to be Hermione—

Hermione shrieked with pain as Elizabeth pulled her back across the bed: The snake reared again, but Elizabeth knew that worse than the snake was coming, was perhaps already at the gate, her head was going to split open with the pain from her scar—

The snake lunged as she took a running leap, dragging Hermione with her. As it struck, Hermione screamed, "Confringo!" and her spell flew around the room, exploding the wardrobe mirror and ricocheting back at them, bouncing from floor to ceiling; Elizabeth felt the heat of it sear the back of her hand. Glass cut her cheek as, pulling Hermione with her—and feeling rather than seeing Emmett grab her arm and Ron, Hermione's—she leapt from bed to broken dressing table and then straight out of the smashed window into nothingness, Hermione's scream reverberating through the night as they twisted in midair…

And then her scar burst open and she was Voldemort and she was running across the fetid bedroom, her long white hands clutching at the windowsill as she glimpsed the bald man, little woman, blonde girl, and young man twist and vanish, and she screamed with rage, a scream that mingled with the girl's, that echoed across the dark gardens over the church bells winding in Christmas Day…

And his scream was Elizabeth's scream, his pain was Elizabeth's pain… that it could happen here, where it had happened before… here, within sight of that house where he had come so close to knowing what it was to die… to die… The pain was so terrible… ripped from her body… But if she had no body, why did her head hurt so badly; if she was dead, how could feel so unbearably, didn't pain cease with death, didn't it go…

The night wet and windy, two children dressed as pumpkins waddling across the square, and the shop windows covered in paper spiders, all the tawdry Muggle trappings of a world in which they did not believe… And she was gliding along, that sense of purpose and power and rightness in her that she always knew on these occasions… Not anger… that was for weaker souls than she… but triumph, yes… She had waited for this, she had hoped for it…

"Nice costumed, mister!"

She saw the small boy's smile falter as he ran near enough to see beneath the hood of the cloak, saw the fear cloud his painted face: Then the child turned and ran away… Beneath the robe she fingered the handle of her wand… One simple movement and the child would never reach his mother… but unnecessary, quite unnecessary…

And along a new and darker street she moved, and now her destination was in sight at last, the Fidelius Charm broken, thought they did not know it yet… And she made less noise than the dead leaves slithering along the pavement as she drew level with the dark hedge, and stared over it…

They had not drawn the curtains; she saw them quite clearly in their little sitting room, the tall black-haired man in his glasses, making puffs of colored smoke erupt from his wand for the amusement of the small black-haired girl in her blue pajamas. The child was laughing and trying to catch the smoke, to grab it in her small fist…

A door opened and the mother entered saying words she could not hear, her long dark-red hair falling over her face. Now the father scooped up the daughter and handed her to the mother. He threw his wand down upon the sofa and stretched, yawning…

The gate creaked a little as she pushed it open, but James Potter did not hear. Her white hand pulled out the wand beneath her cloak and pointed it at the door, which burst open.

She was over the threshold as James came sprinting into the hall. It was easy, too easy, he had not even picked up his wand…

"Lily, take Lizzy and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off!"

Hold her off, without a wand in his hand!... She laughed before casting the curse…

"Avada Kedavra!"

The green light filled the cramped hallway, it lit the pram pushed against the wall, it made the banisters glare like lightning rods, and James Potter fell like a marionette whose strings were cut…

She could hear her screaming from the upper floor, trapped, but as long as she was sensible, she, at least, had nothing to fear… She climbed the steps, listening with faint amusement to her attempts to barricade herself in… She had no wand upon her either… How stupid they were, and how trusting, thinking that their safety lay in friends, that weapons could be discarded even for moments…

She forced the door open, cast aside the chair and boxes hastily piled against it with one lazy wave of her wand… and there she stood, the child in her arms. At the sight of her, she dropped her daughter into the crib behind her and threw her arms wide, as if this would help, as if in shielding her from sight she hoped to be chosen instead…

"Not 'Lizabeth, not 'Lizabeth, please not Elizabeth!"

"Stand aside, you silly girl… stand aside, now."

"Not 'Lizabeth, please no, take me, kill me instead—"

"This is my last warning—"

"Not 'Lizabeth! Please… have mercy… have mercy… Not 'Lizabeth! Not 'Lizabeth! Please—I'll do anything—"

"Stand aside. Stand aside, girl!"

She could have forced her away from the crib, but it seemed more prudent to finish them all…

The green light flashed around the room and she dropped like her husband. The child had not cried all this time: She could stand, clutching the bars of her crib, and she looked up into the intruder's face with a kind of bright interest, perhaps thinking that it was her father who hid beneath the cloak, making more pretty lights, and her mother would pop up any moment, laughing—

She pointed the wand very carefully into the girl's face: She wanted to see it happen, the destruction of this one, inexplicable danger. The child began to cry: It had seen that she was not James. She did not like it crying, she had never been able to stomach the small ones whining in the orphanage—

"Avada Kedavra!"

And then she broke: She was nothing, nothing but pain and terror, and she must hide herself, not here in the rubble of the ruined house, where the child was trapped and screaming, but far away… far away…

"No," she moaned.

The snake rustled on the filthy, cluttered floor, and she had killed the girl, and yet she was the girl…

"No…"

and now she stood at the broken window of Bathilda's house, immersed in memories of her greatest loss, and at her feet the great snake slithered over broken china and glass… She looked down and saw something… something incredible…

"No…"

"Elizabeth, it's all right, you're all right!"

She stooped down and picked up the smashed photograph. There he was, the unknown thief, the thief she was seeking…

"No… I dropped it… I dropped it…"

"Elizabeth, it's okay, wake up, wake up!"

She was Elizabeth… Elizabeth, not Voldemort… and the thing that was rustling was not a snake… She opened her eyes.

Hermione and Ron were leaning over her, concern etched deeply on both of their faces.

"Elizabeth," Hermione whispered. "Do you feel all—all right?"

"Yes," she lied.

She was in the tent, lying on one of the lower bunks beneath a heap of blankets. She could tell that it was almost dawn by the stillness and the quality of the cold, flat light beyond the canvas ceiling. She was drenched in sweat; she could feel it on the sheets and blankets.

"We got away."

"Yes," said Hermione. "I had to use a Hover Charm to get you into your bunk, I couldn't lift you. You've been… Well, you haven't been quite…"

There were purple shadows under both of their eyes and she noticed a small sponge in Hermione's hand: She had been wiping her face.

"You've been ill," Ron finished for her. "Quite ill."

"How long ago did we leave?"

"Hours ago. It's nearly morning."

"And I've been… what, unconscious?"

"Not exactly," said Hermione uncomfortably. "You've been shouting and moaning and… things," she added in a tone that made Elizabeth feel uneasy. What had she done? Screamed curses like Voldemort, cried like the baby in the crib?

"I had to Stun Emmett," Ron said quietly, motioning to the corner of the tent. Elizabeth stared at her unconscious heap of vampire boyfriend for a moment before turning her attention back to Ron and Hermione.

"I couldn't get the Horcrux off you," Hermione said, and she knew she wanted to change the subject. "It was stuck, stuck to your chest. You've got a mark; I'm sorry, I had to use a Severing Charm to get it away. The snake bit you too, but I've cleaned the wound and put some dittany on it…"

Ron turned away as Elizabeth gently pulled the sweaty T-shirt she was wearing away from herself and look down. There was a scarlet oval over her heart where the locket had burned her. She could also see the half-healed puncture marks to her forearm.

"Where've you put the Horcrux?" she asked as she put the T-shirt back on. Ron turned back around.

"In my bag. I think we should keep it off for a while."

Elizabeth lay back on her pillows and looked into Hermione's pinched gray face.

"We shouldn't have gone to Godric's Hollow. It's my fault, it's all my fault, Hermione, I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault. I wanted to go too; I really thought Dumbledore might have left the sword there for you."

"Yeah, well… we got that wrong, didn't we?"

"What happened, Liz?" asked Ron. "What happened when she took you upstairs? Was the snake hiding somewhere? Did it just come out and kill her and attack you?"

"No," she said. "She was the snake… or the snake was her… all along."

"W-what?"

Elizabeth closed her eyes. She could still smell Bathilda's house on her: It made the whole thing horribly vivid.

"Bathilda must've been dead a while. The snake was… was inside her. You-Know-Who put it there in Godric's Hollow, to wait. You were right. He knew I'd go back."

"The snake was inside her?"

She opened her eyes again: Ron and Hermione looked revolted, nauseated.

"She didn't want to talk in front of you, because it was Parseltongue, all Parseltongue, and I didn't realize, but of course I could understand her. Once we were up in the room, the snake sent a message to You-Know-Who, I heard it happen inside my head, I felt him get excited, he said to keep me there… and then…"

She remembered the snake coming out of Bathilda's neck: Ron and Hermione did not need to know the details.

"… she changed, changed into the snake, and attacked."

She looked down at the puncture marks.

"It wasn't supposed to kill me, just keep me there till You-Know-Who came."

If she had only managed to kill the snake, it would have been worth it, all of it… Sick at heart, she sat up and threw back the covers.

"Elizabeth, no, I'm sure you ought to rest!" Hermione cried. Ron tried to gently push her back down.

"You two are the ones who need sleep. No offense, but you look terrible. I'm fine. I'll keep watch for a while. Where's my wand?"

Neither of them answered, but merely looked at her.

"Where's my wand?"

Hermione was biting her lip, and tears swam in her eyes. Ron looked forlorn.

"Elizabeth…"

"Where's my wand?"

Hermione reached down beside the bed and held it out to her.

The holly and phoenix wand was nearly severed in two. One fragile strand of phoenix feather kept both pieces hanging together. The wood had splintered apart completely. Elizabeth took it into her hands as though it was a living thing that had suffered a terrible injury. She felt tears fill her eyes. You couldn't repair a wand with this much damage.

"'Lizabeth, mate, I'm really sorry," Ron said, sitting down and—doing something that shocked Elizabeth to no end—wrapped a supportive and brotherly arm around her shoulder.

"Lizzy," Hermione whispered so quietly she could hardly hear her. "I'm so, so sorry. I think it was me. as we were leaving, you know, the snake was coming for us, and so I cast a Blasting Curse, and it rebounded everywhere, and it must have—must have hit—"

"It was an accident," said Elizabeth mechanically. She felt empty, stunned.

"I'm so sorry," said Hermione, tears trickling down her face.

"Well," she said finally, "I'll just borrow yours for now, then. While I keep watch."

Her face glazed with tears, Hermione handed over her wand. Before Elizabeth exited the tent, she turned to Ron and said quietly, "Wake him up, will you?"

She sat down against a tree and leaned against it heavily. She closed her eyes, but still could not stop the tears from running down her face. Without her wand, she felt lost, hopelessly lost…

She heard Emmett kneel in front of her, but did not open her eyes until her felt him cup her face and wipe her tears away with his thumbs. His eyes held deep concern, worry, relief, fear—a tirade of emotions that almost made Elizabeth dizzy.

"Don't ever scare me like that again," Emmett whispered before he lifted her up and sat her on his lap. He cradled her close with her head resting against his chest.

"I'm sorry," Elizabeth whispered, wrapping her arms around him and snuggling up to his comfort. "I'm so, so, so sorry…"

And there it is! I'm so, so, so sorry for the long wait, but… well, you know why I can't update often. I hope you all enjoyed!

Review!

-Siriusly Insane Chick