The hallway was long and narrow, drops of blood slipping down the dark and shadowed walls like drops of rain on a window. The door had blood on the handle, she could see it from all the way at the opposite end of the narrow room. There were no other doors, Emma had never seen this one before, not anywhere, but somehow she knew what was on the other side of it. She had dreamed of what was behind the door when she first started at Hogwarts. The room of dread, sadness, unhappiness, sorrow, grief and so on. It was the pitch black one, she knew.

"Just - take her," said a woman's voice. It was soft but it still made Emma jump, still glued her feet to the ground. The voice had not come from the hallway in front of her. It sounded like it had come from behind her. 

She felt the breath on her neck.

"You can't mean this . . ." a different voice said, a male's voice. One that she thought she had heard before, one that had bid her farewell, one that she thought belonged to the face she hoped would show up for her seventeenth, that would wish her a happy year at Hogwarts on the platform. A woman was breathing heavily, she could hear it, but it was not the same woman who spoke. That much she knew.

Confused and slightly terrified, Emma swatted at the back of her neck before forcing her feet to reel backwards. Her back reached the wall, not leaving much distance between herself and the door begging to be opened.

She didn't want to hear it. She didn't want to hear something she couldn't know was real or not. Or, at least, had been. Emma didn't want to hear something she wanted to believe. She just missed her parents, that was all. 

"We do, Samson," a different male voice said. It had not come from behind her, but she felt the breath falling atop her head as she sunk to the ground. She could feel the breaths of ghosts touching her skin as words of transparency conversed back and forth. They were all around her, invisible, just like she was to them. A child whimpered. "It's for the best, we've already talked it over, a hundred times if not more. Remus won't do it, not with his . . . furry little problem. I couldn't ask Sirius . . . I don't think he could . . ."

There was a pause, Emma could feel the tension. Now she knew who she was listening to. 

"You and Chelsea have had a baby before, surely you know what you'll be doing," the woman said again. "We'll have her back when this is all over. Till then . . ."

"Yes," she heard her mother's voice say softly, and it took all she had to keep her sobs from taking over. Emma wrapped her arms tight around her legs, drawing them closer to her chest as her mother's breath touched the top of her head, like a gentle pat of a hand. "When this is all over."

It sounded like multiple soft gasps at once, and Emma knew no one else was going to speak. She wanted to wake up now, more than ever. Her dreams hadn't lasted this long since she had visited the pitch black room. She was aware of what had to happen for her to wake but she didn't want to be back in that room again. 

She would not go in there. She could hear voices, not quite audible, but they sounded distraught, terrified. Most likely whispers from the ghosts beforehand, people she once knew. Emma couldn't say how she knew this, but she knew. She knew what it would look like when she opened the door and she knew she would have to sooner or later; she was beginning to feel claustrophobic. There was no where else to go. It was like being trapped in a chest.

  A man's voice hollered and it made her heart thump against her chest with fright. His footsteps were thundering down what sounded like stairs.  It came from the door, but still, she would not approach it. She would sit here, her arms tight around her legs, in a shadowed hallway, until she woke. After all, she couldn't sleep forever.

It was so quiet. So unusually and deathly quiet. Although she was on the ground, she could still feel her legs shaking, even with them tightly drawn to her chest. 

The sound of a loud snap and a body was dangling in front of her, skin pale and rotted, a once white night gown grey with dirt and red with blood. Emma screamed the second she looked up and saw it falling from thin air, dead feet not quite touching the ground, rope being held from nowhere, a noose around an innocent neck.

 It was all too much. She had already seen this once and hoped she would not again. Even after Sabrina had died Emma had not dreamt of what it looked like . . . oh how traumatizing it looked. For a time she forgot just how scary it was to see a dead body. 

Emma tried shoving her back harder into the wall, hoping her dream would hear her wishes and pull her into another dimension, or better, let her wake. She quickly forced herself off the ground and dodged the body as she ran past the bloody walls, the hallway becoming brighter as she neared the door, the one she had once thought unpleasant to open. Now she thought it heavenly. 

Her hand wrapped around the bloody hand print on the golden door handle, her head nearly smacking into the white wooden door. The blood on the door handle was warm and she knew it was smeared all over her own hand, but the dead body of her friend was coming closer, she could hear it, hear the dead moans as it approached her back. 

Her hand acted on it's own and twisted the knob and pushed forward. White light blinded her, dimming in and out, getting brighter, then dimming again as a woman sobbed pleadingly before screaming. 

Emma woke with a yell half crammed in her throat, the screams still ringing in her ears, Sabrina's body still dangling before her frightened eyes. Her bed hangings were drawn but she could hear the snores and steady breathing of her sleeping friends, ending with her sighing with relief, rubbing her eyes. 

It was hard to focus afterward on anything school related, and over the first week of the Christmas holiday. Knowing that she was so close to being taken away was traumatising. The Carrows were evidently notified about it but they dared not approach her; apparently Snape had made sure of it, otherwise she'd be strung up in the dungeons where all the other students who were being punished were taken to, where she would most likely be interrogated. There was no way any Death Eater in their right mind would take Emma straight to Him, whether they were or were not pledged a hundred and eighty Galleons, they wouldn't want to make any mistake in getting You-Know-Who's hopes up. 

If she would manage to fool Him they'd be dead on the spot. But that was highly unlikely. Harry was taking Occlumency for a reason and in which Emma was not skilled. It was a surprise none of the Death Eaters who had come through the school had caught her yet. 

Daphne had made no comment on the incident in the corridor that one evening with the two Death Eaters. She had said some things that evening along the way to the library with pointed glances Emma's way, her voice making sure that she seemed curious and thirsty for an answer that she was unaware Emma knew, but Emma didn't say anything. Her mind had drifted off some place, filling in it's hollow spot with memories that never happened. 

She looks like the Mudblood, don't you think?

Emma could not see anything between her and Lily Potter that might have actually given her away. She didn't look exactly like her. Even as she stared at the old photograph she couldn't see it, and she knew the young man that had claimed the truth was only making up the resemblance on the spot. Or if she did look like Lily Potter, she could not see it. 

It had been a while since Emma had cleaned out her schoolbag. It was never really dirty but it definitely piled up with papers that she eventually threw out when she no longer needed it.

 But hiding at the bottom of her schoolbag was a small photograph that Sabrina Lestrange had given her months after she had first arrived at Hogwarts. It was the photo that she was given after Draco had nicknamed her Freckles and Sabrina had given it to her so that she could derive a name from his eleven-year-old vampire looking appearance. 

She tossed the photographs aside and dumped everything out of her schoolbag. 

The same dream had visited Emma over the next few nights and would haunt her especially during meal times, so she didn't eat very much. She informed Daphne of her uncomfortable dream, only mentioning that she was dreaming of Sabrina and her mother dying. The only advice she received from her friend was to visit Madame Pomfrey and ask for a potion that might help with keeping the nightmares away. 

"And what am I supposed to say when she asks what my dreams were about?" Emma said over her soup, stirring it as she stared out of the windows. The sky was blackened with night and the Great Hall was uncomfortably quiet, minus the soft chatter between the very few students who didn't or couldn't return home for Christmas. The only teachers who were sitting at their tables with dinner were Professors McGonagall and Flitwick. "Oh, nothing serious, just my friend's dead body and my mum dying. Sometimes a creepy crawly or two."

"You don't have to answer her, just say you feel uncomfortable talking about it if she asks," Daphne shook her head. Emma looked at Daphne when she waved her hand in front of her distant face. Daphne sighed, staring at her dinner. "It's still upsetting that there are more first-years here than anyone else."

"Maybe their families didn't . . . make it."

"Emma -"

"It's a possibility," Emma said sadly. "Maybe they're in hiding and they couldn't risk their children coming home for Christmas."

Daphne sighed again, angering Emma slightly. She didn't know why it angered her, but it did. It was all Daphne did - sigh. It was rather hypocritical of Emma; all she did now was mope and try not to poop her pants whenever a stranger walked past her. 

"You're different now, you know?" Daphne said nervously, as though afraid Emma would lash out at her. She never had before, but her anger washed away instantly at Daphne's sad eyes. "I miss you being so benevolent and full of spirit. I haven't seen your spirit since last year, I'm lucky you've still got some of your benevolence."

"Benevolent," Emma smiled, biting her tongue to keep from saying something cheeky about spirit. After all, she hadn't seen Daphne spirited this year either. "Mum used to say I was too benevolent for my own good," her smile faded in less than a second, Daphne cleared her throat. "Draco said something along those lines before. Maybe they were both right."

"They weren't. Hogwarts is just bad luck, really," Daphne replied with a hint of a smirk on her face. Emma smiled at her attempt of lightening the tone. "When you narrow it down it's really one of the worst schools. Has to be."

"It's not the school that's bad," Emma replied. Her gaze drifted toward Snape who had just entered the Great Hall, followed by the Carrows. "It's the people who are bad."