Emma read through the letter twice, unable to tear her eyes away from her father's handwriting. She traced over the ink; she missed him just as much as she missed Harry. 

Emma,

I'm sorry. I can't put much into the letter but I'm sorry. I left you alone and I missed your birthday and seeing you off to Hogwarts. In my state of grief I was set on something (you know what) and I now realise how stupid and suicidal it was. I don't expect you to understand my pain, you're only a child. Nothing I did would bring her back, but I had you. There are so many snatchers. I'm not hurt but they're everywhere. Thieves and snatchers on the hunt for Muggle-borns. I never found who it was, who did it, but I have an idea. Don't write me back.

I'm coming home.

Love, Dad.

She handed the letter over for Draco to read and paced as he done so. She didn't know what to feel. Happy that he'd given up on his hunt, that he was coming home, that he had written her, worried for Harry, Ron and Hermione what with the snatchers. Scared. I'm coming home made her feel safe, even if he was miles away. 

"He was searching for my Mum's killer," Emma said when Draco looked at her questionably. She took the letter back from him and stared at it. "He missed everything but - d'you think Harry, Ron and Hermione will be OK out there? Snatchers and . . ." her eyes stared at Draco's left arm, covered by his sleeve, ". . . and Death Eaters. Hermione's Muggle-born and . . . well . . . Harry's Harry."

He could feel her eyes on his arm and hid it behind his back, clasping his hands together behind him. 

"He's made it this far and surely you've heard the stories about his last few years here," Draco mumbled, sitting on a dusty chair by a pile. 

"Not really," she told him. "All I know is about the tournament. I don't know anything else."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously. Was it bad? 'Cause if it was then obviously it wouldn't have been brought up in the middle of a conversation."

"First year - something about a stone and he met You-Know-Who. Second year - the chamber of secrets. Potter said something in Parseltongue and people believed he was the heir of Slytherin; the chamber belonged to Salazar Slytherin and it hadn't been opened in fifty years till second year. Mudbloods were being petrified, blah blah blah, then the Weasley girl was taken and Potter went to the rescue as usual."

"What d'you mean taken?" Emma asked.

"My father said the Weasley girl was possessed by You-Know-Who and did all the writings on the walls and . . . you're really not catching on are you?"

"Possessed?" she said in a small voice.

"Supposedly. Third year he rescued Sirius Black and escaped a bunch of Dementors. Fourth year was the tournament."

"Well," said Emma, shifting uncomfortably. "Sounds like he's had the time of his life. I really wish you two were friends."

"I tried being his friend in first-year, he refused and ran off with Weaselbee," Draco scoffed, standing from the dusty chair and curling his lip when he noticed all the dust on him. Wiping himself, he muttered, "bloody dust."

"Yeah, and I wonder what made him refuse," Emma raised an eyebrow. He stopped dusting and looked at her with a frown, a hint of a joke on his face. She smiled and turned away towards the harp and pulled against the strings. "There's so much stuff in here. I wonder why nobody came back for their things."

"It's called the Room of Hidden Things for a reason, Freckles."

"No, I mean . . . the first person to come in here obviously had nowhere to hide their object."

"I don't think you understand the whole point of the room," Draco said, and she could hear his footsteps growing faint. She spun around and saw him running his hands over a cabinet. "I worked on this in sixth-year. I was mending it . . . I did - and let them into the school. Part of me wishes I hadn't. Dumbledore was saying there were ways my family and I could be protected, that he could protect us, and if I'd listened sooner he'd be alive and everything would be all right again."

"You were scared," Emma said, staring at his back, while he stared up at the cabinet. "You can't blame yourself. Fear makes us do all sorts of things."

"He threatened us - me. He said he was going to kill me if I didn't . . ."

Emma walked toward him and took his hand. His face was hard but she saw the pain in his grey eyes, even when they weren't looking at her. Hesitantly, she moved in front of him, took his left hand and used her other to roll up his sleeve. He inhaled but didn't stop her, and her eyes finally fell onto the tattoo; the skull with the snake protruding through it. She stared at it for a moment and it was so quiet she thought Draco had stopped breathing. She felt uncomfortable under his stare, as she stared at his Dark Mark, but there was no way she was more uncomfortable than he was. 

"It's not you," she told him, rolling down his sleeve. "Your heart isn't in it. It's meaningless - it doesn't mean anything to you."

"It's always going to be there."

"You can burn tattoos off," Emma told him.

"I'm not burning myself! Plus this was magically implemented, you can't burn it off. It'll always be there."

Emma put down his arm and walked into his chest, wrapping her arms around him. She could feel his heart racing and fought the urge to make a similar comment to the one he had made about her racing heart. She felt one of his arms wrap around her shoulders and his other hand at the back of her head.

"At the start of the year I thought maybe you'd hate me if I didn't explain myself. You did and I wanted to explain but . . . I felt like Potter told you only what he saw and you'd take his word over mine any day," Draco said against her hair. "But now you know why I was going to do it. I didn't have a choice."

"I didn't hate you, I just didn't know if I could trust you. I mean, I could because Harry told me everything that happened. He could tell your heart wasn't completely in it. But I was still unsure."

"What?" Draco said, staring down at her in confusion when she pulled away from him. 

"What?"

"Potter could tell my heart . . . what?"

"He was there that night from the start," Emma said slowly. "Underneath his Invisibility cloak. He saw and heard everything. He told me you were lowering your wand when the other Death Eaters came in, that, I'm guessing, is when you trusted that Dumbledore could protect you. I wish he was here now; I still had a lot to ask him."

"About your parents?"

"Yeah," she replied, wandering away from him and picking up random objects. "And my sorting. I feel like my sorting was planned. I don't feel like I was meant to be in Slytherin, if anything I feel like I was meant to be in Hufflepuff."

"You would be a Hufflepuff," he said thoughtfully. He wandered away too and disappeared behind a large pile of furniture. "Ah, what have we got here?"

Emma looked over at him and saw him coming around one of the large piles, dusting off a record player. He ventured up to her, took the letter from her hands and tucked it away in his pocket.

"You need a break from all the worrying," he told her with a smirk, and turned back to the record player to mess around with the disc. "Now let's see if I can get this working, looks like I can wind it up here. Hopefully I haven't lost my touch since the Yule ball."

"Hold up," said Emma, frowning. "I'm not."

He looked at her. "You are."

"Well, for the record, I hope that doesn't end up working."

Music began to play when Draco spun the platter, and he looked at her with his eyebrows raised. He fixed his posture and extended his arm, which, after laughing, Emma took. With an act of confidence he wrapped his arms around her back and she was left to put hers on his shoulders. There weren't any vocals, it was just music. 

"This music is too slow," she said to him. Draco began to move and she followed his lead. "Looks like you don't need your Yule ball touch after all."

"Stop being so negative," he said. "This is an excuse I can use to be close to you again."

Emma avoided his eye and said, "That isn't a good idea. He'll find out and -"

"He won't find out. Not about you anyway."

"You don't know that," she said, looking up at him. When he pulled her closer, she wanted to move away. "Everyone I talk to is at risk. If something happened I couldn't live with myself. Actually, if something happened I probably wouldn't live at all."

"Stop," said Draco. "No talking about it, remember? Just enjoy the moment with me."

"What was the point of breaking up with me if you were just going to come back?" Emma asked. "You said we should wait until this blows over, which I doubt will happen, and then we can resume where we left off but . . . it feels like you've been wanting to resume for a long time."

"It's hard keeping it on hold but right now we're just dancing as friends," he told her. Something twisted in her stomach and she frowned; it definitely hurt to hear him say that, but it was for the best. "See? This is friendly, isn't it?"

"I can feel your breath on my mouth, how is that friendly?"

"That's 'cause I want to kiss you," he said airily. "But I won't."

Emma looked up at him and shook her head. "We shouldn't."

"I've just made it awkward now, haven't I?"

The record player began to skip. 

"So much for friendly."

_____

A/N: So, I've been thinking and I want to write another book for this, where they're adults - like 6 or 7 years after the battle, that way I can have an entirely new plot instead of the usual Hogwarts plot. I don't know if I'll end up publishing it after this story, I'm writing it in my drafts but if it flows well and plays out the way I want it to, I'll publish it after this story. 

It all depends on what I decide to do with Emma - I have so many endings for this >:)