Many people left the Great Hall, Emma didn't know what for. She didn't care to know what for, all she knew was that she felt so very weak, and she couldn't feel this weak for too much longer. She needed to gather her strength for when the fighting was to begin again. It wasn't hard to foresee the fight that was to come.

She could tell Draco was getting agitated seeing everyone exit the hall, especially when hearing faint arguing outside. Emma looked up at him and studied his face. Draco looked so tired; shadows beneath his eyes, a crease between his eyebrows, his eyes hooded, skin paler than usual, hair unkempt. She wished she could just take him in her lap and let him nap right then and there, but:

"I should find Harry," Emma said quietly, expecting to wobble while standing but she did so without a problem. 

"No, you should stay here--"

"I'm alright, I feel fine."

"You almost died, Emma!" Draco exclaimed, standing up to his full height and looking at her with concern in his grey eyes. Emma stared up at him, her eyebrows furrowed. "I don't know what I'd do if you did."

"I don't know what I'd do if you died as well but, I also don't know what I'd do if Harry died," Emma whispered to him calmly.

 She expected Draco to look annoyed at this statement, but he didn't, instead he nodded understandingly and let Emma take his hand, guiding him towards the doors of the great hall with her. The arguing got louder and louder as they neared the Entrance Hall and upon hearing a certain voice, Draco gripped Emma hard by the arm and yanked her back. 

"What is it?" Emma asked quickly, frightened by the look of terror on Draco's face.

"Get back, back," Draco said, pushing Emma back away from the doors. She fought back and knocked his arms away from her, shooting him a look of bewilderment. "That's His voice, Emma. You-Know-Who..."

Horror struck Emma and a loud gasp broke through the depths of her throat and, without thinking, only thinking of Harry and where he might be, if he was even alive, Emma raced out of the doors and slammed into the backs of a crowd of students. She stood on the tip of her toes; it was Voldemort, and he looked... more abnormal than she'd have imagined. His skin was snakelike and his eyes a devil red, his nose nothing but slits like those of a snakes. So this was the man who killed her parents... and may as well have killed her mother. 

Emma didn't even let the fear of seeing this horrifying looking man bother her, she simply pushed through the crowd until she could see everything. Voldemort, standing there, with a pile of his army behind him, Neville at the front of the crowd looking furious, Hagrid, tears streaming down his face, holding a body in his arms. Emma could hear Draco behind her whispering her name, but his voice began to sound like static to her ears. She let out a cry of terror and felt her knees wobble, almost giving out beneath her. 

"Harry... HARRY!" Emma cried, her legs suddenly finding the strength to move underneath her. She wasn't sure why she would even think to do so, to dart towards the snake-like man -- what was she going to do, strangle Voldemort?
"NO!" she yelled, feeling herself being reeled back by her jumper, and then a hand wrapped around her arm and pulled her back even harder. Emma tried pushing Draco off her, but he was more determined to keep her alive than she was to potentially get herself killed. He dragged her back through the crowd. "Let me go... LET ME GO!"

"I believe our search has come to an end," said Voldemort in a voice quieter than he'd been using the whole time. "Harry Potters sister, underneath this very roof with all of you this entire time and nobody batted an eye, nobody but Draco Malfoy who has been harbouring her all along."

There were gasps and whispers.

Draco pushed Emma back into the Great Hall, a look beyond terror on his face as he used his wand to slam shut the giant oak doors and lock them, even though that was more than likely useless. Emma felt her stomach drop, seeing how scared Draco was at this point. 

"We can Apparate now," said Draco, his voice shaky no matter how hard he clearly tried to hide his fear, sticking out his arm. "Take my arm, Emma. Quickly, now."

The image of what was outside those doors at this very moment hit Emma like a bus, and her lip began to wobble. 

"He's... he's dead," she said in a voice that sounded so airy. Draco's chest heaved for a moment while Emma's tightened. He approached her, his arm still ready for her to take, but even though Harry was gone, Emma didn't want to just leave him here. "I'm not going anywhere, I need to be here when... when I can..."

"When what? You get yourself killed?" Draco snapped at her. He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her roughly. "Wake up, Emma! You will die with him if you stay here -- He knows who you are now because you were too stupid to listen to me!"

The doors suddenly burst open and a crowd of people and spells shooting everywhere rammed inside -- Draco quickly grabbed Emma by the arm and pulled them both backwards away from the crowd pouring in like a sea. 

"Emma, let's go!" Draco yelled at her over the chaos, holding out his arm once more. Emma moved to take it until--

"HARRY!" Hagrid yelled, looking panicked. "HARRY -- WHERE'S HARRY?"

"He's alive," Emma said. 

"No he's not, Hagrid just dropped him somewhere, now let's go!"

A spell was coming at Emma and Draco and before either of them could think to use a Shield Charm, someone had already done so. Confused, they looked at each other and then around them, but couldn't come to any conclusion. Emma thought she might've known what had happened, but she didn't want to get her own hopes up. Maybe Draco was right, maybe Hagrid had accidentally dropped Harry's body somewhere and lost him. 

Two panicked voices, sounding far away, were calling out for Draco, but he made no indication that he was interested in fixing his parents' worry. He was only interested in Emma taking his arm so that they could Apparate out of there, probably because he was sure his parents would be okay...

"We can't just leave them!" cried Emma. Looking around, she could see everyone she knew battling against someone, people she had grown to care about, even those she had never even spoken to before. 

Emma's wand arm acted on it's own and stopped at the centre of her body, producing a Shield Charm. A follower of Voldemort's recognised her in a second and sent spell after spell, cackling, his rotted gunky teeth showing as he did so. Draco joined her at the hip and fired spells at the Death Eater, taking him off guard, as though he had not expected Draco Malfoy of all people to suddenly duel him, as though he could not believe what Voldemort had said was true; that Draco had been hiding Emma's identity. 

"You little traitor!" the man snarled, aiming his wand at Draco, screaming the killing curse but not entirely finishing it. 

"Expelliarmus!" Emma cried, watching the wand fly out of the Death Eater's hand and across the room. She then left him to Draco, who was fuming.

"Alarte ascendare!" Draco shouted, sending the Death Eater through the air until he crashed at the back of the hall into the wall and fell the ground, from which he did not stand and would not stand anytime soon. 

"Harry! HE'S ALIVE!" Ginny Weasley shouted, along with numerous others. 

There were multiple gasps and everyone backed away from Voldemort, who looked horror-stricken at the fact that Harry was standing there, his invisibility cloak at his feet, staring at Voldemort with a hard determined look on his face, yet quite smug that he had cheated death once more. 

"I don't want anyone else to try to help," Harry said loudly, seeing Emma move quickly towards him but causing her to stop in her tracks. "It's got to be like this. It's got to be me."

"Potter doesn't mean that," Voldemort hissed. "That isn't how it works, is it? Who are you going to use as a shield today, Potter?"

"Nobody. There are no more Horcruxes. It's just you and me. Neither can live while the other survives, and one of us is about to leave for good," Harry said in a simple voice. 

Emma felt her heart racing with anticipation, her hand reaching up to her mouth. 

"One of us?" Voldemort snarled, his body taut, red eyes wide. "You think it will be you, do you, the boy who has survived by accident, and because Dumbledore was pulling the strings?"

"Accident, was it, when my mother died to save me?" Harry said, he and Voldemort moving sideways in a circle yet at a good distance away from each other. "Accident, when I decided to fight in that graveyard? No, don't look at her look at me," he suddenly snapped at Voldemort, who Emma had just noticed was staring her way with a vicious look in his eyes, causing Emma to swallow harshly. Harry went on. "Accident, that I didn't defend myself tonight, and still survived, and returned to fight again?"

"Accidents and chance and the fact that you crouched and snivelled behind the skirts of greater men and women, and permitted me to kill them for you!"

"You won't be killing anyone else tonight," said Harry. "You won't be able to kill any of them, ever again. Don't you get it? I've done what my mother did. They're protected from you. Haven't you noticed how none of the spells you put on them are binding? You can't torture them. You can't touch them. You don't learn from your mistakes, Riddle, do you?
"I know things you don't know, Tom Riddle. Important things. Want to hear some, before you make another big mistake?"

"Is it love again?" Voldemort jeered. "Dumbledore's favourite solution, love, which he claimed conquered death though love did not stop him from falling from the Tower and breaking like an old waxwork? Love, which did not prevent me stamping out your Mudblood mother like a cockroach, Potter -- and nobody seems to love you enough to run forwards this time, and take my curse. Except, perhaps, your sister, whom you've been keeping a secret? Would she take my curse for you? Shall we find out, Potter?
"It seems the Lestrange girl was right all along, wasn't she, Draco? Your filthy cousin who could not live with herself, who could not commit to my cause, who could not go on with her dark mark and having given up that stupid girl."

Draco hardly reacted, his face nothing but stone and his eyes hard but watery. His parents spotted him from a distance, but Draco shook his head at them, knowing that if Voldemort had spotted them, he'd kill them for the fact that Draco had kept knowing who Emma was, a secret. 

"And, in turn, would Draco take my curse for her? Tell me, Potter, what is her name? Emma, isn't it? Not all records were sealed and if your silly adoptive parents had given half a thought with their moronic minds and changed your first name--"

"Leave her out of this, like I said, it's just you and me," Harry spat, still circling with Voldemort. 

"After I have killed you, Potter, and your sister, I can attend to Draco Malfoy--"

Emma's hand was suddenly grabbed, hard, a sweaty hand covering hers and her stomach was twisting and turning and the rest of her was twisting and turning the opposite way. Emma knew exactly what was happening and she opened her mouth to scream in fury but nothing would come out, nothing until her feet landed on dead sticks and leaves.