Chapter Text
“Read this,” Ray will say shortly when they tell him everything later, tossing them a book with a ribbon-marked page that they both crowd over, and it will begin thus –
Dementors: foulest of creatures, eater of bright souls, against which the Patronus is the only defence…
– and Emma will think, oh.
“Are you cold?” Norman asks as they slow to a stop in front of the gate.
“Not really,” she answers without thinking, then frowns in realisation – of course, it’s late at night and there is an icy bite to the breeze. “Are you cold, Norman? I completely forgot, we should’ve grabbed your cardigan before we left the house.”
He waves it off with a faint smile. “Don’t worry about it, there wasn’t time. We shouldn’t stay long, anyway, if we don’t want Mama to notice.”
Emma nods in agreement as they move forward again. The temperature feels like it’s dropping steadily with every step, even for her, but Norman’s right: they’re already here, and the sooner they get this over with, the better.
That’s when she sees it: Conny’s lifeless body, laid unmoving in the back of the truck.
Except that’s not even correct because she’s still breathing. Emma can see the rise and fall of her chest, each movement sluggish yet unmistakeable.
But somehow Emma knows, even as Norman stumbles to a horrified stop beside her, even as she tries to reach out despite herself – she knows that Conny isn’t there. Not in the way they’d known her, not the Conny who’d only been able to cast Wingardium Leviosa one year later than everyone else but still laughed bright like a bell when she managed it, the same way she’d laughed just hours ago when Don had helped her levitate a bedsheet to chase unrelentingly after Thoma and Lanni and…
Then that memory too flees her mind when the ragged hem of some dark void glides into view with unnatural smoothness as they hide beneath the truck, shivering harder than even the night’s chill can explain.
As inexplicable as the voice that answers those creatures’ hissed susurrations a moment later.
“Understood,” Mama says, and the air freezes solid in Emma’s throat.
(Beside her Norman’s breaths are turning into the harsh gasps she remembers from the times when he’d gotten badly ill, and worry lurches over her like a dead weight but Emma can’t tear her gaze away from the shape of silvery light flitting around Mama’s shoulders.
Some distant part of her mind recognises it as a songbird like the one she’d seen in a book – Ray would know which, the absent thought follows, except suddenly Emma finds she can’t recall his face. Can’t remember a time when she wasn’t here, arctic cold creeping up her legs even as Norman pulls her up and they stumble into a run.
The ground feels frozen, beneath their feet.)
“That…” Emma trips and falls, but the pain of impact is numb against the whirlwind of Mama? and what were those creatures and – “That wasn’t Conny, right?”
The memory of those blankly-staring eyes sweeps over her again, and almost instinctively she scrabbles for the wand that’s always in her pocket, to do something, do anything, even if her hands are trembling too hard to cast even the most basic spell.
But of course they’d left their wands in the house, because Ray had pointed out half-seriously that Mama always found them too easily whenever they used a spell, and there hadn’t been any point to risking it.
Her hand closes over empty air, and Emma wants to scream from the sheer helplessness of it.
Norman whispers a word from somewhere above her; lumos, her mind registers belatedly, because that’s one spell he’s always been unusually good with, enough to even cast it wandlessly –
But nothing happens.
The night stays just as dark around them, and Emma looks up to see Norman clenching his jaw against the tremble of his fingers.
“Lumos,” he hisses out again, between gritted teeth, and Emma’s torn between waiting and telling him to stop when the familiar blue-white glow finally flickers into life above his palm, a faint but welcome heat that washes over her as he crouches down.
But then:
“Yes, that was Conny,” he says, and even that warmth seems to vanish all over again.
Emma screams.
(Ray’s waiting in the hallway when they return to the house. He holds out both of their wands, handle-first, a reddish flare already lit steadily on his own. “So?”
“Too late,” Norman answers shortly beside her, his hands steady once again as the wand vanishes back up his sleeve.
They're about to keep walking when Ray calls out to them.
“I was saving this for tomorrow, but. Here." The low light catches on the arc of something through the air, and Emma catches it on reflex: chocolate, she realises after a moment, rectangular edges sharp under the crinkle of foil.
"Split it in two, you both look like crap," Ray says before she can ask, face thrown yet again into shadow as he lowers his wand and turns away. "Good night.")