The living room was completely deserted, bar Draco, when I stumbled into it. Through the fireplace no less. I was rather disorientated and mentally comparing myself to a modern day 'Alice through the looking glass' ('Naomi through the fireplace') when Draco grabbed my arm and stopped me falling over a coffee table.

There was a distant tremor of hysteria which I took to be coming from the kitchen. I just looked into Draco's pale face and shrugged before we started towards the commotion. I'm pretty sure Remus came out of the fireplace just as we were exiting the living room but I can't be sure, I was concentrating on Molly Weasley's screams.

I'm not sure when I broke into a jog but suddenly I was there, in the kitchen, in the terror. One of the twins, I'm not sure which, was laying on his back on the dining table, his stomach was a mess of blood and sticking out of it like an exclamation point was a poker. I recognised that poker. It had spent most of its days, unused, in a little rack beside my living rooms faux-fire. I felt sick.

Molly Weasley, a stout, professional looking woman I didn't recognise and Hermione were standing around the twin. Molly looked petrified and Remus went to her immediately, trying to sooth her, but she didn't seem to hear his consoling words, she had grabbed her sons hand and was repeating "George! Oh George!" like a mantra, maybe it was a witchlike chant?

Hermione was talking quickly to the new woman and had the air of someone taking mental notes. I was vaguely aware of gripping Draco's hand when Hermione spun on her heel and strode toward us, well toward the door, but we were in her way.

"What happened?" I gasped my eyes flicking from her to George's gory wound and back again. The new woman had set about smearing creams around the pokers entrance wound and along George's forehead. He was unconscious. Thank goodness for small blessings I suppose, that would have hurt like a bitch.

"Something went wrong," Hermione's voice was just a little quivery. She was almost green she was so scared but she was holding it together. It made me think more of her as a human being in general and the fact that I was pretty sure I was going to faint again made me feel like a prat.

"Well that's obvious," Draco sneered at her haughtily, "I doubt it was the twins intention to get impaled."

Hermione looked vaguely indignant and a little less sick, "Actually Malfoy that twin needs some medication if he is to survive so I really don't have time to stand here and be sneered at. Now if you don't mind," She pushed past him which caused us both to stumble and I felt my face twisting in anger then she turned back, "Oh and Naomi you probably want to go upstairs. Your murderous boyfriend is there!" Then she stalked off. She said it all so meanly, like she blamed me for George's injury. I knew I hated her.

Draco stopped holding my hand immediately. "Your boyfriend?" His face was very blank but I could tell he was annoyed. He so wanted me. He was annoyed that I had a boyfriend! Even the goriest clouds have silver linings. But then again there was one very worrying problem,

"… I don't have a boyfriend," So who was upstairs? Was it shallow and wrong of me to be quite excited at the thought of my long-forgotten boyfriend being upstairs while George was still bleeding all over the table? Damned if I know.

"So who's upstairs?"

"The person who stabbed George I'm guessing." Molly Weasley let out a gasping wail and Remus started physically dragging her towards the door. "Lets go." I said quickly feeling quite guilty because it was my supposed boyfriend who had put her son at deaths door. Even though I haven't got a boyfriend. The plot thickens! Hmm I think it was Colonel Mustard in the living room with the poker. I really am far too heartless to be allowed to exist. But honestly I was feeling really bad as I followed Draco upstairs to discover the Colonel's true identity. I was wracking my mind trying to figure out who I knew that would be capable of shoving a blunt poker through the meat of someone's stomach and the name hit me just before we entered the room of answers.

"William?" I gasped shoving Draco out of the way and bursting into Hermione's bedroom where William was indeed laying very still on the bed. William is very far from my boyfriend, he's my cousin. Born four days before me William has always beaten me in my bid to become the black sheep of the family. Even with my numerous detentions, drinking habits and cussing his antics still keep me a nice grey sheep. The last time I'd seen him he'd been getting shipped off to Utah to trek through the desert and hopefully come back renouncing violence and accepting Jesus. By the looks of his trademark leather jacket and bloodied hands I was guessing the trekking hadn't done much but give his legs even more kicking power. He didn't move an inch upon my entry and my gut turned cold, I turned threateningly to the rooms only occupant, Harry, "You killed him!"

"I stunned him," Harry corrected quickly, "Tell her what stun means Mal- Draco," He was backing up as I advanced on him. I think he was torn between protecting himself and not hitting girls. But I was very angry. William was not only my favourite cousin but I would consider him a best friend. I guess I don't take well to those who kill my best friends.

"He's not dead," Draco said moodily in a tone that suggested he kind of wished William had been blasted.

"Unstun him then!"

"Tell him not to do anything stupid!"

"UNSTUN HIM BEFORE I DO SOMETHING STUPID!"

"Look Naomi, I just saw him run through someone I consider family with a poker. I will not unstun him until I can be sure he is not going to cause more damage to people I love!"

I was fuming, I stalked towards the bed, "William. This is Naomi, can you hear me- can he hear me?" Harry nodded, "This eegit is going to take whatever magic crap he's put on you off now OK? And you have to not attack him William. Because he'll stun you again and I'm not sure anything I will say will convince him to unstun you a second time. You stabbed his friend," Then I turned to Harry, "Unstun him asshole," And fair play to Harry he did it.

The minute he could move again William made to lunge at Harry but I bounced on him doing my best to pin him, "WISE UP WILLIAM!"

My cousins dark eyes were wild with fear as he allowed me to push him back onto the bed, "I couldn't move. I couldn't move!" His eyes reminded me of those of a horse just before it rears and bucks, "I was in your house! He brought me here with magic! Magic!"

"Crazy world ain't it?" Then I hugged him, "Thank God you're here," Really, words don't describe how happy I was to see someone from my old life. The life where I was normal and not threatened by death by an evil dark lord etc. Just seeing William really inspired a hope in me, a hope that things could go back to relative normality. So I hugged him tight. "Why aren't you at boot camp?" I asked finally letting him go and sitting cross legged beside him.

"They let me leave when you were kidnapped."

"Oh yeah that."

"So you weren't kidnapped?" William was looking thoroughly confused as he glanced at Draco and Harry. With them both being about our age it must have seemed more like a school trip than a kidnapping.

"No I was, that guy kidnapped me," I pointed at Draco who frowned, "But it's OK, I'm pretty much over it now. You have no idea what's been going on William, it's all so crazy! I'm talking silence of the lambs crazy." Then I hugged him again that's when Draco cleared his throat.

"Oh right, William that's Draco, and that's Harry." I pointed at them, "Draco, Harry, this is my cousin William." It felt very surreal saying that. Almost as if the two worlds shouldn't be mixing but they were.

"You kidnapped my cousin?" William was on his feet and staring at Draco with very dark, very scary eyes. His fists were curled loosely at his sides and I could practically see his body vibrating with the need to hit someone. William uses violence to gain control of his physical situation, the problem is violence doesn't help fix whatever emotional or mental situation he really needs to take control of. I've always been the only person who William ever became close to. It's not that he never had friends but they were really a bad crowd. The kind of guys who only hung out together because they had a shared love of breaking and entering. They mostly liked William because he was crazier than all of them. Girls like William because he's good looking but it's only the wrong type of girl who would ever be prepared to make a go of it with him. Normal, sane girls steer clear. I think I understand and accept him because I was there in the paddling pool when we were toddlers, I was there when we tried tequila for the first time, I shared his first cigarette with him. I was there through all his bullshit. William is like me in the way that he vents his anger out through violence but instead of the door punching I do he hits teachers in the face with desks. I so didn't want Draco hit in the face with something heavy. I would hurt too.

"It's OK!" I jumped up smiling as brightly as possible, "There is a really great story to go along with all this palaver! Also William through a few technical hitches if you kill Draco I'll go down too. It's that magic crap- so please don't,"

"He couldn't if he tried," Draco definitely sounded angry, "So he's able to stab someone with a poker? You think I can't defend myself?" Oh dear.

"Don't be stupid," I glared at him but nevertheless took William's arm and urged him gently to sit back down, "This is no time to fight. George is bleeding downstairs,"

"Thanks to who?"

"Me," William said and there was something in his voice that made Draco's eyes grow even colder than usual.

"You two don't look like cousins," Harry said suddenly and everyone turned to stare at him in a sort of 'what has that got to do with anything' way. Harry shrugged.

"My mother is Indian," William said gruffly.

"Mine isn't," I threw in. That's when it hit me our different races might have thrown everybody of the family scent. Then something struck me, "What happened to my mum? My dad? Where are they? Lupin said something about Death Eaters?" The fear was back. Damn this unpredictable world.

Harry suddenly looked très uncomfortable. My heart sank and bile began to inch its way up my throat. There really is no fear like the fear that your parents are dead. I mean in the past few days I have come to know fear rather intimately, in fact there seems to be a vague sense of fear in my gut permanently but the possibility that both my parents were laying dead in my living room had me immediately entering shaking, weepy territory. William was staring at his bloodied hands somewhat dejectedly and I turned to him like a heroine in a horror movie who knows that the bad guys right beside her and she just has to look.

"I tried to stop them," William said softly and with feeling. Draco was the first one of us to cry. Tears were creeping slowly down his pale cheeks, glinting in the dim light like jewels.

"Are they…" I couldn't say it. I just couldn't say it. I pictured my mum huffing over my need to wear jeans to my first day of work experience just a few days before and me telling her to 'get out of my face'. I could see my dad carefully watching the road as he drove and telling me in his stern voice that I shouldn't talk to my mother that way.

"They killed your father," Harry's voice was very soft and every syllable willed to be comforting but there was nothing that could make those words comforting.

"How-,"

"They used a killing curse, there was nothing anyone could have done," Harry's voice held a bitter edge amongst all that comfort and even as tears blurred my vision I noticed Draco shooting him a curious glance. "They took your mother, he was defending her."

"T-took?"

"One of them grabbed her and the other surviving death eaters apparated before we could do anything," He was staring at the floor and sounding horribly guilty. I was vaguely aware that I was nodding.

"So my mother is alive?" I asked no one in particular. My words were bubbled and choked with tears, Draco had his face in his hands and was physically shaking with the effort to control my emotions that were flooding through him.

William took my hand and squeezed it in his two big ones. I turned to him and everything seemed to be happening very slowly, very hazily, nothing was quite real, "We'll get her back, Naomi," William told me in his gruffest voice.

I was still nodding and then I turned, very slowly, to Draco. As if he sensed my gaze he glanced up out of his hands and something in his eyes told me that he understood. He understood that I needed to get my mother back and he understood that I would be willing to kill us both to do it. Looking into his eyes I also had a realisation; his life was not something Draco was willing to give. I think we're going to have a problem here.