Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

Author's Note: This chapter and the chapter before it are really like one chapter that I separated to make more sense to the reader. Did that make sense?

"Slytherin… My own mother had been a Slytherin…"

That was Evee's last waking thought before she drifted off into an uneasy sleep…

"Wake up! Evee, please wake up!"

Evee was shaken to her senses and opened her eyes to see her mother's frantic face. "Mum? What's going on?" Evee's voice was slurred from sleep.

Catherine hoisted Evee out of bed by her shoulders and shook her again. "Listen to me!" Evee saw there was tears rolling silently down her mother's face.

"Mum?"

"Hurry! Get in the crawlspace!" She pushed Evee forward towards the door that led out of Evee's bedroom and into the hall.

Evee had now caught wind of her mother's panic and sense of urgency. She turned and grabbed Catherine's shoulders, shaking her instead. "Mum! What's wrong?"

The house became deathly quiet. The wind outside, that until that moment had been howling fiercely, ceased blowing. No cars could be heard on the usually busy street outside their house.

Catherine gave a small gasp. "He's here," she whispered.

"Who?" Evee asked frantically.

Her mother didn't answer. She just bent down and began lifting the floorboards up in the hallway, revealing a tiny, dirt-lined hole, barely large enough for two people to squeeze inside. Catherine pushed Evee towards the hole.

"Who's here?" Evee screamed at her, hoping to get an answer this time.

"Please… Go…" her mum pleaded, her eyes full of worry and tears.

Evee looked at her mother and then obeyed, jumping down into the hole beneath the floor. Catherine hastily replaced the floorboards until the only light Evee had to see by was through a crack.

There was a crash and subsequent boom like something large had torn through one of the brick walls of their small house. Evee heard her mother take a step backwards over Evee's hiding place, as if to protect her from whomever was coming.

The stench of rotting flesh wafted its way to Evee and she covered her nose in disgust.

"Evee…" a man whispered feebly.

"She's not here!" Catherine shouted. She sounded stronger, somehow, to Evee. Like she'd stopped crying. Evee pressed her eyes to the crack, but all she could see was the underside of one of her mum's fuzzy slippers and the hem of a black piece of fabric.

"Silly girl. You're willing to die for her?"

Catherine croaked, "Leave her alone!"

There was a rasping laugh that sounded like wind blowing over dried leaves. "Avada Kedavra!" said the person coldly.

Evee saw and felt her mother's body fall to the floor. Evee bit her hand to stop herself from crying out and tears sprung to her eyes.

Heavy footfalls moved above her and shoes blocked out the sliver of light through which Evee was looking. She scooted back further under the floor in an effort to be hidden better. It seemed to get even quieter, if possible. Evee held her breath and waited for the feet to move away.

With an ear-splitting CRACK, the floorboards were splintered and thrown into the air where they hit some glasses in the kitchen, causing them to shatter. A gray, dead-looking hand with long, dirt encrusted fingernails reached down into the hole. Evee tried to move back farther, but there was nowhere left for her to go.

The hand was reaching. Grasping for her. It took all of Evee's strength not to make a sound. She turned away and squeezed her eyes shut. The hand grabbed at her head, tangling its grimy fingers in her hair, and pulled hard.

Evee let out a yelp and was dragged up and out from under the floor. She was held a foot off the ground, still by her hair, with her back to her assailant. She looked down to find her mother staring back up at her, glassy-eyed with a trickle of blood seeping from the corner of one of her eyes like a tear. Evee began to writhe in the man's grasp. "No!" she shrieked.

She was swung back and hurled at the wall in front of her. Her head hit the hard bricks and all the air was forced from her lungs. Evee tried her best to stand, but she was dizzy and her vision was blurry.

"What a waste," the man said, nudging Catherine's leg with the toe of his boot.

Once again, Evee tried to stand, but found that she couldn't and collapsed back on the floor at the man's feet.

He bent down so that his foul breath hung right in Evee's face like a cloud. "Your turn." He pulled his hand back. "AVADA KEDAVRA!" he roared as he arced his arm back towards her face. Evee saw something glinting in his hand. She assumed it was a knife.

The only thing she could think of doing to protect herself was to throw her hands up in front of her face to lighten the blow. Evee felt a searing pain across the tips of all four fingers of her right hand.

The house was filled with a scream so violent and terrible, Evee didn't even have the words to describe it. She leaned her head against the wall and shut her eyes, praying it would just stop.

Next thing she knew, the man was gone and a fireman was carrying Evee away from her burning house.