She wasn't sure how to do this. What if he asked questions? What if he interrogated her and found out about what else had happened? Even after having a full night of sleep away from Wiggentree Manor her skin felt hypersensitive and her nerve endings felt exposed. She knew where she went wrong, where they both had gone wrong. She should have insisted that he keep his gloves on instead of giving into his whims, no matter how much she had sympathized with him. If he had, things never would have progressed as they had done the other night.
The family gift of hindsight. All the should haves and could haves. How does that explain the two times in the green house the following morning or the quick shag in the hideaway above the ballroom before you left? She shivered again at the memory of it, of losing herself entirely to a sea of sensations. She prayed that the feelings would have faded by the time she saw Alexander again after graduation. One thing was for certain; she'd never let herself be along with him again. What had he said? That there were so many Wiggentrees because of an apparent inability to keep their trousers fastened?
"Or to keep our knickers on, apparently." She mumbled the words to herself as she continued to pace within the stone archway that lead to a corridor where Professor Snape's office could be found. The soft silk of her dress robes, Gryffindor Red, rustled with her movements, barely heard over to gentle crackle of torchlight. She wanted to talk to him before the ball, both to let him know what she had learned and to ask for his help with her current situation. She just wasn't sure how to broach the subject.
"Hermione?" She whirled around to find Draco standing in one of the crossways of the dungeons, handsome in dress robes a deep black with silver trim. He had been heading towards the stairs leading up to the main school, no doubt to do a last minute check of the preparations for the ball. Now he turned and came towards her instead. "What are you going down here? We've only got another hour before the Great Hall opens." He stopped about a foot from her, the scent of his cologne wafting towards her on the dungeon drafts, warm and spicy.
"I… I was coming to speak to Professor Snape. There were some questions I wanted to ask him regarding our essay."
Draco smiled and gave a deep chuckle. "Of course. Don't you ever think of anything other than your grades?"
"I have to keep a step before the Head Boy." She tried not to think of how rich and decadent his laughter sounded. He had lost some of the sneering, nasal quality of his voice as it had deepened into a rich baritone. It seemed to dance up and down her already over sensitized nerves.
"I'll have to work harder to beat you, then." He smiled down at her, mesmerizing her with those blue-gray eyes. They reminded her of the time she was on the beach in France, looking out over the sea during a storm. His eyes were exactly that color. She was so entranced by them that she didn't know he had reached for her until his warm fingers wrapped around her own. "You never did tell me if you would be my date for the ball. There's still an hour to say yes."
"Oh… I… I told Neville I'd go with him. He was too bashful to ask anyone else." One platinum brow arched. "Don't look at me like that. He's a Gryffindor, and he's very sweet. He just needs his confidence bolstered."
"And as Head Girl and a Gryffindor, it's your place to do just that. I can accept that. I don't like it, but I can accept it. Just don't let him take a swing at me when I ask him for a dance."
"You want to dance with Neville?" It was a weak joke, an attempt to cut the tension that was building up inside of her. Draco shot her a smirk.
"You know what I mean." His fingers trailed up her hand and over her wrist, and it felt as though little bolts of electricity were dancing on her skin. She had to get away from him before she did something embarrassing.
"I need to get on with it." She gave what she knew to be a timid smile and tried to step away, only to be blocked by an unseen barrier. It felt squishy, like clear Jell-O, and pushed her back gently. She frowned, confused, and reached out to touch it. The barrier was there, and a hand out behind her revealed that it had sealed the two of them into a space barely two feet wide.
Draco looked up at the ceiling and smiled. He tapped her shoulder, and then pointed upwards. She tilted her head and saw a bunch of mistletoe above them, the white berries creamy in the torchlight. "We've been caught."
Dumbledore had introduced the annoying little bundles during the Christmas season the previous year. They popped and traveled around the school and random spurts. As long as a person was alone, with someone of the same gender or with someone too closely related to them, it was safe. If, however, two people of opposite genders and with no familial affiliation walked under the bundles, they were trapped until they kissed one another. Hermione had only been caught once, during the previous year, and had to kiss a first year in order to get out. She had laughed when Ron had been forced to give a kiss to Millicent Bulstrode earlier in the month.
She was still staring at the insidious plant when she felt fingers move onto the nape of her neck. With a gasp, she brought her eyes downward just in time to see Draco lean forward, pressing his lips to her own before she could murmur a protest. Her lips, already as hypersensitive as the rest of her, felt as though they had been set aflame, causing her to gasp. Draco took advantage of the situation and slipped his tongue between her now open lips, delving deeply for a better taste. Ignoring the screeching voice in the back of her mind, Hermione pressed closer to him, straining on tiptoes to better deal with his greater height. He took this as the invitation it unconsciously was and shifted his weight so that she found herself pressed up against the cool stone of the dungeon walls.
Her heart was hammering inside her chest. After more than twelve hours of being trapped in a sensory overload brought on by the torrent of sensations from two people, having onto the input of her own body being touched by another was even more exciting. Without his feelings to cloud and confuse, she could let herself drown in her own experiences. Draco had been eating chocolates not too long before, apparently flavored with champagne. The sweetness of them was still present on his lips and tongue. This close up she could detect not only his cologne, but the subtle scent of soap underneath it. It was a clean, spicy fragrance, mixed with his own, unique scent. The warmth of his hands caressed her skin through the fine chiffon of her dress robes where he was stroking her arms, his fingers brushing against the swell of her breasts. She whimpered softly in the back of her throat as he pulled his lips from her mouth and trailed kisses across her jaw line. When he captured her tiny earlobe in his lips and teased it with an affectionate nip of his teeth, she thought her knees would buckle underneath her.
"What is the meaning of this?" Suddenly Draco was gone, ripped away from her and slammed into the opposite wall. She blinked, trying to clear her head. When she was able to focus, she saw Professor Snape standing there in his dress robes of deepest black, his face white with fury. He was glaring at them each in turn.
"Professor Snape, we were trapped by one of the Headmaster's mistletoe charms. We were just trying to get rid of it."
"A simple kiss is all that is needed, Mr. Malfoy, not full intercourse." Snape's voice was ice cold and sharp. Hermione flinched under the tone of it. Quick as a striking viper, his hand shot out and gripped her by the elbow hard enough to make her gasp in pain. Draco started, his eyes shocked. "Go to the Great Hall, Mr. Malfoy. Miss Granger will join you there shortly." He yanked Hermione towards him and then ushered her down the hall to his office door. It swung open as they approached and slammed shut behind them once they had entered.
"Have you lost your mind?!" With perhaps more force than he had intended to use, he threw her towards his desk. She was forced to grab it to prevent herself from falling forward. "First you ignore my warnings at your Coming Out and let him get you alone and now I find you clinging to him like some wanton strumpet from a Knockturn Alley brothel! Do you want to find yourself pregnant at seventeen? Is it your goal to throw away all your promise and potential?"
His words were like physical blows. She didn't dare look at him. She could hear his rage in his voice. He had never been this angry before, not even that time during her third year when the Order of Merlin had been snatched away from him through her own actions. She refused to look at him, concentrating instead on trying to keep herself from shaking.
"Answer me!"
"No, Professor, I have not lost my mind. I… I appear to have lost my morals."
"That is obvious. Care to explain where you lost them?"
A sigh escaped her as she finally allowed herself to sit down. She shivered as the feather light material of her robes brushed against supersensitive skin. Was her body ever going to cool off? "There was… and incident at the Manor." Her words were slow and weighty, enough so that he stopped fuming so much and sat down behind his desk. He gave her enough time to collect herself, and then she began to speak again.
She told him everything, not once looking up to meet his eyes. Perhaps she didn't want him to see the fat, hot tears that were leaking from her eyes, see the shame that she felt at her own behavior. She told him about Alexander, about how she had let him come into her room that night. She told him about how what was meant to be an innocent touch somehow turned into something far more. She told him about the snatches of memory they both seen, including the one about her grandmother. She hoped that he would stop her at that point, but he let her carry on. She confessed to the rest of it, the incident in the green house the following morning and the meeting in the hideaway, where there hadn't even been a memory to trigger it, just overwrought nerve endings responding to the slightest touch. The same way she had thrown out every scrap of common sense she possessed just moments ago with Draco Malfoy.
When there was nothing left to admit, she fell silent again. Her breathing was ragged, but deep. The air was cool on her cheeks where her tears had let them wetted, and she was dimly aware that she was gripping the arms of her hair with enough force that her fingertips were aching from the pressure against her nails.
"How many times in total?"
"Sir?"
"You and your cousin, how many times were you together?"
What difference did that make? "Four times, sir."
"Impressive. I'm surprised you're able to walk."
Her head snapped up, her jaw falling open. Was that all he could say? Ignoring her look of outrage, he stood up from his chair and walked over to a locked cupboard on the other side of the room. "I will admit that, even from all of the reading I have been doing on your family since the start of the year, I haven't once come across this particular phenomenon. Not surprising really, since the families that suffer it do not like to let it be known for precisely this reason." He removed two phials from the cupboard, one containing a light blue potion, the other containing something milky white. "What you have described is a particular price that people with telepathy or empathy often face. Since such gifts run in families, what happened between you and your cousin is not unheard of. When such gifts are in the hands of teenagers, things can get out of hand. The compounded sensations coupled with overactive hormones have led to sexual encounters between cousins and even siblings. Rarely do they happen between parents and children or uncles and nieces, as by the time the witch or wizard reaches full adulthood they have learned better control over their bodies." He uncorked the blue potion and handed it to her. "First, we make sure that there are no new additions to the Wiggentree line in nine months. Drink all of it."
She took the phial and drained it of its contents. It had a slightly sweet taste to it, like sugar in water, only thicker. It slid down her throat and into her gullet where the magical elixir began a warming journey through her body, settling in the area of her lower abdomen. As she waited for the warm, wriggling feeling to subside, he continued on in an almost scholarly manner. "I will have to discuss this matter with your uncle, of course. Do not worry; I will not let them blame you. In truth, it is the Wiggentrees themselves who are to blame. They should have warned you that this was a possibility. Do not let yourself believe that Alexander did not realize that this may happen. In fact, considering that he came to your room after the house was asleep, and locked the door behind him, it is obvious that he was hoping for something like this. Perhaps he never intended things to progress as far as they did, but he, like any other sex crazed young man in the same position, would have found you too tempting a target."
"So you're saying I'm an idiot." She certainly felt like one now that he had pointed out the obvious.
"No, I am saying that you were ignorant, which is not the same thing at all. The rest of your esteemed family, however, would have known the possibilities and should have given you warning. At the very least they should have kept a closer eye on the both of you."
She handed the now empty phial to her professor who was now uncorking the other potion. "What is that one for?"
"I am not the Head of Slytherin House for nothing, Miss Granger. Although love potions are forbidden at Hogwarts, potions are still brewed illicitly. More than once I have found a need to counteract some young man's desperate attempt to attract a reluctant girl's desires, or vice versa. This will squash your currently overactive libido." She drank the offered potion, which flooded through her like ice. "For the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, Don Juan could ply you with all his charms and you won't get so much as a shiver. After that, you will gradually return to the state of a normal teenager, always distracted by the thought of sex and drooling over the Quidditch captains."
Hermione shot him a dirty look, which he ignored. "And what of Malfoy? He's bound to notice the sudden change."
"That, Miss Granger, is something you'll have to figure out on your own. Personally, were I in your shoes, I would avoid Mr. Malfoy as much as possible. Now, clean yourself up and head back upstairs." He offered her a handkerchief, which she used to wipe her face dry. As she did so, he rummaged around in his desk until he found a small but unbroken mirror, which he handed to her so she could see to cast a few simple cosmetic charms, banishing the puffy, red eyes and correcting her light makeup.
"Professor, what about what I saw regarding Helena? She had another lover during… perhaps this Bartholomew is my grandfather instead of Voldemort."
Snape took the mirror back and put it back into his desk, his dark eyes boring into her. "It is a possibility, Miss Granger, although I would caution you against getting your hopes up. All dates and clues would say otherwise. Don't let this new bit of knowledge lull you into a false sense of security." She must have looked downtrodden at the idea, because he went on. "For what it matters, I do hope that it is the case. I would save you the trouble of having Voldemort for a grandparent if I could. Now run along, Miss Granger. The ball cannot truly begin until you arrive to dance with Mr. Malfoy. If you hurry, you might still be able to have dessert before the music starts."
~***~
"I was thinking about a light blue."
"She likes red."
"She's been surrounded by red for seven years. It's time for a change."
"What if she doesn't like light blue?"
"Everyone likes light blue."
"I don't."
"Well, you're an idiot."
"That's a fine thing to say about your husband."
"I only say it because it's true."
"The love is overwhelming." John rolled his eyes as his grown, intelligent wife giggled like a schoolgirl. They were relaxing together on an old sofa, sharing a bottle of wine, their clothing grubby and stained from working all day clearing out the space above their garage. When they had signed the papers on their home this had been an at-home office setup, but as they worked in their surgery in town, they had used it for storage. Now they had decided to clean it up so that Hermione could use it as an apartment while going to college or until she had her feet under her enough to get a place of her own. With a separate drive made running from the back side of the garage, it would allow her privacy without having to move too far away from home.
"We should start looking for furniture. She'll need a new bed and dresser."
"What's wrong with the ones she has?"
"They're awfully young."
"Well, she's young."
"John, they're for a child."
"She's our child." He was aware that he was now sounding petulant. It didn't help matters that his wife started to giggle again. Emma never could hold her liquor well. He gave her a half-hearted frown before he stood up, which caused her to fall over to the side once she no longer had his shoulder to lean against. "Perhaps red is too bold. I think we should paint the walls white, with little pink rosettes and a mural of a fairy tale castle on that wall. I saw a carousel horse that would fit into that corner perfectly and we can put bars on the windows so no one can sneak in at night." Emma started to laugh even harder, and knowing that he was sounding like a father steeped in denial, he plowed on. "And we will get her a new bed, a small one that is only big enough for one person. And a new wardrobe to match, complete with chastity belts."
"John, that's just silly." She looked up at him, eyes shining with mirth. She was about to say something else when her eyes shifted to the door behind him. The color drained from her cheeks, her mouth falling open slightly. It was an expression of complete fear. It caused the hairs on the back of his neck to prick up and he turned quickly to see what was disturbing her.
Three men had entered the room while he had been on his tirade, three tall men in robes with steel masks that covered their faces. John turned around fully, his heart thundering inside his chest and forcing himself not to scream. He was aware of Emma getting up from the sofa and moving towards him. He felt her warmth as she reached him, stopping barely an inch from his back. He swallowed and hoped he could keep his voice steady when he finally spoke. "Why are you here?" There was no need to ask who they were; he recognized their 'uniform' from Professor Snape's description.
The center man bowed his head slightly. "Our Lord wishes to speak with you and your lovely wife. He is waiting in your den." The other two men remained where they were as the center man moved to the side and made an inviting gesture towards the door. John felt Emma's fingers slip into his hand, cold and shaking. He gave them a reassuring squeeze and led her through the door.
Two more Death Eaters were waiting at the bottom of the narrow set of stairs leading from the door to the ground beside the garage. The Grangers moved down the stairs in silence, aware of the five pairs of eyes that were watching them as they did so. The door to the kitchen was standing open, and they encountered another man there, minding a cauldron he had set upon the range. The sickly sweet fumes were almost too much to take when added to the suddenly unsettled wine in their bellies. Both were too frightened to allow themselves to become sick in front of the encroachers. They moved down the narrow hallway, past the living room where most of their entertaining was done, and into the den which also acted as a library and was usually only seen by themselves, Hermione and, lately, the Wiggentrees.
It was because of some of the items present in the den that only a select few were ever invited in here. Since receiving her letter to Hogwarts, this room had become the place where remnants of the Wizarding world were kept. Moving photos of their daughter and her school friends, the text books from each year as she completed them and the gifts she found for them in Diagon Alley or the village outside the school were kept here. There were too many things that would raise suspicions should other Muggles lay eyes on them that it was easier to keep this room private. Now, however, there was a tall, thin man in a back robe examining their magical treasures. He was currently studying a moving photo of Hermione and Viktor Krum that was taken by a young boy at school the night of the Yule Ball her fourth year. It had always been Emma's favorite picture of their daughter with her resplendent in her light blue dress robes. The photos of her coming out were not yet developed.
"Is this her?" The man turned towards them, and Emma could barely contain her gasp of shock. They had been warned, of course, that Voldemort did not fully resemble anything human. His face was skull white, his eyes red and slitted like those of a cat and instead of a proper nose there were two slits for nostrils. He looked more like some white, bloated snake than a man. He held up the photo of the two young people dancing. "This is Hermione?"
"It is." John barely opened his mouth to answer him, his jaw clenched tightly to keep it from shaking.
Voldemort smiled and looked at the photo again. "She is a pretty thing, the exact image of her grandmother at that age. Perhaps a bit shorter, though." He raised his red eyes to look at Emma where she stood behind her husband. "Of course, your wife is rather petite as well."
He set the frame back onto the shelf where he had taken it and started to walk towards them. "Well, my boy, let me take a look at you." There was an almost triumphant gleam in his eye. "Take after your mother, I see, very little of me in you by looks. I suppose most of what you got from me would have been by power, had you not been robbed of that. A pity. You should have been the greatest sorcerer the world ever knew, but Helena kept you from that." He narrowed his red eyes. "She robbed you of you birthright."
"She had her reasons."
"Did she now? And what do you suppose those reasons were?"
"She was protecting me from you."
Voldemort laughed a cold, high laugh that didn't suit him at all. "From me? No my dear boy, she was not protecting you from me." He let his voice go soft and menacing. "She was protecting the world from you."
John swallowed, one hand still holding Emma's, the other clenched into a fist by his side. The creature was so close he could strike out at him with ease. A dark rage boiled up inside of him, the rage of a son who was thinking of all the horrible things this 'man' did to his mother, the evil things that had broken her mind and driven her to attempt murder against her own grandchild. This thing before him was the reason his mother was now in a secured wing of St. Mungo's as of three weeks ago, moved there in hope that the mediwizards would accomplish what an army of doctors had failed to do. "Perhaps you're right, but that all hinges on the assumption that you are," he paused, almost choking on the words, "my father."
A hairless brow arched. "If? If I am your father?" The tone of his voice was such that it was obvious the possibility otherwise had never occurred to him. "My boy, who else could it have been? If I have a flaw it is that I am a jealous man, and I would never have shared My Helena with another. Still, I had considered the possibility that you would be unwilling to accept that I am your father, especially given the fact that I have had no say in your life until now." He looked towards the door at one of his followers. "Go and tell him that we are ready."
Voldemort made a sweeping gesture of the room with his arms. "You see my family, your brothers, though no blood ties bind you. This is but a small number of those who follow me. All have been quite curious about you, as I have been. Your daughter, my grandchild, has been a topic of interest to them for some time now, even before her lineage was discovered. It was believed that she was a Muggleborn, an inferior creature who was reaching above her status. How silly we all were to think that a Muggleborn could show such promise.
"And how silly your brothers are not to fully accept that you are my child, just as you doubt it yourself. Though you lack magical powers, there is much of both your mother's family and myself in you. You have my ambition, a fact proven by how you no doubt must have worked to overcome the stigma of an illegitimate birth to become the professional you are. You have the intelligence of both your parents, proven by how you succeeded in your chosen profession. And there is the profession itself; a dentist, a medical specialty, and mediwizardry has been the strongest focus of the Wiggentree line for as long as any can remember. Even stripped of your powers as you were, you have done much that would make a father proud."
The sickly sweet fumes of the cauldron became apparent as the Death Eater returned with the one from the kitchen in tow. They brought the cauldron into the den, setting it onto a coffee table next to Voldemort. "The Patrilineage Potion; an antiquated idea but still quite useful. It proves bloodlines to erase any doubts. When samples of blood from the two people being tested are introduced to the potion it will react. Should there be no relation, it turns darkest black with the consistency of water. If the two are directly related, it turns crystal clear and hardens like glass. The more directly related the two are, the faster the reaction."
John remained silent, ignoring the feeling of dread that was building up in his stomach. The thing before him rolled up a long sleeve, baring a skeletal white forearm. He then flicked his other wrist and a long silver dagger appeared in his hand. With a deliberately slow movement, he sliced the skin on the inside of his forearm, allowing a line of crimson blood to well up on the surface. With a slow, confident grace, he lowered his arm and allowed several drops to fall into the cauldron. With a whispered incantation, the dagger became sparkling clean. With an evil smile he flipped the dagger around and extended it handle first towards John. "The only way to know for sure is to complete the potion."
John swallowed again, hard, and let go of Emma's hand moved down to rest at his waist. Since his shirt sleeves were already rolled up from working in the garage all day, he had only to extend his own arm and draw the blade across. He hesitated, a million thoughts running through his mind. They ranged from a fear of seeing what the results would be to wondering how sanitary the blade could really be without sterilization. He licked his lips, took a deep breath, and then drew the blade across his arm in a quick, slashing motion. He met Voldemort's eyes again as he moved his arm over the cauldron and turned it downward so that his blood fell into the potion.
The liquid inside the cauldron began to spark and boil. The sounds it made were the only ones heard in the den as the gathering fell deathly silent. It was as though the two different samples of blood were fighting with one another for supremacy, and perhaps they were. After all, didn't fathers and sons always fight after childhood was left behind? After too short a time, however, the noises from the cauldron began to subside until they vanished all together. Voldemort's red eyes left John's and moved towards the cauldron. A look of cold, hateful triumph settled on his face even as Emma gave a strangled sob and pressed her face into her husband's back. John only moved his eyes to the side and down, then closed them as though in pain.
The bottom of the cauldron had become clearly visible through a substance that was like smooth, hard glass.
"Joyous news; it is a son." John clenched his fist around the silver dagger still in his hand, wishing he was given to violence. He could imagine thrusting the curved blade into his 'father's' throat. "Not that any of us are truly surprised by this news, of course."
John could feel Emma trembling, trying hard not to cry. His own voice, when he had found it, was hard. "It is an accident of birth, and nothing more." He opened his eyes and glared at the thing before him. "Now leave my home."
There was a disgruntled rustling among the Death Eaters, but he didn't care. Voldemort merely gave him a superior look. "There was no accident in your birth, John Marcus Riddle. The only travesty in this case is the behavior of your dear mother. But do not fear; you are not entirely without your uses. I understand that my granddaughter is something of a genius, either matching or shattering my old academic records. A prodigy among her generation."
"Hermione would never serve you. I raised my daughter to know the difference between right and wrong, and I raised her to be smarter than to follow a would-be fascist." He was uncaring if his words brought down the wrath of this man. He would welcome death, secure in the knowledge that his child would never fall to the darkness. Now that all had been confirmed, he knew his death would likely be better for Hermione in the end.
But apparently his 'father' was smarter than he had known. "I daresay you hope I will kill you if you make me angry enough. Perhaps you feel that, with you and your lovely wife out of the way, there would be nothing for me to use to keep my grandchild obedient. Perhaps you are right, but I am aware of this fact as well." He began to roll down his sleeve. "You will live, my son, as will your darling Emma. You will live not because you are my son, but because you are Hermione's father. It is obvious that you have given everything for your child, nurtured and encouraged her throughout her life. I never had the benefit of such a thing in my youth, but I am certain that had I had such parents as the two of you, I would have done almost anything to keep them safe."
He gave them another cold smile. "It is a pity that you have been rendered powerless. I can see that you would have been a force to be reckoned with. It's all there in your eyes. It truly is a pity." He took out his wand and waved it towards the cauldron, which shimmered and vanished from sight. The wand vanished again inside his robes as he walked around the coffee table towards the door, his followers starting to disappear one by one, each with a soft 'pop'. As he reached the door, Voldemort turned around to speak again. "Tell me, whatever happened to your dear mother? I find that this little reunion has left me with a longing to see her again."
Emma's fingers tightened around John's waist as he turned his head to face the wizard. "You'll find her grave at Charring Cross, where it's been for the past decade."
The pasty face bore an expression of what appeared to be regret. "A shame. I would have loved to have seen her again. There is so much I had to… discuss with her." Without another word, he, too, vanished with a 'pop'.
Emma finally let go and began to sob in earnest, the sound harsh and heartbreaking. John turned around, careful of the silver dagger still in his grip, and wrapped his arms about her. Rage, more than fear, coursed through his veins. The unspoken but clear threat from Voldemort against himself and his wife, and the clear intentions regarding their daughter, left him shaking with an impotent hatred. He had never felt as powerless to defend his own family as he did at that moment.
The soft rustle of a cloak caused him to snap his eyes open once more. There was one Death Eater left, a man of slightly taller than average height. His robes looked new and expensive and the steel mask shadowed his eyes so that the color was undetectable. Emma gasped when she turned her head and saw him, but the man only stood there by the wall, watching them in silence for an extended moment. He fidgeted as if nervous about something.
"I'm sorry." The words were spoken so softly that they were nearly undetectable. John thought he must have misunderstood the man, but he said it again. "I'm sorry." Neither John nor Emma knew how to respond as the man remained a moment longer before he vanished like his companions, leaving them with only one another to hold onto.