In the darkness

Emily had no idea what time it was but it was pitch dark so it must be late. The girl had been fast asleep until a twenty minutes ago when she had woken up, now she had the problem of going back to sleep. She decided to get up and go to the kitchen, a midnight snack might help. Actually it porbably wouldn't but she was hungry and it would give her something to do. Carefully and quietly she got out of bed, and started to walk towards the door. SHe just manged to avoid stepping on any of her books or lothes which litered the floor, and just managed to navigate through the furniture which wasn't easy in the darkness. She didn't want to wake her aunt and she knew if she fell or anything or stubbed her toe then Ursula would porbably wake up.

Eventually she reached the door and opened it silently. She was walking to the kitchen when she heard a nosie, her whole body stiffened. Automatically she looked round about her but she couldn't ake anything out in the pitch dark. She listened again for any sort of noise. Maybe she had just imagined it.

Ursula sniffed in discontent as Mildred went on amongst the crackling fires. This was getting very stupid. "Oh, for heaven's sake Mildred! Just put the Old Bugger on and be done with it." She pinched the tip of her nose where her reading glasses had been.

The fires bulged a little as a different face came into view. Mottled and beaten, easily seen through the crackling fire- the ash a shadow and the lighter embers the highlights. Old Bugger.

"And what have you heard?" she asked sharply. Old Bugger knowing one thing and telling someone what he knew were usually two different things, so you had to be deliberate in how you said things.

He rolled his eyes and bit off a cork of the green bottle he was grasping on to. Honestly, Ursula thought they would have at least been at least the smallest bit professional. Obviously not.

"Are you going to tell me what you saw, or are you going to drink yourself to an early grave in front of me, Fletcher?"

Fletcher wheezed and settled the green bottle down noisily some place to his left. He tried to cough bile out of his throat but when he saw it made no difference, he spoke croakily of what he saw. It took at least three minutes and that was without any interruptions from Ursula. At one point, her knuckles turned white on the back rest of the chair she was holding on to. After that point, it was like the chair was holding her up for support.

"And you saw to it that they were disposed of, didn't you?" she said in a mangled tone, almost distainful.

"Oh yes, ma'am," Fletcher said, wheezing once again as Ursula rolled her eyes. He always seemed red fingered and eager to impress. Or brown nose, but weren't they the same thing.

"I want you to carry out the same deed to the other as well. I can't let this happen again and you'd do well to remember you owe me, Fletch. You owe me. However much you try to twist it." She grins.

Ursula rubbed at her eyes. It was nearing two in the morning. She needed some sleep. Infact, she needed to check up on Emily. For the surprise. "Fletcher. Go get yourself another port and drink yourself to an early grave, I've changed my mind; as long as you get rid of him I don't care what you do. I'm going to check up on my niece."

The transfiguration says this last word with deep meaning and the firey face of Fletcher seems to open and slacken of wrinkles and scrunched up yearning for drink. He sees now, his mouth formed in a perfectly shaped 'O'. Nodding fast and taking his leave, Ursula puts water on the flames and shudders out a breath, then going back to her original position holding onto the chair.

The girl heard noise again and it suddnely clicked in her mind, voices. Emily was starting to panic a little about what she should do. What do normal thirteen year olds do when the voices in their home at this time? She figured most would run to their parents, or in her case her aunt, screaming or something. But Emily wasn't exactly what you would call a normal child. So instead she listened and waited for the voices to come again and she followed them. As she got closer she could make some of the words out, soemthing about an early grave. Catiously she edged closer to the voices.

She was now standing next to a door. In the room she was sure there were peope talking. SHe had no idea where about it the huse she was, she had been too painked to do anything else but go towards the voices carefully. She was pretty sure she hadn't made any noise thankflly she had managed to avoid the few creaky area's of the floor.

"And you saw to it that they were disposed of, didn't you?"

She heard a voice say, she could tell it was female and after a few moments she realised the voice belonged to her aunt. She let out the breath, she hadn'' realsied she was holding. But then it regestired what her aunt had said. "that they were disposed of?" Disposed of what, or who. She heard a male voice, it sounded distant almost. The fire. She though. He raunt must be floo calling someone, but who. She listened to what she heard next.
"what deed? and why did this man, Fletch? owe her aunt?" So many questions. "as long as you get rid of him/" who were the getitng ride of but she didn't have ime to think, Urusla had just said she was going to check up on her? But she heard no movement inside the room. The girl couldn't move anyway all the questions in her head.

Ursula gathered her thoughts together, completely frozen to the spot. In some ways she could say that it had all gone completely wrong. But if anything, she could only admit that it had happened just as she had expected. Not that she had wanted it to happen. But it did, and that was something she was going to have to face.
It was just so annoying.

She really didn't want to bother David with this; it was only her being small time paranoid and it was stupid of her to have even gone this far. She was becoming a lot less sure of her moral lines.

Making a screeching noise on the highly polished tiles, Ursula pushed the high backed wicker chair back into the glass table. She turned to go to the wine cooler but decided she wasn't in the mood for it tonight. The transfiguration professor will just check up on Emily before she makes the final arrangements before she'll head up to bed tonight. She can't sleep with that many things on her conscience anyway.

Slowly, with a lot less intentional grace than usual, she made way for the door...

Emily was frozen to her spot in a complete dream. Everything she had heard whizzied round in her mind. She didn't know what to make of the conversation she had over heard. What had he aunt been talking about? The whole thing worried her a lot. But there was one though that kept coming to the surface of her mind. SHe bit her lip she couldn't allow herself to think such things. There must a perfectly normal explaination to what she heard. After all was it really possible that her aunt... "No you musn't jump to concluions Emily" she said to herself. She was woken from her dream by the horrbile noise of something being dragged across the floor. That meant urusla would be coming to check on her any moment. If she didn't move quickly she would walk right into her in less than a few minutes.

Quickly Emily looked round thankfully her eyes had adjusted to the darkness so carefully but quickly she weaved her way through the furniture and th creaky parts of the floor back to her room. She reached it fairly quickly. She had no idea where Ursula was, if she was still inside the room or if she had left it and she had seen her. What if her aunt had seen her? Returning to her room she would know that she had heard some of the conversation. Emily took a deep breath and lay down on her bed waiting for something. Anything to happen.

Ursula made her way up the stairs, dragging her heavy feet. It seemed tonight all the fluid movement in her limbs was gone. she'd lost the need for a while, but she was sure it'd come back, it never took long coming back.

She opened the thankfully non-squeaky door that led to Emily's room and sighed in relief to see she was asleep. Waving her wand around in her hand, a few of Emily's clothes folded themselves onto the drawer next to the wardrobe. Then, in one flick she transfigured the dresser, with the offending clothes sucking themselves in. She'd leave Emily to pick the few trinkets she'd need from cultivating over the year she had been with Ursula. Ursula was definitely not made of money- although she had come from a reasonably well off family- but she always made sure Emily had something exciting as a present, but still, didn't dote on her as often as either of them would've liked.

Turning slowly, slowly back to the stairs, she muttered alohamora, closed the hallway door, and went to her room, ready to lay in bed for an agonizingly long time thinking until finally, she would sleep.

Emily closed her eyes as she heard her door open, it didn't make much of a noise but she could she the moving shape of the door then her aunt. She lay there for the few moments while her aunt moved around a little in her room. Emily had no idea what she was doing but she stayed still and did her best to look asleep. She waited for a while, she could hear what sounded like soft footsteps, slwoly dieing away as her aunt left her room and returned to her own. The girl let out a sigh of rielif, that she had made it back in time.

She didn't think she would sleep much for the rest of the night. Not with everything she had heard, not with all the thought in her mind, not with all the doubts and fears. She lay in her bed, she didn't think sleep would come, so she simply lay on her bed curled in a ball with her eyes closed. Just waiting for the morning to come.