Unhinged 2: Til the Flame Burns Out

Chapter 18

Ember felt her feet hit the ground, the smell of grass filled her nose. She looked across the open field of tall grass under the night sky until her eyes fell on a large house in the distance. She immediately looked over at Scorpius, who had a confused look on his face.

"Aunt Hermione, why does this place look so familiar?" Ember asked as they started making their way towards the house.

"That's interesting because this house was one of the houses we hid at when Lucius was around. It belonged to McGonagall's family... your mother burned it to the ground with her powers." Hermione said with a smirk as she looked at Ron at the mention of the memory. "You two weren't born yet, she was only about five months pregnant with you guys I think so I'm not sure why it looks so familiar," she explained. "We've put a ward around it and charmed it so that it still appears to just be a pile of burned up rubble."

"What about the house Blaise told us about?" Ember asked.

"We went there... the walls were barely standing," Blaise said.

"How did you find us?"

"Apparently one of the men Adwell had working for him was more loyal to Kingsley and us than Beckett and the Adwell brothers. The last place we knew you guys to be around was the Muggle convenience store you all robbed." Hermione stopped and gave them a stern look. "After that, we had no idea... it was our inside guy, Matthew, who told us the rest."

Aurora stopped listening to the conversation and walked over to where James was as he started to wake up.

"James, are you ok?" she asked him as she gently grabbed his face.

He nodded. "Yeah," he said as he took in the crowd of people walking a bit ahead.

He didn't say anything, he just looked at Aurora with a small smile, relieved at the fact that they finally caught a break. His smile soon faded as he thought back to losing control of his powers. Aurora could see it on his face and before he could say a word she laced her fingers with his and pulled him to follow her the rest of the way.

Scorpius kept walking, trying with everything to ignore the pain from the wound on his side. He slowed his pace a bit until he was at the back of the group so he could lift his shirt to get a better look at it. When he peeled his blood-soaked shirt up, he let out a painful growl as blood continued to pour from it. He didn't realize how bad it was at the time until all the adrenaline wore off. He stopped walking, the loss of blood brought him to his knees.

"No you don't, Bud, come on, on your feet. We just have a bit more to go." Ron said as he threw one of his arms over his shoulders and helped him along. "Hey?"

Scorpius looked at him.

"Don't fuckin die on me. Do you have any idea the shit I'm going to hear from my sister if I let her son die?" Ron asked him.

Scorpius smirked at his comment before he sneered at the pain in his side and continued pushing himself.

After a few minutes longer they finally got to the front of the house and Hermione opened the front door.

"Molly!" she called out.

Ember looked at her aunt to make sure she heard her correctly and sure enough, there she was... her grandmother. Standing there and waiting for them all to come back to her.

"Grandma?" Ember cried.

She was unable to move from the spot she was in as her emotions seemed to have paralyzed her. She felt her grandmothers arms around her as silence filled her ears, the only sound was the muffled crying from Molly.