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could be dead this time,"

Saffron opened her eyes to see just the Grey and none of its arrivals just yet. She stood up, feeling aches in her body as she did so that had come with her from the natural world. She spun around, examining her surroundings curiously. She was trying to suss out if there any changes from the usual area in which she resided during her brief stay in the Grey. She didn't get to study it carefully enough because a voice cut her off guard.

"It's nice to see you,"

Her mother looked slightly older again, but it wasn't too noticeable She reflected the exact age that Saffron was and it seemed as though they had both developed at similar rates. Although, time would tell. Or would it, a small voice at the back of Saffron's mind creeped into the fore of it. Perhaps she wouldn't find out, because perhaps what happened in the Chamber of Secrets had actually killed her. She wasn't sure. She'd been in this situation in the Grey before and she'd never died any of those times, but she wasn't taking it for granted.

"I'm dead, aren't I?"

Instantly, Prina stopped in her tracks and shot an offended glare in Saffron's direction.

"You really think that I would say that I'm happy to see you if you were dead?"

Saffron shrugged her shoulders bracingly. "Maybe it would be nice to have some company in the afterlife,"

"I'm not the afterlife," Prina told her slowly. "I'm not any sort of being anywhere else, Saffron. I exist for you and only you. In my life, or whatever you want to call it now, there is just us, only us. Our survival, or rather your survival, is dependent on the both of us. Should you die, I would too,"

"But you talk to Maya and Rachel," said Saffron in response.

"I don't," said Prina patiently. "But another version of the girl known as your mother does, we're not the same person. We can feel each other, yes, but we just exist in this vacuum that is your Grey.

"So I'm not dead?"

"Of course you're not dead," said Prina with a small laugh. Then her lips came to a close and became pursed tightly. She opened them cautiously. "At least not yet,"

Saffron sighed. "That's reassuring,"

"I think you're okay," said Prina, a hand stroking her eyebrow fervently. "Okay in the sense of being alive, not necessarily okay in other ways though, you'll have to wait and see when you wake up," The thirteen year old version of her mother paused. "I must admit, I'm surprised to see you here. The Grey felt your decision, very very clearly. Whether to join your friends or to leave and I thought you would do the sensible thing and not go with them,"

"I couldn't just abandon them," Saffron remarked defensively. She then sent a direct insult in her mother's direction. She knew that this version had nothing to do with the decision and that she might have been wrong for judging her mother for leaving them. But it was how she felt, and "Just because that gene was in your blood doesn't mean it was in mine,"

"Well, I don't exactly have blood, I'm not---"

"I get it, I get it," Saffron rolled her eyes. "Anyway, I'm here, so why don't you answer the weird thing you said last time,"

"And what was that?"

"Something about what lay within," Saffron said hastily. "I've asked Maya and Rachel, neither of them has heard it from their versions or whatever, so I think that if I'm going to be here for a long time, I should probably ask the question since you said 'until next time' the last time I was here. This is the next time,"

Prina bit her lip. To Saffron, it looked as though she was doing so in order to suppress a faint smile, but regardless, it looked like her mother hadn't been expecting Saffron to remember. Hence, Saffron was irritated because she was going to receive some wishy-washy answer as she always did. The curse on her family was yet again going to manipulate her feelings and make her feel like something is real when it's actually just a warped sense of her wishful thinking. It was incredibly unfair. A Grey free life would be ideal, however, as it stood, Saffron felt like she had no right to complain as at least she had something other than the potential death that could be awaiting her body outside of the Grey.

"That's what I thought," muttered Saffron bitterly. "Just be confusing again,"

"So you remembered," Prina said, sounding surprised, looking for confirmation.

"Yes, I remembered," snapped Saffron. "That's what I said, isn't it?"

"That was sooner than I expected," Prina now let the smile show on her face. "I'll just be a moment, child, I'd like to introduce you to someone,"

Saffron blinked when her mother simply disappeared into thin grey. Sighing, she paced around and mumbled to herself: "Go ahead, probably either God or the Devil, welcoming me to the land of the dead, great, just great,"

She wanted to feel devastated at a potential death but for some reason, she didn't. Maybe she knew that she was alive or maybe she had accepted the death. She wasn't sure. But what she was sure about was that no matter if she survived or not, she was in for a dire fate outside of the Grey. Ginny was dead and there was a large chance that Harry, Ron and Lockhart were dead too. Not that she cared too much for Lockhart, but she wouldn't kill him unless she was forced too, whereas the other three meant a lot to her.

After hearing the clearing of a throat, Saffron jolted and was knocked out of her reverie. She looked over her shoulder to see her mother again, but as she said, she was not alone. What surprised Saffron was who she was with, or, rather the age of the person she was with.

A man accompanied her. He looked as though he was in his fifties but the brown beard on his ageing face made it seem like he could be pushing sixty. His eyes were the same colour as Saffron and Prinas, but besides that, there was very little comparison other than their skin tone.

"Saffron, this is Dilip,"

With a cough, Saffron said: "I'm sorry, but is that supposed to mean something,"

The man, who she now knew was called Dilip, raised his eyebrows at her pleasantly and made a statement that instantly piqued Saffron's interest.

"I'm the one who was cursed,"