Sorry this has taken so long. Life can be pretty busy. But things should be slowing down soon and I should have more time for writing and drawing. I will have art for the next one. Thanks for your patience.

***Alastor POV***

I wake to knocking on my door. Taking a quick glance at the clock. Who in the nine circles is knocking on my door in the middle of the night?

I have my shadow silently check who is at the door. I swear if it is anyone but Charlie or Hope and it's not an emergency, I will make them regret waking me up. As my mind fills with many punishment methods, I could inflict my shadow comes back and frantically motions for me to answer the door. It wasn't giving me an answer to who it was. It was just basically telling me to answer the door.

I quickly got up and made my way to the door. I open the door to see Hope. She looks like she's about to burst into tears. Before I could say anything, she grabs onto me and holds onto me pretty tight. Not tight enough to hurt, but enough to say she doesn't want to let go.

I gently wrap my arms around her and walk her into my room to shut the door. She's clearly upset, and I doubt breaking down like this in front of everyone else is not something she would want. The only problem now is I have no idea what to do.

Naturally I want to know what is bothering her so I can make sure it won't bother her anymore. But she is too upset to say anything right now. Besides comforting someone is not my strongest suit.

Memories of how Mother used to comfort me when I was upset instantly flood my brain. Maybe some of those methods may work in calming her down. Couldn't hurt to try.

I begin to rub her back while humming a calming song. That seems to work. Not long after her sobs begin to slow, and her breathing begins to return to normal. After a few minutes she seems to have calmed down.

I gently pull away a bit to find out why she was so upset. Her face is still slightly red and puffy from crying so much. My poor dear.

I ask her what made her so upset as I summon a handkerchief to wipe her face a bit. She tells me she had a nightmare. She fell back to sleep then had another nightmare. After the second one she felt very uneasy and panicky. That's when she got up and made her way here.

"I'm sorry if I woke you up." She says after blowing her nose in the handkerchief.

"No need to apologize my dear." I say as I incinerate the handkerchief into ash.

She closes the distance and hugs me again. I think mentioning her nightmares brought them back to her mind. While she isn't crying anymore, she is still shaking a bit. I wrap my arms around her, holding her close.

"It's ok sweetheart. You're safe with me. Nothing will hurt you when I'm around." I whisper as I rub her back comfortingly.

After staying like that for a few minutes she pulls away a bit.

"Can I stay with you tonight? I don't feel comfortable going back to my room right now."

"Of course, you can Darling."

I lead her to the bed and once she got in, she cuddled close to me as fell asleep. I just held her and gently rubbed her back. She fell asleep pretty quick. It wasn't long after she fell asleep that I did too.

The next morning, I manage to wake up before her and put a very light sleeping spell on her. Just to keep her asleep a bit longer. Once I had done that I got up and went down to the kitchen.

I decided to make her day a little bit easier. I made breakfast for everyone but took a couple of plates up to my room for us. When I am back in my room, I remove the sleep spell and wake her up.

She is touched by the fact that I made her breakfast in bed. She thanks me for that and making her day easier. We enjoyed a nice breakfast together. After a nice steamy shower, we got dressed and went along with our day.