Prologue
It was Frank Longbottom who found her near the Whomping Willow. She was trying to hide her tears behind her hands. She was not very successful, of course.
"Emma, I'm sure he didn't mean it. He was just fooling around. You know him…" he trailed off, trying to get near her.
Emma shied away.
"He did it on purpose! He made me fall off my broom. I could have broken my neck!" she choked out angrily.
"It wasn't a big fall. And he wouldn't have put you in real danger," he tried again.
"You didn't feel it. It was a pretty painful one. And I'm sure Sirius is not aware when he's putting people in danger," she spat, trying to conceal the remainder of her tears.
Frank patted her shoulder awkwardly.
"Lily has been searching for you. She wouldn't stop yelling at him. He ran off eventually, but I'm sure she's hexed him by now," he told her, trying to cheer her up.
"Tell her I'm all right. I'll be back in some minutes. And then I'll hex him myself."
"You know you won't."
"Don't be so sure."
"You've never hurt a fly," he reasoned.
"I can start now."
Frank smiled ruefully. Emma seemed to be all right. He had worried she would need to go to the Infirmary.
"After you hex him, will you tell McGonagall what he did?" he asked.
Emma stopped for a moment to consider the question. She knew the answer all too well.
"I don't want to risk any House points right now. We're very close to reaching the Ravenclaws," she said, resenting her own words.
"But I will hex him," she repeated.
"I thought so. Well, I'll see you in the common room then," he said, giving her one last look.
"Make sure he's not there when I come back," she told him as he walked away.
"He won't be," Frank shouted back.
That was Third Year. But it might as well have been the summation of all their years at Hogwarts.
Emma liked to believe he just teased her, the way boys usually did when they were young and they did not know how to express their feelings, so they chose to insult and hurt girls because they were scared of rejection.
She thought maybe in time he would stop being tiresome and reveal his true intentions.
She wasn't too fond of him, but she saw he was not all bad and she thought, with some effort on his part, she would grow to like him more.
But he did not make any effort and he certainly did not stop. His intentions were never clear and she was always left wondering, which she rarely liked.
Emma Nelson liked to be sure of things. She liked to triple-check and make sure everything was going the way she had intended. She also liked graphs and colourful crayons. She liked putting post-its over her entire desk and she always carried too many ink bottles with her. She loved stashing books under her bed and writing articles for the Hogwarts Journal.
From the first moment, she had acted like the unofficial class president of her Year. She always made sure no one was slacking or getting behind on their school work and she silenced the trouble-makers as well as made sure Gryffindor got as many House Points as possible.
Naturally, from the beginning she was a bit too much to handle. A bit insensitive and bossy. Not to mention unpleasantly stern at times.
For someone whose entire upbringing had consisted of these particular traits, Sirius Black was far from thrilled with her. He resented the fact that she acted like a head figure and mothered just about anyone who went out of line. He had escaped the Black household to find his freedom here, not to be reminded of it constantly.
It didn't help that Emma was still just a child. He would have liked to treat her like an adult, to blame her like he did his parents.
But he couldn't, because she wasn't a Black and she wasn't entirely bad. Like every other student there, she had her good side too.
That is why he had to settle with mocking her constantly. He couldn't afford anything else.
But even though he was limited by his means, he took any chance possible to show people like her that he could see right through their act and that he could reduce them to ridicule any time he felt like it.
It was petty perhaps, but it was the small revenge he was allowed to have.
He would have lied if he had said he did not enjoy it.
James and Remus weren't much better than him, but they had more reasons to be quiet and mind their own business. Sirius was the instigator and he had taken the job gladly as part of his personality.
Peter was the constant fourth wheel who slowed things down, but even he could be put to good use when the occasion came through.
Emma had a very hard time trying to make the Marauders behave. And she never truly succeeded.
Lily had a better grip on them because she was somewhat of an insider. She was quite close to James Potter and she strangely got along with Sirius too.
Emma though was somehow on the fringes, not quite in, not quite out.
Safe to say, when she appeared in the common room, the conversation between them dwindled.
Lily spent time with them separately, which bothered Emma immensely though she would never show it.
In retaliation, Emma had tried to include Lily in her own little group formed of Frank Longbottom, Alice Melville and Emmeline Vance, but it was hardly the same thing. For one, Emmeline was always against any of their ideas and Alice and Frank spent most of their time together, sharing private jokes and leaving the group behind.
Emma knew she couldn't force Lily to choose between her and the Marauders and she never would have, but there were times, like the one when she had fallen off her broom thanks to Sirius, when she half-wished Lily didn't have to choose, that she could be part of their group. That she could be a Marauder.