But Snakes Can Shed Their Skins

Disclaimer: none of the real characters belong to me, they're J.K.'s, but Emmeline and I have a special connection, it's all in the details, you might say. I'd also like to admit that I'm not proud of myself for starting this in 2007 and then not even remembering it existed until now (2014). Seven years… Wow. Still, Emmeline is in my heart, so I'll be attempting to continue this story. Still, timely updates are obviously not my strong suit, so don't expect them.

Chapter Three: What If?

"No. Freaking. WAY!" Lily spluttered, eyes as wide as saucers, sitting cross legged on Em's unmade four-poster bed, the furthest from the door into the room, and the safest place from unwanted ears.

"I wouldn't lie about this, I swear." Em couldn't help but smirk. Lily was the best person to tell a story to, her reactions were worth her weight in galleons. The brunette rested her chin on her small pale fist, biting her lip momentarily and then letting it go.

"Besides, who would be stupid enough to make something that embarrassing up?"

"Embarrassing, why embarrassing?" The ginger girl's brows furrowed harshly in a way that said 'God, Em, you're stupid.'

"Maybe because he kissed me on the cheek? That says something, doesn't it? Something, oh, I don't know… bad?" Em could hear her laughing before she was even through her sentence. Lily's was the type of laughter that made you yearn for summer, especially on a chilly October day like today, because her laughter rang out as clear as day, even in a loud room, like perfectly tuned wind chimes. Em's hand moved out of the way, and her head dropped to the clump of bedding her torso was resting on.

"What now, Evans?"

"You're so thick!" She paused to laugh again, apparently finding it much more humorous a situation than Em did. "Did you ever think that maybe he was playing shy?" It was Emmeline's turn to laugh now. Em's wasn't a laugh as dainty or pretty as Lily's, it was a gut-wrenching, full and deep chuckle, which was often interrupted by an uncontrollable snort, which sent her ever-deeper into laughter when they occurred.

"Sirius Black, shy!?" Another pause for laughter ensued, brief as it was, Em because of Lily's foolishness, Lily at the sounds of Em's laughter. "Sirius Black doesn't have a shy bone in his entire body, you idiot!"

Lily stuck out her pointy pink tongue at Em, shoving her shoulder and rolling onto her back. It was clear that Lily had already realized the foolishness of her statement before Em had retorted. "Okay, okay." Her acceptance of defeat was whispered due to breathlessness. Despite Lily's ever-rampant optimism in both people and the world they lived in, both of the young girls knew Em was right, Sirius Black wasn't the shy type, not unless it was part of a gimmick to get the girl, and with Em it couldn't be. They were just friends, and there was no way in Em's mind that Sirius would know about the crush. Lily only knew herself because she had spent nearly every day of the last six some-odd years with Em. They were practically sisters.

Em might not understand everything about being a muggle-born, but being a half-blood, she understood the muggle-world, and understood at least some of the struggle, which Hestia and Molly could not. It was hard to be a Muggle-born these days, there were lots of idiots with moronic, elitist opinions that would better be kept to themselves. Lily Evans knew that better than anyone from her friendship with Severus Snape, the almost-relationship that she had spent every moment regretting ever since his true colours reared their ugly head in fifth year. Lily and Em had always been roommates, and had been nearly inseparable since the sorting ceremony in first year, but Em had never seen someone cry the way Lily did when Snape, the git, broke her too-optimistic heart. Em remembered combing her fingers through Lily's dirty hair, laying in their beds for hours longer than they should have, forcing Lily into the shower, forcing her to go to meals, forcing her not to become a total hermit.

Eventually Lily bounced back, and not a moment too soon either, because it was just around then that Em had another one of her relapses. Em sat up on the bed just then, crossing her legs and dusting her skirt off with her hand. The two girls had been laying there for Merlin knows how long, and they were probably well overdue for leaving their bedroom. Lily looked up at Em for a moment before moving, eventually she rose, went to the windows, and opened all of them fully.

"It'll be freezing in here later…" Em warned her.

"It smells like something died in here. We need to clean up if we ever hope of bringing boys back."

"Do we?" Em asked, smirking at Lily until she realized the foolishness of yet another statement.

"Just because Molly brings boys back to this sty doesn't mean we should." She giggled, it was brief though, and easily morphed into a sigh. Lily was unlucky in love, she'd resisted James too harshly in the beginning, citing principle as a reason not to date him, and now it seemed like self-betrayal to admit she liked him, so she pined from up-close, as their circle of friends no longer allowed distance, and James had sort of let his chase lull for the time being, so she didn't exactly have time to say that long-awaited 'yes'.

"You could just talk to him, you know." The redhead rested her head on Em's shoulder as they left the room and descended into the common room.

"Yeah, I'll get right on that. I'll just walk right up to him and say 'You kissed me and I've been crushing on you for ages, so you'd better be prepared to deal with all of my crazy now."

"Yeesh. Can't talk to him like that at least." Lily scrunched up her features in a disapproving way, her nose cutely wrinkling in the process. Em could see James sitting on their couch in front of the fire, staring like a hawk at Lily's nose. Too predictable, she thought, smiling at Lily. "Alright, so off my case and onto yours. Your stalker awaits, I'm gonna go for a walk." Em grabbed Lily's shoulders and walked her goofily towards James, letting Lily go and nodding to James before escaping their attempt at non-awkwardness.

Truthfully, none of their group of friends could bear being third wheel to James and Lily. The blooming friendship, or romance, or relationship, or whatever it was, was toxic to conversations. Lily and James often sat together quietly when in the company of their friends, and talked around each other in conversations with the whole group. They could all tell they'd rather be alone, but both Lily and James were too prideful and stubborn to be the first to ask, especially James, after he'd been turned down so many times.

So thankfully, Em was able to disappear before they got the chance to rope her in to another morning of awkward half-conversation. Em hopped, skipped, and jumped out to the grounds, the halls were blissfully deserted and she avoided embarrassment for the time being. It wasn't until she made it to the grounds that she realized it was quite nippy, as it was nearing the end of October. The sting of the chilly air was still nothing compared to the nagging feeling of Sirius's lips on her cheek, so she persevered, because there was no way she was walking up a dozen flights of stairs for a thicker jumper and a pair of trousers.

Most of the ground was cold and covered in fallen leaves, but the uncovered patches of green were still vivid, a remembrance of the summer just passed. As she walked, Em watched the branches sway, and the descent of the odd leaf, just like she had from her window. After a few moments, she strayed from the path and not just heard, but also felt the leaves crunching under her demure brown penny loafers. There were several other students, in groups and alone, roaming the grounds, but as soon as Em felt she was far enough away from them, her head dipped from side to side to an imaginary song that was only available for broadcast in her head, her curls bouncing off her chest with every step she took, and her lips moving as if she were singing along, even though there were no words set to the melody in her head. She reached out a hand and touched an old pine tree, feeling the tickle of its needles; watching many of them fall to the ground, even though her touch was gentle. The needles fell like rain, dancing in the breeze until they hit the dusty ground at the base of their home.

Em came here often, to the centre of this splatter of trees on the grounds. It was a little-known oasis, at least to the younger students, who were too afraid to stray this close to the ominous, dark, forest. There were a few dismembered logs, stuck on their sides in the dirt by time, as if there had once been a campfire in the middle, where there was none now. Em walked to them from memory, if she had been blinded at this moment, she would find her way there from familiarity, without her sight. Em had been here too many times to count over the years, and had almost always been greeted with blissful alone-ness. She sat on the nearest log, glancing around the circle, and attempting to make out shaped beyond the trees of her special spot, but none could be seen through the thickness of their branches.

Her mind drifted to more complicated times, the years before she got her Hogwarts letter, the years when she thought she was no more special than the average English girl at her dreary, identically bricked Muggle primary school. Her outlook on life had been as blasé as her un-highlighted, mousy brown hair. She would sit on the schoolyard, friendless on a bench because she was the weirdo, though she couldn't place her finger on why. Em would spend all of her recesses tying and retying her shoes, or reading fairytale books, having no clue about how special she was. She would wake, and go to bed every night hating life for how horribly boring it was. It wasn't until her eleventh birthday that she discovered what a treacherous liar her step-monster had turned her father into. You see, Emmeline's mother had been a beautiful chocolate-haired, blue eyed, beauty, and she had also been a pure-blooded witch, before her tragic death, only a year after Em's birth. Eloise, the aforementioned step-monster was a Muggle woman, and a hoity-toity one at that, expecting Em's hair ribbon to always be straight, and her dress to always be perfectly spotless. Eloise had no patience for little girls, especially not witchy little girls, because she hardly believed they existed, and even with proof that magic existed, refused to let herself consciously believe it. What was poor Henry Vance to do? Lonely after the death of the love of his life, he rebounded, needing a mother for Emmeline, and married Eloise, who at the time was a picture perfect woman who seemed like the perfect mothering type.

Em was constantly told not to hold it against her step-monster. Her father, a loving, kind man, who didn't deserve to be leeched off of by the cold, spiteful Eloise, had only done his best as a Muggle man raising a half-witch child with another Muggle. 'Decisions were made,' he had told Em, several times, 'to the best of my ability, with the knowledge I had at the time.' He had always done her the decency of speaking to her as an adult, and had always provided for her. Daddy issues? Yeah, Em had them, and Mommy issues, and step-Mommy issues too. Who had a dead parent, or stepparents, and wasn't screwed up from it? It was the 80s, broken families were a major source of strife in youth. It didn't help her case that Em was the spitting image of her late mother, something that drove her step-monster furious, because her Henry couldn't let go of his first wife.

What if her mother had lived? Em tried not to think about it. The thought only caused immeasurable grief, if she dwelled on it too long she could feel a large, hard lump form in her chest that made it difficult to breathe, and made her eyes tear up. Tears were something Em had taught herself not to have. Em rarely, if ever cried. She couldn't remember the last time she cried. That was a lie. She remembered it perfectly, but like the death and subsequent absence of her mother in her life, it was just something she didn't talk about, or think about. Not if she could help it.

A branch made a swooshing sound, and footsteps could be heard just on the other side of the trees, her trees. Em was not in the mood for company, so she stood and vanished in between the branches, navigating as quietly as she could between them until she heard a voice, the voice, his voice.

"What are you doing out here?"

Her cheeks went crimson, or were already crimson from the cold, she couldn't tell anymore. She made to move back towards him, but unlucky as she was, her skirt got snagged on a snapped branch. Her eye twitched out of frustration and instead of responding back to him, she mussed over her skirt, attempting to detach it.

"Emsie." He walked towards her, too large, and barely fitting between the tree branches, filling up the space that had already seemed full, invading her space and her senses. He swatted her hands away and griped her skirt and the branch, taking her only busy-work away from her, and forcing her to stare open-mouthed at him in bewilderment.

After a long lull, "I hate when you call me that" was all she could come up with.

He gave her his all but patented Sirius Black smirk, his pearly teeth just visible from the edge of his mouth. Noticing her odd behaviour, he grabbed her hand after releasing her from the trees grasp and made to pull her out from the trees, but her feet remained glued to the ground. She was absolutely intoxicated; the crisp clean smell of the October air, the invading aroma of the pine trees swirling around her, and then there was him, the familiar, un-distinguishable, 'Sirius' smell, fresh, and warm, and right there with everything else, completely overwhelming her senses.

After another tug her feet finally obeyed, he moved them to the logs and sat, one leg on either side of it, staring at her in a questioning way.

"Are you gonna make it, champ?"

Realizing that she was completely blowing one of her few opportunities to be alone with him she smirked, as if she'd been present the whole time. "I'm fine. What are you doing in my trees, Black?"

"Your trees," he scoffed, "bollocks." He narrowed his eyes and leaned towards her in a challenging way. "Mine, more like." There was something about the way he it, instead of claiming possession over the trees, he ended up with possession of her. For another moment she was off in la-la land, unable to navigate the smog of her feelings, attempting to bring herself out of the 'what if' place where she imagined herself emboldened, and able to make the first move, any move, towards a romantic relationship.

"I've never seen you here before, so obviously they're not yours. I don't see your name on it." Her childish challenge was out of her lips before she realized how ridiculous it was that she had stooped to that. And how much more ridiculous it was that she had, in fact, written her name on this spot, claiming it for her own, even though she never imagined anyone else would want it.

His roar of laughter echoed up to where the tree tops appeared to touch the clouds, he stood quickly, took Em's hand again and dragged her into the trees on the other side of the small clearing, searching for a moment before steering her into direct view of his name carved into the trunk of one of the trees. "Well now you have!" He grinned in youthful triumph.

"No freaking way." In disbelief she raised her hand to it, touching the scratches that were the letters of his name, completely bewildered. She spun around quickly, catching him off guard, "you did this, just now, cheat!" He frowned immediately, hating when people called him a cheat just because he was a trickster.

"Oh come on, Vance, you can see it's not fresh, you're not a total stump."

She narrowed her eyes, hating that he was right. "As if you carved your name in a freaking tree! Who does that!?" She didn't care how much of a hypocrite she was being, she hated the thought of anyone, especially him, possessing something that she had believed to be hers. It was probably because it made her realize the other thing that was hers that belonged to him, but she couldn't think about that now. Not with the way his lips were twitching into a smile. Not a signature, Sirius Black smirk, but a smile. This was the full-blown, ear-to-ear deal that was reserved for a very select crowd that she was blissfully included in on the rare occasions it happened. He walked back to the log and sat back down, waiting expectantly for her to follow, not speaking until she complied with his unasked request.

"I'm really quite a possessive person, hadn't you noticed?"

"Sure, I've noticed the way you clutch onto your teddy."

"Oh, sod off!" She stuck her tongue out at him, scrunching up her face in the way James liked when Lily did it. Em suddenly wondered if all guys found that endearing when any girl did it, or if it was just one of those weird James/Lily things.

"I have never had a teddy, and you know it."

"I'm sure I could coax it out of one of your girlfriends that you do have one, hidden somewhere. Under the bed, maybe?"

"Fat chance, 'sides, you're the only girl that's been in that bed, so good luck finding someone who can reassure you if you won't believe me." Em couldn't help but laugh, that all-encompassing, body writhing laughter, complete with embarrassing snort, it was so loud that a nearby bird fluttered away from its nest to escape it. Her eyes were closed she was laughing so hard, and although confused, Sirius smiled privately, enjoying Em's few-and-far-between moment of letting go.

"The only… Haha, girl… That's haha haha been… haha in your bed!?" She couldn't help herself from laughing this hard, and the longer he looked at her oddly the way he was, the harder she laughed, tears coming to her eyes. "What do you take me for Black, a fool?" She took a few deep breaths and wiped at her under-eyes with her index fingers. "The only girl who's ever been in that bed?" She finally calmed herself, but her grin hadn't yet subsided. "Bollocks. You're the biggest man-slut on these grounds."

"Doesn't mean I let them into my sanctuary." Em couldn't help herself, she fell into fits of laughter again at the way he said sanctuary, as if his four-poster was some kind of church. "Oh shut it Vance, or I'll give you a real reason to laugh!"

"Like what?" She sobered up for a brief moment, "You gonna drop your trousers?" She waggled her eyebrows in a suggestive way and laughed again, her breathlessness convincing her that her joke was funnier than it actually was. She glanced up at him and became immediately still. The predatory look in his eyes gave her chills, he was staring at her in a heated, intense way that made her think that perhaps she'd touched a nerve that she shouldn't have.

He launched himself across the log at her and his fingers danced on either side of her abdomen, launching her into a writhing fit, laughing again, worse than before, screeching and attempting to get away from him. Spluttering, "Sirius! Sirius, stop! Stop, please, I can't breathe, please, please stop!" It seemed like he never would, until finally his lips found her ear and whispered, "I love it when you say please."

She couldn't move, his words froze her in their exact position. Her cheeks turned the crimson of the Gryffindor banners and her eyes were as wide as Lily's had been earlier than morning. How could he possibly know? Please was often the first thing she said to him in the morning. 'Please, don't wake up.' She remembered, an almost silent plea, nearly every morning, because she cherished the moments when he was half-asleep. He wasn't such a git then. She could still feel his fingers on her sides, but eventually he moved, and then his hands were on her hips, and his face was in front of hers, space in between them, the air colder now.

"You can be quite the tease some mornings." He smirked and let her go, standing up quickly and grabbing the cloak she hadn't noticed, because she'd been too wrapped up in him, as she always was. "You cold?" He raised the cloak in his hand towards her so she'd take it, but she shook her head no. That was when he realized how cold he was; when her breath was hot on his shoulder, he'd felt warm too, but if he was cold now that they were finally separate, she had to be too.

"Come on, Ducky. Put it on." He didn't give her a choice and swung the heavy black fabric over her shoulders. Em closed her eyes for a brief moment; it smelled of him in the best possible unnamed way. She grabbed a fistful of fabric in each hand at her shoulder and tugged it on better. "There you are."

"Why Ducky, of all things?" She narrowed her eyes, and had half a mind to indignantly shove the cloak back at him, but she couldn't bear to give it back, she was too absorbed in his intoxicating scent again.

"Because, I may not have a teddy in my bed… but I have a Ducky in my bath." He spoke so quietly she almost didn't hear him, and it was so suggestive, the way the words left his lips that she didn't believe he'd said it at first. The wink is what sealed it, that he had for sure come on to her in that way. His eyelid fluttered closed, and his signature smirk graced his features, and just like that, he was gone, and she was alone again. This time she was much lonelier than she'd been before. She felt his absence long after he was gone, and long after she went to bed that night.

AN: So obviously I got inspired. Not just two chapters in one night, but also a really long one. Hope that can tide you guys over for a little while until I can catch some sleep, do some homework, and get back at it. Hope you've enjoyed. Feel free to review.