No matter how many times she sat there, being at the kitchen of Grimmauld Place with Sirius dead and gone still felt wrong to Emma. The Order members all around her seemed equally uneasy there, perhaps because of the fate Sirius came to, perhaps because the legal binding of the house to Harry seemed uncertain. Emma stood at the china cabinet to avoid sitting at the table, although staring at stylized painted renditions of the Black family crest all over the plates and bowls and such didn't make her feel much better about being in the room.

"He wouldn't want you to associate this place with him," Remus said softly in her ear. "He didn't think of it as home."

"No," Emma whispered in agreement. "It was a prison. Out of one cage and into the next." She licked her lips. "Sometimes I wonder if any of it is really doing any good."

"Now, he definitely wouldn't want you to say that," Remus said with a slightly hollow, tired laugh. "If there was anything Sirius believed in, even after Azkaban, it was that fighting this war was all that mattered. Even if all we accomplish is delaying the inevitable, it's worth it."

Before Emma could admit that she knew he was right, there was the sound of Albus Dumbledore clearing his throat politely to draw people out of their individual conversations. Those still standing sat at the long table, and Emma glanced down the length to where Snape was sitting in a back corner next to Minerva McGonagall.

"Thank you all for coming today."

As he went on discussing the basics in the news and how it related to the Order, Emma noted how much weaker Albus Dumbledore was looking. This man who had always seemed so youthful, invincible, looked very much mortal.

He kept his black hand covered by the long, bell sleeve of his robes, but Emma could picture it perfectly. Something so horrific burned its image onto the mind, she felt as though she could see it just by knowing it was there. Just the knowledge of it was distracting.

"Now, to the Ministry," she heard Albus say, looking right at her, perhaps knowing that she hadn't been paying attention to the meeting. "Kingsley, what's going on with the Muggle Prime Minister?"

Emma did perk up a bit at this, recalling her parents. Sometimes she got so caught up in her day-to-day that she forgot how the war was tearing through the Muggle world, forgot to worry about her parents, even forgot that they still didn't know she was married, either. She hadn't spoken to them since leaving Hogwarts, for their own protection. She glanced down the table to see Remus pointedly ignoring the way Tonks was staring at him.

Maybe that was why he wouldn't write her. Maybe Remus was doing with Tonks what Emma was doing with her parents: he loved her so much that he had to push her away. But with Emma, it was until the war was over. With Remus, his demons never went away.

"Things are as bleak as they are everywhere," Kingsley said softly. "But thankfully no more than that." He glanced around the room. "I can say that I've been checking up specifically on Muggle relatives of Order members recently. All the ones I know of are safe."

Emma breathed a sigh of relief that must have been louder than she'd intended, because several faces turned to look at her, including Molly's pitying eyes. She swallowed and held her head up a bit higher.

"Excellent," Albus said softly. "Tonks, what is the state of the Auror office?"

Remus tensed at the mention of Tonks's name, and Tonks actually jumped a bit at being called on. Faces turned to her, and she shrank back in her seat slightly. Emma imagine that there was pity in her own eyes.

"Bad," Tonks finally said. "Probably not much worse than anywhere else, but we're pretty utterly pitiful. Ineffectual. Scrimgeour's focusing on the wrong things, as can be expected, and we don't have the resources for all his publicity goose chases and then also doing the right thing."

Arthur cleared his throat.

"Its the same thing for myself and Emma," he said. "We're focused on straws we can get a grasp on, when what we should be trying to do is follow smoke to fire and put out the actual flames." Tonks nodded. "Three arrests, not a one of them a genuine Death Eater if I know anything about my job at all."

"But we already knew there was no getting through to Scrimgeour," Kingsley said reasonably. "Not while he's surrounding himself with the likes of Umbridge and P-"

He cut off and gave Molly and Arthur a nervous look.

Percy. Umbridge and Percy.

Molly did stiffen. It was a bit too soon since the disaster of Christmas morning. Emma, though, didn't think it was entirely fair to consider Percy as a part of the problem. He was a complication, of course. His involvement with the Ministry put the rest of the Weasleys in a more than awkward situation, but Percy was not Umbridge. His lust for power blinded him a bit, but Emma knew that underneath his nativity, he was still a good boy. He had always had a good heart, just like every other Weasley.

"Yes, and he approached Harry, as we know," Albus said darkly. "I am not surprised that he did it, but I expected him to try in a less obvious way." He paused. "Emma, you were at the Burrow for Christmas, were you not?"

"Yes, but I hid under the table," she said, blushing a little. Dedalus snickered and Remus gave her a small smile. "They don't know...know that I..."

Her words spluttered out and she looked down at her hands.

Didn't know that she was a Weasley. But hardly anyone knew she was a Weasley.

Dinner was after the meeting, and to her surprise Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape both stayed for dinner, which was rare for them. Emma stuck by the china cabinet, taking a plate from Fleur with a word of thanks before turning back to stare at the crest that told her how unworthy she was: Toujours Pur.

The Muggeborn who married into a pureblooded family stretching back as long as anyone could trace. According to Sirius's ancestors, she and any offspring she would produce were abominations.

And then it hit her.

Emma turned and caught Remus's eye, raising an eyebrow and tilting her head, telling him that she wanted to talk alone. In the chaos, nobody noticed them slipping into the pantry and closing the door.

"What's wrong?" he asked. "You look...upset."

Bless Tien and the years of asking Emma to pretend to be the victim of her roasts for practice monologuing.

"It's just...this house is..." She bit her lip, organizing her thoughts, capitalizing Remus's pity. "Toujours Pur."

Remus winced.

"Ah," he sighed. "Emma, you're a very bright girl. You're confident. You're practical. You know that you're as good as anyone in that room." She gave him her most uneasy look and he sighed, putting his hands on her shoulders. "You are, Emma. You're fully worthy to be sitting in this house, no matter what your blood is."

"I'm not good enough to be an Auror," she pointed out.

He smiled, shaking his head.

"There are all sorts of talent," he said. "Even in magic. And Tonks is..." His face darkened slightly, but he continued. "Tonks is a half-blood, remember."

"A half-blood with Black blood," Emma argued.

"If blood really made any difference," Remus said, "then Neville Longbottom and Ron would have been better students than Harry and Hermione, and Severus wouldn't have such a high position in either the Order or the Death Eaters. He is a half-blood, after all."

Emma could have laughed, but she still had more to press.

"Fred's family..."

"Love you," Remus said kindly. "And he loves you, and that's all that matters. I think Arthur loves you all the more for your blood, if that's possible, and it makes you uniquely qualified for a very important job." She couldn't help it at that point. She began to laugh. Remus's face went instantly to confusion and he asked what was so funny.

"Remus, you know that the very same people who say I'm not worth anything are the ones who tell you that you're a monster."

His amber eyes grew dark and he shook his head, taking a step back.

"That's completely different, Emma."

"How so?" she pressed. "You're just as capable of magic as anyone else, as you've proven brilliantly for years. You've saved so many lives in the Order. You're a brilliant teacher. And you're one of the kindest people in the world, and that counts for more than the rest of it combined."

"I know this is about Tonks," he said, dropping his voice even lower. Emma raised a challenging eyebrow, and he said, "It's not like you and Fred. I could actually hurt her. Her reputation-"

"She wears her hair pink and falls all over herself on a regular basis," Emma retorted. "I really don't think she could give any less care to her reputation. And before you go saying anything about her father, Ted Tonks braved the Black family for love. I don't think he'd care about his daughter braving a few nights alone a month for love."

"It's not the same!" he insisted, his voice raising slightly in frustration. "It's just not the same!"

"You haven't said how," Emma pressed. "All you've done is tell me the same thing over and over. If it's so different, how is it different?"

Remus shook his head and paced to the far end of the pantry, obviously looking for words. After a long silence he said, "You and Fred are young and in love. You've known each other all your lives. There are no dark secrets. The most complicated thing in your lives is the war, and that's something that we all hope is temporary." He sucked in a sharp breath. "But what I am, maybe attitudes will change, but the condition never will. Even with the potion – which I won't have, because it's expensive and difficult to brew – I can't give her... I'm an old man, Emma. Age aside, I am an old man. And she's a young, vibrant woman." Emma opened her mouth to argue that she wasn't vibrant with her heart broken, but he raised a hand and she quieted. "And...and I can't give her children or a proper place to live or anything. She could lose her job, and she loves being an Auror."

Emma knew all of these things. She'd ruminated over them, trying to find a whole to poke at him through, and she'd been so certain she'd found it by pointing out similarities between the Muggleborn issue and his own condition. She was so sure. But she realized Remus, the ever-rational one, wasn't being rational about this. Because he was in love and afraid. And nothing made people through rationale to the wind like love and fear, and Emma knew better than most how crippling they could be combined.

Suddenly, Tien's offer to drug them was seeming more and more attractive by the minute.

"I'm sorry," she said softly. "I still think you're wrong, though."

Remus shook his head, gave her a sad smile and said, "It's all right, Emma. I appreciate you're honest about it, unlike Molly. It's refreshing that you can actually say what you're trying to say instead of berating me about it from an angle over tea."

After dinner, people began to file out, making their ways in ones and twos back to their homes, and Fred was helping his mother do the dishes, which Emma only had a moment to watch appreciatively before she heard someone clearing their throat behind her.

It was Snape.

"Professor," she said, frowning. "I thought you'd left already."

He said nothing, watching her for a moment before going up the stairs to the main part of the house. She glanced around the kitchen to make sure no one was watching, but even Albus Dumbledore was looking the other way and she slipped upstairs after him. In the sitting room, surrounded by the faces of the Black Family Tree, he looked out the window to the street down below.

"Strange," he said softly, his baritone voice filling the room in a strange way as she closed the door behind her. "Strange that the Blacks would raise their sons in a Muggle street such as this. I was raised in a Muggle neighborhood as well, in an equally foul house." Emma stopped in the middle of the room. "Smaller, though. Much smaller."

"Perhaps you were more alike than you realized," she said softly, nervous about where this could be going.

He turned around with a billowing swiftness that was surprisingly sharp and she took a single step back, proud of herself that she didn't stumble at all.

"Here I thought you were moderately clever," he said softly. His soft voice was more terrifying than yelling, the way she felt about her father growing up. If his voice got too quiet, she'd done something awful.

No surprises here what she had done. Comparing Snape to Sirius was a good way to get herself cursed, and she was actually surprised he hadn't done anything worse to her.

"I'll assume you didn't ask me to follow you all the way up here to give me opportunity to insult you," she said. "Nor for me to give you opportunity to insult me. What is it you needed to say?"

He turned slowly back toward the window and placed a hand on the sill.

"Soon enough," he said deliberately, "this house will become compromised."

Emma tensed. Why was he telling her instead of Dumbledore, instead of the rest of the Order? Perhaps he'd already told Dumbledore and Moody and they were working on securing it. Perhaps they didn't want people to panic.

But still.

"And why are you telling me?" she asked. "It's Harry's house. Not mine."

His lips twisted into a sort of smirk and he did not look at her. Instead he stared as a car went by on the street below before saying, "I know that there are still things here that likely mean something to you. Take them soon, before it's too late. You wouldn't want to forget them in a scramble."

Things of Sirius's.

She would have to think about what she might want, and of course ask Harry first, but she thought it was surprisingly thoughtful of Snape to give her that sort of warning. Whatever it was he thought he was going to eventually need from her, it was something huge. That was the only explanation: he wanted her to do something that she perhaps would be very opposed to doing. Or that would put her in danger. Or both.

"I assume," she said slowly, "that I'm not allowed to mention this to anyone."

"I recommend you grab things Lupin would want as well," he said, answering her question in his own way.

If she were to tell Remus this so soon, it would draw some sort of suspicion on her, likely, and she didn't want someone clever like Remus to think she was doing something suspect. Especially when he had experience with traitors.

"Thank you," she said softly. "Is that all?"

Snape turned to look at her with his fathomless black eyes and he just stared at her for a moment. Then he said, "You've done a good job of keeping unnoticed at the Ministry. Stay that way. The last thing you want is for everyone to know your name. And your parentage."

She said nothing, a shiver going down her spine as she thought of what she'd just said to Remus in the pantry. She'd been trying to goad him, but what if...?

Emma would not have asked him for clarification anyway, but before she would even have had a chance to, Snape had swept out of the room and she knew that minutes later he would be out the door and gone. She didn't bother looking out the window to see him Disapparate.

She walked over to the wall, touching her fingertips to the burn mark that once had Sirius's face in it's place. What would that have been like, having parents who would rather you not exist than take a path they didn't chose for you? Her parents would certainly have never chosen for her to be a witch, to be caught up in a war they couldn't possibly fight and didn't understand, to not be speaking to them for their own safety.

But she knew without their saying that they were proud of her and loved her anyway.

She traced the line of the tree out through Sirius's mother, across to his aunt and uncle, down to another such burn mark. If it had been any other family, Tonks would have been just below that mark. Emma had no such history in her family, and from what she gathered from Remus, he didn't either. If she traced her fingers along the right lines, there were Weasleys somewhere back on the line. Most of them were probably not on the tree, blood traitors that they were, but they belonged there even more than Tonks, as purebloods.

Standing in that room, feeling the weight of history on her chest, she decided perhaps she would wait on asking Tien for something to drug Remus with. In that moment, she understood his fears just a little bit better.