October 28th, 1977: Emmeline Vance
Increasingly, it's hard for Emmeline to care about pretty much anything in her life, and that includes the Order and War Stories. Even with a meeting with Dorcas coming up the next night, Emmeline can't even focus on that. Can't focus on anything these days, really, except for the black pit where her chest used to be that hovers over all of her days.
Peter's the only one who really knows what's going on, so it catches Emmeline completely off guard when Sirius comes up to her in the common room and says, "Can we talk?"
Thinking about it, they haven't really had a one-on-one conversation since the disastrous day that Emmeline admitted to him that his cousin killed her parents. Not that Emmeline thinks he's still angry about the way that conversation played out, when Emmeline misinterpreted his signals and thought they might be able to go back to the romantic relationship they were on the verge of having in fourth year—but she had just kind of assumed that Sirius realized that he doesn't still feel much of anything for Emmeline anymore and wasn't interested to forge a new path with her as friends.
Still a little taken aback, she follows him to the other end of the common room, where they grab a couple of abandoned armchairs. Sirius looks like he's debating with himself what he wants to tell her, but eventually he makes up his mind and says, "Peter told me that you've been having a hard time lately. You don't have to talk about anything you don't want to, but I just wanted to, well, let you know that I'm sorry, and—I'm here."
Emmeline looks away. "I can't believe him," she mutters. "He told everybody, didn't he?"
Sirius hesitates and then says, "Last month. Look, don't be mad at him, okay? He's just looking out for you."
She doesn't dare say it out loud, but she wonders what took Sirius all of a month to approach her, knowing how bad she's been feeling. "It's my business," she protests, "and you can't help anyway. There's nothing anybody can do. I don't even know what the root problem is."
"Sometimes there doesn't need to be a problem," Sirius says gently. "Sometimes, things just suck. Have you thought about—uh—talking to Madam Pomfrey?"
"Madam Pomfrey?" says Emmeline, baffled for a moment. "I'm not sick."
"In Muggle Studies, they tell us that Muggles have doctors who can talk to them and prescribe medication for, you know, mood stuff. It's one thing if your environment is causing your depression, but if it's just depression coming out of nowhere—"
"Who says I'm depressed?" she says defensively.
"You avoid anybody but Peter and any conversation where people expect you to participate. Peter says you don't have the motivation to study or make plans for the Order or anything. And you just said yourself that you don't know what the problem is."
"I mean, I know—we killed two people, Sirius. How do you expect me to react to that?"
"I'm not saying that what you're feeling doesn't make sense," says Sirius carefully. "I'm just saying you don't have to feel it alone, and there might be a way to feel—well—better."
"Sirius, we're not supposed to feel better about what happened. It's like I'm the only one—it's like everyone else forgot. Everyone's just going on with their lives like…"
Sirius presses his lips together and doesn't respond for a moment. Finally, he says, "Trust me, no one forgot. No one did. But you're supposed to deal with it and heal and—and make it a part of you, not let it overpower everything else that you're made of."
"Millie and Elisabeth don't get to heal," Emmeline argues. "If they can't, then we shouldn't, either."
Sirius sighs. "Look, Em—do you want me to be there for you or not?"
"What does that even mean, though?"
"For someone to—check up on you, and listen when you want to talk about it, and not leave."
"Really? Because you let me go in fourth year, and you left in sixth year when I tried to make things right."
"Emmeline," says Sirius, and Emmeline can tell that she's testing his patience but can't seem to stop herself, "I can't change the past, but I'm here now, and I'm trying, okay? I'm trying."
I know, Emmeline sort of wants to say, but it's been a long three years since she decided to abandon all of her friends in the wake of her parents' death, and sometimes she doesn't know how to stop. She feels like she's going to cry, but she manages to hold it in. "How did we get here, Sirius? What happened to fourth year when everything was so simple?"
"I don't know," Sirius admits. "But I want to help. Will you let me do that?"
"How do I trust you?"
He lets out a whooshing breath. "What did I do to make everyone think they can't trust me? Look, whatever happened between us happened. It's over now."
"Not for me," says Emmeline shakily.
Sirius stands up, walks right up to the edge of Emmeline's armchair, and grabs her hands in his. "I'm going to go," he says, "but I'll be back. I'll keep coming back, if you want me to."
She spends the next twenty minutes berating herself in her head for not just backing down and accepting Sirius's goodwill, and she probably would have kept on going the rest of the night if Peter didn't eventually come up to her and grab the chair that Sirius vacated. "You make it very hard for me to help you," he says seriously.
"I know. I'm sorry. I don't know what's wrong with me."
"Years of trauma, probably," says Peter, but he sounds like he's holding in a smile.
"Why do you think Sirius is bothering to talk to me, anyway? I thought he had, you know, moved on."
"Do you want the optimistic answer or the pessimistic one?"
"Definitely pessimistic," says Emmeline sourly, and Peter laughs.
"Worst case? He's messed up about whatever is going on between him and Marlene and Remus, and he's trying to salvage the relationships he thinks he can still have so that he doesn't have to be alone."
"You're right; that's dark," says Emmeline, laughing too. "What is the deal with him and Remus and Marlene?"
"I don't actually know," Peter admits. "I think Sirius just told James, because James has been acting really weird around Marlene and Remus the last few days, but nobody's said anything to me about it one way or the other."
"I hope one of them talks to you soon. Not that I'm trying to get you to tell me what's up or anything! I just mean, you boys are supposed to be best friends, and they shouldn't leave you out."
Peter shrugs. "It's fine. They'll tell me when they tell me."
Emmeline feels a swell of love and appreciation for this easygoing, unruffled boy who never pushes anybody and always makes do with how others treat him. "Never change, Peter, okay?" she says, and Peter smiles.
xx
The Order meeting goes, well, fine, but it's nothing to write home about. The eleven of them all slip past the mirror and crowd into the mouth of the passageway behind it, and Dorcas emerges from the other end five minutes later, hair plastered to her face and sweat collecting under the armpits of her black robes. "Thanks for meeting me here," she tells them. She looks infinitely older than she did when she was in school with them just a few months ago—older and tireder and wiser.
"How's everything with you?" James asks. "How's Fabian?"
"I'm fine. He's fine. Gideon still hates him for dating me, but you know," says Dorcas, brushing it off with a laugh. "Makes Order meetings more interesting, having the three of us all there together."
"And the Order is doing well?" Marlene presses.
"Oh, we're just fine. We had that scare with Doc Dearborn last month, but he's back from it, and he's fine. We're doing a lot to work on recruitment, which isn't going well, but we're also making a big push to identify people potentially leaking information to Voldemort and determining whether they're Death Eaters in training or just Imperiused. We've even managed to get a couple of formerly-Imperiused people to keep reporting back to them and then bring the information they collect from Death Eaters to us, which has been immensely helpful—although we unfortunately can't use all of the information our double agents provide us; we don't want to compromise their safety."
Emmeline is sure that the Order is doing more dangerous work than just what Dorcas is sharing with them, but she doesn't care enough to press the point. There's scattered talk about Order business for a few minutes, and then Dorcas asks, "But what about you lot? How's everything going at Hogwarts?"
"It's—well, it's going," says Benjy.
"To be fair, War Stories is going really well—that's the student org we founded to try to spread awareness throughout the student body," Alice says.
"Love it," says Dorcas, nodding. "What sorts of topics have you covered?"
Lily says, "James and I have been heading it up, and we've mostly covered pureblood privilege—you know, pointing out ways that purebloods are treated better in society and hardships Muggle-borns face that purebloods probably aren't even aware of. We've done some exercises reading out statements and examples, and we've also had a lot of conversations about examples from the lives of people in the audience. I think it's been successful so far at accomplishing what we've attempted with it."
"That's great, Lily, and good job all of you who've been contributing to that. Is there any support you need from the Order carrying this org out? Any information we could provide to give you points to talk about?"
"It would be good to have more concrete stuff on the Ministry," says James. "You know, actual laws that are in place to hold up pureblood supremacy as an institution."
"I can do that for you, yeah. In the meantime, I know of a few reference books in the Hogwarts library that should help you find more of what you're looking for…"
They pass some time talking about book recommendations and pureblood-favoring employment practices at the Ministry and common in wizarding businesses. Eventually, Sirius says, "Besides War Stories, is there more that we can be doing over here to improve things? You know, conversation only gets you so far if the only people who are listening are the people who already agree with you."
"That's very true," says Dorcas, "and yes, there are a couple of things the Order suggested, firstly—promoting inter-house unity, especially between Slytherin House and the others. I know—believe me, I know—but if we don't reach out to them, we run a much higher risk that they'll congregate exclusively and spread supremacist ideals among all of them. I'll let you all take some time over the next few weeks to think about how you want to implement that, and I'll check back in in about a month or so. If you're stuck, we can brainstorm together, but take some time and see what you come up with, yeah?"
Dorcas leaves shortly after that, citing Order business she needs to get back to. "Does anybody else feel like the rest of the Order is having Dorcas handle us with kid gloves?" asks Eddie with a frown once they're all back out from behind the mirror.
She doesn't say so, but privately, Emmeline agrees. Dorcas and the others are obviously busy with tasks that will actually make a difference, as opposed to what the Hogwarts students are doing on the ground, which is a fat lot of busywork that probably won't make an actual impact. Where Emmeline and Eddie differ is that Emmeline can see exactly why Dumbledore and Dorcas have slapped them with nothing substantial, and she can't say she disagrees with their judgment.
Best to restrain the enthusiasm of the kids who got Millie LeProut and Elisabeth Clearwater killed.