Previously in the Darklyverse: Alecto Carrow poisoned Remus to retaliate against Peter for refusing to share more information about the Order of the Phoenix (to which he relented as soon as Remus recovered). Emmeline struggled with depression. Sirius tried to repair his friendship with Emmeline.

Revised version uploaded 25 January 2022.

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December 5th, 1977: Emmeline Vance

It's been officially one month since Madam Pomfrey saved Remus from being poisoned, and instead of out there celebrating with the rest of the Gryffindor seventh years, Emmeline is holed up in a bathroom stall with a razor blade between her fingers. It's not like she's considering using it—well, not seriously considering it, anyway—but it makes her feel sort of safe to know that she has an escape route in her hands, literally. God knows she hasn't wanted to be in this world in a while now, and keeping the escape hatch open means she doesn't feel so trapped all the time.

Unfortunately, she's probably hidden for as long as she can get away with tonight without attracting attention. The last thing Emmeline wants is another bathroom intervention from Sirius and Peter, so she stashes the blade in her sock and takes off on a brisk walk back to Gryffindor Tower.

Inside the common room is a mess of people all drinking butterbeers and practically screaming to be heard over the loud music blasting from somebody's WWN. Remus and the others are sitting over by the hearth, so Emmeline follows them over and plunks herself down on the warm stones with her back to the fire.

"Hey," she says by way of greeting, accepting the butterbeer that Mary passes her.

"Glad you made it," says Lily, and Emmeline smiles timidly.

This isn't so bad, she thinks as she settles in and nurses her drink. Nobody's really expecting anything out of her besides that she just show up and blend in, so she's able to hunch forward with her elbows on her knees and just listen, which doesn't feel terrible. It seems pretty much like everyone has set apart their differences for the night for Remus's benefit; for his part, Remus looks like he's enjoying himself. Peter is very badly trying to teach him guitar, which is resulting in a lot of misunderstandings because Peter doesn't really know enough to know how to answer most of Remus's questions, and as they go back and forth with it, Remus is laughing. It's entertaining enough to watch for a few minutes, and Emmeline tries to tell herself, look—see these moments? If she died today, she'd give up all of this.

Between hanging out in the common room without any expectation that she contribute to conversation, and never being conscious again, she's not totally sure whether she'd pick this over oblivion or the other way around. That's probably worrisome, but Emmeline doesn't feel worried. Emmeline doesn't feel much of anything at all.

It becomes sort of like a game to her: would she rather be here, wherever that may be, or dead? After the party, up in the dormitory with the girls, she'd rather be dead, but she'll take falling asleep as an alternative. At breakfast the next morning, she could go either way again. In Transfiguration, where she's miserably failing at turning Peter into a cat, death is definitely the better option.

But she keeps the razor safe in her sock and doesn't pull it back out to examine it until it's nearly bedtime that night. This time, she holds it up to her carotid artery in her neck and asks herself, does she really understand all the ramifications of death? There'd be no do-over, no more chances to try to improve her life or find meaning in it. She doesn't know what comes after this life, but if she wants to find out, she'd better be prepared for and okay with the possibility that nothing comes next, that her consciousness will pop out of existence and she'll cease to experience anything at all.

She's not ready for this, she tells herself. If she's at the point where "here" sometimes still wins the here-or-dead game, then she doesn't want it badly enough to do anything about it.

Not yet.

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Peter made a valiant effort to get the other Gryffindor seventh years to be there for Emmeline, but as far as she can tell, he's still the only one who really notices when she's there. She would be perfectly happy to have no other friends but him if not for the fact that she worries that she's forcing him to isolate from the rest of his friends when, actually, he would have plenty of them if not for her.

She knows Peter would be sad if Emmeline died. Correction: Peter would probably be destroyed if Emmeline died. But he would eventually pick up the pieces with the help of his large support network and move on with his life. Meanwhile, Emmeline's entire support network is Peter, and she doesn't want to put the burden on him to save her. It's not fair, troubling one person to be your everything, and Emmeline is harder for anyone to keep afloat than pretty much anyone else she can think of would be.

So she starts—well—saying goodbye, really. She starts with Peter, of course, pulling him aside after dinner. They wind up in his dormitory, sitting side by side on the edge of his bed, as she tells him, "I could never have asked for a better friend than you've been to me this last year especially. You reached me and I heard you at a time when I was actively pushing everybody away, and even though I had completely sabotaged our relationship, you heard me out and kept my secrets and basically put the rest of your social life on pause to make sure I had somebody. I just want you to know that I saw you and that what you did mattered. It mattered a lot."

Peter smiles, lacing his fingers through hers. "That's really sweet, Em, thank you. I mean it. It's so good to see you feeling a little better."

She smiles, even though the assumption that she's doing better hits her where it hurts. "I just wanted you to know," she says awkwardly.

There are really only a few people Emmeline needs to talk to before she goes. Peter was one, obviously. Talking to Lily goes over quickly and smoothly: Emmeline thanks her for being her buddy on the outskirts of the Gryffindors through fourth and fifth years and for never pushing her to be somebody she wasn't.

That just leaves Sirius. She considers skipping this conversation entirely, but if she's going to die, it's not like she'll be around afterward to torture herself with the memory of how this goes.

So she gets him alone and tries to find the right words, even though she knows there probably aren't any where it comes to Sirius. "You were my first best friend," she tells him, "and I loved you, and that mattered. I still do love you, in a way, and I want you to be happy, no matter what that looks like."

"I—thanks, Em. I want you to be happy, too; you know that, right?"

It's probably lip service, but it's a kindness, anyway, and Emmeline takes it to heart. "I know," she tells him, and then she bolts out of there as fast as she can.

xx

It was a good plan, and it would have worked if little Meredith McKinnon hadn't had a head cold keeping her awake and stepped into the communal showers at two in the morning to try to clear up some of her congestion. Emmeline doesn't know this until after the fact, of course. From her perspective, she rips open the veins in her arms, fades to black, and wakes up a day and a half later in Peter's bed with the entire seventh year Gryffindor cohort hovering around anxiously and speaking in hushed tones.

Peter, who is sitting at the foot of his bed by her feet, feels her legs rustling and is immediately on her. "Emmeline Vance, you piece of shit. You complete trash. How dare you! How dare you make me think you're feeling better and then go and—go and—"

"I wasn't trying to hurt you," she croaks, and Peter scoffs. Everybody has stopped their side conversations and has come over to hover by Emmeline's head, and the whole effect makes her feel claustrophobic. "I couldn't tell you what I was planning on doing because then you would have stopped me."

"Of course I would have! And I should have! I should have known—how could you put that guilt on me for being with you the whole time and not realizing—!"

"Cut her some slack," says Lily softly. "How Em feels is the problem here, not how anything she did or tried to do affects anybody else."

"You could have told somebody," Peter goes on. "I mean, I knew you were struggling, but you could have told me—anyone—how bad they were getting."

"And what would you have done? Told Madam Pomfrey? Gotten me locked up in one of those mental wards in St. Mungo's?"

Everybody else exchanges significant looks, which just makes Emmeline feel even more frustrated. "What?"

It's Remus who answers, looking haggard. "When Marlene's little sister found you, she took you to Madam Pomfrey. She did what she did to save you and was keeping you for observation until you woke up. None of us knew until yesterday morning, when we couldn't find you anywhere all morning; Mary and Marlene happened to try the Hospital Wing and, well, found you."

There's a big pause, and then Emmeline demands, "So?"

"She would have taken you to Mungo's, and we knew you'd—anyone would be better off than in that place. So we, uh… well, actually, it was Lily, who—she sort of Obliviated Madam Pomfrey to erase her memory of what you did. And then she did it to Professor McGonagall—and then to Dumbledore—and to Meredith, obviously."

Emmeline pauses for a moment just to take that in. Well, now it makes sense why she's in the boys' dormitory rather than the Hospital Wing. They risked doing that big of magic, knowing full well it could very possibly fail, on people who could probably expel them for what they were trying to do, just to save Emmeline from the psych hospital? "I guess I should be thanking you, then," she says. "That's huge. That's—I don't know what to say."

"We think we pulled it off," says Alice, looking stressed. Come to think of it, everyone here looks stressed. Fair enough, really. "They would have kept it hush-hush to protect your privacy. And nobody has come calling from St. Mungo's wanting to know when you're going there, so we don't think anybody contacted them yet to tell them about you."

"But something has to change, Em," says Peter earnestly. "If we hide this trying to save you from the hospital, and you turn around and do it again, none of us will ever be able to forgive ourselves. Are you willing to try and get better? Because if you're not, we need to know that before this goes any further."

"I am," says Emmeline, mostly because she just wants to get that look off of his face. "I mean, I'll try."

"Okay then," says Lily. "In that case—we have some conditions."

No alone time—that's the first one. The Gryffindors literally drew up a timetable of who's going to watch Emmeline when, including when it's nighttime and all of them should be sleeping. (She figures that's fair: she did make her suicide attempt at two in the morning, hoping that that would help her get away with it.) No razors, including in the shower, so it's lucky that she already doesn't shave any of her body hair because she wouldn't be able to anymore, and speaking of the shower, she has to have another one of the girls in the adjacent stall anytime she wants to take one. No walking alone from meals to class and back—she has to have an escort at all times. No privacy. No peace and quiet. No more hiding behind Peter—she's got a whole schedule full of people ready to keep her company and talk her ear off.

She did this to herself, she keeps reminding herself. But she can't forget that she wouldn't be in this position if only her plan had worked.

Peter has her for most of that first day, which is a relief: at least she has someone she's comfortable around here to ease her into it. They're in the library when Peter bursts out, "Why did you do this thing, Em? How could you do that to us? I know it's not about us, but—how could you?"

"I couldn't see the point of going on anymore. Everything got so painful or discouraging or—even boring. I thought it was going to go on like that for the rest of my life."

"And do you still think it will?"

"I don't know," says Emmeline truthfully. "I guess it won't be boring anymore, now that I have people watching me twenty-four/seven."

"Do me one favor, okay?" says Peter. "Talk to us. I mean, actually talk to us as we—whatever you want to call it—chaperone you or whatever. Even if it's not me. Everybody is here for you; you just have to let us."

"I still can't believe you Obliviated half a dozen people, including the headmaster, to try and save me from St. Mungo's, knowing they might still figure out what happened and what you've done."

"You don't belong there," says Peter immediately. After a moment's thought, he adds, "I mean, you hear stories about the way patients are treated, and it makes me think that no one belongs there. I couldn't let them do that to you. I couldn't see that happen. Clearly, neither could Lily or any of the rest of us who were in on it. Listen, Em, just don't waste this, okay? Don't throw it away and end up dead or locked up, because those are your options the next time this happens, if there is a next time. You got a free pass this time, I hope, so use it, okay?"

"I'll try," she says, and maybe she really will.