Previously in the Darklyverse: After her suicide attempt, Emmeline was discharged from St. Mungo's, where she had a very negative and disrespectful experience. While avoiding Marlene, Mary grew closer to Emmeline.

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May 2nd, 1978: Emmeline Vance

Ever since she got out of St. Mungo's, Emmeline's whole strategy has been to keep her head down and avoid attracting any kind of attention that might result in her getting put back into the hospital. It's worked so far. Dumbledore sat down with her when she first was discharged for an excruciating twenty-minute sit-down where he pressed her to see whether she was really okay to be released and jump back into her old life at Hogwarts. She must have passed the test because he let her go without comment, and no one has interrupted her daily routine to try and talk to her since then.

She's starting to think that maybe, just maybe, she got away with it and won't face any long-term repercussions. That's not to say that what happened didn't affect her: she thinks about slitting her wrists all day every day, wishing it would have worked, wishing she would have just told Peter or someone what was going on so that she could have been spared that horrible hospital stay, not knowing which part of history it is that she wants to rewrite. But she's internalized what happened as just another story to tell, like her parents' murders: it can't hurt her if it's over.

So Emmeline feels a thrill of dread when Professor McGonagall asks her to stay behind after Transfiguration that morning. Peter hangs back awkwardly outside the doorway for her as Emmeline approaches McGonagall's desk with her legs shaking and her hand clamped in a death grip on her bag. She hasn't done anything since she got out; surely McGonagall won't—?

"Professor Dumbledore wishes to speak with you tonight. Meet him in his office at eight o'clock sharp. Do you know the way there?" Emmeline nods. "Excellent. The password is 'Pumpkin Pasties.' Off you get, now."

"What was that about?" Peter asks as Emmeline falls into step with him. She's still wobbly on her feet.

"Dumbledore wants to see me tonight," she answers. Her voice comes out shaky, too.

"Did she say why?"

"It's obvious, isn't it? He wants to check up on me and see if he has to send me back to St. Mungo's."

"I'm sure he won't do that," Peter tries to reassure her. "He's got no evidence that you've done anything other than try to get your life back together since you got out. I'm sure you're not going back there as long as—well—as long as you don't try to hurt yourself again. But you haven't, right? So you should be good."

"Right," says Emmeline distantly, thinking hard about Dumbledore and not paying a ton of attention to Peter's words.

They split up when they get back to the common room: Peter catches up with Remus and Sirius, while Emmeline goes to find Mary, who's engrossed in her Arithmancy textbook in a back corner of the room. She has to say, she hadn't been expecting Mary to be her closest companion upon getting out of the hospital, but then, she hadn't banked on Mary and Marlene having some kind of massive rift and splitting up the Gryffindors. Emmeline likes spending time with Mary, though: she's maybe still a little shallow, but she has a good heart and she's smarter than people give her credit for, even if she's not the strongest at magic.

Back when Emmeline's parents had died and she was busy hating all the Gryffindors on principle, Emmeline found Mary fairly annoying, what with the way she prattles on about gossip that Emmeline couldn't give a damn about. That, of course, was before Mary massively reinvented herself last year into someone who Emmeline—well, it's still the same Mary, she's still chatty and loud and curious and a little rude, but she reads the Daily Prophet now instead of Witch Weekly, and Emmeline just has more to say to Mary now that they're sort of back onto the same page.

That isn't to say that only Mary has paid Emmeline any attention since she got back; Peter has been around, too, of course, and the others have been popping in and out of Emmeline's schedule every day to make her feel like somebody, well, cares. But Mary has certainly been the most consistent presence in Emmeline's life lately, and she's grateful for it.

She waves to get Mary's attention; Mary looks up from her notes and waves back with a smile. "How was Transfiguration?"

"Oh, it was fine. McGonagall—uh—she told me that Dumbledore wants to see me in his office tonight."

"Oh, lord. Are you okay about that? Do you want me to, like, walk you there or anything?"

"It'll be fine, I'm sure. I'm probably just overthinking it," says Emmeline with a smile that she doesn't feel in her eyes. "Sure, yeah, I can go with you. Thanks."

"No problem," says Mary. "I think I'm going to have to track down Rem or someone to help me parse this because I have no idea what's going on in this class this week."

"He's probably in the library with Alice and Sirius," Emmeline says. "She's been spending a lot of time with the two of them lately. And Alice is in Arithmancy, too, right?"

Mary nods and slams her textbook shut on her notes. "I'll track them down later tonight. Time to switch gears and work on something I'm actually decent at," she says, hoisting up her Care of Magical Creatures book instead and getting to work.

From then until after dinner, when she's walking nervously over to Dumbledore's office with Mary in tow, Emmeline's mind races with anticipation of what Dumbledore's going to have to say to her. He's not going to accuse her of lying or covering up self-harming behavior, is he? Will he give her an ultimatum—that she has to meet some demands in order for him not to send her to the hospital again? Will he interrogate her about how she's been feeling and spending her time?

She arrives a few minutes early and thanks Mary, who turns to go, but—Emmeline can't quite bring herself to enter the office. She finds herself pacing up and down the corridor outside of the stone gargoyle, eyeing her watch and waiting… waiting… until finally, it ticks eight o'clock. She considers delaying it a few minutes more and just showing up a bit late, but that would be total cowardice at that point, and Emmeline has enough of a sense of Gryffindor shame not to want to be a coward. So she says "Pumpkin Pasties" and edges past the gargoyle and up the spiral staircase.

Dumbledore ushers her in when she knocks on the door, which is a bit ajar. "Take a seat," he implores her, waving his wand and generating a red chintz armchair. "Make yourself comfortable."

Emmeline doubts that anything about this meeting is going to be anywhere close to comfortable, but she sits down without saying anything. Dumbledore must see in her face how she's feeling because he smiles gently and says, "You're not in any trouble. In fact, I want to know what we can do for you."

"What you can…?"

"Miss Vance, it's been nearly four months since you were discharged from St. Mungo's." Emmeline nods, not sure where he's going with this. "Do you feel like you're receiving adequate support here at Hogwarts for your—er—condition?"

"I—uh—I've been meeting with Madam Pomfrey every week like Professor McGonagall asked me to. She monitors my health and—um—asks me some questions about how I'm feeling and how things are going."

"Madam Pomfrey tells me that you seem to be doing quite well based on your checkups," says Dumbledore, smiling again. "But are just your weekly checkups adequate? Do you feel you would benefit from someone else to talk to on a regular basis, perhaps, or more frequent meetings?"

"I… don't understand," Emmeline says finally. "I've been doing everything you asked for."

"And it seems like you're doing exceptionally well," says Dumbledore, "but then, we could have said the same about you at the beginning of last December just prior to your suicide attempt."

"So you're saying I've been hiding things?"

"I'm saying that it is easy for those of us who don't know you very well to assume that everything is fine when it's in fact the opposite. I understand that your sister, Jacqueline, influenced several officials in the Ministry to call for your release from St. Mungo's against medical advice." Emmeline nods dumbly. "I don't want to send you back there," he says now, and something in Emmeline's spine relaxes a little. "But I do want to ensure that the faculty here and I are doing everything we can to ensure that you don't—make another attempt like you did before."

"I'm fine," says Emmeline, albeit with a little less of her earlier urgency. "My friends are keeping an eye on me, and I'm not spending any time—trying to figure out what else I can do that will stick this time, you know—and things feel less… less hopeless."

"I'm glad to hear that. I understand that St. Mungo's… is far from perfect," says Dumbledore, and Emmeline holds in a scoff. "I, for one, was delighted that, when you were discharged, you seemed to be doing well enough to return to school and resume your studies."

"Yes. I just want my life to go back to normal."

"I want that for you, too," he says. "I know that the wizarding world's capacity for dealing with these sorts of problems is… lacking, but all any of us have ever wanted for you was for you to return to your old life feeling better and with better strategies for dealing with—your emotions."

There's a pause, and then Emmeline says, "Is that all, then?"

Dumbledore looks disappointed, like he'd wanted to talk longer, but frankly, Emmeline had her fill of conversations about her mental health when she was in the hospital—if no one ever asks her how she's feeling ever again, it'll be too soon. "One last thing," he tells her. "Are your meetings with Miss Meadowes working out well? She reported to the rest of the Order that there's been some frustration about the types of tasks she's been passing along to those of you still in school."

"Well, we'll do more when we graduate in two months, won't we? It's not that much longer to wait. And—I get it. We messed up last year, and you don't want us going rogue again, so you give us minor stuff we can do to keep occupied until we're of age. I get that."

Dumbledore looks thoughtful, but whatever's going on in his mind, he doesn't verbalize it. "That will be all. Thank you, Miss Vance," he says, inclining his head to her.

When she leaves, she finds Mary waiting for her at the bottom of the spiral staircase. "I thought you'd gone back to the common room to study," says Emmeline.

"Yeah, well, I changed my mind. Figured you'd need somebody more than I needed to get a head start on studying for the night."

"Thank you," says Emmeline, and she means it.

"What did Dumbledore want?"

"To make sure I'm getting enough support now that I'm back here."

"And what did you tell him? Are you?"

Emmeline thinks—really thinks—about it for a moment and then says, "Yeah, actually, I think I am."

Back in the common room, Mary leads Emmeline over to James, Lily, and Peter, who have commandeered the coveted spots by the fireplace to work. "What took you so long?" asks James. "Dinner ended ages ago."

"Thought we'd try to get some work done in the library," Mary lies smoothly, "but we were having trouble focusing."

"So you thought you'd come to noise central up here?"

"I never said the plan was well thought out," says Mary, grinning.

They've been working for a good, solid hour before Emmeline looks up and—there's Sirius. "Em, can I talk to you for a sec?" he says.

She shrugs and gets up, following him out of the portrait hole on a winding walk around the corridors. He looks like he's grappling with himself over something serious, so Emmeline is a little surprised when he simply says, "Are you doing okay these days?"

Emmeline really needs to learn to stop expecting people to say the worst-case thing when they talk to her, but after the ordeal at St. Mungo's, she doesn't know how long it's going to take her to unlearn that assumption. She and Sirius haven't talked a lot since she got out—they've had a couple one-on-one conversations here and there and some interactions in groups—and Emmeline is starting to accept that maybe she's not meant to have a future with Sirius where they're anywhere near as close they used to be up until fourth year. But Sirius wants to know if she's all right, and—right now, it's enough for Emmeline just to know that he's paying attention, that he cares. If they make up and become best friends again in the future—great. If not, at least she'll know that there's mutual fondness and respect.

"I'm all right. I think I'm really all right," she says, and she means it.