Previously in the Darklyverse: The Gryffindors realized Emmeline was under the Imperius Curse when she managed to get a letter to Peter, who forwarded it to Mary. Albert Runcorn won the election for Minister of Magic to the disappointment of the Order, who had reluctantly supported Barty Crouch Sr. Lily agreed twice to meet with Snape outside Canada.

xx

March 13th, 1982: James Potter

James pokes his head into the nursery where Alice and Remus have got Emmeline tied up, and he says, "You're not going to believe what Runcorn just did."

Alice has her hands full with Em, but Remus lowers his wand and turns around. "He hasn't—issued an edict that the Ministry is going to kill all the Muggle-borns or something, has he?"

James scoffs, "Hardly. He's convening a meeting of the International Confederation of Wizards. He's going to reach out to the rest of the world to request aid in the war effort."

"You're joking," says Remus loudly. Alice, distracted, lets her wand clatter to the floor, and Emmeline lies back in her bindings with sweat dripping from all over her body.

"I told you you wouldn't believe it. It's all right here," says James, holding up his copy of today's Prophet.

"What's he playing at? I don't believe for a second that he's really on our side."

"We'll find out sooner or later," James says grimly. "There has to be a twist. There has to be. Runcorn would never try to get aid for the war when he knows that the Death Eaters are willing to line his pockets and promote him."

"But this buys us time," says Alice. "If we can just figure out what he's planning—I mean, it's better than whatever Malfoy would have done, isn't it?"

Remus shakes his head. "We know from Snape that Malfoy is a literal Death Eater, but I honestly don't know if that's much worse than Runcorn when Runcorn is an opportunist who's willing to do anything to help the highest bidder as long as it greases his pockets and keeps him in power. Malfoy's ethics disgust me, but Runcorn has no ethics."

"We never had a chance, not from the moment we backed Crouch," James says.

"Crouch was our best hope," says Alice, twisting her lips.

"There was no hope!" James explodes. "We never should have pinned all our chances on someone so controversial in the public eye, someone who so quickly rose and then fell in public favor. We needed someone more progressive—someone with a strong reputation—someone like—"

"Lily," Remus says, sighing. "We needed someone like Lily."

James's eyes flick back over to Emmeline, who's slumped down on the floor and moaning a little. Even after two hours of Remus and Alice breaking into her mind enough that she ought to be in agony, her expression is dazed, vacant—she's clearly still under the influence of the Curse.

"Let me take over for a while," says James. "Go get something to eat. I made eggs."

"James, it's the middle of the night here."

"Al, it's not going to kill me to stay up an extra twenty minutes while you and Remus eat something."

Alice picks up her wand from the ground, and she and Remus shuffle out, Remus clapping James on the back as he goes. Sighing, James crouches down onto the ground so that he's face-to-face with Em and pulls out his wand.

The Order managed to devise a method to break the Imperius Curse back when James was still stuck at Hogwarts. It's not pretty. To his understanding, it uses the same sort of old magic that the Hogwarts founders put on the Sorting Hat a thousand years ago—the kind that lets you see into somebody's mind and project your own thoughts of your choosing onto theirs. It's like Legilimency, except a little more two-directional—although the person you're using the spell on can only hear the thoughts of yours that you decide you want them to hear.

He mutters the incantation and aims his wand straight for Emmeline's temple. Instantly, James can feel that strange sense of divisiveness in his mind—like he's still got his sense of self, but he can feel inside her mind, too, like looking through a sort of mental window. He can feel the sense of emptiness and peace that she feels, but he can tell that it doesn't belong to him—he can retain his own feelings of urgency and self-awareness.

Em, he thinks hard. Em, I need you to remember. How did you feel before the good feelings came? Who did this to you?

You can't take It away from me. I won't let you.

Emmeline, you're not yourself. You were worried about Runcorn. You were worried about Peter. You remember how much you loved him, don't you? You remembered enough to write him a letter.

I don't need Peter, comes Em's reply. Needing Peter would disappoint It.

He wrote back, did you know that? He sent your letter to Mary. He said to stop trying to contact him, but you wouldn't have tried if you didn't need him. You do need him. Everyone needs someone, and he's yours. Em, I need you to be you again so that you can bring him back.

It's a low blow—because the idea that James could want Peter to come home is a flat-out lie—but if it will bring Emmeline back to them, James isn't above it. You don't want him back, comes her reply, and for just a moment, he can hear it in the cadence of her thoughts—she's still in there. And all I need is to do what It tells me, she adds, and the glimmer of hope that James momentarily felt starts slipping away again.

Being inside Emmeline's head is exhausting work, even considering that he's just sitting there on the floor without moving. It takes a lot out of you to try to think loudly enough to get through the fog that washes over somebody who's been Imperiused—and not just to think loudly enough, but to reason with them, to find the argument that will convince them to want to fight the fog off. James had been sure that bringing up Peter would be the tipping point to make Em start trying to fight off the curse, but in retrospect, that was probably overly optimistic of him: he knows already that it usually takes a day or two before someone Imperiused starts fighting, and another day or two after that for them to actually break the curse.

James has never been on the receiving end of the process, but he's got to imagine that it's unpleasant work for the victim—especially because the Order never lets people under the Imperius Curse take a break to sleep. It's not like they're applying the Cruciatus Curse or anything to anybody, but he knows that sleep deprivation is its own form of torture. It's a trade-off: allowing the victim to sleep in between spell sessions seems to make their progress restart entirely, but the pain and frustration of being exhausted seems to make people want even more desperately to slip back into the sense of comfort afforded to them by the Imperius Curse.

When Alice returns to take over for him, James slips out of the nursery and digs eagerly into the last of the eggs, suddenly famished from exerting all that energy. Remus is still up, chatting with Lily at the table, and James says, "Go to bed, mate. You're on the same schedule as me and Lily, and it's like midnight here."

"I will when you do," says Remus, shrugging. "Anyway, I don't work tomorrow since it's still the weekend, so I can afford to mess up my schedule a little."

"So I talked to Sirius while you were in there with Em and Alice earlier, Remus," says Lily. Remus chokes on a mouthful of eggs. "He says he'll come by tonight after the Order meeting—so in the afternoon on our clocks—and take a turn working with Em for a while."

"That's good," says James a little thickly. A bit of lettuce spills out of his mouth and lands on his robes, and Lily rolls her eyes fondly at him.

"I'm hoping that seeing Sirius will spark something," Lily continues. "They were always so close, you know, up until fourth year. He's not Peter, but that has to still mean something, doesn't it?"

"He was one of the only people Em said goodbye to before her suicide attempt," says Remus quietly. "I know it was years ago, but…"

"And they've gotten closer since then—at least a little. They worked the same shifts at Scrivenshaft's for years," says Lily, as if that settles it.

James doesn't think that Sirius and Emmeline are as close as Lily seems to wish, but who knows?—maybe Sirius will be the one who turns the tide. It would be rare for it to happen within the first twenty-four hours of the process, but it's not unheard of.

For his part, in a twisted way, James is almost sort of glad to have Em here—to be trying to break her from the Imperius Curse. It gives him something to focus on—a concrete goal that can be achieved in a few days, unlike literally every other situation he's facing in his life right now.

And he's not just thinking about the losing war the Order is fighting or the fact that James has been relegated to the sidelines for the past two years. No, he's also thinking about Lily—specifically, the relationship between Lily and Snape.

They haven't talked about it since it happened, but James is fully expecting Snape to want another meeting with Lily when he's found out what he finds out about which of Voldemort's Horcruxes might be in Death Eaters' possessions, and he's pretty sure that Lily is going to agree to it. However horrified Lily may be by Snape's morals, there's apparently a piece of her that hasn't let go of him, that maybe even wants to be the one to rehabilitate him (as if that's possible). What horrifies James is that Lily would risk her life by leaving Canada to see Snape. He doesn't think Lily would have Sirius bring Snape into the Fidelius Charm, but even if she did, that wouldn't be any better: in a less immediate sense, she'd be risking James's and Harry's lives, too, by doing so.

It's goddamn hypocritical, is what it is. She won't let him help Dumbledore find the Horcruxes—says James has an obligation to stay alive for Harry—but she'll put herself in harm's way just because Snape asks it?

On the surface, their behavior toward each other is perfectly pleasant, but sometimes, when there's a lull in the conversation, James's eyes meet Lily's and she looks… well, it just doesn't look like it's James that she's thinking about.

They never go to sleep at the same time anymore, and for his part, James knows he's trying to avoid being alone in bed with Lily and all its implications. They haven't really touched since before—before Snape.

That afternoon, as Remus is departing with Alice for the Order meeting, James looks at Lily and then looks quickly away. "I'll take over with Em."

"Thanks," she mutters.

And he wants to say—something, anything, to get back to where they were just weeks ago, so that he can know that Lily loves him, chooses him, wants to put her old life behind her. But he doesn't, because he's afraid of what she might say if he seeks it.