Previously in the Darklyverse: After Sirius and the others broke her free of the Imperius Curse, Emmeline went on the run with Dumbledore to hunt Horcruxes, but without his knowledge, the rest of the Gryffindors worked on locating and destroying the ones they could without him. The basilisk Mary bred for its venom reached maturity, but not before injuring Mary and destroying her wand hand.

xx

May 4th, 1982: Emmeline Vance

"They have the basilisk fangs," Emmeline tells Albus as she throws down Sirius's letter. "If we go back now, we can destroy the ring tonight. And, uh—there's something else I need to tell you."

Albus doesn't give any indication that he's disappointed in her or her friends for what she's about to tell him. His eyes don't widen or narrow; his face doesn't crinkle; he merely stows his wand in his pocket and passes her the bowl of pot roast that he's just charmed to increase in quantity. It's been very, very strange, camping out in forests with Albus Dumbledore. He's not the kind of bloke she could have imagined living like this—you know, sitting in the mud, the seat of his robes all dirty and his bare hands stained from the same damn food they've been eating for nearly two months now, no utensils in sight. She's still not really used to thinking of him by his first name, but she got over her weirdness about him insisting that she call him "Albus" pretty quick after seeing him conjure up twin mattresses in the dirt and snore heavily from atop one of them that first night—seeing him drag Morfin Gaunt toward himself through the bars of his Azkaban cell and break into his mind.

He doesn't say anything, just watches her serenely while picking up a handful of messy beef and carrots, so she goes on, "We, um—actually, when we go back to get the fangs and destroy the ring, we won't have to come back here after. We've got the ring, and we know Malfoy has the diary and Lestrange has the cup, right? Or had it, anyway. My… my friends just got hold of the cup and three other Horcruxes all in one go. Three of them have already been destroyed, and that leaves everything in our possession except the diary, which Snape is working on."

"But how…?"

"The Sorting Hat," says Emmeline. "Lily said you can use it to get all four Hogwarts' founders artifacts, and we knew that Tom had targeted at least two of the four, didn't we? So Sirius brought Sturgis, Andromeda, and Frank into the castle to get them, and sure enough, all four objects appeared cursed. I don't think Prof—uh—Minerva was too happy with them for breaking into her office during dinner, but… well."

"I see," says Albus. They've been over this before—he didn't want anyone else chasing after Horcruxes—but it's not like he didn't already know that the Gryffindors were expressly disobeying his wishes, and he must know he couldn't have stopped them even if he'd tried. So he doesn't argue her on it, just chews a mouthful of potato and watches her out the corner of his eye.

It surprised her a little—okay, it surprised her a lot—when Albus agreed to let her come with him on his Horcrux quest. Why make an exception for Emmeline when he'd so clearly wanted to keep his mission under wraps? But he did reach out to James, before Lily shot that down, so it's not like there wasn't precedent. He probably just wanted to be sure that someone else knew the objectives, so that if he died in this line of work, the quest could continue. And who better to continue it than Emmeline, who's been hunted out of home by Death Eaters who would kill her in an instant for breaking free of Malfoy's Imperius Curse?

"You say they've destroyed three of the four?" Albus continues, spreading his legs out in front of him on the ground.

"Well—they destroyed the diadem, cup, and locket, but there was a hiccough with the fourth—with the Sword of Gryffindor. Sirius says they tried using basilisk venom on it, but the sword just…"

"Took in that which made it stronger," says Albus quietly.

She frowns. "How did you know?"

"The sword is goblin-made," he says, taking another handful of beef. If Emmeline never eats beef roast again in her life, it'll be too soon. It seems to take ages before he chews and swallows and adds, "Goblin-made artifacts can't be destroyed by the same things which to any other metal would be destructive. They only serve to strengthen them—imbibe them with their own qualities."

"So, what, we're stuck? There's nothing we can do? I don't even want to know how other means of destruction might affect the sword." She has a fleeting mental image of a great flaming sword teeming with Fiendfyre.

"If we take the sword to goblins, they may have their own magic that they can wield upon it."

"And you think we could find a goblin who'd be willing to help us? They haven't exactly chosen our side in the war, have they?"

Albus smiles wryly. "Truthfully, I expect any goblin would be horrified to see what Lord Voldemort had done to one of their most treasured artifacts. That alone may be motivation enough for them to want to break the curse."

They eat in silence for a few minutes, Emmeline reading and rereading Sirius's letter, tracing his handwriting with her eyes. The last time she talked to Sirius alone, he was apologizing for the things he said to her while she was under the Imperius Curse. The time before that, he was inside her mind, goading her with the memory of their first kiss—the memory of Peter.

Honestly? Her stomach sank like a stone when the owl arrived for her tonight. She'd lost track of how soon Mary's basilisk would reach maturity, clinging to every precious moment cavorting with Albus in search first of the ring, second of the locket. Now that they have the basilisk fangs, there's nothing left to do but to go back to her old life—but what life is even waiting for Emmeline back there?

Her boyfriend is in the wind, a traitor to the Order. Sure, he wrote to Mary expressing his concerns after Emmeline sent him that mortifying letter—but it's not like he came back for her. It's not like he's ever coming back for her, like she'll ever even know whether he helped her because he's ever loved her or just because he felt guilty. Ever since Sirius was inside her mind, she can't shake the strange, muddied, helpless waves of warmth that ran through her as he recounted their first kiss, and she has absolutely no desire to tease out what they meant. Her old flat is gone, a bedroom she's never seen before waiting for her while Mary, apparently, occupies it, and if she tries to go back to Scrivenshaft's or show her face anywhere in public on a regular basis, Death Eaters will surely track her down and kill her in cold blood.

Here in the wilderness with Albus, she could fling all of that aside for a few precious weeks and actually make a difference, for once. They found the ring, didn't they? She even managed to stop Albus from putting the thing on his finger, which would have killed him for sure. She's made a real, tangible contribution to the war—rescued Albus Dumbledore from certain death—tracked down a piece of Voldemort's soul to destroy so that, someday, somebody can destroy him.

And now she's supposed to go back. What, pray tell, is she supposed to be going back for?

"I…" says Albus, and Emmeline glances up from her pot roast, startled out of her own thoughts. "After the Horcrux inside it has been destroyed, I need to keep the ring. We can't just discard it."

"Why not? It won't still be carrying around a piece of Tom within it, will it? We should take the curse off after destroying the bit of soul, so that nobody inadvertently comes across it later and gets hurt, but after that—"

"The curse should be broken as soon as the soul is gone. But the ring…" Albus says heavily. He pauses with that overwhelmed look in his eyes, the same one he sported when they first found the ring in the floorboards of the Gaunt shack. "The ring may have other value."

"What are you talking about? What other value?"

"Remember this, Emmeline," he says, and his voice has taken on a sudden tone of urgency. "If you take the stone out of the ring and turn it three times in hand…"

But he seems to think better of whatever he's trying to tell her, scooping the last of his pot roast out of the bowl with his fingers and sucking it from them. She considers probing him further—if she takes out the stone and turns it over three times, then what?—but ultimately just shrugs and points her wand at the empty bowl in front of her. "Aguamenti," she mutters, filling it with water, and she raises the bowl to her lips and guzzles it all in one long pull.

"We should pack up," she says, rising to her feet. The bottom half of her robes are all caked in mud, and she siphons it off as best as she can with her wand. "The fangs are at the flat with Remus and Alice and Mary. I've never been to the new place, but I have the address here."

She wonders idly whether Mary is going to go home to Cattermole now that Emmeline will be reclaiming her bedroom. As far as she's been able to gather, Mary didn't tell him just how long she'd be gone, what she'd be doing, or how she sustained the basilisk bite to her hand and arm and has been avoiding him ever since. From what Emmeline can tell, too, Cattermole also has no idea what Mary told the other Gryffindors not long ago—that she's gay.

The time passes all too quickly as they Vanish their scant belongings. She tucks away her wand as Albus keeps his out and grips her forearm tightly in one hand. The next thing she knows, there's a pressing black all around them, and then they emerge in what Emmeline assumes is her own new bedroom—the shape of it is unfamiliar, but she recognizes her furniture and her green checkered bedspread, upon which Mary is sprawled with a journal in her lap and a quill in hand.

Mary jumps up as soon as the crack of Apparition sounds out in the room. "Em. Professor Dumbledore," she says quickly. "Are you—do you have—?"

"It's here," says Emmeline, and she carefully reaches for the pouch hanging from her neck. She loosens the drawstring and shakes out the ring, letting it fall onto the blankets of the bed.

With the pouch off her neck, she instantly feels lighter, some—but not all—of her agitation about the whole mess with Peter and Sirius and not having a life to come back to fading into the backdrop. "I have the fangs," says Mary, and she steps up to Emmeline's dresser and starts rummaging through the top drawer.

This is the first Emmeline has seen of her since the injury, and she eyes Mary's mangled hand while Mary's back is turned. At first glance, from what Emmeline can see below the hem of Mary's robe sleeve, it actually doesn't look that bad—there are white marks crisscrossing the skin, but they're faded, and the bones don't look crushed or anything. But as Mary tries to reach for the knob on the drawer with her bad hand, her elbow rises toward the drawer oddly while her forearm and hand hang limply at her side, and Mary curses under her breath and lets her arm drop, reaching out with the other hand instead.

Mary looks pained when she pulls out a large, sharp, porcelain-colored fang and deposits it in Emmeline's open hand. After a moment, Emmeline remembers Mary's attachment to the basilisk, her resistance to killing it after collecting its venom. She debates whether to say anything about it, but decides not to: she'd probably just make it worse.

"Uh," says Emmeline then, because it's not like a tooth is going to slice the metal and stone of the ring in half, even if it did come from a basilisk.

"Just the venom laced in the fang should be enough to do it," says Mary, seeming to sense the reason for Emmeline's hesitation. "You don't have to, like, break it open or anything. Just ram it along the side of it."

So Emmeline does so. There's a terrible, anguished shriek that emanates from the ring—a black cloud billows out around it, but it vanishes as soon as it appears—and then the ring drops back down onto the bed before she even realizes it's risen into the air. There's a black, tar-like substance oozing out of it from the point where it made contact with the fang, and Emmeline practically cringes thinking about trying to salvage her bedspread after this. She liked her bedspread.

And then Dumbledore is reaching forward to—

"Albus, don't—"

But nothing happens when Dumbledore grabs the ring and holds it up to his face, twisting it from side to side and inspecting it carefully. With effort, he wrenches the stone free of the metal encasing it. Setting the metal ring back onto the bed, he stares at the stone for a long moment, then, with what looks like incredible emotional effort, pockets it.

"Where is the Sword of Gryffindor?" he asks Mary, as if nothing unusual has just happened.

"It's at the Potters' house. We thought that would be the safest place to store it."

"I'll head there now. I'll need to take it to Gringotts straightaway."

"Gringotts?" says Mary.

"The problem is that it's goblin-made," answers Emmeline quietly. "Their magic might be able to—to reverse whatever it is that makes the sword indestructible, or perhaps to destroy the part of it that's a Horcrux."

"Thank you, Missus Cattermole," Albus says gravely. "I know you didn't want the basilisk bred—or killed."

"His name was Hatcher," says Mary, her eyes steely.

"Emmeline…"

And now they're looking at each other, and Emmeline doesn't have a clue what to say. What do you tell someone when you're parting ways after two months camping on rocks together and tracking down the few people who had memories of the man who would become Lord Voldemort? Take me with you, she wants to say to him, but it's not like he's going back into the woods—with no Horcruxes left to find, he's probably about to inform McGonagall that he's taking his headmaster post back, and Emmeline's place isn't at Hogwarts. The problem, of course, is that Emmeline's place isn't anywhere.

"When it's time, I want to do it," she finally says. "I want to kill Tom, or at least die trying."

Something flickers through Albus's eyes, and she realizes her wording was a bit suspect for someone who once spent weeks in St. Mungo's for attempting suicide. But Albus doesn't say anything about it. "All right."

"You have to tell me as soon as the goblins have destroyed the Horcrux in the sword—and Snape's gotten the diary."

"I will."

"There's something else you should know," says Mary. Emmeline startles—she'd quite forgotten that Mary was even there. "We think Runcorn has been embezzling funds from the Canadian Ministry, and we don't know what he's using them for. Alice is looking into it, but things could get ugly. If there's another election, and Malfoy wins it…"

Albus sighs. "We'll convene an Order meeting straightaway. I'll send Patronuses with the time and place."

"Sirius is on his way," Mary says to both of them now. "He figured he wouldn't be needed at Hogwarts anymore now that you two were coming back."

"I'll be sure to thank him for his service before he goes," says Albus.

And then Albus is gone, and Emmeline is left with nothing.

She doesn't want to see Sirius, but where's she going to run to? When she first got out from under the Imperius Curse—when they talked in James and Lily's bedroom the night after—she'd thought she could do this, be his friend again. Now that she's had time to come to grips with what happened between them in Lily and James's house, she never wants to look him in the eye again.

"You lot will have to figure out sleeping arrangements," says Mary. "I can go back to Reg tonight and give you your room back, but Sirius and Lockhart broke the lease on their flat when Sirius took the Transfiguration job, and—"

"He can have my room," says Emmeline suddenly. It hits her suddenly, and she doesn't allow herself even a moment to question it—to think about what she's about to do. "I have to go."

"Where? Dumbledore—"

"Peter. I have to find him."

"But… I mean, ignoring everything else wrong with that, we have no idea where Pettigrew is, and—"

"So I'll send him an owl," says Emmeline steadily, "and follow it on broomstick. My last owl found him, didn't it?"

"Em, you practically failed flying lessons in first year. I had to take you to the Hospital Wing myself during our second class."

"I'll take James's old Nimbus from when he was on the Quidditch team. I'll do okay on a good broom."

"But Em…" Mary looks like she's not going to let this go, and honestly, Emmeline can't blame her. "Are you sure you even want to see Peter? I mean, yes, when he found out you were in trouble, he contacted me. I'm not saying he's—that he's evil. But he betrayed all of us—you included. He fed information to the Death Eaters for years. For all we know, he's working with them now! He—"

"A bloody Death Eater put the Imperius Curse on me. I had to give up my job and my flat and my—my whole life. And Sirius is…"

"What does Sirius have to do with anything?"

"I just have to go," Emmeline whispers. "I can't stay here. And I deserve answers."

Mary sighs. "At least see your sister first. She's been writing, you know. She hasn't heard from you, and she's worried about you."

This time, Emmeline actually does wince. Since she's been gone, she's barely given a single thought to her sister. She received a couple of letters from her, that's true, but she didn't answer them—of course Jacqueline has been worried.

She considers dashing off a letter setting a time for dinner, but, well, Sirius is on his way now, and Emmeline wants to be long gone by the time he arrives. "I'm going to Apparate over there," she tells Mary. "Tell everyone… tell them I'll see them."

"You're not going to wait even one night? Lupe and Al will be home soon, and Sirius—"

"I'll see them later. I'm going to head over to Jacqueline's, and then I'll go see James and borrow Walsh and his Nimbus."

Mary looks like she doesn't want to let this one go, but she seems to recognize a losing battle when she sees it. Twisting her lips, she says, "I'll send my head over there and give him and Lily a heads-up that you're coming."

"Thanks," says Emmeline. She pulls out her wand, ready to step forward into black, but on second thought, first points her wand at her bedspread and does what she can to clean up what's left there of Voldemort's soul.

Jacqueline is home, lounging on the sofa, when Emmeline appears in her living room. "Emmeline," she breathes, and the next thing Emmeline knows, Jacqueline has leapt up and grabbed her shoulders and literally started to shake her. "Don't you ever do that to me again—"

"Hello to you, too, Jacqueline," says Emmeline, chuckling a little.

But Jacqueline clearly doesn't find it funny. "Your friend Alice told me you were on some insane suicide mission with Albus Dumbledore, of all people. Since when is Dumbledore your best friend? I know how deep you are with these people—I'm not stupid; I know you had something to do with those deaths when you were at Hogwarts, and I know you didn't just quit whatever it was you were involved in—but quitting your job and running off like this?"

They've never really spoken about the Order of the Phoenix before, and Emmeline's a little shocked: she and her sister aren't close, and she wouldn't have thought Jacqueline was actually going to go there. It's not like they talked at all about Elisabeth and Millie dying, and when Jacqueline leaned on her Ministry connections to get Emmeline free from St. Mungo's, they didn't really talk about that, either. She doesn't really know what to say, but that problem is quickly remedied when Jacqueline adds, "All of this—all these things you've gotten yourself mixed up in the last few years—this is about Mum and Dad, isn't it?"

"Mum and Dad? What do Mum and Dad have to do with—"

"They have everything to do with this," says Jacqueline. "If Death Eaters hadn't murdered them, you wouldn't have fallen into this depression. If they were still alive, you wouldn't have this insane need to avenge them."

"I'm not depressed anymore," she replies a little stiffly. "I know you were a Ravenclaw, but I'm a Gryffindor, Jacqueline. Insane vengeance missions are kind of our thing."

Jacqueline, still gripping Emmeline's shoulders, leans in and traps her in a hug. "We both know I can't stop you," she says, "but will you at least promise me you'll be careful before you go running off half-cocked again? You have a whole life here. If you throw it away—"

"It's already gone," says Emmeline. "I've—I've been fighting against the Death Eaters, and one of them put me under the Imperius Curse. I'm going to be on the run until this war is over, if I survive it."

She doesn't really know why she's telling Jacqueline this. Maybe the whirlwind of the last couple of months is just finally catching up to her, or maybe she's been alone with the same handful of people in the Order for company for too long. "God, Emmeline. You're going to let this war run you down until it kills you, aren't you?"

"I shouldn't tell you anything more. If they come after you, I don't want you to know anything they could use against you."

"At least stay for a few hours before you go," Jacqueline pleads. "Give me a chance to talk you out of it, you know?" She sounds like she's only half joking.

One night here can't hurt—she knows that, and it's not like it would be good timing to track Peter down in the middle of the night, anyway. But she can't stay. If she stays, she'll just continue to horrify Jacqueline with what she's become, and Emmeline can't stand to see her reflection in Jacqueline's eyes.

For the second time tonight, she whispers, "I have to go. I'm sorry, Jacqueline. I just—I thought you deserved to know."

And she Disapparates before Jacqueline has a chance to argue.