Previously in the Darklyverse: Denied their requests to get involved with Dumbledore's underground movement against Voldemort, the Gryffindors took matters into their own hands, dubbing themselves the Order of the Phoenix and conducting a series of pranks that target education about the war and blood purity prejudice (CH26). While Professor McGonagall suspected the Marauders as the perpetrators, Lily and James were surprisingly absent from the effort as Mary and Peter took charge of the anonymous initiative (CH28).

Emmeline struggled to make sense of her fragmented relationships with her housemates, having fallen out with them for two years after blaming Sirius for her parents' death at the hands of Bellatrix Lestrange (CH25, CH26). And the Gryffindors' reputations preceded them in their public interactions with students of other houses, like the admiring Mildred LeProut (CH25), while they were often judgmental toward peers like Dana Madley, Frank Longbottom's Ravenclaw girlfriend known better for her sexual indiscretions than for her cleverness (CH17).

xx

February 28th, 1977: Emmeline Vance

Honestly, she probably fell into Divination as some kind of jacked-up attempt at self-help. It's like how Mary takes care of plants since no one can pick up her own pieces, or how Alice retreats into the library and starts acing essays whenever (god forbid) she ends up at the wrong end of a quarrel. Crystal balls suddenly got a lot more interesting in fourth year when Emmeline didn't want to see anyone else, because then nobody could see her, either, past that shroud of mysticism and spooky one-liners. Suddenly she was unnerving, and within the grandeur of it she could crouch down unnoticed to pass her judgments, some of them accurate, others not.

Everyone projects. Most people around here attach, too, which is probably what makes Emmeline so inaccessible. Since she's so big on divining, she sees it as an energy thing; she's spent a few years diverging, rewiring to remember that she's over here, he's over there, just because he kissed her and then killed her parents (or didn't, or close enough) doesn't mean he has to be over here to loom, to haunt—but these Gryffindors are bad at that, aren't they, staying out of each other's heads, and she can still feel herself trailing out the door behind him whenever he leaves, it still takes an hour to pull her mind back into her body from whichever part of the castle she's vaguely aware he's in. He is so tall, magnetic. She intermingles. Emmeline tangles into everyone, into her roommates' limp fingers when they sleep in the night where she lies, and she's been trying to pull her head into her head since fourth year and it never seems to do any damn good.

It feels like crashing, this thing where she tries to be friendly again because it isn't worth it to hate anymore when she is so tired, but these Gryffindors are terrible at keeping distinct and Emmeline is, too; she's a born-and-bred witch, and wizards keep close when they're so few in a dull world, and Hogwarts keeps close when you sleep beside the same faces for seven years. She wanted to find herself when all she'd ever been was friend, then foe, but Emmeline's not there. None of them are. She tried to be like Lily, get separate, but now Lily's in the web and Emmeline's always been bait, hasn't she, hasn't she—

She was arrogant when she thought she could watch and laugh a cold laugh. She was probably watching because she couldn't look away.

The nice thing about this Order of the Phoenix initiative they've taken up is that part of the job is splitting up and keeping ears peeled, so she can contribute without getting too reinvested in the others. And to be fair, some of the pranks have been pretty ingenious, or at least Emmeline thinks so—like today's, for which everyone's neckties and robes have been Transfigured from house colors to a uniform purple and white. Younger students eye each other in the corridors, wary without allegiances to dictate who gets a smile and who gets a spitball. Older ones think it's probably either the boys or Fabian Prewett's group (or both) behind it all, but they all staunchly deny it; James and Sirius even make a show of envying and seeking out whoever came up with the idea.

"You're sure you don't know whether it's them, though?" the pudgy and somewhat pimpled girl asks again as Emmeline fights the urge to try to shake off her new companion. Whoever she is tracked her down in the corridors on the way out of the Great Hall from breakfast, very wide-eyed and very much about to make Emmeline late to Charms.

"I can ask Lily, but I really haven't seen anything fishy."

"Because it doesn't quite seem like they're the ones doing it—it's more serious, you know? It's flashy like they always are, but it's not—like—they're not pelting purists with Dungbombs or writing insults on classroom chalkboards or anything—but the magic they're using, it's clever, it's as clever as they are. It could be them, couldn't it?"

"It's not like I'd know if it was. You picked the wrong Gryffindor to ask about it, sorry."

"Yeah, but you're in their year, right? So you must have at least noticed that something's up if they're involved."

"Want to know a secret?" The girl leans in a little, mouth hanging the slightest bit open, and Emmeline's lips turn up despite herself. "You don't have to only talk to your housemates. Mary Macdonald probably spends more time around Hufflepuffs than she does with us. Lily Evans was best friends with a Slytherin for five years."

She deflates, like she's disappointed that she didn't get something properly personal out of Emmeline. "Well, I know that—I don't spend much time with anybody in my house, really—but I just figured—"

"I know, but it's okay to be closer to people from other houses than people within it. I barely talk to the other Gryffindors at all, honestly, so really, there's nothing I can tell you about whether James's friends are the ones doing it."

"I just thought—house lines are such a big deal around here."

"Kind of seems like the point of this is to change that, though, doesn't it?" says Emmeline. The girl fingers her necktie, flicks its tip back and forth with her thumb. "What's your name, anyway?"

"Mildred. Millie. I'm a fourth year; I'm in—"

"Tell me later when your uniform's back to normal," Emmeline interrupts, and Millie grins.

"Let me know if you do find anything out, though, will you? It'd be cool to maybe get involved with whatever they're trying to do, you know, meet new people and stuff," she says, and Emmeline gets the strong impression that this odd, fairly smelly Millie girl doesn't usually meet a lot of people.

"Sure I will. See you around, Millie."

Five minutes later, she slips into the classroom just as the bell's ringing and nods to Flitwick, who raises his eyebrows and smiles while she's taking her seat beside Marlene. "Where were you?" she hisses, but Emmeline shakes her head for the moment as she scrounges up parchment and a quill from her bag.

It's not until Flitwick's gotten through the theory of Aguamenti and gives them time to practice that she answers the question. "I got held up by some girl who was asking whether we're behind the pranks again. She seemed interested."

"Think we could get her on our side?"

"Maybe. Aguamenti." They're supposed to be filling drinking glasses with water, but the most she can get out of her wand is a momentary trickle. Marlene's is puffing clouds of vapor that fog up her glasses. "Millie—the girl—she did mention something we might be able to use: leaving writing on the chalkboards. She was saying that if it were the boys, they'd probably be leaving something obscene, but I was thinking we could maybe use it to leave more facts—we could figure out a way to have the writing start a dialogue with the professors if they mention it when it happens, even."

"Yeah? We could work with that, I bet. We've got free period after this; we can grab Lily and Alice and check in with them about it, they're the best at Charms."

"Sure." There's one of those awkward pauses that tends to come whenever Emmeline's with a Gryffindor one-on-one, and they busy themselves with their glasses again, still to no avail. "Have you had any luck?" she hedges.

"It's not like I can go to anybody directly about it, but my little siblings keep saying that it's all the younger kids are talking about," Marlene replies, frowning down at the shoddy spellwork. "Not changing any minds yet, but it's only been a couple weeks, what do you expect? Hopefully we'll make a little progress on Friday, yeah?"

"Yeah, hopefully."

"You know, on second thought, maybe we shouldn't go to Lil and Alice together about it," Marlene muses, her eyes trained to the desk where they're partnered up. Alice's stream of water keeps spilling over onto the desk before she can stem it, and she's cursing to herself between flat smiles to Lily, who seems fidgety. "Alice gets crazy competitive when she feels threatened, and this fight thing with Sirius has got to still be riling her, from the looks of it."

"Can we not do the gossip thing, please?" Marlene rolls her eyes but mutters a few words of compliance. Emmeline sighs, casts the spell again; a centimeter of water drops into her glass, but no more. "You're probably right," she says after a moment, softening. "I guess I can work with Lily on it, maybe grab Remus, too, if we need it."

"Sure." She looks like there's more she has to say to Emmeline for her shortness, but it's never done anybody any good for the last two years, so she curbs it and flicks her wand violently to shake off the misty beads clinging to the tip. It results in a gush of water that overflows from the glass to pool on the tabletop, drenching their textbooks. "Bloody…"

xx

She's been having the dreams again, so when a few nights later she can't take any more of it, she steals upstairs to the North Tower, breaks the lock on the Divination classroom door, and darts straight for the tall armchair at the window, the one facing away from the body of the room. A belch from the front of the room startles and halts her before she's walked even five paces, though, and her heart rate accelerates a bit before she swallows and walks briskly forward to find James sprawled out below the professor's desk, clutching a near-empty bottle of firewhiskey to his chest with a few butterbeers littering the floor. "Fancy meeting you here at a time like this," he hiccoughs, sloppily pulling her down to meet him.

Yelping softly, Emmeline collapses half on top of the boy, then clears her throat and straightens up a respectable few centimeters away from him. "Fancy that," she echoes.

"Didn't think anybody would find me up here!" James declares, another couple burps trailing in his words' wake. "Reckoned I'd be safe to do whatever—I—please!"

"Apparently not," she says, then, "I come here to think sometimes."

"Yeah?"

"It's quiet. I can make tea and practice divining from the dregs."

"Tea. You ever sneak into the kitchens?"

"Would you like some?"

"Whatzit?"

"Tea?"

"When I've got whiskey? Nah." He drains what's left of the bottle, although a good amount of it misses his mouth and dribbles down his chin and onto his robes. With a childlike frown, he swirls the bottle around, presses his glasses up to the opening on top, flings them aside (they shatter with a tinkle) and peers in again. "No, all gone? Can't be…"

"I'll put the kettle on, then," says Emmeline, rising as he starts to rattle the drained bottles around him.

"Ooh, you're uppity. Uptight, like. You could give Alice a run for her money, you know! Have an uptight contest!"

"Oh, I don't think anyone would want to see that."

"Would too. It'd be good gossip. Let go for a night, Em, come sit down, have a drink."

"There isn't any left, James; you drank it all, remember?"

"Right," he says, pouting. He rummages around for his broken glasses as she bustles around preparing the tea, but he doesn't attempt to repair them just yet, probably for the best.

"You shouldn't start making this a habit, you know," Emmeline says as she fiddles with her tea kettle and leaves. "People will start to worry about you… I'd worry about you."

James hiccoughs. "Oh, but you're trying! You're bitter, aren't you, and it's hard not to bite, but you're busting your arse to—"

"Is this necessary?" she interjects.

"No," says James, without irony. "You don't talk much."

"You all talk more than enough. You're all dialogue and no—pause, no thought."

"Yeah, but nobody would get anything done—urp—if they didn't talk. It'd be all anarchy and no ideas. Ideas make change happen. It's like a—a—a catalyst."

"Catalyst, huh?"

"Yeah." He looks so earnest there, eyes unfocused but brows furrowed, studying her as she studies the tea. "I'm not—hic—depressed or anything. Sirius is depressed, so I wanted to be his drinking mate to help him keep out of any trouble or anything, but sometimes I pilfer his liquor." Emmeline's a bit impressed by his vocabulary, considering his state. "It makes things fuzzy. And clearer. 'S cool."

"Clearer how?" she asks.

He covers his ears and moans as the kettle starts to whistle, then loosens when she snatches it up and pours him a cup. Accepting it, he gobbles it down, recovers, and tells her, "Clearer like I can tell things. Like people think it's me and Lily running shit, but we're just—urp—front men, doesn't mean we do the shit. She's a mess, I'm more of a mess. I'm plastered. Or like—like you need people."

The dreams have receded by now, but everything feels foggier with James here, here, in her North Tower where nobody ever goes. To her, it manifests as an energy thing, and she can't stop herself from latching onto him, onto his drunk, his piercing. She is not safe near him, near anyone. "Give me your cup," she says quietly.

He obediently passes it to her with trembling hands. She swirls it, stares into the dregs, but they stare back and say nothing and she cannot read anything or tell anything and she stands, leaves it with the kettle for him to tidy up. "Hey! But what's my fortune?" James calls, and she feels herself lingering leash-like and miserable in the room with him even as she ducks out of the classroom and down the stairs, dragging, dragging.

It's already done by the time she reaches the Fat Lady—she won't take dittany for an answer, and that's when Emmeline realizes it's well past midnight and certainly long after Alice hoodwinked the portrait. Bugger. She roams the corridors for a while before finally curling up to sleep in a disused classroom, her knife-edged limbs poking into the floor at terse angles and the ground poking back, fraying her whenever she dozes, gnarly, cloudy, nowhere. The dreams don't come because they have no opportunity to surface; Emmeline is surface, cannot sink, cannot swim. (corpse on waves back floating tightrope taut stretch sever we've got your head we won't let go give me your almighty—)

The bell is shrill. Roused, she rockets upward, forehead hurtling into the desk, and then everything is streaming and splintering in the prickly morning. Cursing, Emmeline collects herself and makes for the Great Hall—she's not enrolled in Potions, so she has the morning off and may as well catch a late breakfast. The hall's nearly emptied by now, and only a few scattered sixth and seventh years remain, picking at their food with fatigue or hangovers or both. Dumbledore nods cheerily to her from the High Table as the door clunks shut behind her, and she raises a tentative hand, lowers her eyes, and fiddles with the hem of last night's dressing gown.

It's not long, however, before students start trickling back into the hall, sleepy but abuzz with impatience. Peter and Mary seek her out at the Gryffindor table as she watches Dorcas Meadowes move straight toward Dumbledore, who's chatting intently with Hagrid. "So it worked, then," she says as they sit down.

"Yeah, and Peeves is taking the opportunity to drop water balloons on everybody's feet in the meantime, since they can't go back to change their socks," says Peter. Mary clicks her waterlogged heels for emphasis.

"Right."

"Where'd you go last night, Em?" Mary asks. "You were in bed before I was; I thought—"

"Nowhere—I—just woke up and couldn't get back to bed. Alice wasn't back yet when I left, so I thought—but when I got back, I was locked out."

"You weren't with James, were you? Because he wasn't there when we woke up, or at breakfast, and we don't know where he is because he has the—uh—he skived off Potions."

"Has the what?" says Mary keenly, but Peter shakes his head.

"Doesn't he always skive off?" says Emmeline.

"Not much, now that Lily's getting fond of him."

Mary snorts. Emmeline's spared responding when Dorcas calls the hall to attention, announcing with fatigue, "All right, so as you all obviously have figured out by now, it seems we've got a situation where all the passwords to the common rooms have been changed, locking everybody out of their houses. We're going to get on taking care of this as fast as possible, but in the meantime, you're all welcome to stay here in the Great Hall or anywhere within bounds in place of your common rooms. Do we know for sure that all four houses are locked out? Gryffindor?"

Of course—there may only be rumors within the student body, but the staff more or less pinned the Gryffindors as the perpetrators of the Phoenix initiative as soon as it started. It's with a second's surprised lift to her eyebrows, then, that she hears grumbled assent from a number of Gryffindors, Mary playing along among them as particularly disgruntled. "Right—Hufflepuff? Ravenclaw? … Ravenclaw?"

And despite the students' uniformly purple ties, it dawns on them all that Ravenclaw's the only house missing from the hall. Up front, McGonagall's thinned lips widen out again as she cocks an eyebrow. Despite herself, Emmeline glances sidelong at Peter, who says in an undertone, "Alice wasn't able to lock it out—she tried locking it onto one riddle that couldn't be answered, but she couldn't get it to work in time, the door found a way around the paradoxes."

"Yeah? We can work with that, maybe," Emmeline says back as Dorcas falls back, briefly conferring with Dumbledore again before striding through the double doors and into the corridor. "We could get everyone to convene in their common room, maybe?"

"Make them help each other out and work with the Ravenclaws to crack the riddles and have somewhere to go, yeah," says Peter. "Em, you've got friends in Ravenclaw, do you want to head over and see if they'll let people in?"

"What, without you? Avoiding your ex-girlfriend?" Mary teases. "You two go; I'm going to go check in with Ver and feel out how people are reacting."

So they set off for the Ravenclaw common room, Emmeline leading the way. Peter raises a hand to the brass knocker on the door when they arrive, but she pulls him away and says, "We shouldn't yet—that'll ask a question, and they probably won't appreciate us barging into their common room and then inviting the rest of the castle in, too."

"Right," says Peter. He raps on the door with his knuckles instead, again when at first he goes unnoticed. As they slouch against the wall in the meantime, he asks again, "So do you know where James is?"

"I found him in the North Tower last night, actually. He was pretty wasted; you might actually want to go collect him before a class goes in while I handle… this."

"Bugger," says Peter, and then Emmeline's alone.

It's Dana Madley who's the next to enter the corridor, to Emmeline's slight irritation. She watches Madley's pumps click purposefully toward her, then halt as Emmeline clears her throat; the right one crosses behind the left and snaps to a defensive point on its toes. "Elegant," Emmeline quips.

"What?"

"Nothing. Sorry. Look—"

"You looking for Maggie? Because I can check for her for you, but I'm pretty sure all the fourth years have class—"

"It's not that," says Emmeline. Madley purses her lips, shifts her weight back. "It's—well, all the other houses got locked out of our common rooms somehow."

"They got what?"

"Yeah, the passwords aren't working, everyone's in the Great Hall for now and Peeves is having a right old party taking advantage of it. Ravenclaws can still get in here, though, apparently, so I was just thinking—"

"That you'd break into our common room into the meantime until it's straightened out, yeah?" says Dana. Emmeline blinks, doesn't yet chance a response. "Cracking the riddles together matters to our house, Vance. It helps first years bond with the rest of the house, it—"

"So it's wrong for other houses to bond together, too, if you let them in?"

"That's just like you Gryffindors, always assuming it's your place to do whatever in god's name you—"

"Sure, all right, think what they want you to think."

"Excuse me?"

"The house stereotyping. Do what you want, but when You-Know-Who takes over because you were too busy holding grudges to resist—"

"Do you even hear yourself talk?" Madley interrupts; Emmeline rolls her eyes, drawing her knees closer to her chest. "If this is even headed toward a full takeover, which you don't know—"

"Which we do know," mutters Emmeline.

"—Then part of picking a side is knowing who your allies are, and I'm sorry, but Gryffindors can't be trusted to be our allies. You think you can step all over everyone until you need them—"

"I don't step on anybody," says Emmeline; "I don't even associate with the rest of my house—"

"Right, so that explains why you're always off snogging Peter Pettigrew and mooning over Sirius Black and braiding Lily Evans's hair—"

"I haven't been mates with Black in years; get your facts right," says Emmeline coolly.

"Of course, ever since you threw a hissy fit and decided you were above all the gossipmongers you live with. But you should see the way you still look at him." Emmeline narrows her eyes. "Don't you know you're no different from them, Vance? Alice Abbott thinks she's better than me, you think you're better than Alice Abbott, but either way, you're both arrogant arses who belittle anyone who's not prudish enough or—or clever enough, or haughty enough—"

"Is there a point to this, or are you going to stand here all day lamenting your insecurities?"

Madley's face heats up scarlet. "At least I'm comfortable enough with my body to make decisions for myself without trying so hard to meet anybody's standards. Lord knows who could possibly be enough for you. And Maggie said your attitude was getting better."

"So I take it that means you're not letting us into the common room?"

She strides forward, the hem of her robes twirling out and brushing Emmeline's ankles. "Of course I'm letting you in. The Hufflepuffs are decent, at least, and I'm not going to try and keep the whole castle away just because of you," she says, pounding the brass knocker on the common room door as Emmeline snarls and collects herself. "Riddle?"