Previously in the Darklyverse: In seventh year, Emmeline's sister used her Ministry connections to break Emmeline free from St. Mungo's after her suicide attempt. Remus overheard Alice telling Frank she'd been feeling left out from the Gryffindors. The Order bailed on Mary's wedding shower halfway through when a Patronus alerted them to an emergency.

xx

December 18th, 1978: Emmeline Vance

"So anyway, Peter told me that Remus told him that Alice told Frank that she's been feeling excluded, so I thought it would be nice to have another girls' night and all get together to help her feel more like she belongs. We're doing it at my place on Wednesday."

"Look at you," says Sirius with a grin. "Hosting girls' night and everything."

"Yeah, I know," says Emmeline in an undertone. "But, I don't know, Alice has always been inclusive toward me even when I was actively pushing her and everybody else away, and I feel like I ought to return the favor, especially if I know she's feeling lonely. Nobody should have to feel lonely, especially not if you've got a bunch of friends who want to help."

"Are you lonely?"

Emmeline has to really think about that one. She used to be, definitely. She was for a long time. Even as happy as she's been dating Peter, one person isn't enough to pin all your needs to, and having him hasn't made up for the fact that her other friends all seem to be slipping away from her. But—

"No," she says, "I don't think I really am anymore. My—whatever you want to call it—depression, I guess you could say—my depression has been a lot better the last few months. It feels like we're doing something important here, and it doesn't feel like there's no point being alive anymore."

"And you know that you have people you can tell if it comes back, right?" says Sirius. "You can always tell me or—or anyone."

"Thanks, Sirius," she says with a faint smile.

It's not just about the Order. She'll never admit it to Sirius, but she thinks it's helped a great deal having him back in her life in a meaningful way. It's not just getting to see him around at the shop every day; it's having real conversations and feeling like she's important to him again in a more sustainable way than before. It actually makes her look forward to going to work, even as dull as it is working for Scrivenshaft's as a sales representative.

On Tuesday night, she goes to her sister's—Jacqueline's—house for dinner. It's weird to think of it as Jacqueline's house alone: it's the same house Emmeline grew up in that Jacqueline inherited when Mum and Dad died, where Emmeline continued to return to for summer vacations up until she graduated from Hogwarts and got the flat with Peter. She hasn't been here much. It's not that she and Jacqueline aren't close, but—she and Jacqueline aren't really close.

She knows Jacqueline worries about her. She worried about her when Emmeline shut down after their parents' deaths, and she worried about her when Emmeline ended up in St. Mungo's for her suicide attempt. Even now that Emmeline is feeling better and has gotten some of her livelihood back, Jacqueline still looks at her with the same tired eyes as she has since that fateful day in Emmeline's fourth year at Hogwarts.

But beyond Jacqueline's constant concern for Emmeline, they don't really—have anything to connect about. Their parents are gone, and Emmeline can't very well tell Jacqueline about the Order. What's she supposed to talk about? Scrivenshaft's?

Instead, Emmeline tells her about Peter. "You would like him," she says, twisting her hands around and around in her lap. "He's sweet and thoughtful and—he notices little things, I don't know."

How do you sum up seven years of friendship, the last two of which were pretty damn intense and the last two months of which have been romantic in nature? What does Emmeline say to Jacqueline about Peter that doesn't sound like a massive generalization?

"He could have treated me like I was second after his bloke friends that he's always been close to, but he didn't. And—it wasn't really until Peter and I got close that I really started to deal with Mum and Dad's deaths."

"And he checks in with you at home? You're feeling okay, and you have people you can talk to if you're not feeling okay?"

"Yes, Jac," says Emmeline. She rolls her eyes a little, but she knows it's a reasonable question. After all, Jacqueline was just minding her business hearing no bad news from Emmeline when she suddenly got the Floo that Emmeline was in the hospital.

"I'm sorry I don't write more often," says Jacqueline. "We're all pulling long hours at the Ministry, and sometimes I just don't know how to turn it off long enough to—"

"It's all right. Seriously. I'm not a total loner anymore. I have people. I live with one of them, and I work with one of them, too."

"That's Sirius, right?" Jacqueline asks. "I thought things were weird between you because of Mum and Dad."

Emmeline nods. "They were, but that's all over with now. We talk a lot at work when there aren't any customers around. Most of it is inconsequential stuff, but it's still nice. Yesterday, he told me to talk to him about it if I ever get depressed again."

"That's good to hear."

"Our manager always puts us the same shifts, which is nice, too. Right now, we're working weekdays during the daytime, so we have evenings and weekends free just like our other friends."

"Listen—Em—can we make plans for next month? I know I'll see you at Christmas, but I want to stay a part of your life. I want to make up for… I just owe it to you, that's all."

"Jac, I don't want you to spend time with me because it feels like an obligation."

"That's not what I—I'm your sister. I'm supposed to worry about you. Anyway, it's not like I don't enjoy seeing you, too."

"Yeah, yeah," says Emmeline, but she's smiling.

When girls' night arrives, Peter kisses Emmeline goodbye and Disapparates to go spend time with Sirius. Lily is the first to arrive minutes later, laden down with several small, rectangular plastic boxes decorated with pictures and words. She waves her wand, and a couple of apparatuses appear on the ground. "Are those—is that a television?" asks Emmeline, frowning.

Lily smiles. "Yeah. These are videotapes, and this is a Betamax VCR. Tuney didn't want this stuff, so she left it for me when our parents died. I brought a few different movies so we'd have some options."

"Here, let's move all this into the living room," says Emmeline.

Marlene arrives next, carrying enough skincare and hair products to last half a lifetime at least, and then Alice, who's brought a motherlode of snacks. "Is Mary coming?" Alice asks as she's carefully helping Emmeline to pour crisps and candies into bowls.

"Yeah, she should be here any minute."

Mary arrives ten minutes later carrying a heavy brown handle bag. "I wasn't sure what to bring, so I made a triple recipe of mac and cheese and bought some pie. You can't go wrong with pie, right?"

"That's amazing, Mary. Come on in; you can leave those on the kitchen counter."

Emmeline feels weird in the role of hostess: she's spent too much of her life bitter and disconnected to feel like she really belongs as the glue to hold anybody together. She distributes the bowls of snacks around the living room floor, and they all spread out with red clay masks exfoliating their faces and cucumbers over their eyes, blindly grabbing at the crisps and giggling when they miss the mark.

Sitting here surrounded by her friends, it almost feels like Emmeline could have a normal life someday that isn't haunted by mistakes she's made and the terrible dread she felt for so long that culminated in slashing her wrists last year. The girls laugh at her jokes and braid her hair until Emmeline feels sort of—whole again, like they're still back in third year when the worst anybody had to worry about was not getting asked to go to Slug Club parties.

After Mary and Lily explain to everybody how movies work, they end up settling on Monty Python and the Holy Grail at Mary's insistence. "Amazing, these things," Marlene says through a mouthful of macaroni and cheese. "Muggles are brilliant sometimes, aren't they? Doc has a TV, and I can never get used to it. The quality isn't as good as our moving photographs, of course, but to tell such a cohesive story…"

"It always surprised me that wizards didn't develop an equivalent to this," says Lily. "You'd think that, if nothing else, they would have done with television what they did with radios and the WWN, adapting the technology to run without electricity, but…"

"I used to watch so much TV at home on summer breaks," Mary says. "Reg and I don't have one, and now I don't know where to get my soap fix."

"Clearly, you just have to go and visit Lily more often," says Alice. "Now I know what I should have gotten for your wedding shower instead of spending all my time on that grandfather clock."

The room goes very quiet for a moment, and Emmeline realizes Alice's mistake: of course the shower would be a sore spot for Mary, seeing as they basically all abandoned her for Order business halfway through. "I'm going to bring out the pie," says Emmeline quickly, and she gets up and stretches.

It's a small flat, so she can still hear everything that's being said in the living room as she crosses to the kitchen and searches the drawers for a pie server. "I'm really sorry we all had to just bail like that," Lily is saying quietly. "I'm not saying we had much of a choice, but you still have a right to be upset with us."

"I'm not upset," says Mary. There's a pause—Emmeline imagines that Lily is looking cockeyed at her—and Mary continues, "I'm not! What, can't I be capable of understanding that lives are always at stake when it comes to you people?"

But her words sound bitter to Emmeline's ears. She sticks the server in the pie and rummages through the cupboards for some plates. "That doesn't make you unimportant, Mare," says Marlene softly.

"I know what you all think of me," Mary goes on. "That I'm weak. That I can't handle what you lot are doing. That I'm selfish—"

"I don't think any of those things," Marlene presses, "and neither does anybody here."

Emmeline's got everything she needs at this point, but she hovers in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, pie in one hand and plates in the other, not wanting to break the trance that's fallen over everyone. "I'm sick of having this same argument again," Mary says. "No matter how many times we talk through it, the problems are going to stay the same unless somebody gives in, and I'm not giving. I can't come back, and that's it."

"No one is telling you you have to," says Alice.

"But we all know that's what it's going to take, isn't it? I can't really be a part of your lives unless I'm in the Order."

"Mare, please, let's not do this," says Marlene. "We brought you here with us, didn't we? It doesn't have to end like—"

"Well, maybe you shouldn't have invited me. Maybe we should just stop trying to force this thing that's never going to work, not anymore."

Silence spills out, and Emmeline takes the opportunity to come in with the pie. "Pie," she says unnecessarily, setting everything down in the middle of the floor.

"Mary," Marlene says then, "I want you in my life. I really, really do. I don't know how things got so messed up—"

"I do," says Mary.

"Please, do we have to do this now?"

Lily breaks in quietly, "I know it's none of my business, but I'm sorry if I—"

"You're right," Mary says. "It is none of your business."

"Don't talk to her like that," says Marlene venomously. "This is about you and me. It's not Lily's fault that I'm…"

But what, exactly, Marlene is seems to be beyond what Marlene is capable of saying. Finally, Mary says, some of the heat drained from her voice, "I don't know whether this is the part where we finish the movie or the part where I go home."

"Stay," says Marlene immediately. "Please stay."

Mary looks at her, something inscrutable in her face, and then says, "All right. Just through the end of the movie."

The rest of the movie is tense, and when the credits roll, Mary stands up and says, "I'm just going to take my dishes back."

"Mary…" says Marlene uncertainly. "Can I just—give you a hug?"

"I—okay. Yeah, we can do that."

They hug. Mary's face is all screwed up with some kind of pain, and when Marlene lets go, she positively runs back into the kitchen to collect her macaroni and cheese.