Previously in the Darklyverse: Emmeline avoided Sirius after old feelings got dredged up when he tried to break her free from the Imperius Curse. Emmeline, after returning from hunting Horcruxes with Dumbledore, and Alice moved in with Mary.

xx

May 31st, 1982: Emmeline Vance

In retrospect, she should have known that she couldn't avoid Sirius forever. She's a Gryffindor, after all, and the Gryffindors from her year are positively notorious for getting themselves into confrontations with each other. The one arguably good thing that came of her parents dying and her life falling apart was that she managed to retreat from the drama for a couple of years there, but she's been making the effort for years to repair those relationships, hasn't she? And arguably, with Peter gone, the one relationship that it matters most to work on is the one she shares with Sirius.

It's a typical Monday evening: she can't leave Aberdeen, thanks to the confines of the Fidelius Charm, so she's put on her best attempt at Muggle activewear (a pair of shorts and something lightweight that Mary calls a "poncho") and gone out for a jog. Emmeline has never been an especially athletic person. She used to go for walks on the Hogwarts grounds sometimes with Margaret McKinnon, but that stopped when she started spending more time with Peter and the other Gryffindors. So she can't really jog continuously—Emmeline is stuck in a pattern of jogging for about thirty seconds, then walking for the next five minutes while she readies herself to go again. She can force herself to do it for about half an hour, but she gets stabbing pains in her legs if she tries to go again before taking a few days off to recuperate.

She's about halfway down her usual route when she hears a familiar voice in the distance call her name. At that moment, she's in the middle of a jogging stint, and she stops and puts her hands on her thighs and tries to catch her breath while Sirius Black comes closer. "I'm glad I caught you," he says finally when they're only a few meters apart.

"How did you find me, anyway?"

"I got to your place about five minutes after you left, apparently. Alice told me you usually cut through this park, so I Apparated into the trees—" he points to them "—and waited."

"You must really have wanted to talk to me," Emmeline mutters, smiling at him.

Sirius flushes a little. "Yeah, well, we've put it off long enough. I know we talked and you said we were good after you got out from under the Imperius Curse, but—you kind of just ran off with Dumbledore and cut the rest of us off. I guess it didn't seem like you really were good, you know?"

"Yeah, I know."

It's a valid point: the whirlwind rush of traveling with Albus thrust Emmeline squarely into Tom Riddle's world, where there was time to interview witnesses, gather memories, and chase Horcruxes that frankly weren't going anywhere no matter how long it took to find them. There was pressure to solve the mysteries before many more people had to die, it's not like Emmeline was ever able to forget that, but she was at least able to set aside the immediate helplessness of being on the front lines of a war she was losing—to set aside the pain of losing Peter, of Marlene and half the Order dying, of Sirius having to go and remind her exactly what she'd lost when she'd left him in fourth year.

The business with Sirius—honestly, out of all the things Emmeline has been running away from, it's been the easiest thing to shove out of her mind. She'd been so caught up in struggling to keep innocents and Order members alike alive that it wasn't until she left with Albus that she really processed the deaths of the McKinnons. She and Marlene had never really had a lot of one-on-one conversations, but she was still one of the people Emmeline knew best and trusted most in the world, and she's gone. And it's not just Marlene: her sister Margaret is gone, too—Margaret, who was there for Emmeline when her parents were dead and she felt like she had no one else to lean on.

It wasn't until she got some space from the rest of the Order that it fully hit Emmeline that they're gone. It's ironic: her travels with Albus allowed her to escape into a world where nobody but Tom Riddle existed, and yet that escapism was the very thing that allowed her mind the freedom to slow down and grieve like she should have been doing all along.

Sirius continues, "Even now that you're back, you're just alone in Mary's flat all the time. Mary and Alice say you don't really hang out with them there, and you haven't been sending owl post or making plans for anybody else to come visit you, either. We're worried. I'm worried. What I said to you…"

"Look," says Emmeline. "What happened between us when I was cursed… it dislodged some stuff that I've been avoiding. I'm not going to deny that. But I'm not hiding out because you screwed anything up. I'm hiding out because I don't know how to go back to normal life like the last couple of months never happened. I don't even know if I want to go back to my life."

"I know you've had a time of it," Sirius sympathizes.

She knows exactly what he's talking about. Her boyfriend revealed he was the Death Eater spy and disappeared from her life, and when she finally tracked him down, he blamed her for not forgiving him, stole her wand, and used it to disappear again. Lucius Malfoy put her under the Imperius Curse, and now she's stuck in Aberdeen under a Fidelius Charm because the Death Eaters are surely coming after her now that she's broken free. She got to live the fantasy of doing something meaningful, something fruitful, to stop Tom Riddle, but then just like that, her friends tracked down all the remaining Horcruxes and ripped that meaning out of her life. And on top of it all, Sirius had to go and remind her what they used to mean to each other.

Not for the first time, she tells herself that she's just got to be the one to go after Voldemort. If she seeks him out and kills him, she can stop living like a vigilante, get a job and her own place and the mental space to process everything that's happened. And if she seeks him out and it gets her killed—well, she's got no reason not to want that. She can't keep going the way she's been going, and if the only way out is death, she won't fear it: she'll gladly take it.

"I promise we're good," says Emmeline now. "The goblins are working on the sword, and Snape is working on the diary, and then this will almost all be over. That's the only thing that matters. Any baggage we have, anything I might feel about it—we'll have time to work it out when this war ends."

"But… I miss you. I miss you right now."

And it isn't fair, because Sirius is playing house with Remus and doesn't have any room for Emmeline—at least, not the kind that she thinks she needs, if they're ever going to sort this out. "It was stupid," she insists. "What happened between us was a long time ago, and I've had years to move on. We have bigger problems now."

She's not lying, not really. What can a little omission hurt?

"Then be my friend again," Sirius pleads. "Can we get lunch tomorrow or something? I just… I want you back in my life, Em. We were doing so much better when we were at Scrivenshaft's—I want that back."

She really doesn't want to take him up on his offer, but at this point, what's it going to hurt? Maybe it'll cause her a little discomfort in the short term, but over time, being around Sirius again will just re-acclimate her to the new reality of their friendship. That's a good thing, isn't it?

"Lunch tomorrow," she promises. "Meet me at Mary's, okay?"

xx

She's expecting lunch with Sirius to be the most eventful part of tomorrow, but it's not. Not by a long shot.

In the evening, Emmeline's alone in the flat: Alice is putting in overtime at the Auror Office, and Mary—well, Emmeline doesn't know where Mary is; she should have been home from work two hours ago. She's distracted from this, however, when the stone arrives by owl post accompanied by a letter in Albus's loopy handwriting:

Emmeline,

I've been selfish long enough: it's time that I pass this to you. If you turn the stone from Marvolo Gaunt's ring thrice in hand, you'll be able to speak to speak to loved ones whom you've lost. As far as I've been able to discern by using it, they won't just appear as imprints: the figures that will emerge from the Resurrection Stone will have an awareness of their deaths and of some of the things they've observed since passing on.

Exercise caution with the Stone. It would be easy to lose oneself in the fantasies that arise from it. I have traveled with and known you for long enough, however, that I fear that we may lose you in a much more literal sense if I don't give you something to which to hold.

Albus

So Emmeline has been worrying her friends more than she'd realized. If Albus Dumbledore is concerned for her livelihood, then everyone must know that something is very, very wrong with Emmeline.

It hits her suddenly that if Albus is right—and he must be, because he says he's used the Stone successfully himself—she's about to see her parents again. If the Stone brings back loved ones, if only for a fleeting moment, then who better to bring than Mum and Dad? Losing them damn near destroyed Emmeline, and it directly and wholly changed the shape of her future, life, personality, and priorities. If there's anybody dead whom she wants to see—and a lot of people she cares about have died by now—it's them.

That's when she notices that her nervous system has kicked into overdrive. She's losing control of her breath and heartbeat far worse than she's ever lost it at the end of the sprints she's been taking around the park every day. Her palms are sweaty. She feels clammy and weak and yet alive in a way she hasn't since Peter left her.

She's going to see her parents again, and she doesn't even have to die to do it.

Her hands are shaking as she fumbles with the pouch attached to the owl's other leg. She feels flushed with excitement, and yet—

And yet Emmeline realizes she has no reason to expect good things from seeing her parents. Have they been watching her, wherever they've been? Have they seen the person she's grown into, the one who abandoned her friends and grew cold and hardened in their name? Are they proud of her for fighting the good, if futile, fight in this war, or are they ashamed of the way she's treated people along the way?

Are they ashamed of her for putting her faith in a traitor? Are they ashamed of her for not having been able to stop him, first when he turned spy and again when she saw him just weeks ago, as if there were still a piece of the person she loved inside him?

She turns the Stone over one, twice, a third time. She closes her eyes.

But when she opens them, it's not her parents staring back at her, pearly and wispy and translucent.

It's Marlene.

It's Marlene.

Marlene's ghost (or whatever it is) looks as whole and healthy as it did the last time Emmeline saw her friend. Marlene's hair is long like it was late in their Hogwarts career; it's twisted into cornrows that come together at a point on the top of her head and then wrap around each other as loose braids in the shape of a large bun. Her skin is a dark grey, almost as dark as her robes. She's barefoot: Marlene always did hate to wear socks and shoes.

"Long time no see," says Marlene. The corners of her lips are turned up.

"But you're… I thought you would be…"

Marlene's face falls. "You weren't intending to see me tonight, were you?"

Emmeline doesn't know why Marlene is here instead of her parents. Her first thought—and she can't tell whether or not she's being irrational here—is that her parents haven't come to see her because they don't want to see her, because they're not proud of her and don't want to tell her to hold on and keep living. But then she realizes that it's probably nothing to do with what they want—she's probably just so afraid of how they would react to her that she's unable to manifest them.

She catches her eyes starting to wet and immediately focuses all her attention on getting herself under control. Marlene was one of Emmeline's best friends, and she deserves better than a lukewarm reception.

Emmeline shakes her head. Dodging the question, she says, "We've all missed you so much."

"Really? Because from where I'm standing, it's looked like everybody's been getting along just fine without me."

"So you've been able to watch us from, you know, wherever you are?"

"From the great beyond? Yeah, I can see you lot. It's hard to explain what it's like being dead—I can tune in to an extent to what's happening on the ground, and I'm sort of with my family, but I can't hold conversations with them or anything the way we could when we were alive."

"Your uncle—I mean, your dad—went missing shortly after you died," Emmeline tells her. "Is he…?"

Marlene nods. "Yeah, he's here with me. I'm not happy that he's dead, obviously, and we're not exactly hanging out in any way that would make sense to you, but it's—I'm glad he's with me, anyway. It's comforting, and it's constant, which is nice. We hardly ever got to see each other for most of my life on the ground."

"I'm sorry we didn't… it's not that we haven't been grieving for you, Marlene."

"Yeah, everybody's grieving. Everybody's sorry. I know." But she's smiling, albeit thinly. The words may seem sarcastic, but Marlene doesn't look pissed. She just looks—tired. And sad. "I never lost anybody close to me while I was alive, so I don't know how I would have reacted to that, but I know how we'd all just bury it and focus on the superficial stuff when bad things would happen. We were always so caught up in our drama and had all our priorities all backward—except for you. I know you were messed up about your mum and dad for a long time."

Emmeline feels a surge of guilt—they both know that Marlene's death didn't affect her the way her parents' deaths did. Of course, Emmeline was close to her parents in a way that she and Marlene never…

It's not that they weren't best friends. They were. But being the Gryffindor class of '78 has always meant having eight people in this world whom you'd die for and who'd die for you—not necessarily that those people spend any time with you one-on-one or are people that you can confide in. It also, apparently, doesn't mean that their deaths destroy you.

"But Em, there's something we need to—I'm sorry to bring Sirius into this, I know what you've been through with him lately, but I need you to tell him something for me, okay? Him and Remus."

"I'm sorry about that, too," says Emmeline. She doesn't think she's ever going to be able to stop apologizing to Marlene tonight.

"Look, it doesn't matter. That's my point. I heard them say—they think I would have wanted Sirius to be miserable without me and never get with Remus and never move on. I need you to tell them that they're wrong, okay? They should move on. They should work through all the shit they're trying to work through and be happy."

"You really want that for them?" asks Emmeline, trying not to sound too skeptical.

"Well—if I'm being honest? A small part of me wants them to feel guilty, and a bigger part wants Sirius to have some goddamn regret, some shame. But I know they deserve better than that, and I don't want to be responsible for them going the rest of their lives with this hanging over their heads."

"That's… really big of you, Marlene. That might even be bigger than actually wanting the best for them would be."

"Yeah, well," says Marlene. "There's something else, at any rate. I need you to tell Mary—"

"Tell me yourself," comes a voice from behind Emmeline.

She whirls around. Mary's standing in the doorway, all right, but something is very wrong. She's not Mary anymore, not really: she's colored in the same greyscale as Marlene, and Emmeline can make out the contours of the hallway behind her through her.

Oh, no. No, no, no, no. This cannot be happening.

Mary can't be dead.

Can she?

"Mare?" says Marlene. Her voice sounds totally different than it did just moments ago—it's high-pitched, shaky, and shocked.

"Or, you know, don't tell me—at least not now. Em doesn't have much of a head start, and I don't want to take up her time trying to have a heart-to-heart with you about my big lesbian feelings."

"Mare?" Marlene repeats.

Mary shakes her head and turns to Emmeline. "Em, I'm so sorry. I swear I never meant to give your secret away to them. I should have known—I should have told you to make somebody else be your Secret-Keeper."

A million things are racing through Emmeline's mind right now. Mary is dead. Mary, her Secret-Keeper, is dead. Mary, the only person tethering Emmeline to safety, is…

"I could waste your time begging you to understand that they tortured it out of me," Mary continues, "but you don't have a lot left before they get here, and I don't want—I need you to go. Go!"

The Stone slips out of Emmeline's hand, and the pearly figures of Marlene and Mary vanish—but it's too late. Her wand is on the kitchen table, she's sitting on the bed Mary conjured for her in the living room, and with a series of cracks, no fewer than three Death Eaters have surrounded her.

"You thought you could get away from me, girlie?" says the one to her left, and she'd recognize that voice anywhere: it's the same voice that infiltrated Emmeline's mind on that fateful night when she was cursed.

"Malfoy," she tries to sneer.

But it comes out like a shaky plea, and Malfoy is the one who sneers when he raises his wand high and cries, "Petrificus Totalus!"

It's not what Emmeline was expecting, but it only takes her a moment to realize what's happening as her limbs all straighten up and she topples to the ground. "Make it hurt," says Malfoy to the other two, and she can see them raising their wands through the corners of her terrified eyes.

She's never going to get to tell Sirius and Remus what Marlene said, she realizes. They're never going to know that it's okay to be happy. Hell, Sirius is never going to know that Emmeline is sorry—that Emmeline wants to repair what's left of their friendship.

The agony lasts all too long, but at the same time, it's passing much too fast—because she knows what's waiting for her on the other side, and she doesn't want it. It's taken her years to figure it out, but she doesn't want this. She wants to live.

Emmeline wants to live.

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A/N: Two things! First, I'm really sorry about this chapter. And second, I'm running out of chapters and not writing new ones super fast at the moment, so updates are going to slow down.