So here it is, Chapter 10. I can't believe there are already over 30 followers, thank you so much for taking the time to read the story and get updates! I fixed the "Lily Potter" mistake (courtesy of Karunna) and I'm glad you all like the direction the story's going. Again, thanks creelluka for reviewing every few chapters! Also, Holly7795 Hithaerel and LeeForShort for your great feedback! Anyway, time to get back to Emma and co.!

Emma was worried at how much her friends had seen, but from what Alecto said it seemed that they had only arrived after she had stepped on the feelers. Regulus hadn't mentioned the incident, or anything about that night, having lapsed into one of his silent moods. Amycus shot her a few odd looks at breakfast, but also said nothing. Her friends were currently chatting to pass time on the train ride home, their compartment filled as ever.

'Emma,' Helen said suddenly. 'Is that a love bite on your neck?'

Emma's hand shot to her bruised throat. I knew I should have worn a scarf, she cursed quietly to herself. "A" love bite. So she only saw one. Thinking quickly, she leaned forwards conspiratorially, letting her hair hang in front of the marks.

'You know I went with James to the Yule Ball?' she drew out the sentence.

'Merlin's saggy underpants, are you two really..?' Helen asked, half-horrified, half-fascinated.

'Don't be disgusting,' Emma replied immediately, then gave what she hoped to be a secretive smile. 'Let's just say I spent some time "getting to know" one of his friends.'

'Which one?' she cooed immediately.

'Well, that's for me to know, isn't it?' Emma winked. It almost seemed unreal, how easy the pretence was.

'Come on,' Helen looked at her with puppy-dog eyes.

Alecto's ears had perked up, though she feigned indifference. Lucinda pretended no such thing.

'It's Sirius, isn't it?' she asked. 'I thought I saw you together, but I wasn't quite sure...'

'Is that true?' Rabastan looked at her, wide-eyed. Oddly, he was the one that minded Gryffindors the least among their gang. 'Good on you Ems, though don't let Regulus find out. He hates his brother so badly!'

'What's Sirius done this time?' Regulus asked from the compartment doorway. Emma inwardly jumped; she hadn't heard the door slide open.

Apparently he had returned from the Prefect meeting earlier than expected. Emma had decided to "forget", since Miller's friend Brian Fuller would be there. The incident was too recent to be able to lie well about it, and she suspected that he would be able to put two and two together if he knew about Miller's plan for the Yule Ball.

'Nothing,' Emma said casually. 'How was the corridor patrol?'

'I had to go with Lupin since somebody decided to shirk her responsibilities,' he gave her a dirty look before throwing himself into a seat. 'Come on, what's the idiot done? I'm in a detention giving mood, and I know which compartment he's in.'

'Emma hooked up with him,' Lucinda said, smirking.

Emma elbowed her, but the damage had been done. There was a silence as Regulus expected her to deny it. She stared at him coolly, hating herself as she did so. If there was one way she could have hurt him, this was it. She waited for him to yell at her, to ask for an explanation, even hex her. But that wasn't Regulus's way. He simply looked at her for a long time as though seeing right through her lie, before turning his head. Eventually the conversation resumed, but he didn't join in and nobody asked him to.

'Pierre!' Lou cried, running over to hug her brother.

Charles and Natalie smiled at each other. They had convinced Dumbledore to let Lou come for Christmas instead of staying at Hogwarts, but they weren't sure if Pierre could come. You never knew when something would come up. But here he was in Godric's Hollow, grinning and dusting off the remnants of Floo Powder that still stuck to his clothing.

'Have you got any more tattoos?' James immediately wanted to know.

For every major curse he managed to break, Pierre would celebrate and remember that victory with a tattoo. A job like his wasn't easy, and it was all too rare for a curse to be broken without casualty. Usually they had to deal with the aftermath instead, so they ended up needing more Healers than Breakers.

Pierre grinned and shook his arm out of his sleeve, revealing a black skull enclosed in a yellow triangle. As they watched, the triangle grew brighter and the skull dimmed.

'Wicked!' the twins exclaimed in unison.

'I got it just before the news...' his voice trailed off and he cleared his throat before continuing. 'I forgot to tell you about it: going to Egypt means that I'm a proper curse-breaker now, not a recruit in training.'

They all congratulated him and Lou slapped him on the arm for not mentioning it in his letters.

'I hear that you've been keeping things from me too,' he teased her. 'What's this I hear about a cheeky prankster falling under your charms?'

Lou blushed crimson, but Emma shook her head. It wasn't me.

'I've been waiting for so long for Sirius to become part of the family, now it's going to come true!' James shouted with glee, drawing out the "oo" like a howl.

'James!' Lou admonished, but she smiled anyway.

'I thought Sirius said he "wasn't going to be tied down by anything"?' Natalie asked, clearly finding the whole thing funny. 'I distinctly remember a twelve year old telling me girls were poo and got in the way of Quidditch.'

'What can I say, my sister's just that charming,' Pierre teased. 'But now that the fun part's over, he gets to meet the mighty big curse-breaker brother, who will tell him that curses won't be the only thing breaking if I hear something I don't like.'

Lou complained, but everyone could tell that she had been missing her brother. When their parents died, he had been on site in Egypt on his last stage of apprenticeship. All of the wizards working there had been placed under quarantine until they cleared up the whole sight. She had eventually seen him in November for Aunt Anne and Uncle Jean's funeral, but even then, it was only for a weekend. He was looking a lot more cheerful now.

'So Ems,' Pierre turned to his cousin when everyone else was grabbing more snacks. 'You've been rather quiet. How's Hogwarts?'

'Oh you know,' she replied. 'Learning and all that.'

'Nothing wrong?' he inquired.

Emma thought back to how she had wanted to make the Mudblood pay for what he tried to do. 'Nothing at all,' she lied. She didn't want to bother her cousin when he had so much more going on.

'Because you know, even though I'm in France, we're still family. James and Lou write, but I hardly get any letters from you. Lou says she's worried you hate her new friend,' he gave her a weighted look. 'I'm guessing this is the infamous boyfriend.'

'Sirius? I don't dislike him. More like... there's nothing to like.'

'Then you're the perfect person to keep an eye on him!' her cousin grinned.

Emma privately thought that she wouldn't like to come within ten feet of Sirius Black, but she nodded all the same. They lapsed into a comfortable silence.

'Pierre,' she said after a while, glancing towards the kitchen. The others were still making dip. 'Have you ever... done something. Something you never thought you could do?'

'Like what?' he asked, frowning.

'Never mind,' she said hurriedly, then thought better of it and blurted. 'Something... not very nice. But only because you had to.'

'My job is filled with not very nice somethings, Ems,' he laughed. 'Actually, I always thought you'd want to be a curse-breaker when you grew up.'

'Why's that?' she asked. She hadn't really thought much of her future.

'Well, you don't go rushing headlong into situations, but you're still curious,' he replied. 'Actually you and James are both too curious for your own good. But my job mostly relies on instincts. You don't do something because it's right, you do it in order to survive. Not everyone can do what needs to be done if a particularly bad curse explodes.'

Emma didn't know whether to be proud: that Pierre still thought she and James were alike, flattered: because Pierre's job was really hard, or scared: that her cousin thought that she'd do anything to survive. Plus, his words sounded rather ominous. Pierre obviously saw her face, because he patted her on the back.

'Think about it. Look it up. But I could use someone having my back out there.'

At the end of January, she had almost forgotten about the beetle on her windowsill when Avery appeared next to her at lunch.

'Go for a walk with me, Potter?' he asked, gesturing. From the way Rabastan was looking expectantly at them, she didn't think it wise to ask why.

As they made their way around the Great Lake in silence, she realised that she didn't know Avery's first name. She didn't think anyone knew. Everyone just called him Avery. She stole a glance at him out of the corner of her eye. He was quite handsome: tall, blonde, athletic. He had taken over captaincy of the Quidditch team after Rachel graduated. But there was a cold look in his eye that made most students afraid of him, and rumours of his practicing Dark Magic had reached even James's deaf ears.

'Carrow told me about what happened with Miller,' he said.

He always called people by their surnames, the same way Regulus didn't like nicknames. Emma wondered which Carrow had told him. Probably Amycus. She didn't reply, unsure of what to say.

'You're quiet. I like that,' he said. 'Loud people don't always get the job done.' He stopped walking and turned to her. 'Look, I'm not going to grass on you or anything.'

'I wasn't expecting you to,' Emma replied. Avery wouldn't bother talking to her if he was.

He smiled. 'You seem to really hate Mudbloods.'

Emma thought of Lily Evans, James's crush since second year. And then she thought about Brian Fuller, and the bug she fed once a week in the jar on her windowsill. 'You could say that.'

'Look, your reasons are your own, but I know someone who would really like to meet you.' She narrowed her eyes at him, trying to puzzle out his meaning. 'I'll do you a deal: come to Lucius Malfoy's house during the holidays for his engagement party, and in exchange I can make your bug problem disappear. Or more precisely reappear. He'll only remember the past week as a beetle.'

'I don't know where Malfoy lives,' Emma said, buying time.

'Regulus does. Tell your parents you're staying at the Blacks'.'

'You've gone completely mad!' Sirius was pacing around in the cramped compartment space, shaking his head. It was a strange vision of déjà vu: the twins and the Black brothers had found an empty compartment on their own. 'Was this your idea?' He addressed this question to his younger brother, who was looking slightly bored.

'Give her some credit, Sirius. Emma can make her own mind up. Yes, I invited her over for the holidays, but I'm not holding her hostage,' Regulus replied scathingly. The brothers' relationship had done nothing but deteriorate between Christmas and Easter.

'Why anyone would willingly enter that house is beyond me,' Sirius muttered. 'You're my friend James, back me up here!'

'You're just annoyed that James is grounded and you can't go there,' his brother said, going back to staring out of the window.

James shrugged his shoulders sheepishly. 'What? That Valentine's prank on the girls, turning their faces pink when they talked to the person they liked, was genius. I had to take full responsibility.'

Sirius grinned despite himself. 'Why do you want to come again?' he asked Emma. 'Couldn't get enough of me at the Inter-House ball?'

'Inter...' James's face went white. Sirius leered, obviously regretting nothing. Regulus's head snapped back to the conversation, looking at Emma with an odd expression on his face. Emma ignored them all.

'Regulus and I have an Astronomy project on the movement of stars for a consecutive month,' she replied. 'Separately, our charts wouldn't match, and I think Dad would have a fit if there was another Slytherin in the house.'

It was true, though the projects were actually individual. Miller had turned up in the Hospital Wing with no recollection of where he had spent the past month and a strange craving for dirt. Rumours chalked it up to the hate against Mudbloods, but most thought it happened outside of school. Though Emma was apprehensive about the visit to Malfoy's mansion, she was excited to spend the week at the Black's. Her father had taken to shaking his head at her recently, as if every slur against Muggleborns was her fault. She had made the mistake at Christmas of agreeing that there should be a separate policy on Muggleborns at the start of Hogwarts to explain what was going on - remembering the tedious McGonagall lecture of first-year - and he had taken it as blood discrimination. Of course, she had made no move to deny his accusations - saying that it was positive discrimination - and the tension only grew.

'Who takes Astronomy for their OWLs anyway?'

But this time the grumble was general: he and James had dropped the subject in favour of Care of Magical Creatures as soon as possible. Though he hadn't joined in Sirius's hate-party, which seemed more about having to go home for a week than not wanting Emma to stay, James hadn't been pleased. Apparently Sirius had convinced James that Regulus was in love with Emma, and her twin had not liked the idea of her going to his house one bit. Emma then pointed out that she and Regulus had shared the same common room for the past five years, and that Sirius would be the last person that Regulus would talk to about girls even if he did like her that way, so James relented.

Besides, after Sirius's new revelation, James had decided that he would be having words with the older of the Black brothers about his sister.