Lily Evans was many things: spunky, outgoing, carefree, outspoken, but one thing people did not often know about her was how perceptive she was.
She noticed everything, even amongst the people who nobody watched and were as sly as snakes. And at the last Hogsmeade weekend before the Christmas Holiday, she was paying very close attention to two people in particular.
One of those people was James Potter. James sat across the pub with his girlfriend, Genevieve. He had his arm about her waist as she squirmed, and they sat opposite Sirius Black and his girlfriend, Cynthia. Passing a cursory glance at Sirius, she noticed he seemed lighter, happier, and more attentive to Cynthia. Perhaps the great Sirius Black was finding himself in love, though she never would have matched him with Cynthia, truth be told.
But Sirius wasn't the second person who had Lily's attention that day, it was Emma Howard-Shelley. Looking at Sirius was secondary to watching Emma, because Emma had her eyes glued to Sirius, and the look on her face was one she probably would be ashamed to convey. The oh-so-carefully guarded Ravenclaw had let her guard slip, and Lily was intrigued.
Sirius didn't have to pretend to not notice Emma Howard-Shelley. When he walked into Three Broomsticks that day, he wasn't even aware of her presence. It was better that he didn't notice her, as she was surrounded by a crowd of Slytherins, all trying to buy her a butterbeer. If he had looked, he would have become jealous. But he wasn't letting himself think about Emma, getting jealous about her. He was focusing on Cynthia. She was his girlfriend, after all.
He was inexplicably attracted to the Ravenclaw pureblood, though reviled by her acquiescence to family ideals. There was something about her that he felt was not showing itself at the surface, something that not even she was completely aware of. Of course he knew that she was precisely the sort of girl who would please his parents, and maybe she was just enough of the pureblood psycho scale to be pleasing to him. But nevertheless, he didn't want to be a dishonest boyfriend.
Emma was pretty. Elusive. Wicked smart. But she was off limits to Sirius Black.
Emma sat in the Three Broomsticks, nursing a butterbeer and trying to ignore Severus Snape drone on and on about his potions marks. Thankfully there were others at the table to listen to his boasting. He was good, but she was better.
She stared at Sirius across the pub, her mind glued to the letter she had just read from mother earlier that day. It was said that she was entering negotiations with Walburga Black to betroth her to Sirius, effective in a year. It would be kept quiet until then, as child engagements were looked down upon by and large in the magical community. She had also been sent 10 galleons as a treat in exchange for the information she had passed along about Alice and Frank.
Marry Sirius, she thought. There had been worse ideas to come out of her mother's mouth. And she hated to admit that she almost liked this one. Sirius was rebellious against the cause, a Gryffindor, and dating a muggleborn. He was in every way a blood traitor in all but name, and she knew Walburga wanted a strong betrothal to reverse that.
However, they were still only 16, and it would take some time to have the plan solidified. It was after all, a negotiated process. Family homes had to be passed down, dowries from each side arranged, house elfs to engage, the Dark Lord's permission to seek, among other hoops to jump through. Emma had seen it all before with her older sisters before they'd moved to France. One thing was certain, Emma was glad to be back at Hogwarts, but looking forward to the intrigues the holidays might offer.
Severus Snape sat next to Emma Howard-Shelley in the Three Broomsticks.
He did not care for her. She was the sort of pureblood who was so assured in her status that she never bothered to talk about it. It was hard for a halfblood like him to prove himself to someone like her.
What he did care about was Lily Evans across the room, but he couldn't be too obvious in stealing glances, so he began to boast about his recent successes in potions class to the rest of their table. Emma was a Ravenclaw, but spent plenty of time with the Slytherins in their year, owing to the fact that she was related to nearly all of them. Lily watched Emma intently, and Emma watched Sirius Black. Odd, Severus thought. Occasionally Severus would see Lily break her study of Emma to gaze longingly at James Potter, which infuriated him to no end. James was like Emma, so confident and assured, except boisterous. James didn't talk about his blood status either, but had that same self assurance Severus craved so much.
Severus was in love with Lily, and hated James Potter with all of his being. But Severus knew that Lily was never meant to be his, on account of her lowly blood status. He'd acknowledged that she would be forever out of his grasp, so long as he continued in his path to join the followers of Lord Voldemort, but that didn't mean he couldn't do everything in his power to keep Lily from James.
The Black Family Christmas Party, Christmas Eve 1975
Sirius didn't know it at the time, but tonight would be the last time he spent Christmas in Grimmauld Place.
It was softly snowing outside, like one of those muggle films Lily had shown him, It's a Wonderful Life, or White Christmas. Carolers sang on the streets and the Black family opened their doors to the cream of pureblood society for an evening party, followed by Midnight Mass in Diagon Alley at St. Salazars. It was a Black family tradition, one that he sometimes enjoyed, if he'd spiked the punch enough. It was also helpful to remain behind the scenes, lurking in a corner or next to a tall statue, to listen and watch others. Tonight was one of those nights.
Sirius watched from the gallery as guests filed into the house. The Lestranges, Belcours, the Black cousins, Zabinis, Parkinsons, Dolohovs, to name a few. And finally, the Howard-Shelleys.
He was anticipating their arrival most of all. Alistair and Vera swept into the hall, exchanging pleasantries with his parents and Regulus, always at his mother's heels. Following them was their twin daughters, who resembled giraffes with their long necks and hair piled high, and their two husbands.
The four of them look positively inbred, Sirius thought. Well, they are.
The three brothers followed suit, in their black and white dress robes. He smiled seeing Lewis, the only sane one of the bunch.
And then came the one he'd hidden so she wouldn't see him as she entered. Emma.
He'd seen her nearly every day for the past four months, not to mention the Lestrange's ball. She was always pretty, and at the ball she had been stunning too. But tonight, tonight was different.
She looked like she could have been a Black tonight.
Her hair was curled and arrayed in a mass at the back of her head, curls tumbling down her neck, shoulders, framing her face, while most of it remained pinned at the nape of her neck. Emma's lips were a sharp berry color, contrasted to her skin, which in the summer had been bronzed, but now in December, was increasingly pale. It was startling. Her dress was a black floor length halter, silky and flowy with a deep v-cut that extended halfway down her chest. On her hands were jeweled rings, heirlooms they looked to be.
He had to step back into the hallway to catch his breath. Sirius knew he needed to avoid her tonight. He had to think of Cynthia, had to remember the sight of Emma dancing with Voldemort with a look of rapture on her face.
Yet his mind was drawn to a small velvet box that mother kept above the mantelpiece in her private sitting room. A box that Emma would see inside of later tonight, unknown to him. Emma would see things tonight she had never seen before, learn things very few knew. If her arresting darkness was attracting him, it was nothing compared to the things she would see that night and later that week.
New Years Eve, 1975
It was New Year's Eve. Emma and Narcissa watched the initiation ceremony from the gallery above at Howard Hall. Father was in London and Lewis was nowhere to be seen. Mother took a place of pride, sitting between Bellatrix and Walburga Black. Lucius was uncovering his forearm to the Dark Lord, as Rodolphus Lestrange kept watch over a simmering cauldron, emitting fumes that made Emma's head dance with horrible ideas. Vicious, sinister, gruesome thoughts plagued her mind. And she was enchanted by them.
She thought of the great honor that Voldemort had entrusted her, on the steps of St. Salazar's Church, protecting the precious possessions of the Hogwarts founders until he needed them. His horcruxes, he said they would be. And he had chosen her to be their protector. She didn't know what a horcrux was, but he told her that it was of grave importance to keep them secret. He had pulled her aside when the rest of the purebloods went inside for midnight mass, not Bellatrix or Lucius. Her.
As the ceremony continued Emma was overcome by bloodlust. She pictured them all. The mudbloods, the traitors, Lily and Alice and James and Sirius and Laura Chumley and stupid Cynthia the Hufflepuff. She wanted to watch them all writhe in pain and die. Her body went into a trance, and she could see it all before her: Her own initiation. The beautiful dark mark staining the skin of her right forearm forever. Lord Voldemort looking upon her with that same look of pride he gave her outside St. Salazar's in Diagon Alley on Christmas Eve. The corpses of the filthy blood traitors. Her place in Wizard history as a purifier of the race, a noble heroine for magic. She wanted to hurtle herself over the gallery rail and ask them to take her too, to make her one of them. If she hadn't been so greedy in her own thoughts, she might have noticed Narcissa shaking in fear beside her. But she didn't snap out of her haze until a hand clasped over her mouth and she was sharply dragged backward.
She didn't come free of her assailant until she heard a door click shut and locked, and saw Narcissa and Lewis standing before her.
"What was that for?" She nearly shouted. And she never shouted.
Narcissa, petite and calm Narcissa, stepped forward and slapped her across the face. Emma was dumbfounded, but the power of whatever had overtaken her in the gallery was fading away. As the fumes from Rodolphus cauldron left her nostrils, a cold shame swept over her.
"What is your name?" Lewis asked calmly.
"Emma Howard-Shelley." She replied.
"What is your Hogwarts house?"
"R-ravenclaw." Emma stumbled.
"Do you truly believe in pureblood supremacy?" Lewis stood in front of her and grabbed her by the shoulders. He looked into her eyes with that same direct, knowing look that she often used to intimidate others. But she wasn't scared, she wasn't intimidated by him. It was the first time someone had asked her that question.
"I...I don't know. Some days I do, some days I don't.." She said.
"Do you swear never to join the Death Eaters?" Narcissa stepped forward.
"I don't know how I could, I feel like they're halfway done seducing me to their side, that's all I know. To refuse would mean my death." She whispered, fully understanding the gravity of the situation she was in. In all her time slowly feeding information to Mother, her presence at pureblood social events, her conversations with the Dark Lord, promising to protect his horcruxes, she had put herself in a place she could not turn back from. But she didn't know what else there was to do but continue.
"There is a way to protect us, Em," Narcissa replied. Us, she had said. She was trapped too, Emma thought, "If we can never escape them, we must rebel from within. We must use our greatest talent: to conceal."
"How?" Emma said, on the verge of tears. She was frustrated by her own inconstancy, but saw that her brother and her best friend were adamant.
"The Unbreakable Vow." Lewis said. He then silently joined Emma and Narcissa's hands, and pulled out his wand. Intoning the sacred words to an ancient spell that wrapped around their arms, into their souls, and bound the two women he loved most in the world with one promise: to never take on the Dark Mark, to never stain their souls with the hatred and violence their families had. Tears, rare tears, streamed down Emma's face. When the spell was over she still kept Narcissa's hand in hers.
"I need to go to confession." Emma breathed out.
"You'll need to go to a muggle priest then," Lewis began, and she gasped, "Yes, a muggle priest. You cannot trust Father MacDugh, he's one of them too. He would give you away."
"I've never spoken to a muggle, let alone a muggle priest." Emma replied.
"You're going to have to get used to working with people you've been taught your whole life to hate." He told his sister, resting his hand reassuringly upon her shoulder.
"Where did you learn all this?" She asked in wonderment.
"When everyone was obsessing over Hippolyta and Roxanne's marriages, when Father was too busy running for re-election, and Mother was whispering secrets in your ear, nobody paid much attention to me." He shrugged.
"And what about you Narcissa?" Emma turned to her blonde friend.
"I started listening." Narcissa said simply. Listening, Emma thought. Not spying and analyzing. But listening.
"Lewis do you know where the muggle church is?" Emma turned back to her brother.
"Yes, I've been many times."
"Could you take me please?" Emma said, an earnest tone to her voice few had ever heard.
"Of course."
Welllll I'm not completely happy with this, but I'm finally done with finals and have been sitting on portions of this for the last two weeks. Feels good just to post something again! I promise anything that seems half-baked or underexplained here WILL be fleshed out! Happy Holidays xx