It was snowing on the January day before Emma and her brothers were set to return to Hogwarts. Their bags were being taken by floo to Grimmauld Place where they would leave for Kings Cross with the Black cousins the following morning. Emma was all ready to leave, until their house elf summoned her to her mother's study. Lord Voldemort sat behind her mother's desk, and her mother stood behind him.
Emma immediately dropped into a curtsey and kept her eyes cast downward when she saw him.
"The Dark Lord has a commission for you, dearest." Vera drawled.
"Rise, child. You need not be afraid." Voldemort said to her.
She stood up and steeled herself as best she could.
"I sense that you are beginning to doubt our cause, Miss Howard-Shelley. It saddens me, but I can understand how proximity to so much free thinking at Hogwarts would tamper with a young mind."
"My lord, I promise," Emma began, but he held up his hand to silence her.
"Don't lie to me. I've consulted with your mother and some of my other supporters and we've decided to take my horcruxes out of your care. It was not wise for me to put them all in the same place, guarded by a child no less, but I am certain now that they shall be safer in their new homes."
"Yes, my lord." Emma whispered. The color drained from her face. He'd only taken her into his confidence a few weeks ago about them, and just as easily he snatched them away. She wondered if she should tell someone about them, someone like Lewis or Frank Longbottom.
"But rather than give up on you, the Dark Lord has decided to entrust you with another task. This evening you and Sirius are to visit family vaults in Gringotts and retrieve two special items: both of them diaries." Her mother told her
"Diaries?" Emma asked, confused.
"Yes. Sirius is a lost cause, but at least he is useful for smuggling dark objects. Nobody would suspect the rebellious snot of anything untoward." Vera sneered.
"Now now, Vera. We must treat our fellow wizard with due respect." Voldemort cautioned. There was something in his cold voice that Emma did not like.
"And what am I to retrieve?"
"The diary of your ancestor, Mary Shelley, witch and authoress. She wrote a popular muggle novel on the subject of galvanism, and though the simple minded mudbloods thought it a dark and implausible story, I think perhaps it would be useful to our cause. It will be your job to read her diary and take what information you can from it." Voldemort stood.
"I am simply to read?" She asked.
"Guarding horcruxes was too large a task for you, but I know you to be a skilled student and keen observer Emma. We must all do our part for the cause. Some of us will have to be more covert than others." Vera said gently.
"Am I still to marry Sirius?"
"Excuse me?" Voldermort asked.
"Mum said he was a lost cause, but Walburga showed me the family heirloom ring."
"We will see. He is wayward, but his blood is impeachable." Vera looked at her with a look of annoyance.
Emma curtseyed and began to leave the room, as she opened the door, Lord Voldemort spoke,
"I will be watching you Miss Howard-Shelley."
Emma quickly strode down the hall to where the fireplace was waiting for her. Her brothers had clearly gone ahead, and she tossed the powder into the flames and found herself in the parlor of Grimmauld Place where Walburga was pouring tea. She stepped out of the fireplace and shook her winter robes of their ashes.
"Madam Black." Emma curtseyed and the two women kissed each other on the cheek.
"Emma dear, Sirius should be back shortly. Tea?"
"Please."
"Sirius won't be keeping his package he collects, we wanted to send Narcissa but she has been detained at the Lestranges and won't arrive until dinnertime. Your mother told you?"
"She mentioned Sirius was coming, but nothing about Narcissa."
"Ah yes, she got my owl then. Well, Cissy is better to take the diary into her care eventually. But I also thought this could be a good time for you two to discuss your betrothal."
"He knows?" Emma asked, sipping her tea.
"I told him this morning."
"I'm sure that went over very well."
Walburga shot her a look for her insolence but also nodded. The pureblood matron was undeniably prejudiced, and did not know how best to love her son, but one way her mother's intuition would not escape her: she knew that Sirius and Emma would either have a seismic love, or none at all.
Sirius and Emma wound their way through London streets from Grimmauld Place to Diagon Alley. In their thick cloaks and wizards hats they must have caught a few stares, but then again, this was a major cosmopolitan city. You'd have to be dressed a little more outlandishly for a muggle in London to really notice you.
"Do you want to stop for a drink?" Emma broke the silence as they approached The Leaky Cauldron.
"Of course." Sirius muttered and they walked inside.
Emma strode up to the bar directly and ordered two hot butterbeers while Sirius staked out a cosy corner booth near a fireplace. The sounds of the muggle street outside diminished and Sirius felt like they were in an age gone by. His mind was all a jumble, after hearing his mother drone on and on about Lucius Malfoy's initiation at Howard Hall, to the news that he and Emma were informally betrothed, which lead to his screaming match with Walburga, in which he confessed to having a muggleborn girlfriend. If that weren't enough, he had to spend the rest of the day and the night with Emma, and she looked far too good in her fur-lined amethyst cloak.
She joined him with the mugs of butterbeer and sat opposite him, taking off her cloak as she did. She wore a white turtleneck and a black watch plaid shift dress over it. Jewel tones suited her.
"You know why we are here today?" Sirius asked.
"Of course." She said and sipped her drink.
"I imagine you're buzzing with excitement." He tried to provoke her. She said nothing and gave nothing away in her expression.
Sirius watched her as she continued to consume her drink. He knew she had been at Lucius' initiation, knew she had assented to their betrothal. But she gave nothing away in terms of affection or desire. Not even a hint of excitement at the implications of their match in terms of power or stature. As usual, her face was a mask. They sat in silence for some time.
"Are you not disgusted?" He asked.
"Actually I think the butterbeer here is quite good."
"Not with the drink, with yourself. With our errand today."
Emma stood up and put her cloak and hat back on, gesturing for him to finish his drink.
"I don't see why I should be disgusted with myself. I am getting a family heirloom at the behest of my mother. I've committed no crime." She responded as they entered the alley.
"Surely you can see the difference between illegal and immoral." Sirius shot back.
"Of course. But I also fail to see where I have entered immoral actions."
"You mean if I lift your sleeve I won't find a stain there worse than a mark upon the soul? I know of Lucius' and Bella's but not of yours yet."
"You don't know what you are talking about." Emma said decisively. They were now on the steps of Gringotts and they dropped their conversation, lest their voices echo in the halls of the bank. They approached the goblins and Emma handed over the key to the vault they sought, Vault 1818.
"Follow me." Intoned Griphook.
He led them to a cart inside the bowels of the bank and handed the key back to Emma. When she and Sirius were seated he shut the door behind him.
"Paradoxically, yet perhaps fittingly, 1818 is one of the few vaults that your illustrious ancestors allow only wizard entrance to. You'll have to go on your own." Griphook said with an icy tone.
Their cart took off along the tracks and wound around several corners.
"You know if we are to be married someday we must find a way to have more civil conversations." Emma said as they entered a dark tunnel.
"Married? You can't possibly be going along with their inbred scheme." Sirius shouted back.
"We don't have a common ancestor for at least 75 years, Sirius. Don't be a brute. Most of the wizarding world intermarries with a far closer relation." She responded.
"Perhaps I have other reasons for not wanting to wed you, besides the fact that we are still children."
"People often have to grow up fast in our world. War has a tendency to do that." Emma shot back. They were still in the pitch dark.
"There also happens to be that. I would never marry someone with the shite views you hold."
"You misspeak Sirius. You don't know my views." She raised her voice to be heard over the sound of their cart speeding along the tracks. Sirius was unused to hearing her shout.
"Of course I do." He replied
"What are they then?" She asked.
"Lumos." Sirius intoned and his wand glowed between their faces. He could see her eyes alight with indignation. "Pureblood supremacy, wizard domination, crackpot schemes for immortality. That's why we are getting these diaries, aren't we?"
The cart came to a stop outside their vault. Emma clambered out ungracefully and put the key into the lock. Sirius followed her, irate.
"You just sit silently while other witches and wizards are risking everything to stop this. You have no courage, no sense of sacrifice or common good." He continued to bark at her.
They were in the vault and Emma rounded on Sirius.
"Perhaps if you were more concerned with caring about the people around you than making grand displays of your feeling for the common man you would see that this conflict is more than just bravado and duels." She said with a steely tone.
"Oh what a load of-" Sirius began but she cut him off.
"Our whole world is embedded with the meaning of blood status. The Statute of Secrecy is built upon the fact that we are different for muggles and that it matters. Nothing at Hogwarts is untouched by the implications of wizarding supremacy. And you have no clue what your peers are doing and feeling in the midst of all this. If you looked beyond your own cocky, holier than thou attitude, you would see that some of us are suffering trying to find our place in this world." Emma was shouting at this point.
"Suffering? You live a charmed life, waited on by house elves, plotting an engagement before you're old enough to apparate." Sirius countered.
"Resistance takes all forms of people. Unlearning prejudice takes effort beyond pure rejection. Look at your own life and ask yourself what you are doing to resist."
He took a step closer to her.
"I do plenty more than you."
"How? By performatively dating a muggleborn? By breaking every Hogwarts rule, only to be saved from expulsion because your father is on the Board of Governors? Tell me how you live without privilege again." Emma stood beneath him, a deep well of emotion in her large brown eyes.
"At least I speak out." He faltered.
"But what are you actually doing about it?" She whispered.
Sirius couldn't stop himself. Her troubled face bore secrets he had no understanding of, her agitated mannerisms spoke to a fear greater than the opinion of her peers, which she would not betray. He longed to sooth whatever bothered her, wanted nothing more than to take her into his arms, and for the life of him he couldn't fathom why. He stood in the cold, dark vault, fighting with someone who represented all he resented about his upbringing, but all he could do was kiss her.
He took her face in his gloved hands and fiercely pressed his lips to hers. After she recovered from her surprise, he felt her hands rest upon his chest, and she kissed him back. She tasted like the Earl Grey tea his mother always served. For a split second, he thought of all his mother planned. A marriage to Emma in a few years, selling Grimmauld Place and moving to a home along the sea in Cornwall. A different world for wizards and muggles to raise their children in. But as soon as his mind settled upon that beautiful dream, she pushed him away.
"We have parts to play." She said. Sirius panted and put his hands behind his head in frustration.
"What does that mean?" He asked.
"It means this can't happen now. Not yet, at least."
Emma and Sirius left Gringotts with a strange distance between them, despite their rushed intimacy. Sirius could tell that Emma was purposefully leaving things unsaid.
The next morning they journeyed back to Hogwarts, Sirius giving his cousin Narcissa the diary after dinner and saying nothing to Emma.
A new chapter was being forged up in Scotland, and when they arrived in the Great Hall, Sirius saw Emma and Professor Dumbledore in deep conversation.