Authors note: Greetings after a LONG time away! I set aside this story as I was finishing my last year of college (university)…and never picked it back up. I've gone back and reread it a handful of times, and discovered many canonical, grammatical, and continuity errors (I'm beginning working as an editor..and seeing my own mistakes is jarring!) I hope you super-fans will forgive me for the sake of the story! I believe a necessary side effect of centering this tale on an original character, is that some things aren't going to jive completely with the canon. Also, in rereading I saw that I have a jumble of American and British English phrases, spellings, etc. I am American but try my best to emulate the vocabulary these characters would have. Forgive me for my blunders there as well! It's good to be writing again, and to rejoin this magical world.
It was a dedicated study hall Saturday in the Great Hall, where fifth year students prepared for their OWLS exams. Lily and Emma had spent the morning working on their astrological charts and reading tea leaves. There was a new closeness between them, a kindred bond since the day Lily had saved Emma's life in the astronomy tower. She was grateful that it was her, and not Sirius. But if only she could remember what had brought her and Emma so close...
If all had gone to plan, it would have been Sirius who found Emma that evening, and Lily would have gone to James. But just as the two had parted ways, James appeared in a rage, and cornered Sirius in a fury. She heard the words "Moony" "Snivellus" and most poignantly, "How dare you?" Not wishing to be caught in the middle of whatever conflict the two friends seemed to be in, she elected to find Emma instead.
And find her she did, with her wand to her temple, and the beginnings of a fatal spell upon her lips. She'd hauled Emma to the ground and disarmed her. The brunette was shaking, but relief was awash on her face. Almost instantly, a story came pouring out. The story of everything.
The Howard-Shelleys' political connections. Emma's personal knowledge of Voldemort. The Horcruxes. Occlumency lessons. Her betrothal to Sirius. Half of it Lily didn't even understand, but she knew one thing: they must tell Dumbledore of this. Lily rushed her friend to the Headmaster's office, who listened to all they had to say. And with no preamble, no explanation, he whispered just one word.
"Confundus."
For Lily and Emma, their memories of that April day had a large gap. Everything that had happened in the astronomy tower was gone. What remained was a hollowness, a sense that something had been taken from them. And a distrust of the headmaster, too. Lily maintained a nagging suspicion, a constant "Why?" in her head.
As a result, the two had been mentally checked out of everything but their schoolwork. With OWLs approaching, it was a convenient excuse whenever they'd been asked to go to Hogsmeade, or why they'd missed the Quidditch Cup Final. The only thing that hadn't escaped Lily's notice was the absolute loathing that Genevieve Belcour had for her, and an icy, polite friendship maintained with Emma. Lily knew that it would only be harder for all of them if she and James started seeing one another officially, so she had resumed her old tactic of insults and rejections. She saw the way it pained him every time, but he didn't see the way it hurt her, when she pulled the drapes shut on her bed at night and cried. The worst part was that he thought she meant it.
Emma was also rather indifferent to Sirius of late. Between planning Narcissa's wedding, OWLs, occlumency lessons, confrontations with Lucius, and the strange gaps in her memory, there was little time to seek out Sirius. She knew in the summer with all the pureblood social obligations, she'd see him perhaps more than she did at school. But in her heart of hearts, she knew the real reason she gave Sirius the cold shoulder, and it had to do with a letter from France she'd received in February.
"Are those the Transfiguration notes? Mine are so patchy and I can't bear to ask McGonagall for a private tutoring again." Lily leaned over to look at the parchment in Emma's hands.
"Uh, uh, yes, um, right here." Emma stammered, shuffling her papers, hastily trying to cover the one she had been studying.
"You take notes in French?" Lily was puzzled. It didn't look like school work at all.
"Never mind that. Here." Emma said, thrusting a thick scroll into Lily's hands.
Odd behavior indeed. Lily noticed that this scroll was in English. She knew that Emma was a fluent French speaker and writer after her years in France, and also knew that her friend was secretive. Still, it was strange behavior.
"How will you spend your holidays, Emma?" Lily asked as she perused the scroll for gaps in her own notes.
"The usual. Weddings, garden parties, initiations." Emma said absentmindedly.
"Initiations?" Lily cocked her head.
"It's better if I don't explain that one." Emma responded in a whisper.
"Ah." Lily said, shifting in her seat. "I suppose you'll be seeing a lot of the pureblood crowd, Sirius, and all that."
"You mean I'll be seeing James." Emma bluntly spat out.
"Yes, I suppose so."
"Only rarely. His family are practically blood-traitors, but they're our cousins."
"Oh?" Lily squeaked. She knew that the Potters weren't exactly popular amongst the most elite of the purebloods.
"I think they spend far more time with the Weasleys, Prewetts, Longbottoms and whatnot. Pureblood culture is neatly divided like that sometimes. Occasionally someone's great great aunt that we all have in common will die, and I'll see them at the Requiem Mass."
"You talk about it so simply, like it's the most normal thing in the world." Lily put her quill down and looked at Emma. Emma turned her head and looked back.
"For us it is."
Lily noted a forlorn look in her friend's eye.
"I seem to have misplaced my potions notes from the poultices and tinctures lessons." Emma regained her composure, changing the subject.
"You may look at mine. They're textbook." Lily started flipping through her papers.
"No, I'll ask Severus. He did better on those than we did."
Lily stiffened.
"I'd rather you didn't ask him for help."
"Why?" Emma asked, not looking up from her parchment.
"You know why. What he called me."
"His name calling doesn't change the fact that he is talented and dedicated to the craft." Emma responded.
"Wouldn't you rather take a lower mark, and stand up for what is right?"
"I'm not sure we're talking about potions anymore. Besides, he didn't say that word to me. I can hardly believe you let it have such power over you." Emma was growing frustrated. What right did Lily have to tell her who she could and could not borrow notes from? She'd heard the word "mudblood" countless times in her life. To be upset over it, to her, was childish.
"I guess you are fortunate that nobody has made up a nasty word for you and your kind yet." Lily fumed.
"I guess so."
"Say what you will about 'my kind,' but at least I was raised with the empathy to listen to my friends when they are hurting and not proliferate hatred." Lily stacked her books and papers in an angry rush and left the table without another word.
Emma didn't understand, fundamentally. She thought she did, since that day when she made the unbreakable vow. She didn't agree with the cause anymore, she would never do anything to actually hurt Lily or any of her kind. But at the end of the day, Muggles and Muggleborns still carried that label, "her kind." She still thought about it as "them" and "us." Like all rot, it wouldn't stop spreading no matter how often it was pruned, unless the roots were torn out. And Emma had yet to have her roots torn out.
The stalemate continued in the Gryffindor boys dormitories. Alliances had been drawn, then redrawn, and then discarded and resumed again. The likes of this passive aggressive behavior had never been seen in the tower before.
"Remus, would you please tell the shaggy one that his bedpost is wobbling and I cannot sleep listening to it rattle?"
"Actually Moony, could you inform the self-righteous one that my bedpost wobbles because it has been notched so many times, something I'm sure he doesn't understand."
"Please remind our dear unshaven friend of the old adage, 'quality over quantity'."
"Be so kind as to inform the horned git that some of us are blessed with both in equal measure."
"COULD EVERYONE SHUT UP! I HAVE MY MUGGLE STUDIES EXAM IN THE MORNING AND IF I DON'T HAVE A SOLID 8 HOURS OF SLEEP THERE IS NO WAY I WILL REMEMBER THE DETAILS OF MR. DARCY'S FIRST PROPOSAL TO ELIZABETH BENNET COMPARED TO THE SECOND PROPOSAL!" Shrieked Peter from beneath a stack of pillows.
The alliances and grudges were born thusly: Sirius apologized to Remus. Remus forgave Sirius. Remus thanked James for interfering. James became haughty for being the savior of the hour. Sirius was annoyed with James acting like Jesus returned to earth. James didn't forgive Sirius.
Peter was clueless. Both in this minor war in his dormitory, and with the details of Jane Austen novels. He was hopeless with the Muggle Literature portion of the course, and needed all the help he could get.
"You absolute dolt, he proposes to her at the Collins' rectory for the first time. It is the height of arrogance." James replied to Peter's yelling.
"Don't tell me about the height of arrogance…" Sirius muttered, just loud enough to be heard.
"Enough! Please. Sirius, you got yourself into this. Do your penance and move on. James, it is not your burden to bear, nor your life that was in jeopardy. If you two try to use me as a conduit one more time, I will personally go to Professor Dumbledore and inform him of the whole incident. Expulsion is preferable to listening to this for the past fortnight." Remus said, an edge in his voice.
With that final word, he twitched the scarlet hangings on his bed closed. It had been a hellish few weeks for Remus. The incident brought enough guilt to sink him very low indeed, and then there was the way Severus looked at him now, with a mix of fear and promise, like a new puzzle…that also happened to be a werewolf. And to add on to that unease, his two best friends had somehow made it all about themselves and their egos. Thank God for Peter and his constant reading and asking him to define words like "dowry" and "annuity."
James and Sirius both suffered from a similar affliction: lack of progress in their romantic relationships since April. It wasn't that their lady loves hated them…they just cared about their OWLS more. Or so they had said, to each of them after repeated attempts to take walks around the lake, days in Hogsmeade, maybe a kiss or two on the astronomy tower.
"I am ready to approach negotiations with him if he is ready to shut his trap." Sirius said with a huff.
"Likewise." James preened. He really was a diva when he wanted to be.
"Good enough for now. Goodnight, fools." Remus muttered to himself as he finally drifted off to sleep.
Across the castle, Professor Dumbledore paced his office, while Minerva McGonagall sat primly in one of the cushioned chairs at his desk.
"I'm afraid I must, Minerva. I fear that disallowing it would cause more harm than good."
"Really, Albus. To bring that here, meanwhile rings of espionage exist in this school under your watch, while the ministry is cracking down on such societies. These are children whose lives we are playing with here."
He knew that from most perspectives, she was right.
"I concede that the Order shall be restricted to legal, apparating adults only. I have already spoken to Gideon, Alice, and Frank about ceasing their recruitment efforts. That was a lapse in my judgment I admit."
"Thank Merlin for that. But the other way? You know I have my doubts about these Blood societies. For one, I just don't like the look that Miss Howard-Shelley has in her eye, bright as she is. Something is just wrong about her." McGonagall replied.
"I don't think you're wrong, but I don't think you're entirely right. I've had my eye upon her for some time, and for much of the year I'd been instructing her privately in occlumency."
McGonagall gasped, but Dumbledore continued.
"What would a 16 year old need with occlumency you ask? Think of who her mother is, a woman under ministry surveillance since she could walk. The only one left of a string of Potters that cared a whit about their blood. And then her father, descended from Mary and Percy Shelley. A couple whose lives contained secrets that muggles and wizards are keen to get their hands on. Including Tom Riddle himself."
"I've heard the whispers that Tom intends to increase his public power, perhaps to run for minister or some such. I know he has devoted, even maniacal followers. They've killed for him. You believe her to be an agent of darkness on his behalf?" She asked.
"I do not know what she intends to do in that regard. But I do know she has some capacity as a seer, that she has been given more than one vision she has asked me to rid her of temporarily."
"And what were they?"
"That I do not know, for I have never examined her memories without her permission, and do not need any more temptation to do so. But I fear to restrict her, to restrict other students' politics while at Hogwarts would be a grave mistake based upon what she has told me."
"I find that extremely foolish Albus."
"I know. And perhaps it is. But for one, I do know that both our greatest suffering as a people, as well as our redemption, shall come out of all of this. It shall come from within Hogwarts. I would not like to stand in the way of fate." Dumbledore finished, sitting down in his great chair behind his desk.
"But you will bring a tournament here to distract fate." McGonagall rolled her eyes ever so subtly.
Dumbledore laughed, and answered, "The Tri-Wizard Tournament was not my plan, though I am excited to see its return to Hogwarts. My colleagues from France and America are keen to see a Scottish winter, God help them."
