innocent flower; serpent underneath

Regulus watched her, at a slight loss for words at what was going on. If he’d made a list of the top five least likely scenarios to ever happen, Emma Vanity showing up at his house in tears would definitely be at least #2. 

He glanced to the floor at the mention of Lucinda being upset, knowing that he was at fault for it but not yet ready to face her. The last thing he wanted was another fight with her and he knew that would happen if they tried to talk things out too soon. 

Sighing, he moved towards her, crouching slightly so that he could be at more of an eye level with her, while he tried to figure out what to do. He considered trying to console her, but he was not good with that kind of thing and was a bit worried that Emma might hit him if he tried to do so.  “…Do you often show up at my home in France when I’m not here?” he asked, genuinely confused but also hoping it might lighten the air a bit as he sat down against the wall across from her.

“…Because we’re still on break?”

“What?” Emma was taken aback slightly, very slightly, at Regulus’s pathetic attempt at consolation. He was truly as emotionally constipated as a man who only ate cheese for a month. “No! Of course not.” She sniffed and wiped her nose again. “I was-” She didn’t want to say it to him. She didn’t want to admit that this was what she’d been doing with her free time. Emma didn’t even want one of her closest friends to know that she still cared so much about finding a woman that had never wanted anything to do with her.

“It was an accident, okay?” Regulus plopped down on the floor near her. He looked nearly as out of place on the floor as Emma felt. “I was looking for something and someone pointed me here, and I didn’t recognize it until I was at the gate. So I thought I could come in and rest for a little while undisturbed and then leave.” Tears were still streaming down her face despite the casual, if not snarky tone, she took with him.

“I thought you’d be at school since, you know, you were there like a day ago? Why would I ever think you’d be here? Even if it is still break. It’s not like I keep your schedule on hand every minute, okay?” She looked to the ground and placed the palms of her hands over her eyes, trying to rub away all the built up emotion. “It’s just been a bad day. I’ll leave.” To punctuate her point, Emma pushed herself up from the floor and began to make her way to the door.

If there was one person he was least expecting to be at his family’s manor, it was Emma Vanity. He hadn’t even really expected that she would talk to him for a while when they returned to school. So when he heard her voice, he nearly dropped his cup of tea, his mind racing to try and find a reason as to why she might be there, and frankly, what she could possibly want to shout at him so badly that she needed to show up in France. 

In the back of his mind, he also wondered if Lucinda was possibly there too. It was rare that the pair went so long without speaking to one another, even during their fights they still managed to have some kind of exchange almost once a day. So this total silence was entirely new territory. 

Sighing, he stood up and made his way down the corridor to where he’d heard the voice, straightening his blazer as he did so. Even though he was alone on vacation and in the confines of his own home, he was still impeccably well dressed. Perhaps it was simply due to the fact that it was how he was raised, but it also could have to do with the idea that he was a broody stick in the mud half the time. 

“I swear, if you’re here to shout at me then just leave, Em-” he started loudly before stopping once he came face to face with her and took in her expression. “What’s happened? Are you alright? Is Lucinda okay?”

It was pointless to try and evade Regulus now. She considered making a run for it and not having to deal with him until school started back or later, but frankly, she was tired. Tired of searching, tired of failing, tired of fighting, tired of lying, tired of trying to be okay so that no one saw her falter. It was too much. She collapsed to the floor and sat up against the wall. 

“Luce is fine,” Emma said, her voice cracking slightly on the last word. “Well, no. No she’s not. She’s really upset, but that’s not why I’m here.” Regulus look astounded to say the least. She didn’t blame him. In their many, many years of friendship she was almost positive that Regulus had only seen her cry once before and that time it was not for an emotional reason. It was because she got rammed off her broom, fell about eighty feet, and then broke her tailbone, and both arms. She proceeded to try and kick him when he asked if she was okay.

It had to be shocking to see her now. No matter how hard she tried to stop crying, the floodgates had been opened and years of repressed emotion was pouring forth. “I- I didn’t think you’d be here. I thought you were still at school.” Snot began to drip from her nose. Emma wiped it away angrily. Why the hell would anyone cry? It was disgusting. “Why aren’t you at school?!”

It hadn’t taken long after his fights with both Lucinda and Emma for Regulus to decide to take a sudden trip to France- his preferred residence. It was ironic how, when put in a difficult situation, Regulus had the immediate reaction to just drop everything and go there. Of course he’d never compare it to or even realize the irony of the fact that both Black brothers had the tendency to just run away from their problems. 

Hearing someone walking around and assuming it was his mother he sighed, putting down his book for a moment as he called out, “Mother, I told you. I want to stay here for break. I’ll floo back for whatever functions are extremely necessary, but I’m staying here.”

@emmavanxty

France was just one more facet to the many-sided lie that Emma had been living for quite some time. In an act of desperation last summer, she’d begun searching for her mother. She held on to the hope that the letter she’d received from her mother so long ago was only a lie meant to make Emma not care about her mother anymore. Well, Emma certainly didn’t care about a woman who hadn’t bothered to stay more than a month for her, but she did care about keeping herself afloat in the current state of the world.

Her intel lead her to France, and not the fun, shopping centers of Paris. Two shadowed figures waited for her at the corner of a nearly empty road. The handoff was quick. Emma got an address in return for nearly 30 galleons. It was a small price to pay in the long run. A small slip of paper ended up leading her towards the mansions. She began to recognize her surroundings slowly. There was no way her mother was here. Emma ripped up the slip of paper and let it fall to the ground. She hadn’t recognized the address on paper but there was no denying the building she was standing in front of belonged to the Black family.

Emma recognized it from years of summer visits, and the occasional Holiday party. “Dammit.” It was another dead in. Emma hated failing. She could feel the hot tears beginning to well up in her eyes. She may as well go in. The house elves would recognize her, and she didn’t have anywhere else to go. She didn’t expect anyone to actually be there until she heard Regulus voice from the room over. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.” She said under her breath. He was the last person that she wanted to see right now. She was crying, she was pissed at him, and he was supposed to be at school. “I’m not your fucking mum.”

The event this evening was one he’d attended on his own - with no ring on his finger, Antonin had not been allotted a plus one – and the majority of the company was rather boring. His eyebrows rose at the sight of the younger generation with their phones out, though he said nothing. He was not so old yet that he should be lecturing the younger generation, though Antonin wondered if muggle ways of life would continue to penetrate pureblood society. He certainly hoped not.

The hazy look made Antonin bite his lip in amusement. He certainly did not look that old, did he? Antonin took a sip of his drink. “Parties like these aren’t for having fun,” he told her, his voice tinged with the sound of one who what repeating what he had been told a plethora of times. “Parties like these are for fostering connections, ensuring our way of life goes on in the future. At least I didn’t come upon you on your phone. I don’t think old Madam Greengrass would approve.” He gestured to the older woman who was watching a crowd of Hogwarts students along the walls like a hawk.

“As for myself, yes, I’m having a decent enough time,” he said steadily. “It is always good to interact with society.” His lips twitched at the corners. “It’s certainly better to be at an event that ensures the dregs of our society are unable to attend, though one should not speak of such things in polite company. I apologize,” he said with an incline of his head, his nose wrinkling at the thought of muggles.

His words rang with the same tone of her fathers in regard to what sort of party this was. He’d repeated a nearly identical phrase for most of her life as he encouraged her to behave and make solid connections. “Right, but most people aren’t particularly interested in networking with a fifteen year old quidditch captain, unless they’re offering summer internships at the ministry in departments that are frankly uninteresting.” She realized that what she said could be misconstrued as lazy or disrespectful. “That being said, I’ve had my internship for this summer locked up since last November.”

“Obliviator Department. I wanted it out of the way before practice got too serious.” Madam Greengrass was looking at her now. That devil woman would nit pick anything in order to give you a good rap on the knuckles. Emma quickly looked away so she wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I can check my phone every day, it’s not as easy to catch wind of the ministers new policies. I’d hate to miss out in favor of a snapowl.”

Emma shook her head and took a sip of her own drink, non-alcoholic in the presence of her father. “No need to apologize.” She offered. “It’s a shared sentiment by any sane person in the vicinity, I’m sure.” Emma knew that the tensions between purebloods, halfbloods, and mudbloods had been rising over the year to heights that people couldn’t have predicted unless they were in the inner circles. Sure, there might be a few mudblood sympathizers or blood traitors in the room, but they weren’t stupid enough to speak up. Of that, she had no doubts. 

@emmavanxty

Antonin Dolohov skimmed the crowd, looking for a girl – a Hogwarts student, really – he’d been told about earlier that week. Vanity had approached him at work earlier in the week. Though the two of them were both involved in the same social group, they played different roles and Antonin knew that recruitment was about to begin for the Dark Lord again soon. Apparently young Emma was something of a prodigy when it came to quidditch and her father assured Antonin that his daughter would be up to the task. Unwilling to recruit someone so young without knowing her own prowess, Antonin took it upon himself to talk to her, perhaps see if her spellcasting was at the level it would need to be by the time recruitment began.

He held his glass of whiskey in his hand as he walked over to the girl he recognized vaguely from other events and mostly from the photo her father had shown him. “Miss Vanity, I trust you are having a good evening,” he said smoothly.

Emma had been hopping from event to event the entirety of spring break. Pureblooded society used every opportunity of student’s free time to socialize them, groom them, and push them further up whatever ladder their family was trying to climb at the moment. Emma’s father had bought her a brand new dress and insisted that she come with him to this event since he’d barely seen her over the break. It wasn’t a request. Like most suggestions of Tennyson Vanity, it had the air of requirement. 

It was a dreadfully boring affair. The few people that had bothered to take to the dance floor were ancient and moved slower than the conductor, whose grey beard nearly touched his toes. Anyone Emma’s age or close sat on the outskirts of the room, sneaking drinks if they could, or lazily looking through their phones. Emma was passing the time by trying to read the lips of the ministry officials. She was positive that there was an outbreak of dragon pox in Denmark that they were trying to keep hush, hush. 

A vaguely familiar voice distracted her from deciphering the minister’s new policy on either dragons or dorsal fins. Emma turned to see Antonin Dolohov speaking to her. He was a pureblood that she’d seen around since she was a little girl, and she hated to admit that she definitely had a crush on him for quite some time. She stared at him hazily for a moment, before realizing that she needed to respond.

“Uh, yeah. I mean, it’s kind of a drag, but I’ve been to worse parties. Are you having a nice time?”