#emdora

"Why did you bring me here?" She asks, keeping her gaze on the plaques. The first one reads beloved friend, the second beloved brother. Emmeline feels rage forming in the pit of her stomach. That word doesn't belong there, to these people. There is nothing about them to love anymore.

At least not for Emmeline. But for the woman that is standing behind her, they were worth loyalty that they didn't deserve.

"Because I wanted to see you, because I miss you." Pandora says, and Emmeline scoffs.

"You lost the right to miss me when you sided with them." There is venom on her tongue now, spitting poison onto every person she talks to. It has been this way for years, she can no longer remember what it felt like to be soft.

"I didn't choose a side." Pandora says, stubborn and unyielding, like she's always been.

"But you did.” Emmeline argues, and her voice is raspy and ragged. “You saw the snakes on their arms and you still let them be in your life. You chose them."

“They were my friends.”

“I was your friend!” Emmeline snaps, turning around to face Pandora. She looks both sixteen and sixty, both light and heavy. She has a baby strapped to her chest, a child that Emmeline has never met, a child that she should have met. She takes a deep breath, holds it for as long as she can until it starts to burn her lungs, then releases. “And you sure as hell didn’t choose me.”

"You chose to erase six years of history." Pandora says. Her voice isn’t the same anymore, changed by years of screaming matches and curses. It’s a wonder their vocal cords still work at all, Emmeline thinks. “You love them, I know you do. You can say whatever you want to your new friends, tell whichever lie helps you sleep at night, but I know you want them back just as much as I do.”

“No, I don’t.” Emmeline shakes her head. The lie comes easily, after years of practice. She has told it to herself and to Dorcas and to every person in the Order. She tells it to her reflection in the mirror everyday, repeats it like affirmations whenever she looks at the stick and poke tattoo on her leg that she let Evan do in sixth year; the one matching with Barty, the design that Regulus drew for them.

I hate them, she thinks, I hope they rot in hell. Fuck Regulus Black, fuck Evan Rosier, fuck Barty Crouch Jr.

Sometimes, she’ll say fuck Pandora, too.

I hope their deaths were slow and painful, I hope Barty suffers for the rest of his life.

On particularly hard nights, she’ll drink half a bottle of firewhiskey and she’ll wish that Pandora is miserable for the rest of her life.

But now, when she looks into her former friend’s eyes, looks at the bundle of white hair resting against her chest, she can’t quite bring herself to curse her.

“I miss you.” Pandora says, and Emmeline knows it’s true. Pandora is many things, but a liar is not one of them. She and Emmeline are opposites that way. “Don’t you miss me?”

“I can’t forgive you.” Emmeline lies again, because she can’t help it. Cruelty sits at the tip of her tongue, the truth lays buried deep inside her chest.

Pandora looks hurt by it, and in this moment Emmeline hates herself more than she hates her former friends.

“I am not asking you to forgive me, or them.” Pandora says, taking a step forward. She is eye to eye with Emmeline and stares her down with a courage that Emmeline has never possessed. All she wants to do is look away, avoid Pandora's presence because it is easier to tell herself she never wants to see her again that way. Easier to lose someone you love when you're not seeing them everyday. “I want you in my life again, Emmy, I want you in Luna’s life. You were supposed to be her godmother, you and Re–”

She cuts herself off but Emmeline knows what she was going to say. You and Regulus, my best friends, my child’s protectors. Guilt is an ocean in her mind that she dives in daily, anger is the sand she lays on when she dries herself off.

It wasn't always this way. Before any hints of war, before there were lines drawn and sides chosen, before Emmeline chose Dorcas and her friends and Pandora chose the friends with the Dark Mark on their arms; before all of that, they were a tight group, a family.

Emmeline, Pandora, Evan, Barty, Regulus.

But now the war is over and Regulus and Evan are dead, Barty is in Azkaban, and Emmeline and Pandora are still on a battlefield but Pandora is laying down her weapons, waving a white flag while Emmeline is still aiming an arrow at her chest.

“I love you, Emmy.” Pandora says, her eyes filling with tears. It breaks Emmeline’s heart, rips it right out of her chest. “I want you back.”

She could stay, could go inside the house and meet Pandora’s new life and be a part of it. She could stop fighting and she could admit that she misses her friends. She could hold Luna in her arms and tell her bedtime stories.

She doesn’t. Instead, Emmeline chooses to break Pandora’s heart in return.

“I’m leaving.” She tells her, voice firm and leaving no room for arguments. “Mary and I are moving away.”

“Mary,” Pandora spits her name like it’s poison. “Mary Macdonald, isn’t it? Your new friends’ friend. You’re choosing her instead of me.”

“Yes.”

Pandora turns to look at the gravestones and Emmeline wants to ask her if it was worth it, if they were worth it. She wants to say I told you so, to rub it in Pandora’s face that she made the wrong choice, and has lost Emmeline because of it. That Evan, Regulus and Barty were never going to change, that she should have cut them off like Emmeline did. That she should have chosen a side and that it shouldn't have been theirs. She wants to poke at Pandora's wounds until they are as big and bloody as her own. Until there is no hope of healing.

Was it worth it? Would you do it again?

She doesn’t, though, and Pandora simply nods and says, “I hope you’re happy.” before going back inside her house.