It’s kind of hard to believe we’ve spent twelve (combined) birthdays together, isn’t it? 

You’ve always been there. For each and every one of them, even when I was bending myself backwards to not be here for them. To not be present. To not remind myself that it’s another year without the people around me that should be here, that should be alive to celebrate with me.

But you’ve always been there.

To drag me out of those thoughts, to drag me back into the present. Back where I’m supposed to be, with you. With everyone I love, because I love too much and too many and have never known how or when to quit, and you’ve never asked me to stop.

My Emme, you are a gift. A gift to this world, and great Merlin, a gift to me and my soul because I would not be half the person I am today without you. I would not be here, without you. Some days, I would not be out of bed without you, or I would not be actively trying to live without you, or I would not be able to say the words that you deserve to hear from me for the next millennia, because it’s true and even though we are not in love, and we are not related, and we are not the stuff of legend (unless we’re talking Merlin & Arthur) -- but we are just as good. We are me and you, always. 

You’ve been my best friend from the very start. From the word go. I don’t think the world really knew what it was getting itself into when it threw you and me into the same place at the same time on the way to Hogwarts. I am so endlessly grateful for you.

For your wild nature, for your compassion. For your love of cats, and your love of dogs. For your love of Tolstoy (the writer, not the cat,) and Tolstoy (the cat). For your ability to rewrite any mood that I’m in into a good one with just one phone call, or one message, or just one bloody word. For your endless capacity to love and support me, for your love of wearing lipgloss even though nobody’s going to see you other than you. For your wit, your unwavering ability to be kind one second and pull faces at their back the next. 

I love you, Emmeline Vance.

You are my best friend, the one who always brings out the better parts of me, the parts that I did not know was missing in those first few days, the one that reminds me I can be anything that I fucking well want to be, the one that reminds me that kindness is not weakness, the one that reminds me that there are so many things to be grateful for in this world. You’re my soulmate, the one that I can always turn to when things go bad, the one who always knows the right words to say, the one who’s fingers fit between mine like a puzzle piece, the one that points out constellations from the window when you know I can’t find my words, the one who bundles me up in blankets and doesn’t care when I fall asleep with my head in your lap, because you can tell I haven’t slept properly.

You know better than anyone that I would do anything for you. I remember when we watched It’s a Wonderful Life, and you’d turned to me before the scene had even finished, because you knew I’d do anything for you. “What do you want? You want the moon? Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around it and pull it down. Hey. That's a pretty good idea. I'll give you the moon...”

You’re my family, E. Well, you’re probably more than family, really. Nothing would ever, ever be the same without you in my life.

You have changed me, forever. No matter where we end up - whether we end up on separate continents, in different parts of the world for the rest of our lives, or whether we end up going on that massive cross-Europe roadtrip, and countless Paris trips, and staggering through museums because we’re half-drunk on champagne and happiness and feeling at peace, that we always talk about because they all have to happen. 

In the words of Elphaba, in the words of a writer who can put my heart into words better than I ever could... “So much of me is made from what I learned from you. You'll be with me like a handprint on my heart. Whatever way our stories end, I know you have re-written mine by being my friend.”

You are my constant. The moon to my sun. The yin to my yang. The salt to my pepper. The Natasha to my Sonya. The chocolate to my strawberries. The Tom to my Jerry. (Or the Ben to my Jerry.)

I love you. I love you. I love you, and I like you.

Never change.

Yours, always and forever, until the stars go out and there’s nothing left to hold in this universe, 

Dorcas hadn’t met many people that she could say loved her as much as she loved them.

Her aunt, was one. Her uncle, another. Emmeline, was always, always, always top of the list. No matter what, no matter where, Emmeline would always be on the top of any of Dorcas’s many, many well-worn lists. (Of course, this was often shared with Calliope, but Dorcas was as endlessly devoted to Callie as she was Emmeline, no matter the fact that Emmeline wasn’t blood related to her, in any way, shape or form.) 

Emmeline’s birthday was incredibly special to her. It was a day, or sometimes a weekend, depending on what day it fell on, to celebrate the most important person in her life. The striking love that she felt for Emme knew no bounds, and every year, she got more gifts for her than the last, from socks to new coats to a 365 Day jar, every year since she’d met her.

The first gift she’d bought had been the gold plated Dragon. She’d gotten it from an old muggle shop, one of those tacky ones that sold trinkets and antiques, and had fallen in love with it. She’d poured over spell books for months to make it exactly what she wanted it to be. She first charmed it so it could actually fly, and act like a living Dragon. It flew, most often, around the person who was originally carrying it’s head, swooping down to settle on their ear or their finger. It breathed fire, or more often, smoke, when she charmed it for the second time, and held the nifty ability to detect deception, and breathed fire whenever it detected a big lie was being told. (She’d tried and tested it, getting her aunt and uncle to lie, and watching the tiny dragon breathe fire for a few moments, before it shuffled around and looked at her, despite having no eyes.) It was a gift she knew Emmeline would love; Dragons were smart and fierce, and often those who identified with them were loyal, passionate, and had a great sense of humour.

The second gift was, well, technically the longest running. The 365 Day jar was an idea she’d come up with in first year, and it’d been one of the three gifts given that year, and was filled with little notes. Some were reminders, others quotes and lyrics she knew Emmeline would appreciate, and moments and memories. This year, she’d gone for a mix of quotes Emmeline knew and loved, and new quotes, that she knew Emmeline would appreciate, and probably be drawn into reading whatever it came from. She’d gotten quite good at predicting what Emmeline would and wouldn’t like. The reasons she loved Emmeline had grown too long for Dorcas to put in a jar for one year; so it’d been spread to eight, although she knew it’d end up having stacks and stacks more after the year was up.

The cat necklaces were next. They were made in the design of constellations, and bought from this muggle store online. She hadn’t known whether to get the gold or the silver one, and had just resolved to buying both of them. (She knew Emmeline would wear both of them. It just depended on her mood.)

The otter related gifts were next. The otter mug had been one of the first things she’d seen on Amazon, and she’d saved it in a private ‘gifts for Emmeline’ wishlist, knowing that she’d both laugh at the sight of it, and get a lot of use out of it. The notepad had followed suit -- she’d checked that it could be used as an art pad, too, and had bought it after approximately 30 seconds of thought. The enamel pin of Otters holding onto one another was the last Otter gift. Her first thought was that it was absolutely adorable, and her second thought was that it sort of reminded her of them both. They were one another’s anchors, when things went wrong. Everything was right with the world when they were together, or things would be. The symbolism was more than enough to push her into buying it.

The ‘BEST. FRIEND. EVER.’ necklace, two arrows conjoined, was the seventh gift. The packaging read ‘make a wish and put on your necklace. with you by my side, i know anything is possible! wear your necklace as a reminder that together, we’re a force to be reckoned with.’ The entirety of it felt too much like a speech Emmeline had once given Dorcas, when she had been struggling on the anniversary of her parents and brothers deaths. The catastrophic loss she felt on that day often left Dorcas, known as the resident ray of sunshine, at a loss for words, and completely drained emotionally. With Emmeline by her side, she knew that anything was possible, and that they could get through anything the world would throw at them. They worked in tandem, partners in everything from life to tying their shoelaces. The gift seemed like a message, a call-back, to say ‘I hear you. I got you. Always.’

The flowers and the doughnuts were both ordered two weeks before. The doughnuts were from a muggle store, which shipped them to her house, where her aunt then shipped them to her. The flowers were from the local florists at Hogsmeade, hidden behind the back of Madam Puddifoot’s (it was where she got all of her pink flowers from, but the other shades of flowers were just as beautiful, if not more.) The bouquet contained white snapdragons (which were Emmeline’s favourites,) and white Alstroemerias.

There were countless other gifts she’d also gotten her, which felt like enough for Emmeline to have an entirely new wardrobe, and for her to end up with an entirely new stock of art supplies (from oil paints to water paints to anything that Emmeline could want).