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chapter four

"THIS LORD VOLDEMORT GUY..."

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     There were many things that Emilia thought she'd never do. One was befriend Dinah, Melanie, and Carmilla (since in their first year, they all looked very scary to a small Emilia Salvatore). Another was randomly decide to get a tattoo, and also dye her hair blue. And another was the very thing she was currently about to do — instead of her friends sneaking onto the Hufflepuff table, Emilia was going to slip onto the end of the Slytherin table and sit with her friends.

     She sat towards the end of the Hufflepuff table. The four girls she shared a dorm room with — Mia Anderson, Lottie Dion, and Zoe and Claudia Lee — were sitting next to her, and they were including her in their conversation, but Emilia was very aware that she was not fully a part of their group. Which made sense. She did sort-of leave their group the instant she found people that clicked with her better.

     But, in her own defence, she had never really felt like she was completely connected with them. They were friends, and she was okay with it, but when she met her current friends towards the start of Second Year, she couldn't help herself when she realised that she had found the people that she felt like she belonged with.

     So, now, the girls in her dorm still spoke to her, but it just felt incredibly weird to Emilia. Well. That, and the fact that they seemed to dislike the blue hair and tattoo. Emilia didn't mind. She thought that she looked pretty badass, and for that reason, she wasn't bothered what they thought about it.

     It was getting towards the end of Dumbledore's annual speech when one of the girls, Lottie, asked Emilia, "So what's up with the hair? Is it actually blue?"

     "No, it's fluorescent yellow," said Emilia. Claudia's head span around from looking at the teachers to Emilia. Her eyes widened. Zoe's jaw dropped. Mia looked offended on behalf of Claudia. (Mia was their Dinah, apparently.) "It was a joke."

     "Not a good one, Salvatore," said Mia.

     Emilia said, "Humour's subjective, pal."

     Mia told her, "Don't call me pal."

     Emilia raised her eyebrows. She wished she could document that moment, to show that yes, Hufflepuffs were loyal and fair and all of that, but that didn't mean that sometimes they could be a little mean. Take the Zacharias guy that left two years ago. He was a Hufflepuff, but he was a little bitch and was convinced that he was so perfect that his children — whether born a male or female — were going to be named after him.

     The food began to fill the tables. As the conversations rose, so did Emilia from her seat. She slipped off of the bench, and began to dart across the room to the Slytherin table.

     "Merlin, Em!"

     Dinah, Melanie, and Carmilla stared at her in surprise. Emilia's eyes widened, and before she knew it, two hands belonging to two different people were ushering her to sit down at the nearest table. As they sat down, Melanie and Dinah already moving to grab some of the roast potatoes, Emilia looked at the table. Ravenclaw.

     "Have you lot noticed?" asked Carmilla. "Not all of our year's showed up."

     "It's not all because of that," said Melanie. "What's her name in Gryffindor left because her dad got some disease—"

     Dinah frowned, and replied, "Yeah, but the other ones didn't leave because of that." Emilia looked at Dinah, eyebrows raised slightly in hopes she'd explain. Dinah caught it easily, and sighed. "They're all joining that man's side."

     "Who?" asked Emilia.

     Melanie furrowed her brows. "It's all in the newspapers..." She looked at Emilia, and then her expression changed suddenly. Hm. "Oh, don't worry. But there's this man, they think he's going to be the next Grindelwald."

     "Wait, what?" asked Emilia. "How didn't I know—?"

     Dinah, whom had been dishing vegetables out onto all of their plates, smiled at Emilia. A pile of carrots fell onto her plate. "Because, Em," said Dinah, "in the nicest way possible, your grandad was his friend so obviously your family's not going to mention it if his successor arrives."

    "Well, by what the prick's saying about muggleborns," Carmilla sighed, shaking her head. "Don't be surprised if I go missing for five years. I'll move to Australia with Jonathan."

     Jonathan was the aforementioned muggle that she had been going out with since last Christmas. He was the reason that Emilia had turned down Capulet's job offer on Carmilla's behalf — something he mentioned every so often, which was weird, but whatever, he's just interested in her friends, which is nice — and he also made Carmilla happy, so Emilia liked him.

     (He also made the best sandwiches, which made the other three happy, so the other three liked him.)

     "I guess that's true," said Emilia. She moved to get some of the gammon in front of one of the Ravenclaws in her year. The girl in question didn't look up from her muggle book. "I don't know why Uncle Capulet wouldn't tell me, he hated Grandad Rupert, he took the four of us off of him when Marie left us."

     "Well, anyway—"

     "There is bad in the world, though," said Melanie. She looked at her forkful of cauliflower. "The Soviet Union's still running half of Europe! And that Hitler man — and the one in Italy—"

      "Isn't there one in Cuba, too?" said Dinah.

     Carmilla twisted her lips. "Think so."

     Emilia frowned. "Yeah, because didn't the muggle American president try and get him out of power?"

     "Yeah, that's it," said Carmilla, nodding in recollection. "'Cause he thought the Soviet Union would put missiles in Cuba because Castro — the Cuban one — was getting friendly with Khrushchev — the Soviet leader — and the Cold War was going on. Is going on."

     Melanie sighed. "The military's being a little nicer in Brazil," she added. The other three nodded, all interested. "My grandmother wrote the other week. They're allowing trade unions again, but the muggles have fucked up the economy."

     "It's always the muggles," muttered Carmilla. Emilia, Dinah, and Melanie raised their eyebrows at her. "I know, I, the muggleborn, am saying this! But have you seen the amount of shit they get into? Fucking hell, they're idiots!"

     "Yeah, but the wizards are just as bad," said Dinah. She set her knife and fork down. "The only thing is, the muggles are more public about it. The wizards like to keep to themselves. For all we know, there could be something similar to the Soviet Union taking over the wizarding communities in Eastern Europe."

     "Surely we'd know," Melanie said. "Durmstrang is in Bulgaria, Bulgaria's currently Soviet, and Hogwarts is close with Durmstrang, so they'd surely mention it if they needed the help...?"

     Emilia chose to keep quiet for most of the conversation. By the sounds of the conversation's beginning, she wasn't aware of a lot of it. And she felt bad about that, she really did. She made a mental note to research into more of it.

     As the food on the table flickered into desserts, Melanie looked up and down the Ravenclaw table. Her lips twisted in thought, and she told the other three, "Maybe we should sit here from now on. The Ravenclaws are nicer."

     "And there's no Sampson and Gregory offering to bite their thumb at you," Dinah pointed out. She rolled her eyes as she spoke, shoving a piece of purple hair behind her ear as she ate one of the profiteroles.

     Melanie grinned. "Speaking of which—!"

     "Oh, no," Emilia shook her head. "You set her off, Di."

     Carmilla laughed. "Let's not mention them right now?" she suggested. "I'd rather not vomit my dinner back up?"

     Melanie's cheeks went red slightly. "All right, but—" She paused to grin and tap Emilia on the nose. Emilia giggled. "— Tomorrow, we will discuss it. I want to destroy them as soon as possible."

     Dinah snorted. "I can't wait to meet your kid."

     "Poppy Fleetwood Mackenzie will be a beautiful heartbreaker," said Melanie. "And I will be incredibly proud of her."

     Emilia clasped her hands together. "You changed her name!"

     Melanie nodded. "I thought just Mac would be too on the nose, so it's Mackenzie," she explained. "And Mackenzie's a pretty name, so it's all fine."

     "Now," said Emilia, her lips curving into the brightest of grins. "You just need to speak to Sage—!"

     Melanie hissed, "Shut up!"

     The other three began to laugh. Emilia had Carmilla's head on her shoulder as both of them laughed, and Emilia couldn't help but think, fuck, I've missed this.

***

     If Emilia could imagine the insides of a princess' tower, it would the Hufflepuff dorm rooms. They were all painted a light mustard, and they managed to look both earthy and nice enough for her brain to think, a princess could live here all right.

     Lottie had been discussing the same thing Emilia and her friends had been conversing about during the Start of Term feast — there was an evil man lurking in the shadows, and everyone believed him to be the next Grindelwald. Even worse than Grindelwald, Mia had exclaimed a couple minutes ago.

     "This Lord Voldemort guy..." Claudia began. She had been lying on her bed, whilst her twin Zoe had been waltzing around singing some wizard rock band as loudly as possible. "If he's as bad as Grindelwald, then why aren't we being warned about him?"

     "Maybe," said Emilia, her heart racing slightly (since she didn't tend to include herself in their conversations), "they just don't want to scare the younger years? How horrible would it be to go to this school of wizardry, and the first thing you're told is that a nasty man wants you dead because you're muggleborn?"

     Mia frowned at her. "In the nicest way possible, Emilia," she said, "your grandfather helped Grindelwald. I'm hoping you think differently to him, but, it was still your blood that helped him."

     Emilia went dead quiet. The other four continued to talk about Grindelwald. The more they spoke, the more Emilia could feel her blood boiling. She laid her head on her pillow, and squeezed her eyes shut, and hoped that if she thought hard enough, she could block out their talking, which would block out all of her thoughts about her Grandad Rupert.

     He was a terrible man. She knew that. She had been raised believing that. At one point in her life, Rupert almost became the caregiver of her and her siblings. Her mother had dumped them at his house, after all. But, it was Capulet that got a hold of them before he could be legally theirs, and after that, they were looked after by Capulet and Donna.

     It scared her, sometimes. If it wasn't for her uncle, she might've grown up in the grim house Rupert used to own. If it wasn't for her uncle, she might've grown up in a house where the rain never stopped pouring and the walls were laced with his horrible ideals. And, yeah, she knew that her current situation was shitty, but that was because of her siblings. At least, now, the sun still shone, no matter what.

     Even without the whole idea of Rupert, just thinking of him made Emilia think of her parents. And, although she was too young to remember, the tales she had been told were enough to both anger and upset her. It was all just horrible. Emilia hated it. It was those moments that she wished she could pluck her surname out of her title, and change it.

      She couldn't do it. Emilia couldn't ignore them talking, regardless of how much she tried. Suddenly, she sat up. She looked at the clock. The hands and the numbers were jumbling up in her head, and she quickly tried to bat away the negative thoughts.

     Finally, she let out, "How long is it until curfew?"

     "Oh, um, forty minutes?" said Zoe.

     Emilia held onto Ripper the Rabbit, and she nodded. "Cool," she said. She scrambled off of her bed, shoving on some shoes over her fluffy socks. "I'll be back for curfew."

     The four went quiet until the dorm room door closed behind her. Emilia carried Ripper the Rabbit. It wasn't until she was leaving the Hufflepuff common room when she thought, oh, where's his lead? And consequently remembered that she had left it at home.

     Emilia bitterly trudged through some of the hallways, and finally took a seat on one of the cold stone benches. She'd probably get into trouble for returning after curfew, because (a) she didn't have a watch, and (b) even if she had a watch, she wouldn't be able to read it.

     "Hey, Salvatore."

     She froze. Ripper the Rabbit looked a little nervous.

     Emilia stood up, holding Ripper the Rabbit carefully. She didn't want to accidentally let go of him, but she also didn't want to scare him by holding him too tightly, and end up killing him.

     One of the boys Melanie had been speaking about looked at her. Emilia felt the need to protect Ripper the Rabbit from him.

     "Um, not to be rude," said Emilia, as she thought but also, to be rude, because this might just kill my rabbit because I'm a little nervous and he seems to be a little scared, "but which one are you?"

     "The one that's on the Slytherin Quidditch team," he told her. Emilia wanted to go home. Like, not just to the dorm room, just flat-out back to the house with the siblings that hate her. "I'm the Chaser. I've been told I'm good enough to be on a proper team... I'm also pretty good at Charms... all sorts of them, really..."

     Emilia grimaced. "That's nice, but, um, do you have a name?"

     "Paris?" he said. Emilia nodded. She thought, please don't scare my rabbit I've already had enough worry this evening I can't have my rabbit die. "But, yeah, your hair's really cool. So's that tattoo. Is it real?"

     "Oh, yeah, I got it done yesterday," said Emilia.

     "Cool," he said. Emilia thought, someone kill me I want to go home. He walked closer. She stepped backwards. "I was just thinking, your friend Turner's just gone off with my friend Sampson—"

     In a panic, Emilia told him, "I'm sure you're okay, but you're close to killing my rabbit so leave me alone."

     And, with that, Emilia used the nearest hallway to walk away from him as quickly as possible without scaring Ripper the Rabbit to death. She wasn't quite sure where she was going, or if what's-his-face was going to drop it (or get beaten up by Dinah) but she didn't particularly care about the details. She just wanted to get away from him.

     "Fuck, Salvatore!"

      "Is that your new way of greeting me?" asked Emilia. She sighed in relief. She liked Sirius. Sirius wouldn't kill her rabbit. That gave him Brownie points. "Because, it's lovely, really, it's truly charming..."

      Sirius smiled at her. She felt relieved. Ripper the Rabbit seemed to be less scared, but that might've been because Emilia wasn't terrified that she was going to have a dead rabbit by curfew.

     "I know, I try," he said. "Where's your rabbit's lead?"

     "At home," said Emilia. She was a little surprised he remembered, but, suddenly, she remembered how much he found the rabbit lead thing hilarious. "I forgot the lead, Ripper almost died, I personally want to go home—"

     Sirius asked, "What?"

     Emilia frowned. "I forgot his lead, Ripper almost died, I personally want to go home—"

     "No, that's lovely, but," Sirius frowned. "He almost died? What did you do?"

     "I did nothing!" she exclaimed. "It wasn't me that almost killed it! It was what's-his-face — the group of boys in Slytherin that brainwash the younger years?"

     "Snivellus?"

     "No!" she said. "The other group."

     "Oh, Prince and that lot?" he asked. Emilia nodded. Sirius looked at her for a minute, and then he frowned. "You're cute, Salvatore, but why would they try and kill your rabbit—?"

     "Because he started talking to me—"

     "Your rabbit almost died protecting you?" asked Sirius. Emilia raised an eyebrow. "Ripper's living up to his name."

     "No!" said Emilia. "I was holding Ripper because he didn't have a lead and I didn't want that black dog that runs around eating him and then one of the brainwashing Slytherin boys — I forgot his name because I can't remember names for shit, just like I can't read a goddamned clock — tried to talk to me because apparently Melanie got with one of his friends because she's trying to destroy them psychologically because they're horrible so he talked to me and he seemed to be too excited by the blue and the tattoo and I was nervous so I was holding Ripper tighter but also he kept on walking closer to me and I thought he was going to scare Ripper and kill him and I swear to fucking Merlin I cannot deal with Ripper dying because of some idiot—"

     "Okay, breathe, sit—"

     "I'm not a dog."

     "That's nice — I am—"

     "I don't want to know what you're like in the, um—" Emilia pulled a face, and shook her head. Sirius' eyes widened, although she didn't particularly notice that. "Anyway — do you actually want that tattoo thing? Because I know how to do it, I did Dinah's — no, no I didn't, shit—

     Sirius looked at her sceptically. Emilia smiled.

     "I've had an idea of what I'd get for a while," he told her. "It's the same as the muggle way to get one, right?"

     "Oh, yeah!" she said. "It just makes your skin feel all tingly for a while. Which, really, was nice, in a weird way, you know?"

     "Not really, Salvatore," said Sirius.

     Emilia pulled a face. She thought it made sense. Oh, well.

     "What are you doing out, anyway?" asked Emilia. "Isn't it close to curfew?"

     "Well, there's about ten minutes until it starts," Sirius replied. Emilia thought, maybe I should head back soon... "Felt like going for a walk, I guess. The Gryffindor tower always feels stuffy."

     "Oh, I get that," she nodded. "Hufflepuff's common room always smells like a garden shed. And the Slytherin one's a little stuffy, but it's also a little damp."

     "Wait — Slytherin—?"

     "Well, my friends are all in Slytherin, so I've snuck in there—"

     "You snuck in?"

     "Yeah, because they couldn't get into the Hufflepuff basement," said Emilia. She laughed. "I mean, I don't think they'd pass as Hufflepuff, they all look like they're ready to fight someone. Well. Mel looks ready to destroy someone psychologically, and Carm looks like she's about to slip arsenic into your drink, but, I mean, Dinah looks ready to fight someone."

     Sirius frowned. "But you fit into Slytherin?"

     "I thought it was because it's easier to sneak in one instead of three," said Emilia. She shrugged. He looked confused. "I don't know. Maybe it's the Salvatore-Slytherin legacy."

     "Oh, don't get me started," Sirius shook his head.

     "Maybe it's good that we both didn't get into Slytherin," said Emilia. Her voice was quieter than usual. "You wouldn't have met your friends. I wouldn't have met mine in the way I did. I needed that year to realise what a good friend actually was."

     "And if I was in Slytherin, I would've ended up like my parents."

     Emilia sighed. "Or mine."

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em's parents are really horrible but i'm trying my best to slowly tell you things about them

i hope you enjoyed, and let me know what you thought! :)

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