Chapter Text
1st September, 1971
Emmeline stood alone on Platform Nine and Three Quarters in her bubble of isolation. Families around her screamed and cried and laughed, but it didn’t seem to quite reach her.
She watched a girl be pulled into a tight hug by her mother before leaving. She looked away. Closer to her stood a boy whose parents were smiling as they spoke. Emmeline couldn’t help but eavesdrop.
.
“Be good, Jamie,” the father said. She watched his mother wipe away an escaped tear.
“Can’t make any promises. Mum, you know I’ll write everyday, right?”
Emmeline averted her eyes. She willed herself to feel nothing. She forced herself to swallow the anger and self loathing that rose up in her. It tasted the same as it always did, a bitter pill. It’s for my own good , she thought, but not for the first time, she didn’t believe it.
She knew her parents didn’t really love each other, or her for that matter. But if they were so intent on playing the part of a happy family in front of pureblood society, would it have killed them to pretend to be the same in front of the rest of the wizarding world too?
Deep breaths, she told herself, patiently waiting for her breaths to even out before she lifted her eyes from the ground. Her eyes latched onto another girl, but this time the girl was alone. She looked as out of place as Emmeline felt.
Emmeline made the split second decision to walk over to her. Her parents had told her to only speak to purebloods, to “maintain her image.” She snorted to herself. They only cared because it would affect the pureblood supremacist image of themselves that they projected, despite being halfbloods themselves.
She stopped in front of the girl. The other girl looked up from the ground. She looked pretty from a distance, but Emmeline wasn’t prepared for how beautiful her features actually were up close.
“Hi,” the girl said.
“Hi.” For the first time, Emmeline felt unsure of herself.
“Are you muggleborn too?” She was either one herself, or a blood purist.
“No.”
“Oh.” The girl looked disappointed. Definitely not a blood purist.
“My name’s Emmeline.”
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t even introduce myself. I’m Mary, Mary MacDonald.”
Mary smiled, and Emmeline could tell it was genuine from the way her eyes lit up. She didn’t remember the last time she had seen such unbridled joy on someone’s face.
The train whistled. It would be leaving soon and Emmeline hadn’t even loaded her trunk onto it, and she needed to find a compartment. Mary hadn’t either, so at least she wouldn’t be alone.
“Sit with me?” Mary asked before Emmeline could even open her mouth.
“Okay,” she replied, and Mary graced her with another smile. Mary lifted up her trunk with one hand, reaching out for Emmeline’s with the other.
“Can I call you Em?”
“Sure,” Emmeline smiled, and she let Mary take her hand. It was her first genuine smile.
“What house do you want to be in?” She asked Mary as they hoisted their trunks up and onto the rack.
“House?” Mary looked confused.
“The four Houses?”
“Hogwarts has Houses?”
“You don’t know?” It was Emmeline’s turn to be confused.
“No? My letter came last month, telling me that I was a witch and that I had to come to Hogwarts.”
Emmeline was stunned. Was that how all Muggleborns found out that they were witches and wizards? She owed Mary an explanation, something that Dumbledore should have given her and every other Muggleborn before they got on the train. It was honestly a miracle that so many Muggles even let their children go with so little information.
“Hogwarts has four Houses. Slytherin, for the ambitious and scheming. Ravenclaw, for the intelligent and resourceful. Gryffindor, for the brave and protective. And Hufflepuff, for the loyal and kind.” Emmeline had exercised great restraint with her embellishments because Mary deserved to know about each House objectively.
“Do we get to choose our House?”
“If only.” She scoffed. “The Sorting Hat decides where we go. I think it’s stupid, really, to brand students with something that will follow them around for their entire lives at eleven .”
“A hat decides something that’s going to haunt me for my entire life?” Mary was incredulous.
“If you’re lucky, you’ll get sorted into Gryffindor. That way your House will become sort of like your shield. You can get away with anything, at Hogwarts and even after, if you’re a Gryffindor.”
“And what if I’m not in Gryffindor?”
“If you’re in Ravenclaw, you get lucky because you’re in a neutral house and no one looks down on them. Hufflepuff is a neutral house too, except people think that Hufflepuffs are weak. And if you have the misfortune of being sorted into Slytherin, well, I wouldn’t say misfortune exactly, Slytherin has alumni in high places but everyone else looks down on them to the point I’d say that they’re downright villainised by the other three Houses.”
Emmeline knew where her parents wanted her to go. Slytherin, with the other pureblood children, like Mulciber, Black and the Rosier twins. But in all honesty, she would rather suffer at her parents’ hands than become a pawn in their games. She knew where she wanted to go.
“So, what you’re telling me is that a hat of all inanimate objects in the world will decide what the rest of my life is going to look like when I’m eleven ?”
“In short, yes.” Mary huffs and leans back in her seat, clearly displeased by her answer. Emmeline wishes she had a different one to offer her, but she didn’t.
“What House do you want to be in?” Mary asks her, clearly trying to lighten her own mood.
“What House do I want to be in or what House do my parents want me to be in?” She laughs dryly, because she knows that the thought never even crossed Mary that they might not be the same thing.
“How does whatever your parents want matter?” Mary scrunched her nose up in confusion.
“In wizarding society, nothing matters more than what your parents want. Especially in pureblood circles.”
“Are you one? A pureblood, I mean.”
“No.” Emmeline tries and fails to suppress her laughter. “My parents can pretend all they like, but neither of them are purebloods, and neither am I.”
“Oh.” She understands Mary’s confusion. “Then why is it so important to you?”
“It isn’t. Not really, at least. But my parents want to act like purebloods and they want me to fit into the mould of a perfect pureblood girl, being raised to be nothing more than a socialite and trophy wife to be used for their own agendas.”
“And what do you want?”
“What do I want?” She repeated slowly, and Mary nodded. “I want to be famous. I want to make history, and make them remember my name.”
“What’s stopping you?”
“Nothing that I can’t take care of.” She smirked, and Mary smiled back.
“You’d make a great Slytherin.”
“I would,” Emmeline agreed, “but that’s exactly what my parents want, and that’s the last thing I’m inclined to do.”
“Which House do you want to be in then?”
“Ravenclaw.”
“You’re certainly smart enough to be there.”
“And so are you.” Mary smiled at that. She smiled a lot, Emmeline noticed. “But is that where you want to be?”
“Honestly, I have no idea. I’d rather be in any of them than in Hufflepuff.”
“Not Slytherin, though. It gets its shit reputation from the blood supremacists there. They’d make your life a living hell."
“I guess that leaves me with Ravenclaw and Gryffindor to choose from.”
“Technically, you won’t be doing the choosing. The Sorting Hat will.”
“Yes.” Mary rolled her eyes. “I forgot that’s the talking hat’s job.”
She’s funny, Emmeline will give her that. Or maybe her standards for humour were extremely low, given that the only interaction she has had with children of her age was with stuck up purebloods.
“I hope we’re in Ravenclaw together,” Mary says, giving her a smile, less cheerful and more shy.
“I hope so too,” is all Emmeline can say and she means it.
“Tell me about your family.” She’s surprised by the sudden change of topic, but she lets it be.
“Well, my parents are both Vietnamese, and halfbloods. They moved here when I was what? Three? And then they raised me as a pureblood, and the British purebloods were none the wiser to the fact that we weren’t.”
“You never told me your last name.”
“Vance,” she replies, and that’s only a fraction of the truth. She knows it’s not her real last name, but that was the one her parents used.
“But you said you were Vietnamese, right?”
“Vance isn’t my real last name.” Emmeline sighs inwardly, regretting opening up so much to someone who was practically a stranger.
“But it’s the one your parents use?”
“Yes,” she replied shortly.
“A part of their whole ‘new country, new life’ agenda?”
“Yeah.” Emmeline exhaled softly.
She didn’t like speaking about her Vietnamese heritage, because if she was being honest, she knew nothing about it. Her parents had raised her so estranged from their culture that she barely felt like a part of it. If not for her looks, she would have blended into British wizarding society seamlessly.
Emmeline didn’t speak the language, or know the folklore or eat the cuisine. Her Vietnamese heritage meant nothing to her. Her parents had made sure of that.
They stayed silent for a while, until Emmeline felt the weight of it pressing down on her and crushing the flame of hope that had started burning in her chest.
“You never told me about your family.” Mary forced her eyes away from the window to look at her.
“My family?” Mary repeated slowly.
“Yeah, your family.”
“Well, my mom’s Jamaican and my dad’s Scottish. I have two older sisters, they’re twins. And then there are my younger brothers, and my twin brother.”
“You have a twin?” Emmeline raised her eyebrows in surprise.
“Yeah.” She nodded. “Malcolm.”
“Is he a - ,” Emmeline began, only to be cut off.
“No.” And just like that, Mary shuts down the conversation and looks away to the window again.
“I’m sorry.” It slips out, surprising even herself.
“It’s not your fault.” The other girl shakes her head. “Apologies from people who had nothing to do with it doesn’t change shit. I don’t need your pity, or anyone else’s for that matter. I’m dealing with it.”
I’m dealing with it.
Emmeline said that often enough herself. Every time she shoved people away, insisting that she could help herself, that was her go to phrase. She didn’t really mean it, but at the same time, she did. She didn’t need anyone, but that didn’t mean that she didn’t want anyone. People just took them to be synonymous and left her alone.
“Well, we still have seven hours or so to kill before we get to Hogwarts. What do you want to know about the wizarding world?” She smiled as Mary launched hundreds of questions at the same time, barely taking a breath herself, let alone giving her a moment to breathe.
Emmeline had never spoken to someone who didn’t know how the underlying mechanisms of the wizarding world worked. It was refreshing in a way, being asked so many questions as if her normal was something special and new. Mary’s questions forced her to think more about things she overlooked in her daily life. It was a challenge, and Emmeline never backed down from one.
She and Mary would be good friends, Emmeline decided. No matter what the Sorting Hat decided for them, Mary was the first friend that she had had and had actually liked. She wasn’t going to let them be separated.
And as the Hogwarts Express sped towards Hogwarts, two girls from different worlds and different lives became fast friends. Little were they aware how much the next years would test it.