His Dark Lady | Tom Riddle Novella

Chapter 1: Blast to the Past

August 8th, 1950

A knock at her bedroom door was what jerked her awake on a gloomy Tuesday morning. Emelina Smith heaved a sigh while sitting up and rubbing the sleep from her eyes, heart feeling heavy from the dream she was abruptly pulled from.

Dream or memory?

A knock sounded again before her door opened just enough for a tiny and extremely aged house elf to poke her head in. Her papery skin was sagging off her small form and Emelina could make out a knot on her left shoulder of the clean linen cloth she usually wore; the mark of a house elf's enslavement.

"Mornin', young mistress!" The house elf squeaked happily. "Mistress Smith asked Hokey to see if you is awake yet. She's wanting to wait for you to have her breakfast."

"Yes, Hokey, I'll be down in a couple of minutes," Emelina responded mildly, still trying to reorient herself from her memory-filled dream. "Thank you."

Recognizing her dismissal, the house elf closed the door softly behind her, leaving her young mistress to ponder over the life she was pulled from. Both figuratively, as it was a dream after all, and literally.

Emelina swung her legs over the side of her plush bed and stood to stretch, trying to ignore the dull ache in her heart. An ache that had decreased gradually over the last 7 years that she had been trapped here.

Truth be told, most days Emelina rarely thought about the life she had before. She easily forgot about the family and friends that she had left behind until a dream in her nightly state of unconsciousness would trigger a memory. After all, she was only 15 years old when she had ended up here. A good third of her life was spent in this once-foreign reality. 

Regardless, every time Emelina awoke from a dream full of her memories, she would take a few days to get back to normal before accepting her reality again. A vicious and emotionally draining cycle.

She was torn from her world along with 4 others. Emelina's world was not somewhere she could return to easily, she could travel the world if she had wanted to and gotten to wherever her heart desired. The trouble wasn't where her home was; it was when.

Emelina Smith was not always a Smith, at least not by name. She was born as Emelina Du Lac in the vibrant city of New York on a crisp November morning of 1995 to Delmar Du Lac and Ophelia Smith. Emelina Marie Du Lac. She had a relatively normal upbringing, well, as normal an upbringing one can have in a magical family at least. She had a loving brother, Lucien, and a doting father that had made up her world little world.

Delmar Du Lac worked at the Magical Congress of the United States of America; he was the head of the Office for Magic Relations and Education. The year Emelina had turned 11, she had excitedly received her letter of acceptance to Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the "greatest school of wizarding in all the world," according to her brother, Lucien. Her father had cried tears of happiness and she could still recall how he had seemed more excited than she was to get his little girl's wand, books, uniform and everything else for school. Delmar was even further delighted when Emelina joined her brother in Thunderbird house to continue the "family legacy" as her father was also a Thunderbird.

Emelina barely remembered her mother, she was barely two years old when her brave mother returned to her ancestral home in England to care for her injured, auror brother. Ophelia Du Lac was the great niece of Hepzibah Smith, her Auntie Smith that had so generously taken Emelina and Lucien in when they had ended up here seeing as they were family after all. Ophelia and her brother were eventually killed when several death eaters had finally tracked them down. Emelina did not know the names of those death eaters but supposed this was the main reason for her captivation with the story of Lord Voldemort. She knew every recorded detail of his story and even convinced her father to take her for the confidential viewings of the memories Albus Dumbledore had collected on Tom Riddle when they had arrived at the Magical Congress.