Being a Greengrass after all should sound pretty serene.
But being a part of "the Emeralds" should not, especially when hearts become entangled with the infamous Regulus Black.
Goodness, lawfulness, or evilness. Which path will they tread in the ti...
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July 16th, 1978
It had been two weeks since Hogwarts closed its doors for the summer, and the silence that followed was louder than any chaos Avery had known. Two weeks. Fourteen days. Not a letter. Not a single owl from Regulus. Or Barty. Or Evan.
Two weeks wasn't much. Not really. Not when measured against the length of a friendship or the weight of a relationship. But it felt like enough time for Regulus to miss her.
Avery had woken up each morning with that strange, dull ache of waiting. She listened for wings beating at the window. She memorized the sky. She watched other birds fly past, but none of them ever stopped. She had read the Prophet every morning. Not for headlines—she didn't trust them anyway—but for the names tucked away in the margins. Arrests. Disappearances. Werewolf attacks. She started reading between the lines. She learned how to spot the things they weren't allowed to print.
With the unbearable weight of the world pressing down on her shoulders, Avery stopped agonizing over the decision. One impulsive moment of clarity—and she accepted Lily Evans' invitation to join the Order of the Phoenix. She wasn't going alone. Dorcas Meadowes was beside her, as always.
Dorcas didn't need convincing. She didn't ask questions or hesitate. She had already made up her mind the moment she saw the look in Avery's eyes.
"Then let's do something about it," she said simply, as if it were the only choice worth making.
Pandora Lestrange was different. She knew exactly what she stood for: freedom, justice, and something brighter than the world she'd been born into. But when it came to the idea of joining a youth organization dedicated to fighting Voldemort and his followers, she remained unmoved. Not because she didn't believe in the cause, but because motives mattered—and this one didn't call to her for some reasons.
Avery Greengrass and Dorcas Meadowes didn't have a big, dramatic entrance into the Order of the Phoenix. It was more of a quiet showing-up. The first meeting was in a dim old room at the top of a creaky house that smelled like dust and something that used to be alive. The table was scratched and ancient, and most of the faces around it were familiar to them.
Everyone seemed to be talking at once, in that chaotic-but-comfortable way that meant nobody really minded being interrupted.
At the end of the long table, Emmeline Vance was sipping tea with the kind of poise that came from both class and practice, but her eyes betrayed a quiet sharpness, always scanning, always listening. She laughed quietly at a joke Gideon Prewett cracked from across the table, his sleeves rolled up, ink staining his knuckles from notes he'd been scrawling minutes earlier.
Lily Evans stood near the far wall, animated in conversation with Alice Longbottom. Frank Longbottom was holding court near the fireplace, recounting something vaguely ridiculous that had happened during his last mission to Peter Pettigrew and Fabian Prewett —something about a cursed kettle and a transfigured chicken.
