The Lethal Triangle

The Hidden Girl Discovered

Rain falls chaotically on the small bedroom's windows, making Emma fall asleep with her traumatic thoughts. She had just finished her latest painting, one of Hogwarts, the way her adopted father describes it. A place she longs to go to but is banned to go for the Dark Lord might discover she exists. The world might discover she exists. And Snape would probably pay the ultimate price.

She is a girl locked in a dungeon, or so it seems. Sometimes she wishes Severus Snape didn't find her all those years ago when she escaped her Girl's Home that cold snowy evening. She had been shivering in a cold alley, hiding from muggle police officers who had been looking for her for hours, apparently near somewhere called Knockturn Ally. Snape quickly took her frail body and apparated to where he resides in Spinner's End and nursed her back to life.

Her story is a unique one. Her mother and father were killed when she was only months old by an ancient dark wizard because she was born and they then wanted to stop working for him. The Dark Lord they call him- but Voldemort is his name. A name that sends shivers through Emma on a cellular level. A name that is banned to be spoken.

Snape works under the Dark Lord. But he is a spy. He is actually on the 'good' side but no one but Albus Dumbledore and Emma know this to her knowledge. No one can know this. Just like they can't know he has a pure blood witch for an adopted daughter because he wants to protect her from the hands of his master.

Snape has told her stories of the boy, Draco Malfoy, who is the same age as her but a few months older. The boy who bares the dark mark on his left forearm already and has a mission that Emma can't even fathom having. He is to kill the headmaster of Hogwarts or his whole family's life is on the line. And Snape knows Emma too would have a similar fate if she were to show her face as Snape is one of the Dark Lord's most trusted followers. The only other wizards who know of her existence is Wormtail and the great Albus Dumbledore. And Dumbledore has made his fair share of visits to Snape, trying to convince him that it is time to let Emma Lockwood free. To let her come to school where she belongs at Hogwarts. Snape refuses every time.

In just a few weeks, Emma will be turning sixteen. Unbeknownst to Snape, she plans to go see the world she is missing around her birthday whether Voldemort finds out or not. Being locked in a small two bedroom apartment in a creepy dark and broken town for all these years is becoming too much where her only outing is through the muggle internet through her primary schooling. So much so that she feels she is about to explode, and she has a plan to escape Wormtail's beady eyes and leave home as Snape is never there anyway. It is just the protective charms and Wormtail most of the time- Snape is usually at Hogwarts.

Her dreams are filled with her parents' faces. Though she barely remembers them. She grew up in foster homes and abandoned the last one because they caught on that she can do magic even when she didn't mean to and started to treat her as a threat, locking her in isolation and never letting her leave.

Severus taught her all she knows. He is her mentor. He is her true father in her eyes. Even though she has grown to feel a lot of anger toward him. Their conversations that were once deep and connected are now strained and confusing. Severus and Emma are often on opposite ends of the apartment, avoiding one another. She wants to talk about leaving her 'dungeon' but watching this Draco boy go through what he is going through makes Snape even more against letting Emma leave his sight for one second and this is making her despise him.

A clap of thunder wakes Emma up and she opens her bright blue eyes to a dim dreary gray color flooding into the blinds of her dusty small bedroom. It is still raining, but Emma loves the hard rain.

Her room is a dark olive green and her bed is covered in a velvet black comforter. Everything in Severus' home is dark. Every time Emma suggests a color change to her room as she personally prefers brighter colors, Snape waves her ideas away. No wonder the man seems so depressed. There's no doubt in her mind he stays depressed and she has no idea why. But often she hears him muttering sayings like, "please stay Lilly, don't leave me." In his sleep. Who Lilly is? She is unsure.