ANGER AND PRIDE ERODE AWAY ONCE JO HAS HER BROTHER BACK BY HER SIDE. Once she gives in, she realizes how exhausting it's been to dig her heels in the sand, how holding onto her anger and pride has left her tired. That happens to Jo, sometimes. Red hot emotions explode so bright and burn everything in their path and then she just fades, a once raging fire now just a tender ember. So she lets herself sink into Marlene's embrace, lets Remus sling his arm over her shoulder and pull her tight into his side, lets them fret and apologize and she smiles and accepts their apologies graciously and gracefully, how she thinks Lily would, and she swallows whatever harshness remains. But she doesn't forget. The taste of bitterness isn't so easily washed away.

She tries to push it to the back of her mind while she half-folds wrinkled shirts and tosses them, mostly crumbled and hardly folded, into her suitcase. Jo tries to replace her petty thoughts with ideas for Christmas presents and she's really only half listening to Dorcas.

"-and I think I might hang out with Marlene over the break. After I get back from California, of course. I want to take her to a movie theater. She has no idea what they are," Dorcas rambles, a pair of trousers neatly folded in her lap as she packs, shaking her head and a small, stubborn smile on her lips. The sun is setting, casting a golden light on her dark skin; Jo thinks her best friend is radiant, legs crossed on her bed. "Do you remember when I took you to a movie theater for the first time? I swear, you purebloods can do the most unimaginable things all your lives but just lose your minds at the simplest of technology."

Jo snickers. "You didn't even tell me what to expect," she reminds her, the absolutely traumatizing memory of her first time in a muggle theater replying in her head. "A girl in pig blood killed a bunch of classmates and you didn't even bother to tell me it wasn't real."

"I thought you would know!" Dorcas protests.

"How would I know?" Jo questions back, giving up all pretenses of folding and simply shoving her clothes into her luggage.

Dorcas chuckles, "Well I'll make sure to explain to Marlene that they're just stories."

Jo flops down on her stomach, hand under her chin and she sinks into the softness of her bed. "Since when are you and McKinnon so close anyways?" she asks. Jo can't think of an instance of the two of them spending time together. Or maybe she just hadn't been paying attention.

Dorcas seems to sink into her shoulders, bites down on her lip and looks everywhere but at Jo. "I dunno, why? Is that a problem?"

Jo shrugs. "No problem with me. Just wondering, 's all."

"She just helps me out with Divination sometimes," Dorcas offers. "You know, I think that-"

But Dorcas is cut off at the sound of their dorm door being slammed against the wall, wide open to reveal a panting and frantic looking first year girl. It's the little blonde one, the one who approached Jo in the library, one of the girls who hadn't left her alone since. Her big eyes scan the room before they land on Jo and she yells, "Josephine! Come quick!"

Jo blinks. "How did you get up here?"

The small girl throws her hands up in the air, throwing her arm back to point down the stairs. "Antonin Dolohov is...is torturing Olivia Atkins!" she rushes out.

"What?" Jo questions, feeling a little slow on the uptake, feeling like she has nothing to go off. Dorcas is leaning forward on her bed.

The little girl has their rapt attention when she says, "Olivia is muggle-born and he started-"

"Ah, shite," Jo interrupts, needing nothing else. There is suddenly a fierce sense of urgency as Jo pushes off her bed, and she doesn't need to look back to know Dorcas is close behind.

They run. They run through the common room and down the tower steps and through the corridors and Jo's feet feel like concrete. The first-year girl is quick on her feet, Jo is always just a step behind her, and Dorcas a step behind Jo and then, all at once, they skid to a stop in front of the History of Magic room and the a little girl with tight braids and blue robes is dangling upside down, screaming.

The sight of Antonin Dolohov, wand pointed up, slimy grin on his face, makes Jo seize up with rage. And there's no one there, no one there to look out for the little Ravenclaw girl. Jo chomps back the urge to hit him straight in the gut with the vilest curse she can think of, one that would get her a lot worse than two weeks detention.

Jo stomps forward, "Put her down Dolohov!" she bellows, red in the face, Dorcas close behind her, the first year that fetched them cowering behind them. Dolohov snaps his head in her direction and contorts his features in disgust. "What, too much of a coward to pick on someone your own size? Had to attack an eleven-year-old girl?" Jo scoffs. "How brave."

Dolohov tightens his hand around his wand and the girl's screams are diluted to whimpers. He sneers. An ugly, evil sneer and Jo wants to hurt him and it's an ugly urge in her she can't control. "Mudblood's a mudblood, and mudbloods get what they deserve." He spits out his words like they're dirt in his mouth. "Same goes for blood traitors like you."

"Do I look like I'm afraid of you?" Jo practically growls, taking big steps towards him with her hands in tight fists by her side. "You're a maggot, dead from the neck up and you need to pick on little girls to feel good about yourself."

His wand remains still. The Ravenclaw girl's eyes are fluttering shut and Jo has no clue how long she's been dangling up there and she doesn't know how to catch her if she falls. Jo sees Dorcas take gentle steps towards her. "You don't have a right to talk to me like that," Dolohov shoots back. "Not after the way you degrade yourself, defending tainted blood."

"Actually, I can talk to you however I'd like," Jo counters, smugness clear in her tone. "Your parents are cousins, Dolohov. That's tainted blood if I've ever heard of it."

The dig hits him hard, she can see it in his face. It's the pureblood curse; the harder you try to preserve the status, the more insular the family tree becomes. "You blood traitors are all the same. Might as well lick the dirt off the ground," he shouts at her, and falters. The girl drops a couple of feet. Dorcas rushes forward.

"Kiss my blood traitor ass and put the girl down before I put you down," Jo threatens, hand reaching for the wand she has tucked in her back pocket.

And apparently, she has pushed him over the edge, because he lowers his wand, and with it, the girl, whose back smacks hard against the cold ground, and points it directly at Jo. Dorcas gasps loudly, not quick enough to catch her but she drops to her knees, tending to her. Dolohov completely ignores her, pointing all of his rage right at Jo. "I'll make you regret that." It sounds like a promise when he says it.

Jo's arm is extended, shoulders angled and wand ready and Dolohov is doing exactly the same, each waiting for the other to make the first move. Jo opens her mouth, ready to spit out a spell she would likely later regret, when the cooling voice of Regulus interrupts.

"What's going on here?" he questions as he rounds the corner, tall and elegant and smooth in his movements as he approaches Dolohov from behind.

Dolohov barely spares him a glance as he says, "I'm about to teach blood traitor Potter a lesson."

Jo watches with tense shoulders and a hammering heart as Regulus processes this response, face expressionless, cheeks looking hollow. Regulus doesn't look at her. He looks at Dolohov and he keeps his hands in his pockets, and he does not look at Jo. "Hmm," he muses after a moment, and then says, "Better leave it. She'll break your knees."

Jo lets nothing show on her face and remains firm in her position, but Dolohov turns, wand nearly lowering. "What?" he questions, bewildered.

"I said she'll break your knees," Regulus repeats easily, voice low and smooth and Jo grinds her teeth together. "Did you not hear what she did to Reed?"

Dolohov scoffs. "Reed's a stupid half-blood-"

"And Potter's not. Leave it, for your sake," Regulus tells him, but Dolohov remains firm. Jo can tell that Dorcas is staring. She doesn't even know if the first year that burst through her door is there anymore. She just stares down at Regulus as he leans in close to Dolohov and says something low in his ear, watching his jaw move with each word.

And whatever was said, it makes Dolohov lower his wand. It makes him take a step back, It makes him call out to Jo, "This isn't over, Potter," as he retreats.

Regulus stands still for a moment, eyes feeling impossibly heavy as he looks at Jo, looks at her stance, looks at her pointed wand. And she stares back, not knowing how to feel and not knowing what the beating of her heart and redness in her cheeks mean. But Regulus just gives her nothing, not a word, and leaves, turning his back and taking long strides back in the direction he came from. Reality kicks back in for Jo when he disappears around the corner.

Dorcas is still kneeling, hand under the neck of the girl, Olivia, Jo suddenly remembers, and the first-year rushes past Jo, towards her friend. Jo watches, chest heaving with heavy breaths she didn't realize she was taking.

The first year drops to her knees and Dorcas tells her, "She'll be okay, but let's take her to the Hospital Wing just in case, yeah?"

"Yeah," the younger girl agrees with a nod, completely breathless.

"And maybe next time, it might be better to grab a teacher," Dorcas tells her with a gentle smile, and then turns towards Jo, "A little help?"

Jo nods, and her body is working again. The girl's barely awake, from all the blood rushing up to her head. Her arms are slung over Jo and Dorcas's shoulders, and they drag her from the corridors down to the Hospital Wing. Jo suggests they levitate her. Dorcas ignores it, and it doesn't take long for Jo to realize why. The first year follows them, looking impossibly small.

"What was that?" Dorcas questions after a few minutes of silence.

Jo gives the best shrug she can with the weight over her shoulders. "Just Dolohov being a knob," she answers dismissively.

"Bollocks to Dolohov!" Dorcas nearly shouts. "Did Regulus Black just defend you?"

For a reason Jo can't explain, her face flushes red. There's a scandalous tone in Dorcas's words that make Jo feel as if she's done something wrong. "No. He was just looking out for Dolohov," Jo answers, and the severity in her tone is cutting and sharp and it leaves Dorcas examining her with narrowed eyes and pursed lips.

"Alright," Dorcas eventually concedes, but her stares linger for a while, and Jo can feel them for even longer.

Jo doesn't sleep that night. Her eyes are heavy, and she tosses in her sleep and her head pounds but she doesn't sleep. Jo stays in her bed, though, and something tugs in her gut at the idea of another late-night walk through the corridors.

Her rest comes on the train, her forehead pressed against the glass and her eyes sealed shut. Emmeline pokes at her and Hestia puts feathers up her nose, but Jo doesn't wake until the train as arrived in London and Jo is lunging to be in her mother's arms once more.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Jo watches Lily Evans laugh and feels transfixed. There is something so seamless and natural and beautiful about Lily, something that Jo had never really noticed before. She's standing in her kitchen, Jo's kitchen, red hair tied back in a ponytail, wild strands flying free, freckled apple cheeks round and pink as she laughs, a bell-like sound that rings around the house, echoing in Jo's ears. Euphemia has a hand on Lily's shoulder, using it to hold herself up as she doubles over in laughter. They are coated in flour, glowing, and they are the stars of the show. James and Fleamont lean up against the kitchen counter, looking so positively in love and in such delightful bliss. Jo sits alone, in a big red puffy armchair in the living room, a glass of Daisyroot Draught in her hand (one that her father handed her with a wink and strict instructions not to tell her mother). It's darker in the living room. It's emptier in the living room.

Jo stares and stares and thinks that's the girl-that's the girl everyone likes better than me, and right then, she can see why.

For a moment, Jo wonders what it might be like to be Lily Evans, to be so unconditionally loved by all, to enchant everyone she meets. She takes a sip of her drink. A little lump in Jo's throat makes it hard for her to breathe evenly as she watches Lily and her mother lean into each other; she hasn't even been back a day she already feels as if she's lost her own mother to the redhead. There is a beast inside of her, little, trapped and slamming against her ribs, desperate for Jo to scream, to yank Lily away from her mother and yell in her face, she's mine! My mother!

Jo thinks about how she is in relation to Lily. Lily is warm sunlight and rolling fields and soft skin and flowers on skirts and contagious smiles and bright eyes. Jo is brittle, cold winters and nasty scowls and fighting words and broken knees and chipped teeth and calloused hands. Resentment beats hard in heart, and she doesn't know what she doesn't like more-Lily or herself.

Jo slumps further down in her chair and wishes she were somewhere else. In a few days' time, Emmeline and Alice and Hestia will be at Potter manor, spending Boxing Day with Jo. Lily will be gone, and her friends will be keeping her up at night and making her laugh so hard her side will hurt and making her feel not so unwanted but for now she is resigned to feeling sorry for herself in the dark.

At least she has Juniper, curled up and purring on the edge of her lap. She'll always have Juniper.

The snow floats outside the window, taking its time to land on the blankets of it that have already piled up on the ground outside. And though the laughter in the kitchen is loud, Jo feels like she is surrounded by silence.

That is, until Sirius stumbles into the living room, a little too drunk a little too early, grinning and flopping onto the couch across from Jo so loudly it makes Juniper leap off of Jo's lap and dart up the stairs. Jo shoots him a look, but he continues to grin.

"Can I tell you something, Little Potter?" he questions, his cheek resting against the arm of the couch, words slurred.

Jo takes another sip of her drink and watches him with hard eyes. "I have a feeling you will no matter what I say," she answers, voice gravelly and deep, heavy with exhaustion.

But Sirius just beams. "I think this is the best Christmas I've ever had," he declares, so bright and sloppy and the sight of him there on the couch forces a small smile on Jo's face.

"It's not even Christmas yet, Sirius."

"Don't care," he tells her with a slight shrug. "I don't think I've ever been happier."

"I think you're just drunk," Jo reminds him, and he laughs.

"Never said I wasn't."

"Well, I'm glad you're happy."

There is a beat of silence, and Sirius sits up, adjusting and shifting and he leans in closer to Jo and says in a soft voice, "I wish you were happier."

Jo flinches. She wasn't aware her sudden misery was so obvious. "I am happy," she tells him, even though she knows she's not, at least not right then. "Can't you tell? I'm beaming."

Sirius examines Jo's flat expression, composed and void. "I'm serious, Jo."

"I already know your name," she deadpans.

He groans, throwing his head back and whines, "Fuck off, Josie! Trying to have a heart to heart over here."

A small giggle escapes her lips at his display. "Well, go on then."

"It's too late," he asserts, slinking back onto the couch once more. "You've ruined it. You ruined my heart to heart."

"Suppose I'm just a ruiner."

"Suppose you are."

Conversation is dull, for a moment, as Jo watches him. She can pick out things about him that now seem more familiar than they did before, the darkness of his hair, the slope of his nose, the point of his chin. For a moment, she wonders what his brother might be doing, how he might be spending his holiday, and before she can stop herself, Jo asks, "What were Christmases like before, for you?"

The question seems to shock Sirius, physically, from the way he reacts, flinching harshly, jolting, jerking. Jo watches his shoulders rise and fall, his eyes flickering. It takes him a moment to formulate an answer, and when he speaks again, his voice is different. It's clearer, thicker, like his answer sobered him up. "Cold. Quiet," he says, eyes trained firmly on the ceiling. "Very proper. Felt like I was spending holidays with my executioner. Everyone walked around like puppets and talked politics and business, but no one ever laughed. My cousin Andromeda was a riot, made it fun when I was younger. But she got disowned and stopped showing up. Then it was just me and Reg. I would cause a scene; he would laugh and then I would get in trouble, and it wouldn't be funny anymore." Sirius pauses, hesitating, like he's trying to catch up with what he just said and Jo sees the way he picks at the skin around his thumb. "Regulus wasn't half-bad for a while. And then, I dunno. I suppose you just can't survive in a place like that."

Jo tilts her head. "How do you mean?"

"My mother had a taste for cruelty," he answers quickly, response sounding so rehearsed and political, like he's trying to hide his real answer from her. "I used to shield it from him, when he was younger. I don't know how things have been since I left but, reckon she had to take it out on someone." Sirius sits up again but doesn't twist around to look at Jo. Instead, he keeps her back to her as he says. "He was always easier to mold than me. Not as well, I dunno. He seems different, from a distance. I dunno."

"Do you miss him?" Jo asks, her throat feeling dry.

Now Sirius stands, turning to look at Jo with wet eyes and a soft smile. "Do you know you have a terrible talent for sucking the fun right out of everything?" he asks, and he takes a few steps towards her, leans down and presses a soft kiss on the top of her head. "I love you, Little Potter. Never change."

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

On Christmas morning, Jo awakes to a small pile of presents. A new broomstick from her parents, as well as a pretty set of dress robes. A broom polishing set from James, "so you can actually take care of this one, Josie." Some new records from Sirius (In the City by The Jam and Rattus Norvegicus by The Stranglers-Jo proclaims Sirius to be the only person she knows with good taste). From Remus, she gets some Sugar Quills and a new book on the latest innovations in healing potions. From Dorcas, her favorite gift, a handknit scarf, with deep reds and warm brows. Alice gets her a semi-matching pair of mittens she did not knit. Emmeline gets her a perfume smelling of fresh pine and heavy rain. From Hestia, she receives a framed photo of all of her friends, laughing too hard they cannot even face the camera (Jo hangs it right up on the wall, and tears up at it).

And there's one more. A long, lone box, the last one to be opened. A long, silver chain, with a small vial pendant. And on the inside is a small sprig of juniper. Preserved and neat. Jo tells herself she doesn't know who it's from as she wears it around her neck.