Esmerelda Avery was quite your typical lone wolf. The past couple of years had truly been a turning point for her - most significantly marked by her friendships growing with Piper, Levi and Regulus. Now she spent much of her time surrounded by people, them being either her friends or the Slytherin Death Eaters. This constant company meant Esme had difficulty finding moments for herself to quietly think or reflect as she so enjoyed.

In her first few years at Hogwarts, whilst struggling with the new isolation looming over her, Esme spent much time by herself with only her thoughts to occupy her time. Of course Dirk was around some of the time, always with a kind word, though he was mostly found with the popular group of Ravenclaws and Gryffindors.

This had really allowed Esme's independence to blossom. She had become even more solitary than she had been before and this was where she was comfortable. Esme's confidence was deeply rooted in how she only had herself to look out for and everything she got she had earned.

Summer had been passing by at a shockingly slow rate. Everyone was preoccupied with their own business - Piper was moving across the country with her father so they were closer to London for work, Dirk was undergoing work experience at the Ministry, Levi was on holiday, and Regulus was travelling abroad with his parents. Though she would never bring it up to the boy, Esme suspected Regulus' parents were taking him on such an extensive trip in a bid to separate the two teenagers. He pretended to act oblivious to it, but it would be clear to anyone with functioning eyes that Walburga and Orion were not a fan of Esme and they thought their son could do better. It would only be a few years before their parents started pressuring them to settle down with someone and Walburga was very keen on Regulus finding someone else - perhaps anyone else.

Back to the matter at hand, Esme was now spending more time alone than she had in a while. Even the house was empty as Ignatius had finished his time at Hogwarts and was now working as nearly a full-time Death Eater alongside their father Lucas.

This provided some time for Esme to reflect on how much things had really changed. Honestly, she'd started thinking about it when she realised how uncomfortable she was with being apart from Regulus for the summer. The girl who had once been so independent now so heavily relied on her boyfriend and her friends and this terrified her.

Esme hadn't noticed it before. She'd been distracted and preoccupied with concerns about the Dark Lord and the Death Eaters, she hadn't been able to realise how perhaps she had lost some of her independence and self-preservation.

Without even being aware of it, Esme had become deeply dependent on those around her - particularly Regulus. She didn't want to be clingy and she absolutely didn't want to rely on anyone else.

Perhaps some alone time over the summer would offer Esme the opportunity she'd been looking for - the chance to be a bit more self reliant and far less clingy.

Esme would be much more comfortable if she could just undo all of the development she'd been through over the past couple years.

"Don't look at me like that." Esme narrowed her eyes, peering across the room to Egeria, who was sprawled out on her back on the sofa where the sun was peeking in through the window.

The black cat watched the girl for a while, despite being upside down, before rolling over onto her front and sitting up to stare at Esme.

With a huff, Esme pulled her gaze away from the scrutiny of her pet and looked down at the letter that lay in her lap.

As promised, Regulus had been writing very regularly to her. Although as time passed his letters were getting somewhat shorter (the most recent one being only a couple sentences long) as he was clearly struggling to find spare time and had been scrawled before hurrying off someplace else. Yet, much to Esme's amusement, he had found time to send her some rather questionable drawings.

The most recent being a drawing of himself.

Esme lifted the sheet of parchment to look closer at it. Regulus appeared in a sort of half-stickman styled drawing, but his face was very chiselled, to almost the extent that he looked like a greek statue. Clearly the face had been the centre of his focus and the body was added as an afterthought as the figure on the parchment was practically a bobble head. What made Esme laugh, however, was the cartoonish addition of very large bicep muscles on top of the twig-arms as the small drawing of Regulus smirked and flexed.

"Don't eat this letter." Esme warned Egeria, placing the parchment on the seat beside her.

"Esmerelda! Venez ici!" Antoinette Avery's voice called out from the kitchen.

With an exaggerated sigh, she pushed herself up to her feet and replied, "Coming, mother."

The letters and small scraps of parchment that had been resting in her lap fluttered down through the air and scattered across the wooden floor. As Esme reached the door however, she pulled out her wand and gave it a quick flick. This caused the papers to float up into the air, stack themselves in a neat pile, and drop onto the coffee table.

For a moment, she paused to stare at the table and contemplated the fact that perhaps unlimited magic was beginning to make her rather lazy.

Esme pushed the thought immediately away. It wasn't laziness, it was maximising efficiency. Besides, it wasn't like she was going to tell anyone how lazy she'd become.

"Esmerelda! Viens tu?" Antoinette's light voice called again.

"What? Oh, yes, as quickly as possible!" She replied, pocketing her wand and giving Egeria one last glance to make sure she wasn't misbehaving before turning and heading towards the kitchen.

Antoinette Avery had just returned from visiting her family for a month over in France, and had returned with a much thicker accent than usual. Whilst Lucas was out of the house most of the time this also meant she was speaking in more French - something that bothered her husband who had never learnt a word of the language. Ignatius was also becoming like his father, and grew irritated when his mother spoke to him and he couldn't remember what any of it meant.

It was fair to say Esme was a little better. Her fluency in French was, however, very limited. Perhaps limited only to short sentences that one might find to be relatively useless, such as: are you ready? Why are you late? Dinner time! And don't do that.

As Antoinette was speaking most exclusively in French whilst she was settling back into English life, Esme was taking this time to try and be out of the house as much as possible.

Whilst the summer was proving to be the prime opportunity for Esme to revel in some solitude, it was also keeping her awfully busy with her original scheme.

As bizarre as it was, she had been keeping in regular contact with Professor Dumbledore. Most days she would venture out for a few hours to visit families Dumbledore suspected of having some association with the Death Eaters and that would be searching for an escape. This was proving to be somewhat challenging, as Esme had to determine whether they were actually loyal to the Dark Lord and whether or not they had an valuable information without putting herself at risk. Thankfully, most of the people she'd visited were only too grateful for some sense of safety under the watchful eye of the Death Eaters and immediately offered up anything they could for Dumbledore's protection. However, there had also been a couple of instances where Esme had accidentally revealed her disloyalty to Dark Lord too quickly and the person she was visiting had no intention of selling out their secrets. The silver lining was she'd gained an awful lot of experience with the memory-modifying charm.

One thing was for certain though, she was not telling Regulus.

Over the course of their relationship, things had always hit a rocky patch when one of them tried to conceal something from the other. If asked, Esme would say she had undoubtedly learnt her lesson. Yet she also was determined to keep her adventures over the summer tightly under wraps from anyone's else's prying hands.

Before the school year had ended, Regulus had repeatedly - to an obsessive degree, almost like he was talking to a brick wall, - warned Esme against challenging the Death Eaters, either face to face or behind their backs. She, of course, had promised to stay out of harm's way in order to keep the boy's mind at ease.

Regulus, on the other hand, knew he was talking to a brick wall whenever he tried to tell Esme what to do.

She was a brilliantly smart girl, but could also be undeniably dense at times.

If someone tried to tell Esme what to do, in any capacity, she would immediately do the opposite in an attempt to prove that she always knew best.

Regulus was aware of this. She had been that way since she was a young girl and whenever Regulus would share a lesson he'd learnt from his parents she would instinctively argue that they were wrong and lying to him.

Sometimes Regulus couldn't understand why his parents hated Esme so much, but then he would see that memory and understand, though always with a smile and sometimes a laugh.

After all these years, he had learnt a way to guide Esme's decision making. It was a simple tactic, one which the clever girl should really have seen coming, to use basic reverse psychology and make Esme believe she was making the choices for herself. This was how he had swayed her out of taking part in many mischievous pranks against the Slytherins with Levi Rogers.

"You called, I came." Esme remarked as she lingered in the doorway of the kitchen, waiting to see what exactly her mother wanted before she committed to fully entering the room.

Antoinette twirled around, smiling broadly at her daughter as she adjusted the apron around her waist, "It's dinner time, of course. Just the two of us though."

"Dinner time? Really? I just-it was only morning a few minutes ago." She muttered to herself, not wanting to fall under the scrutiny of her mother.

Perhaps summer wasn't passing by as slowly as Esme had first thought.

-

a/n

don't mind me just throwing in a chapter with a completely different writing style

ik this chapter may seem a little slow paced or whatever, but i just needed to gather everything together in one coherent chapter in order to set the characters up for the rest of the story

essentially this chapter is a kind of divider between the first bit of the story which is where they're really teenagers in this dark, adult war

and then the second part where they're forced to become much more adult in the face of the death eaters etc.