if you recognise this post its because my former blog @viscountess-nila has been hacked and im reclaiming all my favourite posts. please unfollow if you are following that blog. thank you.
HC-ing Pandora as Evan's older sister, even if they're most commonly known as twins, cause the PANDALILY and the ANGST POTENTIAL
aka my love letter to Pandora Rosier as a character
(it is long guys, i will warn you)
TW - canonical character death, explosions, mutilation, gore (very little but its there), hallucination and angst
Its only one year between them, so it doesn't really make much of a difference in their lives (at least at the beginning). Pandora can't remember her life without Evan, and so they do act like twins and look like twins and even consider each other twins
Both of them cried their hearts out when Pandora left for her first year at Hogwarts, the prospect of separation was terrifying
They didn't even bother to correct anyone when people assumed they were twins in her second year, so everyone assumes they're twins, even if Pandora and Evan are never in the same class together.
Dorcas knew, cause she's in the same year as Pandora, but neither Barty nor Regulus figured it out until 5th year (Barty doesn't talk to them for weeks out of sheer shock and Regulus laughs for the first time in that year)
Regulus also uses the senior girls dorms pretty much all the time after that(he's genius enough to bypass the charms), complaining to Pandora and Dorcas about how his room mates won't stop shagging like bunnies as though Pandora had any control over her brother's love life
So all in all, everything is pretty much the same in Pandora's personal life
However, this little age shift puts Pandora in the academic year above her brother....and in the same year as Lily Evans
Ok it does more than just put her in the same year as Lily
If we're considering her a Slytherin, it puts her in the same dorm as Dorcas, which...ig gives them a dynamic within the skittles
Pandora quizzes Dorcas before an important test, Dorcas listens to Pandora's rants about prophecies and crystals, Pandora analyses and improves Dorcas's Quidditch plans, Dorcas agrees to help Pandora with her newest potion experiment
they might even be each other's first kiss, sapphic awakening
(they both laugh and tease and blush over and talk about their respective Gryffindor girlfriends in later years)
If Pandora is a Ravenclaw, then I'm guessing she's rooming with Emmeline Vance, who's her own degree of cunning and genius. She could be the first link between Pandora and the Gryffindors. She could be the person whispering crazy theories than fuel Pandora's innovations
More importantly, if she's a Ravenclaw and her relationship with Evan remains as comfortable and easy as always, Regulus will look at his two best friends, siblings from different houses and one year apart and wonder why? why can't i have the same thing? where did Sirius and i go wrong?
i love black brother angst forgive me
So, until like, 5th year, Pandora and Evan are twins in every way that matters. Pandora sometimes wishes they were actually twins, so she could have him around all the time, to distract her from the worst of her visions and the scariest of her prophecies in Divination
Then come OWL Potions classes.
Pandora is paired up with Dorcas, like she always is, but she hears a bright laugh from the benches beside her and she turns to see-
Lily Evans, her emerald eyes shining with the mirth of Mary Macdonald's reaction to Marlene McKinnon's snarky retort, her freckles and red hair burning in the fires lit up for their potions
Pandora has seen Lily in potions before. But until now, she'd been with Snape, a little isolated and pretentious. Now, she was shining like rubies, beauty as wild as the blazing sun and Pandora...
It took a grand total of 3 potions classes for Pandora to fall for Lily Evans and 5 classes for Dorcas to figure it out
By the 10th potions class of year 5, Pandora's heart is actively trying to crawl out of her chest to the bold redhead and Dorcas is sighing every time Pandora gets distracted (even if Dorcas herself is also distracted by her insufferable quidditch rival, Marlene McKinnon)
By the 12th class, Pandora notices the prolonged eye contact and casual touches shared between Lily Evans and Mary Macdonald in the breaks between their potion brewing
And for the first time, Pandora Rosier, the girl who has gracefully processed every negative emotion she's ever felt and smiled in the darkest of mind spaces, feels jealousy crawl across her skin and twine its way around her heart
What Pandora doesn't know is that Miss Lily Evans has been quietly glancing at the whimsical, bright-eyed Pandora Rosier since third year
And while her feelings for Mary aren't just unserious fun...Pandora has always been something wondrous, something alluring, something inspiring
So, Pandora simply can't take the jealousy anymore. She can't look at Lily Evans and see a distant, unreachable star instead of a gemstone she could hold and cherish
And Pandora is on the Slytherin/Ravenclaw spectrum. The combination of knowledge, ambition, curiousity and cunning is powerful, to say the least
Slughorn walks in next class, a little dazed (confundus charms take a little while to wear off) and announces that the class pairing will be randomly switched to a list he created just last night
(if anyone asks, Pandora was dealing drugs the previous night, when she mysteriously disappeared from her dorms after classes and returned when she knew her dorm mate was at Quidditch practice)
That's how Pandora Rosier and Lily Evans find themselves paired up for the remainder of their OWL potions classes
No one catches the small smile on Dorcas's face at her best friend's plotting, not even Marlene McKinnon who was sitting right beside her, rather disgruntled with the new seating arrangement
(she won't be disgruntled for long)
Anyways, between Pandora and Lily, this arrangement leads to quiet admiration, fleeting glances, brushing hands, contemplating potioneer theories, and an unexpected friendship between a Gryffindor and a Slytherin that has Lily's Marauder acquaintances baffled and her dorm mates teasing her every chance they got
(Mary shoved the bitterness down, Lily's happiness mattered the most)
Then one day, Lily invites Pandora to work on an invention she'd been thinking of, drags her to the potions classroom at 12am, and somehow potion brewing ends in a night of quiet confessions, wide smiles and delicate, fragile kisses
Suddenly, Pandora is reading with Remus, making jewelry with Mary, playing chess with Peter, laughing with James (and passing on his love notes to Regulus, who perks up every time Pandora enters the Slytherin dorms and blushes every time he reads James' words), singing with Marlene, reassuring Sirius about Regulus
Point is, while there are many Slytherin x Gryffindor couples (furious dorlene, star-crossed jegulus), these two set a calmer, symbolic precedent that sort of highlights the pointlessness of such house enmity
Until the war and prejudice and homophobia and death tears them apart, at least
But yes, for the majority of Pandora's teenage years, the only effect of the one year between her and Evan is the relationships she manages to build and the Hogwarts norms she manages to break
But in her last year, she notices her 16 year old brother talk with people who have malice in their eyes and brands on their forearms. She sees the glint of power in his gaze, the pretentiousness in her friends' behaviour, the worry lining Dorcas's face and the panicked glances she sends to Pandora every time one of the other skittles says something inhumane or cruel
War is ink in water, and they're all getting stained black
She and Dorcas manage to keep Evan, Barty and Regulus out of the death eaters as long as they're in Hogwarts
But one year, just one year, is all it takes
It doesn't matter if Pandora doesn't remember a life without Evan, it doesn't matter if they've slept in the same room all their lives, worn matching clothes and smiled the same way. It doesn't matter if everyone thought they were twins, so much so that Pandora herself almost believed it
Because, for just one year, Evan goes to Hogwarts without Pandora
And when he comes home again, he comes with bags under his eyes, cruelty in his smile and a twisting snake inked on his forearm
Their parents are proud, but Pandora runs to her room (their room their room should be their twin room) as a vision tears through her with a burning headache
A crazed laugh, an explosion and a man with one eye
Years later, Pandora stands at her brother's grave (there is no body inside, but the bloodied, inked forearm is found and the sight haunts Pandora for years to come)
Clutching the crystal he'd picked out for the ring he was going to propose to Barty with, she cries and cries and cries for the one year between them because now she has to live the rest of her years without him
One year, one year, one year
If only they could erase that time-
The idea strikes Pandora with a vein of madness she'd seen on her brother's face before he'd died, a theory Emmeline or Dorcas or Lily must've whispered in her ears a lifetime ago
It's a project she works on for many years, using resources that have been outlawed for centuries and spells that haven't been uttered in millennia
She gets married, she hides the project, she has a daughter, she hides the project, the war ends, she hides the project
She hears of Lily Potter's death, and she doesn't cry this time, cause her project can save her it can save her and save Evan and save Regulus and save Dorcas and save Barty and-
And so when Pandora Lovegood nee Rosier dies, she dies in an explosion from an experiment that should've thrown her back to 1961, thrown her back to the beginning of her life and let her life as Evan's twin, because that one gods damned year is the reason for everything that went wrong
But all it does is take her life as well
