Marlene didn't like Slytherins.
If she had taken the time to really think about it, she would have been forced to admit that she didn't hate every Slytherin. Lots of them were okay, many of them were even nice, but every single person that she had been involved in a fight with was from there, and there was a certain strain of pure-blooded egomania that ran through the house.
She also wasn't a person to force honesty, especially from herself, so she was perfectly content with the thought that she really didn't like any Slytherins.
She walked down the corridor, almost daring someone to say something to her. She had just had a letter from home and it had left her feeling that familiar mix of guilt and resentment that so often led to her punching someone in the face. Her mum had written the week after she had returned to school and had asked her not to mention Hogwarts in her next letter home, as her brother had been feeling a bit isolated since her return to school, and the Knockturn Alley Incident. Her brother didn't go to the same school as her because, despite both having the same two, thoroughly magical parents, only Marlene had inherited the skill. Her brother went to the local school, something he had only done after a great deal of fighting, and which he had eventually settled into well. Marlene was the one that had to look at the people who thought her family lesser for her brother's place in it, she had to walk by them in corridors, partner them in classes, and eat across from them at dinner. Honestly, it was a wonder that she hadn't been in more fights that the already expansive number than she had. She was only walking down to breakfast, something that anyone else might have thought as a dull routine part of the day, but Marlene was always expecting the next insult to fly and so was always just a little tense. In the back of her mind, the memory of the Knockturn Alley Incident clung to her, refusing to be forgotten.
It had happened when they had taken a trip to Diagon Alley to get her school supplies. Her brother had wandered away for a bit and had taken a wrong turn onto the decidedly darker Knockturn Alley, and had ran into a group of Slytherin students who had immediately recognised him as a relation of the blonde haired, angry girl who was regularly getting into, and winning, fights with them. Marlene had found him before any words were thrown, but the damage had been done. The words the whole family had tried so hard to shield him from were hurled at him as if they were his name; he was a Squib, a filthy, useless, 'worse-than-Mudblood' Squib.
Martin hadn't liked the way she had handled the situation. He had informed her after, as he wiped blood from her nose, one of the Slytherins having gotten in at least one good punch, that she ought to have turned away, and just ignored them.
Turning away and just ignoring things had never, and would never be Marlene's preferred option.
"In any case, you shouldn't punch them? I might be a Squib, but you're not. You have a wand!"
"Yeah, but they're expecting the curse. None of those pure-bloods expect a right hook." She had elicited a small laugh out of him there and it made her smile. "… and don't call yourself that, you're not a Squib, you're a McKinnon, you're my brother, and you're ten times better than them, don't let them get to you!"
He gave her a funny look at that, a wistful, almost pitying sort of look.
"I don't. Marlene, it's not me that they're getting to. I'm not the one reacting, throwing punches and making enemies. You have to be careful; I'm not always going to be around to clean you up after."
"I don't need you to clean me up, and you've known me for long enough to realise that 'careful' is not a word that will ever be used to describe me!"
He pulled her along behind him as they headed back to safe territory, and found her parents, who had taken one look at Marlene's blood-speckled blouse and Martin's defeated look, and declared the trip over.
People often thought that Marlene spent her whole life looking for fights. She did attract an unprecedented number and it would have been hard for even the most innocent person to think that their frequency could be complete coincidence.
To be fair, it probably wasn't coincidence. Marlene, while not exactly looking for trouble, didn't go out of her way to avoid it. If someone insulted her or her family, or if she thought someone else was being picked on, she could be relied upon to get herself involved. It had become a common occurrence for her to be pulled away from someone only to look up and see the condemnation of Professor McGonagall, who would inevitably cart her off to her office, give a familiar speech about how she was bringing a bad name to Gryffindor house, that she understood the impulse but that if Marlene wanted to continue on and do well in life, she would need to learn more appropriate ways to deal with disagreements.
Marlene liked her way; it made things much clearer than they might otherwise be.
On this particular morning, she didn't see anyone who antagonised her enough to engage, and she reached the Great Hall without event. She made her way up the Gryffindor table, and found her friends, sitting silently as they yawned, rubbed their eyes and generally tried to get rid of the tiredness that was still sitting heavily over them.
"You look a right state, Gid! What happened?" She laughed, making sure to ruffle Gideon's hair in that particularly annoying way that she knew he hated. He didn't answer, except for a low grumble and muttering of insults. "Wow, that bad? Did Millie knock you back again?"
"No… she's just busy!" He had said that loud enough and, knowing she had hit a nerve, she backed off.
"So, Fabian, how was your night, do anything interesting?"
He seemed a little bemused.
"Not really, I was just doing homework, unfortunately. See, since this git was off getting dumped…" He gestured resentfully to Gideon. "I had to sit in the Common Room and focus on Potions. I hope you're happy!"
Gideon, it seemed, was not happy. He just stirred his porridge, looking forlorn.
"Unlucky!" Marlene commiserated. "but… lucky for me, because that should mean that you have the Potions homework finished?"
"No! I'm not letting you have it!"
"Be a mate!"
"No."
"Come on!"
She handed in her Potions homework with a smug smile at the slightly resentful looking Fabian. When she returned to her seat, he was still looking a little dazed.
"I'm not even sure how you talked me into that!"
"That would be my wonderful powers of persuasion at work there!"
Dory looked over at them and rolled her eyes.
"You do realise that he's going to read them and realise they are exact copies of one another."
"Please, you don't still think that Slughorn actually reads homework before he marks it, do you? Honestly, the marks in this class are given out based on how many bottles of elf wine and boxes of Honeydukes finest you hand in, not homework."
She dropped her voice as the stout professor stood up to begin the lesson, which was actually among Marlene's favourite classes.
Homework might not have been her priority but she always seemed to do well enough on class work and talent. She liked Potions, partly because of the increased likelihood of explosions and evacuation after someone's potion filled the air with choking smoke. Another part of why she liked Potions was the fact that it, though being undeniably a branch of magic, it was something that you didn't need to be powerfully magical to be good at. That was always intriguing because it still held that faint glimmer of potential, that maybe her brother could come into her world, could join in, if only in some limited aspect. She would go home every holiday, uncharacteristically eager to share what she had learned in classes, and she and Martin would pore over the textbooks, learning the ingredients, the mixtures, the requirements of brewing. She would be on hand, but they had been able to have some limited success with brewing and that had only fuelled her interest in the subject.
They hadn't done it much recently, Martin was growing closer to the world of Muggles, understandably, but Marlene couldn't shake her liking for the subject. It held too much promise for her to treat it with the level of apathy that she tended to treat some other subjects.
Within ten minutes, she was starting to feel her traditional disinterest creep in. Sixth year was never going to be easy, she had expected the workload to increase, but this was ridiculous. It was only the second week of classes, and only the first day of that week, and already she was feeling slightly snowed under. Slughorn, the usually relaxed, easily distracted professor, was resisting the combined best efforts of the class to get him talking about some ex-pupil who had risen to great heights, thanks to a carefully considered introduction from the professor himself. Usually, he could be distracted by a gentle breeze and could be engaged in a monologue for entire classes at a time, but today there was a determined resolute in his gait as he walked around, from potion to potion, remarking cheerfully on their contents or offering suggestions for corrections to the desperate looking students.
Marlene's potion was coming along okay, and there was a bluish, pearly sheen to the liquid that was buzzling lazily above the flames. Next to her, Fabian was less successfully trying to contain the lurid bubblegum-pink liquid that seemed to be straining to escape the cauldron and was causing great tufts of hair to form on everything it touched, including the desk, and Fabian himself.
She tried to help the growing situation but Fabian seemed to be almost enjoying. He wasn't doing much to remedy it and in fact seemed to be throwing ingredients in at random, mixing violently and hoping for a change. By the time the class ended, Slughorn told Fabian not to bother trying to get it into a flask, simply to leave it for Slughorn to deal with later and Fabian cheerfully accepted the fact that he had gained nothing from the class.
"Do you even try?" Dory chided him as they left, and Gideon was trying to quieten his laughter at the bright green patches of hair that had sprouted on the parts of his brother's skin that had been touched by the potion.
"I did, Dory, I tried for so long, and then I realised that I've always been far more talented at causing problems than any of this nonsense!"
"What you call nonsense, I call academics!" Dory tried to look disapproving, but it would have taken a very serious person not to find the green, hairy face of Fabian Prewett at least a little amusing at that moment.
The group made their slow progress through the halls to the next class. This time, there would be none of the inattentiveness of other classes, for any of them. This was perhaps their favourite class, and the one that they all thought was the most important.
As they took their usual seats in the familiar Defence against the Dark Arts classroom, they had their wands and books laid out on the desk, prepared for both the exciting or the dull teacher that was about to enter the classroom and begin their new year of teaching. Their last professor, an elderly, slightly wandered-looking man with a mind sharper than most of theirs, called Professor Harrigan. He had resigned at the end of term, health problems catching up with him. He was now, according to his great-niece, a third year Hufflepuff who had relished being related to someone, even a professor, so well-liked, living in his seaside home in Dorset. Everyone in the school was glad he was well, Dorset being an undeniably better place to rest than Hogwarts, but there was now that familiar feeling of worry that the replacement would be inept, or worse, uninteresting.
When the professor entered through the door near the front of the class, every student was watching with deep interest. Marlene imagined that it must have been quite an intimidating scene to come across on your first week at a new job, and she could bet that every class he had taught before had given him much the same welcome.
He had missed the first week, which only added to the mystery, and their classes had been led by whatever professors had time free for the hour. That had meant, since none of the professors had taught a Defence against the Dark Arts class, that they had done a significant amount of reading and theoretical work, and now they were praying that their new teacher would be the sort who supported teaching them practically.
As Marlene threw her first spell at Dory, who immediately blocked it, she realised that probably this was going to be quite a good year. The professor had given her this impression when he first walked in and straight away ordered them to have their wands ready and then had cleared the desks to one side of the room with a flick of his wand. Then he had started to write instructions on the board, wand movements and the incantation and had let them begin to practice.
It was a good lesson. Fabian seemed to be moulting, shedding more green hairs every moment, and by the time the lesson ended his hair was completely ginger again and his skin clear. Besides that, Marlene had managed to cast both disarming and stunning spells almost non-verbally. She was muttering the words under her breath, so it wasn't technically non-verbal, but she hadn't gotten caught doing it, so that was as much a success as could be expected on a Monday morning, only one week into classes.
Later on, she was forced to come to the realisation that it was likely going to be a very long, very difficult year. She had just packed away the scrolls of parchment on which she had taken an unreasonable amount of notes for Transfiguration, where they joined similarly extensive amounts of writing for each class of the day. She was starting to wonder if she was going to need a bigger bag to carry all her notes.
Even the twins were looking a bit startled, perhaps realising that their usual casual attitude wasn't quite going to work when it came to N.E. . They might actually have to put in some effort.
