I don't own a thing.
It's quick and messy and not completely edited. Sorry it's not Latitude but my minds too busy to stay on task presently.
I.
Marlene McKinnon was bright sunshine hair and quick, loud laughter. Prongs' cousin once removed, I had grew up alongside here at Potter family functions since 11. She was summer, in all the ways a person could be- light and breezy and so damn free, even with war and death hanging over our heads. For some reason,it was always assumed that we would date, or were dating, secretly. Maybe because she was so damn happy, and I was always making jokes, I don't know who or where it came from, but it made us both laugh until our stomachs' ached, that first time. The whole thing was bloody brilliant, when so many things weren't and I won't deny that I had a right time with it.
Honestly, Marli was everything I would have wanted, should have wanted, had the war not been so unsure and unsteady. We joked, and flirted and took the mickey out of the Prewetts for the hell of it at the same time. She was a bloody good duelist and a riot after a couple of fire whiskey's, but Fabian until the end, even though neither of them ever acted on it. Stupid berks.
After the Prewetts were blindsided by five Death Eaters during a routine patrol, she was never quite the same. Tragedy wakes some people up and it shuts others down, and she was lost under the regret and fear and grief. We all were for a time, Gideon and Fabian had been among the best of us and died ruthlessly... but we all knew the risks back when they were more theory and less practice. It wasn't long after that Travers led his merry band into the MacKinnon's Highland home, extinguishing that line in one macabre night. It was said that Marli was found laying in the kitchen, wand drawn and holding the final barrier to her younger siblings that hid in the pantry. Too young, and too damn brave, she had always laughed at death.
II.
Despite the poetic justice of it, it wasn't Marli MacKinnon that caught and held my eye. Dor was dark and fierce and all too intense for a girl her age. Tragedy woke her up in a blazing, consuming light during our sixth year. I had never noticed her before that year- a quiet Hufflepuff, a muggle born, haughty and a bit proud, but willing to bend over backwards if she held any regard for you at all. After receiving one of the first death summons though, she dived into dueling and defense and it was hard to stop noticing her. Always asking Moony for defense tips or practicing curses with Evans and Emmeline, picking fights with Slytherins, winning fights with Slytherins. She was a wreck of a girl well before the war and resistance became official; having decided if she was going down she was going to take as many of those Bloody Bastards with her as possible. That being said, she was, wands down, the orders best duelist- going rounds with Moody whenever the chance presented itself and always walking away under her own power.
We talked sometimes, until close to the end she believed the drivel about Marli and me, despite being friendly with Mackinnon. I would catch her after meetings sometimes, or we'd be on rotation together for a patrol, but it took awhile for Dor to seek me out; proud thing that she was. I understood her dark determination and she, in turn didn't balk at my... blacker jokes and turns of phrase. She was so lost in avenging her family that she couldn't, wouldn't see past it and had a hard time spending time with the other members when it wasn't training related. But we got along, would mostly get drunk together on nights that we couldn't sleep and weren't on call to do anything useful. I did talk her into dinner at my flat once, and a couple of trips on my motorbike, but we never dated. We were never anything more than a familiar, drunk laugh in the middle of a long night and a quick, cutting wand at eachother's back during a duel. You weren't scared when you fought beside Dor, you couldn't be, her fierceness caught and burned among us until well after the battlebuzz had worn off.
Voldemort killed her himself- she took out too many of his followers to risk sending anymore after her. A Mudblood and he couldn't trust any of his highborn followers to finish her off,that had to be a thorn in old voldy's side. They say that she spit when she saw him, got a couple of curses off and died straight backed and just as proud as she had lived. I'm sure she's seen her family in whatever afterlife there is,though I doubt that they recognize their daughter for all that the war twisted her into.
No, Dor and I never dated. She was quick and intense and so damn determined to clear as many Death Eaters out before her time ran out. And I was Sirius Black, charmer and flirt and hopeless prankster, and if we could have been more, well, the war stole that choice from us.