Pairing: Zacharias x Marietta

Cameo's: None

Tags: Slice of Life, Redemption, Hurt/Comfort

Format: One-Shot

If you know nothing of these character's, I suggest looking on the HP Wiki otherwise you may get confused.

Living with Zacharias Smith was a routine Marietta had come to know all at once, a lifestyle she had been thrown in to without a lifesaver, head's first. Bizarrely, every morning he would wake up at five am, get dressed, prepare precisely one cheese omelette and two pieces of buttered toast, set the table for himself and then retrieve the Daily Prophet so he might verbally add his own opinion. There were only two things that had been added to that list since their first year of sharing a flat in London: the first was that, as soon as Marietta would grumble her own way out of bed and meander in to the kitchen, Zacharias would stop, very literally, whatever he was doing. He would come and kiss her on the temple, the lips if he were in a particularly loving mood, and without a word return to his station. The second was a more indirect shift, his commute shifting from using the Floo to merely apparating once his breakfast was done.

Marietta was not the same creature of habit, she would drift in to the living room and pick up a book to read. Sometimes she'd open it on a random page, sometimes she'd finish one or start another or give up halfway through. Or she'd skip that altogether, preferring to chatter on the phone (Marietta always wanted one for easy conversation, it was ten times more convenient than waiting for letters or sticking her head in fires), or looking through the mail (this was always her job, to sift through taxes and fairweather friends. Zacharias despised tax collectors and insincere people. Once he told her she was the only genuine person he'd ever met. He always replied to her letters.)

Other times, when Marietta was feeling the stress of her working position or something reminded her of something else she'd rather forget, she would trace Zacharias' steps as he ebbed through the kitchen, memorize each movement to memory. When she looked close enough, she could see a faint smile on his lips, but he never liked to be interrupted so she would say nothing. Mornings were only allowed to be chaotic when he got his hands on the paper, on the rest of the world. This was their bubble, and they did not need words, those paled in comparison. Mornings were peaceful, because Marietta enjoyed seeing Zacharias be quiet (she used to hate his voice, the drippiness of it, how every syllable could be twisted to sound ugly, but that changed.)(Now, his voice was silken gold spun on truth and wit) because he never was with anyone else, not for a second. Eventually, she learned his vocabulary was his armour, his shield and his sword. This was okay, these were her weapons, too.

On this singular morning, Marietta tip toed down the stairs far later than normal. It was a day off, and she bathed in the advantage of sleeping in. Already, Zacharias had the Prophet clasped so tightly in his fingers his knuckles were white as paper. Sharply, he had looked up at her, and he was wearing an expression that could only be described as a smile and grimace fighting for control over the muscles in his face. Through her nose Marietta sighed, she had missed the small window she had gotten every day, the one where Zacharias let himself be vulnerable. "Do you see this?" He holds up the starchy paper, text designed in that ridiculous way only wizards would deem plausible. In his tone she could sense both frustration and amusement and, half-curious, Marietta squinted to make out the headlines from her stance at the middle of the staircase.

Groaning aloud, the acronym alone was enough to exhaust her, to make her wish to tail it back upstairs and under the covers. But Zacharias needed to let this out, let this go, or else the steam within him would rumble until it exploded. "The DA-"

"'The DA, Back Together Again'! Can you believe this?!"

When it came to Zacharias, there was no actual tell as to the response he was truly looking for. Marietta never bothered, she always said what was on her mind. "Given the ego's of half the people in that club, I'd say we should have seen it coming earlier," she said casually.

Rolling his eyes in the way Cho always insisted she did, Zacharias clearly had more than two cents to say on the matter.

"It's only been, what, five years now since the War? You'd think we'd have left a great enough impression that they would invite us" Zacharias complained. He complained as much as he breathed, and maybe even more so. There was never a shortage on his list of what was wrong with the world.

Heavily, Marietta took each step down the stairs one at a time, her feet making blunt, clunking noises each time. Their floors were hard wood. "You can't honestly tell me you really thought they would. I'd bet you just want to laugh in their faces once you rejected them. That's it, isn't it?" A sound that could resemble a snort vibrated from his lips. Grinning, Marietta pointed at him. "That is it, you just want to deny Potter something,"

"Life has given him far too many passes at getting what he wants," His mouth twitches upwards and Marietta laughs, and shakes her head. In school, they'd always make fun of the Potter's and Weasley's and their mindless followers. There were holes in her memory, but she remembered after, remembered bumping shoulders and criticism at the golden boy and his merry band, when Cho was too busy chasing another hero to pay her any mind, too busy getting over herself to have understand.

They don't belittle Harry Potter as much as they used to in crowded halls when he wasn't around. Marietta was ashamed to admit her information was misguided. No one cared, and she had to stop caring, too, and Zacharias never apologized. Never pretended he had to. He knew the value of his own life. So she begins preparing her own breakfast - cereal and a banana - and she lets Zacharias flood her, all his thoughts spilling out and filling her veins, there's always enough room. She makes more of it, when she needs to, because Zacharias loves nothing more than to talk for talking's sake, and he lets her say what's on her mind. They were free of judgment, if only for one another. Zacharias talks, he talks about the DA reunion, and he talks about the economic climate and 'what did you think of the new policy the Ministry has come up with, Marietta? If they had half your mind...' Whenever Zacharias praised her, it was not a cooing affair. He did not ogle, did not make more of something than what it was and always, always Zacharias would say it the same way as anything else, with an intensity he carried with him on his shoulders since he was fourteen years old.

When Zacharias folds the paper up and slides it across the table, it is an indicator. He's about to head off. Not once has Zacharias ever thrown it out after he was done, in case she got in to the mood of skimming over it afterwards, letting her own mind dwell over each word and come to its conclusions. From the start, she knew what Zacharias had seen in her, but it had taken her awhile to figure out. She had the wherewithal to hold conversation with him, where others refused. He was a difficult person, and they both knew this, but they also both knew that she was, too. Hard people to swallow always got spit out by the weak stomached.

There's a pause, the one Zacharias normally sets because sometimes Marietta would ask him to wait a minute longer, to lace their fingers together and remind themselves that they were here when no one else was. This time, Marietta gets up from her chair, she tiptoes towards him and lifts herself higher so she can slide her arms around him. Her hands hook together and she hangs back, staring him straight in those hard blue eyes of his. "They'll miss us, they've got no one else to antagonize them and make them be right about something" The corner of her mouth twerked higher, a brow raised to be comedic.

"Big damn heroes," Zacharias muttered.

"Big damn heroes," she agreed, above a whisper. Kissing Zacharias Smith was a lot softer than she thought it was, before, when they were only thoughts. Now, she gives him one, and it glows in its familiarity, in its feeling of being home.

He goes with a pop, and Marietta can feel the air that was surrounding him being sucked out, too. Rocking back on to her feet, Marietta sighed. The only friend she had left in the world was gone, now. So Marietta moved towards the entrance of their flat, pulling open the door she slowly paced to the elevator, then down the hall, and she was standing before the collective mailboxes of everyone in the building. As she pulled out her keys they jingled timidly, she twists it into the lock and the metal creaks. Shoving her hand in, Marietta wraps her fingers around envelopes and then shuts it rapidly. None were going to be from the magical world, they would be from Muggle banks and Muggle companies demanding Muggle money and perhaps Marietta's Muggle third cousins inviting her and a plus one to a Muggle wedding.

Zacharias did not keep in touch with the Muggles in his life, it was an assurance that he'd never have to put up pretenses. 'Let me around them for more than a day and they'd have to break my wand in half' He'd say, he'd say because Zacharias was never good at keeping secrets, especially when he was expected to. Especially when it came to matters of great importance. They were on a waiting list for a house in Hogsmeade, they had their eye on one closest to the Shrieking Shack. It was out of the way of visiting students and wandering eyes.

Bringing them back up, Marietta waits awhile before ripping in to them. A pot of tea is brewed, a newspaper is read, and a change of clothes occurs all before she walks past the pile of letters and takes a closer look at them. There's one from their electric and plumbing company. She flips it beneath the next. One from their telephone company, and another for their television. Not one from a bank or Cousin Timothy. Reaching the last, Marietta furrows her brow in confusion. A sandy brown envelope with their names scrawled on the front faces her, she does not recognize the handwriting but she does know the postal stamp, it is for Cadburry. There is no seal at the back, the sender licking the letter shut. Stropping off the chair Marietta grabs a pair of scissors from a drawer full of random tools and papers and returns ready. Slicing the top open, she fingers the parchment out of its confinement and smooths the letter out against the table. It could not have been from Cho, Cho used elegant station and her writing was spidery and thin, she had a wax seal that was passed down from her through the generations. A 'C', its curve made out of a dragon and lotus blossoms framing the corners.

She reads it bottom first.

Sincerely,

Dennis Creevey

Marietta gulps, and her eyes bug out and she's about to crush it in the palm of her hand but then she remembered Dennis' cheeky grin in the Hog's Head having successfully snuck out to join them at the age of twelve, Dennis trailing after his brother like a puppy and she doesn't remember anything else. Everything after had been taken from her, and she cannot allow herself to even for a second think of Colin. Marietta did not hate the Creevey's, not when one flashed a camera in her face on the day of the First Task of the Triwizard Tournament and not when the other poked her on the last day of school in her last year of Hogwarts, insisting to take a picture for the first. The first couldn't take pictures anymore, and Marietta couldn't let anyone capture her marred face. She glances down at the letter addressed to herself and Zacharias, the words are blurred at first and Marietta's still too hesitant to put them in to focus.

She breathes, rolls back her head and prods the tears to fade.

She looks back down, and begins to read.

'Dear Marietta and Zacharias

I didn't know how to write this to you at first, and I needed to get it done on time so I don't think I'll come off how I want to, so here goes nothing. Since the Prophet has probably already got their article on the Reunion ready to print I'm betting you'll see this after, though I tried to get the two to line up decently. So you know, I didn't go to the get together thinking you guys weren't going to be there. The past between you and the rest is rocky, and I understand why they wouldn't want you to be there. Gosh, even that sounds bad but, it's true. Marietta tattled on everyone in it and Zacharias might not have done anything against us but... you not heading in to battle has soured a lot of people more than your personality already did, Zacharias.

Wow, again this comes off sounding a whole lot more like hate mail than anything else. But the point is, I don't hate you, even though I don't support some of the stuff you've done it's just something I can't do. Don't get me wrong, I tried to, and sometimes I tricked myself into believing it because everyone else around me felt that way. But I don't. And I thought I was terrible whenever I even thought about it too much, but then I started changing my mind I guess and I thought the others would, too. So I thought you'd be invited, and I asked around for where you two were but no one really sounded happy with me for it.

Hermione even gaped at me, Ron gave this horrible frown and mumbled something and Harry just looked irritated about it, but none of them gave me crap for it. They never do. Hermione organized the event and told me flat out neither of you were invited. Didn't push my luck with them, so I seeked out Cho. Easy to find, actually, chatting with Michael Corner. I think they might be dating again. She was the one who told me your mailing address, and she even smiled when I brought you up. Apparently she had to agree not to bring you along in order to come, and the only reason she gave in to the command was because she really wanted to catch up with people she normally wouldn't get to. Whenever I remember Cho in school, I remember a red nose and splotched makeup and tear tracks, and rumours telling me she was once beautiful. For the first time, I think I believed them.

So I sent you this letter, because I didn't think them not letting you come was right. I was surprised to learn you lived together (Cho didn't seem too happy about that. It was one of the few things she seemed unhappy about.) I don't recall ever seeing you together in the Room of Requirement, but maybe that doesn't matter. I was wondering, if the two of you would come have dinner at my house on the 23rd of March to get caught up. Feel free to request a different date, or decline altogether if it suits you.

We might not have been the best of friends, the three of us, but I never hated you. I thought it might come as some sort of comfort now, to know that.'

Holy shit, Mari."

"I know."

"Holy shit"

"I know," she agrees. It's evening, and Zacharias poured over the letter on what must have been his tenth time. His eyes had widened the first time around, and were just now getting back to their regular narrowness. They sit across from each other in the living room, Zacharias hunched over and legs spread out, and Marietta stares with an emptiness in her stomach.

"Is this not hilarious to you?" There it is, that hint of deliriousness that so often came up when Zacharias was in a tizzy. It had been months since his last break out.

"Well, maybe it will at some point. Not now. We won't be going anyway," Marietta relaxes her back against her couch. This will be a long night.

"Why the bloody hell not? Dennis might be a fool, but he's not fake. He never pretended to know what he didn't," Zacharias insists, and she didn't think he would. Didn't think he'd even want to attend. By now, she'd pictured that he'd have thrown the letter in to the fire pit and laugh in mirth as the embers turned it in to dust. There was even a copy of it she'd procured, charmed in to existence, that she saved in the safety of her pillowcase. But Marietta knew what he was speaking of now, and her worries of what Zacharias would say had turned to smoke. After all, she knew as well as anyone that Dennis Creevey was as genuine as they came.

"Not arguing that, it's only we weren't friends with him at Hogwarts. You used to make fun of how he walks," She points out, still finding excuses. No matter how much Dennis has emphasized in his speech that he did not hate them, Marietta did not want to give him any reason to. She remembered Dennis Creevey and his unwavering optimism, and just being in Zacharias' presence would tarnish that spirit.

Scoffing, Zacharias tosses the letter on to the coffee table, where it lands light as a feather. "Made fun of you just as much, and look how splendidly we get on now," Zacharias counters with a smirk, and his jokes are so dry but Marietta can find a drop of water in them. She used to convince herself it was only a mirage.

"That's because you were a prat, and you still are one. Only difference now is that you can't blame adolescence for it," she says with mock annoyance, folding one leg under another.

"No, but I blame you for encouraging it. You're a bad influence, Miss Edgecombe, I should have grown out of this stage by now," his grin is less angry now, more smooth. Sometimes it took hours to wash away at his layers of pent up aggression, the kind that lived to his very core. Sticking her tongue out at him, Zacharias shook his head playfully. "And you only keep proving me right. You really are good at doing that," he quips, and Marietta throws a pillow at him. With the dodge of simply leaning over, she misses her mark.

"Quit being horrible, Zacharias." She warns, but there is no true edge to it.

"I'm not the one refusing to go to a child's tea party. What is he, nineteen now? You'd deny him our famously charismatic company?" He drawled.

"Fine! I'll go," She relents. There's a new smirk on his face, the 'I always get what I want' Look, and not for the first time Marietta regrets pumping up his head with more helium.

"Why the hell didn't he send this by owl?" Zacharias inquires in to the air. He asks, even when there's no answer.

"I don't know"

The twenty-third comes speeding down the tracks and Marietta feels as if she were the damsel being tied to the rails, seeing her fate on the horizon. In that metaphor, she is not sure if Zacharias is the villain who strapped her there, or if it was Dennis, or maybe it was herself. Either way there is no hero to cut her free, so she holds her breathe, tries to see if she could knock herself out just in time not to feel the pain at all. It works, for awhile. She sends a letter to Cho asking how her Muggle job was going (Cho was an accountant. Her intelligence laid in her mind and not the wand in her hand), folding laundry and learning recipes. Charms was her strong suit, she bested many of her peers in school but when she was seeking out a peaceful state she turned to doing work with her nimble fingers. Nothing cured the worrying mind as menial labour did.

Zacharias won't stop talking.

But when he talks he learns in equal measure, and what he learns he shares. Apparently, Dennis Creevey had dropped off the magical map as soon as he graduated from Hogwarts. Well, almost. After Zacharias' near begging - he begged in his own way, as if he deserved to know everything in your closet - Marietta slips in vague notions to Cho that she might want to know more about the young man's private life. Cho is the only one either of them were on good terms with that Dennis had spoken to recently. And Cho, sweet Cho, never had anything to hide save for the pure nerve in her muscles and determination in her wandwork.

She tells them Dennis is in Muggle university, that he seemed to have no interest in pursuing a life among wizards. Unfortunately, Cho knows little else, and they have exhausted their one source. So Zacharias doesn't talk as much about it, until the day they prepare to head over and witness it all for themselves. If Marietta understood correctly they were to dress tastefully, so she adorns a knee length dress with a sheer shawl and ties her unruly curls up. There used to be nothing she could do for her scars, but now they were near-invisible so she brandishes the canvas of her face with makeup and hopes Dennis forgets. But it's never anyone else that can't remember.

"What motive could he possibly have? To make our sorry arses feel just a little better about ourselves?" The air is Zacharias' best friend.

It always has a reply.

Sometimes Marietta does, too. "To make us feel like special snowflakes. It's the 'Bad Guys Turnover' plan. When they don't have a good enough reason to kill us," She jokes, straight faced, and Zacharias barks out a laugh. There was always a 'they', and the two were always an 'us'. It didn't matter who the 'they' were - The D.A, the Ministry, Harry and his friends, hell even Hagrid - it just mattered that it was separate.

Marietta prefers side-along Apparition. It feels slightly less disorienting for her, her mother used to apparate them everywhere. It was a familiar pull. No one sees them land in the back alley of a Muggle street. Zacharias had scouted the place out days ago, so that they'd have a safe arrival along with the opportunity to investigate. There wasn't anything significant to discover, apart from that the house was too nice for a teenager to own. Chalking it up to Dennis still living with his parents was the most sensible solution, but not one Zacharias was fond of 'Dear Lord if I have to shake hands with his father'. It's Marietta that knocks on the front door, and Zacharias clears his throat and attempts to flatten his mess of blond hair. The attempt fails, and Marietta giggles at him. As expected, he frowned heavily.

The wait is brief, the door swung open with so much a plump that a light wind brushes past and fusses up Zacharias' hair even more. Generous doses of hairspray prevented Marietta from sharing the same fate. Dennis stands at the entrance, impossibly taller than he had any right to be and hair tossed up and fluffing out. There's his cowlick, and his milky brown eyes and his smile is less toothy than it used to be, cheeks less round. Marietta does not know what to do with this familiar stranger, so she is rigid, and she tries not to stare so much.

She hates starers.

But Dennis doesn't notices, he widens the door and gestures his arm towards the exterior of his home and Marietta is grateful for a new focal point. The innards of the house is well-furnished, but not expensively so. There are paintings of geese and flowers hung up on the rose-printed walls. "Quaint," Zacharias comments, and even to Marietta's trained ears she cannot make out if he is sincere. Letting her go first, Marietta steps in with as much enthusiasm as an inmate on death row steps in to prison. An over exaggeration, to be sure, but the desire to be somewhere else is still the same.

"Yeah, it's small," Dennis replies, and if he is offended he does not show it. Marietta didn't think the Creevey boys could get offended. Creevey boy. There was only one, now. "But it's home. Uh... I've never really been a 'host' before. Would you guys like something to drink?"

"Got any alcohol?" Zacharias is immediate, and Marietta gives him a glare that he ignores.

"Aha, no, sorry. My mum's been sober two years, not a drop of the stuff in the house," It does not take long for either of the guests to figure out the math on that.

"Good for her," Zacharias' eyes grow dark, his voice containing that unnatural lowness. Flashes come back to her, of an elder Mr. Smith with the rim of a bottle tapping against his teeth. "Couldn't have been a walk in the park," Then, Zacharias, slipping in through the door and Marietta never asking where he'd been. Never asking, because she knew he'd tell her.

"No..." Dennis drags out the word, drags and drags. "I reckon it wasn't," A beat passes. "I wanted to show you two some pictures. Brought two whole albums with me to the Reunion, there's a good two dozen with at least one of you in them," He brightens exponentially, moving on. Already Dennis goes off to search out the photographs. Words were buzzing on Zacharias' lips, she could see them being pushed down. Why Zacharias was showing any restraint she did not know. Perhaps he wanted to be heard clearly, and that could not be done with Dennis halfway down a hidden hall.

"I don't want to look at pictures of myself," Marietta muttered. The young woman knew what she would look like; a sour teenage girl who wanted to be anywhere else. She had no doubts that all the photos Dennis had in his inventory of her were from the DA meetings, where she was most prominent in the Creevey's lives. It was a wonder that they hadn't burned them, along with any trace she might have left behind.

"I'd imagine not, you weren't much of a looker in school," Zacharias insulted openly. Once she swatted him on the arm, his hard expression softened slightly and took on a lopsided, wicked grin. "Oi, be gentle,"

"I will be when you are,"

"Touche,"

When Dennis reappears, the light from the hall gives him a golden halo, and his smile is so wide it gives him apple cheeks and in that slivered moment, Marietta caught a glimpse of the child he used to be. Still was, in a sense. There's a folder held in his hands, plastic and tied down with string and so neon blue it aggravated her eyes. He holds it up as if it were the holy grail, swivels his feet towards the living room and slowly inches down to sit on the couch. Patting the cushions next to him, Dennis speaks with as much excitement as he wears on his sleeve. "Come, sit down! It'll be great," He insists, so Marietta takes a thoughtful plunge and crosses the floor to sit on his right.

A loud, belligerent sigh follows her. "Is it really necessary, though? Couldn't we talk about it instead of see it all over again in silent slow motion?" Zacharias harpoons, getting to Dennis' other side. He sinks in to the sofa, his arms stretching out behind him and he's in control as much as he always is.

"Not all of them move," Dennis corrects, distracted as he unwinds the string sealing their past and Marietta wonders if he'd even listened to everything Zacharias had said.

The one on the very top is dynamic, and half of it is blue and blinding sky. Then, at a sloth-like pace a younger Zacharias begins to fly across the glossy cover and his cape is slashing out behind him and if you look close enough, there is no roughness to his edges. Only smooth lines, and determination. Dennis picks up the edge of the photo between his thumb and forefinger and lifts it closer towards them. Hungry to get a better look, Marietta subconsciously takes the other corner and squints at the sequence trying to find something new, knowing she never will. In her life, Marietta had only ever seen Zacharias play Quidditch two times, and during neither had she had any interest in him. It's a treasure.

"What made Creevey want to take a picture of that? Can't even tell if anything important is going on," Zacharias observes. Did he ever notice the condescension he sometimes slipped in, or was it always unintentional? She'd asked him one time, and his response was direct but unsatisfying. 'Depends who I'm asking.'

Shrugging, Dennis' eyes shift to the small pile on the table. He lets go, and Marietta draws it closer to herself. She thinks of asking Dennis if she might keep it, or perhaps get a copy. "I wasn't there when he took it. To be funny I used to say he should have gone in to Hufflepuff - he was always so nice and helpful - but who's to say how much that had anything to do with it. I think he might've just wanted to keep a moment when-" He stops himself.

"When what?" Zacharias demands, not so cheery.

"When you weren't so..."

"Ticked off at the world?" Marietta provides. Better it come from her. Zacharias glares but she ignores him, and Dennis' shoulders sag comfortably.

"Yeah. Or, that's what I see, knowing you from outside the picture. Maybe Colin-" It's the first time any of them had said his name, and none flinch. "had a different view of it, I didn't even know he had it until years later so I never got to ask him but, he liked for people to take a crack at their own interpretation of his work." Dennis deduced. The next photo has a different tone to it altogether, low lit lights and tall windows and it takes Marietta a moment to understand where she'd seen it before until her eyes land squarely on herself and she covers her eyes before she can drink herself in. It is of a fifteen year old Marietta, before her scar, before her world had closed down to four walls.

She looked odd, at the Yule Ball, giggling next to radiant Cho Chang. This was their prime, two glittering girls with so much potential it burst from their fingertips in sparks and danced in their too wide eyes. Worlds weren't crashing, then. Cho outshone her, as always, with her silken dress and delicate ornament pressed against her shiny hair and Marietta didn't feel ugly, in the moment, she remembered feeling every inch as beautiful. She worked hard, flattening her curls and lining her eyes and Cho had said her dress shimmered on her, that the red in her hair came out more when it was ironed out. But looking at it now... reminded her that she wasn't. Her dress didn't fit her as well as Cho's, her hair while more red than gold was still slightly frazzled, too dry, she was only a little girl pretending to be grown. Marietta used to play make believe, and she was always older than she was. How had Colin even managed to take this? He was too young to be invited, and Marietta knew it was too harsh, but she couldn't think of a single person that would have asked him. He was tiny, and too hyper for his own good.

"Haha, my Lord Mari it always escapes my mind how much of a stereotypical school girl you used to be. It's cute," Zacharias says liltingly, and Marietta almost feels better.

"There's another one, too," Dennis adds spiritedly, letting Zacharias hold on to the photo of them so he can pick up another. This one does not move.

It does not have Cho Chang in it. Only Marietta, and she is not laughing or smiling or doing anything in particular. There is no indicator as to what she could be looking at, and Marietta in her limited memory can not recall. But she doesn't look so little here, not on her own, and the frizz of her hair is marginally less noticeable and her eyes aren't quite as wide. Then, Marietta is hit with it. She knows. It's Cho, and Cedric, and what she didn't have and what she did. Ah, teen angst. The stuff of legend, and, apparently, of pensiveness. For this picture, Zacharias doesn't say as much, though he stares at it longer. Then, he pipes up.

"You only got ones of Marietta at the Ball, or are there more?" A notch of jealously transpires, though of what Marietta can't pinpoint. After all it could have only been Colin that took the picture, she'd never seen Dennis with a camera slung around his neck.

"There's a whole lot more, but none of the rest have got either of you in 'em so I didn't think you'd care," He explains simply. "Do you want to see them?"

Zacharias frowns heavily and Marietta just shakes her head. "I don't," Zacharias confirms.

"Okay. Colin was really happy when he finally convinced someone - Leanne Reynold's - to let him be their plus one. Guy just wanted to go so he could take pictures of everyone in fancy wizard stuff, and not boring old robes," Dennis shakes his head while staring at the floor and gives a short laugh.

"Hadn't even noticed he was there,"Marietta refuses to look at the still image. She is not that uncertain, innocent girl anymore.

"So there's literally none of me at the Yule Ball?" Zacharias deadpanned.

"None that Colin's kept, no. He wasn't really your biggest fan, there's a whole lot more with Marietta in them," Dennis says with a silly smile. Turning to Marietta, he gives her a friendly bump of the shoulder. "I think he had a good opinion of you for awhile even though you didn't speak the best of Harry. You're in as many as Luna and Cho, the three of you were his most photographed Ravenclaws."

"Can't say I ever expected to be a favourite of his," Zacharias brushes it off. He brushes it off the same way he brushes off sneers and insults, the word 'coward' flung at him more times in a week than any average person would hear in a lifetime. The one time she had ever used the ugly word against him, was the only day she had ever seen tears take form at the corner of his eyes. Never has Zacharias called her Sneak, not in retaliation or hurt or otherwise. Of anything Marietta had ever done or said, the moment she decided to take an easy low blow towards the one that meant the most to her was the biggest regret she'd ever had.

"Neither can I," Marietta tacks on, glancing at the pile with new knowledge that most of them had her as the subject. This was not what she had prepared herself for, and her fists tighten in her lap.

"Well Zacharias, there are more of you than there was of Ginny Weasley, she's only got one to her name. So there's that." While Dennis shares this tidbit Marietta feels the self-satisfied smirk on Zacharias' face before she sees it. If there is anyone of his old peers that Zacharias detests, it is the youngest Weasley. "As for you Marietta..."

Quick as a whip another picture is in his hands. There's bittersweet Marietta again, with her curls thick and best friend Cho Chang at her side. But this one is even younger, even more childish and naive. A gaggle of girls surround the two of them but Marietta is closest to the center of it all, Cho, as they all orbit around her. She was Jupiter, and Marietta her closest moon. No one was supposed to get between the lot of them, and no one really did. Did it count, when the severing force was already dead? The image is not still, Wendy Silverman doubles over in laughter and Marietta throws her head back in glee. They laughed at everything, they thought they knew better than the world. "Nearly all of them have got you in it,"

That was true enough. Either Marietta was the focus of the picture or was featuring in it, one of every three had Cho Chang in them and none so far had been of moments after the DA. A couple stood out, the coincidental photo of herself and Zacharias, on the streets of Hogsmeade having just left the Hog's Head. They are not walking with each other, Zacharias is several paces ahead and the only reason she recognizes him is because of the lamplight he is under, illuminating his blond hair and broad shoulders but otherwise lanky form as he tramps ahead stubbornly. Marietta herself is just outside of the light, and besides Hermione she was the only girl with such wild hair in that organization. Another was of Zacharias, solitary, in the Room of Requirement, it's his profile, crossed arms and rolled eyes and to anyone who'd ever been to their meetings, it was obvious what Zacharias was so perturbed about.

There are only three of Zacharias, but he is never a a supporting player in any.

The last is two are ones that stir frustration and humiliation within Marietta, striking her like lightning and causing her to go in to herself. Too thick foundation that colours the bumps on her face the same shade as her skin cannot stop angry red flesh from showing through. It is a moving picture. Her head flicks up, and it is only for a second in real-time but with magic infused in technology it lasts frame by frame, and Marietta does not like the girl that is reflecting back at her. She didn't really like any of them, and she knows that this is only a mirror of herself, of the woman she still was. No one changes, they can only go along with the tide. It is Zacharias that speaks out, and she knows it will always be Zacharias who does so. Her voice was scarred.

"Why the bloody hell is this in your collection," It is not a shout, or particularly angry sounding but there is a threat there all the same. "What are you trying to do here, Creevey? What was the point of inviting us here? It doesn't mean anything."

Dennis isn't smiling anymore. He isn't doing anything, but looking at the photo, splayed out on the table for all to see. The ugly truth, being covered up. Just like good intentions. "There's only one left," He ignores Zacharias, turning over the last one and there's Marietta sitting in the Dining Hall, her balaclava screaming out just as much what she was branded as as the marking on her face did.

She does not move, there is no plate before her. Marietta never ate in front of others in her final year, Madam Pomfrey had house-elves bring up her meals for her in quiet hours of the day.

Madam Pomfrey felt sorry for a girl she couldn't heal.

"You weren't really treated well for what happened, Marietta. Whether Colin meant it to or not, he chronicled a lot of people's lives. One of them was yours. So, I didn't really know what I was doing when I sent you that letter, because I was looking through all these and I realized that there was a better reason for everything that you did than 'they're terrible'. That wasn't fair to you, or to your lives. I'm not going to apologize for it, I haven't done anything to you and I don't think you'd appreciate it. But so you know, you're not not a 'sneak' for eternity for being misguided and sixteen-"

"and you're not a complete coward because you valued your own opportunity to grow up more than that of a single boy's life, or a school that never showed you much affection at all."

"You're not the villains in the story of life. You're only people, trying to make the best of it."

A/N

So... I think this kinda speaks for itself, in that I adore Marietta Edgecombe and Zacharias Smith, the two most... outspoken members of the first Dumbledore's Army. While not 'controversial' characters neither of them are all that liked in fandom but... Zach's my favourite Hufflepuff, and Marietta my favourite Ravenclaw after Luna. Can't help shipping them either, honestly. And Dennis is underappreciated, so why not make a cake of cynicism and sarcasm, with cheerful icing? If any of you feel the same way, you should review to share the love or, if you hate them, still review anyway /shot (Also this is somehow the first Zachietta on this site? 0_0 AO3 has got like... six. And from what I recall, no Zennis or Detta either...)