A/N: A twoshot by myself and the awesome LeilaTheRainbowNinja; I wrote this chapter, Leila wrote the next.
Summary: The thoughts of the Order when they experience their first loss of the war.
Disclaimer: We do not own the Potterverse, though we so wish we do. We only own what you don't recognise. Neither do we own Paramore's songs that inspired these.
Chapter One
We Are Broken
By LozzT-In-Time
They just stood there, bewildered, wondering whether what they had just heard was real. Marlene couldn't be dead, she just coulding. They knew that sending her off to detain Lucius Malfoy had been dangerous but they hadn't believed that it would kill her. The duel that had taken place at Malfoy Manor had been fierce, that was what Dumbledore had said, and no-one would have survived. The Death Eaters had just been too good for poor Marlene. They almost didn't want to know what they had done to her; surely they wouldn't be content to just curse her?
The youngest members of the Order of the Phoenix, including Lily and her new husband James, their best friends Alice and Frank Longbottom, Dorcas Meadowes, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew, all stood there. They didn't know what to say.
Marlene McKinnon had been a good friend, the best, and the fact that she was now dead was unthinkable, incomprehendable, unimaginable. There was simply nothing that they could think that could make them process it or make it seem any better. Because nothing would be good again, not now they had lost one of their number. Not now that they knew what the war could really do.
They'd seen too much already, they'd heard too much, done too much. Their flimsy innocence had been shattered in that first duel with the enemy, a wholeness that had been punctured by the realness of the situation that they were in, the things that they had signed themselves up for.
There were seven words that stuck out to each of them, something that Marlene had said to each and every one of them when they had gotten angry at their predicament: this is war, we live like this. It was the truest statement that they had ever heard and maybe, just maybe, if they started to believe their friend's words, it could bring them some peace of mind. Except that they knew it couldn't, that it wouldn't, because nothing could bring her back, not even magic. There was nothing.
Instead, the eight of them, almost like a family with the amount of time that they spent together now, just stood there on the streets of Diagon Alley, such a familiar sight to them all, eyes filling up with tears that they knew Marlene wouldn't want them to shed. Their hope was diminished now that they had finally seen what the war did to everyone. They wanted to lock everyone up so that nobocy else could be hurt by the Death Eaters, by Voldemort and his cause.
He disgusted them, he disgusted everyone, but the Order were the only ones who were doing anything that could be considered helping the Wizarding world. But their efforts were wasted; they knew that they could never win against someone that powerful, someone that organised. It would be like trying to win against a God.
There was one thing that they wanted now, and that was to be whole enough to mourn their friend because nothing could bring them back from the precipice that that were standing on: they would either have to go over the edge, or stand on the cliff looking out over the futures and wait for the oblivion to strike.
A/N: I hope that you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Leila will be sending me her chapter and we shall post both up ASAP
-Lauren
