Normal

He didn't care much for girls, the ones he actually knew, his cousins, were not much fun. Bella was mean, Cissy stupid, Meda boring. Girls were not particularly interesting, period. But this one had hair of actual gold, and he felt a faint, passing regret as she got sorted into Slytherin. Shame, really. She had a rather brave look about her, with the piercing blue eyes and daring attitude. She almost looked somewhat interesting.

x.x

'Everyone wants Black, you know.'

'Which Black?' she mocked, because Regulus was „theirs", yes, but Regulus was young and awkward, and nowhere near as hot as his brother.

'I get it, Marly, I do. But he is twat. And he is trouble.'

'Oh, dear me.'

'Marly!' Eve had a worried look on her face, and that angered her. Was she not enough of a girl to handle a stupid teenage boy? What was it about Black that scared (or supposedly scarred) girls so much?

'Don't worry about it, Ev. I am not interested in boys.'

And with a light flick of her wrist she silenced the raven in front of her, wordlessly. Eve made a face and tried to do the same with her blackbird, but it kept singing its beautiful tunes. It took Marly at least fifteen minutes to understand that she was nonverbally shielding the animal from the spell of her friend.

As she lifted her shields and the song finally stopped, she felt oddly emptied and sad.

'Finally.' Eve sighed, and Marly unconsciously pulled her chair further away from the girl.

'Why is everything so easy for you?' Eve groaned. 'It's so unfair.'

She shrugged. It was easy for her, most magic was. She couldn't care less about the fairness of it all. She wanted to be good, she needed to be good. End of story.

And while Eve whined on about hating Charms, and Flitwick went on and on about how amazing Evans was for being the first to succeed (he didn't notice Marly at the back of the classroom), she just kept staring at Sirius Black and his mysterious grey eyes, or at the odd way his teeth all showed when he smiled.

Not that she cared.

x.x

'I want you!'

He said and she shrugged, because any other reply would have been insufficient to express what she felt anyway (not that she actually knew what she felt).

'Fine.'

'Now!' he growled but she just stared into his eyes, unimpressed. Someone was hammering her insides, yes, but she decided to ignore that weird pounding.

'Fine.'

She would have shrugged again but he closed the distance and kissed her roughly, tilting her face, cupping her cheeks.

'Fucking beautiful,' he whispered when he tore away for a second and what feeble resistance she had crumbled away instantly.

Afterwards she sat down and leaned half naked against the wall, with her skirt crumpled around her waist. She watched wordlessly as he pulled his trousers and his robes back on.

'That was amazing!' He grinned and she couldn't look away. For some reason she wanted to cry.

'Yeah.'

'We should do this again, yeah?'

'Sure.' She even managed a smile. 'Bye, Black.'

And she turned her face away.

She didn't want a goodbye kiss, she just wanted a smoke. She wanted to just stop existing.

x.x

'Why do you let him do that to you? I always took you for a proud girl.'

She pushed a stray golden lock back behind her ear. Had she no pride? Or did she have too much?

'It's not like he is the only one enjoying it. It's not like this is one-sided. And it's not like I couldn't find anyone else to do it with, if I wanted.'

'I imagine.' Remus answered dryly. 'But I also think that you are the one who is hurting more.'

'Since when is any of this your business?' She was genuinely interested.

'I don't care that much.' The boy shrugged and pushed his pinkie finger into the hole in his sweater. 'I just thought it would end by now. Some of you would get it together and decide one way or another.'

'You want to have him back to yourself, is that it?' she asked with a teasing smile, but there was something in Remus' gaze then that stopped her.

'Just don't... don't... you're going to ruin each other for good.' The hole in his sweater grew slowly as he kept fiddling with it.

'You don't have to worry about me. Or him.' Her eyes narrowed with annoyance because she knew he was right.

'Don't I?'

'Remus, butt out!'

x.x

'I wanted you there more than anything!' The accusation was heavy in his voice.

'And I wanted him that night. Not you.' She was calm and quiet; he visibly trembled.

'We needed you there!' he growled.

'I fuck you, I feed you, I give up my career for you! What more do you fucking need from me?'

'This isn't about me. That wasn't about me. This war is about doing the right thing!' he shouted back at her.

'Is it? If doing the right thing is so important to you, than what are were doing together?'

x.x

'I am a fucking Slytherin, Black.'

She panted with wide eyes, her hair in disarray, forming a crazed halo around her pale face. 'They are going to kill me for this.'

'For this, Marly, they would try to kill you no matter what house you've been in.'

Their narrow escape rattled even Sirius, but as the nervous energy passed from his system he became more and more alive. He seemed to feed off of near death experiences.

'Is that supposed to make me calmer?' she asked in disbelief.

'That is supposed to be the truth, dear. Also, you were bloody amazing in there. Where did you learn to fight like that?'

She smiled at his amazement.

'I have always been good. You just never noticed.'

'How bloody inattentive of me. We were almost never in the same class.'

'Yes we were, you were just too focused on my butt. You didn't notice anything else.'

'Please!' The voice of pure indignation. 'I payed attention to your fucking amazing tits too.'

She was too tired to argue, so she just shook her head. 'This was stupid, Black. I almost lost you back there.'

'But you didn't.'

'That's not the point.'

'Yes it is. Because as you said, this is a war. Any survived day, any survived battle, even the smallest of victories is the bloody point. And you were amazing.'

'Is this worth it though? '

'It is not even the question anymore,' he answered, and Marlene wondered at the change in his voice. Black was never serious, not like this.

'We have to fight, Marly. Even you. Because they gave you no choice.'

War made him like this, Marly realised. Where was their youth? War stole it from them, war and death. A strange, bitter taste filled her mouth.

'But I don't want to lose you, Black.'

x.x

'Unbelievable!' She stared after his retreating form.

'He kind of grows on you, yes.' Evans smiled as she secured the bandage on her right arm. 'Better?'

'Yeah. Thanks.'

'You are amazing for doing this, you know.'

Marlene looked up, surprised by her sincerity.

'You are doing this too.'

'Yeah. But I don't really have anything to lose. You could just join them.'

'I couldn't, not really. I tried.'

'I know, 'Evans said with a warm, grateful smile.

'Seriously, Lily. I am not a hero.'

'None of us are.' She smiled still, and Marlene had no answer to her kindness.

x.x

'Marly!'

She did not turn, merely took another swig from the bottle.

'I just wished, for fucking once that I were not the last bloody item on your list, Sirius Black,' she answered quietly. 'I know you're not my boyfriend. If I wanted one, you would not be here! But three hours late, Black? I was fucking worried about you. And then here you are, completely unharmed and the reason for your delay was probably not some mission with Moody but a hot chick at the Leaky Cauldron. You could have at least sent me a patronus, you know.'

'That's not like it...' he had never felt this horrid before with her. It was her birthday tonight.

'Just this fucking once, Black. Just this fucking once.'

He sat down beside her and threw an arm around her. She was crying now, something he had never seen her do before. (He suspected she did it sometimes, when he was already asleep. He could not know this for sure, but her eyes were often red in the mornings.)

So he kissed her like it was the end of the world.

And she kissed him back as if it really was.

In another life, maybe some ten years later, it could have worked. Might have worked.

x.x

'I'm getting mad. I am barking mad.'

'It's okay. It's okay.'

'It's bloody not.'

'You liked her. It's normal to feel…'

But she couldn't finish, because he started to scream and yell at her.

'Normal? You think this is normal? Are you fucking mental? I can't breathe half the time, my head hurts and nothing hurts badly enough, I am not even sure how she looked, but I can smell her in my bedroom, and the lack of her cigarettes suffocates me more than her smoking ever did…'

And he crouched down like a wounded dog, whining and whimpering, repeating the same sentence over and over again… It took Lily some time to finally understand the muffled, muttered words:

'I didn't even love her. I didn't even love her. I didn't even love her...'

And he curled up, and Lily Potter stroked his hair until the whimpering mess of a drunken boy finally drifted to sleep.

Lily was shocked to see no trace of tears on his face. Maybe that was why he wailed and howled so much; Sirius Black did not know how to cry, and perhaps this inability hurt him even more than the death of Marlene McKinnon.

x.x.x.x

AN: Eve is a minor, quite unimportant OC. The backstory and character of Marlene Mckinnon is quite different from the way she is usually portrayed in the fandom, but I don't think it goes against anything canon. (In this version she has a much older brother, and no spouse.)