Some People Die
They'd killed them. Just, come inside and started killing. Marlene couldn't think, couldn't breathe, and didn't know how to feel as she lay against the ground. Marlene was dragged to her knees, arms twisted behind her back, facing the killer. "You," She hissed, contempt, rage, and a numb sense of grief filling her voice as tears escaped her eyes. "How could you do this to us?!" Nicholas Avery, someone she had trusted – someone she'd loved—stood before her, wand held out, face unmasked as he looked into her eyes.
"I told you it was getting dangerous, Marlene," He said in a low voice.
"Fuck you!" She snarled, unashamed of her tears. "How can you come in and just kill us all?" There was no doubt she knew why they were there. She'd been too loud in her opposition, too much of a liability to the other side. She was going to die. Funny, how she hadn't even placed a situation like this into her calculations.
Marlene McKinnon was a woman who liked to calculate things. From a young age, she'd been fascinated with figuring things out from the time it took to get to and from the market back home to mathematical questions that would come up on different exams in school that tied in with the subject she had been taking. She was a master at calculations, someone who knew how to prepare for just about any and everything that could come up. She was the girl who had an extra quill ready for exams, who got to class ten minutes beforehand, took copious notes, and made sure that she was always one of the most prepared girls in her year. Marlene was a whiz at that.
Yet, there was one thing she hadn't placed into calculation; her heart. He was Nicholas Avery and, while he was a Slytherin and notoriously someone she shouldn't have even begun to think of as anything more than a boy who was fascinated with the Dark Arts, something happened. Paired together to work on a project, she found herself talking with him more and more on subjects that didn't pertain to History of Magic, laughing at his wry comments on the student body and sharing her own dreams of what she wanted when she finished school. "Auror," She answered easily when he asked, tipping the quill she held in her hands down to her parchment, leaving a small ink blot. "I want to do some good in this messed up world."
She hadn't pushed him away and, even when the project was finished, they found themselves in one another's company more and more often. Enough so that Marlene didn't fight when Nicholas kissed her that rainy March day in seventh year. From that point on, they had been something—a private something, as they both had agreed to, not wanting to deal with any backlash from friends who disapproved of the other. For the first time in a long time, Marlene felt alive, like there was some purpose to life and, while the world was falling apart at the seams, she had someone to hold onto, keeping her together.
"If you're going to kill me," Marlene added in a low growl, "why not just do it and get it over with?" There was going to be no pleading for her life, no asking to be spared. There was only a fierce determination in her eyes, to die with pride rather than letting herself and her cause away. "You've already killed many people, haven't you? Were you the one who killed Dorcas Meadowses? Or were you just as scared to do it like you are now." That earned her a hard back-hand to the face. She gasped at the impact, head jerking to the side, hair falling into her face as tears of pain mixed with her own grief.
"Again, you speak when you shouldn't. A trait I never found appealing." His words were cold and calculating and, had Marlene looked up, she would have seen the emotion traveled in both his voice and eyes. "What I do never has been and now never will be any of your concern." She finally glanced up, turning back to meet his eyes, a pink handprint visible across her left cheek; she watched as he raised his wand, waiting for the moment when she, like her parents, grandmother, and younger sisters, would see the green light and feel nothing more.
Minutes passed and nothing happened. Nicholas held his hand steady, yet he didn't make any move. There was a moment when a nerve twitched in his jaw and his hand seemed to falter; Marlene was observant, catching this slip of hand. A cold, dry laugh escaped her lips. "Coward," She said in a soft, matter-of-fact tone.
"AvadaKedavra!" The curse hit Marlene full force; the life was snuffed out and her body grew limp. The Death Eater who had held her let her body fall to the floor was a hard thump. Nicholas held his wand aloft still, unable to put it down as he stared at the body of Marlene McKinnon. He turned to the man standing next to him, who also held out his wand, finding his voice.
"I could have killed her. You didn't have to do it!" There was no denying the edge in his voice, irritation and a heavily veiled grief in his words. The man snorted, pocketing his wand in his billowing black robes.
"You were too chicken shit to do it."
"It was just a miscalculation." Nicholas said grumbling.
The man shrugged his shoulders. He turned to the others in the group. "Time to go and tell the Dark Lord what we've accomplished." He glanced at Nicholas. "I'd prepare to be punished if I were you. Now, put yourself to use and mark the home."
Outside in the cold, other families were celebrating Christmas, spreading yuletide cheer. No one saw the man in black robes lift a wand to send a mark meant only for death into the starry sky, nor did they see him vanish into thin air. Yet the mark lingered, a poisonous image in the sky that was gone come morning when the bodies of the McKinnon family were taken care of.
It had been a miscalculation. A simple miscalculation.