It's 1979 and Marlene is hunting. When they had found Edgar Bones and his family dead the night before she had felt fury racing through her like ice water in her veins, like fire in her pulse, like embers that had been smoldering for months that had suddenly gotten a breath of pure oxygen. It had been the work of a few hours to round up the surviving members of her family that were capable of handling a wand against foes that didn't mind murdering children. It hadn't taken much longer than that before she had picked up the trail and led her cousins and aunts and uncles on a wild chase.
Now, here, in this clearing, she has finally nailed down the pack of murderers that think it's acceptable to attack children. She knows her family is falling around her but she doesn't let herself feel the pain, instead bringing all her magical might to bear. She has always been a powerful witch and she had made a particular study of offensive and defensive charms in her final few years at Hogwarts. If she didn't drip loyalty from every pore, the Sorting Hat had told her, she would have made a fantastic Ravenclaw. As it was, she was the quintessential Gryffindor, passion and fire and rash bold moves.
She shoots a jet of red light at some fool in a mask and shouts her triumph as he collapses. All these people deserve to die. They deserve death and worse. They murder children and families and mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters... The loss of Moira is still a gaping wound in her heart, gushing pain out like blood. Someone who sided with these people had killed her. For that, they deserved to be burned.
A fire spell is on her lips when something catches her notice. A glint of silver – a hidden foe. She narrows her eyes, knowing she has to dispatch these ones first. She twists her wand in a complicated figure and a bolt of silver light shoots forth, narrowly missing her target. She growls, a feral grimace on her face.
"Marlene!" A familiar voice screams, and she turns halfway. A shock of green light zips by her face narrowly and she stumbles back, off-balance for a split second. In that second it's 1972 and she's cornered a young Slytherin boy behind a tapestry, but not for any of the reasons her housemates would approve of.
"You've been ignoring me," she says. Between his scared-and-trying-to-hide-it look and the shameful eagerness in his eyes, Regulus Black is a conundrum she is bound to solve. "Is it because I kissed you?"
He shakes his head too fast. "No. You're a Gryffindor and I'm a Slytherin. You actually like being around my blood-traitor brother. We shouldn't even be talking."
"But we are," she says, raising an eyebrow at him.
He looks torn for a moment and then she thinks she can see a slight twitch in his lips that might be the start of a smile. "But we are," he agrees. Then he laughs just a little, a quick breath of a smile, the motion and sound knowing past his age.
"Marly!" Another family member calls and it snaps her out of the memory. Marlene throws herself to the side, diving out of the way of another hex. Now isn't the time to be remembering the past. Now is the time to survive the present. This was what his family led him to anyway, supporting this terrible regime. He fought for everything she fought against.
A deft twist of her wand locks up another hooded, masked figure in shimmering silver chains as thick as her wrist. The chains turn to nothing more than smoke as the black-cloaked person is aided by a companion and it draws another snarl from Marlene. A curse flashes past her sleeve and singes it and she feels a wild laugh bubble up in her throat. She lets it go. She was never one to hold anything back.
The laugh takes her back to 1975, remembering the feeling of stalking the halls of Hogwarts back before she knew that the world was ending, hunting down one particular person.
The same feral laugh echoes in her throat as she pulls back from Regular Black, leaving lipstick smears on his lips, taking in his wild eyes and ragged breath. There is something delightful about his lack of experience and the way she can fluster him without hardly trying. She tries a little, of course.
Blood rushes to his face and she can see the pounding of his pulse in the side of his neck. She can feel it in his hands, their palms pressed together. She has her fingers laced through his, pinning him against the cold wall. He had kissed her back just now, of that she was sure, and she can feel her own blood racing as well, tingling and throbbing in her lips all at once.
It had been a week since she had broken up with her boyfriend. She felt things keenly, everything, and had pouted and cried in her bed for three days before emerging with eyes of fire and stone. Tommy Davies had flinched away from her every time she had seen him and it made her feel powerful. Still, she still hurt.
The boy she has pinned against the wall moves to kiss her back and she lets him, falling gently against him. She can feel herself softening under his inexperienced touch. He is genuine in a way she is unused to, and when their breaths mingle together she feels a strange sense of completeness.
He laughs softly into her lips the first time he draws an involuntary moan from her and the laugh makes her shiver in all the wrong (oh so right) ways. Dark and velvety, sultry in a way she wasn't expecting, and rumbling through his chest and through his shirt and through her shirt and against her skin. He is a Slytherin and she is a Gryffindor, and it will never work.
But his laugh feels like sin and chocolate and freedom all at once, and she bites his lip teasingly to draw another laugh from him. She knows she will get addicted to that sound.
A stray spell has caught her hair on fire and Marlene douses it with a blast of water from her wand. Now she's soaked as well as singed but all it does is make her fight more fiercely. She can't look around her, can't bring herself to see how many of her family have been brought down. She doesn't feel guilty – they all agreed to come of their own accord, and everyone knows the risks intimately – but they're still her family. She will mourn later.
The flash of silver catches her notice again. The hidden watcher will have to be dealt with soon. But first this one. She doesn't let desperation catch hold of her, because she has no time for that. Time enough for fear, for crying, for despair later. Time enough to cling to loved ones and whisper their names over and over, as if by saying their names they will be spared.
"Regulus," she whispers in 1977, body soft against his. They're in the Astronomy Tower and it's three in the morning and she's stripped down to nothing more than her shirt and underwear. His hands are at once rough, callouses from Quidditch on his palms raking her skin, and gentle, tender strokes of her body making her whimper.
He pauses, bracing himself on his arms above her, the motion separating their bodies. She shivers from the sudden chill against her skin. "You've never said my name before," he comments, voice low.
She feels her brow furrow. She must have said his name before. They've been doing this for years now, though more and more clothes have come off as they've aged. "I have," she argues, even if only to stall for time while she tries to remember an example.
He shakes his head, slow and sure. There might be a tiny smile on his face, but it's just as likely to be a trick of the light. It could be a frown. It could be nothing. He is hard to read on the best of days and inscrutable on the rest. "You haven't." He's certainly laughing now, a ghost of a laugh that suits him perfectly, rumbling and dark and sinful and making her shake.
"Well," she shrugs, propping herself up on her elbows to bring her face six inches closer to his. "You haven't said my name either."
They breath together once, twice – and then he presses his mouth down on hers, seeking, demanding, She reciprocates with all the desire she has, their bodies melding together in the moonlight and he strips the rest of her shirt off of her. His shoulders are broad and strong under her hands and she hooks a leg over his back, grinding against him.
"Oh, Marlene," he groans, pleasure making his voice hot and deep with desire. His dark grey eyes stare down into hers, drinking in the sight of her and making her feel like the most precious thing in the world. "Marlene."
She's the one unable to move now, and Marlene struggles futilely against her captor. Her family is unconscious or worse around her but she can't give in to despair now. The rest of the pack of murderers are down though, and Marlene knew more than one of her killing curses hit their marks. Even if she dies, at least she made some difference.
"Going to kill me?" She spits, putting all her hatred into the words and her glare.
Her captor, when he speaks, makes her blood run cold again from rage. "Yes," he nods. "You're a pretty one, girl, and powerful. The Dark Lord could always use someone like you."
"Like hell, murderer!" Marlene shoots back in an instant. Join You-Know-Who? She'd sooner die.
"Shame." With that one word Marlene knows she is dead, and the man raises his wand to end her. She cannot fight any more so instead she closes her eyes, remembering against her will but not fighting it. It doesn't make sense that she should be thinking of him through all this but she is. She is hoping against hope that he has taken himself far away from these people and their ideas, that he is safe.
It is three days before she graduates and they're in the Astronomy Tower again, completely naked in the moonlight. He is looking at her like she is the finest creature he's ever seen and no one has ever made her feel to wanted, so complete before, and she is terrified of what that might mean.
"What happens in three days?" He asks, running a feather-light finger along her shoulder, once up and once down her neck, then down across her breast.
She shivers and it's nothing to do with the chill of the night. "I don't know," she admits.
A rumble of a laugh echoes through him, dark and sultry and making her tremble, that same laugh that entangled her imagination years ago. "Marlene McKinnon, not knowing something?"
She rolls her eyes at him and everything is almost okay, just for a second. "Stranger things have happened," she retorts.
He nods in agreement. He takes her hand and presses a kiss to the palm, eyes never leaving hers. It leaves a burning sensation. "Stranger things indeed."
There, in the moonlight, in the silence of the Scottish castle, surrounded by the stars and the night, she loves him. She returns his kiss and it feels like a promise and a farewell all at once. Stranger things indeed.
She's back in 1979 and she's free. The spell binding her is gone and she looks around wildly before locking eyes onto the last person she expected to see. He has grown, put on more muscle and stripped down the little fat that he had. There are hollows in his eyes and angles in his face that break her heart just a little.
Her previous captor is in chains, silver like the ones she had cast earlier. But she has eyes only for Regulus. He's looking like he surprised himself by what he did and it makes her nervous – is he going to hurt her? Is he going to kill her?
No time for that. She goes to her closest cousin who she thinks might still be breathing and checks on her. When she looks up again he is walking away, hands shoved into his pockets and his head down. He's apparently leaving his companions and it makes a bit of trust revive itself in her heart, where she thought she hadn't had any trust left.
"Regulus," she says, her voice cracking from all the yelling and fear. He stops and she swallows hard, trying to keep the emotions from overwhelming her. He's right there, so close she could run to him and bury her face in his chest again and feel his arms around her. "Thank you."
He nods slightly, not looking at her, not turning around at all. She's so attuned to him that even the slightest motion she recognizes. He starts walking again but she can't leave it like that, with so much unsaid. Her brain scrambles for the right thing to say – I miss you, are you okay, have you killed anyone I love, have I killed anyone you love, what are you doing what are you doing what are you doing – but none of that is right.
"I wish it could have been different," she says instead, staring so hard at his back he has to be able to feel it even though his cloak.
He doesn't pause but she knows he falters in his step just an inch. If she hadn't known him, known the lines of his body so well, known his faults and fears and flaws so well, she would have missed it. The barest twitch of emotion tells to her a million different stories and it breaks her heart again.
They belong in different worlds, and they never see each other again. But it's 1979 and she's staring down the lines of You-Know-Who's wand, staring her own death straight in the face with no rescue to come this time, and the last thing she hears is him whisper her name, with the ghost of his sinful laugh on his lips.