September 8th: Marlene McKinnon
It's weird, being a part of the quartet that is herself, Sirius, Lily, and James. A year ago, this clique would have been the most popular one in the school, between James's and Sirius's Quidditch fame and Marlene's perceived coolness at the height of the Gryffindor then-sixth year girls. And spending all her time with her boyfriend, her best friend, and her boyfriend's best friend, who also is Marlene's close friend? She ought to feel so complete, happy, wanted.
But—
For one thing, Mary was supposed to be Marlene's best friend, for most of their lives, and now she feels like they barely speak outside of mealtimes and the two classes a week they share together. Mary's always off now with—not even with the Hufflepuffs, which honestly would have bothered Marlene less, but with Pete and Em, who are starting to feel just as alien. So are Remus and Alice, to be honest. Marlene knows that the group has always veered way over the line of codependency, especially last year—appreciated it at times like Liz and Millie's deaths when she had eight other people who understood, and appreciated it a lot less at times like when her best friends in the world would try to interrupt and physically get in between herself and Sirius, before they were properly together—but at least then they didn't have this weird us-versus-them-versus-them dynamic that makes her feel a little sick to her stomach.
Of course, until last year, there was always an us-versus-Lily factor in the Gryffindors' relationships, as Lily always sided with Snape when he pitted himself against the rest of the group. Even last year, while Lily was integrating nicely into the gang, there was the business of Emmeline avoiding everyone as she feuded with Sirius, and the tensions between everyone were so strong that they came to a head during that out-of-control duel in Andromeda's class that landed them all in detention together. Still, Marlene can't help feeling like they achieved something admirable, even enviable, during the long days after Dumbledore invited them into the Order of the Phoenix—like they were a united front against all the forces that could try to shatter them—and now, that front is gone, and they're fragmenting.
She misses Mary. Not everything about Mary—the gossip, or the drama, or the oversharing—but she misses the familiarity of Mary's chattiness, her loyalty, the way she was a menace to anybody who tried to get in the way of Marlene's happiness. It's not to say that she would trade Lily for Mary—she loves Lily, too, just as much—but Marlene doesn't understand why she can't have them both, why they're fracturing and she has to choose.
And it feels like the choice isn't even hers, like she's been buoyed over to Lily and Sirius and James out of expectation, when really, she's on the outs with even them. Not that they would ever mistreat her—she doesn't mean that. But Sirius and Lily live together now, like actually pay rent on a flat together-together, and James spent a month staying in that flat with them while his mum suffered from spattergroit at home, and Marlene didn't. She was over at the flat nearly every day of the summer, but she didn't have the simple intimacy of skirting around each other's boundaries for meals and showers and sleep, and then there's the business with Remus. She knows there's something wrong there, knew it all summer as she watched Remus avoid the hell out of Sirius, and yet Sirius brushes her off every time she tries to bring it up, and it makes her feel—out of the loop, and sort of dismissed, like there's a significant piece of Sirius's life that he doesn't want to share with her.
Even besides whatever thing between Sirius and Remus that has been getting in the way, Marlene's relationship with Sirius has been—she doesn't want to complain, because she has everything she asked for, doesn't she? She and Sirius are together full-time now, without the constant breaking up and making up, Sirius's indiscretions, or Marlene's totally trashed sense of self-respect. But is she respecting herself, really, by staying in a relationship with someone who made her so unhappy for so long? They're happy now—she's happy now—but is that only because they've fallen back into the cycle of codependency that they spent two years trying so hard to break out of?
Because Marlene still doesn't know where she stops and Sirius begins, and that frightens her, because what if Sirius decides he's done with her and tosses her out? What happens to Marlene then? Even if Sirius stays with her forever, will she ever stop expecting him to leave?—will she ever feel like he belongs to her? Should she even want him to?
Not fitting in seems like such a stupid thing to be worried about, given that there are two girls dead because of them and a war raging outside the castle in which they can't seem to make a difference. Four months later, Dumbledore still hasn't contacted any of them about meeting with the Order, and it seems like the only thing they've contributed is the black stain of their misstep last May that cost Millie and Elisabeth their lives.
So Marlene is—not excited, exactly, but definitely anxious to begin Defense lessons a week into the term. It's the only class that all nine Gryffindors share together, but even as they walk down to the classroom together, Marlene is flanked by Sirius, James, and Lily and is barely able to get a word in to Mary or any of the others. How did they get to be so segmented like this?
Bungs is already in the classroom when they stride in five minutes early and take their seats, Marlene automatically sitting next to Lily. She sets her wand and her textbook on the desk, crosses her legs, and waits, watching Bungs out of the corner of one eye and Lily, who is twirling her wand around and around her fingers, out the other.
She turns a little in her seat so that she can look over her shoulder behind her. Sirius is sitting with James, Alice with Remus, Peter with Emmeline, and Mary is left alone at a desk toward the back of the classroom, skimming the textbook's introduction and looking rather glum. Marlene feels a surge of guilt, a familiar feeling at this point, but before she can really stew in it, Bungs calls their attention to the front of the classroom.
"Welcome to seventh year Defense Against the Dark Arts," she says severely in a low-pitched, raspy voice. "My name is Rosalind Antigone Bungs, and I will be your Defense professor for this year only, after which I'll be returning to my post as the Deputy Head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation at the British Ministry of Magic. Before I became Deputy Head of the department, my research was about Gellert Grindelwald's rise to power and the French Ministry's attempts to infiltrate and convert members of the Alliance away from Grindelwald's side. This work included both breaking the Imperius Curse set upon some followers and convincing others to see the lies in the ideological premise of creating a better, safer world for wizardkind that Grindelwald had promised them. Get out your quills, write this down…"
It's the most unusual Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson that Marlene has ever had, and she's had some unusual Defense lessons, between now seven different professors of the class in her time at Hogwarts. Bungs lectures for an hour and a half on the Imperius Curse, including ways to recognize its tells and ways that the French government intercepted it after it had been cast by followers of Grindelwald in the 1940s. "I want a foot on the Imperius Curse by class time next week," she says raptly at the end of class. "Next lesson, we'll begin on susceptibility to the Imperius Curse and strategies for overthrowing it after it has been cast on you."
"She's not going to actually cast it on us, is she?" Marlene mutters to Lily, who shrugs, her morning-frizzy hair obscuring her face as she tucks her parchment and quill back into her bag.
"It's fascinating, the idea of taking a historical-political angle to Defense the Dark Arts," Lily says avidly later that afternoon as they're working in the common room on their Imperius Curse essays. "The Prophet has said that the Death Eaters have been using the Imperius Curse on people already; maybe this will help us learn how to fight it off, or better, how to recognize it being used on people and figure out a way to free them. That's what Bungs's research was all about, right? Partly, anyway?"
"Too bad information on her research is proving basically impossible to find," says James, gesturing at the enormous stacks of books they had hauled with them to the common room out of the library; they've pored over half of them already while only coming up with a few inches' worth of information relevant to today's lecture.
"All the more reason someone should be teaching it," Lily argues, smiling faintly.
Sirius adds, "Wonder if this has any relevance to what Dumbledore's going to have us doing in the Order."
Marlene looks over her shoulder at Mary, who is in the opposite corner of the common room laughing with Emmeline at something Peter said. "Hey," says James. "Don't worry about Mary, all right? She made the choice she needed to make for her, and she knows we're good with it."
"Does she, though?" Marlene says. "She's obviously noticed that we all avoid talking about the war in front of her anymore."
"Yeah, but this—this splitting up that's happened, that's not just about Mary. No one can make Alice want to be around Lily or Moony want to be around Padfoot," says James fairly. Lily twists her lips, while Sirius rubs the back of his neck self-consciously. "Peter and Em have had a weird, isolated thing going on ever since last year. Mary's just…"
Feeling like a third wheel, probably, in Marlene's opinion, but she doesn't say so. She casts one more look over to Mary, who accidentally catches her eye. Marlene smiles weakly; Mary quickly looks away.
"You're just happy because Lily finally said she would go out with you," Marlene mutters, not really intending for James to hear her, but he does and looks embarrassed by it, rubbing a hand down his face and looking away.
She sits next to Lily and James and Sirius like always at dinner, but when they're getting ready to go, she tugs on Sirius's sleeve. "Can we find someplace to talk?" she asks.
"Uh, yeah, of course," says Sirius, and they let Lily and James go on ahead and linger in the Entrance Hall, off to the side where the occasional students ducking in and out of the Great Hall won't disturb them.
"So I've been thinking," Marlene starts, fumbling the words because she doesn't know what she wants, exactly, or how she can explain it to Sirius. "Do you think—do you think we've been spending too much time together?"
Sirius frowns. "I thought you were happy—I mean, I thought we were in a good place."
"We are in a good place… I think. It's just, sometimes—sometimes I think I need you too much, and I think I might need to work on that. On my own."
"So—you want to break up?"
"No, that's not what I'm saying," says Marlene, feeling hot. "I just think we need to be—to be less intentional about spending time together for a while. You don't have to go out of your way to avoid me or anything, but—I don't think I'm doing too well with this thing where it's just us and James and Lily all the time, you know? I think I need to be around other people more and figure out if—if I still like who I am without you there."
"Right," says Sirius, scrubbing a hand down his face. "Okay, so I guess—we'll walk back to the common room together, and then—?"
"And then I'll head up to the dormitory for the night," Marlene finishes for him, nodding.
She kisses Sirius goodbye when they get through the portrait hole and climbs the stairs to the dormitory two at a time. When she gets there, she finds it deserted except for Mary, who's sitting on her four-poster working on what looks like their latest essay for Charms. "Hey," says Marlene, and Mary spins around with a surprised rise of the eyebrows and one corner of her mouth twitching. "Can we talk?"
"Yeah, we can talk," Mary mumbles.
"Thanks," says Marlene, totally unsure of what to say now that she actually has Mary alone for the first time in what feels like forever. "Listen—" she starts to say at the same time as Mary says, "Lena, I—"
They both stop talking abruptly, and then Marlene grins and Mary smiles sheepishly and tucks a few strands of hair behind her ear. "You first," says Marlene after a pause.
"I'm not going to say I'm not jealous because I am—I'm jealous. Really jealous. Of you and Lily, and of—of you and Sirius." Mary looks like it's taking a lot for her to admit this, which frankly seems sort of dumb to Marlene, who had already figured that this must be the case. "And I'm pissed at you for ignoring me, but—but just because I'm pissed doesn't mean I don't want to be close to you anymore."
"I don't know how this thing where we all avoid each other started," Marlene admits. "I really don't. I felt so connected to everyone in the wake of everything that happened at the end of last year, and then over the summer Remus started drifting away, and then Alice started drifting away, and then James moved in with Lily and Sirius, and I…"
"He's your boyfriend, and she's your best friend," says Mary dully. "I know."
"Yeah, but you're my best friend, too. You're always going to be my best friend, too," Marlene insists, although she can tell that Mary doesn't believe her. "I don't care if Lily is around or if you're not in the Order—I'm always going to love you, okay?"
But from the look on Mary's face, Marlene has said the exact wrong thing, and she can't for the life of her understand why.
